Posts in Category: Culture
Lion Gate
Gate to Caesar's Palace
I won’t pretend to have any grasp of the history of architecture. Nor will I assert that I know much of anything about principles of, contemporary trends in, or prominent figures of architecture. But, as is often asserted by the ignorant, I know what I like. And now I will admit that I was surprised to find that I enjoyed strolling the strip and experiencing some of the excessive, overblown buildings that bring so many people to this desert city year after year.
I’m not so much talking of hotels like Treasure Island, with its campy pirate ships, or the Mirage and its volcano. Nor do I mean the Disney-like settings of New York or Paris. Rather, I’m thinking of the tributes to classical achievements like Caesar’s Palace, or the interiors of the Venetian. There are some great scenes to experience. While over-the-top in their own way, they yet manage to recall something of architecture’s ability to inspire awe while bearing testament to the human spirit. Great buildings are a necessary expression in any culture’s attempt to establish some degree of permanence and project itself into the future.
The irony here is that the continual tearing down and rebuilding in the competition to be the latest and most outrageous, luxurious, or spectacular, undermines the sense of human triumph over mere mortality that grand architecture was traditionally able to inspire. The vanity and greed of these buildings’ origin and the decadence in and around them obscures this aspect in the narrative about Vegas and hides it from us.
Nonetheless, the fact that they still impress is testament to the fact that grand works feed the human spirit. That makes me just a little hopeful.
Lost in Las Vegas
Caesars Palace
I’m having a bit of a reflective time here on this, my first real visit to Sin City. My presence here explains why this post is a day late. And why tomorrow’s post will likely be late. And the day after that, too. In any case, my former tendency to be dismissive in absentia of everything Vegas as a symptom of a sick culture is undergoing substantial scrutiny and reevaluation. Since I’m here now, and my typing is impaired, I won’t go into the details. Instead, I leave you with some images from which to draw your own conclusions. And I promise to get my thoughts down in a future post.
Angels
Weekly Photo Challenge: Refuge
Meditation Window Display / © neo serafimidis
As we walked around the Mission last month with friends, we came upon this situation at Artists’ Television Access. Pairs of people taking turns meditating in the window. I was lucky enough to see the shift change, so I know they’re real. It just goes to show you, real refuge is in the mind of the refugee.
Glass Ceiling, Invisible Line
Rotunda of the Oakland Federal Building. Oakland CA, February 2011.
The post-9/11 security obsession had built to the point where photographers are routinely harassed and intimidated, and have their property stolen or smashed. A few months ago, TSA even published posters depicting photographers as terrorists. But just a couple weeks ago came some sanity when a man was found not guilty in a case stemming from his refusal to show ID and turn off his video camera in the airport. Reading that story, I learned some very surprising things that came out of the case. Perhaps they are surprising to me because I am too much of a rule follower. But the case placed on record that, for example: TSA checkpoint staff are not law enforcement officers and have no police powers; you have the right, recognized by the TSA, to fly without showing ID, and signs and announcements in airports saying that all passengers must present ID are false; you have the right, recognized by the TSA, to photograph or film anywhere in publicly accessible areas of airports including TSA checkpoints. Who knew?! Really, check out those links above or do your own web search. Let me know what you think.
The reason I am thinking about this is that as I left work today, the big doors around the rotunda of the Federal Building were open, making it feel truly public. Whether it is, I don’t know. It is outside the checkpoints to the entrances of the building. But I have long wanted to photograph the glass ceiling from directly underneath, and this seemed like a perfect time to do it. So, I walked to the middle of the floor and looked straight up. I took out my camera and shot the rotunda. I got one click before the nice guards with whom I had just exchanged “good night” pleasantries called to me stop immediately, that photography was not allowed. I sheepishly started to put my camera away. Just then another couple of guards who were standing outside in park area approached me and insisted I take the pictures I wanted to take. “It’s ok, take the picture, just don’t photograph the checkpoint equipment area.” He seemed to be in charge in some way and was quite adamant, and then went over to talk to the guards that had stopped me. So maybe sometimes people mean well but there is confusion and miscommunication. And, of course, other times people are power drunk,… and there’s confusion and miscommunication.
I looked at my camera display and saw that I had an ok shot, and anyway, the moment was kinda ruined now. So, I thanked the second guy and turned to head for the train station to go home. Perhaps I’ll try again another day, and the light will be even better.
