Maria Popova of Brain Pickings directs our attention in a thoughtful and expansive book review of graphic artist Chip Kidd’s recently published programme and kind memoir that imparts a great sense of reverence and goodness for the touchstones of Charles Schutz’ Peanuts characters.
The enduring success of the franchise comes about as perhaps for the humanities one of the longest running autobio- graphies and confessionals, Schultz claiming he was not only Charlie Brown but a little of every character, Snoopy included. Not only does feature explore the complexities portrayed with a sometimes conflicted and existential gang as only Schultz could create—a vexed bafflement on par with Hamlet serialised, but there is also a touching account of how the Peanuts reflected current events and fears over segregation in the States and brought in the character of Franklin in response.
Saturday 14 November 2015
woodstock
Friday 13 November 2015
nuance and nudge
Mental Floss has a funny and informative comparison chart of how emojis are rendered differently on different devices, and the deviation from the norm seems quite significant for much of the core vocabulary.
It’s really interesting to think that we rarely stray from our familiar, native ecology and might never appreciate how one meaning is subject to code-switching (alternating between two different syntaxes) in a sort of meta-communication. Of course, it is humorous rubbish that our short-hand might become garbled but the general ramifications might become something broader in terms of precision and understanding.
5x5
format-wars: after four decades, Sony is retiring Beta-Max
non-verbal: as an encore of the facial recognition algorithms that guessed one’s age, there a new application that produces an emotional composite from one’s expressions
cast-offs: as a fashion-statement, Dutch designer folds newspapers into disposable shirts you’d think twice about throwing away
thin white duke: David Bowie gets down on Soul Train
Thursday 12 November 2015
timeliness, objectivity and narrative
Building strong partnerships with leading museums and educational institutions around the world to help bring the iconography and language of modern art to the broader, internet dwelling public, the clearing house Artsy is wonderful resource for discovery and triangulation.