October 5, 2009 at 5:52 pm (Art)
Tags: Art, Christianity, Church, Culture, Entertainment, God, Life, Liu Bolin, Opinions, Photography, Pop Culture, Religion, Theology, Worship
Behold the invisibility of artist Liu Bolin.





Liu Bolin, an artist in Beijing, captured the previous images, after an investment of ten hours per photograph.
His ability to successfully adapt to his environment has gained him international fame. Concerning his work, he wrote the following statement, found here:
Now, in the real material world, the world views of different people’s are also different. Each person chooses his/her own way in the process of contacting outside world. I choose to merge myself into the environment. Saying that I am disappeared in the environment, it would be better to say that the environment has licked me up and I can not choose active and passive relationship.
In the environment of emphasizing cultural heritage, concealment is actually no place to hide.
It is hard to not be reminded of similar words, found in the New Testament:
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
A very powerful, visual reminder — concealment is nothing more than a blending with an oppressive environment.
Transforming power can only be found in an escape.
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September 30, 2009 at 2:44 pm (Art, Blogging, Church)
Tags: American History, Communication, Culture, Entertainment, Facebook, Flickr, God, History, Hulu, Life, MTV, Music, Opinions, Pop Culture, Privacy, Purpose, Snapfish, Social Networking, Technology, Television, The Buggles, The Internet, The Telegraph, Video Killed the Radio Star

Self-Made Prophets ...
The Buggles told us the truth.
Video did kill the radio star. And they added to that death by producing a music video that would be the first aired on MTV.
Now, other things are dying, but are being killed by the Internet.
A list of what the Internet is killing was published in The Telegraph, and is longer than what I’ve posted here, but these are the ones that got my attention.
1) The art of polite disagreement
While the inane spats of YouTube commencers may not be representative, the internet has certainly sharpened the tone of debate. The most raucous sections of the blogworld seem incapable of accepting sincerely held differences of opinion; all opponents must have “agendas”.
2) Fear that you are the only person unmoved by a celebrity’s death
Twitter has become a clearing-house for jokes about dead famous people. Tasteless, but an antidote to the “fans in mourning” mawkishness that otherwise predominates.
3) Listening to an album all the way through
The single is one of the unlikely beneficiaries of the internet – a development which can be looked at in two ways. There’s no longer any need to endure eight tracks of filler for a couple of decent tunes, but will “album albums” like Radiohead’s Amnesiac get the widespread hearing they deserve?
5) Punctuality
Before mobile phones, people actually had to keep their appointments and turn up to the pub on time. Texting friends to warn them of your tardiness five minutes before you are due to meet has become one of throwaway rudenesses of the connected age.
12) Letter writing/pen pals
Email is quicker, cheaper and more convenient; receiving a handwritten letter from a friend has become a rare, even nostalgic, pleasure. As a result, formal valedictions like “Yours faithfully” are being replaced by “Best” and “Thanks”.
13) Memory
When almost any fact, no matter how obscure, can be dug up within seconds through Google and Wikipedia, there is less value attached to the “mere” storage and retrieval of knowledge. What becomes important is how you use it – the internet age rewards creativity.
14) Dead time
When was the last time you spent an hour mulling the world out a window, or rereading a favourite book? The internet’s draw on our attention is relentless and increasingly difficult to resist.
15) Photo albums and slide shows
Facebook, Flickr and printing sites like Snapfish are how we share our photos. Earlier this year Kodak announced that it was discontinuing its Kodachrome slide film because of lack of demand.
17) Watching television together
On-demand television, from the iPlayer in Britain to Hulu in the US, allows relatives and colleagues to watch the same programmes at different times, undermining what had been one of the medium’s most attractive cultural appeals – the shared experience. Appointment-to-view television, if it exists at all, seems confined to sport and live reality shows.
18) Authoritative reference works
We still crave reliable information, but generally aren’t willing to pay for it.
27) Knowing telephone numbers off by heart
After typing the digits into your contacts book, you need never look at them again.
29) The mystery of foreign languages
Sites like Babelfish offer instant, good-enough translations of dozens of languages – but kill their beauty and rhythm.
31) Privacy
We may attack governments for the spread of surveillance culture, but users of social media websites make more information about themselves available than Big Brother could ever hoped to obtain by covert means.
