Article Dan speed blogs

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August 13, 2009

Unbelievable sand animation - so can art only stay beautiful in the dust?

Un. Believe. Able. Ukraine's apparently REALLY got talent for sand animations:

I'll quote Neil Gaiman's tweet that first brought this to my attention 'If you are an ad executive planning to rip off this Ukrainian Sand animation for Coke or Sony, please die first'

At first I second that. This was a simply a beautiful display that, frankly, shits on Susan Boyle's efforts. Hypnotising. Enchanting. Not an ounce of saccharine, which an ad agency just wouldn't be able to get.

But why shouldn't she make some money out of this talent? And what pays better than an advert? Why are we so instinctively adverse to the 'corruption' of talent by commerce? Is this why we've moved so neatly and seamlessly into accepting the notion that we should no longer pay for music, for news, for content? Because beauty ceases to be beauty when you know the creator has done it for cash?

Of course not. And Gaiman's words are to Coke ripping it off. But if they paid her to do this for a coke ad - is that ok? I get the feeling that many would get that sinking feeling and that the warm light from that flickering candle might pale and chill a little.

Art, beauty, soul, love... All best imagined and embraced in a cashless vacuum. But, do our artists really need to be so poor and obscure to remain real?

Keep th' faith,
Article Dan

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Filed under  //   Art   Marketing   sand art   Video  

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July 12, 2009

Comic Strip encounters with the architecture of the soul: All Over Coffee

Attention poetic art-form fans - Paul Madonna's All Over Coffee might be your next treat to self.

I was browsing in a Brighton comics store yesterday, as I'm wont to do (though seldom do I buy any comics these days), when I fell upon All Over Coffee - a beautiful hardback bound collection of pictures - comic strips, if you want to be vulgar - featuring illustrations of San Francisco skylines and architecture accompanied by apparently unconnected snapshots of thought or curious conversation. (Though the architecture and stylings of the two are linked by the city, the mood...



Just a couple of pages into the book I knew I was holding something beautiful. £20 - I would usually think twice, but like I say, I knew the beauty was there and that the price was small.

The buildings seem to lean with the prose, the poems; the shading of the streets, the drains, the windowsills, so plain, yet so perfect, breathe with the flow of the words. I could lose myself in this all day: in the streets and the thoughts of Paul Madonna's San Francisco.

Now, I've been having an arse uploading pictures from the net lately - they copy and paste as broken links :(. So I hope this will give you some idea of the art of Paul Madonna and the utterly beguiling All Over Coffee. Otherwise visit the San Francisco Chronical's archive of All Over Coffee.



Keep th' faith,
Article Dan

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Filed under  //   All over Coffee   Art   Comics  

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January 7, 2009

The statue has no genitals; its genitals have become a statue

Amidst the madness of an exhibition in the Musee d'art moderne examining the links between glam-rock and the industrial revolution... (Yes, I know), I met this fellow:
 
 
The Burry Man - a man made of burrs. Standing proud, yet strangely bashful - his twig and berries absent. We must assume that his anatomy was truncated by some coyness in the artist, perhaps chastened by memories of the sexless Barbies and Kens of their childhood...
 
Nope.
 
Meet the Burry Man's genitals, pinned to an adjacent wall:
 
 
Now, where's the dignity in that for a fella, burry or otherwise? Sheeesh!
 
Keep th' faith and your hands off my burry bits,
 
Article Dan

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Filed under  //   Art   Bizarre   Genitals   Humour  

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July 7, 2008

Doing the Twitterbug

Here's a new one on me. Not the Twitter Whale, but rather some surreal-ass symbols to denote that the thing is buggered. Note the test that states:
Something is technically wrong.
Thanks for noticing—we're going to fix it up and have things back to normal soon.
 
"Thanks for noticing"...??? Look, guys, I'm not here to fucking troubleshoot your service. I don't want thanks for discovering something's knacked on you're already legendaryily knacked site. I just want to send a goddamn tweet. 140 characters. Not a music file, not a heavier than god .tiff - 140 little characters of text. Get it done.
 
This said - I rarely see the whale and this is the first time I've seen this Dali-esque holding page, so maybe I should ease off.
 
Look I'm getting no sleep at the moment. I need to vent!

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Filed under  //   Art   Fail whale   surreal   Twitter  

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