For a while I thought creating a photo mosaic was sort of a lost art.  That is until a friend of mine called me up and asked me, “So what you know about software that build these things?”  So for the last few days, I have been very diligently testing software that will create photo mosaics.  The problem is fitting it into my criteria it must be inexpensive and easy to use.

Running in the top of my poll is a piece called, Mazaika 3.0.

     Back in the day, I was rather artistic — literature, art and music for the most part — but somewhere along the line, I realized that my form of Literature wasn’t for the masses.  The Art that I created could be sold or not based simply on how I named it.  My Music was destined to be devoured by greedy, leg-breaking asshats who’d make it unaffordable.  There was always a business angle to discourage me.

     A bit of cartooning proved to be humorous, but not socially acceptable.  Back in high school, my Art teacher looked upon those doodles with great disdain.  She’d often ban me from the class because she knew what I was going to draw before I’d finished the first few strokes.
     “I won’t have that filth in my classroom!” she’d scream.
     “It’s not filth, it’s…”
     “Get out, get out, GET OUT!”
     No amount of explaining could convince her otherwise.

     While it turned me away from Art for some time, it was all for the good.  Ingenuity became the outlet for my creativity, and I avoided the life of a starving artist.
     Besides, I still have the odd spurt of creativity that I can do something cool with.  *grin*

     So, Mrs. Cooper, this video’s for you. 

(Video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=apP29XeK1o4)

Tip: Bluepaintred - I’ll get back to my regular reads soon enough

     I haven’t found any suitable artists to keep writing about on the 2nd of every month.  Phil Hansen, who I blogged about in May, impressed me a lot because he’s not a pretentious asshat like so many others.  I’ve seen a lot of impressive artists, but a crappy attitude can turn me off their work regardless of how much I like it.
     So … Check out Phil’s Goodbye Art, where he take X-Ray photographs made from sand and foam, and… well… watch the video.  Cool stuff. 

(Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5anMHmYonk)

     Fracas did a silly post the other day about Kissing, and posted a really nice photo along with it.  I looked all over trying to find who it belonged to, thinking, “Here’s a Photo Artist who really manages to strike a nerve or two…”  Alas, I couldn’t where it came from.  Some people might disagree, but to me, it’s something I’d have hanging on my wall…

     As far as Photographic Artists are concerned, I know an absolutely brilliant photographer, still a hidden talent, who promises to get his portfolio together soon… And strangely enough, he writes for this blog…

     I had some blogs saved up complaining about a Web 2.0 meme I couldn’t finish (sorry), a Wikipedia Article, and the fact that I couldn’t find a suitable Time Lapse artist on the 2nd … So … Here we go …  

     Web 2.0 is an old concept.  We were using the term back in 1999 at a Web Design studio where I worked at as a lead developer… It had to do with the seperation of form and function, an optimized user experience with nearly seamless transitions from Desktop to Web, and ability to allow clients to manipulate that experience in a way that helped them make sense of the data they were viewing.
     Despite the Wikipedia article which says O’Reilly Media quoted it in 2003, the term’s been around for more than 10 years… Seriously, believing that is like believing Al Gore created teh Internets.
     Also contrary to popular belief (especially to a lot of anti-Microsoft asshats), the first real “Web 2.0″ app was Microsoft’s old Exchange Webmail client — thrown away due to its instability, instead of fixed and re-packaged — which boasted more features than even Roundcube Webmail can get away with now.

     This video, however, has only a little to do with any of that.  Instead, it’s a great piece of artwork which highlights the things that’ve happened over the last ten years and gives us some things to think about as we go through our cultural transitions.

(Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE)

Tip: Sir Rantzalot, more commonly known as Rantz, who, for all practical purposes appears to be a gentleman and a scholar.  Or something.  heh

Well as I slipped, tripped, and stuck my Blogitude.com in your wife, (see the ever-changing logo above), I remembered an Eddie Izzard skit from Dress to Kill:

But we’ve got known in Britain for making the smaller films, you know. Recently, we’ve been pulling out of that into the more “Trainspotting” area, but the smaller films, they’re kind of “a room with a view with a staircase and a pond”-type movies. Films with very fine acting, but the drama is rather sort of subsued and - subsumed or - a word like that. Sub- something or another. You know, just folded in and everything’s people opening doors.

