glob: August 2010

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Ancient Blogs

Admonitions Scroll

Glob seems to be evolving nicely. Writing and photos make it a dual medium 'artform'. How does this new internet based platform compare with those of the past? Chinese scrolls (here illustrated the admonitions scroll now at the British Museum, a Song Dynasty version of the lost Tang Dynasty masterpiece painted by one of Min's ancestors - Gu KaiZhi) and Turkish illustrated manuscripts (here the story of Hüsrev and Shirin that Orhan Pamuk popularized in his 2006 Nobel Prize winning novel 'My name is Red') are a triple medium - including poetry and illustrations, but also calligraphy. Given my handwriting, the lack of this third artform in glob is probably an overall benefit to the viewer. What viewer? Well at least the singular is correct grammatically since glob has only one follower. The celebrated power of the internet - providing outreach to hundreds of millions of souls - seems unlikely to challenge the ancients. Content matters?

Hüsrev and Shirin

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Cultural Collage

Copacabana, August 2010

Brazil. Rainbow nation. On the Copacabana, the wave pattern of white limestone and black basalt derives from Brazil’s Portuguese colonial period, and the beautiful centuries old patterned sidewalks of Lisbon. But the ‘Muscle Beach’ public weightlifting zone (on the left in this pic) is obviously a cultural import from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s decades old haunt - Venice Beach in LA. Rio is a collage not a melting pot. Be they hanging out, playing soccer or volleyball, sitting at outdoor cafes or walking the shopping zone, the locals are usually grouped by similar skin tone. Blacks, browns and whites share the same space, but they mostly don't mix. The people, it seems, coalesce into patterns, like the paving stones they walk on.