The Cindy Sherman retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art on Sunday afternoon.
I’ve loved Cindy Sherman’s work since my first glimpse of her Untitled Film Stills from the 1970s. The kind of work where you meet an array of compelling characters (Girl Fridays, centerfolds, film noir heroines) and make up the story as you go along.
Something about this retrospective brought me back to my days playing Barbie. My parents refused to let me have a Ken doll, so in a desperate move, my neighbor and I cut off Barbie’s hair, snipped off her high-heeled feet, and ground her breasts into plastic dust on the sidewalk.
Voilà, Ken.
You must believe me when I tell you that we used our Ken doll. We put him through all the moves, all the scenarios, all the silly, dark, soap operatic passion plays our young minds could invent, trying our best to hold onto the illusion that he was really a Ken doll and not a mangled, stub-foot surrogate.
This was the feeling I had walking around the sixth floor at MoMA yesterday. The viewer is made complicit in the illusion of it all; each photograph a cutting commentary on the nature of identity, representation, mass media culture, manipulation, male gazes, women, their faces and their bodies. The exhibit made me (or was it the image of me?) feel like we do this everyday. We all play pretend, we try to project an illusion of some idealized image, when we really are a little mangled, a little disfigured, a little played upon by external forces and internal ones, too. 
This feeling only doubled as I sat down to lunch downstairs at The Modern. In an eerie life-immitates-art moment it appeared as if the ultra-chic restaurant was completely populated by characters from the ”Society Portraits“ series. There was the botched lip injection Cindy to my right and the tired Upper East Side Cindy to my left. The Cindy next to her had drawn on her arched eyebrows a good inch too high…
Voilà, Cindy everywhere.
Many of our favorite websites wore black today, as a strike against the Internet Blacklist bills. The tone was solemn and dramatic, enlisting users to click here and here and here to defend the Internet as we know it. It was striking how similar the sites appeared. Black. White. Capital letters. Big brother-type proclamations. Many websites actually performed a self-imposed censoring of their material, to show users how it would be if the anti-piracy laws were to come to pass.
Aesthetically, I was interested in the sites that literally enacted censorship like Google and Wordress and Wired in both form and content. There is something so innately human about wanting desperately to see underneath the thick black bar. It’s a compelling visual statement. Not to mention a cultural one – loaded with scary, dark, freedom-infringing vibes. Of course, I would be remiss not to mention The Oatmeal, which marked the day with humor. (see below).
Source: google.com via Aimée on Pinterest
Source: Uploaded by user via Aimée on Pinterest
Source: lettersofnote.com via Aimée on Pinterest
Source: fastcompany.com via Aimée on Pinterest
Source: Uploaded by user via Aimée on Pinterest
Source: Uploaded by user via Aimée on Pinterest
Source: Uploaded by user via Aimée on Pinterest
Source: Uploaded by user via Aimée on Pinterest
Source: Uploaded by user via Aimée on Pinterest
Source: Uploaded by user via Aimée on Pinterest
Seattle. The Modern Language Association.
Mike and I are interviewing candidates for the Multimedia Writing position at St. Joe’s. Holy smokes, what a privilege this is. It’s exciting to engage candidates in conversations about our new Communication Studies Department next Fall. People are throwing down tremendous ideas.
Here’s the words that are circulating:
Engagement. Apps. Code. Social justice. Video. Rhetoric. Interface. Materiality. Aesthetics. Mobile. Civic. Design. Delivery. Usability. Interface. Social Media. Strategy. Community. Activism.
We’ve been so busy – the only taste I’ve gotten of the city so far is the coffee. Tonight, my hope is to actually leave the conference hotel.
On October 13, 2011 Saint Joseph’s University hosted its first TEDxSJU “Student Changemakers” conference on campus. A standing room only crowd of SJU student, faculty, staff, and community members were immersed in a showcase of live talks, short videos, and interactive Q and A’s.
SJU’s Communication Studies students hosted this event. The program is committed to nurturing a culture of social innovation and entrepreneurship on campus. As part of that mission, we created a TEDx program that featured live talks from innovative students, faculty, and young social entrepreneurs from across the country who use social media to make positive social change.
Here are the much anticipated videos from the event.
A Cinemagraph is an image that contains within itself a living moment that allows a glimpse of time to be experienced and preserved endlessly.
I’m enthralled with these images – caught somewhere between a photograph and a video. On their portfolio site, Cinemagraphs, Kevin Burg and Jamie Beck display their captivating and somewhat eerie moving images. They’re animated gifs. And they’re beautiful.
I have to try this. My students would love to make them, I know. Could this be the first “challenge” in my upcoming Spring Digital Storytelling course? Does anyone know how to do this? Would you like to come in or Skype with my class? (We are nice folks and will bake you cookies.) Does anyone have more “Cinemegraphs” to share?
You can see more images on Becks’s From Me to You Tumblr.
Zuzi, one of my favorite fashion/photography bloggers from Prague, has made her own. Could someone please share the magic recipe? Thank you.
Update: Here are a few tutorials readers have sent this way from Smashing Buzz, An Aesthetic Discourse, and Tested!
And here’s Zuzi’s tutorial recommendation. Thank you!
