New Color

The Caveman and his Computer

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-the-new-groupthink.html

Routine

wake up

wake machine

brush teeth

make coffee

consume coffee

check system aborts/issues

plan day

check emails

check that world outside still exists and is not at war

rearchitect bi solution on top of hadoop

eat lunch

fetch monster energy drink from corner store

consume energy drink

continue rearchitecting

deal with any misc business issues

deal with any misc personal issues

take ai

watch cbs news, while playing with ai

feed ai

eat dinner

practice standing with ai

give ai a bath

say goodnight to ai

code java for painting

shut down machine

brush teeth

inversion in attic

get in bed

read 1q84

go to sleep

Into Time

by rafael

via tagbanger

Pass The Salt

Hadoop

Hadoop

Paradigm shifter. Discovering it’s power at Hadoop World!

Thank You.

Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

dmr, 1941-2011

Formalism

Source

Term for any approach to the arts, whether theoretical, critical or historical, that emphasizes the autonomy or primacy of formal qualities. In the case of painting, these qualities are usually understood to be compositional elements such as line, value, colour and texture: they can be distinguished from technique on the one hand and content on the other. Because compositional elements can be considered and enjoyed independently of the way in which a picture evokes the visible world, tells a story or expresses philosophical ideas, some formalists have argued that representation of any kind is incidental to art. They may be answered by those who insist that formal values, when elevated to objects of primary interest, in fact perform a kind of representation. The difficulties involved in the use of such terms helps explain why formalism has met with resistance in recent decades; at the same time, the issues that it attempts to address are so fundamental to art that it is bound to arouse perennial interest.

The origins of formalism are deeply rooted in ancient thought, in the belief for example that the universe is governed by numerical relationships, or in the notion of form as the intelligible quality of things, imposed upon or inherent in matter. Even in antiquity such ideas were applied to the arts: Aristotle understood art (techne) as a shaping process analogous to the processes of nature, while Vitruvius distinguished the design (lineamenta) of a building from its material existence. These applications were developed during the Renaissance. The humanist philosopher Benedetto Varchi, in a lecture (Due lezzione, Florence, 1550) on one of Michelangelo’s sonnets, defined the task of the sculptor as the drawing-forth of the ‘actual’ from the ‘potential’ being. In the Enlightenment, with its concern for the psychological nature of knowledge, there arose the notion that the experience of a work of art as a work of art was neither purely sensual nor purely rational and that an ‘aesthetic’ experience could be distinguished from other kinds of experience. If in looking at a picture we are moved to religious insights, for example, we are not experiencing the picture aesthetically. Kant, on the other hand, in his Critique of Judgment, formulated the possibility of ‘adherent’ as well as ‘pure’ beauty and admitted that beauty could be a symbol of the good, that aesthetic experience could thus have a resonance in the realm of morality. Friedrich Schiller, pushing Kant’s ideas towards Romanticism, emphasized the spiritually therapeutic nature of aesthetic experience, its capacity to reconcile the conflicting aspects of human nature and even to be an instrument of social and political reform.

Modern formalism evolved during the late 19th century and early 20th. An important impetus was given to this development by aestheticism, a broad-based cultural movement, in large part a reaction against the ills of modern industrial society. The literary and artistic movement known as Symbolism also played a part by emphasizing emotional expression above objective representation and stressing the integrity and autonomy of the work of art as object. The German essayist and critic konrad Fiedler, who was inspired by Kant, developed a formalist theory that was adapted and popularized by his friend, the sculptor adolf von Hildebrand. In Britain, similar ideas were broadcast in a more flamboyant fashion by James McNeill Whistler. The idea that a painting must succeed as an arrangement of compositional elements before it could succeed as representation was also central to the art of the Post-Impressionists and is found in a variety of forms in the writings of their critical supporters. Such ideas served the liberating impulses of Modernism, helping, as in the case of Kandinsky, to open the way for abstraction. They also informed much of the criticism that subsequently popularized ‘modern art’, most notably in the writings of roger Fry, clive Bell and herbert Read during the first half of the 20th century. Later, the American critic clement Greenberg developed a formalist definition of modernism in painting that was highly influential until the mid-1970s. In the meantime, formalism had also had a profound effect on the discipline of art history. Bernard Berenson, for example, invoked Hildebrand and Fry in giving a theoretical framework to his connoisseurship. The Viennese scholar alois Riegl and the Swiss heinrich Wölfflin each sought to develop a systematic approach to the history of art that would, among other things, define the historical evolution of style as an autonomous and necessary process. Riegl made use of the notion of ‘artistic will’ (Kunstwollen) to establish the distinctive formal features of works of art as the products of something other than technique. Wölfflin believed that, ideally, the history of art could be written ‘without names’, that it could be reduced to purely impersonal and necessary processes. Although the conceptual foundations of these systems were soon disputed, they have continued to serve as points of reference for such scholars as Wilhelm Worringer, Hans Sedlmayr and Otto Pächt (1902–88). Wölfflin’s critical terminology survived the obsolescence of his system and still enjoys currency even in the English-speaking world.

Robert Williams
From Grove Art Online

Gauguin

A conversation about Paul Gauguin.

Moments In The Sunlight

Bushwick / NY Times

link

The Messy Studio

Filter Bubbles

1st Father’s Day

My first Father’s Day with Ai, spent BBQ’ing with friends.

Java Advanced Imaging

I finally got fed up with exporting my Java Graphics2D renderings to Photoshop to perform post-processing, which I couldn’t then stick back into the render pipeline, and discovered the radness that is JAI.  If you like to play with pixels, check it out!

A recent sketch for a large scale painting I plan to do (somehow) between work and bouncing Ai chan.

Ai’s New Journal

http://ry0n.com/journals/ai

Ai (藍)

Our new daughter, Ai.

Born April 4, 2011 at 9:34 AM

5 lbs., 15 oz. / 2.69 kilograms

Ai’s kanji is 藍.  It’s the symbol for deep beautiful blue.  It’s also the name of the plant that produces the deep blue used in traditional kimono dying.  The kanji evokes a sense of calmness, relaxation and depth of a person’s character.

9 Months

10 Years

Blonde Redhead

Runachan

This is my niece, Runa, (on the left).  Runa is 4 years old and lives in Nagoya.  She likes Anpanman and Doraemon.  She is the fastest runner in her class.

4 Months

Voyager Golden Record

CGI 1972

Eratosthene

INCHES CAN DIFFERENCE

Joy Division, 1978 Granada Reports Live

Pantha du Prince, “Frozen Frog”

I Feel Coke

New Order, “Blue Monday”, Tokyo, 1985

Efdemin

“Lohn & Brot”

Andreas Angelidakis’ “Hotel Blue Wave”

Sony’s “Asimo”

Angelo Plessas

www.electricitycomesfromanotherplanet.com

www.iwanttobeamachine.com

www.melookingatyou.com

www.elasticenthusiastic.com

www.futureisfake.com

Black Dice’s “Cloud Pleaser”

Discover Japan