My stuff is being posted temporally here:

http://abarreiro.tumblr.com/

El astronauta.


De niño, una vez imaginó que su habitación tenía una puerta oculta. Y que esa puerta, después de teclear un código en el sistema de acceso te cedía el paso a una gran base secreta.
La base mostraba siempre una gran actividad, el numeroso personal se afanaba en una indeterminada labor, los operarios se movían entre los grandes ordenadores y de vez en cuando se les veía comentar entre ellos los datos frente a un monitor.
En el enorme complejo, compuesto por numerosas salas, los corredores convergían hacia un pabellón central, una gigantesca sala circular presidida por una pantalla que ocupaba la totalidad de las paredes. El espacio resultaba de una mezcla entre el interior de un submarino y la sala de control en tierra del Apolo XII, tal y como recordaba haberla visto en la televisión. Cuando su padre y él accedían al complejo por la puerta escondida de su dormitorio, toda aquella tecnología se ponía a su servicio. Los agentes secretos les leían sus informes y él se sentaba frente a un monitor y allí se quedaba, observando atentamente.

Al crecer, una vez también se sintió observado.

Mientras caminaba recordó un reciente programa de televisión en el que se afirmaba que el primer alunizaje del Apolo XII habia sido un montaje. Volvió a ver los rostros expectantes de los técnicos de la base en tierra, atentos a los monitores en los momentos previos al primer paso de un ser humano sobre la superficie en blanco y negro de la luna. Y se acordó del laboratorio fantasma que de pequenho guardaba tras la puerta. Tenia ahora treinta y dos años, los mismos que habían pasado desde aquella odisea espacial que ahora algunos consideraban falsa.

Se hizo de noche y una cámara móvil de vigilancia seguía a unos jovenes borrachos. El círculo de luz infrarroja haría mostrar una calle iluminada como la luna en alguna lejana pantalla. Los tres corrían alrededor del poste que sujetaba la cámara y el vigilante se esmeraba en alcanzarlos con el objetivo. Al desaparecer la juerga entre gritos por una de las bocacalles, el sistema de vigilancia fijo en él su luz invisible. Desde lo alto la cámara le miraba, enviando su imagen de astronauta a algun centro invisible de control.

Le era imposible determinar cual era la importantísima labor que se desarrollaba tras la puerta secreta de su habitación. Ahora, al recordar su suenho, se reconoció en la silenciosa mirada que le examinaba al otro lado de la cámara. Alguien, en alguno de los edificios de los centros financieros que le rodeaban, había accedido por otra entrada a las terminales de su refugio secreto, y le observaba atentamente, iluminado por la luz intermitente de los monitores. Volvió a imaginar que con el tiempo, su gran base secreta había crecido multiplicándose en todas las direcciones hasta dispersarse tras una explosión en un número infinito de pequenhos nodos, emulando un modelo divino de perspectiva capaz de comprender la totalidad de los puntos de vista posibles. Se imaginó a si mismo como un astronauta en un decorado fingiendo la falta de gravedad mediante teatrales saltos. A modo de bandera clavó el paraguas con el logotipo de su empresa en el centro de una pequenha jardinera.

No halló en su camino a casa un lugar en el que descansar del frío en la espalda, del frío en la frente, en el pecho y en las manos que producía el cristal helado de las cámaras, el círculo de luz infraroja y el zumbido electrónico de los servomotores.

http://www.nastplas.com/blog/?p=1433

I am raising now

a dead butterfly

with no make-up

Cat Power singing a Haiku from George Seferis in 2003...
The video is totally random but I like it.

"Sixteen Haiku & Other Stories" is a collection of poems by George Seferis, translated from their original Greek into English, set to music, and then performed by a guest cast some of the great, good & obscure from the alternate music scene of Western Europe & America. Read More

Another google egosearch finding.

http://www.outonofotografico.com/2000/expo/natural1.html

What you can see here it was a very large print-out that I (if I remember well) glued to the exhibition wall. This is a picture of my old bonsay, that I place in the window of my room at Kingsland road, facing east, the buildings in the background are a group of council estates in the heart of Hackney. The picture was took with a crappy webcam attached to my computer (640x400 resolution).

Micro-casual videoclip filmed at home (from the sofa in a full moon day).
The music is the soundtrack of the game I was playing.

Moon from alberto barreiro on Vimeo.

"when the tobacco smoke smells also of the/mouth which exhales it, the two odors/marry by inframince". Marcel Duchamp.

Inframince from alberto barreiro on Vimeo.

The shadow of the blinds in my office in a windy and cloudy day and the lines of my notebook also marry by inframince

.

Based on the previous post, I decided to move Lindsay into the realm of the alternative realities, transforming her into a character of a nonexistent Richard Linklater movie:

Lindsay K. is a Hollywood actress and one of the most popular faces on screen.
When trying to isolate herself in a remote island, she receives a script from an unknown producer. The role was about an actress that falls in a spiral of paranoia and self-destruction after the death of her best friend, also an actress.
She reads a few pages and told her agent that despite the offer, she wasn't interested in playing the role.
From that day she felt things were not quite the same (animated rotoscoped sequences start here).
A few days after, she goes back to LA just to find out that Brit, her best friend, was dead.

.... it will continue

The view of the skeptical. Waking Life, Richard Linklate, 2001

For some reason I'm fascinated by the look of Lindsay Lohan in court.
She never looked more beautiful.

She crossed the boundaries between fiction and reality in the most dangerous way, developing a self destructive character. Transforming herself in her own degenerating portrait, like an inverse version of Dorian Gray.
It looks like Lindsay is testing the limits of herself as a representation. In fiction nobody dies, it's a simulacrum. Maybe that's why some stars living in a world that doesn't differ much from the ones in the movies, tend to believe that everything is unreal, therefore they won't die.
Someone has to take the heroic task of proving the solidity, the rules and consistency of reality, and that's what she is doing.

Like Mal, Cobb's wife in Inception, she is not sure if she is living the real life, she enters a self destructive spiral and kills herself in order to go back to reality.

Going to jail is a way of proving the consequence of the acts in real life, maybe that will be enough, maybe not.

We, as spectators of the Lohan Show, are a key ingredient to the mix, a "broadcasted" life is not an autonomous life anymore. Every single act becomes a representation in the very moment it is performed, the end result is that she becomes an actress representing her own life, she is her mirrored reflection, made of nothing but light. I suspect that under this circumstances, the subject will be trying to regain ownership of their missing identity, like Truman did.
What are the tactics to break the spell? self-destruction until crashing with the boundaries of that layer of reality?

I don't know... but today she is my hero.

Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?

99 ways of shifting realities: 

in not particular order:

1. Alice´s Adventures in Wonderland
2. The Mirror
3. Inception
4. Brazil
5. Dreamscape
6. Synecdoche, New York
7. A Scanner Darkly
   
8. Strange Days
9. The Wizard of Oz
10. The 5000 Fingers of Dr.T
11. Pan's Labyrinth
12. Performance
13. The Fall
14. Tron
15. Lost Highway
16. The 13th Floor
17. Memento
18. Dark City
19. Primer
20. The Cell
21. Altered States
22. Naked Lunch
23. Abre Los Ojos
24. Hellraiser
25. A Nightmare on Elm Street
26. ExistenZ
27. The Matrix
28. The Science of Sleep
29. Life on Mars
30. Mirrormask
31. Spellbound
32. Total Recall
33. Avatar
34. Waking Life
35. Fight Club
36. Solaris
37. Stalker
38. Nostalgia
39. Requiem for a Dream
40. Jacobs Ladder
41. Flatliners
42. In Dreams
43. Being John Malkcovich
44. Adaptation
45. Vanilla Sky
46. Flight of the Navigator
47. The Machinist
48. Pi
49. Donnie Darko
50. Brainstorm (Cypher)
51. Science of Sleep
52. The Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
53. I ♥ Huckabees
54. NeverEnding Story
55. Labyrinth
56. Je t'aime, je t'aime
    
57. 8 1/2
58. Matter of Life and Death
59. Where the Wild Things Are
60. City of the Lost Children
61. Heavenly Creatures
62. Futureworld
63. Paprika
64. Un Soir, Un Train
65. American Psycho
66. 2001: A Space Odyssey
67. Belle de Jour
68. The Serpent and The Rainbow
69. Coraline
70. Identity
71. The Fountain
72. Don't Look Now
73. Vertigo
74. Last Year in Marienbad
75. La Jetèe
76. Twelve Monkeys
77. Twin Peaks
78. Taxi Driver
79. Blade Runner
80. Ninth Configuration
81. Shutter Island
82. Eraserhead
83. Living In Oblivion
84. Until The End of the World
85. Audition
86. Spirited Away
87. Inland Empire
88. Beetlejuice
89. Hour of the Wolf
90. Le Sang d'un poete
91. Ghost in The Shell
92. Perfect Blue
93. Lawnmower Man
94. Bridge to Terabithia
95. The Prestige
96. Minority Report
97. Truman Show
    
98. Paperhouse
99. The Game
    

Note: I compiled list after watching Inception a couple of days ago. I used to collect films on this topic, many of those are in the list above, now lost on some dreamed past.
They are about dreams, virtual reality, movies in movies, worlds in worlds, psychosis, multiple identities, layered simultaneous universes, the blurry boundaries of our knowledge, the uncertain limits between the subject and its representation, the ductility of reality, the unsettling doubt.

