Art

Hatshepsut and Destani Wolf

Chris Jefferies — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 00:35:00 GMT

Today, Aurora and I had a great day full of art and history (and food).

This morning we drove into the city and went to the New De Young museum (http://www.deyoungmuseum.org) to see the Hatshepsut exhibit. When we got there, the lines were long so we toured the sections of the museum on Art in America from colonial times through the twentieth century. We also browsed through the textiles.

Hatshepsut was an Egyptian queen who became a Pharaoh around 1473 BC when the Pyramids at Giza were already 1000 years old. The exibit had numerous artifacts from her reign. Read about her on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatshepsut

Before we left the city we stopped at the Zuni cafe and had a late lunch.

Later we went to the Berkeley Jazz School to see Destani Wolf, a friend of Elena's from Berkeley High school days. She performed 2 great sets with a Jazz Band. It's a small venue and it felt very intimate and with all her old friends there, it felt like we were hanging in her living room.

You can keep up with Destani at her MySpace site: www.myspace.com/destaniwolf

For my book making friends

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 10 Jun 2005 01:20:00 GMT

I had a picture book made for Aurora for her birthday. It was made by Memento Press and while they were a little protective of their binding method they said it was a modified FastBind technique. I collected 20 images and one extra for the cover and included a word document with captions on a CD. 2 day turnaround. Looks great.

Here are some online pages about do it yourself bookbinding:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/tobycraig/29223.html
http://www.joannebkaar.com/Bookbinding_/body_bookbinding_.html

Joni Mitchell

Chris Jefferies — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:36:00 GMT

Last night Aurora and I went to see Joni Mitchell. She’s was speaking at the Commonwealth Club a few blocks from where I work. The event was scheduled to coincide with the anniversary of Earth Day. We were surprised to see our friend, Nancy Carroll, atending with a friend of hers.

Instead of being a straight interview, it started out with Joni talking about her world view and how she thinks we, as humans, have gone wrong. At first, she seemed to be a little overwhelmed with the 'big ideas' and with the depth of the subject, but she had some notes to keep her on track and had apparently given considerable thought about what she wanted to say. Her first statement:

“To love nature in this time is to be in terrible pain.“

She described a poignant display of our world condition as seen on the side of the Hard Rock Cafe in Los Angeles where there is a ticker or continuous counter that shows the growing world population juxtaposed with the number of trees being cut down.

She thinks it all went wrong with Plato and western 'logic' or intellect and the focus on western justice which lacks sense. On a poster board, she drew a diagram with a large circle marking North, South, East, and West. These points represented:

North as intellect
South as feeling
East as clarity
West as sense

She thinks that we, in the west, have focused too much on intellect and clarity and have lost our ability to feel and sense. Because we seem to focus too much on intellect and clarity we are, as a result, working with 'half a deck'. What was needed, she said, is a balance and called this balance the “Apple mind“.

She draws her world view from various philosophies including Buddhism, Jungian theory, Nietzsche, and Native American culture.

Her talk was interlaced with anecdotes about her recording career, Larry Klein, and "Iron Eyes" Cody (who is known as the Tear Indian in the famous Earth Day ad from 1971). She was asked to read a letter, purported to be from Chief Seattle, which is included in the liner notes of her most recent album, The Beginning Of Survival.

Some other interesting things we learned about Joni:

She thinks of herself primarily as a painter
She started smoking when she was nine years old and would ride her bicycle out into the country and spend quite time, enjoying nature and her little bag of tobacco.
She was asked who she was interested in musically and she said responded without hesitation, “No one!“
She doesn't listen to music very much and has very esoteric tastes; needs a high level of originality... There was a term she used that I can't recall now. (Update 04.25.2005: Nancy Carroll has reminded me; Joni said she needed a “high degree of divinity and originality“ in the music she listens to.)

Some other interesting links:

Interview by Elvis Costello from the November 2005 Vanity Fair magazine:
http://www.jmdl.com/library/print.cfm?id=1182

Discussion, from ’97 about one of my favorite songs, Sweet Bird:
http://www.jmdl.com/th-sweetbird.cfm

They recorded the talk and I think you might be able to catch it at this location:
http://www.commonwealthclub.org/broadcast/index.html

Eye of Science

Chris Jefferies — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 18:09:00 GMT

Here's a great site found by my friend Brooks Harris. It's called the Eye of Science and it features microscopic photography.

http://www.eyeofscience.de/eos2/index2.html

Here's a gallery site that hosts many of the Eye of Science images: http://db2.photoresearchers.com/cgi-bin/query.cgi?&api=MEC001

Have a happy day of superstition...

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 02:40:00 GMT

Look deeply into my blog...

Chris Jefferies — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 19:08:00 GMT

No, do not look away. Look deeply, calmly, willingly into the darkest depths of my blog...

See more cool optical illusions here: http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/saishin2e.html

Jumano Forums

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 16 Jul 2004 14:30:00 GMT

I've set up a web forum for discussion threads at: http://www.jumano.com/Forums

Please visit the forums and start up or join a discussion.

Fahrenheit 9/11 - in their own words

Chris Jefferies — Sat, 26 Jun 2004 15:28:00 GMT

Aurora and I saw Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 last night. While I can't confirm all of the facts presented in the film (who can?) I can say, that what you see is George Bush and his administration officials presenting the case for Michael Moore in their own words. Sure, the quotes might have been taken out of context, but the quotes nevertheless stand on their own. Like George, saying to a group of supporters, “This is an impressive crowd, the 'haves' and the 'have mores'. Some people call you the elite, I call you my base.“.

One of the things I learned, and was quite shocked by, was the treatment of black representatives who went to the senate to protest the disenfranchisement of black voters right after the 2000 election. The resolutions, required a singnature from at least one senator, and not one senator stepped forward. Not one. Pathetic.

The last moment in the film points out the slow witted Bush stumbling over a common saying, and should leave all viewers with a resolve to do whatever they can to help voters understand that we need George out of the whitehouse.

Here's a link to the trailer for the movie: http://www.fahrenheit911.com/trailer/windows/large.php

I urge all of my friends to see this movie. Soon!

Composite Faces

Chris Jefferies — Wed, 02 Jun 2004 18:42:00 GMT

Found an interesting site that composites faces based on demographics. You can be the judge of what it means...

Republican Composite Face

Democrat Composite Face

Jedermann Project

It had to happen...

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 21 May 2004 11:28:00 GMT

The iconification of the torture images... These are apparently showing up in transit stations in New York.