Update post!
Hah… yeah… I know I know… I said I’ll be posting weekly, but I’m late this week. And you know what that means! An empty post! I do have some drafts and stuff, but come on I really don’t want to stay up and type. I really don’t feel like it, but it’s kinda happening already.
Maybe I’ll write an update and rant a bit.
So here’s the thing, I have some ideas that I didn’t go through, and I’m hoping I’ll filter a good serious article out next week. Probably about one of these ideas:
- Discussing the creative class’s value (and its perceived value) in Jordan.
- Ranting about how Jordan is gonna become Saudi Arabia if the education system isn’t changed from the core. By the way, I don’t mean like we’re going to get rich, I mean our culture is going to become more enclosed.
- Discuss LEED a bit, maybe even make fun of them for no reason and then rant about how I forgot to talk to my “superiors” about taking the test. Fack.
Now here’s the thing that kinda make this post worthwhile for me.
“All aboard the hype-train!”
*crickets*
Alright crickets, here it is! I am considering making another watercolor painting! Yeah! I know! Totally! Yeah! Right?! Yeah! Okay stop.
…
Seriously, though, awkward monologue aside, I kinda got excited to talk about the painting. So excited, in fact, that I chose to not go and take a picture of the sketch I made for it, because I was so paralyzed by excitement. But I like it, it’s a tad melancholic but I thought it looked nice and dramatic (as long as I can get some good contrast with my colors, I think it’s a challenge since I kinda play it safe while painting), so we’ll see. Now I just have to think about the colors and all. Bah, it does have a bit of that Vivi Ornitier painting vibe, now that I think about it, but I’ll make sure to try and give it a different character, and I want a different feel/scheme. So I think it’ll be nice. Hmm yes, it’s really coming together in my head. Now actually doing it is a different case.
I’ll try and start working on it this weekend. Oh maybe I’ll post a pic of its concept sketch along with some other sketches, to make up for this very well made post.
Alright that’s good enough, I’m sleepy (and very sorry for this post).
Okay I’m really not sorry, you don’t comment, this is a fair relationship we have, readers.
…..
Cheers,
WCH
Surprise Bus-es!
Well I’ve been away for a while, it was a sort of a break, I guess. I wouldn’t say a holiday or anything like that, it was just a “man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do” thing, really (bada-boom, bada-bing, eh, tony?).
If I ever want this blog to be anything I would have to be a bit more consistent with the weekly Friday posts. But fear not! I actually wrote a bunch of articles while umm…. nothing. I just wrote a bunch of drafts whenever I got ideas for posts. So I might post an extra piece sometime, but hey… hey, no I probably won’t, but I might. Going back to consistency is enough for now, right?
On with the show!
I guess to an extent I want the blog to be more serious and urban oriented, but I can’t seem to shake the comical tone out of my writing sometimes, and I hope you don’t let the tone disregard the ideas in the pieces, I’m not joking, I just like writing this way to make it fun. I do have other drafts that concern other ideas, but this draft started as a rant, and dammit I will rant about Amman and buses (read as “be-ooze-is” for funsies).
Oh and I really hope you get the joke in the title, I giggled at it for a good 3 seconds.
…..
You know why we have a traffic problem? Because I would personally rather keep anyone I care about off the streets, where they would be endangered by rushing drivers or harassed by loitering drones misled by societal habits, or be left to waste time as they attempt to go home (I dare say) without a car. I think there are about 40% of the population who believe the same.
I think the authorities are trying to make people get off their cars, if they are not, then less-experienced fresh-graduates are more aware than they are (given that universities do teach about the importance of public realms rather than the mere “will” of a client). But I really doubt anyone could just not know things when they are in such positions of power, I think they know what needs to be done. Could they really not know? Am I jut being wishful when I say that? I just can’t comprehend the idea of people in power being ignorant, it’s just wrong.
I think the authorities at least know a bit about what they’re doing. Unlike many Ammanis, who always seem to think they know better than officials; who often overlook their own mistakes and cuss at others from behind their windshields (or fists if it gets really serious). Many in our society just tend to underestimate others, believing that their thoughts are the most relevant and correct, and that others (in this case: power figures) have no idea what they’re doing, when a lot of the time it just seems like baseless bashing, due to a lack of research. What I’m trying to say, is that many bash Jordan’s power figures, but why do you really think they’re so utterly stupid and villainous? Maybe the authorities are just out-dated, I really think so. Isn’t it time that the newer generations start running things along with the pas and mas? Or is it just out of the norm, that older, more experienced (and egotistical) people can be corrected by a potential-leaking youth?
