July: I just passed a monk and so the peacetime is in full effect

you were never very good at caring for me, he said. 

she said: “it really has always been about whether you are being cared for and how much.”

man in need of mothering seeks fatherless friend.

Abelton does a nice job of using minimal text and maximal multimedia. I might add some alpha-ed black background to the text, but to each their own.

I also like the arrow teasing content “below the fold”

…reading papers and manuscripts is one thing. Looking through someone’s e-mail is quite another, and the feeling of creepiness and voyeurism that overcame me as I sat with Gonzalez struggled with the unstoppable curiosity that I feel about Sontag’s life. To read someone’s e-mail is to see her thinking and talking in real time. If most e-mails are not interesting (“The car will pick you up at 7:30 if that’s ok xxx”), others reveal unexpected qualities that are delightful to discover. (Who would have suspected, for example, that Sontag sent e-mails with the subject heading “Whassup?”) One sees Sontag, who had so many friends, elated to be in such easy touch with them (“I’m catching the e-mail fever!”); one sees the insatiably lonely writer reaching out to people she hardly knew and inviting them to pay a call. In their reactions, one reads their bemusement, how hesitant they were to bother the icon, with her fearsome reputation.

With the software available today, the biographer who strives to put himself in the position of his subject is faced with new conundrums. One of the most intriguing tools that Gonzalez deploys is a program called MUSE, which can search an e-mail database and map the writer’s feelings with uncanny accuracy. You can see categories such as “medical,” “angry,” and “congratulations”; you can see, on a graph, what percentage of the time in May, 2001, for example, Sontag was happy or sad or upset.

As I was marvelling at this technology, I wondered how I would feel if someone searched my e-mail and revealed that I uttered an average of three hundred and twenty-one bitchy remarks per month, and that my weekly horniness index ranged from 34.492 per cent to 56.297 per cent. Should we, simply because we can, boil down human emotions and lives in this way? Would Sontag have wanted her life analyzed like this? Would anyone?

Benjamin Moser on Sontag’s “implacable archives.” (via snpsnpsnp)

Relationships change over time spent online. Where I used to want to know everything about someone I loved, I now want to know only what he or she tells me. Anything I find out about that someone, from someone else, I rule inadmissible. In Tao Lin’s new novel, Taipei, his protagonist meets a girl and spends hours searching Facebook for any photos she might have untagged of herself. Reading this, I sympathized, and thought he had doomed his interest. It seemed unfair – both of and to Lin’s character – to not see her as she wanted to look.

me in the summer on Miranda July’s email project. Thought of it reading this. (via snpsnpsnp)

I can relate. I spent my first real relationship this way—not listening to what other people said, wanting his idea of himself to be the only one that I received. But the messages were mixed and in the end I could have used some help to discern them. These days I’m not sure which way is right.
Perhaps looking for someone’s untagged photos is akin to finding candid snapshots of someone when they’re unaware a photo is being taken, where—as Jennifer Egan once put it—you see how someone really looks. 

snpsnpsnp:

Interviewer: Do you think people understand you?
Bresson: I don’t know if they understand me, but is the issue here the film or me? If its the film, I think - I’d rather people feel a film before understanding it. I’d rather feelings arise before intellect.

mein kampf

I’d rather feelings arise before intellect.

playful logo. 

Learn Meteor Fundamentals and Best Practices

deluxe quick guide to meteor with enough detail to keep me from going crazy

Learn Meteor Fundamentals and Best Practices

i like the look of paint and mix of human/machine (watercolor vs. type).

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via snpsnpsnp ‘s article:
Your Friends and Rapists: How dick culture permits the crime. 

art reminds me of Anne Carson’s “Nox,” which I have taped around my bedroom walls. 

horizontal lines. 

make that wooden couch feel squishy with a futon and lots of pillows

feedly ui

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via http://www.finisterreuk.com

via theselby

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organization

We watch, for the most part impassively, as “The Night Alive” ’s five characters cling to the refuse-laden reef of their lives—a space littered with greasy food, misbegotten children, bloodstained T-shirts, used condoms, cheap cologne bottles, broken promises, the rubbish of love. From this they try to build a home, but there is no comfort there—not even a window through which to look out at the passing world… .