“Oh, I’m - oh, what? Well, I’ve - oh.”

“What is it, Sebastian? I’m arranging matches.”

“Well, I - I thought you - … I’d better go.”

“Yes, I think you’d better had.” ( sings morose melody )

And you can’t eat popcorn to that! You’re going ( mimes trying to eat popcorn but getting frustrated  and sighs ).

Whereas if the film did any little bit of business in America, if the film did some decent bit of business, then Hollywood would take it, and they’d remake it, and they’d up the budget by 50 million and it’d be called, “The Room With A View of Hell!” “Staircase of Satan!” “Pond of Death.” And have people open the door, going,

“You’re fucking in here all the time! All the time you’re in here with the fucking matches! In here with the fucking matches! You’re fucking doing and fucking ( clucking )”

“You don’t talk to me that way! You don’t talk to me that way! You fuck my wife? You fuck my wife? You fuck my wife? You fuck my wife? You fuck my wife?”

“I am your wife!”

“That doesn’t matter! That doesn’t matter! I say again, you fuck my wife?”

“All right, yes, I fucked your wife. I am your wife, and I fucked her.”

” ( Nonsensical ) fucking matches - I can’t get ‘em… I’m going to drive around town and put babies on spikes.”

( sounds of babies sliding on the spikes )

“Oh, no! Space monkeys are attacking!” A whole new part of the film that wasn’t in the original! ( mimics battle sounds )

“Damn, its jammed!” ( dialing on mobile ) “Janine, I love you really, even though you fucked my wife…” ( big explosion )

( mimics eating and drinking everything in sight while watching ) “It’s a fucking handbag. With a brick in it! It’s the Queen! Don’t know who that is…” Yeah.

And then I thought to myself, “Gee, Mark hasn’t posted and unknown artist this week… ” Comedy even in word form is art.  (Especially if someone can cover an existing work in feces or make an object out of it and then it is placed in MoMA.)  So I present to you a teacher, who not unlike some of us here at blogitude.com shares a wonderful ablity to play with the mind using words.  Always speaking his mind,  Taylor Mali, is simply here to make you use your head for something besides a hat rack.

     It’s May 2nd, and as promised last month, it’s time to spotlight another talented artist.

     Seattle-based Phil Hansen fits the bill.  He’s quite different from the last couple of artists I’ve blogged about.  While the others are speed painters with incredible skills, that’s only a small portion of what Hansen does.
     Hansen uses a myriad of techniques, tools and materials from construction equipment to Starbucks cups.  When you think “Modern Artist,” and perhaps even “Avant-garde,” this is the type you end up with.

     He’s earned himself quite the controversial reputation by making a number of political statements with his artwork.  From Rosa Parks to the KKK, from a homeless man to George Bush, he’s come up with some damned fine work and managed to get more than a few people thinking.
     My personal favorite is entitled, “48 Women.”  It’s a portrait of convicted serial killer Gary Ridgway, aka The Green River Killer.  Up close, you’ll see that the portrait is made up of pixelated photos of a few of his forty-eight victims, including some which merely read, “Jane Doe.”

     Hansen defended the painting on a 2004 news clip from KIRO:

Some people don’t want me to give more glory to him, more fame, more exposure.  But at the same time, if we’d never do that, if we never see his face again, we’d forget those forty-eight women.

     On to the timelapse…

     In one of his more tame moods, he karate chops Bruce Lee onto the canvas:

     Next up, in a work entitled “The Value of Blood,” Hansen paints North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il … yes, in blood.  Kids, do not try this at home…

     Be sure and check out Phil’s other videos on YouTube.  And, of course, you’ll definitely want to check out his website at philinthecircle.com.

     And, hey… if ya like it… Check out his store.

