Photoshop's Filters In Two Minutes

Barcelona-based audiovisual design studio Device has packed all the filters from Photoshop CS5 into a two-minute video showing them applied to the Ps icon.

Think of it as a performance art demo.  

Talking Art In A Capitalist World

An excerpt from the must-read essay Acknowledging the Rhino: Talking Art In A Capitalist World by Matthew Guerrieri:

Just know this: realism, in the hard-nosed, nickels-and-dimes business sense, is a way of maintaining the status quo. [...]

Everybody in the music world, I think, subscribes to the idea that music is more than just entertainment, that it is transformative, that listeners should be changed by the experience. But in the face of the encroachment of free-market and capitalist rhetoric and values into every corner of society, that sort of talk about music has been reduced to the level of platitudes. “Music can change the world!” sounds sentimental and unrealistic. But do we believe it or not? Maybe a statement like that isn’t extravagant enough. Art’s realism is no less real than capitalism’s realism, even if the respective vocabularies stand in disparate esteem. The first step toward resolving the disparity might be, literally, to talk the talk. The danger? You might get lumped in with fools. But it’s fools who know the score; and anyone who calls you unrealistic isn’t really interested in anything beyond cosmetic changes anyway.

I continue to be reminded of the Max De Pree quote "We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what way we are."  

(via Michael Sheppard) 

Ballerinas Defined

The original Italian word “ballerina” just means “female dancer,” but it has become encrusted with layers of mysticism — primarily through the idolization accorded in Russia to ballet’s divas since the 19th century. But to be American is to be ornery, direct, unaffected. Is it possible to be American and this exotic dance vision of transcendence? Can a ballerina represent local or national characteristics in her dancing?

The questions pile up. Does the 21st century even need ballerinas? America is one of many Western societies where women fight for equality in the workplace and can no longer expect men to stand when they enter a room; same-sex marriages are now institutionalized. Ballet had a beginning; it may have an end. In particular, the practice of dancing on point may one day seem as bizarre as the bygone Chinese practicing of binding women’s feet. Do we still need an art form whose stage worlds are almost solely heterosexual and whose principal women are shown not as workers but as divinities?

I ask these questions; I don’t rush to answer them. The future of the form is to be determined not by critics but by choreographers, artistic directors and, not least, by dancers, working together. The answers they are currently providing show us a complex situation for ballet and its women.

From the must-read article All-American Goddesses: U.S. Ballerinas Redefine an Art, but What About History? by Alastair Macaulay in The New York Times. Important food for thought as the art form evolves.  

A Tribute To Alfred Hitchcock

Fantastic short film by Jean-Baptiste Lefournier. 

Summer Reading: The Novels of Max Barry

Continuing my suggestions of books to read this summer I share with you the novels of Max Barry. 

I'm always fascinated by people in creative fields that are adamant to the idea of reading fiction. There you are having a casual conversation, you suggest a novel you think they will find interesting and they strongly oppose the idea. They don't read fiction (often they also say they never watch tv or attend any live performances.) 

And while I can see why anyone would think that somehow things like reading fiction are just entertainment and could not possibly lend themselves to teach us anything, what kind of creative work could they be creating when they deprive themselves of the enjoyment (and education) of watching someone manipulate language to convey messages in ways that are often profound and revealing. 

Besides, the more we study the brain, they more we learn how important fiction can be in neurological development. 

This is why I am recommending the novels of Max Barry. He is an astute observer of life and has tackled subjects dear to me (and this blog) in his novels. From marketing, advertising and branding to management, leadership and productivity to, in his latest novel, released today, poetry, language and influence. Each written with clear insights and full of enjoyable surprises. If you are interested in those areas there is much to be learned from his novels, while having a great deal of fun.