Anyway, I think that to an extent, the authorities have an idea about what to do, this post is more about public transportation, not politics. Here’s what I think they’re trying to do:
- Make people follow the law by making it more risky to break it. Simple idea. Then again, how do you stop the traffic congestion from making breaking the law the best way out?
- Make it less feasible to drive cars everywhere, so as to make using public transportation more viable, which can be done by increasing the cost of gasoline. This, however, does not work if the public transportation is much less comfortable and unbearably unreliable, and has the clarity of a cup of coffee from a vengeful-looking coffee vendor, i.e. it looks dirty but you don’t know if it really is, I mean is it wet then dried dust or finger cheese on the handle? Why is the seat so black? Anyway, people just can’t put a price on their family’s safety/comfort, public transportation is just way too much of a hassle.
- Nope, that was it; that’s all that seems to be done. They did try making some street ads with a bus filled with “happy”, cartoony people saying that buses are better for you and your family. But come on, is that all?
Actions speak louder than words, and actions don’t show anything about improving public transit. Even the “Fast Bus” project (الباص السريع), in my opinion, is extremely wasteful and has was an unreasonable idea compared to fixing and organizing existing buses first. At least a bit of organization of the existing transit system would reduce some of the stress on the streets, and would make space for the damn “fast bus lane”, but the way it was about to be done near the Jordanian University just seemed like it’s an impatient attempt at fixing the whole problem instantly (impossible, don’t you think? It’s a lot deeper than that). Instead of wasting (maybe that’s a subjective choice of word, but I think it was a waste) all that money on a poorly studied attempt, they could have paid for more bus drivers to fill in time gaps, or to create settlements with private buses who don’t really have a schedule at all, to kind of get them on their side, maybe even provide service to areas with no easy/affordable connection to the city. But why didn’t they?
I find it strange really, especially since in recent years, and with the “green uprising” public transportation has become key in fixing existing social and traffic problems, I don’t get where the investment in the public realm is, it should be the best time for it, unless they’re just waiting for “security problems” to pass or something, such that their transparency about their plans would not mean more risk but more trust from the public. Truth is, nobody is going to invest in public transportation, the government has to do it for its own well-being, and it’s about time that government-provided facilities become cleaner and more efficient than privatized, over-priced, and polarizing ones.
Well those were my 2 groosh.
We’ll see what happens in the future, I guess, I’ll just assume and think about it until I find out if my thoughts made sense.
…Or perhaps I’m pushing so hard to put happenings into perfect sense, it’s just producing pretexts to poorly pondered planning policies.
…..
Cheers,
WCH
Filler-like Update Post-type-words Thing-a-ma-jig
Unfortunately, this week’s post is just going to be a filler (unless you like improvised, poorly thought-out posts, then you’ll love this blog). I guess I’ll make it a personal one in a way… yes, it’s because I had nothing prepared, I apologize. So let’s just rant until a god point comes up.
I have been trying to make this blog into a serious one, at least every now and then. So I was for the past while discussing urban ideas, and just tossing my ideas into the bowl and seeing how they taste, but I don’t get any feedback really, not even if I share an article on Facebook. I’m almost sure my content beats at least some of the other blogs copying and pasting articles from other places. Hm… Well it would be nice to be appreciated, though.
Anyway…
I guess people just don’t enjoy reading much anymore? Or maybe they just don’t relate to random thoughts I put out here, I do think that urban planning/design is something that people have come to understand and feel quite a lot these past few years. Well my stubborn head thinks so, but who knows. But hey, I really do enjoy just writing things down here, then maybe in a few years I’ll come back and see what’s happened to me, what changed, and how my ideas are growing, it would be motivating for me at least.
This weekend was utter crap, though, I had a lot of thoughts, but nothing to write about, and nothing to say; I guess you could say “my thoughts were so loud, I couldn’t hear my mouth”. Yeah, I would say that’s pretty accurate, thanks Modest Mouse.
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So…. updates eh? Been playing Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past for the first time ever. Go figure. And I gotta say, it has aged quite well, and is not bad at all. I played Minish Cap before and have been wanting to explore the top-down view Zelda games for a while, and Link to the Past was quite a pleasant surprise really. It’s not too easy, it encourages exploration, it’s fun, music is brilliant. So yeah, it’s pretty good. After that I’ll probably play Chrono Trigger since it’s supposed to be one of the best games ever, too, so we’ll see how that goes.