50) Your lunchbreak
Did you leave your desk today? Or snaffle a sandwich while sending a few personal emails and checking the price of a week in Istanbul?
Powerful things here. How true are these for you?
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September 7, 2009 at 2:57 pm (Art, Culture)
Tags: American History, Culture, Entertainment, Everybody's Magazine, Family, Family Portrait, Happiness, Life, Magazine, Marriage, Mona Lisa, N.C. Wyeth, Opinions, Painting, Pop Culture, Portrait, The Mildest Mannered Man, Vincent Van Gogh, X-Ray
We try to hide so much. Maybe it is true, then, that time does not really heal all wounds. It just uncovers them.
I think this discovery may prove just that.
__________
X-Rays Expose N.C. Wyeth Painting Hidden Beneath Another
by Jenna Bryner
A new X-ray imaging technique has revealed colorful details of a painting hidden beneath another painting by famed American artist N.C. Wyeth, whose iconic work appeared in popular magazines like the Saturday Evening Post.
The so-called lost illustration depicts a dramatic fist fight, which was published in a 1919 article in Everybody’s Magazine, titled “The Mildest Mannered Man.” Previously, scientists had used X-rays to show the artist, Newell Convers Wyeth (1882-1945), had covered the fight scene with another painting called “Family Portrait.”
But that work only revealed the illustration in black-and-white. The scientists weren’t even sure the hidden artwork was in color.
“One of the surprises was that the painting was in color at all,” Jennifer Mass, senior scientist at the Winterthur Museum in Delaware, told LiveScience. “When N.C. Wyeth was making a painting for an illustration, if he knew it was going to be reproduced in black-and-white, sometimes he just did the paintings in shades of gray.”
Mass, who is also an adjunct professor at the University of Delaware, will present the findings today at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington, D.C.
Mass and her colleagues shot intense X-ray beams at the painting using a so-called confocal X-ray fluorescence microscope. The instrument then collected the X-rays that were emitted by different chemical elements in the painting’s pigments. Each element gives off a certain intensity of X-rays. And since certain elements were used to make pigments, the researchers could translate the X-ray measurements into color. For instance, cobalt would indicate a blue pigment, while chromium would signal a yellow or green color, Mass said.
The result was a full-color representation of the hidden painting.
The non-destructive method could uncover other famous artwork veiled beneath second paintings by Wyeth and others, the researchers say.
__________
Here are the Wyeth portraits.

"Family Portrait" by N.C. Wyeth, the original painting

This untitled, full color portait, was discovered underneath "Family Portrait"
I wonder if you see the irony – a picture of a peaceful family, involved in the intricacies of life, is nothing more than a nice cover, a facade, for a much darker, portrait of a fight beneath. A peaceful, public image, covering a private, brewing anger.
This is certainly an intriguing story of art. But it may be a more truthful portrait of real life.
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July 21, 2009 at 10:25 pm (Art)
Tags: American History, American Idol, Communication, Culture, David Bowie, Entertainment, Indie, Indie Music, Life, Michael Jackson, Music, Opinions, Pop Culture, Teenagers, Top 40, Top Forty, Undiscovered, Unsigned, Whitney Houston, Youth Ministry
Mainstream music is certainly manufactured for immediate success and quick remembrance.
And since the world is contemplating the legacy of Michael Jackson, and in the minutia of musical influence, I found the following article somewhat refreshing.
In my ministry to students, I have found that a brave few are listening to a wide variety of unknown or undiscovered artists — artists who have rejected the mainstream version of creativity, and have launched albums with unique sounds, though maybe only enjoyable by a select few. Any artist with the courage to break the status quo and find a unique sound with a unique following is worth a listen. I have a few favorite artists like this myself.
But that certainly proves the point that we like our music, and we like our music our way. It’s such a powerful, powerful medium, but …
according to this article, it should have been much, much better …
“Five Singers Who Ruined Pop Music”
Tony Scalfani
msnbc.com
David Bowie
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Robert E. Klein / AP
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Sure, he could sound like John Lennon on one album and Luther Vandross on the next. But that was the problem with David Bowie — in his heyday he seemed more of a theatrical chameleon who tried on personas than an impassioned rock singer. Bowie’s restless experimentalism allowed him to pull off being coolly distant and affected. Sadly, others copped his affectations without his intelligent approach. For a while in the 1980s, it seemed as if nearly every singer drew more from Bowie’s European theater tradition of singing than the tradition of rock singing itself (which came from R&B and gospel sources). Those who succumbed to Bowie-itis included everyone from Ric Ocasek of the Cars to David Byrne of Talking Heads to Robert Palmer to even Cyndi Lauper and Madonna. In short, anytime anyone tries on a vocal persona instead of singing from the heart, they’re channeling the Thin White Duke.