Location, Location, Location
"XXX" From the "Where in Albany" series. Albany CA. January, 2011
It was a spooky evening for photography in Eastbania last night when I went out to shoot for the “Where in Albany” game feature on albany.patch.com.
The current obsession in Albany is the locating of a marijuana dispensary somewhere in our little town. The current application to open a dispensary was coming before the City Council again tonight, and it was expected that the applicants’ appeal would be rejected. It would locate it in a largely residential neighborhood on Solano Ave. But there is another application right behind that one that locates a dispensary down in the light industrial edge of town next to the train tracks.
With all that in mind last night, I set out to photograph the locations under consideration. The Solano location results weren’t all that interesting. But the fog helped produce something of interest down by the tracks.
"Light Silhouette" / © 2011 Neo Serafimidis
I suppose that all in all, this looks more like where expects to find one’s pot than a row of quaint storefronts surrounded by suburban-style homes.
Bill Frisell and Friends
Wendy and I worked together at a small tech company for a couple of years. We’ve stayed in touch since then and recently she pinged me about getting together to catch up. She suggested checking out the first night of Bill Frisell’s residency at Yoshi’s Oakland. Sarah wanted to come along too, so we all got there early to have dinner and thereby get good seats for the show. It was actually the first time I’d eaten there, and I wasn’t disappointed. The calamari appetizer, the edamame and, the sushi were all really good.
I knew Wendy wasn’t a big Frisell fan, so I was a little surprised. But this was part of her project to do something different from her usual routine each day for a year. Luckily for her, Thursday night wasn’t experimental music night, but rather Frisell’s more country music-oriented project. The announced line-up included bassist Tony Scherr, drummer Kenny Wollesen, avant-guitarist Marc Ribot and pedal-steel player Greg Leisz, as well as a special surprise mystery guest from Nashville: Buddy Miller.
The result was a country set of songs layered with beautiful steel guitar work, extended harmonic space, and a sprinkling of Frisell’s melodic lines.With three guitarists and a steel player, there was not a whole lot of room for Frisell to stretch out, and I’ll admit to a little disappointment not to get more from him. Marc Ribot also contributed and sang several songs, giving the set a darker and noisier edge on several songs. Ribot plays guitar like a man having a seizure, and that angular energy gives you the feeling that something unexpected is going to happen any second.
With all that, Buddy Miller was really the star of this show. I had seen Miller when he toured with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, and enjoyed his work on that project, but I didn’t really get a sense of his depth. Last night was different. From his wonderful singing and solid playing, to his hilarious stage banter, he’s a great musician and tremendously entertaining.
Miller and Frisell have recently finished recording together in Nashville with a number of guest artists and singers. Much of this set consisted of songs recorded in that session. Needless to say, I’m already really looking forward to the CD coming out.
More nostalgia
Becca turned me on to this site, which I thought was kinda cool, Place and Memory. It is a wiki of places that no longer exist. How awesome is that, and useful too. Well, for those of us who are fixated on recapturing our once glorious past, it is perfectly cathartic. And recorded versions of stories make it onto NPR. In any case, the very first place I thought of when I saw the site was Yosemite Nursery in Fresno, and I wrote the Entry below. Though I would encourage you to read it at the site and make your own entry about a place that no longer exists.
My family moved to the neighborhood when I was about 5 years old. We lived on Griffith Way. At the top of the street was Hwy 41/Blackstone Ave, and there on the corner was this amazing place. It was an amazing nursery with a large variety of plants, trees, soil, mulches and so on. It was owned by a Japanese family and their house was on the Griffith side of the property, with the nursery sprawling behind it. In front of the house was a koi pond, or series of ponds, with connecting streams and Japanese bridges, meticulously pruned black pines and other topiary.
The parking lot was on the Blackstone side. At the back of it stood the business office and covered areas for shade plants, bonsai, and also the fish hatchery! There was a series of troughs with koi, goldfish, etc. I seem to remember that they were segregated by size to some extent. Around the outside of the parking lot, along the street were huge piles of feather rock for sale. Feather rock is volcanic rock that has a sponge-like structure, which makes it very light for its size. It is also essentially glass, which means it is very easy to get cut up when you climb on it, as we often did. I remember that that it came in two different colors, a glossy black, and a more muted gray.
Down the block from the house on the Griffith side was a series of large stalls containing different soils and mulches, and so on. There was tractor that was used for loading material into customers’s trucks. I still remember clearly the sweet, bourbon-y smell of the redwood forest humus.