Been sketching a bit on the guitar, and I might upload some audio-only covers/originals depending on how motivated I am. I really wanted to do Songe Le Reveur styled covers (you have got to check this guy out, seriously one of the best musicians I have ever witnessed), but I guess I’ll just start with anything, just to get moving. So audio-only videos won’t be too bad, I think. Or maybe I’ll take a video and match it to the corresponding audio recording. The acoustic guitar does not sound so horrible if I record it on my phone, go figure. The electrics, however….. heh…
We’ll see… that’s the word of the year. We’ll just see what happens on the way, right? Perfectionism is a bad habit, but it’s good to have some standards, so with some self-discipline and initiative, I’ll actually do something I believe. If I manage to make myself work somehow, that is.
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Well I think that’s enough for a filler post. Improvising isn’t so bad eh? I actually have an idea to blog about now, but I don’t feel like it. Maybe I’ll get it again next week.
Thanks for the read.
…..
Cheers
WCH
School
Some things just don’t change.
Patterns. Patterns like: “go outside, play, talk, mock, hang out” become “go outside, smoke, talk, gossip, hang out.”
It’s like none of us really grow up after all. Growing up doesn’t really change you, does it? It just exchanges habits with other habits, that’s why it’s so important to grow up with good habits. Oh and please do excuse my using the informal tongue in this piece, but it just felt right. Right?
Right!
But yeah, we really don’t change much when we “grow up”, I mean as a kid I thought people talking about economics are boring (usually 20 or 30 years older than me), but it’s just really what’s “in” to talk about. It’s nothing new, instead of talking about new happenings on a small scale (your personal universe of school), you talk about news (politics, kids, don’t let it touch you).
You really just realize how small the world is, we really don’t grow that much after all the hype that adults build for kids, the hype is just concerning dirty adult jokes and alcohol (blessed be, alcohol, totally worth growing up), but it’s just like the the city is an expansion/extension of the school playgrounds. I guess that kind of highlights schools’ importance in setting the atmosphere for the rest of the city. I don’t mean it literally nor architecturally/design-wise, but by the people it produces and how they all interact with others. It’s no coincidence that all bad schools are in bad neighborhoods (most of the time), because the school itself (in my humble dumb opinion) produces the neighborhood.
Perhaps it all comes down to if the economic systems are ready for less trouble/less low-class people to carry out the city’s dirty bidding.
I mean I’m pretty sure everyone knows that schools are the basis of societal interactions, it’s not really a mystery, it just takes someone to point it out for you to gasp and say “I knew that, how didn’t I consider it as such an important factor?”. I just think that politicians do not see that the world is ready for 100% educated people, especially since (in Jordan) hard labor is seen as -I’m just gonna call it- icky. Calloused hands? Gross! Go study and manage people, be a boss! But truth is, we really do need to appreciate hard labor as much as the manager, probably even more, because they are the literal force that move the country’s economy, and the less you appreciate them, the more they’ll shift to other “groups” (maybe even cults) that give them more appreciation in one way or another.
I just think we owe it to some people, to appreciate them before they depreciate you (hah… Get it? Because they can literally depreciate your e-… never mind), but I digress.
Schools can literally drive your entire social system. A great example is how Germans teach their kids tolerance at a young age, and (while there are of course some deviants from the respectful norm) their society is pretty respectful and humane (and you know it). They’re also a huge economic force because of the fact that even a common “hard-laborer” is given the appreciation she/he deserves (through money, because that’s how you show appreciation in our time… no amount of feasts and coffee can sustain a family enough, unfortunately).
Schools are the heart of society, and everyone has to understand that. The school builds society, since it has the direct input of the government. While society can affect it, governments have a direct access to people through a school system, and thus must take advantage of that.
But hey… are you ready to be common? Are you ready to become as appreciated as those who do manual labor? Would you accept seeing them next to you in a pub, Amman? Do you see the value of others from your pedestal? Is it really something we hate, having so many people that are “lower” than we are?
Are you able to put your ego down to see others to discuss with? Or are you happy in our circle-jerk society? Believing they are better, and disregarding the fact that you are at a huge advantage when compared to others? Not considering the cultural difference, can you live your city the way someone who has nothing to lose does?
Would you enjoy living with carbon copies of yourself, having nobody to consider inferior to yourself? Are you educated enough to let go of your ego, Amman?
…..
Right…
WCH
Human Adaptation
So, good news, imaginary readers, the Working Class Hippie is now officially part of the work-force: an Architect/Urban Designer. Na’ ain’ ‘at somefin’! That’s all for the update, here’s something I wrote while reading urban articles at work until I got a task. Might seem a bit redundant, I’m pretty sure I mentioned the idea of humans being just as evolutionary as other species, but with more complexity, so this piece takes on that idea from another perspective.
