31 December 2011

Assortment

An atheist at Christmas: Oh come all ye faithless - Alain de Botton discusses the Christmas for those who view the nativity as nothing more than a fairy tale - interesting prelude to his new book Religion for Atheists.


The secret life of J Edgar Hoover - For half a century, the FBI director waged war on homosexuals, black people and communists. Now, a controversial film by Clint Eastwood is set to reveal some of the explosive truth about him. This is going to be great.




    22 December 2011

    Eat food



    Maira Kalman talks about her latest illustrations. I do love her.

    11 December 2011

    Tilt / Shift

    For my next film project, I'm experimenting with a shift tilt lens to create a miniature effect on distant objects. It's going to look so damn great.


    10 December 2011

    07 December 2011

    Creativity | Do be do be do!


    'To do is to be' - Rousseau *
    'To be is to do' - Sartre
    'Do be do be do' - Sinatra

    * some say Voltaire

    05 December 2011



    Attempts at using my new graphics tablet. I have a looong way to go.

    04 December 2011

    Film | Tarantino on auteurism




    "One of the most talented filmmakers of my generation is David Fincher. All right. But he's not in the same category as me because I'm a writer/director, and that makes it different. That makes it a different thing.

    ...and it's a lot easier to go and look at the scripts that are out there, and available, and you can maybe work with a writer, or do a little rewrite, or do that kind of thing. And you get more movies made. But, you know, cut to six years down the line, and where's that voice? It's gone away.

    ...'cause to me the glory of what I do is the fact that it starts with a blank piece of paper."

    - Quentin Tarantino

    28 November 2011

    Music | Spraaaawl

    I always find it weird when my favourite song on an album is the least promoted. When I listened to Arcade Fire's 'The Suburbs' when it was released last year, I instantly fell in love with the song Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains). Now, over a year later, I'm looking for the official music video.... and.... nothing. Huh? This is a fan-made edit:



    But as a well-meaning viewer on YouTube said:

    2:49 is like meating god (sic)

    What is it about this song that I find so addictive? Perhaps just a longing for 80s dream pop combined with a misspent youth watching The Mysterious Cities of Gold on repeat.

    25 November 2011

    Shut up and listen



    Jacques Thibaud plays franck violin sonata with his friend Alfred Cortot. Recorded on May 1929.

    24 November 2011

    Film | That moonglow




    “The Glow and the Gloom” showcases the most stunning garments of S/S 2011. It combines elements of performance, music and light design. A suggested narrative creates a loose structure around our heroine within a sinister yet beautiful world. Guided by a never revealed power, our heroine moves around her surroundings, revealing a dark and brooding world.


    I think this is the best lighting design I've ever seen in a film. It was inspired by Henri-Georges Clouzot's unfinished film L'enfer, starring Romy Schneider (below).


    21 November 2011

    Music | Connan Mockasin

    Hail thee, the new masters of psychedelic whimsy. This is the shit.



    11 November 2011

    King Harvest has surely come

    I was reading about Jessica Helfand, who together with William Drenttel form Winterhouse, a design studio in Northwest Connecticut. She is Senior Critic at Yale School of Art, where she is an Associate Fellow in Jonathan Edwards College.

    Watch this video!  Even if you're not interested in what they say about design, their house is perfection.  And they have my favourite dogs!


    19 October 2011

    Six hangovers


    P.G. Wodehouse, best known today for depicting pre-war English, upperclass society in his Jeeves and Blandings Castle novels and short stories, was the first to document the six original varieties of hangover in his novel The Mating Season.
    "I am told by those who know that there are six varieties of hangover — the Broken Compass, the Sewing Machine, the Comet, the Atomic, the Cement Mixer and the Gremlin Boogie, and his manner suggested that he had got them all."

    They have been described by others in the following way:

    1. The Broken Compass
    "The Broken Compass attacks the senses of balance and direction and its symptoms include stumbling, colliding with objects which under normal circumstances one would find it easy to avoid, falling, tripping, disorientation, dizziness, aimless wandering, and the sudden and crippling inability to find one’s way home. In extreme cases such as the one illustrated, the victim becomes so disoriented they fall to the ground they know not where, unable to move.

    A rare variant of this form of hangover is known as Shatner's Compass. This affliction causes a peculiar sense of detachment from reality, giving its victims the sense of floating outside themselves."

    2. The Sewing Machine
    "The Sewing Machine affects the nervous system and its symptoms include shaking, the inability to move one’s limbs in the direction desired by the brain, the physical inability to talk due to jaw malfunction or other nervous defect, and sudden involuntary movements.

    An oft-experienced aspect of the sewing machine is known as the Carpet Layer - a curious malady that causes the sufferer to feel as though the inside of their mouth has been carpeted over by a mysterious gnome."

    3. The Comet
    "The Comet has been praised by philosophers for its simplicity, which is often said to be beautiful in a mathematical sense. It has only a single symptom, which is the forcible expulsion of the contents of the stomach through the mouth."

    4. The Atomic
    "The Atomic attacks the brain and, although its effects can contribute to one or other of the metaphysical hangovers, the Atomic itself is strictly physical. Its symptoms include many varieties of headache and, in extreme cases, deafness."