One of these days

10:48 AM

- Sightings of pictures of Brigitte Bardot: 3

- Hearings of Elkie Brooks' Lilac Wine: 2

... and counting

Listen to me, why is everything so hazy?
Isn't that she, or am I just going crazy, dear?

Just found an article lost in the immensity of cyberspace and time.

It´s from elcultural.es, one of the best art publications in Spain. Happy to find that they used one of my old works to illustrate the article. yes!

Rouma, 2001 (I can't recall what the title means and why I gave it to it).

http://www.elcultural.es/version_papel/ARTE/3726/La_nueva_figuracion_atlantica

via @Tom (thanks)

Picture: Juliet (Olivia Hussey, 1968)
Music: Alberto and his mac.

Purchasing this thing by email in this very moment.

http://9000.bigcartel.com/

just as a reminder that I MUST get one.

A small music/video haiku I did a few weekends ago. Hack of Hitchcock's Rear Window kiss scene. Please put your headphones on.
Full experience here: http://www.webjam.com/kissing_someone_you_dont_know

An artist is a necromancer...

... I idle my time, imagining that Japan was a Philip K. Dick world

Tashahi Murakai, interviewed in "Seven Days in the Art World" by Sarah Thornton

(tal como aparece en http://www.oestesurf.com/$weblog/2010/03/14/anatomia_de_una_ola_2)

Anatomía de una Ola

No sé si se puede decir que nací o que simplemente aparecí. El caso es que el viento soplaba con fuerza sobre la superficie del mar y que yo, de repente estaba allí.

Débil, dispersa y caótica al principio, pero notando como mi interior acumulaba forma y energía. El viento soplaba fuerte sobre mi espalda y yo, por debajo, con la gravedad como respuesta, crecía y avanzaba, concéntrica, feliz y entusiasmada, sin atender a razones, persiguiendo y perseguida por fórmulas opuestas.

De un océano oscuro y frío, del centro de la borrasca es de donde vengo, de una espiral, de un vórtice y de un abismo. Escapo de ese infierno a ciegas por el fondo y me dirijo al Sur y hacia el Este, creo.

Moléculas de agua fría, sales, placton, arena, partículas de minerales vivos me daban paso a empujones, avisándose las unas a las otras de mi llegada, bailando en círculos en mi pista invisible y olvidándose de mí tras un instante.

La luz se hacía encima en mi viaje, el viento se paró y ya era yo, una unidad, entera y oscilante, con mi amplitud, mi periodo, mi velocidad, mi dirección y mi fuerza. Parte de un sonido, una frecuencia, un ritmo, un pulso calmo, un latido grave, azul y constante. La física de una canción que cuenta que paralelas, vienen, siguiéndome.

Y es que no hay nada mejor que dejarse llevar por la inercia de ese impulso primero, saberse fruto del caos y transformarse a pesar de ello en una Idea, negando así la antigua maldición de la entropía.

Y como soy en parte una Idea que fluye y estoy también, en parte, sujeta a las leyes naturales, percibo a medias, superpuestas, realidades. Me traspasan los peces, las ballenas, acarician mi lomo los cormoranes. Me acompañan al ritmo que yo impongo los delfines, se lanzan sobre mí los arrecifes y me cortan en dos con sus quillas los cargueros. Pero aparece también la Historia hundida en forma de tesoros y cadáveres, y veo con mis ojos las Leyendas. La Serpiente de Mar coge mi forma, he pasado por el estómago del Kraken herido por los sables de Piratas y como no, y son mis favoritas, me han ignorado, soberbias, Las Sirenas.

Por un tiempo mis brazos alcanzaban horizontes, el Este, el Oeste y las Profundidades, me movía entonces apacible y pura, sin interrupciones, con el océano curvándose imperceptiblemente sobre mí, dejándome paso con la elegancia de un viejo caballero.
El mar cambió de nombre un par de veces, y avancé así, en calma y en silencio, sin dejar tras de mí ninguna huella.

Apareció la Costa por la tarde, en forma de cabo entre las Islas.
Con una mano agarré el acantilado y con un giro me adentré en el estuario, cubriendo de blanco las rocas exteriores. Alcancé a ver las playas a lo lejos, como una línea clara entre la bruma. Comencé a alzar la vista.

Ayudada por el fondo me elevé suavemente, el horizonte se había transformado ya en colinas verdes, en las casas de un pueblo, en un paseo, en un arenal dispuesto a recibirme.

“It´s show time!!!” pensé en alto.

Ya no cabía en el mar, no cabía en mí, de orgullo y ansia. Los fondos me empujaban hacia arriba, hacia fuera, me expulsaban del agua, pero yo era parte de ella y entre los dos, mano a mano, esculpimos una pared móvil e imposible.

Avancé vertical, azul y opaca, proyectando sombras, mientras por arriba me hacía transparente y blanca, amplificando el Sol, lanzándolo en brillos como gotas.

Ya no podía más, era el momento. “Romper” le llaman, es todo lo contrario. Nos miramos, y en un segundo, el Mar y yo saltamos desbocados adelante, irresponsables, tomando cuerpo, sacando a la luz la fuerza, la violencia, el instinto y la Naturaleza. Desconocía ser así, no lo sabía.

Noté que se impulsaba, le impulsaba y sentí de pronto que me cortaba la piel, tatuando sobre mí una curva amplia. Éramos tres ahora, él, el mar y yo, persiguiéndonos. Con afán suicida y de acuerdo con el mar, me abalancé aun con más fuerza si cabe. Caí por delante de mí misma dibujando a escala una espiral, un vórtice, un abismo. Lo hacía sin moral, sin intención, que no la tengo, y le cubrí de mí por dentro.

Fue más fuerte que yo, aunque yo era la fuerza y salimos los dos, el de pié y yo lanzada detrás gritando gotas.
A mi alrededor el agua ya era blanca, teñida de oxígeno y arena, cansada, intentando calmarse en su yakuzzi.

Acompañó el paseo de mis restos hasta la misma orilla, yo seguí un poco más, hasta el muro de piedra, contra el que rompí ya en mil pedazos, con una explosión y un golpe sordo seguido de un gran aplauso.


Me escondí en las partículas de agua que escalaban el muro, no más grandes que la sal que contenían y subí, con el viento, muy arriba.

______________________

Sofía esperaba, con el pelo aun mojado y los pies colgando hacia el exterior del muro del paseo. La ola surgió desde un lugar cercano al horizonte, ella le siguió con la mirada. Le vio apuntar al cielo, triangular, azul, altiva y desplomarse después sin prisas, en diagonal, redonda, limpia y matemática como una Idea, empujada por infinitos vectores.

Alguien realizó sobre la ola un dibujo, dos, tres giros y acariciando la pared con sus dedos, se dejó tapar por un momento, dando sentido al caos, a todo aquello.
La ola y la mirada siguieron su trayecto hasta las rocas, debajo mismo de sus pies, donde esperaba. La ola alcanzó el muro, tronó por lo bajo y ascendió ayudada por el viento.

Arriba, Sofía, sentada sobre el muro del paseo, respiró el aire salado y se inseminó con una idea.

Él dejó la tabla a su lado. Ella aún miraba hacia abajo, a la corriente que ahora se recogía.


“…hay una cosa importante que no me explicaste”. Le dijo ella.


“¿Qué es una ola?”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/miguelcachapa/3178429678/

I am a bit concern that my records are full of talented people who couldn't deal with the world: Nick Drake, Elliot Smith, Bill Evans, Chet Baker, Jeff Buckley, Ian Curtis, etc.... Basically my ITunes is getting full of corpses.

and now, Mark Linkous, the singer of Sparklehorse who died last Saturday.

Paradoxically, one of my favorite songs is called "It's a wonderful life":

as seen by Annie Leibovitz.

Kiera Knightley with a few "A list" artists: Jasper Johns, John Currin and Brice Marden...

Cool finding on my favorite fetish: girls with guitars.
She's called Anne Clark and her fabulous band St. Vincent.
Spotify link: St. Vincent

picture via: http://mollycorinne.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/your-heart-is-a-strange-little-orange-to-peel/

found in here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dinosonic/4333087381/

I went to see Pop Life at the Tate last week. It was about artists whose life is indistinguishable from art, people who transform their own personal lives in a art performance.

