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This is all over left bloggerville, but must be passed on. From Salon's War Room: "Washington Post fashion columnist Robin Givhan doesn't think much of Vice President Dick Cheney's choice of attire for Thursday's commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Cheney's dressing down in a parka and ski cap, Givhan notes, was rather at odds with the solemnity of the event." Givhan's text:
"The ceremony at the Nazi death camp was outdoors, so those in attendance, such as French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Vladimir Putin, were wearing dark, formal overcoats and dress shoes or boots. Because it was cold and snowing, they were also wearing gentlemen's hats. In short, they were dressed for the inclement weather as well as the sobriety and dignity of the event.
"The vice president, however, was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower.
"Cheney stood out in a sea of black-coated world leaders because he was wearing an olive drab parka with a fur-trimmed hood. It is embroidered with his name. It reminded one of the way in which children's clothes are inscribed with their names before they are sent away to camp. And indeed, the vice president looked like an awkward boy amid the well-dressed adults.
"Like other attendees, the vice president was wearing a hat. But it was not a fedora or a Stetson or a fur hat or any kind of hat that one might wear to a memorial service as the representative of one's country. Instead, it was a knit ski cap, embroidered with the words 'Staff 2001.' It was the kind of hat a conventioneer might find in a goodie bag.
"It is also worth mentioning that Cheney was wearing hiking boots -- thick, brown, lace-up ones. Did he think he was going to have to hike the 44 miles from Krakow -- where he had made remarks earlier in the day -- to Auschwitz?"
You could almost feel sorry for him if he wasn't responsible for so many people getting killed. There is some difference of opinion on whether this happened because he and Lynne came from separate events, and she wasn't around to help him dress, or if this is just him being indifferent to "Old Europe." Weighing in on the side of arrogance, I'm reminded of the story of Cheney on the campaign trail ordering a bunch of vegetables from a farmer and then just handing him a ten dollar bill, without asking for the price.
Details from Michael Bell-Smith's video, Top of the World, at Foxy Production, in the group exhibition "GEO," which runs through February 8, 2005.
The video begins with an aerial perspective looking down on a videogame landscape (sort of reminiscent of the old Intellivision tank battle terrain, but it could be a lot of things from that era). Directional arrows invade the middle ground and...
...after passing over, under, and around each other they begin to dissolve into painterly sprays of pure pixelation--a gorgeous effect, but not too gorgeous. It looks like a specific set of commands to "break down" as opposed to a one-click Photoshop filter; don't know if any, or how much, custom programming was required and don't care particularly. Eventually the screen fills with a succulent allover abstraction that could be Monet's Water Lilies a la Bit-Rot.
This detail showing the initial breakdown into pixels probably looks fuzzy in Safari--another browser is recommended to see this scaled up image super-sharp.
In the gallery, the video is displayed on an LCD screen directly from the computer. My only quibble is I miss seeing this type of imagery on the big clunky CRT picture tube, as a similar work of Bell-Smith's was displayed last summer in the Infinite Fill Group Show. Ideally when he has a solo exhibit we can see his work with a variety of formats and hardware. Also recommended is a music piece on Bell-Smith's blog that is a kind of marathon sequencer ditty--curious to see what happens with that if it reaches the projected 74 minutes.
