Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Nam June Paik

SMS Conceptual Art ...


JRyder's "Summer Kisses", manipulated digital still, 2005 Posted by Picasa



A eve-of-holidays last drink that does not come off can be turned into Art? - the Honourable Reader might be forgiven for his skepticism.

This is a very Hi-Tech conceptual thing and the Honourable Reader has to bear with me while I go through the crucial technical data here. In the beginning you have a incoming SMS in the screen of a ™Nokia 6300 mobile phone. Then you photograph it with a ™Sony Cybershot DSC-T7 and you transfer the image, thanks to Sony ™Picture imaging software into a portable computer ™Compaq Armada 1750. After checking image quality you store it in a ™MyFlash 1G Memory Stick. You then transfer the 557 KB image to the USB port of a ™Hewlett-Packard mainframe computer, via the Memory Stick, and with ™Microsoft Photo Editor-related ™Paint software you make the last manipulations. Having got your final picture you store it as a ™Picassa file and upload it, through ™Hello software, to the ™Blogger site at http://www.blogger.com/, from where it will be published in your blog.

Old sod McLuhan said it all before: the medium is the message.

Summer kisses to you all!

(Note: Nam June Paik is credited with having "invented" videoart when he used a then new Sony Portapak device to shoot footage of Pope Paul VI's procession through New York City)

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Balthasar Klossowski de Rola

Pink gown..


Balthus' "Chambre Turque" 1963 (detail) Posted by Picasa


How does one associate (1) painting, (2) depicting a woman and (3) the pink colour? There you are. Ms Setsuko Ideta, in a pink gown.

Velazquez clones

New Spaniards...


From the cover of John Hooper's "The New Spaniards" Posted by Picasa


Iconic imagery always sells well.

Monday, August 01, 2005

Jorge Luis Borges

Fervor de Buenos Aires...




Photo-manipulation of a portal in Mexico to accommodate the subject-matter
"El Hombre de la Esquina Rosada" Posted by Picasa


Just finished a Borge's biography by James Woodall, which I had bought some time ago to add to an already inflated list of books by and about Uncle Georgie. This time I was readier not to loose implicit or more subtle links. Borges lived in Spain, namely in Madrid, in places with names that have now a meaning for me. Argentine national sport of attenuating their Spanish roots and prefering to elaborate on supposedly more glamorous British or French DNA is also better understood now. And I've met a Buenos Aires-born Madrileña that evokes the pinkness of JLB's masterpiece "El Hombre de la Esquina Rosada", one of my long time favorites. Pure love for literature brought me to Borges in my youth; Piazolla took me later on to a second wave of curiosity for any porteño-related stuff; now, embarking on my third journey to Borges's works, I realize that's Buenos Aires what is ticking me this time. I'll blog about it some day.