Art is not an activity that happens in an art gallery or a studio, it's a code to read the Reality and to be able to transform it.
Very few people is able to make sense of it, it implies a difficult compromise, intelligence, talent and commitment. But some of them do, like the ones in the video bellow.

PS. Every time I find more parallelisms between Art and Humor. Bill Hicks, Wes Anderson and Monty Python are now listed among my favorite contemporary artists; Duchamp, Hirst, the Chapman Brothers, among my favorite comedians. The creative process is the same, the format of the output differs slightly but the goal is shared: to break the logical flow of normality for an instant, opening the gates for crude love, knowledge and imagination, naked in front of our eyes *.

*As Graham Chapman did in The Life of Bryan.

Hi world,

Great video by http://www.pazsurfing.blogspot.com/

The action takes place near my home town, a spot we called Fontenla, next to my favorite local beach. For years we saw the waves breaking but not until recently people started surfing it. This time among the surfers we had two of the editors of Oeste (you can read the story there)
The waves only break big western swells. And as we always say, size doesn't count. Think about the cold and dark water, the gray skies, the strong currents of the bay and the sharp rocks, only then you'll get an idea of what's the feeling in there.

;

We've been looking at the famous White Stripes stop-motion Lego video by Michel Gondry today when searching for inspiration for our new corporate video. After some browsing on YouTube I found that my favorite videoclip ever is also created by him: "Start Guitar" for the Chemical Brothers, I don't believe the song can exist anymore without the video, here it goes:

"Y entonces yo me le acercaba a Anita la secretaria y le decía al oído, en la mas profunda confidencia el secreto que se esconde detrás de la ley de Duchamp, entonces Anita la secretaria me escuchaba con atención y después se ponía el imperdible en el lado izquierdo de su pecho y me sonreía con esa tranquilidad que solo se da en la juventud"

9 0 0 0 keeps adding flavor to the long office days. This time with a nice art student story (in spanish).

I copied it from here http://www.flickr.com/photos/dinosonic/2482886214/ because I love it and I want to keep it.

Song on this (nostalgic??) moment:

Grandaddy, Miner At The Dia-A-View

10 years ago I was doing this:

Hi world,

I left my flat this morning with the only intention to go swimming. I stopped at a small vintage furniture shop which is about to close. There is where I found two framed pictures that I couldn't resist to take home with me.
They are two black and white photographs taken in the 50's by some obscure erotic photographer. They represent a naked model wearing a wedding vale and with a bunch of flowers in her hands.

All my past artwork were based on reinterpretation of Duchamp's ideas. One on the central concepts that kept his creative mind busy was what someone called "the dynamics of desire". These dynamics are applied to the realm of erotic love but they can be extrapolated to a number of topics (the impossibility of knowledge, for example). Around this topic he produced two of his more important works: The Bride Stripped by Her Bachelors, Even... (also known as the Large Glass) , and my favorite artwork ever, Etant Donnes.
Duchamp's Bride represents the "object of desire", which by definition, is unreachable. His work explains the circular flow of forces that drives the energy of desire, which ends resulting in an unproductive cycle, closer to a defeat than a victory. Only irony and humor (and love??) could break the vicious circle and save us from the dispair and the suffering of the distance.

The beautiful pictures I got this surprising morning seem to play the same game of visual chess (at least in my eyes as a victim of desire).
In Duchamp terms, they are a "ready made", they haven't been done with an artistic intention, they are made just to provoke a bit of naif arousing effect on the postwar male British population. But it terms of symbolic elements, their story is very complete and consistent.
They relate to the archetype of the "femme fatale" atracting her bachelors to an sinister castrating trap. She doesn't seem to be getting married, she is just playing the symbolic game of presenting herself as a sexual and spiritual goal (by marrying her she will be "yours" forever).
The vale allows some clarity (see-trough) while simultaneously implies an always frustrating distance.

That's the beauty of archetypes, you call them and their appear with all this meanings and stories. Like a friend of mine said, maybe the life of the archetypes is the real one, what we think is real is just a blinded representation.

Thanks Sjors for the video. Despite the irony, it's a very "neo post modern (sam dixit)" and trendy video:

"I refuse to get involved in arguments on the existence of God--which means that the term "atheist" (as opposed to the word "believer") is of no interest to me at all, no more than the word believer or the opposition of their very clear meanings. For me, there is something other than yes, no and indifferent -- the absence of investigations of this sort, for instance."

Marcel Duchamp

Chapter 1. He sat in front of a mirror in her living room wondering where all the reflected images of her past were stored. No rewind button
From my Twitter 140 characters stories

Hi world,

I am starting a new visual experiment, I just purchased a really nice 1860´s french mirror with a golden wooden frame in an trustful antique shop in Notting Hill.

Years ago I started to use vinyl stickers over mirror glasses, as a way to enforce the materiality of the surface: Material versus illusion, I would say. I call them: "Surface Invaders".
The idea is back again, with a less conceptual but more aesthetic goal, building up on the doodles I keep doing while at the meetings. The reason why I use the doodles is because its the closer thing to random creation I can think about, and at the end of the day, creation relies on instints and shape is just an issue of random numerical combination.

 Bellow the first draft I've done tonite as away of showcasing it. The reflection is not of my current flat, but it looks like my future one.

For the last few weeks I've been starting a new novel every working day of the week (I think I missed one day). I post this short beginnings of amateur literature in Twitter. The only rule is that they have to be exactly 140 characters long (Twitter maximum number of characters).
They tell the stories of different unnamed people (he, she, I, they) and they are not related with each other.

These are the first 35 entries (updated 27 May 09):

Chapter 1. She arrived home late last night, he was awake by a dream when she oppenend the bedroom door. She was wearing a beautiful dress.

Chapter 1. The girl at the coffee shop smiled and prepared the usual large latte and orange juice. No words were crossed. No word was needed

Chapter 1. For a man with such strong principles, "truth" wasn't a real issue for him. The spell must be protected from those little details

Chapter 1. She was upset for no particular reason. Particular reasons are manageable, the unanswered generic feelings are the difficult ones

Chapter 1. Her voice at the phone was broken by the effects of a nasty cold, her breathing let escape some echoes of pain and sweetness.....

Chapter 1. Factory made abstract paintings hang all around the furniture shop, he was drunk and surrounded by aspirational, hateful ugliness

Chapter 1. There was nothing she could do about it. She was part of a game that was bigger than her, a character defined by desires and fear

Chapter 1. The picture covered the most of wall, nothing on the painting existed but those days it became the only landscape of his reality

Chapter 1. I saw her at VATS drinking a long shot of something strong and red, dressed in black and with the liquid, deep eyes of a vampire.

Chapter 1. She pointed to the wrong man. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Life made an unexpected turn dragging all their lives.

Chapter 1. She stopped working for a minute, looked up and raised her hand to the first lacy rays of sun. Do you think we'll have a summer?

Chapter 1. He stopped listening, his mind was already filled with too many images and ideas. Quietness was unavailable there, a rare luxury.

Chapter 1. In his brain the electro-chemical reactions to beauty and sadness were closely connected. And he saw beauty and sadness everywere

Chapter 1. His room was empty, it had the white walls and concrete ceilings of an aseptic art gallery. Everyday started from a blank canvas.

Chapter 1. They kissed and said goodbye. He stayed smoking outside the terminal before taking the train back home. He was also traveling far

Chapter 1. They felt like falling in a bottomless well, acelerating hand by hand, together, strightly following the Universal Law of Gravity

Chapter 1. They sat at the bar and he had a shot of scotch before ordering the dinner. I am fucked, he said. You are just tired, she replied

Chapter 1. I lost her, he said. Memories of defeats exploded inside my brain, diluting the night and my will like a bath in corrosive acid.

Chapter 1. His behavior was observed, classified and measured on her virtual emotional grid. A complex equation to define the value of love.

Chapter 1. They were friends since they could remember. After the funeral two of them left in opposite directions, the third one stood there

Chapter 1. He was alone, sitting on his board exploring the horizon, cold, quiet, hypnotized by the moving parallel lines, invisible to all.

Chapter 1. They were waiting at the hotel lobby under fake flames made of fabric. And she walked in, looking like fake flames made of fire.

Chapter 1. She stared at his shaking hands: Dear maybe you are meant to be a smoker. You are not you anymore, you are like your evil brother

Chapter 1. He was trying hard, but it seems that destiny only have one face, a face beautiful enough to let himself go, to give up fighting.