Hilton Als for the New Yorker on Conor McPherson’s “The Night Alive”

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The piece consisted of 28 cords stretched from the ceiling to the floor below, each associated with a line of text from a poem about a woman’s worth. By plucking and pulling on the cords, visitors could release sinuous clouds of letters and billowing ribbons, projected on the opposite wall. The harp was a unique visual instrument that struck a balance between legibility, aesthetic beauty, and interactivity.

via small design firm

http://www.davidsmall.com/portfolio/loreal-poetry-harp/

If the girl had been worth having she’d have waited for you?’ No, sir, the girl really worth having won’t wait for anybody.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (via illusionsvk)

wellbeyondmars:

#Asana of the Week: Half Lord of the Fishes

Last pose I just learned pretty much!

I’m still with the right leg out straight and the bind in the back. It’s more unstable but I think will make me stronger. 

Parsvottanasana

wellbeyondmars:

Asana of the Week: Pyramid

100% my mom’s style. 

thecollectionblog:

Slinky pajama dressing at Haider Ackermann Spring 2008

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artandsciencejournal:

Inside Out: The Art of Vesna Jovanovic

The art of science is in full bloom in the multimedia drawings of Vesna Jovanovic. Jovanovic, a visual artist based in Chicago, creates mysterious and complex images in which human organs, plants, and other organic shapes emerge out of abstract inky pools. Invoking the phenomenon of pareidolia, or the perception of meaningful forms from random stimuli (think Rorschach blots), Jovanovic typically begins her drawings by spilling ink on various 2-D media, including paper and Yupo (a polypropylene-based paper). In response to the shapes created by the ink, she draws in new elements to create a detailed and cohesive composition: cilia-like hairs sprout from shadowy watermarks; intestine-like tubes snake around a rivulet of ink; dividing cells blossom out of blotchy, reddish stains.

Overall, Jovanovic’s work reflects her interest in the broader question of what it means to have a body in an age of dizzying technological advancement and scientific discovery. Her work is a striking montage of the physical and the ephemeral: far from traditional medical illustration, Jovanovic’s compositions are thoughtful and poetic reflections on our relationship with nature and the human form.

Given her background in both visual art and chemistry, Jovanovic’s fascination with the intersection of art and science seems a natural fit. In addition to informing her drawings, her interest in science has tinged other aspects of her work, including her photography and ceramics practices. Vesna Jovanovic is currently completing a residency at the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago. To see more of her work, go to her website , and her fascinating blog, Traces.

- Suzanne Hood

for whatever reason i can never remember this

Completely Mental

"You’re projecting" is always a dis. 

a disrespect.

a pointing finger that wags at the psychological undertones present in the words you just said

the words you just said with your own heart and your own lips. the sounds that you just thought were yours to make. the reaction yours to take.

Subliminally it’s not the case. For there are layers of association and self rejection that plumb the depths of insecurity even while the ticking, scheming brain is wide awake. 

In art we’re allowed to dream with open eyes. 

The references and associations, are ok. Wherever they come from, however interior or hipster or old school or passe. 

Having your own feeling is the point. The art evokes and what you make of it is what it is.

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(top) [via @motutech] I really like the back-lit MOTU booth. For some NAMM attendees, this was their first brand impression. <EDIT> Better angle of the logo: https://twitter.com/motutech/status/427192462453387265 </EDIT>

(bottom two) [via @motutech] Check out the product display desk. The rack-mountable items are in a display rack and the table top items are next to laptop-looking-rectangles of product info. Not to lean too much towards skeuomorphism, but making the 3d models fit in a virtual rack on a products page might just work. It gives a sense of scale and context to the use of the product.

I really like how I don’t have to scroll several page lengths to see all of the content. There’s also a nice balance/flow between the media and text which makes reading a bit more engaging.

http://www.teenageengineering.com/products/oplab

april fools background: burned-down night club

You only got in because you're a girl...

Same here. Me versus the 3 boys that I had all of my classes with. We were the guinea pig group at my hs and someone eventually made up a rumor that I had slept with someone to get in. At that point I hadn’t had so much as a boyfriend so it was embarrassing. 

mansplained:

When I was a senior in high school, I got into MIT, a prestigious engineering school, during early admission and several boys, who also applied to MIT early but were either rejected or deferred, and even some girls, who did not apply, quite profusely told me that “the only reason…

You only got in because you're a girl...

