On Bags
Old Domke ad. Strike that pose.
I’ve been working on the last essay of the term for a few days now. Blogging seems to be a therapeutic activity though.
Harrison Boyce and I have recently spent a fair bit of time discussing the design of bags. Yesterday he emailed me a 9mb zip file containing nothing but pictures of bags and I had a blast going through them today. My focus is on bags that strike a nice balance between function, weather-proofing, and (what I think is) timeless style. Wanted to get some thoughts onto screen, so click on for some bag porn.
No Pegs
Steven Hamilton, sequence taken from his Ride UK interview
Cory Beal recently sounded off his frustration on facebook and twitter saying: “Is pegless street even a style of riding? Sometimes I feel like it’s just less tricks.”
A blogger for thecomeup, I can only imagine how many bmx videos he must go through a day. The repetition is understandably grinding at his nerves as he continues in the FB comments with “[c]an’t even count how many web videos are just barspins, whips, and tuck no handers.”
No one can blame him for this as there’s been rash of videos with desperately imitative riding lately. The limitations to these three tricks is pretty disappointing given that this form of riding has produced a wealth of innovative and important video parts. Here’s a compilation of videos that hopefully inject a breathe of fresh air into the pegless atmosphere.
The Filming of Children of Men
I’m a sucker for extended single takes, and this scene from Children of Men is absolutely riveting. It’s provoked praise for its technical prowess and criticism for being technically show-offy, but regardless of what camp everyone is in it’s pretty much impossible to talk shit on how plain awesome this scene is.
The cinematography in this movie has always given me a hard on, and today I stumbled across a few links that shed light on the astounding lengths and ingenuity used to create this magic.
Fix Your Tools
Toothpicks, 2008 by Chris Jordan – Depicts one hundred million toothpicks, equal to the number of trees cut in the U.S. yearly to make the paper for junk mail.
Lately I’ve been especially conscious on the build and quality of the things I buy. This article nicely summarizes why we need to go back to making good, strong products that will last. Have been having a lot of fun visiting MEC and army surplus stores lately just to check out the design of things.
As for the article’s philosophies. Even if you take away their ‘it’s for the environment’ argument, the benefits still outweigh this cluttered, non-nonsensical form of disposable consumer culture we’ve created.
Porn 2.0
Checked out the great Best Free Documentary blog for the first time in a while. After clicking around a bit, I ended up on Porn 2.0 which is a technically SFW documentary on, well, how porn went 2.0 (I guess the same way web went 2.0?). Not sure if anyone else will find this interesting but I always find unabashed analysis on the porn industry to be fascinating.
Oh yeah, the pic above is apparently a ‘russian protest’, but I’m using it anyway because it’s cool.
Danny Macaskill’s VW Commercial
Search ‘biking’ on youtube and the inspired bikes video of Danny Macaskill is the first thing to pop up. Having already clocked 12 million pairs of eyeballs with the one video alone, Macaskill has captured the imagination of a fresh generation of internets and VW has wisely taken notice. They’ve hired TRY advertising from Norway to create a spot that is less car commercial and more biking video with product placement.
No doubt looking to draw a connection with the spot and the first Macaskill video that made such an impact, TRY and VW have copied elements from the original. Again, strangers rush to look over a railing, and again, Macaskill is paired with an unoffensive indie song. But the shots are car commercially filmed, and the editing is sometimes dicey. The combination is a good-looking spot that doesn’t achieve its goal.
Action sports videos rely on honesty to show a whole trick because tricks are the narration of a video. Macaskill does death-defying things and paints a visual picture that most can understand. These stunts (sorry, I tried to avoid the word) have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and they help to communicate the consequences of the riding.
The original video displayed a style of editing that works – 12 million youtube views is no joke. But as far as the VW spot is concerned, cutting out halfway through tailwhips, and switching takes in the middle of a drop degrades Macaskill into a mere visual spectacle, thereby defeating the philosophy of the spot. VW looks less like they are celebrating the rider, and more like they’re only taking advantage of the visual spectacle of his riding. The missed opportunity is especially a shame considering honesty and forthrightness are particularly valuable images for a corporation to project his year.
If time constraints were the reason for the butchering, less clips should’ve been included. Or even a new way of having Macaskill interact with the car dreamt up. It would’ve done a more effective job of connecting the values of Macaskill’s riding and the car. Confident, daring, but (just) sensible enough to not go over the edge.
In the end, what could’ve been another Macaskill hit is merely another car commercial on youtube with just under a hundred thousand hits. It may seem like a small thing to care about, but I get really frustrated when action sports are presented to the mainstream public in a way that misses the mark.
TCU, rated t for teen
This fantastic video was posted on thecomeup recently, but the excellentness doesn’t end there. Check out what was posted in the comments:
Attention thecomeupbmx.net
This is Sue Miller with the IWF (Internet Watchdog Foundation). The mother of a 12 year old frequenter of your website witnessed her son watching this and immediately reported it to us. Seeing as there is no age warning or verification on your site, we must demand you remove this video and any other age-inappropriate material (we are currently reviewing all content on the website) within 48 hours or face being shutdown.
http://www.thecomeupmx.net
ip adress: 75.119.202.143
flag: inappropriate content without age verification
complaint logged: 9:03 pm pst
It’s bullshit (and she links herself to the Independent Women’s Forum), but the furor it caused in the comments is funny. Well played, anon poster, well played.
a sudden change in sleep habits is a catalyst for rambling
How you have failed me, invisible lines that pull image onto my screen. Those lines that trawl information from afar. Friends had to scoop them up and mail them before you find the nugget bytes first. Like links to whorecraft real-life porn via a girl in korea (nsfw). or a dope music blog via a giffer in Vancouver (#gifgang). yes, whorecraft to music blogs. the world is a perilous place.
here’s another that took a year for the lines to find. History of Our World – one of the most compelling image and text blogs I have come across in a while. Most blogs consist of image and text, but this one’s really really good at image and text. Particularly the jpgs.
