In the classic Calvin and Hobbes comics there are several moments when Calvin sends notes to his future self. The more academic description comes from Wikipedia:

In a storyline in the daily comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin attempted to create an ontological paradox by travelling two hours into the future to retrieve a story he had to write for homework and did not want to do. He reasoned that by that time it would be done and he could then bring it back to the past and spend the time goofing off instead of working. Of course, the future Calvin didn't have the homework either, having decided two hours previously to time-travel instead of doing it. Calvin eventually ended up fighting with two of his future selves, while Hobbes and his future self wrote a story based on the whole predicament. The story (which was about Hobbes saving the day) received an A+.

I actually done this once in my life (writing to myself) - primarily to see how long it would take to post something in town. But I found it quite interesting writing to my future self. It is sort of like reading a journal or diary years after the fact.

Well, Forbes has a page where you can email yourself or someone in the future. I am thinking of sending myself an email in 1 year. 5 years could be interesting. 20 years is a bit optimistic considering I go through email accounts as frequently as my cat goes through chew toys.

Anyhow, it could be a bit of fun. Delayed gratification.

It could also be a bit heart wrenching especially for those who may send messages then pass away before they are delivered.

Regardless, it might be nice to let your future selves know that you are thinking about them.

(from Boing Boing)

It is no wonder that the riots in Paris, ignited by the deaths of two Muslim youths, coincides with Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan. For many Muslims world over, it is time of thanksgiving, the end of a period of reflection, and celebration of family and faith. It is, for those living in west, also a moment in time that sets the divisions between cultures in fine contrast.

Let me explain: I wanted to share with my class images of how people celebrate both Diwali (the Hindu festival of lights) and Eid al-Fitr. Doing a search for images I could find many for Diwali but was really frustrated by the fact that all images pertaining to Eid were, for the most part, people praying. The strangeness is this: think about Christmas and now imagine doing a search for the holiday and calling up only pictures of people sitting in church.

Flickr has some 500 photographs of people all over the world celebrating Eid. The images are often personal with little that actually gives some overriding sense of the celebrations.

And this brings me back to Paris and the riots that started in Clichy-sous-Bois. It takes us to Birmingham and Amsterdam. All these places in Europe that have large immigrant populations from predominately Muslim countries. In these places Muslim immigrants live in what could be considered nothing less than ghettos. Not only is there a lack of integration but downright bitter poverty and boiling frustration.

Radicalism blossoms in these conditions and European countries, which welcomed immigration in the past partly as a long term result of colonialism and as means of building and sustaining modern economies, are now facing the stark reality that, whether they like it not, immigrant cultures cannot be ignored. To continue on this path means only more roiting and unrest, at best, and, worse, radical fundamentalism. Islam, throughout Europe now, is an identity one can hold onto when one is neither Moroccan or French, Turkish or German, Pakistani or English.

If governments and their citizens really considered this and are really concerned about the potential for terrorism they would act immediately to integrate disaffected populations and begin to celebrate the cultures which now augment their great traditions.

Back to the images of Eid. When I can do a search and find images of Eid celebrations in Paris, or when I see a commercial for Eid in London, and when I look and can say to myself, "that's French" or "that's Dutch" I know that we, this global culture, will be just a little better off.

Visual Complexity is a vertible warehouse of over 200 examples of representations of complex networks.

It is a fascinating site in that it makes explicit the complexity that underlies seemingly simple things. Take high school social networks and look at the image above. Hmmm. See that little dot over by itself on the left....that's me.

Actually what can be gleaned from this image is that white people (in white) hang around with other white people (mostly) and african-americans (in green) with other african-americans (mostly) and that everyone else fits in all over the place (at this one particular school).

Some of the images are hard to read and understand. Some are full of overlapping images and we can't really make sense of them. But, in some instances, that may actually be the point.

(Almost Forgot: Thanks, Jayme)

(click for higher resolution image, buddy.)

Thought I'd work in both "Remote" and "Broken" as I was too busy to complete last weeks entry. I was really pleased with the way the woman turned out. I drew solely from my mind's eye as I was in a hurry (a perpetual state of being these days). My car is a bit junky but that's the point, I guess.

The rock is really funny...out of place, awkward. But a convenient place to rest, I suppose. Whatever to tell the story...