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“The goal should be to use social/ecological dynamics that are flexible for futures we can’t imagine”
– Chris Reed
The past two decades consisted of Urbanism merely trying to integrate new technologies into its “normal/common” form. With these attempts, and the awareness of needing to be more “green” and environmentally friendly, our “growth” has been hindered due to having more to incorporate. We now know that the future of Urbanism is as complex as any living organism, and not as simple as we once believed as we threw concepts from the sky and forced people to follow them; therefore we need a lot of time until all the forces (of the many schools of thought – each with its own set of pros and cons) balance out, to evolve the city into an organism with its own logic and balanced existence within the ecosystem. This will have to be localized for every region in order to be truly balanced in its existence within nature, rather than a set mold of materials and borrowed standards; it would have to start as an adaptation, and must continue to adapt with the rising technologies to perfect itself. The rush to catch up with the other powers is forcing us into pushing through time while leaving many behind who do, in time, pull us back, as they are left in the dark, not knowing where nor why we are going in a certain direction (I would say the increasing cost of gasoline is a good example, despite the lack of follow-up on the public transportation side).
Colonization has failed to understand locality and mutated the existing architecture and urban habits into imported and misunderstood logic; however, with new technological advances, the adaptation is able to continue, since they can be utilized to more intricately adapt, and the technologies to survive with less environmental impact is available for almost every location on earth.
So based on that quote, I would say that nothing is more flexible than evolution/adaptation.
This adaptation would not only be based on natural forces, but ecological forces, including the forces of society and humanity. The organisms (people) that use the space are just as important as the organism (plants,nature, urban fabric) being affected by it. Natural selection would even be the elimination of that which does not allow our survival, such as bad architecture, poor planning, and technologies that hurt the environment; this already happens naturally within society, with those who threaten the well-being of mankind being shunned away in prisons to preserve the survivability of the species. In a way, all of mankind’s history has been a natural adaptation (leading to an evolution), as every change in the past was in one way or another brought forth via new technologies and discoveries about ourselves and our relationship with the world around us. In other words, adapting to new-found technologies and discoveries are a natural step forward.
Arguments about what is good/bad for our world; what looks nice and what does not; people’s obsession with Kim Kardashian’s bum and those calling bum-groupies silly; are all part of the natural evolution of mankind and our growth in tiny proportions, forming a larger image. While many believe a larger image removes our individuality, truth is, change begins with single units and changes slowly, cascading along the facade of humanity, shifting, breaking, changing color, and the waves created by all the changes are what propel us forward, all due to the tiny inner-workings that make it all happen.
When people discovered that they can cultivate land, they did, and it changed the way we think of shelters. It led to many of the early settlements being near a body of water in order to better sustain themselves. Now that we see green technologies that would help us better sustain ourselves, we should logically adapt and “go green”, since it allows our use of resources to be more efficient, thus allowing us to “last longer” [no innuendo here, move along…]. Greed, I guess, would play a part in preventing this adaptation, in order to maintain income for those with the most capital and benefits from the current systems that should naturally be left out, since they do not help the betterment of mankind anymore. There are discoveries being made about the surroundings we live in (cities, natural resources) that were cut off from Nature in order to maintain the “balanced” system that we are all living in, but these systems (physical and political) are slowly becoming more obsolete and are in desperate need of change, especially since they are proving to be hurtful to nature.
I believe that is how we should be viewing Urbanism right now, and probably for a long time: without the constraints of groups, schools of thought, and conceptual prose, but with logic, and a mind open to understanding the many hands that shape our world. It is an ecosystem and should be treated as one, from the smallest detail to the entire surface of the Earth.
…..
I guess,
Saed
Desperation
“To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair.
The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed,
the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress.
The hate of men will pass, and dictators die,
and the power they took from the people will return to the people.
And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men –
machine men with machine minds and machine hearts!
You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men!
You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful,
to make this life a wonderful adventure
Let us use that power!
Let us all unite!”
– Charlie Chaplin
I am incapable of posting, because these words just left me dumbfounded, really…
But, since I’m blogging, might as well, right?
…..
I don’t think enough people understand the value of respect right now, I think it can make or break you.
I think respecting your fellow humans is the most important thing for all of us right now, and I find it sad that some people still choose to be uppity at such hard times; I believe this is the best time to show people the meaning of humanity.
Not because of dirty ape games (politics) like ISIS or wars, but because it is what people need right now. Ape games should not be the deciding factor of how we deal with each other. Why do people even find joining armies as a viable option?
Why do we even find ourselves fighting for things we don’t believe in? Why do we find ourselves in cages we never built, as if we were mammals being pulled into different places based on zoo-runners’ choices? Why do we mistrust others? Why do we not believe in our humanity?
Why do we end up being led by shepherds to our misery? Why do we deny our own freedom in fear of the tangible, rather than finding comfort in our own aura?
