Victoria Roberts/The New Yorker
In our imaginary Best D-I-Y Christmas Tree Contest, this one wins hands-down.
inspiration blogs + sites
signmark and the very loud message of deaf rap
Note: although there are three videos in this post, watching the first two for just a minute or so tell so will give the gist; the third one is short and to the point.
Signmark is a Finnish rapper who is deaf: he uses American Sign Language to rap his poetry, often in tandem with hip-hop artist Brandon, who sings his lyrics. The very FACT/ACT of a deaf person rapping shifts the view instantly, changing notions about what is possible, and about what deafness is. Signmark views the deaf as having their own culture, community, history and heritage, very distinct from hearing culture. He ignored all the people who said “You’re deaf, you can’t be a musician”.
This anonymous comment left on YouTube says it all:
“dis-ability? whatever! aint othing “wrong” or dis about this ability! doin it… and showin it… aint no thing “disability” stupid hearing attitude…. that the real dis to ability.”
We’re embarrassed to admit that we never stopped to think about deafness much at all until yesterday when we happened to meet Bill Moody, an interpreter in sign language, who filled us in a bit, and we began to consider a subtle language made of body signals… read more…
a cosmic advent calendar online
When we were kids, we loved advent calendars, those big cards with little pop-out windows offering a surprise for each day before Christmas. We were wishing we had one of those, and then we stumbled on something better: The Big Picture’s Hubble Space Telescope Digital Advent Calendar. Each day reveals a new awe-inspiring photo from Hubble, from now until Christmas (There’s even a temporary RSS feed.) And like a regular advent calendar, the coming windows are blank – leaving that pleasant feeling of anticipation.
remodelista’s newsstand (we’re in it)
Want a place to read Design/Interiors/Home/D-I-Y blogs all in one place? Check out Remodelista’s Design Newsstand, which brings their great, curated selection of blogs together, organized by general categories, like Fabulous Femmes, Hipster & Minimalist, Exotica, Design Magazines Online…
Like a great newsstand, it invites browsing (it’s in beta, and is a bit wonky on Safari still)…
We’re pleased to be included in Renovators & DIYers, though we were thinking the category a little limited and concrete for what we do. Maybe not though…we ARE about renovating, inside (our heads) and out…
Thanks Remodelista!
aging as an invitation to reinvent oneself
Cerre of 2 or 3 Things We Know posted this video by her film maker/correspondent father. He is making a series of short films (with an accompanying blog to come) about aging baby boomers who have reinvented their careers and personal lives. It’s inspiring no matter what age you are.
We LOVE the shift that we see happening all around us: people hitting their 50′s and 60′s and re-imagining the decades to come in very different ways than the traditional concepts of retirement aging…
Check out some of Mike Cerre’s video’s here.
anonymous wonder: twisted paint can basket
One of the blogs we love to check into is Anonymous Works, which features creative, often odd works made by anonymous souls, that are for sale at various sites. Many of its images, like this basket made by cutting and twisting a paint can, make us go “Wow, a human being made that!” and tap into the wonder read more…
today’s sign
Anne Herbert/Peace, Love and Noticing the Details
Related posts: How to Find a Hidden Solution
one thing ALWAYS leads to another: from ‘revolutionary yardscape’ to the campana bros astonishing website
Sometimes we are just completely knocked out by the connections of ideas and people we make daily writing ‘the improvised life’. Like Matthew Levesque, a reader from San Francisco who runs Building Resources, a not-for-profit depot of re-usable and re-manufactured materials for building and landscaping….