UPDATE: It is strange how seeing an image every day influences our feelings. I have gone from luke warm to completely frigid in my feelings about this image. All the corners cut, the hurrying through just to post something...I know I can do much better and will.

I don't quite know how to describe this one.

(from Gizmodo)

I am very interested in the ways that storytelling can impart information that is otherwise difficult or, frankly, too dry to present quickly and effectively. Edward Tufte,an information designer, in his books (Visual Explanations in particular) finds wonderful confections and visual displays that tell stories and reveal important information if the viewer takes time to read them. Tufte's examples are wonderful but some take an added bit of knowledge or explanation to understand the stories the way they were intended by the author or artist.

Sometimes, informative storytelling happens in such a way that complex information gets wrapped in a wonder candy-coated shell and the what we learn taste so good going down. This little story about Polio, I feel, works in that way.

When you've finished reading it, you'll say, "Makes sense to me."

Amy Archibald, from somewhere in Oklahoma, has crocheted these Yoda ears. Light sabers and Darth Vader mask (possibly) in the works.

I still cherish the papier-mache mask Darth Vader mask my mom made for me in '78. Aren't moms great?!

I don't know about you but I am really rather enjoying the whole Plame leak investigation/Judith Miller/Rove/Libby affair.

The best and most comprehensive coverage with video clips from a number of tv news programs (and the daily show, of course), I believe, is Crooks and Liars.

In the same vein, you have to love the Daily Show's view of White House as a television show (click on "The White House Show"). Brilliant.

(Click on image for larger version in Spectaculovision™)

Inked a quick sketch and went with a modest palette. Pretty quick again. I like the simple story it tells. Only disappointment was I couldn't work a squid into it. Enjoy.

(Click on image for larger version)

This is a quicky and I don't feel done with it. I have to post because I am having trouble finding time to work on this. Mid-term week. Sigh. And the students gripe about it.

Anyway, this time round I tried to simplify my process. I was away from the scanner again (curse those faculty and committee meetings!) and didn't want the frustration of not being able to get the effects that I desired with the tablet and mouse. I feel as though each week is so divergently different from the next that I haven't a consistant style.

I came across this blog offering and decided that I could do a much better job of finding words that may have negative repercussions on the way a potential employer views your resume. Here is my selection:

1.) Mujahideen

2.) Jiggy

3.) Nasal Spray

4.) Necrophilia

5.) Tickly

6.) Aardvark

7.) Inflatable

8.) Dander

9.) Plutonium *

10.) Peep

* This word is safe to use if you are apply for work in: a nuclear power plant, a university research lab, Hollywood, convenience store on route 66.

I don't remember if I've talked about it before but much of my ire about metrocentrism came from reading Richard Florida's Rise of the Creative Class. While that book, which talks about how important creative people are to the economy, highlights hipster creative youth (which in my research often means young white males) it does so at the expense of other more pressing issues that cities (and rural areas) face. It also glosses over the struggles young creatives face.

Angela McRobbie, who studies British culture industries such as fashion design, lays bare the mythology of the hipster, artsy-fartsy lifestyle. She highlights how labour actually places the burden of social programs back on the individual creative producer and dismantles unionization through a 'hollywoodization' of work. Creative individuals who love the work they do go from job to job with no long term prospects and very little security net. This is the seedy underside of the creative class.

Add to that a city's need to support growing numbers of underprivileged individuals, address social inequities, and, heck, in some parts of the country just consider mundane infrastructure issues makes the focus on attracting creatives short sighted. Diversified creative communities are important, don't get me wrong, and we should pay attention to what their members have to offer. But the discussion needs to move beyond a celebration of the few who have made it and happen to be currently living in the city. There is a whole country that could use creative people, not just in the capacity they were trained, but in ways that could help communities grow and flourish.

For a good dismantling of Florida's creative class arguments read this article.

I've just surfaced again from being inside some of the oldest and most remarkable books in the world.

The British Library hosts an online gallery that is filled with beautiful examples of historical works that are not only interesting to read (and, in some instances, decipher) but to merely regard.

(thanks to Jann)

Sometimes the most beautiful things in world are really quite ugly. More often than not there is something deep within us that prompts a certain visceral reaction that favors an aesthetic. Or, more simply yet, we have emotional connections that allow us to look past the object itself and see only the beauty in our mind's eye. Don't get what I am talking about then think about the crap your mom posted on the refrigerator.

