Refreshing OPML

Another blog I want to advertise is Urban Sketchers. I search for similar feeds to subscribe because of DSLR cameras spreading which made common photographing almost senseless – wherever you are standing it’s usually enough to type your location in Flickr to find tons of great pictures you are eyeballing. So sketching skill is back again hailed by many including myself.

Good news everyone

Obama hype is gone and credit crunch motives are almost worked out by now, so street artists sober up gradually and turn to other subjects.

I mean, the last two works by ABOVE are absolutely RAD:

THE NAKED TRUTH from ABOVE on Vimeo.

EARS, TEARS, & FEARS. from ABOVE on Vimeo.

Vltava - Bedrich Smetana

Note how the main theme brightens up from that uneasy gloom at 10:40.

Upd. direct file link to avoid imeem track length limitation.

Detaching a sticky note

Turning back to Bruce Sterling post I want to share my thought for the points it explains. The first challenge mentioned is the most interesting:

Literature is language-based and national; contemporary society is globalizing and polyglot.

Word! When I started to read in the original books in English source language I realized that the difference between author’s text and translation matters at any rate or even can be of critical significance.

No, it is not a snobbish thing - you see, often translator is more talented than the one being translated and some books that were among my favourites in Russian I believe to be rather dull in English. But the trick is that even the positive difference can’t be totally ignored and that’s the reason to consider it a problem.

And the real problem is that – as to me - I do not know any foreign language enough to read books except English a bit (skill posessed nowadays by many). And a really huge amount of literature is stuck in its own language and culture and can be known through translations only – and as I revealed for myself translated book may be even better but it will not be the same book.

To understand what it really matters for literature just imagine that you are unable to get any records by your favourite group and you can listen only to the cover versions. And for the literature it is a great everyday problem, with a handicap for the authors lucky enough to have English or Spanish or other popular language as their native one.

And here we do face a challenge that is brand new and did not existed before because not so long ago there were few connections with other cultures. So, there was a possibility to be fully satisfied with the products of your own culture because they explained everything that you would ever have a chance to see in your life. Now they can’t.

And some points that I disagree on:

Vernacular means of everyday communication — cellphones, social networks, streaming video — are moving into areas where printed text cannot follow.

Not a challenge. All this stuff can be described easily with text as railways and airplanes before. Literature is a way to describe, not a thing that needs describing. Text remains text, is it embossed or printed or displayed, you name it.

Intellectual property systems failing.

The time humanity lived without intellectual property laws is much longer than the time we have them, and literature still exists. An even if it is really a challenge, it is not a challenge for literature only but for all intellectual products.

Barriers to publication entry have crashed, enabling huge torrent of subliterary and/or nonliterary textual expression.

Same as above, how did literature manage to survive Gutenberg? Also, these challenges are connected because ‘barrier crushing’ shows that the lacking of old property system is not an obstacle for new narratives to come. They are green but I think it is a question of time for them to ripe. And I am almost sure there will be a phenomenon of freeware classic-formed literature, I mean books written as free of charge primordially.

***
I will proceed later with other source article points but your opinion on the listed above will be appreciated.

One way ticket

29 Jul 2009

Domodedovo (DME)
Moscow, Russia

Heathrow (LHR)
London, UK

A sticky note for a future post

Eighteen Challenges in Contemporary Literature by Bruce Sterling.

I totally agree with a large part of this list but for some of that items I can't see real challenges at all or challenges that are really new to the literature and are imprinted by our aera. I wish I had more time to write more details but now I haven't and gotta explain my position later.

NB: I loved the verb balkanize.

Even in little wisdom there is much grief

Being curious for details of the recent BNP success (btw, they gained less voices than on previous elections in 2004, but labours sector’s apathy made it possible) I saw the following banner on their website:

As you can see Lady Justice eyes are disclosured. Quite self-explaning, I guess, but this is not actually the thing I want to talk about.

I thought before that the Highest Court of Russia featuring Iustitia who is not blindfolded is an outstanding oddity:

 

But when I rushed to Google to search for BNP’s corrupted justice mascot suddenly I discovered that it’s a common occurence to sculp punishing goddess with an abitity to see us people. Also the first blindfold appeared on the statue only in XVI century. What a whack!

All I can say is that I was a bit more friendly to the world around before knowing it.

P.S. Still Russian Iustitia got her style bearing shield instead of sword but I’m confused with the interpretation.

Senseless Russian text from The Wire S2

BTW, I've heard a lot about Omar but this bloody thug is cheap! If you are such a lonely hunter then why snitching? By doing it he receives benefits both from being a criminal (suffering no lawful man's restrictions) and cooperating with cops (having no problems with the law). It isn't fair, you know, one must make his choice and stick to it.

After the first season Cedric Daniels is the man if you ask me.

Pic related, it's me

Maybe you have already noticed that I like to end sentences with prepositions :( FML.

The Working Man’s Burden

In my childhood I used to believe that professionals are somehow connected with the stuff they work with, and that they really master it like nobody else can, and that they do what they like and want. I thought that programmers have the best computers at their homes, drivers have the best cars and so on. So you if want to own an airplane you be a pilot, this is the right and only way.

I remember when I was told that the famous Soviet aircraft designer had been put to a prison and forced to work there I was astonished indeed. You see, there were so many military fighters constructed by him and named after him, so why didn’t they flew to that building and didn’t bomb its walls to dust?

It is stifling today

Suddenly I realized that music I have been listening to for last several months can be described best as “Tom & Jerry OST”.

Also I've got an another useless declaration – once you are ready to accept connotations you won’t suffer from the lack of them regardless of the subject chosen. See, all the humans characters are shown in “T & J” series with their heads hidden by the screen upper border. And I can hardly remember faces of the musicians too.