Apple is sponsoring the Insomnia Film Festival for students. The goal is a 3-minute film in 24 hours. I always had a good time with the very similar Campus MovieFest, which operates on the 5-minute, 7-day rule. Factor in some healthy procrastination, and the two festivals are about even. Most CMF movies didn’t really get serious until the last 40 hours or so anyway. Might as well be realistic about it.
Category: art
I enjoyed this one-hour documentary on Blade Runner. Two early comments that stuck with me were Philip K. Dick‘s notion that people “aren’t interested in novels of ideas,” and in contrast, that “sci-fi is essentially the field of ideas.” I’ll need to ponder that one. And wow, I still love the soundtrack by Vangelis.
The 9/11 Report: A Graphical Adaptation (review: 2/5)
At the least, I can say that I’m now more interested in the original 9/11 Report than I was before. I really wanted this one to be good; it was just frustrating.
Jacobson and Col??n got off to such a good start with a slick 10 page fold-out timeline that tracks the four flights concurrently. It was a truly powerful experience to juxtapose the events of my own morning with what happened in the air. But it all went down from there. The illustration was disappointingly inconsistent, mixing some really clever, accurately rendered scenes next to some that are just a little sloppy. I’m not sure if scattershot, somewhat arbitrary imagery is due to the nature of the original Report. The lettering and narrative boxes really killed me, though. The box geography was awkward, so I ended up stumbling around the page. Out of hundreds of comics I’ve consumed, I’ve never had so much trouble doing the basic task of reading.
Regarding the actual Report material, it’s not so bad. For someone like me, who generally steers clear of popular politics, it’s a nice intro to the history, who is who among the terrorists, and who is who among the white men in suits. Here’s my #1 piece of loveably laughable advice the Commission offers: “It is crucial to offer a way of routinizing, even bureaucratizing, the exercise of imagination.”1 Oh, I really wanted this to be good.
Some other links for your curiosity… here’s a good review over at Salon, an NPR interview with Jacobson and Col??n, and Slate offers an excerpted version online & an interview as well.
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1*ahem* Some other important thoughts on bureaucracy…
Since the tumult over the Vietnam Veterans Memorial back in the 80s, Maya Lin has disengaged from ideological discussions, taking a turn towards soft environmentalism. [via greg]
The National Press Photographers Association has posted the Best of Photojournalism 2006.
Design Observer discusses the pluralist European Union anniversary logo. Here are the top placements in the logo design competition (no, seriously). I think it’s fascinating that the “improve by including” tendency is such a natural human inclination. But synergy can backfire. Thinking more broadly, I wonder if this is a side effect of democratization, the political culture filtering down to applied arts. Anyone know any good resources about design and politics?
Opening Night at the Atlanta Ballet
I stopped by for the season opener at the Atlanta Ballet tonight. Their performance of Giselle was just wonderful. The costumes were really amazing.
A couple downers: the lady on my left who had a persistent, throaty cough. Thank goodness another audience member had some spare cough drops! The Fox was only about 1/3 full, which explains why there’s no live music anymore. Various musicians and supporters were outside the Fox picketing, as announced in the Atlanta Composers Blog. The recorded music was fine (fine as in “functional”), but it just doesn’t feel as warm and fuzzy and human as it did when the orchestra was there. And there’s a certain sense of spectacle that’s missing. It’s a little awkward to walk into a show when someone gives you the earnest plea, “You deserve to hear live music.” Good luck to them. Let’s hope that each side will come to their senses, and that fellow Atlantans will remember what a treasure they’ve got.
Understanding Comics (review: 4.5/5)
Understanding Comics is both an excellent treatise on comics and a working example of the form. Scott McCloud explains the medium within the medium–highlighting one of the unique strengths that comics have.
McCloud makes the argument that comics fill the gap on the scale that has purely representational images on one end (visual ‘high art’), and on the other end, the realm of purely arbitrary images (aka words, as ‘literature’). But the comics niche has been trivialized as a mere diversion of pop culture, and that ain’t right. (See Highbrow/Lowbrow for similar cultural divisions and how they came about)
McCloud traces the roots of comics back to the early days of literacy, before literature and art went their separate ways. Drawing on this union is where comics set themselves apart as a unique form of visual communication. I see a parallel here with Beautiful Evidence (my review), where Tufte has a whole chapter called “Words, Numbers, Images, Together.” Those were the good ol’ days when words and doodles got along just fine without ridicule.
After the history, there’s an extended analysis of form and style and structural elements.