Chapter 1. He stood inside the house looking off the window.The house was just a drawing and he was just thinking they were outside. Playing

Chapter 1. The slow, deep and thick sound of a guitar made her bones vibrate, then the bass reached her soul. She remembered her secret name

Chapert 1. She was dancing slowly inside a loose white blouse, looking at the floor of my room with her eyes half open. Careless, like a God

Chapter 1. She felt tired and burned. After a drink, she laugh of my stupid joke, then she realized she loved me. Her light was blinding me.

Chapter 1. Not one single second had passed since the last time they met, despite the winters, the summers, the victories and the defeats.

Chapter 1. They walked along the avenues, the water front, the parks, the back streets, looking everywere but to each other. No turist area.

Chapter 1. While she smiled to my exhausted eyes: "Do you want a simple life?". "No", I said. "In that case assume the price of your choice"

Chapter 1. He sat in front of a mirror in her living room wondering where all the reflected images of her past were stored. No rewind button

Chapter 1. The stones of the city are green & silver after the strong rain. My bones are cold, wet, it hurts. She is the air after the rain

Chapter 1. 11 minutes to the next train. She kept waiting at the terminal thinking on the old prophetic error that drove her there, praying

Chapter 1. He felt that his life was a collection of unconnected, fragmented memories and facts made to be written in 140 charaters maximum.

Chapter 1. She was attached to geography. Her identity changed with the many places where she lived. Leaving the furniture of memory behind.

For my collection of beautiful things:

Music: Jason Linder
Directed by: Michal Levy

via: Instinto Guapo

Sorry dear coworkers for looking rude when in long meetings and keeping my apparent attention on ramdon drawings, but finally science has proved I am right:

Doodeling increases attention and memory up to a 30% !!! yeah!!!
Years ago I was told off for this by an ex boss, I am about to send her the following link.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7912671.stm

Now that we fell confident about this issue Marcus and I will exhibit our notebooks in the Webjam office sometime soon.

Untitled PRD, 2009. Webjam pen on Notebook Paper. £2000

Afternoon,

I cannot avoid feeling the winter blues these days. Today, despite the rain, the dark skies and the sight of a few more months of misery ahead, it's a good day, two news gave me hope:

One: Obama is moving towards progress and reason and it's encouraging the federal support on stem-sell research
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article5569623.ece
Last night I bought another book on the topic: "Superstition. Belief in the Age of Science", that I cannot but recommend. Who would think that the main challenges of the new century will be the fight between believers and heretics, between humanists and fundamentalists, like in the Middle Ages.

The other good stuff is the discovery of Yuko Nasu, a japanese co-student from Saint Martins and a follower of Bacon, with a softer but more melancholic approach to portrait.

Tal vez abulta el alma simulacros
y nos lleva al error y nos engaña:
también transforma el sexo de la imagen
y en vez de una mujer sólo tocamos
un hombre transmutado en un instante,
y otro cualquier objeto que en pos viene,
de semblante y edad muy diferentes:
eso proviene del olvido y el sueño.


TITO LUCRECIO CARO, De la naturaleza de las cosas. Libro IV (s. I a.C.)

Untitled, 1994

Good weekend discovery: Baltic Fleet, instrumental post rock type of thing. It was the staff selection in Rough Trade's new shop at Brick Lane.

illustration by 9000 @ Flickr

For the girls at Saint Martin's College that look like Sadie Frost

(Patencia led me to this guy's Flickr art collection: 9000. I've been fascinated all day).

"Es misión del artista penetrar cuanto sea posible en ese terreno secreto donde la ley primordial alimenta el desarrollo. ¿Qué artista no desearía habitar el órgano central de todo movimiento en el espacio-tiempo (sea el cerebro o el corazón de la creación) del cual derivan su vida todas las funciones? ¿En el seno de la naturaleza, en el terreno primordial de la creación, donde está escondida la clave secreta de todas las cosas...? Nuestro latiente corazón nos lleva hacia abajo, muy abajo del terreno primordial."

"lo percibido secretamente se hace visible"

"Mi mano es totalmente el instrumento de una esfera más distante. Ni es mi cabeza la que funciona en la obra; es algo más"

Paul Klee.

Citas recogidas de "El simbolismo en las Artes Visuales" Aniela Jaffé. Incluido en "El hombre y sus símbolos" Carl G. Jung

Paul Klee "Six Types"

La misteriosa Caja Azul en Mulholland Drive (David Lynch)

Another insight on David Lynch's creative process:

 as seen here: http://podcasts.theatlantic.com/2008/07/where-ideas-come-from.php

El hilo se va desenredando.

En una búsqueda en Google sobre los arquetipos de Jung en las películas de David Lynch, encontré la siguiente conferencia de Lynch sobre conciencia y creatividad, acompañado por un especialista en Física Cuántica.
El proceso creativo es análogo al que vengo describiendo.

"Este argumento ilustra la forma en los que aparecen los arquetipos en la experiencia práctica: son. al mismo tiempo, imágenes y emociones. Se puede hablar de un arquetipo sólo cuando estos aspectos son simultáneos. Cuando meramente se tiene la imagen, entonces es sólo una imagen oral de escasa importancia. Pero al estar cargada de emoción, la imagen gana numinosidad (o energía psiquica); se hace dinámica, y de ella han de salir consecuencias de alguna clase.

Me doy cuenta de que es dificil captar este concepto, porque estoy tratando de emplear palabras para describir algo cuya verdadera naturaleza lo hace incapaz de definición exacta. Pero, puesto que hay mucha gente que se empeña en considerar los arquetipos como si fueran parte de un sistema mecánico que se puede aprender de memoria, es esencial insistir en que no son meros nombres, ni aun conceptos filosóficos. Son trozos de vida misma, imágenes que están integramente unidas al individuo por el puente de las emociones. Por eso resulta imposible dar una interpretación arbritaria (o universal) de ningún arquetipo. Hay que aplicarlo en la forma indicada por el conjunto vida-situación del individuo determinado a quién se refiere."

 Carl G. Jung. El Hombre y sus Símbolos, 1964

Jung habla de los arquetipos que surgen en el inconsciente humano, pero su definición puede ser fácilmente aplicable a la experiencia estética.
Si pensamos en los objetos de arte como "arquetipos": imagen + emoción; y los entendemos como trozos dinámicos de vida, dependientes del sujeto observador tenemos una explicación bastante detallada del fenómeno artístico.

La función del artista es la de servir de puente entre el mundo simbólico y el real mediante la representación de imágenes transformadas, mediante el proceso artístico (ideación, realización, contexto), en figuras arquetípicas, capaces de significar de una manera abierta.
Volvemos así a la definición del artista, como medium (Duchamp), shamán (Bill Hicks) o sacerdote (Jung), pero en este caso a a través de un razonamiento empírico, y de esta manera encontrar un camino para entender la capacidad significante de las obras de arte y la escurridiza relación entre arte y vida. (había tratado este tema en un cuento: Anterior al Hombre).

La pregunta está ahora en la clave del proceso creativo: "la emoción".
Yo soy de los que creen que el arte mejora "cuanto más alejado está el hombre que crea del hombre que siente" y que la emoción se confunde muy facilmente con el sentimentalismo. Así que dada las complejidad del tema, lo dejamos para otro momento. 

 
Marcel Duchamp: Etant Donnes, 1968

  "Kublai: No sé cuando has tenido tiempo de visitar todos los paises que me describes. A mí me parece que nunca te has movido de este jardín.

    Polo: Todo lo que veo y hago cobra sentido en un espacio de la mente donde reina la misma calma que aquí, la misma penumbra, el mismo silencio recorrido por crujidos de hojas. En el momento en que me concentro en la reflexión, me encuentro siempre en este jardín, a esta hora de la noche, en tu augusta presencia, mientras sigo remontando sin un instante de descanso un río verde de cocodrilos o contando las barricas de pescado salado que bajan a la bodega.

   Kublai: Tampoco estoy yo seguro de estar aquí, paseando entre las fuentes del pórfido, escuchando el eco de los surtidores y no impregnado de sudor y sangre cabalgando a la cabeza de mi ejército, conquistando los paises que tú tendrás que describir, o tronchando los dedos de los asaltantes que escalan los muros de una fortaleza asediada.

   Polo: Tal vez este jardín sólo exista a la sombra de nuestros párpados bajos y nunca hayamos cesado, tú de levantar el polvo en los campos de batalla, yo de contratar costales de pimienta en lejanos mercados, pero cada vez que entrecerramos los ojos en medio del estruendo y la muchedumbre, nos esté permitido retirarnos aquí, vestidos con quimonos de seda, para considerar lo que estamos viendo y viviendo, sacar conclusiones, contemplar desde lejos.