Not to suggest this website is at all attractive, but I do like how the user gets a personalized navigation drawer (“My Workspace”) that they can customize. I can see that integrating well with registration, support tickets, and product comparison. User log in can be hidden in the drawer to free up screen real-estate at the top of the page. 

Seeing “My” in the navigation invites the user to interact with something that already belongs to them (even if they don’t know what it is). It also primes them for further interaction in this box throughout the site with friendly orientation text:

Create an account to access these benefits:

• Save part pages


• Save Data Sheets and other files


• Create folders to organize your projects


• Share folders with colleagues


• Organize secure documents for easy access


• "Follow" parts to see alerts and updates

Obviously, not all of these features are appropriate for retail…

What advice would you give on finding inspiration to create original artwork? It would be greatly appreciated! I'm young and have no idea on what my career path is. I have talent but I feel like I have to force ideas. You're such an inspiration!

elleluna:

Creative junk food and the quest for deliciousness.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

C. G. Jung

When I think about my creative process, I’m usually in one of two modes: divergent or convergent.

Divergent energy is like a light that shines bright. It flows. It plays. It knows no boundaries. Divergent thinking gets ideas moving. It un-funks and un-blocks and gives us permission to make a big ole damn mess. It suspends judgement and encourages us to let go, to free fall. Divergent energy craves quantity over quality. It is especially effective early on in a project — or in life for that matter. For people who crave control, seek predetermined results and hate vulnerability, I have two creative methods especially for you.

First, the Really Cool Shit folder.

I have a folder on my desktop where I dump every image I see online that speaks to me. It could be a bespoke logo; it could be a memorable color; it could be a beautiful woman. If it moves me in some way, it goes in the folder — no questions asked. This morning I printed out a few hundred images contact-sheet style and sorted them. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but as I began to sift and sort, I began to make piles. I pinned them up and now I am surrounded by:

-A mood board for a new brand identity
-A mood board for a women’s product
-A mood board for my dream life
-A mood board on zen
-A places-i’d-like-to-travel board
-And a storyboard for a children’s book I’m working on but couldn’t really “see” when it was in the computer.

To do this, you need…
10 minutes a day to wander and capture visual content on the internet.

01) Create a folder on your desktop and create a short cut in your toolbar so it’s always there for you to drag images into

02) Look at visual blogs daily. Some of my favorites are FFFFOUND!, Geometry Daily and iGNANT. Grab images liberally.

03) When you’re starting a new project or are stuck, select a ton of them (quantity over quality), open them in Preview, and print them 6 or 9 to a page. Cut them out. Sort them. Pin them. Share them. Leave them. Collect them. (Sometimes I tape them to the bathroom mirror or keep a stack in my purse for the train.)

Next, take yourself on an artist’s date.

At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.

Jean Houston

The artist date is a famous assignment by Julia Cameron. It’s where you take your inner child spirit on a date. There are two rules: 1) It’s a solo journey. 2) There are no rules. (Other than rule number one.)

Think absurd. Think crazy. Think CRAVE. BURN. LONG FOR. That’s how you feed child spirit. Yesterday I was craving a visit to the book store with my sketchbook. I read about african masks and William Burroughs and the Bauhaus and IM Pei and paperclips. I sketched a lot. I bought 2 books. Over breakfast today I kept sketching. Turns out I was hungry for visual inspiration.

Other, previous artist dates have included:

-Racing a BMW Z4
-Dancing in the rain, inspired by this young girl
-Going to a museum and sitting in front of one painting the whole time
-Hand washing a car in the summertime
-Camping alone during a full moon
-Arriving in a foreign country with no plans, no hotel room and no phone
-Swimming in the ocean in the middle of the night
-Going to hear piano at the symphony
-Riding my bike without a helmet and with my headphones on
-Movie and popcorn in the middle of the day on a weekday
-Going to the dress department of Neiman Marcus and trying on what I like to call “goddess gowns”

So, to find more divergent energy, ask this question and follow the answer, wherever it goes: What do you crave?

Nourish your creative self. Go broad. Drink it all in. Spend the money and take the time to fill up your child spirit with the most worthy of inspirations and feelings and ideas and cravings.

The other energy, which we also need, is convergent. This is a great process when it’s time to focus, to hone, to be decisive. Convergent thinking helps us take all of that LET’S PUT PEOPLE ON THE MOON energy into action. Convergent methods gives us a plan. It cuts the crap. It holds us accountable so that we can not only get to the moon, but first, and more importantly, get out of bed.