Also, Anour Brahem was born on October 20th 1957. Happy birthday yesterday fifty two years ago Brahem! It’s crazy it took that long before his music graced my headphones. I recommend hitting up this dope post on the greatest conversation to hear and read for yourself.
I made hainanese chicken rice today for the first time. the end result was average due to my not so very good skills but the experience was amazing (nothing tastes like food from home). My hands still smell of garlic and ginger. Mmmmmm.
School is going interestingly. Taking a film studies 100 class which has been blowing my mind a bit. In an art history / archeology of China class, our prof told us about an emperor who had a pool built where the reflection (or illusion) of the moon could be seen during the day. I think it’s supposed to be in or near a cave and there are seven holes around the pool and if any of them were blocked, the reflection would not work.
It’s a mystery to everyone how the reflection works. Apparently when the Japanese occupied the area they built an exact replica of the set-up but were still unable to replicate the illusion. Our prof explained that it was created with an entirely different philosophy and technology to ours, which is why it baffles us so much. I find this incredible fascinating, but cannot find any more information on this reflection pool. It’s supposed to be located at Bishu Shanzhuang in Chengde. If you do know anything more about this and would like to share the knowledge, I’ll hug you for an email!
Travel-wise, I’m a bit shocked at how many air miles I’ve put in. For work I’ve visited toronto six times this year, montreal four times, and a host of other Canadian cities a bunch (I should be in the ‘air canada top tier’ section soon. It means free scotch in the airport lounge, looking forward to this). Considering I hadn’t really been out of BC before this year, I feely very grateful to have seen this much of canada (even halifax!) and learnt more about this incredible country. Overall, photographing the flying lotus tour is still one of my favourite gigs ever. thank you kenny mac for that.
Am shooting a job in toronto next month, and will be flying from there to new york for a job later that week. Never been to new york, really excited for it.
On the internet front, I’m not entirely sure what to do with We Mine Deeper anymore. I’ve got quite a few blogs going right now and as has been said, ‘dude you’re spreading your blogging thin.’ WMD has always been a nice place for me to spew out whatever I wanted though. Imagine if I posted all the random nsfw stuff on my ‘proper’ photo blog…. Or maybe I should.
Whatever it is, a new david lang photo is in the works by andy chung who just started a new blog. I might be keeping with my usual URestlessL behaviour on this revamp. Other stuff in photography… Am procrastinating on a print requested by Day 19 which is dumb of me because they are incredible photographers and this is an honour. Speaking of day 19, harrison boyce went to visit them recently and came back with this fantastic photo.
Bloggingly, there is an interview that needs to be transcribed for some blogging news happening soon. On the work front, I sort of agreed to take a job that happens over my birthday, as I had a momentary lapse of memory on which day I was born on. For whatever reason, I’ve always wanted this to happen.
Really liked Where the Wild Things Are. It’s fucking good, but I must admit it’s a film that is sometimes more groundbreaking than it is pure fun to watch. There is a lot of love and certainly a lot of hate for this movie. I want to watch it in cinemas again, and this time round with a note pad to jot some writing down and maybe try to defend these waves of hatred. A salute to spike jonze for sticking to his path and somehow managing to put this film on our screens.
“He has developed an extraordinary sense of meaningful whimsy as in such music videos as [etc. etc.] where psychological tension is conveyed through original, iconoclastic scenography. Jonze’s sensibility is an authentic development of the music-video era’s generational split—which is also an aesthetic split. He doesn’t exploit pop rebellion but has a counter-intuitive slant on what’s funny, sad, universal.” – armond white in a review of the film.
I think jonze is doing something incredible with wild things, but how people take influence from it remains to be seen – which is a bit scary. This direction has so much potential but will look particularly stupid if used in the wrong hands. I think we’re in for a lot of face-value meandering filmmaking and photography soon; you can imagine how interpretations of the aesthetics and narrational style can be utterly dreadful (yes I know some of you already think this is bad). Whatever it is, the new kanye X jonze video We Were Once a Fairytale Where the Kanye’s Are -a.c. is dope, and you know it.
To finish – am actually falling for that Glee tv show, I have no reservations about playing with a sony psp on the bus and the vancouver locals can continue to look at me strange all they want, chicken rice is the best, and yup.
The Atomic Level of Porn
Computer historian Jason Scott gave a slideshow presentation titled “The Atomic Level of Porn” at monochrom’s Arse Elektronika 2009 in San Francisco.
This is a pretty long watch but I thought it was worth it. Scott uses porn as an overall theme to the talk, but this video is really about the history of computers and human communication, which is surprisingly fascinating.
Also, Scott has produced a documentary titled BBS about the subculture that developed around the Bulletin Board System (BBS). Pretty curious about it now.
PS: If this dude pronounces it ‘jiff’ then that’s gotta be the right way to say it.
ghosts
Brian Park:
ooooh, I created a new genre of poetry!
David Lang:
… what?
Brian Park:
stemming from that “manunkine” thing I was being silly about
its called anti-semanticism
and you write something, and then you replace most of the words with similar sounding words that mean totally different things
eg. I just had textual intercourse
