Sharing the wealth

I found a few cool links and things online today to which I thought I'd direct your attention.

First, Google has an "In-House Philosopher." I want that job. I found this out by listening to a TedTalk by Damon Horowitz. I like to listen to them during the job search-cover letter-resume writing process. You can find the talk here and find out more here.

Next, I found this amazing artist whose work you should check out. He makes art using data, digital technology, and crowdsourcing. Wikipedia says crowdsourcing is "the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community (a 'crowd'), through an open call." The artist's name is Aaron Koblin.
His work is seriously amazing on both visual and conceptual aesthetic levels. Really. His bio says:

Aaron Koblin is an artist specializing in data and digital technologies. Aaron's work takes real-world and community generated data and uses it to reflect on cultural trends and the changing relationship between humans and technology. He received the National Science foundation's first place award for science visualization and is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He made Radiohead's "House of Cards" video and two of his other music video collaborations have been Grammy-nominated. In 2010 Aaron was the Abramowitz Artist in Residence at MIT and currently leads the Data Arts Team in Google’s Creative Lab.

To find out why this post has a "sheep" tag, check out his TedTalk and website.

Beauty

Oh my gosh, this is just the most mesmerizing, calming piece of art --

Thought of You.

Music: The Weepies, The World Spins Madly On

Patterns in nature

Just a quick post to say how nice the Denver Botanical Gardens were today! I went with Rita, who was in town for the night/day. It was actually a bit of a gray day in Denver, so we skipped a hike in the mountains. We decided to go local and visit the gardens instead. We had a nice time walking around for a few hours.

I really love patterns in nature. There is something reassuring in that they confirm there is both order and meaning and incomprehensible absurdity. Patterns are perfect. Patterns are also an inexplicable fluke of life. I don't understand them, but I think they are beautiful. Look:

a Photo a Day

I am sure there is a lot of hidden beauty here in Denver, so I want to be ready for it when I see it. To help, I'm trying to bring my camera around with my more often. I like how it puts me on watch, always looking around with a creative eye. It makes me pause and think for a second, "Huh, would that make a good photo?" or "Wow, that's so absurd." I'm training myself to look take another look, and then to look even closer. Here are some photos so far - nothing spectacular, but it's a start.

A full rainbow:



A summer thunderstorm leaving me in its wake:



This just struck me as ironic, simple, and profound all at once:



And, today, I saw a flutterbye - it even stayed in place while I took some photos. Look!:

How much is that baby cello in the window?

I went to Denver's First Friday last week at the Santa Fe art district. The galleries are open late with free wine and nibbles. Pretty decent people watching and as close to "culture" as I've found in Denver so far. I saw this cool cello mosaic in one of the galleries. Wow! It was so pretty, but I couldn't help feeling a little badly for the cello (it being all mosaic-ified, stuck with tiles and everything). I mean, the poor baby cello's career is over at just a half-size.

Naturally, I e-mailed my Diana-the-cellist to tell her all about it and she asked for a picture. So, the next day I biked back there and took a photo. The photo is a bit surreal and unintentionally "creative" because the sunny day made the background behind me reflect in the window almost as strongly as the actual schtuff in front of me.

Oh, and Diana said not to feel badly for baby cello because it probably likes getting all dressed up. And, sure, that makes sense because who doesn't like getting all snazzied up?



P.S. Price tag? $2,500 smacks. Sigh.