hughsato.com

I thought this website was worth the note, especially since I’ve been in love with it since first finding it.  The interesting thing about information is that it can be organized in several different ways, some, which can be incomprehensible, but data, like nature, has inherent structure, which if you use it for good… can be pretty damn awesome.

link: Information Is Beautiful

This seems to be the epitome of my current life direction –toward the culmination of all my interests, bringing together art and information, or simply giving meaning to words and numbers (not that they don’t have a meaning already) in visual form, so we can appreciate the patterns that we mimic from nature.  Our social memes are not so different from patterns found in nature –in fact, I think they’re exactly the same.  But their contexts are different, and beautiful in each sense; what we can achieve is better.

Luke and I had a cool idea for music, where in the last several number of years, a diagram is drawn, with circles indicating melodic patterns.  So much of our popular music is similar in the sense that most of the songs follow a certain melody, for example, pachabel’s cannon famous 8 note, found in a lot of different songs.  A beat would play in the background of this dynamic infographic, and as you mouseover the melodies, which are differentiated by size (popularity/number of times found in songs of that year) and by year, the melody will play to the beat.  Furthermore, you can adjust the tempo of the beat on the page, to search for different songs at different melodies.

Doesn’t sound like  a bad idea… as soon as I finish learning Java, maybe I’ll venture to creating dynamic infographics with Flash or Html 3.0

Every day, new websites pop up from nowhere, constantly aggregating information.  Expansion makes for a very interesting effect on the internet communities, as well as the physical communities that exist in real life.  Virtual identity becomes intertwined with reality.

There are both benefits and drawbacks for artists from this active sharing of information.  Beneficial, because it opens their audience to the world to expansive networks of people seeking creatives, and creatives looking for inspiration.  But more and more it dawns on me that perhaps somewhere in the line, identity takes a toll.  Creatives must try even harder to be more expansive, more selective with their work, as variation only causes the loss of personal identity.  Yet it creates an entire new identity altogether.

Websites like Tumblr among other blog sites seem to enable people to blog about anything, compiling image and text in any way they want, without the character limits, and constructing their own personal identity based upon the art that they view and share.  More and more I stumble upon websites that simply compile massive amounts of artwork.  Most of it is “pop” art, seeing as that there really isn’t much traditional painting or traditional art being made, and it’s being driven to spread through the internet.  I’ve seen the same artwork in several of these web compilations.

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot on web privacy and the creation of web communities based upon the sharing of information, so it’s caught my attention that there is so much happening, and the rate of how much is “happening” is increasing exponentially over time.  It’s incredible how much information our minds are taking as we continue to absorb information from the world, as well as contribute and add to the amount of information there is on the web.

More after the jump

Disclaimer: you might be all TL;DR, but if you’re interested in this kind of stuff… uh… it might be interesting?

(more…)

So… I was watching a couple of episodes of CoolHunting video podcasts that were from maybe 2007 or so, and though I’ve seen them already before… I really started to appreciate what they do:  they not only take into view those people who are in essence, the independent, local shops, the proprietorships that exist in the world, but also those who are involved in larger companies: say, they did a piece on Jacques Polge, a perfumer who works for Chanel.  He goes on to explain his work, and why it is significant to be a perfumer, why perfume as an art is important to him, and all that is very interesting.

Now then I look at what the normal citizen sees every day – the shops that are like Target, and Walmart… then the higher end, specialty stores (I guess I’m speaking for downtown Chicago, especially) such as Banana Republic, Neiman Marcus, Calvin Klein, Chanel… so forth.  I think what has happened is that since a normal person cannot exactly afford to shop at any specialty store, they opt for stores like Macys, Target… which in hand, causes this further disconnect from the makers to the store.  These… say, “third-hand” stores open the market to a lower revenue market, and eventually (at least, this I feel true for myself,) the brand names become more of a wall of names… essentially, they lose meaning because I can go to one shop, and see “everything” there is that is available to me at my income.

Then I see CoolHunting again, and I notice that disconnect… that departure from the whole idea of relationship between a maker (and I use that term loosely) and their market.  Admittedly, the market is expanded, since they have the “third party merchants” that expose your product to the world, but I really am interested in the people behind the scenes; the people involved in creating that product in which probably most of us take for granted.

I know, I’ve made fun of many fashion fads, and arbitrarily hated many products designed for the masses, but there’s definitely a need to observe where products come from, because THAT’S where we go wrong:  when that disconnect happens, and when the designers can only understand their market through the select people their company interacts with, and the select friends that the designers themselves have, they definitely have a limited point of view – and I think, (this is just a guess, but) maybe that’s where design obsolescence comes from… maybe, that’s where we see all these unnecessary products built to last a year and then be thrown away –we see products poorly made, look cool, but are completely impractical… there’s just so much that we miss today because all we see is…. Target.  Macys.  Walmart.  so forth.

