He Knew All The Words

Archive for the ‘art’ tag

A little work

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My company recently launched a new website for photographer Nancy Ellison, designed and edited by yours truly. It’s an HTML5 site (none of the animations are Flash) — so it works on iPads as well as desktop computers. And if you turn the iPad vertical you get an app-like full-screen slideshow of all the images that you simply swipe through. It’s pretty cool.

Written by David Zaza

June 6th, 2012 at 9:29 am

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My Debut on the New York Social Diary

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Well well well, look who finally got his face in some society pages (scroll down a bit). The book we published about Romain de Plas was the cause for a lovely celebration at Archivia Books. This is a fantastic independent bookstore on the Upper East Side, a real gem of a place, run by the wonderful Cynthia Conigliaro. She did it up right for us and everyone enjoyed themselves immensely.

In related news, I am quoted in this article about de Plas in The Lo-Down, an online magazine about the Lower East Side, where de Plas lived and worked for a good amount of time. He spoke in an interview of not knowing what to make of Downtown, having spent much time abroad and most of his New York time to that point Uptown. Personally, I can’t think of a better place for an artist than Downtown Manhattan. But he had a true artist’s soul, which lived in its own world and by its own rules. I’m glad the show and the book are beginning to get a bit of press. It’s a project I’m very proud to have had a hand in.

Written by David Zaza

November 10th, 2011 at 10:12 pm

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Amen

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I wish Sen. Sanders a long, healthy, and politically active life.

Written by David Zaza

July 15th, 2011 at 10:22 pm

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Fox/Zaza

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I took this picture of Mark, looking through one of his cut mirror pieces. My eyeballs and nose. His glasses and beard.

Written by David Zaza

April 11th, 2011 at 8:47 am

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New work from McCall Associates

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I don’t blog about my day-job often, but today we finally updated the portfolio on our website. When I take a look at the body of our recent work all together I have to say I’m pretty proud of what we’ve been up to lately. If you’re curious check out the portfolio here. In the meantime, here are a few highlights:

New design for the information-rich website of Galerie St. Etienne, a prominent 57th Street gallery. My contribution to the project was a completely re-thought editorial structure for the site:

Catalog for MoMA’s fascinating survey of drawing through the 20th century. The cover has an unexpected rhythm, and I wish this picture showed the spine — which just has a simple line right down the middle:

Catalog for The Morgan Library & Museum on the art collection of Kasper — the fashion designer and bon vivant (and personal friend of mine). Michelle made two different jackets to show off the dual nature of the collection — drawing and photography:

Catalog for L&M Arts’ show comparing the work of Calder and Tanguy. Mark’s typography and use of color in this book is about the best our studio has ever produced:

Written by David Zaza

April 8th, 2011 at 10:05 pm

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Wim Wenders tackles Pina Bausch!

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The world will be a better place because of this. I am sorry to hear it’s in 3D, as I think that’s a terrible format, but Wenders is such a master that I don’t think it will matter.

Written by David Zaza

February 4th, 2011 at 10:49 am

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Guest Entry: Adrienne Colla on Mark Fox

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Adrienne sent me the following as an update to my previous entry about Mark’s album art for The National. But since it was two entries ago, I’m giving this its own spot so it’s not buried down below. DMZ

While on a Delta Airlines flight on Sunday from Cincinnati to Orlando I thumbed through their “Sky” magazine and on their monthly Hot List is the new The National CD which, of course, features Mark Fox’s cover art. I was so excited! Mark’s art is reaching anyone and everyone who is on one of Delta’s thousands of flights each day. He’s global! So if you happen to be flying Delta in the upcoming month make sure to violate the “no talking to your neighbor” rule on the flight and tell them you know the artist of that CD cover. They will look at you like you are a crazy person and then go back to reading their Kindle, but who cares? Mark. Fox. Rules. –Adrienne Colla

Written by David Zaza

May 17th, 2010 at 11:20 am

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High Violet, and Mark Fox, hit the street UPDATED

