platitudnal

Via the inestimably great wonder-source Boing Boing comes this collection of motivational posters inspired from unflinching world-view of film director Werner Herzog Stipetić. Check out the link for more unabashed truisms snatched from bleak but resounding dialogue.

worth one-thousand

The Daily Beast has a very interesting profile of awarding-winning photographer Alec Soth and his team who are taking an epic road-trips and documenting Americana, sharing his dispatches with all and sundry that really draws in the reader, as the artist’s eye does.

Soth’s latest show is a collection of evocative, black-and-white images, all purposefully untitled and without a caption. The pictures are at first jarring and jumbled, and in trying to interpret what the subjects are doing and to make sense of the setting, one’s focus shifts to find little details that become extremely telling. Never staged and strangers appreciative of the attention, Soth’s work does invite the viewer to construct a narrative—but nothing more, as Soth know the story behind these images either, not wanting to impose his message or meaning. The artist’s publisher and agent also sponsors workshops and retreats to help other to hone their talents for visual story-telling.

desk-job

Via the nonpareil Neat-o-Rama, comes the next phase of office furniture engineered to make one jump out of his or her chair, a surfboard like foot rest that requires one to constantly readjust one’s weight and make small shifts in one’s posture to remain upright.
It’s a clever idea and I bet it would be much more fun to rock and keep one’s balance rather than just standing still or going through a litany of sitting, standing and kneeling like one’s at Mass—but sometimes this idea of healthy ergonomics makes me want to jump out of my skin sometimes. I would imagine that the goal of all of these subtle and not so subtle changes to the work environment is to eventually allow us to redeem the virtues of being able to rest one’s feet and work in a setting not buffeted by distraction and walking the high-wire. The office is a venue for combating our general laziness and inactivity because we’re rather captives for what someone has deemed our own good, never mind that being seated—or even lying in bed is probably more conducive to creativity and productivity and fitness ought not to start or end at work. Besides, I think the layout of the office, even as a sandbox for collaboration, is changing too quickly for any of these sedentary iniquities to really take root.

link roundup: five-by-five

major arcana: weird numerical connection, coincidence between the calendar and playing-cards

tyranny of the bells: can you match these electronic beeps to their gadgets?

the telescreens have no off switch: new TVs caution viewers to watch their mouths in its presence

pulp fiction: satisfying vintage SF artwork of Frank R. Paul

suitable for framing: sleek infographic on the chemical structure of vitamins

larp oder knutepunkt

Though this event reported in Spiegel (DE) is not the first instance of live-action role play—in some ways Renaissance Fairs, Civil War re-enactments and Comic Conventions can be considered games in the same genre and a few epically sophisticated ones are cited in the article, but this four day challenge that was held on board a battleship turned into a marine museum, transformed into an elaborate gaming environment in Wilhelmshaven probably really surprised its creators for its depth and wrenching emotion. Project Exodus, loosely based around the arc-of-story of Battlestar Galactica—with humans on the run from cyborgs intent on wiping them out, was immersive and elicited a lot of bathos, well-up from unexpected places, due to the game’s “play-to-lose” nature. The scripted plot had leadership killed off at crucial moments and the crew had to manage to carry on. The organisers of the game hope to eventually bring this experience to the classroom—to schools and universities, since it might prove more effective in teaching lessons about conflict and what it means to be a refugee better than a lecture.