  Kublai: Tal vez este diálogo nuestro se desenvuelva entre dos miserables apodados Kublai Kan y Marco Polo, que revuelven en un basurero, amontonando chatarra oxidada, jirones de trapos, papeles viejos, y borrachos, con unos pocos sorbos de ma vino, ven resplandecer en torno todos los tesoros de Oriente.

  Polo: Tal vez del mundo haya quedado un terreno baldío cubierto de inmundicias y el jardín flotante del palacio del Gran Kan. Son nuestros párpados los que los separan, pero no se sabe cual está dentro y cual está fuera."

Las Ciudades Invisibles. Italo Calvino.

Tal vez somo dos, uno que sobrevive, otro que sueña.

Dos que no se conocen, sólo se intuyen, uno que despierta cuando el otro duerme.
Uno que arrastra el polvo del viaje y otro que permanece en el salón leyendo los recuerdos.
Viviendo en dos mundos rotos, separados, que hacen que ninguno sea cierto, que ninguno seamos ciertos.

Esperando La Reconciliación,

Aventuras Domésticas.

Perhaps we are two, one who survives, another who dreams.
Two that don't know each other. Only an intuition, one who wakes up when the other sleeps.
One who drags the dust from travels; other who stays in the living room, reading memories.
Living in two broken worlds, separated, so none of them seem real, none of us seem real.

Waiting for the Reconciliation,

Domestic Adventures. 

S/T Bad Godesber Series. de la serie "Aventuras Domésticas" 2000

Two hand made formulas.

Marcus's formula for a better world (yes, he can behave like a sentitive individual from time to time):

and mine (a bit of a rip off of Duchamp's artist coeficient):

"Design a formula for the 21st century’ – that was the directive from the Swiss art critic Hans Ulrich Obrist to a selection of the world’s greatest creative thinkers". Found on The Independent Magazine last Saturday. The whole article here.

One of my favourites bellow:

by Tacita Dean

I am sure Marcus has something to say about it.

I also like this one fron J.G. Ballard.

 

"...En todas las ficciones, cada vez que un hombre se enfrenta con diversas alternativas, opta por una y elimina las otras; en la del casi inextricable Ts'ui Pên, opta —simultáneamente— por todas. Crea, así, diversos porvenires, diversos tiempos, que también, proliferan y se bifurcan. De ahí las contradicciones de la novela. Fang, digamos, tiene un secreto; un desconocido llama a su puerta; Fang resuelve matarlo. Naturalmente, hay varios desenlaces posibles: Fang puede matar al intruso, el intruso puede matar a Fang, ambos pueden salvarse, ambos pueden morir, etcétera. En la obra de Ts'ui Pên, todos los desenlaces ocurren; cada uno es el punto de partida de otras bifurcaciones.Alguna vez, los senderos de ese laberinto convergen; por ejemplo, usted llega a esta casa, pero en uno de los pasados posibles usted es mi enemigo, en otro mi amigo. 

...La explicación es obvia:El jardín de los senderos que se bifurcan es una imágen incompleta, pero no falsa, del universo tal como lo concebía Ts'ui Pên. A diferencia de Newton y de Schopenhauer, su antepasado no creía en un tiempo uniforme, absoluto. Creía en infinitas series de tiempos, en una red creciente y vertiginosa de tiempos divergentes, convergentes y paralelos. Esa trama de tiempos que se aproximan, se bifurcan, se cortan o que secularmente se ignoran, abarca todas la posibilidades. No existimos en la mayoría de esos tiempos; en algunos existe usted y no yo; en otros, yo, no usted; en otros, los dos. En éste, que un favorable azar me depara, usted ha llegado a mi casa; en otro, usted, al atravesar el jardín, me ha encontrado muerto; en otro, yo digo estas mismas palabras, pero soy un error, un fantasma. "

José Luis Borges, El jardín de los senderos que se bifurcan.

Siguiendo con las vagas disquisiciones metafísicas del post anterior, creo que Borges explica mejor que yo la(s) conclusión(es) de la historia(s) de los varios porvenires. 

"Untitled, from the serie "Domestic Adventures", 2000, Translucent print on mirror glass, 70 x 50 cm

THE CREATIVE ACT
by Marcel Duchamp


"Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art: the artist on the one hand, and on the other the spectator who later becomes the posterity.
To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing".

"If we give the attributes of a medium to the artist, we must then deny him the state of consciousness on the esthetic plane about what he is doing or why he is doing it. All his decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis, spoken or written, or even thought out."


"I know that this statement will not meet with the approval of many artists who refuse this mediumistic role and insist on the validity of their awareness in the creative act - yet, art history has consistently decided upon the virtues of a work of art thorough considerations completely divorced from the rationalized explanations of the artist."

"This phenomenon is comparable to a transference from the artist to the spectator in the form of an esthetic osmosis taking place through the inert matter, such as pigment, piano or marble."

"What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way that a bad emotion is still an emotion".

"The result of this struggle is a difference between the intention and its realization, a difference which the artist is not aware of. Consequently, in the chain of reactions accompanying the creative act, a link is missing. This gap, representing the inability of the artist to express fully his intention, this difference between what he intended to realize and did realize, is the personal 'art coefficient' contained in the work".

In other works, the personal 'art coefficient' is like a arithmetical relation between the unexpressed but intended and the unintentionally expressed".

"To avoid a misunderstanding, we must remember that this 'art coefficient' is a personal expression of art a` l'e`tat brut, that is, still in a raw state, which must be 'refined' as pure sugar from molasses by the spectator; the digit of this coefficient has no bearing whatsoever on his verdict. The creative act takes another aspect when the spectator experiences the phenomenon of transmutation: through the change from inert matter into a work of art, an actual transubtantiation has taken place, and the role of the spectator is to determine the weight of the work on the esthetic scale."

"All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. This becomes even more obvious when posterity gives a final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists."

(From Session on the Creative Act, Convention of the American Federation of Arts, Houston, Texas, April 1957)

Another note following the topic that is bugging me lately. Another example, maybe my favourite, of this two ideas:

1- The idea of the artist as a medium at the service of some kind of "labyrinth beyond time and space", very similar in definition to Jung's "cosmogonic entity", Paz's "real world" or Bill Hick's "True Reality". Different names for the same intuition.

2- The impossibility of language to describe the above.

more to come...

"the most expensive art work in human history" as read in today´s Independent.

what if they find the world is made of pixels?, that would be fun.

"Mi experiencia como médico, al igual que mi propia vida, me han puesto incesantemente ante la pregunta sobre el amor, y nunca fuí capaz de darle una respuesta válida. Como Job, tuve que 'taparme la boca con la mano. Hablé una vez, no he de repetir' (Job, 40, 4 s). Aquí se trata de lo más grande y de lo más pequeño, de lo más lejano y de lo más cercano, de lo más alto y de lo más hondo, y nunca puede decirse una cosa sin la otra. Ninguna lengua se encuentra a la altura de esta paradoja. Sea lo que sea que puede decirse, ninguna palabra expresa la totalidad. Hablar de aspectos parciales es siempre excesivo o demasiado poco, cuando lo que tiene sentido es solamente la totalidad. El amor 'todo lo soporta' y 'todo lo espera' (1 Cor 13, 7). Este texto lo dice todo. No podría agregársele nada. Nosotros en el sentido más profundo, somos las víctimas o los medios del 'amor' cosmogónico. Pongo esta palabra entre comillas para dejar claro que con ello no me refiero meramene al anhelo, a la preferencia, al favor, al deseo y cosas similares, sino al todo, único e indivisible, que supera al individuo. El ser humano, como parte, no comprende el todo. Se encuentra sometido a él. Puede decir 'sí' o puede enojarse; pero siempre está atrapado y encerrado en el todo. Siempre depende de él y está fundado en él. El amor es su luz y su tiniebla, cuyo final no alcanza a ver.´El amor no acaba nunca´, incluso si hablase ´las lenguas de los ángeles´ o si persiguiese con su rigor científico la vida de la célula hasta su fondo más recóndito. Puede documentar el amor con todos los nombres que están a su disposición pero solamente se perderá en infinitos autoengaños. Si posee un gramo de sabiduría rendirá las armas y llamará a lo ignotum per ignotus, es decir, con los nombres divinos. Esto constituirá una expresión de su inferioridad, imperfección y dependencia, pero a la vez un testimonio de su libertad de elección entre la verdad y el error."

Carl Gustav Jung, Recuerdos, sueños, pensamientos.

Untitled, After Vertigo, 2003, glossy print on paper 150x100 

Siguiendo con el tema de los post anteriores he encontrado este bonito texto de Jung.
Me llaman la atención dos cosas del texto: la imposibilidad del lenguaje de comunicar la esencia del "amor", tal como discutíamos Paul y yo más abajo; y la exisitencia del amor como un ente "cosmogónico" superior/exterior al hombre, del que tan solo somos "víctimas" o "medios".
Jung en sus textos sobre el amor, recuerda que tan solo unos pocos llegan a comprender su significado; aquellos que alcanzan la sabiduría a través de "conocerse a sí mismo" y por ello logran re-conocer junto a ellos a otra persona en toda su individualidad y plenitud.