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UPDATED THURSDAY to say:

The National will be on David Letterman tonight. Watch for Dave to introduce the band by holding up Mark’s cover art and talking about the new album. When you see the cover art, cheer!
Original entry follows:
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If you missed an earlier entry where I told you about Mark Fox making the cover art for The National‘s new album High Violet, now is the time to pay attention. The album hit store shelves today. I ran up to Other Music after work to buy a copy of the limited edition vinyl version. It’s so beautifully produced. Big gatefold double-album treatment. The cover is uncoated paper, so it feels great in the hand. And it’s printed nicely, with silver foil stamping for the title. Very fancy.

I had understood from Mark that there would be fly-posters up around town to promote the album, but I haven’t seen any yesterday or today. Perhaps they’re yet to come. Or maybe they aren’t doing that. But there was a big duratrans poster in the window of the record store. Looks great!

Still, the album is getting terrific notices all over the place. I love it myself. The National play dark brooding music with rather sophisticated lyrics and catchy melodies. This new one promises to take them to the next level of fame and fortune. It’s certainly all over the internet. The album’s first single is “Bloodbuzz Ohio” and I believe a video for it is also being released today. When I see it I’ll post it here.

Anyway, this is all perfectly timed for Mark, as his new show opens at his gallery this coming Friday. Go check out his website to see lots of images of his work. And if you’re in New York, come to the reception at the gallery on Friday from 6 to 8 pm….

Written by David Zaza

May 11th, 2010 at 8:25 pm

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Go Away

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In addition to helping noted artist Mark Fox get his shiny new site up and running, there are a whole slew of other sites that have been intriguing me lately. Part bookmark for myself, part desire to share with you dear readers, here’s a simple list of where I’ve been and where you’re going…

First a few new additions to the links at the right which I haven’t ever made mention of:
Information is Beautiful is site that compiles infographics from all over the place. And yes, it actually is beautiful.
– Similar information, of a more personal nature, can be graphed by anyone at the very cool site called Daytum. I’ve set up my page to graph four important measures of my life: days lived in New York v. days lived in Ohio; transportation method of my commute; cocktails imbibed; and what percentage of my Facebook status updates are my own v. those I steal from others. It’s interesting to learn that Manhattans do indeed make up 75% of my cocktail intake (expect this to shift toward martinis and negronis as the weather warms up). The graphs are also providing me with some goal-oriented feedback. I’ve always been longing for the day when my New York residency eclipses my Ohio residency (I think New York will take the 50% mark on December 8, 2015). And on the commuting front, I’d like to get the subway slice of the pie down to below the 50% mark, with biking and walking combining to take the lead. We’ll see over time.
– Check out my new friend Kenji’s movie reviews on his blog, My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second. He’s a terrific writer and a nice guy. We met through Twitter and have gone to a few movies together, with more planned.
– If you like smart pictures, good light, and a healthy natural curiosity, you’ll want to see my friend Scott’s pictures, over at, yes, Scott Likes Pictures. (He’s not in Spain and it’s not in Spanish, despite the .es URL!). I especially love his “from below” pix and the “words on photos” series, but the whole thing is worth a look.

Elsewhere on the web:
– More photography: 500 Photographers sound like a nice project. It’s just getting rolling and will be interesting to follow over the course of 100 weeks.
I Wrote This For You uses photography, but it’s really a poetry site. It’s mysterious and strange, a bit dark and oddly warm. Go back to the beginning and go entry-to-entry. You’ll get sucked in and spend hours reading the cryptic, emotional messages.
– Speaking of poetry, have I sent you here before?
Why marriage equality needs to be the law of the land.
– For a good time, spend a few hours lost in a wondrous architecture archive.
– I love New York, and and I love the way Paul Sahner loves New York.
– The Catherine of Cleves exhibition at the Morgan is outstanding.
– You all have heard about ChatRoulette by now, right? (Just in case: It’s a randomized video chat website, hooking you up via your webcam to all kinds of weirdos all over the world). Here’s a wonderful video of a talented dude singing about and to those he chats with.
– Finally, have you seen the two videos for Ok Go’s “This Two Shall Pass”? First came the live version:

Then came the Rube Goldberg version:

Written by David Zaza

April 19th, 2010 at 2:12 pm

Mark Fox Goes Public

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I’ve spent a bit more time recently working on Mark Fox‘s new website than I have writing posts for this one. Sorry about that, but it needed to get done. Mark’s got a few new things going on that you all should know about.

First of all, the new Mark Fox Studio site is a simple and straightforward portfolio, but it allows him to have a bit more of an expansive web presence than just being one in the stable of his gallery, Larissa Goldston Gallery. Lots of nice pictures to look at, so please do.

But the bigger news is that Mark’s art is featured on the cover of the forthcoming new album by The National. If you don’t know the National yet, I have a feeling you will soon. They’re a terrific, moody, melodic, intense band. The new album, High Violet, is their fifth, and if the first single (Bloodbuzz Ohio, which also features Mark’s artwork) is any indication, it’s going to be really great.

So the National album comes out May 12 — the same week that Mark’s new solo show opens at Larissa Goldston. Hopefully, the combination of the band’s talent and Mark’s talent will create something special for both of them. In the meantime, go take a look at Mark’s site and let me know what you think.

Written by David Zaza

April 14th, 2010 at 12:58 am

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Spring Forward

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As everyone knows, spring is a drag. But these are some recent things I’ve sniffed out that have made grinning and bearing it possible:

Shostakovich’s The Nose at The Metropolitan Opera. Last year Mark and Elizabeth birthday-gifted me the promise of a night at the opera of my choosing. I chose The Nose. I was not familiar with the music, but I love Shostakovich and this was a new production by William Kentridge, a South African artist I’ve long-admired. Here’s his preview:

The opera itself has a very strange, frenetic energy to it. And despite feeling it was overly busy at points, I enjoyed it thoroughly. It’s a strange tale — based on a Gogol story — about a man who awakes to find his nose has disappeared. He spends the opera chasing it around town trying to get it back. When he finally does, there’s a scene toward the end where he’s trying to reattach the nose to his face and it won’t stay on. This was so musically affecting it felt like a waking nightmare. The sheer frustration of this character was captured perfectly by Shostakovich’s tense score and the emotive singing of Paulo Szot.

Mark felt that the production — which is a cacophony of projected video and clever sets — had a bit too much Kentridge in it, that he’d put too much extraneous imagery throughout it. I agree to a point, but it bothered me far less than it did Mark. I think Anthony Tommasini got it just about right in his review in the NY Times.

Speaking of William Kentridge, his retrospective at MoMA opened last month and continues to mid-May. It’s wonderful. He makes wonderful drawings, then he turns those into single-frame animations. His films balance artistic and political concerns, juggle absurdities and beauties, and are as disquieting as they are stunningly hypnotic. It’s a dense crowded show. Go twice.

Also at MoMA, I loved the Marina Abramović show. Here is someone who took a few steps out into the weird body-based realm of performance art and never looked back. The show features video and documentation of her works, but also recreations of them by assistants who are performing in the galleries. It also features a new performance by Abramović herself. The show is called The Artist is Present, and she makes it a reality — for every day of the run of the show she will be in the second floor atrium, sitting at a table, looking into the face of someone sitting across from her. Any museum-goer can sign-up to sit in on the piece. It’s unnerving to watch. And you can join in the fun as MoMA is doing a live video stream of the event here (during museum hours).

Another intense experience of late came in the form of reading Louise Glück’s latest book, A Village Life. A powerful exploration of life in a rural village, the poems are written in a multitude of voices, and reflect and refract one another in deeply affecting ways. Glück has the ability to seduce the reader with one simple thought. Then she puts the knife in you slowly, gently, no smile, then she turns it and when she takes it out the hole closes up, perfectly healed on the outside, but her art is still festering inside you. It’s a beautiful and devastating book I highly recommend.

