DEEP THOUGHT

Time to declare your major:
BFA Information Design

CREATIVE CLASS

RICHARD FLORIDA

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY (MARCH 2009)

FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

HOLY MISE-EN-SCENE

This stop-motion animation-style video by the director "Pes" (a.k.a. Adam Pesapane) for the Washington State Lottery is delicious. The colours are so luscious and the palettes of each scene are harmonious in their simplicity. Also, this video is a great example of reappropriation (one of the post-modern principles of art) in its utilization of everyday objects as landscape settings and props. For example, white rubber gloves as snow on the mountain, pine cones as trees, and lunch box as barn.

BIG SHITPILE: THE MOVIE

click for larger

It's fun to play Oliver Stone.

AVOIDING THE INFORMATION HOLE

Jenny Holzer, Protect Me From What I Want, 1986. New York, NY.

The Information Age is packed with, well, information. Tons of data enter our awareness on a daily -- perhaps even hourly -- basis. Just walk outside. You look down and there is a newspaper. You pick it up, maybe check out the headlines. Your phone buzzes and you read a few email, click on a link, check out a web site. You walk down the street with your newspaper in your hand, your phone in your pocket and your ipod in your ear. To the left is an advertisement on the side of a newsstand. To the right is a digital sign. When you return home, you turn on your t.v. and scan through the channel guide to find something interesting to watch. While you do some online shopping. Blog reading. And investigate hotel options in Tunisia. And then your phone buzzes.

This slice of the day is typical for many people. We are accustomed to doing several things at once (almost exclusively, which means that the word "multitasking" is now archaic) by processing words, images, other words all at the same time. Information. Lots of information.

So with all of this information swirling in and around our heads, how do we select what to pay attention to and allow entrance into ourselves? Sure, you could go with chance or something in front of you. Or drive yourself crazy by being indecisive. Or...

You could have someone else do the selecting for you. That person, who we can call the "Sorter," is responsible for isolating and ushering in information. Your Sorter should be smart. Curious. Engaging. And have a similar perspective to your own. Two examples of Sorters include the following:

• Jenny Holzer - (conceptual artist) helps sort by isolating certain aspects of literacy, mostly in the form of arphorisms or selections from government documents. She then enlarges them to a vast scale, which forces us to pause and look so that we take in information that is thought-provoking. Holzer's "Protect Me From What I Want" was projected in NYC's Times Square in the 1980s. Stop and think about that.

• Oliver Stone - (filmmaker) is a Sorter by virtue of the moving image. He steps back and isolates a sliver of our culture that is interesting or significant. This sliver is usually the life of a person, whose life details could easily be lost in the "Information Hole." Such examples include Jim Morrison of The Doors and George W. Bush. By pulling this information out and pushing it into our consciousness in the form of a film, Stone enshrines and enlarges these interesting parts of contemporary humanity. And what could be a better medium than film, which is both enjoyable and is easy to process since it is visual information. Pretty powerful stuff.