Rindamos las armas.

"Gracias al humor Duchamp se defiende de su obra y de nosotros, que la contemplamos, la admiramos y escribimos sobre ella. Su actitud nos enseña - aunque él nunca se haya propuesto enseñarnos nada- que el fin de la actividad artística no es la obra sino la libertad. La obra es el camino y nada más. Esta libertad es ambigua, o mejor dicho, condicional: a cada instante podemos perderla, sobre todo si tomamos en serio nuestra persona o nuestras obras. Tal vez para subrayar el carácter provisional de toda libertad, no terminó el Gran Vidrio; así no se volvió su esclavo. La relación de Duchamp con sus creaciones es indefinida y contradictoria: son suyas y son de aquellos que las contemplan. Por eso las ha regalado con frecuencia: son instrumentos de liberación. En su abandono de la pintura no hay patetismo romántico no orgullo de titán; hay sabiduría, loca sabiduría. No un saber de esto o aquello, no afirmación ni negación: vacío, saber de indiferencia. Sabiduría y libertad, vacío e indiferencia se resuelven en una palabra clave: pureza. Algo que no se busca sino que brota espontáneamente después de haber pasado por ciertas experiencias. Pureza es aquello que queda después de todas las sumas y restas. Igitur termina con estas palabras: La Néant parti, reste la chateau de la pureté."

Octavio Paz, Marcel Duchamp o el castillo de la pureza.

Cierro un año de "Domestic Adventures" con otro texto de Octavio Paz, esta vez sobre el método vital y artístico de Marcel Duchamp. Subscribo plenamente el texto y me lo aplicaría si pudiera, aunque esto es "algo que no se busca".
Estoy convencido que que en el "saber de la indiferencia" se esconde la clave de un proceso creativo rico y lleno de sorpresas: la ironía, el humor, la distancia crean los vacíos necesarios para que el lenguaje, las ideas, el mundo real o el de los sueños se manifiesten; no como cosas, firmes y acabadas, sino como objetos de vida, arquetipos de bordes difusos y cambiantes. Obras de arte, diseños, productos, poemas, canciones, edificios que aparecen cuando se les observa, porque en la observación, en su habitabilidad, en su uso, se les dota de una energía única y variable que pertenece a tí, mirada creadora.

Velázquez, La Venus del Espejo, 1648

"Entre deseo y realidad hay un punto de intersección: el amor. El deseo es más vasto que el amor pero el deseo de amor es el más poderoso de los deseos. Sólo en ese desear un ser entre todos los seres el deseo se despliega plenamente. Aquel que conoce el amor no desea ya otra cosa. El amor revela la realidad al deseo: esa imagen deseada es algo más que un cuerpo que se desvanece: es un alma, una consciencia. Tránsito del objeto erótico a la persona amada. Por el amor, el deseo toca al fin la realidad: el otro existe. Esta revelación es casi siempre dolorosa porque el otro se nos presenta simultáneamente como un cuerpo que se penetra y como una conciencia impenetrable. El amor es la revelación de la libertad ajena y nada es más dificil de reconocer que la libertad de los otros, sobre todo la de una persona que se ama y se desea. Y en esto radica la contradicción del amor: el deseo aspira a consumarse mediante la destrucción del objeto deseado; el amor descubre que ese objeto es indestructible... e insustituible. Queda el deseo sin amor o el amor sin deseo. El primero nos condena a la soledad: esos cuerpos intercambiables son irreales; el segundo es inhumano: ¿Puede amarse aquello que no se desea?."

Cuadrivio. Octavio Paz.

Este es uno de mis temas preferidos. Hace unos años hice un pequeña pieza entre lo poético, lo visual y lo azaroso, se trataba de la lista de todas palabras que en el Diccionario de Real Academia separan las palabras "deseo" y "desnudo". Lo podéis reproducir en casa, y leerlo lentamente, como una letanía.
El tema del que habla Octavio Paz en el texto de aquí arriba describe perfectamente "el deseo" como una parte inseparable de la condicón humana y que nos mantiene atados a la virtualidad del mundo. Sólo el amor (o el arte) es capaz de romper las dinámicas del deseo y enseñarnos fragmentos de realidad.

Untitled, After "The Rear Window", 2003 glossy paper 150 x 100 cm

God's perspective is isometric, both in terms of time and space (simultaneous, multiple and transparent).

"Stairs (after the Third Man)", 2003. Gloosy print 150 x 100 cm.

Marcel Duchamp

Eric Satie

Carl Jung

Bill Hicks

Philip K Dick

David Sylvian

Italo Calvino (?)

José Luis Borges

Octavio Paz

John Lennon (?)

Edward Munch

Baudrillard

David Lynch

William Blake

J. G. Ballard

David Cronenberg

Max Ernst

Terry Gilliam 

Michael Palin (?)

Stanley Kubrick

Program to be released next Sunday. Amazing visualisations of different human activities over the country.

Specially interesting the images of the mobile phone usage.

See the video:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7539529.stm

via: Information Aestetics

Hi only reader of this blog, how are you?

Today our coleague and friend Sian has added a new and exciting webjam to the family:

http://www.poppycockney.com/

Real Life London in a Fictional World.

enjoy

Dear reader,

The page background for this summer weeks is based on Gerard Richter's 180 colours (1971)

hope you like it

I recently discovered Bill Hicks, an american stand-up comedy genius who sadly died very young, as some kind of martyr in the name of art and common sense.

I am reading  "Love all the People", a compilation of his routines and other documents (thanks Marcus). Among them there's this amazing letter he wrote as a personal response to one complaint of one Christian viewer, after a bitter satirical speech about religion.

The viewer defines comedy as some of escape to the "daily grind of reality to jusy kick back and don't think for a while".
This is part of Bill's answer:

" Dear Mr. Christian,

... If comedy is a escape from anything, it is a escape from the illusions. The comic by using the Voice of Reason, reminds us of our True Reality, and in that moment of recognition, we laugh, and the 'reality of the daily grind in shown for what it is - unreal ... a joke. True comedy turns circles into spirals. What before seemed a tiresome, frightening or frustrating wall, the comic deftly and fearlessly steps through, proving the absurdity of it all. The audience is relieved to know they're not alone thinking. 'This bullshit we hear and see all day makes no sense. Surely I'm not the only one who thinks so. And surely there must be an answer... ' Good comedy helps people know they're not alone. Great comedy provides an answer.

It is a most rarified air in the air that the great comics must breathe, who've trascended their own preconcieved notions as well as the audiences at the same time. Here the comic is one with the audience. He is a vesel, empty of himself, yet full of wonder and joy and creation - for these are the fruits of the Voice of Reason bears. The Voice of Reason is in us all, and it is the same voice that is in us all. And when it is voiced, it is heard by all and everyone can recognize it, because it makes sense, and everyone benefits from it ... equally. There's no downside. There's no other shoe.

It is, and has been, and will forever be, this world of ours, a fucking joke. The real world lies beyond its veil, and the Artist, all Artist, have lifted that veil for themselves, and therefore for all, because we really are All One".

It's one of the best descriptions of Art I've ever read, seating aside Duchamp's "Creative Act". Both of which are very very similar in thesis and conclussion: the artist, the comedian as a shaman.

"The comic as a shaman? Now there's a fucking unifying theme"

Bill Hicks, June 1993.

"I have a lot of respect for humour, it’s a kind of safety-net enabling us to pass through all mirrors.”
Marcel Duchamp.

Dear 3 or 4 readers,
Some more thoughts about Quantum Aesthetics.

A few years ago, with the help of my old friend Jeremy Bosher,  I created a little tool to produce images. Some of those images were presented in an exhibition in the shape of large glossy printouts.

The tool mixes frames from films into a single image:
i.e. I rip  a few seconds of a video scene and separate all the frames in my computer. Each frame corresponds to a different time of the scene.
The tool takes random lines or dots from those images and places them together into a single image.
The only constrain I put was that the lines or dots have to stay in the exact physical place than the original.
It’s a quite simple idea but it has interesting consequences.

It came back to my mind after thinking on the topic of quantum physics and the existence of particles in different possible simultaneous stages (a particle can be in A and B at the same time).
The images bellow show multiple fragments of time presented in a simultaneous way, each line belongs to a different stage of the timeline:

 more in the next post.

We are getting closer to confirm my suspictions.