Less intense, but as important to my daily life, are a handful of new albums that I’m loving to bits. Fellow Brooklynites Yeasayer have taken hold of my heart with Odd Blood, their second album. Here’s one:

Also big in my daily mix is the new album from Hot Chip, but I can’t embed a video because the major label they’re on won’t allow it. That’s stupid, so screw ‘em. Also, Surfer Blood, Phoenix, and last but not least, the new album by Spoon. Take it away boys:

Written by David Zaza

March 29th, 2010 at 8:48 pm

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Christopher Stout: Open Studio

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[nonmobile]Christopher Stout in his Bank Street studio, NYC, 2009
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[mobile]Christopher Stout in his Bank Street studio, NYC, 2009[/mobile]

My friend Christopher Stout had an open studio exhibition recently. It was my first encounter with his work, and as always with these things one approaches them with some trepidation. What if I don’t like my friend’s work? What if I have nothing to say about it? I try to tamp down those kinds of thoughts. First of all, if you don’t like a friend’s creative output there’s still always something nice that can be said. I mean, I go to such events as a friend, not as a critic. If I didn’t like the work itself, I’d still love the ambition, the risk-taking, the bravado of standing up as an artist and announcing one’s presence with an event such as this well-thought-out open studio. And as for having nothing to say, well, that’s not really ever a problem for me, is it?

All that’s to say that any trepidation was unfounded. For I took an immediately delight in Christopher’s paintings, and I welcomed the chance to see a bunch of them together and to have him tell me some of the background and inspiration for them. He showed a recent body of work, arranged around the freslhy-painted white walls of the apartment he shares with his partner. This body of work was punctuated with a few examples of his previous body of work, which provided a sense of continuity and a nice bit of contrast in scale (the few older works were significantly larger).

[nonmobile]Black, White, Gold, and Gray paintings by Christopher Stout, 2009
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[mobile]Black, White, Gold, and Gray paintings by Christopher Stout, 2009[/mobile]

The paintings are monochromatic, in four colors: black, white, gold, and gray. Made of cement, oils, pigments, and shredded corporate documents, the paintings are thick and dense, and at 20-inches square they look so solid that one supposes they weigh a ton (they don’t). Christopher is a rather intellectual artist, who thinks deeply and broadly about his work, which is evident both in the informal lecture he presented to me and in the statements to be found on his website. But it’s deceptive to read these statements too closely because the works have an intuitive feel to them. I believe this comes from the profound manipulation of the materials that Christopher must go through in creating these works. The shredded corporate documents, of course, stripped of their thematic meaning are, when mixed with cement and oils and other media, more or less simple paper pulp. Interestingly, the large works on display from a previous body of work had (perfectly readable) shredded paper making nests of the works’ surfaces. And yet despite the paper in the new works being absorbed and abstracted these smaller, denser works had a rather papery feel to them (especially, of course, in the examples that did not have shiny gloss coats).

The gray works, the artist tell us, take economy of scale as their theme. These works are the freest and texturally the most interesting. The golds had a prickliness, the blacks a glossy voluptuousness, and the whites a very painterly feel to them. But the grays were varied, papery, and mysterious to me. With the artist applying consistent themes for each color, it was not surprising that the paintings hung well in groups, and that anyone acquiring these works would do best to buy four of them. Christopher’s installation of so many paintings in this small apartment had a wonderful sense of visual rhyme and reason, with subtle shifts in mood, tone, and sculpted surfaces leaping from painting to painting as one circled the space.