Whitney Houston
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Evan Agostini / AP
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In the second verse of her second hit single, “Saving All My Love for You,”Whitney Houston pronounces the word “cry” as “cu-ry.” That was just the beginning of her habit of adding extra syllables to words and over-the-top frills to songs — embellishments she seemed to add to show off her voice, not to put the song across better. Yes, Houston was a dazzling singer when she emerged, but younger female singers picked up on the most bombastic elements of her style, thinking that was what you needed to be a great vocalist. So along came Taylor Dayne, Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, Celine Dion and almost any “soulful” female singer who ever made audience’s ears bleed on “American Idol.” A new style of vocalizing emerged, and it even got a name: oversinging. Over the years oversinging has become an unintentional parody of the R&B singing from which it descended. All of the above singers should have gone back and studied Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight, two brilliant artists who knew what you leave out of a song can be as important as what you put in.
Jim Morrison
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AP file
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It makes people uncomfortable when you mention that Morrison often took vocal cues from an old school pop artist like Frank Sinatra. But that seems to be where the late lead singer of the Doors got his croon from. The difference was, Morrison wasn’t wrapping his baritone around jazz standards by Cole Porter or George Gershwin — he was singing rock lyrics with poetic pretensions and more simplistic chords. Even though Morrison could pull this off without sounding idiotic (most of the time), others couldn’t. What followed Morrison was a succession of singers whose bellowing brought to rock music an annoying self-importance it had never had. The main offenders are the obvious ones, like Eddie Vedder, Scott Stapp and Michael Hutchence. But you also have to throw in almost every post-punk singer that emerged from the U.K. and employed a deep voice to sound “profound” (we’re looking at you, Dave Gahan). Traces of Morrison’s pompous leanings can also be heard in singers as wide-ranging as Bono, Chad Kroeger and Bob Geldof.
Paula Abdul
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Getty Images
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Paula Abdul has the opposite problem of Whitney Houston. Where Houston could sing too well for her own good, Abdul could hardly sing at all, and even got sued by R&B singer Yvette Marine, who claimed she shared some of the lead vocals on Abdul’s debut album “Forever Your Girl” (Marine lost the case, but careful headphone listening reveals Abdul’s vocals were bolstered by someone). What Abdul could do well was dance and look good, which was starting to matter more and more on MTV around the time she emerged in 1989. And so the door was opened for anyone who could make Chipmunk-like sounds but looked hot doing so. Britney Spears, P. Diddy, the Pussycat Dolls, Kanye West and Ashlee Simpson have walked through that door and earned millions, as have the other scads of singers who rely on Auto-Tune to carry a tune. The irony of all this, of course, is that Abdul herself could likely never have qualified to be a contestant on “American Idol,” the very show on which she now serves as a talent judge.
Steve Marriott
Marriott was the powerhouse lead vocalist of the super-cool U.K. mod band the Small Faces and arena rockers Humble Pie. As a singer, the guy couldn’t be topped — his power and versatility were amazingand he virtually always sounded engaged (if not possessed). But Marriott was also the first male vocalist in rock to regularly sing in a very high register in a full, non-falsetto voice. According to Jimmy Page, Marriott was the original choice for Led Zeppelin’s lead singer. And here’s where he became a bad influence. Marriott led to Robert Plant, Plant led to Geddy Lee of Rush and Steve Perry of Journey and all of a sudden there were scores of long haired guy singers who picked up on Marriott’s screeching but left out his soulfulness. Zeppelin, Rush, Triumph and (sometimes) Journey are all great to listen to separately, but the cumulative effect of all these wailing voices on the radio back in the day made rock music sound, well, sort of silly. It also probably drove people to punk rock, where the singer sounded more down to Earth.