Check this out:

http://www.webjam.com/paulsari/$my_blog/2008/07/01/art_and_a_hippopotamus_from_the_hood?source=ActivityLog#Comments

During an unexpected little debate on Paul's blog, Marcus brought a very nice idea: using Quantum Physics as an analogy for the aestetic experience. I found the idea very related to some of my old art projects.
This is a fascinating but complex concept that I would love to start exploring (if I am capable to).

I leave the conversation that started it as a reminder:

• paulsari says:

  p.s. I strongly presume there is no real answer to my questions, and as such, they are not really questions, but more expressions of appreciation
  
  
  

• chickerino [http://www.chickerino.com] says:

  It depends on one's state of mind at point of observation. Think of it as a quasi quantum physics comparison - i.e. it is art at the same time as not being art. Whether said art is actually good is simply in the eye of the beholder.
  
  How about THAT for insight!

• chickerino says:

  p.s. I like the hippo too

• paulsari says:

  Thanks for that insight, Marcus. Everything I would like to say about that can be summarised in that I find it a very enlightening comment.
  
  http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?ke ... =CALD
  
  
  

• albertob says:

  good one marcus!
  Art is ruled by the "uncertainty principle": a given object is and isn’t an art work until the very moment it’s observed.
  
  Building on the analogy: a work of art is a box with the Schrödinger cat inside. The uncertainty of the observer before opening the box is the reason why artworks can create open meanings.
  
  Take a normal object, put it in a box (move it into the art context, build a frame around, tell people that its art) and tell the observer that it has a hidden meaning.
  
  Duchamp did something similar with this work “With Hidden Noise”, where he hid a mysterious object inside:
  
  
  
  
  

• albertob says:

  really good Marcus...
  check this out:
  "Human counciousness is non-algorithmic".
  "Quantum mechanics play an esential role in understanding it".
  Roger Penrose: The Emperor's New Mind
  
  If Art is an expression of human couciousness, then Quantum mechanics can help us to understand how it works.
  
  
  

• paulsari says:

  A none too daft contribution from you either, Alberto!
  
  I've seen Penrose in interviews / roundtables a few times. He
  has a lot to offer.
  
  This discussion reminds simultaneously of something else Marcus repeats that "there are different forms of intelligence". The idea that the creation of and people's enjoyment of art is non-algorithmic, i.e. not realised by a series of selections from options x,y,z is appealing.

Cool kynetic sculpture made for BMW

Interesting interview to John Lyndon by an ill-informed tv presenter.

 via: Lost At E Minor 

Hace algunos años escribí un pequeño texto sobre las maravillosas coincidencias que encontré entre una pequeña pintura flamenca del siglo XV (El Matrimonio Arnolfini, Van Eyck 1434, National Gallery, Londres) y una de las obras de arte más importantes del siglo XX, El Gran Vidrio de Marcel Duchamp.

Si comparamos la foto tomada en el último festival de Cannes con el cuadro flamenco, vemos que la composición no dista una de la otra: la pareja mira al espectador, ella a la derecha luciendo su embarazo con un traje verde que recuerda el color de las “mantis”, en clara coincidencia con el original flamenco. El lado masculino destaca, por contraste, por su sobriedad, como un molde vacio, solamente animado por la energía del deseo.
Al fondo, como en el Vidrio y en la pintura, están los testigos, las cámaras fotográficas, cuyas lentes cóncavas y circulares recuerdan literalmente al espejo al fondo de la habitación y a la manera en que Duchamp describió a los testigos en su obra.
Dejo las imágenes y la idea como una nota, para que no se me olvide, para que algún día el lenguaje se manifieste en alguna de mis obras con su amada, su sujeto y sus testigos.

A webjam user, a teenager from the US, as part of the development of her fantasy character is creating some images that I find quite interesting.

Check the following one:

Her fictional character is some kind of giant alien leopard that enjoys flying around on top of passenger planes.
I found the strange flat coulored organic shape that hugs the plane very aesthetically appealing, as it mixes two incompatible realities in a graphically naif way, with no pretensions of realism. In this particular case the sublime presence of the snowy mountain gives a sense of inmediate catastrophe.

quite amazing stuff... 

Two books to purchase:

The Wrong House. The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock.

Review here:
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/06/book-review-the-wrong-house-th.php

Duchamp in Context: Science and Technology in the "Large Glass" and Related Work

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Duchamp-Context-Science-Technology-Related/dp/0691055513/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213207337&sr=8-2

I haven´t recieve spam like this in a long time. I don't know what they are selling but I find it fascinating.
In order to cheat the anti-spam programs they use some kind of automatic sentence generator software that uses aparently harmless words and mixes them in some random order.

This emails looks like the "exquisite cadavers" that the surreal artists used to "release" the unconsiousness and produce unexpected and free connections among words.

Sometimes they are beautiful.

Here goes the last one (in black the words I like):

To relieve pain A narcotic analgesic and feminist

My good friend Alberto Prieto "maxnemo" has published a selecction of some of his best photos on a book.
Photos about "Beaches, surfers, waves and roads" taken during the last 10 years, it's title is "Oeste" (West).

I wrote the introduction, it says something like this:

There's a place where some evenings the horizon seems to turn around. It’s an unlimited place, not because its size, but because its boundaries are erased by the fog and the tides. It opens its mouths of sand to the winds from the West, to the swells from the West.

This is a West that is even more far away. It's gazed from the water with your eyes squinting of sun and salt, and it approaches, severe, dark grey, it covers you with shadows and you paddle it."

Click on the ad on the top right corner of the page to get your own copy.

More on oestesurf.com 

If you take a look at the rigt column of this webjam you´ll see a new module displaying some images.

I just became an "exhibitor" of Gawker Artist. It´s a simple but very appealing idea about "art distribution", your site can become a platform to showcase the work of a good number of contemporary artists. It's a good way of discovering new stuff and improving the visual and intellectual flavour of your site :)

http://gawker.com/artists/

Just found out about this popular website PostSecret.

It's the project of Frank Warren, an artist who recieves thousands of personal secrets from anonymous people in the shape of a 6x4 postcard

There are some really beautiful ones, I took a few from today's post. They are a great example of those special times when art and life merge together.

I went to see Low last Saturday evening at the Union Chapel. I was seating at one side of the stage, very close to the band, but due to my position I got the sound bounced back and echoed by the architecture of the Chapel. The sound of the bass was so dense you could touched it, Low sounded deeper and more atmospheric than ever.
As I was expecting, they started the gig with “Murdered”, and it sounded almost as sublime as in this studio session:

I am trying to find the following print, I saw it in a show here in London and I believed there were some copies made and available for purchase.

Typo/Topography of Marcel Duchamp's Large Glass, 2001–02 by Richard Hamilton.

Richard Hamilton (English, b. 1922)

Dimensions: 105 1/2 x 67 inches (total of two maps, bride and bachelor)

One of the most innovative artists of our time, Richard Hamilton has long been fascinated by the work and ideas of Marcel Duchamp. For the sixth installment of the Museum Studies program, Hamilton has created a computer-generated diagram of Marcel Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), of 1915–23—one of the most important works in the Museum’s collection, and one that has had a profound effect on contemporary artists, including Hamilton. To coincide with this installation in the Duchamp gallery, Hamilton has also created a double map of The Large Glass, which also includes the English translations of Duchamp’s intricate manuscript notes and studies for the work. In these two maps—The Bride and The Bachelors—each visual element is united with the written ideas and schematic designs that preceded it. Printed in a limited edition, these double maps are available only through the Philadelphia Museum of Art Store.

But... It's gone!. No more copies available.

If you ever walk into a gallery and see it for sale, please let me know.

A quick design note written for the blog that we share here in Webjam with the other designers.

It seems that the "cut-out" graphic style has sucessfully moved from design to comic, to art back to design and even to cinema.
From the design perspective it seems that the "cut-out" came a few years ago back in fashion thanks to the vector-based drawing tools, such Illustrator of Freehand. The designers rediscover the simplicity and possibilities of overlapping multiple layers of flat colors and tones. The look of the "vectorised" photo became increasly popular. The simplification of the color gradients from photographs into progessive areas of flat colors gives full control to the relation between shape and color.

The visual references are related to the classical painting methodologies and the look of half finished paintings; but mostly it relates to mechanical graphic reproduction technics, specially silkscreen and the aestetics of popular illustration and comics.

Andy Warhol popularised the "cut out" style when he started doing his silkprint-based artworks by usign very contrasted photos as the starting point and creating multiple color variations of the same images.
He seemed to make an ironic comment about this in his work "Painting by numbers" here:

Forty years on the style is still alive in the contemporary art.

Two of my favorite London based artists, Gary Hume and David Thorpe are very much in line with the style, but totally different ways.