Having a rough time focusing? Take 20 minutes and try this:

Make a list of your creative junk food and then vow to stop eating the damn stuff.

Dr.Clarissa Estes taught me about this exercise. It made me realize that there are some things I do that never ever forever in all of time will make me feel good. An example? Google searching a medical symptom. No. No. NO. Clicking “search” after typing in “Symptoms for X?” is is like eating poison that has been marinating in poison inside of a building constructed upon hazardous waste. We know it. But we still click it. And it never makes us feel good. Never ever.

On my list of creative junk food are all of the ways I procrastinate, many social networks that I overuse and habits I have to avoid doing my hardest (and most exhausting) work.

This morning over breakfast I discussed this activity with a girlfriend and we both made our lists. We talked through how we were going to cut back on the junk.

But then — THEN! — we made a list of the projects that we’ve worked on that have produced the most fruit. Because when we focus, when we stop eating the junk, when we cut the fat, then we can really taste those juicy strawberries and relish them for all of their magic.

I was experiencing this in my own work when many of my paintings were heavy and raw and sharp. They were intense and felt not too dissimilar from getting cut by razorblades. I didn’t want to make paintings that felt like that. And the next time I went to the art supply store, that little voice in my head said to me, “If you don’t want to paint black paintings, you have to stop buying the black paint.”

For the next six weeks I worked with color and produced an emotionally rich, light body of work — a giant juicy strawberry.

To do this, you need…
20 minutes, paper & a pen.

01) Set your timer to 5 minutes. (Timers are important.) Make a list of your creative junk food. Think Facebook. Think distractions. GO.

02) Reset your timer to 10 minutes. Make a list of the most fruit-bearing projects from the last year or two. GO.

03) Look at your list of fruit-bearing projects. What are the similarities between them? Notice any themes? Take 5 minutes to jot these down. Set the timer. GO.

I’ve been working alone for four months now. I need both divergent and convergent processes. And I’ve got to be self-aware enough to know where I am in my creative process so I can give my inner creative spirit what it needs to get things all the way to the finish line.

Some days I need to bike and swim and lay in the park like the laziest bohemian artist imaginable and other days I need to get out of bed at 7 and take a shower and get dressed and be in my chair with coffee and email turned off by 8 because that’s just what we’re going to do today (we decided this the week before and by “we” I mean me. Just me. Dressed and ready for work at 8AM. Employee of the week right here. *raises hand*).

Be self-aware enough to know where you are in your project and/or in your life.

Is it time to go broad? Time to narrow? Then, depending on where you are, find inspiration and methods and tools that will help you do what you’re doing even better. Oh, and people. I must mention them. Because they’re the key to it all. Why? Inspiration and accountability. Start with people. End with people. Find the people who believe in you and want you to put your best work in the world and then have breakfast with them once a week. Or a phone call. And give them lots of hugs and smiles and help, too, because we’re all trying to find our own paths through life, and it certainly is more fun together.

“Serendipitous discovery by browsing is less likely,” when all you have to go on is essay titles and descriptions.

“My posts are often full of images and I view their selection and placement as being as crucial to what I am trying to say about the subject as the writing. The images are also a declaration that the pleasure of the visual is a key motivation in writing about and discussing visual subjects. ”

-Rick Poyner The Compulsively Visual World of Pinterest

Images provide holds for browsing quickly. 

What are the feminist tomes—or, really, any tomes that informed your conception of what it's like to be a self-possessed grown-ass female—that most shaped the woman you are now.

snpsnpsnp:

I discovered feminism when I read Jane Eyre in sixth grade, and I discovered *my* feminism when, at 26, I realized I was not the governess, the nurse, the schoolteacher of the romantic plot but the madwoman burning down the attic. Figuratively. The worst I ever did in real life was break dishes and faith.

In women’s studies, which I took at two different schools, I hated almost everything we read. I hated The Yellow Wallpaper. I hated sanctimonious poems about our bodies. I hated Friedan. I really hated Dworkin. I thought bell hooks was good, but so does everyone; bell hooks is an undeniable good. And I liked Germaine Greer cos she was a thoroughly self-glamorized badass. Then I read Paglia.

