Filed under: Uncategorized — machinesandhumans @ 11:16 am
More and more this technology will be surfacing in the coming years. As a kid I used to sit around and imagine the one thing I could have if I could have anything. Mulling a million items and objects over in my head I always settled on an “Anything You Want Machine”. Now 20 some years later and it’s right around the corner. The builders and designers of these technologies often talk about how this will democratize production and consumption. I have no doubt that we are entering a new era that will move manufacturing away from large scale factories and into home or local businesses, or at least to a personal level. This will mirror and expand on what has happened in the last few years with digital file sharing and “consumer as producer” models used with services like YouTube and MySpace. The next step will be customized items by everyone for everyone and of course those who will succeed will as always be the ones who can effectively market and navigate a explosion of available items and services.
There are some great science fiction stories from the 1960’s envisioning this future we are heading into. One of my favorite is ”The Man Who Ate the World” by Frederick Pohl.
It is a series of short stories about a world where consumption is mandatory because factories have all become automated and unstoppable, spitting out tons and tons of production each day. Only the very rich are allowed the luxury of simplicity and temperance, the rest of the world has to bare the brunt of an onslaught of consumerism. I love it!
I’ve been drawing these little bubble domed hatchbacks lately, for some reason they’ve been stuck in my head for some time, so I had better get them out…
And a thumbnail sketch for a traffic problem. This might make a nice shirt if anyone is interested. It would be a good excuse for me to figure out how to use Cafe Press.
Filed under: new york, drawing — machinesandhumans @ 7:36 pm
A few images from my recent trip to New York.
Sketches of people at an ice skating rink in downtown Manhattan’s Bryant Park.
Nice Scarf Dude
I did see a great window display for Hermes on Madison Ave (a store that looked so prohibitively exclusive and not aimed at me and my t-shirt and jeans wearing scrubbiness that I didn’t even care to walk inside) by the artist Aga Ousseinov.
What a great city. I will be back, I will live there….It’s a humbling place. I come away in awe but also accutely aware of my smallness. Just another person not to far off of the average bell curve. There is comfort in that.
Filed under: new york, drawing — machinesandhumans @ 4:44 pm
On the bus down to New York I sat next to this man, Kader. He was sleeping and had an interesting face so naturally I drew him. When he woke suddenly I quickly put my sketch down but then realized that I didn’t particularly want to hide the fact I was drawing him. We hadn’t spoken for the entirety of the trip and I had already exhausted conversation with the people in the seats (we talked of Naples and Oranges) next to me, so I simply said “Hey I drew you, see..” and then showed him the sketch. He was favourable to his likeness and had a kindness to his demeanor so we started talking of work and life and god and women. He had grown up in Algeria and then moved all over the world. While in Paris he met an American woman, they married and came out to Pittsburgh. At the time (11 years ago) he spoke no English and when he came here - although trained as an accountant in Europe and very bright - his options for work were limited, so in his late 30’s he began working in gas stations, making pizza dough, and doing whatever odd jobs he could find. He had wisdom and he had presence and he appreciated life for what it was. At least in our conversation he presented his philosophy of focusing on what one is doing while they are doing it, embracing each job for all it’s worth and each city and place for their value as well. He referred to God frequently, often with a quotation. I didn’t get the impression that these were statements from a book or dogma, but from lessons and truths that had been garnered through life.
I’m in New York for the weekend and stumbled across this store. Evolution, For many hundreds to thousands of dollars you can purchase 220 million year old fossils of lizards, bugs, squirmy things, and wingy things. I love this place.
I also discovered the Elizabeth Street Gallery, original and replica architectural ornmanentia (what is that word), ancient safes, shooting gallery mechanisms, hitching posts, architectural facades, statuary and everything else you can rarely get close to these days. I talked to the owner Allan who along with selling the originals (I believe) has some of the work duplicated and then refitted for other purposes. The environment was a dimly lit open studio filled (but not packed) with the original and replica items. Most of them I believe were originals as I was given a brief tour where we talked about what he sells. In the middle of the space sitting on a low table was a 19th century catalogue from a French fixture company. Hundreds, thousands of engraved drawings were in this book. I am grateful to the Allan and his staff who intially hesitated to open the book as the pages were very thin and fragile but then flipped through a couple of the images letting me look through the work and taking their time to talk to me about what they do. Sometimes I think I expect their to be an attitude associated with such luxury, probably because there usually is. As I’ve been working in the Jewelry field my own knowledge base has been rapidly expanding on techiques of fabrication and construction. I think that if I had gone in here a couple of years ago I would have only had an aesthetic point of view to begin from and I would have been limited in my ability to discover more. It was a great feeling to actually talk about and discuss the techniques in use and to some extent imagine myself doing the work rather than ‘just’ drawing the work. The world opens more and more…
If this works, if it is not a hoax, if it is validated by the scientific community then it will amazing. Apparently the company Steorn has stumbled upon a technology that puts out more energy than goes in and they are in the process of getting public unbiased scientific validation for it right now. In an open advertisement in the The Economist, they have solicited the help of the science community to perform unbiased tests on their technology, and after recieving 79,231 applicants they have narrowed it down to 492 for their first phase of testing. If it is proven to work or proven false they say they will abide by and step up to the results. The thing is that they are a real company with a long history. On the surface they would appear to be little to gain in the long run from making such a fantastic claim. This may be naive on my part however, any way to publicize a business seems to go these days. I hope it works though (do I?). Reminds me of the movie Primer, the concept of creating a technology for one purpose and then finding that it has properties that were unimaginable and unexpected. The premise being that most breakthroughs happen in this fashion rather than a person sitting down to ‘design’ a revolution. I think every kid in the world has had the dream of making a perpetual motion machine once they discover the magic of rubber bands and magnets, squashed of course by any grimfaced rudimentary science teacher and the first law of thermodynamics. Maybe they should go on Myth Busters.
Here is a brief description of what they claim they can do
1. The technology has a coefficient of performance greater than 100%. 2. The operation of the technology (i.e. the creation of energy) is not derived from the degradation of its component parts. 3. There is no identifiable environmental source of the energy (as might be witnessed by a cooling of ambient air temperature).
I don’t know that I can go so far as to say that I feel at home yet (or can even imagine feeling at home here) but I will enjoy it for what it is, so in that vein here are a few sketches of observed moments today.
This group of women sat in a cafe and talked about their church, their priest (Catholic) and their lives. There was nothing great or expansive about their words, but they were enjoying each others company and appeared to have been friends for many years. A woman talked about her daughter who was having a problem with ADD and the other women who ranged in age from mid 30’s to mid 80’s listened and commented attentively. What more could a person ask for?
The building is a synagogue for Congregation Shaare Zedek Sons of Abraham. It is a regal structure, solid but in some disrepair. Beautiful what one can find if they in between the countless beauty salons that dot every block this town (more on that later).
An article I found by a student writing on computer creativity, both the idea of machines capable of creative and artistic action and the facilitation of human creativity with machines. I like this quote in reference to the the ongoing discover of how we as artists (and humans) not only learn to use our tools but evolve our possibilites and direction as we delve deeper into our technologies.
It is characteristic of our culture both that we search out things to satisfy current needs, and also that we restate our needs in terms of the new things we have found.