I respect these companies and their motives, because that’s exactly what’s driving the market right now.  I just think maybe it’s important to take a look at the core of these companies, and the people who drive their ideas.  Sure, we see a whole lot of douchbag designers who think they’re the shit, but they can’t all be that way, and I’m sure they want to be appreciated just as much as any worker.
It’s not as if I have a lot to say about being a worker like that, but I firmly believe that it’s NOT the brand, NOT the logo, not even the image that is completely important for these large companies, because by the time that company got corporate, that original idea has gotten diluted by the several, maybe hundreds of shareholders who also have ideas.  Sure, that’s important too, I’m not saying their visions aren’t important, but it’s always interesting for me to see that original vision and purpose of the proprietor to create that market, or societal niche for him or herself.

And maybe, iunno, maybe that vision was incredibly stupid… or just bad in general… but it caught the attention of people, right?
(I know I’ve ignored the proprietorships that are still small-scale stores, and maybe I’ll talk about them in another post too )

by writing down my thoughts, I automatically decide to publicize them
even to myself.
to make a physical copy
and to remember them
as if they were a figure of their own
though thoughts are an accumulation of our environment
the birds and the trees and the land and the air and the chemicals of your mental experience

have no say

how you ask to trim the back of your hair may say much
or very little about your personality, i think.

for instance, some people might go to the barbershoppen and actually consciously ask for something to be done specifically to the back of their hair. Perhaps they note: ‘I want it cut straight horizontally, and kept at a long length’ or ‘I want it layered, and with streaks.’
But think about it. This is the only time when most people will actually consider their appearance of something so close to their body (a part of it) and yet, we see none of it… ever (well, really… when’s the last time you took two mirrors just to see if the back of your hair looked okay?) and yet, at that instant when you cut your hair, you may treat it as the same importance of how… say… your house or your room and how it looks to other people, when otherwise, you could care less… because you can’t really do much about it, and otherwise would be at the back of your mind (heh… heh)

So I was riding the train today, and I noticed certain people’s hairs as they sat in front of me (yeah, that’s a little creepy i admit) and i couldn’t help but think: ‘did these people actually think, or ask for, that specific back-of-the-head haircut, or did they just let the hair cutter decide?
if either, are they a person of forward appearances, or could they care less?  I wonder sometimes what characteristics of a persons visual appearance affects what characteristics of that same persons personalities.

In any case… I finished reading Siddhartha, which was an unexpressably amazing book, and I would recommend to anyone.  Hesse in his book, talks about the oneness of things, and explains of how everything at an instant is perfect, and because of such, continuous meddling of words, and the complication of words like… ‘love’ and ‘perfect’ are already boundries in theirselves (this is what i think).  By using words to separate the world into meanings, we deconstruct the world into a thousand ‘lessons’ and more, which leaves us yearning for more: more knowledge, more ability, more thoughts, more actions, more creation, more destruction… when if we remove words, and remove the need to express and separate the oneness of the world and its own peculiar ‘perfectness,’ at every instant, where time never exists, and the separation of words is here all at the same time– we experience the ability to listen, the ability to absorb, and connect, and draw positive energies, and what metaphorically exists as ‘happiness’ and ‘love.’

That’s what I got from that book, and much more.  It connected this child part of me: from when I used the notion of ‘time’ to help visualize the motion of things, and the cycles of the earth– connected it to my current wont to love the earth, and love its people without judgement, and live among people without being a ‘higher’ being or acting pompous, as if I have more ‘right’ than anyone ‘know better’ or any sort of condition that proves me better than anyone else: because im not and that’s okay.  Siddhartha in his own reaction to the world: that everyone, despite appearances or actions that could be thought of as ‘rude’ or ‘greedy’ or negative in any way only proves that each and every person strives toward a goal –their struggles and actions in living is simply what makes them perfect, and I can love everything and everyone at the same time for that.

That’s all for the ‘ego’ side of me.

Yet, for the other side of me that knows human reality, and knows the separation with words, and knows the brutalities of what can exist as a ‘perfect’ world in my mind, I know that it is not so for most others.  It makes clear though, what I strive for in life: an ability and knowledge that allows me to make other peoples lives better.  I want to create, and provide for others.  Even through my art and graphic communications, I can create a virtual ‘happiness’ and perhaps through my environmental efforts and social work efforts I can provide that same virtual ‘happiness.’  Yet I cannot provide true happiness, because that comes from within.  That comes from their experiences, and struggles that gives them the strength for happiness, yet as a person that can affect others virtual ‘happinesses,’ I can make that passageway easier, and help them, as well as me, reach both virtual and internal happiness.

What is happiness to me?  It is love and hate both at the same time, and accepting that it is so