[nonmobile]Detail of black painting by Christopher Stout, 2009
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[mobile]Detail of black painting by Christopher Stout, 2009[/mobile]

Anyway, as I mentioned at the beginning of this, I’m a friend not a critic, so Christopher will forgive me if I’ve got this all wrong. But one thing I know I’m right about is that it takes a good sense of self-worth, of get-up-and-go, and of deliberateness to get one’s act together enough to strip a living space of its homey stuff, paint it all white, make a condensed gallery space for oneself, and invite the world over to see. So not only did I love the paintings themselves, but I have a newfound respect for Christopher as a professional who can see the bigger picture that isn’t always so clear to many artists. Well done.

Written by David Zaza

September 30th, 2009 at 12:21 am

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35 Rhums, by Claire Denis

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Claire Denis makes movies that inhabit the viewer from the inside out. These are not movies that start on the screen, enter the eye, and take the mind on a linear journey. They reflect from the screen, enter the chest, and then take the heart on a journey that blossoms outwardly like a flower. From her first feature, 1988′s Chocolat, to her newest, 35 Rhums, which was completed in 2008 but is only now receiving its American distribution, these films create their own worlds and sustain their own tensions by departing from conventional storytelling — the fictions that most films are made of — and embracing instead a narrative structure that is more poetry than fiction and a visual composition that is more painting than photography. These works are round, organic, and intuitive, instead of linear, bordered, and logical.

35 Rhums begins with a long sequence of moving images: point-of-view shots of Parisian commuter rail lines, filmed from the train’s engine, showing a winding progression of tracks and wires and tunnels. These tracking shots reminded me of Marguerite Duras’ Aurelia Steiner (Melbourne), which places its camera at the front of a boat as it navigates the Seine, its eye wandering to the shores and the bridges it passes under. The slow pacing of this opening sequence allows the audience to acclimate to the hypnotic rhythms that will unfold over the next 100 minutes.

We enter the action in the middle, getting to know the four main characters, all residents in the same modern apartment building. A father and daughter and two of their neighbors, who together form a post-modern family, move around each other mostly in silence. Friends and colleagues come and go. The pacing remains slow and mysteriously intimate, filled with real-time accountings of individual moments in these people’s lives.

Denis’ longtime collaborator, cinematographer Agnes Godard, has created a mood that is tenuous and lightly floating — with a mixed use of fixed and hand-held camera work, but which is consistent in its alternating between hesitations and actions, a pulsing visual approach to familial subject matter that is alive with emotions and the characters’ own heartbeats. There are some singular images that are among Agnes Godard’s best: a line of children carrying lanterns on the beach; a formal shot of a man on a sofa; and the motif of winding tracks disappearing under a moving train.

As always in a Claire Denis film, music is central to the construction of 35 Rhums. The score is once again provided by Denis regulars, the Tindersticks. And once again, there’s a set-piece that is central to the story and characters that takes place with a pop-song underscore — in this case, almost unbelievably, Commodores’ 1985 Marvin Gaye tribute, Nightshift.

The actors are also wonderful, especially Alex Descas, who plays the father. He says little, but conveys much. It helps that he has the kind of beautiful face that one could look at for two hours without really needing much more. Mati Diop is a newcomer, but fits right in, with her shy smile and her quiet beauty. She seems to be on the exact same page as Descas, and the intimate moments they share are so authentic and so deep that one begins to feel intrusive by even observing them. And Gregoire Colin seems to expand his abilities with this film. His posture and facial expressions are unlike what I’ve seen him do in other films (including Denis’).

Late in the film the narrative leaps forward twice in a row, accelerating both the movie’s pacing and its emotional impact. In giving us a slow character study, capped with a sudden road-trip, and finally a ceremony of love, Denis seems to be smiling at us, although we might have tears in our eyes. In fact, the film itself could be described as the cinematic equivalent of an enigmatic smile — just mysterious enough and just melancholy enough for us to want to look at it forever.

Distribution is limited. If it’s playing near you, don’t miss it.

Trailer:
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[mobile]35 Rhums[/mobile]

Written by David Zaza

September 22nd, 2009 at 12:51 am

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MoMA Saturday

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With Hurricane Bill parked off the coast and causing our rain storms to stay put for the time being, and with having to be in the city for a morning haircut, Saturday seemed a good day to go to MoMA for a whole bunch of new exhibitions.

