The Boring Store

Wicker Park’s 826CHI (www.826chi.org) is an after-school writing program for Chicago kids ages 6-18. The center is part of a nation-wide chain of free writing programs founded by novelist Dave Eggers, who also publishes the popular McSweeney’s magazine and humor web site.

The program has been offering drop-in tutoring, field trips and bookbinding programs for local school kids for more than a year and has just put the finishing touches on its storefront: a mysterious and often-times hilarious “secret agent supply store” known as “The Boring Store.”

According to 826CHI Executive Director Leah Guenther, the secret camera-glasses, mustache disguise kits and underwater voice amplifiers in The Boring Store serve a triple purpose: they fund new programs for the 826CHI kids, jolt them with quick doses of imagination every time they drop by and grab the attention of every adult (a.k.a. potential volunteer) who secretly thinks he would have made one heck of a spy in another life.

Let’s take a look at the only store in Chicago that denies its own existence.

[ txt,img src: The Chicago Methods Reporter ]

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The Boring Store: A photo tour of 826CHI’s new Chicago spy shop

Read it on The Chicago Methods Reporter

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Diesel Wall:Big ideas need big spaces

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The Micragirls

The Micragirls 

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SCR#002:Drop Clock

“DROPCLOCK” is an aesthetically intriguing motion clock screensaver. Every minute of real time is numerically expressed with heavy Helvetica dropping into water in super slow-motion. Be captivated as the contrasting elements of organic water and solid typography infinitely morph and mix.

[ text.img via SCR ]

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The Visionary Art of Gil Bruvel

[ text,img source: ursi’s blog ]

Gil Bruvel’s visionary style grew out of the dream of making intuitive art. “I have no interest in recreating reality”, he says; instead his work emphasizes the imaginative aspects of the mind and body, along with intuition.
After a childhood spent making art and studying at Laurent de Montcassin’s Restoration Workshop in France, the classically trained Bruvel emerged as a defining force in the Visionary Art Movement.

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David Spriggs: Paradox of Power

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subject: The Paradox of Power

Art Mur Publication May 2007

The Paradox of Power-David Spriggs

Text by Andria Hickey

Indeed, all things move, all things run, all things are rapidly changing. A

profile is never motionless before our eyes, but it constantly appears and

disappears. On account of the persistency of an image upon the retina,

moving objects constantly multiply themselves; their form changes like

rapid vibrations, in their mad career. Thus a running horse has not four

legs, but twenty, and their movements are triangular.

Umberto Boccioni

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Natalie Shau

Natalie Shau

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James Jean

James Jean

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Art by Vitche

at the Jonathan Levine Gallery

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Kitab al-Bulhan

The ‘Kitab al-Bulhan’ (Book of Wonders) [MS. Bodl. Or. 133] manuscript is a collection of Arabic divinatory treatises produced in the late 14th century hosted by the Oxford Digital Library.

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Vladimir Gvozdariki

Illustrations © Vladimir Gvozdev at the Gvozdariki site.

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Sinkin’ soon

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Nicoline Patricia Malina

Images rights reserved by Nicoline Patricia Malina.

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David Lynch and psychosis

( text source: mindhacks, image source: imdb )

The Psychologist has just made an article available that looks at the parallels between the most recent David Lynch film, Inland Empire, and what we know of the psychology of psychosis.

The article looks at some of the proposed pathologies of psychosis, drawn from cognitive science, and suggests how these are represented in Lynch’s latest movie.

Paranoia comes with an inherent sense of personal threat and concomitant fear. Inland Empire’s dark and chilling world is produced in part by David Lynch’s use of story. While fear is generated with genuinely unsettling imagery and dark shadowy lighting, it also comes from the carefully managed attrition of any recognisable storyline. The audience, who have been led through the early stages of the plot with some of the conventional devices of storytelling (coherent dialogue, linear chronology) are suddenly thrown into a world of unfamiliar film cuts, unexplained locations and wordless acting. We are forced to jump to our own conclusions and build what narrative we will from scant concrete evidence as to events. Our sense of sense itself forces us to put something together and, given the presence of ominous emotions and apparent malice, what we put together is a paranoid and terrifying vision of the intentions of the characters in the film and even the world we inhabit.

Lynch’s hallucinatory style certainly suggests altered realities and this is not the first time that it has been linked with mind-being reality distortion, as countless interpretations of Mulholland Drive testify.

Link to article ‘David Lynch and psychosis’.

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Sil_van_der_Woerd

Worms [2007]

This experimental underground music video shows Lolly Jane Blue on her way down the earth layers; a journey leading to a climactic underwater ballet…

Swim [2005]

In a time where all is designed to be controlled, the elementary force of our very existence brings an undeniable fusion for a magic moment. This short film is simply about the power that brings us all to life.

Duet [2004]

Modern and classical merge in a sky-blue scenery at the first peep of dawn.

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