At an exclusive school somewhere outside of Arlington, Virginia, students aren’t taught history, geography, or mathematics—at least not in the usual ways. Instead, they are taught to persuade. Here the art of coercion has been raised to a science. Students harness the hidden power of language to manipulate the mind and learn to break down individuals by psychographic markers in order to take control of their thoughts. The very best will graduate as “poets”: adept wielders of language who belong to a nameless organization that is as influential as it is secretive.

Whip-smart orphan Emily Ruff is making a living running a three-card Monte game on the streets of San Francisco when she attracts the attention of the organization’s recruiters. She is flown across the country for the school’s strange and rigorous entrance exams, where, once admitted, she will be taught the fundamentals of persuasion by Brontë, Eliot, and Lowell—who have adopted the names of famous poets to conceal their true identities. For in the organization, nothing is more dangerous than revealing who you are: Poets must never expose their feelings lest they be manipulated. Emily becomes the school’s most talented prodigy until she makes a catastrophic mistake: She falls in love.

Meanwhile, a seemingly innocent man named Wil Jamieson is brutally ambushed by two strange men in an airport bathroom. Although he has no recollection of anything they claim he’s done, it turns out Wil is the key to a secret war between rival factions of poets and is quickly caught in their increasingly deadly crossfire. Pursued relentlessly by people with powers he can barely comprehend and protected by the very man who first attacked him, Wil discovers that everything he thought he knew about his past was fiction. In order to survive, must journey to the toxically decimated town of Broken Hill, Australia, to discover who he is and why an entire town was blown off the map.

As the two narratives converge, the shocking work of the poets is fully revealed, the body count rises, and the world crashes toward a Tower of Babel event which would leave all language meaningless. Max Barry’s most spellbinding and ambitious novel yet, Lexicon is a brilliant thriller that explores language, power, identity, and our capacity to love—whatever the cost.

Scientist Charles Neumann loses a leg in an industrial accident. It's not a tragedy. It's an opportunity. Charlie always thought his body could be better. He begins to explore a few ideas. To build parts. Better parts.

Prosthetist Lola Shanks loves a good artificial limb. In Charlie, she sees a man on his way to becoming artificial everything. But others see a madman. Or a product. Or a weapon.

A story for the age of pervasive technology, Machine Man is a gruesomely funny unraveling of one man's quest for ultimate self-improvement.

Stephen Jones is a shiny new hire at Zephyr Holdings. From the outside, Zephyr is just another bland corporate monolith, but behind its glass doors business is far from usual: the beautiful receptionist is paid twice as much as anybody else to do nothing, the sales reps use self help books as manuals, no one has seen the CEO, no one knows exactly what they are selling, and missing donuts are the cause of office intrigue. While Jones originally wanted to climb the corporate ladder, he now finds himself descending deeper into the irrational rationality of company policy. What he finds is hilarious, shocking, and utterly telling.

Taxation has been abolished, the government has been privatized, and employees take the surname of the company they work for. It's a brave new corporate world, but you don't want to be caught without a platinum credit card--as lowly Merchandising Officer Hack Nike is about to find out. Trapped into building street cred for a new line of $2500 sneakers by shooting customers, Hack attracts the barcode-tattooed eye of the legendary Jennifer Government. A stressed-out single mom, corporate watchdog, and government agent who has to rustle up funding before she's allowed to fight crime, Jennifer Government is holding a closing down sale--and everything must go.

A wickedly satirical and outrageous thriller about globalization and marketing hype, Jennifer Government is the best novel in the world ever.

When Scat comes up with the idea for the hottest new soda ever, he's sure he'll retire the next rich, savvy marketing success story. But in the treacherous waters of corporate America there are no sure things--and suddenly Scat has to save not only his idea but his yet-to-be-realized career. With the help of the scarily beautiful and brainy 6, he sets out on a mission to reclaim the fame and fortune that, time and again, eludes him. This brilliantly scathing debut is a hilarious send-up of celebrity, sexual politics, corporate America, and the fleeting status that comes with getting to the table first--before the other guy has you for lunch.