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I believe this is the time to rebuild and reevaluate our lives and our meaning. I think this is when we should rediscover the love within us. How could we have been so blind as to miss all the signs pushing us to remember to respect each other?
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I guess I am still tongue-tied, our power is in us. We are the people, we are not machines, and it seems like it is catching up to us now, yet we still do not see it. Why?
When will we understand the value of the demons and the gods? When will we stop hating and understand that we are meant to be free? Why do we not see the beauty of adventure in being ourselves? When will we understand?
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We are our own heroes.
Yet, it’s like we are heartbroken, and seem to misunderstand everything to protect ourselves, just to end up feeding the image that someone else wants us to be. Desperation perhaps…
Because our fellow humans could not survive, they could not but join anything that appealed to that instinct of survival.
How do we not understand?
Then again…
I just guess and disrespectfully agree with the box… right?
I’m just a dreaming romantic, am I not?
….
Right?
When did man lose sight of the origins of nobility, humility, respect, and grace?
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“Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men –
machine men with machine minds and machine hearts!
You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men!”
…..
I guess
WCH
Perfect Imbalance
So I found this one lying around in my drafts, and I really do believe in its idea in one way or another, but I’ll just disrespectfully agree with whatever you think, if that’s what your mind likes. Sadly it has been writer’s block this week (especially since I get some nice and beefy poetic ideas, but then forget to write them down somewhere) so I just tossed myself into previous half-done pieces. It was that bad.
Anyway, I hope it’s thought-provoking and interesting to you as it was for me while I was tip-tapping it away on my keyboard. Have fun.
Disclaimer:
This essay does not support any political side – because politics are games of apes using “civilized” tools -, it merely points out facts and theories to be held over our society as a magnifying glass for an up-down planner’s view of our current situation, and those to come. The purpose is for better-understanding, and critical, deeper thinking before bearing sticks and phones for a demonstration.
____________________________
After going through a “rough break-up” and the colonization, the Arab world has seen a range of scenes and historical moments in the last century that many other cultures/regions have witnessed over a course of centuries. Perhaps we lagged on a global scale due to our materialistic detachment from the fleeting, rough, yet constant land, or our attachment (emotionally and even physically) to our tribes, or perhaps it is due to our stability in the Islamic times, but we have managed to catch up industrially, again on a global (foreign) scale. Although we had a previous safe and booming nation, our technologies were not technologies as they are thought of in our time. Looking back at our marvels as an Islamic nation, we had green local technologies which worked for us and a society with its own mind and body, almost like a fantasy novel or the eco-friendly, peaceful elf tribe with a grand, majestic leader. But alas, this is being written with a foreign language, using foreign technologies; our ways were not up to par with other, more “advanced” societies. The mud and stone buildings might have been interesting but they were neither slick nor fast enough for the others. Inter-cultural communication was non-existent as most cultures were similar, and we were the second (after the Native Americans) to face the almost-peaceful takeover. The balance in the nation was disturbed, and while that was inevitable, the breakup of the country led to a large difference in resource availability, leading to inter-Levant communications as different powers with different agenda, political interventions, and foreign aids with different agenda. “Are we driven or driving?” is not the question, as we were driven into another direction. Just as ideas spill over each other to create new perceptions and ideas, as well as open and closed doors, being driven has turned our world around and has resulted in many good and bad results.
We were driven by the earth’s humble environment into our current situation, the earth was driven by the sun, the sun was driven… well, then we reach a line where people argue who put what where, so in that sense, it is something out of our reach, so it is out of question, but we are driven by default. However, even as humans, one can say that we are driven by our god or sub-consciousness, again, a “who put what where” situation. That is why, the only things we are (almost) sure of being in control of are our actions, due to our conscious act in most of them. Even though our environment has put our thoughts in our head, we do still have control over what we do with those results.
The thing about our culture (and many religions and regions, as it played a huge part of creating it), however, is that we accept the fact that we are not completely in control. Islam literally means, surrendering control. “Is it a good or bad thing” is up for debate. Then again since the appearance of democracy, or rather “Hollywood democracy”, through globalization we are no longer accepting the fact that we are driven. It is not an easy thing to accept, as we do believe that we are all loved by each of our gods. Nevertheless, breaking away from our culture or from religion in general, while driven by yearning for freedom (as it is fed to us in its glorious box) is seen as a relatively bad deed, as people without religion are seen as people lacking morals. Beliefs are not enough to hold people accountable or trust them as before, people are not becoming more honest about their faith (or lack of it) as we slowly open up to American ideas of freedom. To some it breaks our social fabric into cogs and screws which have no life but only work for a production machine, while to others, the fabric already is restraining, and the democracy brings freedom. One can safely say that the spilling of the idea of democracy is surely to shift the balance, and whole movement of globalization is shifting our scales, we are currently amidst a spill and mix of cultures, and it will take time for the mix to happen. The spill is driven by one side driving into the other, and it has its causes to do so; it is driven to do so by political agendas.