    5. The Cement Mixer
    "The Cement Mixer attacks the digestive system, and its symptoms include abdominal pains and abnormal lavatorial experiences. The Cement Mixer often becomes apparent after its victim has begun to eat something."

    6. The Gremlin Boogie
    "The Gremlin Boogie is the only one of the eleven hangovers which has the peculiar distinction of being enjoyable, and is thus sought out by hangover connoisseurs. It is a psychological condition that enables the sufferer to revel in their hungover state* and to draw a peculiar kind of energy from their circumstances. It is almost always experienced in groups and its symptoms include an unfounded sense of wellbeing, hysterical laughter, the desire to buy goods which at other times would be deemed unnecessary and a masochistic enjoyment of the other types of hangover. Most commonly, it fuels within the sufferer a rampant desire to continue drinking, the victim becoming so caught up in the joy of the communal hangover that he or she cannot bear for the experience to end. Indeed, it is generally wise to allow the Gremlin Boogie to run its course."

    These were categorized on GreeneHighway, so go have a look to note wonderful recent additions as "The French Horn", "The Happy Chef", "The Fear", "Mr Batey", and my favourite: "The False Dawn".

    14 October 2011

    Film | Hell and Back Again


    Unless you have a personal connection, the war in Afghanistan is an abstraction. After nearly ten years since the initial invasion, the daily bombings and ongoing violence has become mundane, almost ordinary. It is tempting to become indifferent to the horror and pain. It is much easier to look away from the victims. It is much easier to lead a life without rude interruptions from complex insurgencies in distant lands. But it is when we take this easier path, the suffering becomes of no consequence and therefore meaningless. The anguish becomes invisible, an abstraction. It is when society becomes numb to inhumanity; horror is allowed to spread in darkness.

    - Hell and Back Again

    Scary.

    02 October 2011

    No digital traces found...

    Check out Personas - an MIT experiment.  Enter your name on the website...
    ...and Personas scours the web for information and attempts to characterize the person - to fit them to a predetermined set of categories that an algorithmic process created from a massive corpus of data.  It will then give you something like this:
    The computational process is visualized with each stage of the analysis, finally resulting in the presentation of a seemingly authoritative personal profile.

    Unfortunately, I'm the only Freya McOmish in the world (I think) so it just replied with "no digital traces found" - but other people may have more luck!

    via Peter, thank you!

    27 September 2011

    Heidegger Heidegger was a boozy beggar


    "What gets said in the call of conscience? Heidegger is crystal clear: like Cordelia in King Lear, nothing is said. The call of conscience is silent. It contains no instructions or advice. In order to understand this, it is important to grasp that, for Heidegger, inauthentic life is characterised by chatter – for example, the ever-ambiguous hubbub of the blogosphere. Conscience calls Dasein back from this chatter silently. It has the character of what Heidegger calls "reticence" (Verschwiegenheit), which is the privileged mode of language in Heidegger. So, the call of conscience is a silent call that silences the chatter of the world and brings me back to myself."

    Simon Critchley, Being and Time, part 7: Conscience, at the Guardian

    ( via A Myth in Creation )

    Unfortunately I wasn't around to chat with him on this park bench, as our being and time did not coexist.

    31 July 2011

    Colour me Pantone


    271 Years Before Pantone, an Artist Mixed and Described Every Color Imaginable in an 800-Page Book.

    In 1692 an artist known only as “A. Boogert” sat down to write a book in Dutch about mixing watercolors. Not only would he begin the book with a bit about the use of color in painting, but would go on to explain how to create certain hues and change the tone by adding one, two, or three parts of water. The premise sounds simple enough, but the final product is almost unfathomable in its detail and scope.

    - (via This is Colossal)










    27 July 2011

    Life's a beach

    Some images by Massimo Vital

    26 July 2011

    Short film | Muta by Lucrecia Martel

    A short film for Mui Mui - beautiful and very creepy.



    I like:
    • Fast and slow editing
    • Hidden faces
    • Incredible, haunting sound effects

      25 July 2011

      TED | How I became 100 artists


      "How do you stage an international art show with work from 100 different artists? If you're Shea Hembrey, you invent all of the artists and artwork yourself -- from large-scale outdoor installations to tiny paintings drawn with a single-haired brush. Watch this funny, mind-bending talk to see the explosion of creativity and diversity of skills a single artist is capable of." -- TED Talks

      12 July 2011

      Wayne Thiebaud



      { Wayne Thiebaud “Girl With The Pink Hat” 1973 }

      07 July 2011

      Haute street looks at Paris fashion week

      Tommy Ton photos from Paris fashion week - more here










      06 July 2011

      Short film | The man and the thief


      The Man and the Thief from Freya McOmish on Vimeo.
      Short silent film created for Introduction to Film Production BFP100 at SAE with Joel Plunkett, David McDonald, Steven Lawor and myself. No dialogue allowed, 3 minutes.

      Starring: Renee Johnson, Michael Jones and Peter Bjerregaard.

      Enjoy!

      04 July 2011