…who wrote a book we want called: The Revolutionary Yardscape: Ideas for Repurposing Local Materials to Create Containers, Pathways, Lighting, and More
….whose comment on our post about “The Mother of All Task Lights” called our attention to…
a) a wonderful Achille Castiglione lamp that is hidden in the photo
b) and the EXTRAORDINARY website and work of the Campana Brothers, the Brazilian design team. Their website needs Flash to run and will try your computer’s resources. And once you enter, it will eat at least a half hour of your time, a fabulous example of what’s possible in a website. Somehow, in the oddest ways possible, the Campanas give you a sense of the process/origins of their furniture and housewares. On the main page, click Projects, and then click on the project you want to see. Prepared to be surprised…
Our favorites: read more…
rules for living: just one from pablo picasso
David Douglas Duncan Archive,The Harry Ransom Center, U of Texas at Austin
Sometimes, we have so much to do, so many things pulling at us, that we don’t know what to do first. We’ve been trying out a new very simple guideline that we read recently; It’s a quote from Pablo Picasso:
“Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”
We find that it immediately cuts the shit, and helps to clarify the important things, even if it doesn’t perfectly resolve all the rest…
…
We also found a trove of David Douglas Duncan’s wonderful photographs of Picasso, online with notations, like this one: read more…
how to find a hidden solution
…Another amazing post from Anne Herbert at Peace and Love and Noticing the Details. Whether you believe in God, or some sort of higher power, or not, she really got the gist:
…the solutions that we are so sure are the right ones or the only ones, often aren’t…best to not insist, because we just can’t imagine all the possibilities…
…then a totally unexpected answer, or path, reveals itself…
‘the world is full of interesting things’ on the massively creative internet and google
“The World Is Full of Interesting Things“, an online slideshow created by Google’s Creative Labs, gives you a compelling glimpse of the imaginative ways technology and the internet are being used (much of it in collaboration with Google technology). There are revelations in the realms of Audio, Movies, Vizual, Art, Physical, Light, Tech, Sport, Books, History and Advertising. The Advertising section that starts at #110 is a must for anyone trying to get a sense of crowd-sourcing and commercial uses for social media.
For us, the best stuff started a good ways into the show (at the bottom, left of the site, there’s a navigator that will take you to any of the 119 slides). Here are some of our favorites: read more…
2-second video from thomas ashcraft (look up!)
Thomas Ashcraft
We love this teeny, potent 2-second video from our friend Thomas Ashcraft at Heliotown, an artist/radio astronomer/”electroreceptor” who spends his time monitoring the heavens for interesting activity, like this unbelievable ‘fireball‘, a deluxe shooting star. We see Tom’s videos as reminders of things that are going on all around us as we live our lives, unaware. Look close or you’ll miss it.
Related posts: Tom Ashcraft’s Sign: Cures Arise, Remedies Appear
john cage applying ‘what would happen’ if to music
There’s a beautiful piece by Alex Ross in this week’s New Yorker this week about avant garde artist John Cage, who had a profound influence on our understanding of what music can be. Here’s a chunk that knocked us out:
“One a simpler level, Cage had an itch to try new things. What would happen if you sat at a piano and did nothing? If you chose among an array of musical possibilities by flipping a coin and consulting the I Ching? If you made music from junkyard percussion, squads of radios, the scratching of pens, an amplified cactus? If you wrote music for dance –Merce Cunningham was Cage’s longtime partner–in which dance and music went their separate ways? If you took at face value Eric Satie’s conceit that his piano piece “Vexations” could be played eight hundred and forty times in succession? Cage had an innocent, almost Boy Scout-like spirit of adventure. As he put it, ‘Art is a sort of experimental station in which one tries out living.’”
It shows just how far the simple question “What would happen if” can take you.
You can see the range of Cage’s work in many YouTube videos. Our favorite is this 1960 appearance on This is Your Life, a popular TV game show, in which he performs his composition “Water Walk”…Watch Cage’s work starting to change our culture…fifty years ago! read more…
a gift for the last day of summer
We were looking for a little gift to leave on the blog this last day of summer and thought The Wilderness Downtown would be just right…It is one of the very best things we’ve seen on the internet: crazy beautiful, imaginative, really surprising and moving…
…click here, have patience while it loads, and watch to the end…
Wishing you a wonderful Labor Day!
more improvising at the beach – in black tie
Improv Everywhere is devoted to “causing scenes of chaos and joy in public places”. Over the years, they have invited anyone-who-wants-to to participate in their missions which have included Cell-Phone Symphonies to No Pants Subway Rides. In the latest, they instructed their agents to appear at Coney Island dressed in tuxedos and ball gowns bought at thrift stores or other cheap venues.
“We covered a mile-long stretch of beach with a diverse group of people of all ages (from babies to sixty-somethings) laying out, playing games, and swimming in the ocean, all in formal wear.”
We find this video curiously liberating to watch. (It totally changes the look and vibe of black tie in the best, most unexpected way possible..).
What strange delight!
via BoingBoing
Related post: Improvising at the Beach
