I’ve started to write again. Well I’m sprouting really. It’s chick lit. A bit of a surprise for me too. But it seems working so why not.

And I’ve decided to have a full first draft by end of this year. My Aunty added that it would be published within the new year. Amen.

image via lotta > modern motive

In 2004 my friend Thomer called me a fractal.

As a communicator I am always looking to define myself with clarity.
And hearing of this term was quite a relief. Firstly, fractals are very pretty.
They also are 1. very hard to condense into a precise definition
2. they work on many levels 3. fractal geometry is a branch of mathematics that bridges many areas from art to science and technology.

And that was how I first came into contact with Benoît Mandelbrot, the man responsible for coining the term fractal.

Suffice to say that I do not know Mandelbrot personally, but I am deeply thankful for his discovery of this pretty damn amazing branch of mathematics.

And also, now having read his biography, also much charmed by the innovative maverick he seemed to be!

“If you take the beginning and the end, I have had a conventional career,” he said, referring to his prestigious appointments in Paris and at Yale. “But it was not a straight line between the beginning and the end. It was a very crooked line.”

RIP Benoît Mandelbrot

Obits in:
NYtimes
&
Boing Boing

“Our kids don’t know what it’s like to be bored…” my uncle mentioned in passing last week.

I write this on my laptop with Whale Rider on the TV in front of me, my iphone next to me, a zillion tabs open in firefox…I notice how these days if I’m in a cab or even walking home alone from work I’ll call someone or play with some app or check emails or…

“Multitasking” is by no means a new game for me – I’ve been doing that from at least teenagehood. But it seems to be getting worse. And I also wonder if we are somehow getting more ahem, dumb.

Could it be, like not being used to being still and doing nothing we are also no longer used to being bored. And are thus getting less creative in our thinking. Not just in how to entertain ourselves. But in having space to come up with new ideas? Or…

So today I’m thinking about empty spaces. And the importance of boredom for being creative.

I just caught the trailer of “A Film Unfinished” on BoingBoing & I got goose bumps. I must see this film.

“…Yael Hersonski’s “A Film Unfinished” is about found footage from a Nazi documentary rough cut, produced by the Goebbels Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Goebbels had a two-fold urgency to his work: short-term use as war propaganda, but also long-term use as historical propaganda of a race of people he thought would soon be extinct. He sent crews out to film extensively before the Warsaw ghetto and others were liquidated. The vast majority of this footage was lost, and the footage in question was found in an East German archive in 1954.

Hersonski discovered through first-hand reports that alleged documentary scenes were heavily staged: hand-picking people for crowd scenes, and “casting” subjects who represented archetypes. One apparent goal of the film was to juxtapose archetypical wealthy Jews with impoverished and dying Jews in the street, to make them look parasitic, even of their own people. Hersonski told PBS News Hour: “I think that my hope is that in a way the viewer’s perception of footage of edited imagery [changes] — not only from the Holocaust, but the Holocaust as a case study.” ”

via
BoingBoing
A Film Unfinished official site

I’m inspired in ways that I haven’t been in a long time.
And it’s thanks to Jim Denevan.

Below you’ll find his art (just a taste) and images from “Outstanding in the field” – a moveable feast that brings people back to where their food comes from, setting up large tables in farms and fields all around America. See if you can attend one – and Jim, please say you want to take this to Israel-Palestine!! I’m here to help!!

ps i just realised he was funded by the anthropologist, who also funded in search of eustace, which i blogged about earlier this year…small world because I was looking at that today too)

big tx to black eiffel for the find
and Jim – i’m serious!

I keep wondering about the oil spill – and what I can do…
And I’m thinking about what I should be thinking and why I feel slightly detached and apathetic and am also wondering why there isn’t everyone of us is standing over the spill with a straw and hose and…because frankly this isn’t just BP’s fault, it’s all of ours – all of us who love our cars and to travel and fly and all the other stuff oil enables us to do…and also the fact that we accept that it’s OK to stick big poles into the earth and suck out something of hers in order to get our energy…and…then I also know I’m a hypocrite and…

And, in the meantime, I thought I’d share my friend Adam’s response. And channel my anger and frustration towards prayer/hope that we clean up this mess soon! And that the animals will be unharmed.

Oil Spill Series -Beyond Pelican- (c) Adam S Doyle

“Content, it turns out, is not king”
Overwhelmed by all the data? How do you keep up with it? And your files? And filtering it…
“… And that is what the Semantic Web could eventually promise to do.”
And then there’s the critics…

A little story about the Semantic Web by Kate Ray

Web 3.0 from Kate Ray on Vimeo.

Find the transcript, interview bios, and other info on kateray.net
Find video on vimeo here

Find tx to swiss-miss

I happened across Iranian artist/filmmaker Shirin Neshat via the Financial Times this week. There was an image from her Women of Allah series – and I had to find out more! Below you’ll find some of her achingly beautiful disturbing and challenging images. She also her first feature film out “Women without Men” – whose trailer made me gasp, literally.

Women of Allah

Women Without Men Trailer
“Poetically speaking, I thought it could be beautiful to connect the plight of the women with the plight of the country. They are looking for the same thing: democracy, change, freedom.” – Shirin

The film won the Silver Lion award at 66th (2009) Venice Film Festival in Italy.
Find out more about Women without Men

PS Am now really sure I should go back to my idea about dancing letters – Arabic & Hebrew and more!!

I’m noticing I’ve posted a lot of art of late, but this is what’s inspiring me most!

And I HAD to share this exhibition by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot currently at London’s Barbican

It’s honestly one of the best, most inspiring, modern art installations I’ve ever been to!
What? Essentially, birds making music and flying around (& on) you…but you have to be there.
The next best thing (but really no comparison)…watch the video

PS special thanks Jac for taking me!
PPS Celeste – come to Tel Aviv!

I am just loving NZ-Australian Rosalie Gascoigne!
Industrial fabulousness! Wish I had one on my wall!!

These are from here 1999 collection. Find more of Rosalie here