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April 21, 2009 at 7:00 pm (Art)
Tags: American History, Billie Jean, Culture, Entertainment, Happiness, History, Michael Jackson, Moonwalk, Motown, Performance, Pop Culture, Purpose, Singing, Technology, Television, Thriller, Youtube
One of single greatest pop-culture events of our generation. You need to watch it again. Now.
(New note: Previously, this post contained the video of Michael Jackson’s performance in 1981, when he debuted his single, “Billie Jean.” As of September 15, 2009, though, the video of the performance is no longer posted on YouTube, because of legal reasons. I encourage you, still, to find the video online.)
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March 14, 2009 at 6:28 pm (Art)
Tags: Acting, Art, Comedy, Culture, Entertainment, Funny, Grand Central Station, Happiness, Improv, Life, Mob, New York, New York City, Pop Culture, Protest, Purpose
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February 20, 2009 at 2:47 pm (Culture)
Tags: Communication, Culture, Entertainment, God, History, iRobot, Isaac Asimov, Life, Military Robot Ethics, Movies, Naval Research, Opinions, Pop Culture, Purpose, Research, Robots, Science Fiction, Star Wars, Technology, Terminator, The Future, Three Laws of Robotics, Transformers, Unmanned, US Navy, War, Warcraft

Terminator 2: Judgment Day
A future filled with fully automated autonomous robots may not be just the stuff of entertainment. Read this, from the Times Online:
Military’s Killer Robots Must Learn Warrior Code
by Leo Lewis
Autonomous military robots that will fight future wars must be programmed to live by a strict warrior code or the world risks untold atrocities at their steely hands.
The stark warning – which includes discussion of a Terminator-style scenario in which robots turn on their human masters – is issued in a hefty report funded by and prepared for the US Navy’s high-tech and secretive Office of Naval Research.
The report, the first serious work of its kind on military robot ethics, envisages a fast-approaching era where robots are smart enough to make battlefield decisions that are at present the preserve of humans. Eventually, it notes, robots could come to display significant cognitive advantages over Homo sapiens soldiers.
“There is a common misconception that robots will do only what we have programmed them to do,” Patrick Lin, the chief compiler of the report, said. “Unfortunately, such a belief is sorely outdated, harking back to a time when . . . programs could be written and understood by a single person.” The reality, Dr Lin said, was that modern programs included millions of lines of code and were written by teams of programmers, none of whom knew the entire program: accordingly, no individual could accurately predict how the various portions of large programs would interact without extensive testing in the field – an option that may either be unavailable or deliberately sidestepped by the designers of fighting robots.
The solution, he suggests, is to mix rules-based programming with a period of “learning” the rights and wrongs of warfare.
A rich variety of scenarios outlining the ethical, legal, social and political issues posed as robot technology improves are covered in the report. How do we protect our robot armies against terrorist hackers or software malfunction? Who is to blame if a robot goes berserk in a crowd of civilians – the robot, its programmer or the US president? Should the robots have a “suicide switch” and should they be programmed to preserve their lives?
The report, compiled by the Ethics and Emerging Technology department of California State Polytechnic University and obtained by The Times, strongly warns the US military against complacency or shortcuts as military robot designers engage in the “rush to market” and the pace of advances in artificial intelligence is increased.
Any sense of haste among designers may have been heightened by a US congressional mandate that by 2010 a third of all operational “deep-strike” aircraft must be unmanned, and that by 2015 one third of all ground combat vehicles must be unmanned.
“A rush to market increases the risk for inadequate design or programming. Worse, without a sustained and significant effort to build in ethical controls in autonomous systems . . . there is little hope that the early generations of such systems and robots will be adequate, making mistakes that may cost human lives,” the report noted.
A simple ethical code along the lines of the “Three Laws of Robotics” postulated in 1950 by Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer, will not be sufficient to ensure the ethical behaviour of autonomous military machines.
“We are going to need a code,” Dr Lin said. “These things are military, and they can’t be pacifists, so we have to think in terms of battlefield ethics. We are going to need a warrior code.”
__________
Robots in rebellion? Unmanned warcraft?
What sort of a future are we in for?