Of course, this begs the question whether there are generally accepted notions of beauty regardless of culture or education. The more interesting question perhaps is why do we find things so friggin' ugly sometimes.

When we spend time exploring the production of visual materials the process is often such that the exploration - not unlike a romance - builds a bond between the product and the producer. That bond, if enough time is spent building that relationship, can be quite strong.

What is the point to this? What does this have to do with the image above?

The image is of Hotel Fox, a hotel in Copenhagen that is a Volkswagen project. The hotel will house the journalists coming to report on the unveiling of a new car. Illustrators and designers were hired to do up each room. The results are very strange and, I must admit in my opinion of some, awful.

Why do I have such strong sentiments? Take a look at this room. I cannot imagine spending the night in it only to wake up face to face with an oversized pink mexican hip hop wrestler. It is so much the illustrator's private party that I can't seem to feel welcome.

It's got me to thinking that, while I celebrate the freedom to play and liberation from Martha Stewart's aesthetic grasp, I find the work too much, well, work to interact with and appreciate.

(please click on image to see larger version - don't be shy now!)

Once again went for the all digital solution and tried to get my markmaking somewhat looser and similar to a pencil sketch. I also wanted something lighter in spirit than last week's experiment, hence the jolly polar bear reading, oh my, Kierkegaard. So much for lighter....sigh...

I found this and thought to myself that it would be good example for my Intro to Viz Com class of how narrrative is constructed in film as the little movie shows how elements from the horror movie The Shining can be reworked into a faux-preview of a romantic comedy.

My colleague pointed out, more brillantly, that it'd be a good example of how media can be twisted and meaning extracted and replaced - in essence, how propaganda could be made by remixing story elements.

Regardless, it is very funny. Check it out.

(from Screenhead)

Answer: I prefer to drive with both hands on the wheel (har har har).

(see last post)

On the short commute to work each day I pass through a stretch of wheatfields and basalt quarries. I've driven the road so many times that the car seems to drive itself while I work out the day's schedule in my mind or deal with my cowlicks in the rearview mirror. Anybody with even a modest amount of driving to do each day knows what I am talking about.

But it struck me the other day how much this little stretch of road is changing and that startled me out of my complacency. It is only a matter of time before the road is widened or businesses start popping up on cheap farmland. Of course, like most things rural change happens at a pre-global warming glacial pace. Anyway, what spurred this revelation was the site of a row of cars parked on the shoulder and a troop of photographers (from a university class perhaps?) taking pictures of the barn shown above.

I saw another photographer today and one yesterday. That barn is getting photographed more than Kate Moss these days, I thought. Why? Driving home tonight I looked closely and noticed that it is near collapse. The bent boards on its sides are straining under the weight of the structure and are about to give way any day.

Oddly enough the barn has always been there - at least for as long as I can remember. It is a metaphor for the agricultural history and the small scale lives that made up this community and thousands like it all over the west and the whole country for that matter.

Now I understand the need to capture it and to hold on to the moment before it is gone: it is not the barn that we will miss, after all there are hundreds dotting the roads and hills surrounding us, but instead it is the idea behind that metaphor - the idea of another time and place.

As classes have hit full stride and I have a number of projects in the pipeline, Metasurface is suffering slightly.

Deeper, as you can see, is up in a skeletal state. Deeper will be an expanded portfolio section (the portfolio that is there now will transmogrify into something quite different) and a storehouse for my academic writing and ideas that may be too large for the average post.

In the meantime, Illustration Friday is providing a needed respite from the stresses of the week and, hopefully, some interesting alternative content for this site.

(please click for larger and more legible version)

This week's project was again an experiment in mood and narrative. 'Fresh' always conjures up such happy things for me or, perhaps, the designer's term for anything new. I tried to get it to take on a contrary meaning.

Anyway, like the other recent pieces (escape and depth) I continued playing with an all digital process (usually I work in pencil, then ink, scan it in and only use the computer for coloring). I am not enjoying it as much as I thought I would. After a number of Photoshop freeze-ups in which I lost work, I decided to just get the thing done before heading back to work tomorrow.