Yay for cell phone drivers!

I know the title of this entry sound sarcastic, but really, it's not.

Sure, when I see someone driving badly in traffic and they're on their phone, my first inclination is to shout at them 'Hang up and Drive' (though usually littered with significantly more 4 letter words) but I was thinking about it the other day and I realized that they signify the end of a world.

Not armageddon or the 'sentient computer eradicates mankind' sort of end of the world, but rather kind of an information singularity.

Let me back up a bit. It's been very disheartening, seeing in the news, all this conservative spin, blatant lies being presented as 'fact' to lull the sheep. It makes me sad when I see the cancerous growth of evangelical religious groups who brainwash their children to dogmatically adhere to conservative doctrine... But... I also have come to realize that organized religion is becoming so violent because it is in its death throes. A wounded animal is always most dangerous.

In 10 to 15 years, there will be the inevitable backlash against all of this crap but this backlash will be different. It won't produce a similar backlash back to conservative values when it's all over. The cell phone drivers are a sign.

People, interacting with people. Talking, communicating. We are getting more and more access to information. Even if people are just talking about who is dating who on their phones, you can bet that nearly none of them are reciting dogmatic adherence to religion on the phones. That's not why people call each other, and if they did, in the car, you can say 'Um.. I'm driving, I need to go..' I would bet you that at the deepest level of human psyche, NO ONE likes being threatened and lectured. In the past, religion has been able to control contact between people, but with the internet and cheap cellular communication, all of that is starting to break down.

Very soon, there's going to be a point in human evolution where we can all be in almost constant contact with almost anyone we like, and that's the crux of it. We're not going to choose people that make us feel uncomfortable, we're going to chose people we like. People are going to talk, spread ideas, and on some level, they are going to have to think. We're approaching a moment where mankind will have no choice but to be aware of other religions, ethnicities, ideas, and it's going to break dogmatic adherences.

No, we, as a race probably won't be smarter. Most of the information distributed will be football scores, the price of milk, and the clever thing someone's baby did, but as frequently demonstrated by the shopping habits of american consumers. Sufficient quantity can make up for a lack of quality. Religious dogma has been steadily losing power since Gutenberg introduced the printing press to European culture and I think we're close to the end for it. Information is the nemesis of dogma.

So for the shrill pious evangelicals out there, revel in the approach of your doomsday but know that it's the end of your world, not the end of ours, and the annoying rings of a billion cell phones are the heralds of your passing.

Modern Art

Last Friday, Stacey and I went to the MoMA. Didn't find the exhibit we were looking for but had a good time none the less.

In the MoMA, there are no rope barriers keeping you from the pieces and you can view them as close as you want. Sort of a strange and even unnerving experience for me, because in the back of my mind I'm like, "What if I tripped and fell against this million dollar Picasso?" Happily, that did not happen. I kept wishing prickvixen had come with us as I feel she's someone that would really get modern art and there were several pieces I thought she'd probably quite enjoy.

Lots of things I liked, lots of things I didn't like, as Stacey pointed out, some of the pieces were interesting only because of their age (meaning the styles had become so often used that they're a part of daily culture and might otherwise seem unremarkable)

The one thing I wish I'd got to see at the MoMA that I didn't get to see was myself. I have shockingly red hair and I was dressed mostly in black that day and looking a bit pale (too little sleep) I had a stranger come up to me and tell me that in front of one of the large pieces, I'd suddenly just vanished and became part of the artwork. Stacey saw it too. Apparently it was a pretty neat effect, but I didn't get it see it.

Final notes on modern art. If you can barely stand looking at Lichtenstein normally, do NOT do it when you've had only 2 or 3 hours sleep for several days in a row. It WILL make your eyes bleed.

15 minute projects

So, in the Maya class, the instructor has required us to do 15 minutes a day of work in Maya. The idea is sort of like the Artist Ambushes. Give yourself a topic and you have 15 minutes to create it. We're currently working on modeling and basic texturing, and of modeling, we've so far mostly worked with NURBs revolve and the sculpt surfaces tool. Though this week we also got loft, extrude, duplicate, and the all-powerful project curve and trim-surfaces tools. He also gave us a tutorial on Paint Effects, but I have far from mastered that yet as seen below.

( A week's worth of 15 minute Maya Projects )