We are all being driven into each other and spilling, and the constant spilling is what gives us the meaning of existence; we are seeking to find the balance born of the war between ideas; to bring the present-at-hand to a ready-at-hand. It was once done with wars and now it is done with propaganda and ideas. We are all units, atoms, that help to make the whole a reality; indicators for the planners of our fate, the drivers of our city. Criminals are suspended so as not to throw the system out of control, the numbers of people and statistics are studied to know how to deal with the change of situation, the residents are provided with “food” and things to keep them motivated. It does seem negative, yet it is the nature of a city, it is even the natural behavior of mammals to stick together and members do their “jobs”. It sounds brutal to the observer, but it is only for allowing certain human tendencies to take control; while we like belonging to something, we also like to be individuals. This contradicts the contemporary products and media which push for special people who save the world and celebrities who have money and live the beautiful life. It motivates people, and the products help make people feel special, but what about the cold truth that we are part of a collective and only contribute simple parts that many can do?
The individuality aspect that people yearn for shines through art and special commodities to display publicly. For the more fortunate it is custom-made objects that give meaning, while for poor people it is art (theoretically). Take Europe for example, where the most renowned renaissance personalities are poor and did their art in the streets or by barely getting by and having support, furthermore, they truly lived the city as a bourgeois never could; they were the “derive” of their time. In our region, collectivity is superior, and those seeking individuality are outcasts; like those with long hair or special fancy cars. The derive are marked as “nawar”. However, the nawar are low-class people with many of their ability hindered by their living situations. Back in the renaissance people could go by, and would not have that many expectations, such as “be a doctor/engineer/architect”. Jordan’s derive have no ability to express themselves, and must do what they can to help the collective and survive. The rest of the country’s classes benefit from having people lower than them to add drama to their lives and anecdotes for colleagues while they live their educated lives travelling in their boxes and avoiding confrontation. However there is the middle class who is currently creating life in the art scene and expressing themselves. While the people in the lower class can make a choice to create art, they are not given the push to create it; they are driven into the circumstances which force them to choose survival over art. Another possible situation that they are driven into is the fact that they do not quite know how to create art, nor do their families see art as something worthwhile as a way to bring food to the table or to maintain a shelter.
Maybe it is all planned, since it is possible due to much psychological, sociological, and scientific advancement. We do have a choice of controlling the drivers below us in the hierarchy, and working on that, we are able to do so. Although it is governed by a “higher power”, we do have a degree of control and responsibility in our positions. We are a system that works together, and we can use our knowledge to fix and add at the right spots in order to make a move in our system. Those who wish for change and those who hold the opposite opinion are two forces we need to keep a pulse fluctuating in the system. The lack of understanding creates a misinterpretation of people and their motives, our renaissance is now, but the mix of contemporary needs for survival and inclusion into society is preventing many generations in certain parts to be left out. The freedom/bohemian feel that we can use to our advantage at our artistic peak is where a huge investment should be put to put people on the same level, before we move into architectural terms to unite our beautiful mix.
…..
I guess,
Saed
Update!
Been way too brain-scattered to do anything on here, really. The Poro piece hasn’t been touched in a while, but I’m starting on a Vivi Ornitier painting (Yep! A water-color painting! :D), just got the base down and all that’s left is the coloring. I’ll go back to the Poro thing afterwards, because I’m pretty excited about using water colors, since I haven’t used them in a while.
Other than that, I’ve been trying to make a logo for a while and it just has not been expressing the subject well enough; it’s just one of those intangible things that you can’t be so visually smart with. But, I do believe a more experienced designer would be able to to it more easily.
That being said, we’ll see how it all goes, as long as I’m not distracted playing something or doing abso-flippin’-lutely nothing, I will be working on these and continuing to look for a job!
What else… Yeah, umm… that’s it! Also, no visuals on the Vivi thing, I’m gonna put a bit of progress pics when I finish. Because it’s cool and stuff.
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Cheers!
Saed
Art
Well, this is pretty much a lazy post I guess, I haven’t posted “on schedule” since I couldn’t really find much to talk about. To be honest, I did not want to talk about Gaza, because well this just isn’t the place for wars and that side of politics. Also I’m working on a “Poro Mother” piece, Poros being those adorable creatures from League of Legends, so we will see how it turns out, and I’ll post it here when it’s finished.