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December 30, 2008 at 3:55 pm (Art)
Tags: Acoustic Guitar, America, American Culture, American History, Art, Barack Obama, Billboard, Christian Entertainment, Contemporary Christian Music, Culture, Entertainment, Faith, Girl America, God, Mat Kearney, Music, Poetry, Politics, Pop Culture, Presidential Election, Rap, Religion, Spoken Word, The United States of America, Top Forty, Worship
Mat Kearney is a poet.

When I first opened his album Bullet, in 2004, I was completely overwhelmed at his acoustic stylings, playing against spoken words and great hooks. And then I dissected each song, and was drawn into the music.
I burned it, though, played it until I was no longer interested, until I picked up my acoustic and learned a few of the tunes, and that catapulted my interest again. This week, the album is once again spinning, and this time I was drawn to his song “Girl America.” The song itself, as well as Bullet, was repackaged into his second album, Nothing Left to Lose, and right now, I am awaiting his third album, and trying to be patient.
When you first listen to his song Girl America, you’re left a bit confused. He speaks the words so fast, and the chorus and the bridge, the songful parts of the tune, are good, and you start to wonder a little. And then you break apart the song, find the lyrics from a Google search, and realize that the song itself is quite powerful. And quite poetic.
I’m not sure what he planned for this song. I’m not sure if he thought he was writing something so poetic and contemporary and raw. And maybe, through the fiasco of the last presidential election, with all of the image and pomp and American degradation, this song speaks to me even more now. I’m not sure, but I have found a new realness in this song that was somehow missed in all of the previous listens.
Click here for his site, and listen to the song by shuffling through his tracks in the music tab at the top. Then read these lyrics, and then maybe you’ll see America in a much different way.
**********
Girl America
by Mat Kearney
My girl America is just a youth in this world,
Her smile is more precious than the sparkle of pearls.
And though her age reads, she’s just a young girl,
The age behind her eyes show the pain that she’s swirled, through the hand that’s been dealt,
Though it’s quiet as kept,the weight that she felt last night when she slept,
And as she crept into the dreams of the things of her past.
Seems to have grown so fast, way beyond her own class,
Though they’re right there with her, her brothers and her sisters.
A natural born leader even when her peers dis her.
My girl, she’s at a crossroads, people praying for her.
Some are preying on her.
Magazine ads, sex, drama, smoking marijuana,
Longing for a father to call her “daughter.”
She’s part of a generation longing for reconciliation,
And this future that they’re facing and this poison that they’re tasting,
My girl, I know this love you’re chasing.
****
My girl America’s crying when she’s lying on her bed at night,
I can see that she’s screaming when she’s dreaming for her freedom.
My girl America’s dying while she’s trying just to stop this fight.
Don’t stop believing, my girl America.
****
Boys with hungry eyes have been beating her door,
Telling her that’s what she’s for, trying to rob at her core,
Then leave calling her a whore, but still she knows there’s more.
I know she knows there’s more because there is a voice she can’t ignore,
‘Cause it was founded in the foundations, from the day of her creation.
“In God we trust” engraved on the treasures of her nation,
And the void that the boys can’t fill,
With the tipping of the bottle or the popping of the pill.
But still most of her friends don’t care as they glare,
Ready to drown down the funnel as they frown down the tunnel.
They stumble and they tumble breaking down into rubble.
My girl America, stop! Can’t you see?
It’s not the circumstances that determine who you’re gonna be,
But how you deal with these problems and pains that come your way.
It’s for you that I pray with hope for a brighter day,
And so I say, your deliverance is coming.
****
My girl America’s crying when she’s lying on her bed at night,
I can see that she’s screaming when she’s dreaming for her freedom.
My girl America’s dying while she’s trying just to stop this fight.
Don’t stop believing, my girl America.
****
Faith like a child from your first birth.
You left it in the dirt on your worst hurt.
And I see each tear and every scar,
The hands that have held you where you are.
And I can see we’ve strayed so far.
A king born under that morning star.
As a crown of thorns was placed to erase
Each tear that’s touched your face.
And his palms and sides were pierced with spears
He hung in love just to draw you near
My girl, out of this whole world,
Can’t you see this is where we started?
****
My girl America’s crying when she’s lying on her bed at night,
I can see that she’s screaming when she’s dreaming for her freedom.
My girl America’s dying while she’s trying just to stop this fight.
Don’t stop believing, my girl America.
**********
Powerful, isn’t it?
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