It’s interesting to see McCloud use an argument that is revived in Steven Johnson’s Everything Good is Bad for You (my review). Namely, that comics are more demanding of the reader. The storyline isn’t completely spelled out for you. The selected elements of the story are presented together, but you have to fill in the gaps between frozen moments in time, to give them life. As McCloud says, the comics reader becomes a participant.
Though it is probably beyond the scope of the work, I’d only ding McCloud for not going into enough depth. I’m sure there would be some copyright issues (grrr!), but I wish he were able to do a longer work with more case studies and analysis of the form. That task, however, is left for the newly-educated participant-reader. Which is perhaps how it should be.
The Cover Browser allows you to (wait for it)… browse the covers of thousands of comic books.
Music video for Bjork’s tune, Bachelorette. Great song, great video. Directed by Michael Gondry, who was in charge of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I enjoyed very much this weekend. [via waxy]
The Rest is Noise reminds us that Steve Reich turned 70 this year. Do yourself a favor and read up on Reich. The wikipedia entry gives a good start. For your listening pleasure, I’d recommend that you find, and subsequently purchase/ download/ rip/ obtain his works Electric Counterpoint, Clapping Music, Proverb, and Six Marimbas as an appetizer.
Visualizing Meaning is a project among scholars at Cornell, who were asked, “Of the many charts you have seen in your life, which has been the most important, remarkable, meaningful, or valuable?” [via rebecca’s pocket crediting seat 1a linking to infosthetics]
Shaun Inman points to As Slow as Possible, John Cage’s composition which is now the longest musical work ever in the history of concept art. It’s still going on right now, and will for proceed for, oh, 600 years.
NYT on the business of fashion: “At the end of the day, would I wear Balenciaga? Probably not. But you have to make a choice between whether you only show pretty dresses that women will want to wear or whether you show work by a designer who can change the way people see.”
More Tufte
Yeah, that Beautiful Evidence was something. Here’s some related material for you:
-I also liked Derek Miller’s review of BE
-The kind folks at 37 Signals report on a Tufte seminar they attended
-Here’s an interview with Tufte on NPR [via kottke]
-Tufte’s infamous essay, PowerPoint is Evil
-And Scott Rosenburg‘s profile of Tufte over at Salon
Beautiful Evidence (review: 4.5/5)
This is such an excellent book. Just a couple days after finishing Beautiful Evidence, I decided to invoke my alumni privileges at Emory’s Woodruff Library so I could get my hands on his earlier books. I’m in the midst of Envisioning Information right now, and it’s looking to be just as good.
Edward Tufte has crafted a reputation as something of a guru of analytic design and information display. His latest work, Beautiful Evidence is about the act of visual communication in all its forms–using image, word, number, line, or otherwise. He’s talking about the transformation of observation to presentation, “how seeing turns into showing”. This comes out in chapters dedicated to mapped images; links, arrows & causation; corrupted evidence; and more, all calling on case studies from modern science back to ye olden days.
The book itself sets a good model for what it discusses, as a beautifully printed book with thoughtful, purposeful design. Add in some lovely colors and inks on some really nice paper. I liked seeing the “footnotes” placed in the left and right margins vertically parallel with the corresponding phrase, so the commentary is but a glance away. And for the most part, each page represents a full argument. While it can make for some slightly terse writing, I have to admire the editorial restraint to not let the ideas run all over the pages.
I give petty demerits for a little bit of loose organization. The individual chapters and pages are really tight. On the other hand, at the macro-level the book is a wee jumbled. He expands on some incredibly cool ideas on sparklines; but then there’s also a reprint of an old pamphlet on PowerPoint; and then there’s also an odd dwarf chapter on sculpture. Hmm.
Later, Tufte offers a bit pseudo-inspirational advice on information design: “What would Richard Feynman think?” Well, gosh, Ed. I really don’t have a clue. How about a little help? I’m reading your book so you can tell me. Don’t make me think! Er…
But really, it’s easy to criticise because it’s kind of hard to choose which excellent parts to highlight. There’s a lot to learn here.
Maybe you’ve seen a few of the huge photos pasted on buildings throughout Atlanta as part of a project for Atlanta Celebrates Photography. See the handy treasure map and collect all 14. [via wdik]
I just picked up The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation from the library today. It looks pretty cool. A quick flip-through showed some nice fold-out spreads and timelines and such. I’ll let you know how it turns out. Maybe one day we’ll see one for the Pentagon Papers as well. And by the way, sorry for the lack of book reviews lately. It’s one of my favorite things to do here. I’ve read a ton, but I’ve got to work through a bit of a backlog. More to come, promise.
Mark Larson 