I was looking around for Knoxville blogs and came across this post. It was just too damn perfect not to share. All you locals can relate:

So one of my bitches (yeah Allison I’m talking about you) moved with her hubs to Los Angeles so as to cozy a little closer to what the Pacific Coast has to offer. The first time I spoke to her after the big move, she was telling me how a vast majority of the working class in LA have no work ethic at all. Everyone is working at Starbucks until they get their big break, or working at the call center until they get their “show.” Nobody just worked anywhere because they liked it or because they liked dealing with the public or because they might learn a little something about life and happiness after putting in a day’s hard work. Thus jobs are disposable and I have to imagine that customer service and morale in general are rock bottom there. I thought about it a lot and thought about how I have been at the same job for 2 years. I hate it but can find some merit in what I do. I don’t love my job, but I like it and I love my co-workers. It is hard to imagine leaving and even harder for me to imagine how a person could go into an employment situation thinking that in one week they might quit. I simply could not understand or imagine life in LA. That all changed Sunday…  

My boyfriend and I took a trip to our local used book warehouse, McKay’s bookstore, to find some literature. We of course found the perfect books at the perfect price ($2 yo) and headed to the cashier to pay. Lo and behold, within 20 seconds I was transported from Knoxville, Tennessee to Los Angeles, California. I was faced with the whiniest, rudest bunch of wanna-be artist, writers, actors, comedians, musicians and maybe even some trapeze artists who would obviously rather sit around and seem self-important than do their job and check me and my $2 book out. Checking out at this store is like taking a much-needed crap, it starts uncomfortbly gets down-right painful but is such a relief when it is over. You take the book up to the counter, the cashier (usually wearing some variety of either leather or flannel and smelling a bit more than faintly of cigarette smoke and patcholi) looks at your selections with a critical eye and most likely makes a scoffing sound. If you’re really constipated for a bad experience, they will even make comment on your selection.For example, I once bought a Radiohead Cd and I was informed, “…understanding their music is something that so few lucky souls can do.” The cashier than asked me if I felt lucky then smirked, “ Didn’t think so…” Once I ventured to buy North by Northwest on DVD and was informed that DVD’s were the bastardization of the movie culture and this particularly surly salesperson bets that I also prefer CDs to vinyl.

All I have to say for ye employees of Mckay’s, be ye sick or weary of the working world, WE ALL HAVE TO HAVE REAL JOBS! You are in Knoxville and will probably never have a recording contract or a movie deal or an exhibit and you will probably never be able to support yourself with your art. Don’t stop trying, for goodness sake, but do stop acting like I am the bitch that is making you work at McKay’s instead of writing your best seller. And if checking me out makes you that unhappy…GET ANOTHER JOB!

Or just move to LA….they will love you there

     On March 2nd, I did the article showing off the talent of Nico / Channel Nexx as he speed-painted John Locke in Photoshop, and a Lord of the Rings cover on canvas.  Now that it’s April 2nd, I thinking maybe this should become a regular feature…

     But this one Jason / Eclectic Asylum blew me away even more.  He doesn’t use fancy gimmicks like Photoshop — no way!  He does this in MS Paint, which is unarguably the crappiest piece of Graphics software (well, it’s supposed to be that) ever written!
     I present you with:  The Mona Lisa, in MS Paint.

     Way cool!

     He’s also been running a contest:  “Strike a pose, and get a portrait!”  Now watch him paint the last winner (Daxflame) in Chocolate Syrup:

     Of course, he couldn’t ship a chocolate portrait without nasty melting issues… 

     Be sure sure and check out Eclectic Asylum’s profile on youtube for more examples of him painting with “other” things besides chocolate…

     Quite by accident, I ran across a time-lapse video of a Photoshop paing by an “arte fusion” artist named Nico.  Some of you have probably seen this guy before…

     If you can see it fast enough, you might actually learn something about Photoshop.  Some people, of course, will discount Nico’s talent as a computerized trick, so here’s another one of his… 

     He’s is a talented artist, no doubt, but doing the time-lapse video is particularly brilliant in that it turns the relatively mundane act of painting into an enjoyable act of performance art.  It’s difficult to say what’s better: the artistic creations themselves, or the time-lapse videos of their production?

     For even more, check out his Profile page on YouTube.