So I was having a discussion with a friend of mine, and I thought it was pretty interesting, he makes good points and so do I (I believe so), and I like talking to that friend, we have some nice discussions every now and then. So I’ll just post it because I like to have interesting ideas on here.
Person A:
Thought you might find this interesting, it’s about art and well about what was “so great” about Andy Warhol (the guy who made a banana as a piece of art). It kinda relates to that sketch you found silly, but yeah, this is a really interesting read (these are all from a reddit thread btw):
[Quoting from a reddit thread]:
“For most of history, artist paint two kind of things: important things (portraits of kings, Washington crossing the Delaware River, etc) and pretty things (flowers, landscape, etc). Starting in the late 19th century, artists began question why can’t they paint whatever they want? Hence movements like Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, etc were born. Artists like Jackson Pollock took it to the extreme and created arts that consists entirely of splatters. Pop Artists like Andy Warhol felt they are taking it too far and wanted to create something non-traditional yet meaningful.”“What “meaning” does 32 paintings of a soup can have? Isn’t it just masturbatory self-aggrandizement?”
“You can look at it as basically a parody of the commodification of art.
For most of history, paintings have been unique objects. Someone painted a painting, and that was the only instance of that painting, and you had to see it in its context. To see the paintings in the Sistine Chapel, you actually had to go to the Sistine Chapel and walk around with clergy in an enormous church, craning your head to the ceiling to see endless panoramas of the transcendant topics that were being passionately discussed there, and that context and location was part of its impact. Erotic paintings were commissioned by wealthy lords of their mistresses and partners and hung in their bedrooms or holiday houses as a major status symbol for their private enjoyment. Portraits of famous figures were hung in palaces and public buildings — for ordinary people, the only time you knew what the King or President looked like was when you went to a government building and saw his face 5 feet tall in a glamorous powerful portrait with dozens of other major figures, and that contributed to its impact and perception. Each artifact was unique, and most artifacts were made for a specific purpose in a specific context that contributed to your experience of it.But in the 20th century, all of that changed. We entered what people call “the age of mechanical reproduction” — using machines, we can basically perfectly duplicate any image at will an infinite number of times, initially through film and colour printing, then TV, and now obviously we’re all armed with high-res cameras and internet connections 24/7. I could be walking through a field at 5AM, decide I want to see any painting on the planet, pull out a phone and be looking at it within 30 seconds. And this is how most people experience art — images in a book, images on a screen, reproduced prints, if they’re lucky maybe in a museum where it has become an attraction famous for its fame. But virtually never in its original context, and never as a unique one-of-a-kind object.
This changes not only the impact of art on us, but our attitudes towards art. Art becomes commodified — it wasn’t necessarily created as a commodity, but it becomes treated like one, we divorce it from its context and put them in the same context as a billion other artworks, just like products at a supermarket. If you go into a museum, many of the information cards introduce paintings or statues with their price, which is its value measured in the worth of other goods, equivocating Picasso’s La Reve with X number of bananas or Y number of shoes.
And that’s what Andy Warhol did literally: he took an image of a mundane commodity, mechanically reproduced it over and over again, put them all next to each other and called it art, because that’s how we treat art now. And in this way it’s more ‘artistically valid’ than traditional high art, because you’re actually viewing it in its intended context!”
“Or maybe he was having the biggest personal joke at the expense of art snobs ever in the history of the world.
… Or possibly both at the same time.”
Person B:
I think some of the responses are dumber than a few of the worthless pieces of “art” displayed in lots of museums (I’m no artist, I don’t claim to be an expert, but appreciating beauty, creativity, ingenuity is not rocket science).
1. First of all the simple definition of art is, according to Oxford dictionary: The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination… (Focus on creative and imagination).
So when someone summarizes previous art as “For most of history, artist paint TWO kind of things: important things (portraits of kings, Washington crossing the Delaware River, etc) and pretty things (flowers, landscape, etc)” you can straight away tell that this guy is shit for creativity, imagination, history, ART, and brains, and skip whatever he writes next.2. I sort of agree with the points others make in the next paragraphs, although the explanation sort of pitches an idea that artists no longer have options to create beautiful pieces. Although some artists do make creative stuff like:
http://d3dsacqprgcsqh.cloudfront.net/photo/4247613_700b.jpg
http://d3dsacqprgcsqh.cloudfront.net/photo/a8W8RgZ_700b.jpg
http://designtaxi.com/…/Hybrid-Paintings-Mix-The…/…3. Others are simply shit. The explanation made in the paragraphs only help/apply to Warhol’s concept (which is genius in my opinion), they simply don’t apply to things like these <clicky>. Compare that to this <clicky>
To make it more simple, if I ([bad] at art) can create a bad piece, and hire a pretentious philosopher/critic to write some crazy stuff about it, then make headlines about it, or if a 5 year old can create an abstract red line, then this is not art, and claiming that you are not looking at the context of it is simply lazy. Claiming that due to whatever modern technology or modern lifestyle or modern bla bla made you create such a thing is simply lazy. Here is a perfectly good example for that.
