April 22, 2005
China 1981
In 1981 I spent about six weeks in China, Hong Kong and Macau. I am in the process of converting my pictures to digital. Here is a preview. The first is a bit of a cliche. The second might be a scene from an as yet to be written opera . . .
Posted by apc at 08:56 PM | Comments (0)
March 14, 2005
The Floating Finger Illusion (hand characters, too)
When my children were little, I invented all sorts of hand characters to amuse them. Two of the more obvious names I came up with were Handman and Fisticuffs. As you might expect, Handman was kind and gentle and Fisticuffs gruff and mean. He went on to found the Fisticuff Corporation which, in turn, owned just about everything imaginable. Other characters included Ostraloch and Ostralich, both of whom never placed their heads in the sand and had the now requisite opposing personalities. There was also a Bee With Hayfever and the Zither, and dozens of others I failed to remember. When pressed to bring them on stage, I took my cue from Ty Corporation and said they had retired.
As my children matured to say, five, the illusions became somewhat more sophisticated. I could do that bit where it looks like you are pulling off the end of your index finger. But today, only today, I discovered the coolest trick yet. I wish I knew this way back then. It is The Floating Finger Illusion. Try this at home. Go ahead. It works. The Floating Finger Illusion is:
A visual illusion that is seen when the forefingers of each hand are held horizontally about 30 centimetres in front of the eyes, with the fingertips touching and the gaze focused on a point in the distance, and the fingertips are then drawn apart about one centimetre. A disembodied finger, with two tips, appears floating in mid-air, and it can be lengthened or shortened by varying the distance between the fingertips (see illustration). The illusion was discovered in 1928 and described in the journal Psychological Review by the US psychologist Winford Lee Sharp (1890–1975).
Source:
"floating-finger illusion n." A Dictionary of Psychology. Andrew M. Colman. Oxford University Press, 2001. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 15 March 2005
Posted by apc at 10:09 PM | Comments (0)
February 23, 2005
Las Meninas
For about 25 years or so, I have been trying to develop a story out of Velázquez's Las Meninas.
I first saw the painting around 1988 or so, and I have always felt that there was something monstrous about it. Eventually a first line came to me that I associated with the unveiling, followed by some sort of reprisal.
"I am the girls' mother, the boy's aunt. The painter is not to be paid .."
I never really bothered about the facts behind the painting. I just thought that my scenario was more realistic than, say, Foucault's, with his overly complex interpretation of the the various perspectives in the painting. Picasso did some interesting things with it, and if you google the painting you will get lots of visual input. In any event, I haven't come up with the story in twenty five years, and probably never will, but I do hope that someone will take it up.
Posted by apc at 02:35 AM | Comments (0)
February 19, 2005
No More FrontPage
Today I took another small step toward independence from my PC, at least as far as the web in concerned. I pretty much completed switching the content of bend of bay from Front Page to Movable Type. I didn't like all the extra code that FrontPage inserted, and I very much like the idea that I can update from anywhere. Send me some feedback if you like what you find at bend of bay.
Posted by apc at 10:35 PM | Comments (0)
February 13, 2005
Mumbai, India
I just returned from Mumbai, India and have placed some of the photos from my weekend wanderings here. I recommend you select the "slide show" option, which works pretty well. The images are in no particular order. I also disabled the "purchase a print" since I reduced the resolutions to speed up the download.
Posted by apc at 06:34 PM | Comments (1)
January 12, 2005
God's Wife
What would you say if your husband, wife, companion or close friend announced that they were God? This, perhaps.
The site has a couple of more episodes concerning God.
Posted by apc at 01:08 AM | Comments (0)
December 20, 2004
The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe
Do you want to help seach for extraterrestrial intelligence? If you do, you should check out the SETI@home project. The idea is you download a small program onto your computer. When your computer is otherwise idle, it downloads and analyzes a bit of radio telescope data, and then sends it back. And while your computer is working away, you get to watch the analysis unfold on your screen.
Posted by apc at 12:33 AM | Comments (0)
December 09, 2004
John Cage & me
A couple of years ago I sat listening to John Cage's string quartets as performed by The Arditti Quartet on Mode records. I had purchased them that afternoon.It was about 1:00 o'clock in the morning, and I live in a quiet neighborhood. The configuration of my stereo is such that I can not see the CD player or its display while I am listening. As a result, in pieces with protracted silences, I can not, at first listening, be certain when a particular recording has ended. I have no visual clues.
The house was quiet and after a few moments I noticed that I had not heard a violin for a while. As I wasn't sure the piece was ended, I began listening more intently. Sometimes, after all, John Cage's music contains long pauses and it can also be remarkably quiet. Gradually, I became aware of the sounds of my house: The low hum of the refrigerator, the fluorescent kitchen light and then, listening more intently still, the sounds from further away: Highway 36 and, very faintly, the ocean further beyond. It occurred to me that these sounds flowed from the music, and creating this expanded awareness of sound in the world was exactly what John Cage intended.