Behind all this lay the vast (to a kid) interior of rows and rows of trees and plants, hiding places, and mysterious objects. I loved going there with my parents and running off to throw pennies, or just pebbles, into the koi pond, to look at all the curious, colorful figurines and statues for sale, to get lost in the backwoods, and to feel the cool, damp soil between my toes on a scorching Fresno summer day.
Fresno continued to grow northward, and what was once a north gate on Hwy 41 heading to Yosemite, became a rural holdout in the middle of the city. Eventually, I don’t remember exactly when, the place closed and the property was developed into an L-shaped strip mall.
By: Neocles
Maker Faire 2009
Fire-breathing Snail at Maker Faire
I attended Maker Faire 2009 this last weekend with Sarah and Theo. I was not quite sure what all to really expect other than “burners”, art cars, and other alt-artists. It is definitely a scene for Bay Area hipsters.The fire-breathing snail truck, motorized one-person cupcakes, tesla coils, fire-arts displays from The Crucible, body art, etc. set that vibe for sure.
If it were just this, it would have been fine, but it was so much more than this. We went as a family, and the number of activities and other things geared toward kids and families was really great. Theo was totally into it. Of course, for a six-year-old boy, the main buzz was word of a large Legoland display and activity area. Theo wouldn’t settle down until we found it, and then wouldn’t leave it once we did. (We could hardly escape to do the things WE wanted to do.) There were many other building, science and educational activities and presentations going on from groups like NASA and Exploratorium. Sarah and I both came to the conclusion that the Weekend Pass is a good idea; the Faire really demands a two-day visit, and next year we thought we’d spend one day largely devoted to kid stuff, and one day to explore all the stuff we really want to see. I was disappointed to entirely miss Survival Research Labs among other things.
Among the things I checked out was the experimental and computer music section, which was definitely cool. There were individuals there with their own creations, like computer controlled prepared piano, home-built electronic zither things, guitars with sound-sensitive color displays built into the body, and more. I also discovered organizations like Sound Arts, which work to support the sound arts community in a variety of ways. I was actually inspired to try to participate next year. I’m eager to start composing electronic music again, and perhaps put it together with photographic imagery. There were several multi-media tools on exhibit, and the possibilities for interactive mash-ups appear to be very extensive. So, we’ll see..
Beyond the fun of electronic noise-toys, it seems to me that the notion of making your own fill-in-the-blank, instead of relying only on mass-produced consumables for furnishing one’s life, is more important than ever. A quick review of the story of stuff should convince you of that. In fact, among the most interesting and yet slightly disturbing activities we did at Maker Faire involved making things out of discarded stuff, mostly computer stuff. There were gigantic piles of computer gear that were available for dismantling and use as raw material. (I’m not really sure which Theo enjoyed more, destroying a computer keyboard, or assembling its pieces into a robot ship.) The fun aside, the sheer volume of discarded material present here gives one pause as to what must be going into the world’s landfills. Thank goodness for groups like the Alameda County Computer Resource Center, which was a participating organization and probably the source of the “art supplies”, for what they do to stem the tide of electronics discards.
Not that everyone is going to build their own computers. But there were exhibits and activities on everything from sewing, to gardening, to “slow food”, to green energy technology, to bicycling, and how to make your own robot. I’m already looking forward to next year.
Our moment, our time
Essex St. Our moment,our time, originally uploaded by january20th2009.
I am amazed. Politics has been subject matter for street art for as long as they have both been around, I am sure. But in my experience, the political message of this kind of work is almost always critical of the dominant political party, and when it comes to elected officials, nearly always scathing in its portrayals and parodies. I’ve seen plenty of this for all the presidents I have lived through going back to Nixon. Admittedly most of the criticism has been directed at Republicans. No one, however, was sneaking around putting up triumphal representations of Slick Willy or Jimmy, as far as I remember.
I just don’t remember street artists ever busting out to celebrate the election of an American president like I’m seeing happen for Obama. It is almost disorienting to see newstands and telephone poles plastered with stylized images of Barack bearing slogans of support. I think it is another indication of what an enormous cultural and political earthquake this election has turned out to be.
It’s almost as if one needs to be continually reminded of this fact because it is so hard to really grasp. And the artists are doing it. They are reminding me to be amazed.
a poem for our times
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
William Butler Yeats
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