There is no art in laziness, it’s called being uncreative, unimaginative, not artistic.
Person A:
It’s still another angle to look at art pieces: as part of a context rather than as a technical piece and you can’t deny that; whether you agree with its point or if you find it pretty is your opinion. But if it was in fact a conscious act to make people reconsider art, it sure as hell worked. You can say its lazy or whatever, but it did stir something in a society whether for being horribly silly or lazy (as you graciously put it) there is absolutely no need to do something spectacularly in order to be appreciated. So in the end it is only how you appreciate it.
The credibility of these people has absolutely nothing to do with it, they make good points and give you new ways of looking at things. So nitpicking at their words is well… silly really; I only posted their words because they brought a new idea to the table, which I tried to explain to you before: the context of art. Whether someone appreciates it is their own opinion.
You’re making this too complex for no reason, the idea of contextualism is there, everything can be appreciated in one way or another. I honestly don’t care what you personally find nice (no offense), I really just wanted you to see the other way of appreciating art.
Person A:
That Joan Miro painting, it says it bridges “effortlessly bridging the transition between figurative and abstract art.” but I just don’t see how. But I did find this:
Miró worked with strategies such as automatic drawing (where the hand is allowed to move freely as an extension of the unconscious), Surrealism (which philosophically strove to reveal authentic thought through juxtaposing unexpected symbols and forms), Expressionism (which applies emotional subjectivity to evoke moods or ideas), and Color Field Painting (that meditated on combinations, and or fields of color symbology).
As for an interpretation of Miro’s Etoile Bleue the painting provides just enough information to stimulate the process of interpretation, but the same stimulation resists conclusions and continues to evoke questions.
Through the interpretive resistance of Miró’s artwork we are better able to witness our own processes of interpretation for what they are, reflections and projections of who we are—internally and as a community. And what we find is that who we are is just as unresolved as the image that we meditate upon.
So there you go, there is a way to appreciate it. The moment someone tells you that it sold for a bum-load of money, you try to understand why. Hell, if there was no google, and I wasn’t being lazy, I would have stared at it for a while, too, trying to find a way to appreciate it just because of this conversation. Man, maybe people do this for sport, I would have just stared at it for a long time doing nothing and saying it’s a lady floating to a door that represents the future or something, but yeah, due to its many different ways of interpretation, it just reflects the viewer.
Some could see a sinking ship and that woman is on it, some could see it as a silly scam and a joke, seeing the person buying it for millions as an idiot. Yet at the same time, maybe that buyer sees it as something else, maybe he’s high and sees it as something moving (emotionally or literally), maybe he sees its value as all the controversy that happened over it. Technical trash I know, but there IS a way to appreciate it, whether you do or not is your own opinion. Hell, if you think about it, it kind of reflected how cynical you are.
“There is no art in laziness, it’s called being uncreative, unimaginative, not artistic.”
Punk rock is uncreative if you’re into music, it’s literally just power chords, and is quite unimaginative in its lyrics because it wants to break free of the mold of society. It is pretty damn lazy when it comes to composition, too, if you listen to it. But it is music, and there are people who appreciate it.
Anyway, that’s an opinion, but that kind of painting could be taken as an impulsive expression or something, sure someone could try scamming due to the standards being set (hello music industry), but it could also be an honest expression.
This for example, is also not detailed at all, but look at how beautiful the lines are, and how they create a full image of a face with soft strokes. It’s an expression of beauty so it qualifies for art right?
But the technique? It’s just a few lines! Compare that to old paintings, it’s technically nothing, but that’s the beauty of it. It shows you exactly what our time is. It’s also not very imaginative, it’s just a woman’s face, is it creative? Well… not really what’s new in this one? It’s just a face.
My point is, every single thing can be appreciated in its own right. You see what you want to see in it. It’s a matter of opinion, and it reflects who you are.
I guess,
Saed
Quina
Messing around with Adobe Illustrator a bit, thought this sort of “abstraction” of Quina from Final Fantasy IX would be nice on a t-shirt (without the background), or maybe with the shirt having one of the colors of the background… Or maybe the face on a black background.
Anyway… Here it is.
… I think you can click on it to enlarge it.
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Cheers,
Saed
Working Class Hippie 
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