Posted by apc at 10:18 PM | Comments (0)
September 23, 2004
Proust, Unbrellas and Briefcases (Memory)
There is no persistence of memory. Rather, it is easier to forget. Proust was correct. You really do need an object, such as his madeleine, to help you along. Once I told a story in which a man recounts his life through the umbrellas he has owned. A turning point occurs when his most prized umbrella, the one with the mahogany handle, disappears. Umbrellas won't do in my case, however, because I don't use them. They get in my way and are useless in the wind.
So what do I do to help me remember events from say, twenty or twenty five years ago?
Briefcases. Maybe I can use briefcases to recast my life story, or at least help me to remember whatever it was I have forgotten that just might be worth remembering after all. Here is a list of briefcases that I have owned. To the best of my knowledge it is complete.
1) Brown Samsonite. Plastic, with aluminum frame. A gift. Used maybe two years. The main issue with this briefcase was that its hard sides made it difficult to fit all my stuff inside. I wasn't crazy about the style. On the inside was a file folder to which I had taped a stylized music notation clipped from the Village Voice. In retrospect, I think this might actually have been a reproduction of a John Cage manuscript page, but at the time I had not seen too many of his scores and so can't be certain of the attribution.
2) Brown, cheap leather with a flip over top, brass lock and shoulder strap. The seams separated on this one and I tried to repair it with a glue gun. Eventually the brass clasp of the shoulder snapped off, rendering this briefcase completely useless. This briefcase was short lived, due to poor workmanship.
3) Black canvas. This is the reigning champ. I carried it for years. The style had a name (which I forget) and one version evolved over time into the messenger bag. Companies still make the original style, and it has evolved to accept the notebook computer and other modern conveniences. This briefcase had a zipper along the bottom which enabled its capacity to be expanded by unfolding a secondary lining. The flap was secured by two plastic straps and had a zipper compartment. Under the flap on the case proper were various nooks and crannies. There was a side pocket for the paper. The shoulder strap was the most comfortable ever made. When the top seams started to go I sewed it back together myself. Eventually, however, there was nothing to be done and it was discarded with the trash.
4) Black Leather Kenneth Cole. I still use this occasionally. The leather is nice and soft and there is plenty of room for stuff. It can handle a notebook computer. It suffers from a broken zipper and doesn't match my raincoat and hat.
5) Green Gym Bag. Short lived. Impractical. My stuff sloshed around and I could never find what I needed. Don't try this.
6) Black Backpack and 7) Green Land's End. Both excellent, practical choices. In rotation, depending on where I am going and my mood. Currently the Land's End is in storage.
Posted by apc at 12:44 AM | Comments (1)
September 19, 2004
Closing Time Continued
A couple of emails asked for more details on why I shut down pursued by bears, as announced here. Here is a little more context.
The surviving site, bend of bay, has been around for five years or so. The idea behind bend of bay was and remains fairly straightforward. It features rotating content and no by-lines. The practical advantage of rotating content is that there are no deadlines, which is a real plus if you happen to have a day job. The idea was to watch it evolve, to see how the various pieces managed to interact.
When blogging became popular, I decided to experiment. The premise behind pursued by bears was to follow a character as he walked from the United States (New Jersey or New York, to be more precise) to Europe. The site also featured Harry and Doris, the main character's parents who are dead but still sentinent, a man who believes that he is God, and various other odds and ends. After a while it seemed that pursued by bears was basically a variant of bend of bay, but in blog format. It also caused me problems managing comment spam. So I decided to fold the story lines into bend of bay.
Bend of bay's technology is somewhat outdated but it gets the job done. I am looking to ways of incorporating the best features of blogs and rss into bend of bay, but I am not very tech savvy so will need to wait for the right guidebook. Should you have a suggestion, please comment or send an email to apc@bendofbay.org
Posted by apc at 08:37 PM | Comments (0)
September 18, 2004
Closing time
The weblog pursued by bears has been discontinued, and its content is being integrated into the web publication, bend of bay. The original site will remain unchanged as an archive.
One of the reasons for shutting down pursued by bears is a problem with comment spam. Equally important however was that the authors decided the evolving story lines weren't gaining much from the blog format. They thought it made more sense to present them as part of bend of bay.
Posted by apc at 03:45 PM | Comments (0)
September 17, 2004
More Free Books
For the past few years, bend of bay has been giving books away. Most are paperbacks drawn from extensive personal holdings of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama. Over the last year back issues of Art in America, BookForum, Bomb Magazine and The New York Review of Books have been added to the list.
Everything is left in a public place. Each book has the following label on its cover:
Free book from bendofbay! Read it,
then pass it on. For info:
www.bendofbay.org/books
books@bendofbay.org
So far, books have been left in New York, Washington DC, Boston, Seattle and London. Some have found their way to Toronto. Recently, an email arrived from someone in India who wants to participate but unfortunately none of our books have made their way to Asia. In time, in time. If you have one of these books, and are heading to India, please take it along.
Posted by apc at 07:57 PM | Comments (0)