Gary Hume

David Thorpe

also joined the trend for a while. I created a whole serie of portraits and pictures of flowers made of flat color plastic stickers on mirror glasses.
The following image is not the actual artwork but the pattern for the cut outs (the greenish part corresponds to the mirror).

An finally an image of a visualy amazing movie, "A Scanner Darkly" (Richard Linklater, 2006). The "cut-out" look is used here all across the film to give it some kind of "comic/animation look" but also to enforce the sense of drug/technology fueled irreality of Philip K. Dick's stories.

Winona Ryder here:

that's it for today...

Beautiful infographic animation for an important story.

via information aestetics 

This is the title of an art performance that took place somewhere in the City of London yesterday. I found about it in a business newspaper, the picture shows an art student dressed as a weird clown while drinking vodka directly from the bottle.

I googled it, but no direct results related with this misterious topic and beautiful sentence. But the first result refers to a paper about J. G. Ballard [here], which drove me to think on David Croneberg, which happily help me to make sense of the title of that performance by thinking on eXintenZ, maybe one of my favourite movies, where the multiple layers of reality, perversion and computer games blend together in a fantastic mix:

Ted: Allegra, what if we're not in the game anymore?
Allegra: If... we're not...?
Ted: If we're not, then you just killed someone real.

Ted and Allegra plugged in.

After so many months of hard work on putting together the platform, Webjam is looking really good and becoming a very useful tool for many people, including, of course, myself.

I am now helping to put together a webjam for a small community of surfers/photographers/designers/shapers/ocean-lovers, from my local area in north Spain, we called it: < Oeste

The webjam is very complete, includes a weblog, maps, weather info, photos, a photolog, forums and all the ingredients that could transform it into a nice hub for this community and will reduce my levels of nostalgia.

(Area de Agra, por Josiño)

I guess pixels are conceptually interesting because they talk about the very essence of the image.

In the "old-analogic world" images were out of control. Digital technologies deconstruct the images/realities in the minimum units and allow people to re-create them as you want.

Take the world, break it, and rearrange it in a ramdom way:

SKATEBOARDING ON THE SOUTHBANK COULD SOON BE NO MORE! since the early seventies ‘the Undercroft’ (the sheltered area beneath the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s Southbank) has served as the home of the skateboarding community in the UK. it’s an open public-space that has brought together thousands of young people, from various backgrounds, over the last 35 years to form a harmonious and positive community. BUT IT IS NOW UNDER THREAT!

Estupendo post de Iago "surfercosmovision" sobre las sesiones de Fontenla y sobre el mejor fotógrafo de las Rías Baixas.

El ojo de Berto y en el agua, las de Caín. Un poco de aquí, y de los nuestros.

Gracias por el relato. 

http://surfercosmovision.blogspot.com/2008/01/el-ojo-de-berto-y-en-el-agua-las-de-can.html

El 2007 ha sido mi "Black Swan", el 2008 un lienzo en blanco.

2007- Thom Yorke, Black Swan

2008- Kasimir Malevich, White on White

Hace solo un año, "I haven´t gone very long but it feels like a lifetime" Bright Eyes.

Nuevas fotos de Alberto P. es su visita a la costa norte durante el temporal del 09/12.

Sublime.

tengo debilidad por este video.

Alberto me sigue manadando fotos de la ría durante la serie de marejadas de Diciembre.

Esta misma mañana se acercó a la zona de La Lanzada,  donde fotografió la ola de Fontenla. Parece ser que se está preparando una buena sesión para esta misma tarde.

Olas de 8 metros en la costa de la Mariña lucense. Galicia camino de convertirse en el paraiso europeo de surf de ola grande.

El Pico de la Luz (bautizado así por Juanjo, pero también conocido por otros nombres), es una ola que rompe sobre unos fondos de roca a unos 150 metros de Punta Faxilda, enfrente la playa de Major. Según estas fofos que me ha enviado Alberto ha estado rompiendo este fin de semana.

Aquí me quedan...

An interesting trend. People recording videos for the music of their favourite artists, some of them with real quality.

Sufjan Stevens.  Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland. by jymdavis

Toyota Corolla en wireframe.

Creado por el artista Benedict Radcliffe para una campaña publicitaria de la marca.

Ayer me perdí el programa sobre Jean Giraud (Moebius) in BBC4.
Años atrás compré una copia del original Silver Surfer dibujado por Moebius, no sé donde lo he dejado, pero ahora debe valer una fortuna. 

En una entrevista Almodovar confiesa su admiración por Marge Simpson a quién querría de musa en una de sus películas. 

Siempre me ha parecido el personaje más interesante de Los Simpsons y un verdadero sex symbol.

"I Started a Joke" de los Bee Gees, los mismos de Saturday Night Fever! en este caso versioneados por mi grupo favorito: Low.

 (Puedes escuchar la canción el "Playlist" en la columna de la derecha)

A cuenta de la muerte de Pavarotti, volví a escuchar esta canción y ver el video de Miss Sarajevo.  Una canción que me había gustado mucho en su momento, por muchas cosas, sobre todo los violines cuando entra la voz de Pavarotti.

El video es muy bueno a pesar de estar mezclado con las imágenes del concierto y de la mala calidad de esta copia de YouTube filmada con cámara de video sobre la televisión, lo que refuerza incluso la intensidad de las imágenes.

Here we go again,

Estoy a punto de acabar "Tokio Blues".

No suelo leer muchas novelas, el poco tiempo que reservo a la lectura se lo dedico a ensayos de temas diversos con el único motivo de que el mundo no me adelante demasiado. Pero ésta novela me la recomendó mi hermano, no puedo negarme, él lee mucho más que yo e insistió con una cara muy seria.
Compré el libro al día siguiente, no para mí, sino para Coca. Acabé leyéndolo yo.

"Tokio Blues" me está gustando, no se lo recomendaría a nadie en un estado de fragilidad emocional, pero esta semana los viajes de ida y vuelta entre casa y la oficina se me han hecho mucho más cortos a pesar del tráfico. Antes de ayer, en pleno ensimismamiento dejé olvidado el teléfono en el Número 1. Por suerte intuí la perdida a los pocos minutos y llamé a mi número desde el móvil de un compañero; la mismísima conductora del autobús respondió enseguida y decidió esperarme, con autobús y todo, los 20 minutos que tardé en llegar a la parada. Realmente increible, estaba tan contento que comencé a mandarle besos y a decirle que le debía una.

Por esto mismo estoy escribiendo ahora, porque el buen arte consigue despertar las ganas de compartir cosas.

La edición española de "Tokio Blues" además tiene una bonita portada, que aquí mismo muestro:

En el iTunes, he puesto "Beautiful Freak" de The Eels. La primera canción dice algo así como "Novocaine for the soul, you better give me something to fill the hole..." Podría ser la banda sonora de "Tokio Blues", excepto que la novela ya viene con música incluida, "Norwegian Wood" de los Beatles, un montón de jazz y Bach a la guitarra.

He contado tres suicidios en lo que va de libro, ninguno de ellos con un motivo aparente, son la consecuencia natural del Tokio Blues. Un buen amigo mío desapareció igual, sin motivo y del mismo modo que Kizuki, uno de los personajes del libro. En su caso sonaba "No Surprises" de Radiohead.

[Actualización: Los suicidios finales son 4!, pero Reiko vuelve al mundo real, lo cual compensa un poco]

El estilo de la novela es sencillo y ligero, como una ilustración a lapiz con detalles a veces meticulosos y un poco de color aquí y allá. Escrita por un hombre y con un potragonista también masculino la narración es increiblemente sensual y femenina. Necesito saber la opinión de una mujer sobre el libro, mi hermana Paloma también lo está leyendo, la llamaré esta noche, Coca lo dejó por la mitad.

Dicen que recuerda al estilo del "Guardián entre el centeno", y de hecho en medio de la historia alguién compara al personaje de esa novela con Watanabe, el protagonista de "Tokio Blues", un joven alienado pero inteligente con una mirada un tanto cínica del mundo.
Personalmente no creo que Watanabe sea un cínico, de hecho él ama a Nakoto y cuida del padre enfermo de Midori con sinceridad y generosidad, simplemente está un poco perdido o un poco sólo.

Mi personaje favorito es Reiko, la atractiva profesora de piano retirada del mundo y que sabe tocar Julia de los Beatles a la guitarra. Sabiéndose a salvo decide quedarse a vivir en una casa de reposo toda su vida.
La opción de Reiko parece tentadora, reducir el "scope" de la vida, limitarla a una serie de acciones que se repiten día a día (como en el "Día de la Marmota") hasta logran la perfección en los detalles, con disciplina, como un buén estudiante de piano.
Sin embargo aquí estamos, dibujando la vida con groseros brochazos conociéndolo todo sin saber de nada.