I’d heard from some people that Song Dong’s “Projects” installation, “Waste Not,” was terrific. But I just kind of shrugged at it. The artist has arranged (quite brilliantly) the complete contents of her mother’s house. The belongings were kept under the concept of wasting nothing, so like a hoarder the artist’s mother has collected clothes and basins and tools and toys and every other manner of household junk. It is an interesting display, filling the floorspace of the huge second-floor atrium. And it is a work that exists within a well-established tradition of artists inventorying their entire lives (see Mark Fox’s Dust and Charles Ray’s All My Clothes for two quick examples). But does it do anything besides cleverly fill space? Not to my eye. MoMA is having a hard time justifying that second-floor atrium. I can imagine it was greeted with wows and big ideas when it was first proposed by MoMA’s architect. But it’s too vertical, too big, too broken with doorways at the corners, and too much in the way of the building’s natural traffic flow. And so most everything that gets put in it is physically dwarfed and conceptually diminished. Song Dong’s new project included.

I was excited to finally get to the big James Ensor show that I seem to be the last to have seen. I hated it. There’s a reason why minor artists are minor. Ensor’s work is interesting, but it’s all over the place in terms of quality and I felt frustrated halfway through and streaked the rest really fast. There was one painting I loved because it made me laugh out loud — a self-portrait in which the artist dons a lady’s hat. It’s true that this artist was ahead of his time. I mean, Christ’s Entrance into Jerusalem looks like a political rally, which I suppose it was. But for everything I liked, there were two or three that I either didn’t like or that had nothing even interesting within them. Maybe it all went over my head, but I found this uneven exhibition to be more like a curatorial grad student’s work than a real live MoMA exhibition.

On the up side, I was totally enthralled with In & Out of Amsterdam: Travels in Conceptual Art, 1960–1976, a wonderful exhibition about some very cool artists and their home and home-away-from-home relations with Amsterdam. I loved the works by Allen Ruppersberg, Sol LeWitt, Bas Jan Ader, and Hanne Darboven. And there was a stunning installation by Gilbert & George — an 8-part drawing of the artists in the Tuileries, with a large multi-panel mural on the wall with drawing-upholstered furniture in front of it. Wild and great.

As I left the museum, the sky opened up and a downpour drenched everyone on the street. Except for me, who had somehow slipped into the door of The Modern and took refuge in a cocktail until the rain subsided. I love MoMA.

Written by David Zaza

August 25th, 2009 at 7:02 pm

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Go Away

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If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been updating the links in my blogroll to include some new blogs and sites that I like to check in with regularly. All the links in the “Others” department to the right are worth checking out every now and then, but these are the three that I’d love you to see right away…

Do go take a look at Jessica Fenlon’s new video on the homepage of her site drawclose. She’s doing something she calls “datamoshing,” which is taking the messiness of data compressions — known as data artifacts (or artefacts), you know, those weird effects you see in digital video that’s been compressed wrongly — and creating something new from them. Of course, Fenlon’s just doing what she always does: taking the ugliness of the world, filtering it through her unique vision, and feeding it back to us as something beautiful.

A new find for me is And I’m Not Lying, the blog of storyteller Jeff Simmermon. No only is he a very smart and funny observer of life and New York City (and life in New York City) but he’s also been telling his story of fighting testicular cancer, which he does with grace, humor, and touching insight. Go back a few pages into his archive and read forward. It’s very worth the time.

Indexed is the brainchild of Jessica Hagy. She takes the whole world and sorts it out for us in very witty, mathematical charts and diagrams. It’s like math nerd heaven, but you don’t actually have to be a math nerd to enjoy it. Go there every weekday morning for a laugh or an “ah-ha” moment.

Written by David Zaza

August 9th, 2009 at 3:39 pm

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