I’m reading Paglia again now in tandem with Dworkin’s Intercourse, and also the SCUM Manifesto, the latter two books being (I eventually learned) as excruciatingly funny and genius as they are impracticable. Is genius always impracticable? I tried to swear off saying “genius.” Anyway, it’s Sexual Personae I’m re-reading, and it makes me feel so many colours (mostly red, like Anne Carson’s red), but it’s not funny at all. I’ll have to read I Love Dick after. The thing is, I loathe men more every year, and I love *a* man more than I love my independence. Which is a lot, and a lot to figure out.

Lately I too have felt Red like Anne Carson’s red. When I wrote about red based on Anne Carson’s red and what my dad loved about red I had it all wrong. One day I hope to be yellow. And yes not in a yellow wallpaper kind of way. I hated that as well. But in an Anne Carson two egg-yolks in parallel kind of way. Floating on the water like a sunflower kind of yellow. 

Cynthia Nixon and Allison Williams

PG: Have you noticed that when people talk about your shows, they love to make the characters stand in for all women — and in the case of “Sex and the City,” for all gay men, too?

AW: It’s strange, because other shows aren’t expected to speak for large groups of people.

PG: We don’t do that to men.

CN: But I think our show was deliberately written that way. There’s Athena, Aphrodite, Hera — and Sarah Jessica. I’m not sure who she is.

AW: Zeus?

CN: I remember one time Sarah Jessica was having this conversation with Jerry Seinfeld, and he matched up the characters on “Seinfeld” with ours. Jerry was Carrie, Kramer was Samantha, I was — what’s Jason Alexander’s character’s name?

PG: George?

CN: Anyway, before, when you were a girl, you were forced to identify with the one girl on the show. But now it’s like, which one of those girls am I? You’re not usually given a sampler plate.

PG: And 10 years and a million reruns later, we get a new show with four girls.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/fashion/Allison-Williams-Cynthia-Nixon-Girls-Sex-and-the-City.html?action=click&contentCollection=Style&region=Footer&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=Blogs

lyrics to Martí’s favorite Shabazz Palaces love song. 

I like the rap genius way of easter-egging text on hover. Perhaps useful for catalogofaloss.com

layout

mpdrolet:

Jim Herrington

nico muhly on 2 chainz

"Mainstream Ratchet" also cites, with its pipe organ and near-constant piano arpeggios, Philip Glass’ score for the 1992 horror movie Candyman, a score which found itself sampled (by Lil Jon) and imitated throughout the early part of this century. The soundtrack to that film is daring: while the majority of the film takes place in the Cabrini-Green housing projects in Chicago, the soundtrack consists of amplified pipe organs, a music box and a piano, and a choir outlining simple harmonic cycles with increasing intensity.  This technique gives “Mainstream Ratchet” its power: the exposition of a cycle sets up the anticipation not of a chorus, or a bridge, but of an intensification of the same cycle.  You add an element, you take something away, or you insert a digital silence, changing the footprint of the beat.  It’s a slightly different musical economy, but one in which I think we will all be participating in a post-Yeezus landscape.  

nico muhly on 2 chainz

The “Pin/Pen Merger”: An Example of Neutralization

Yes! I called it! Dated enough texans in my life to hear the pin/pen giveaway. 

via Nico Muhly http://thetalkhouse.com/reviews/view/nico-muhly-2-chainz

The “Pin/Pen Merger”: An Example of Neutralization

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thesufjanstevensmodel5000:

The world is death.

thirdorgan:

KURT ROESCH / The Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke 1944

I like this layout

It was said that I refused to grant any value to the maternal instinct and to love. This was not so. I simply asked that women should experience them truthfully and freely, whereas they often use them as excuses and take refuge in them, only to find themselves imprisoned in that refuge when those emotions have dried up in their hearts.

Simone de Beauvoir - Wikiquote (via alecresnick)

mpdrolet:

Chris Caig

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the ipad is hiding behind the pencil. 

This is the TOOL IN CONTEXT. Reminiscent of Lulu’s photos. Lots of depth in each photo. Consistent placement. All the settings are places that inspire creativity. 

michaelswaney:

✓ Mike Badour, Prediction (XOR LOGIC), 2013. Oil on Canvas, 5’ x 4’

Today I figured out an XOR pattern for UI Dialog design. Bottom right corner two buttons (the classic example being [Save] [Cancel].