|
Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
Digital Media Tree this blog's archive OVVLvverk Lorna Mills: Artworks / Persona Volare / contact Sally McKay: GIFS / cv and contact |
View current page
...more recent posts
An intriguing F.A.Q:
What happens if death should occur at a great distance, or if USA is unable to use the body?
Issue #16 is now posted. (thanks simpleposie #1599)
Kate Wilson
Cold Drive 2000 series of 248 paintings, oil and digital media
on vellum, 23 x 30 cm
Today I went to the ministry of health to update my OHIP card. The guy at the counter noted that our birthdays are very close together and that we both have a watershed birthday coming up this spring. "I don't care," he said, "you're only as old as you feel." Then, when he took my picture he said, "Is that one okay with you?" I shrugged "sure." It's not like I sit around staring at my OHIP card. Then he said, "even with the frizzy hair?" Then he said, "it's winter hair." Then he said, "I know that feeling." Then he said, "not that I have any hair." Then he said, "I'd rather have frizzy hair than no hair." I was pretty much done with saying things, myself, so I left. Which is all by way of introduction to my new favourite phrase:
"graceful degradation"Which has deposed my old favourite phrase:
"accelerated decrepitude"Here's what the current issue of Scientific American says about graceful degredation in their article on the broadcast transition to digital tv:
Even if your TV can receive over-the-air digital signals, that does not guarantee you can see the pictures. Analog offers what is called "graceful degradation": people in fringe reception areas can at least see something, even if the picture ghosts or fades in and out. DTV is not as forgiving. You either get it, or you do not.Being of a fairly murky mindset I find myself quite comfortable in the fringe reception areas. I grew up in the country without cable and spent a lot of time staring at something-less-than-completely-random TV snow that teased me with rare decipherable images hinting at the storyline of Battlestar Galactica. I'd rather have a fuzzy winter broadcast than no broadcast at all.
Sally has gone horseback riding. Discuss.
A friendly reminder (via Von Bark) for any of us who forget to read Bookninja: read Bookninja. This recent thread about Margaret Atwood's Globe & Mail essays on arts funding might be the most sophisticated arts funding debate I've ever seen. Even the internet-obligatory just-looking-out-for-me-and-mine dude has some thorough and complex insights. My favourite bits, however, are embedded in George Murray's response. Excerpt...
Artists have always been supported by the tribe/lord/town/government. Art is not a business. It can’t be run that way. It’s not a free market of supply and demand. And despite history’s filtering, it’s not Darwinian on the macro level of present day. If it was, it would all be cartoons, dogs playing poker, corporate sculptures, Brittany Spears and John Grisham novels. And we would all be working in art sweatshops for a few cents an hour and another part of you would be crying for our liberation from oppression.note: L.M. and I re-posted both of Atwood's essays in the comment thread here.