my anxiety is through the roof because of this post. i can't grapple with existential nothingness.

I double agree about the fact that it's not photorealism, but I also have to argue that it's not "hyperrealism" because that, too, has come to define a contemporary kind of painting. Daniel Jackson, for instance. I think we're just dealing with a new kind of sculpture. As Absimiliard points out, it's a lot like the kind of pseudo-realistic, graphic stuff you see in videogames that don't do obscene amounts of rendering: a sort of "close enough!"

On a different note, I immediately thought of the photography that the character Claire does in Six Feet Under, where she photographs her family members, prints the photos, cuts up the photos, and collages them onto the faces/heads of the same members, then photographs THAT.

If the telcos like Verizon suck so bad and like doing bad things to us, why are you guys accepting ad revenue from them on BBtv? It's very contradictory.

This reminds me of a beautiful glass sculpture piece that I saw a little over a year ago at the Corning Museum of Glass when I was living in Upstate New York. It's called "It's Raining Knives" by Silvia Levenson, from Argentina, and is a beautiful piece about the hidden anxieties and instability of living in Suburbia, especially in this day and age.

Photo:
http://positron.truman.edu/~edis/pictures/LakeOntario07/LakeOntario07-Pages/Image133.html

Official release article with photo:
http://www.cmog.org/index.asp?pageId=1467

MattyD-

I'd like to disagree with you here, on several of your points. First of all, I think New Yorkers and those in nearby areas DO wring their hands in fear. In particular, people who already have anxieties about traveling, be it by plane or by train, are at this point paranoid. The government has not done a good job of responding to 9-11, it has done a good job of implementing measures that have a) the appearance of security and b) the only real value of inconveniencing, making "brown" people afraid, and now even making any civilian scared of crossing police or other law enforcement, for fear of their Constitutional rights being suspended.

In response to the government maybe not having done enough, I would like to point out a New York Times article from February 2nd:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/nyregion/02machinegun.html?_r=1&bl&&st=cse&sq=new+york+automatic+rifles&scp=1&oref=slogin

Putting officers on all subway trains, all day long, who are carrying military-grade automatic rifles and bomb dogs only increases security so much. Anyone who wants to come down and blow up the subway can still do it, because they're not afraid of dying. What this does in a larger sense is inspire fear in all those people riding the subway. For instance, I have the right to refuse the search of my bag by the police. However, if the man who is asking me to open my bag has a machine gun, I am going to be disinclined to refuse his request. In fact, I think I might not want to refuse ANY request! And that fear is a real and immoral one.

As for your citation of the loved-ones in London and Madrid, I agree that those people have suffered an unconscionable and irreconcilable loss. However, loss of life never justifies excessive ANYTHING. If we asked them what they thought, their perspective would be severely colored by their experience. This is the same kind of problem we run into when we talk about the Death Penalty and whether it should still exist (and while I'm bringing out that can of worms for reference, I'm NOT opening it. So just put it back in the cupboard, anyone reading this! And I say that with a smile). As for your insistence on pointing out that those attacks were done by "Muslim (yes, Muslim)" people, I think it's important to point out that there is a BIG difference between Muslims and Islamic Fundamentalists. The attacks were perpetrated by Islamic Fundamentalists, not run-of-the-mill Muslims. That kind of pigeon-holing based on rudimentary categorization is what has led us to the racial profiling issues that we're running into today.

I'd imagine there's more I want to say here, and more would be said if this were an actual conversation, and I'm probably missing a point or two that I wanted to make, but I just wanted to make sure I gave my two cents. I really hope you won't look at this as flaming, because I mean my words sincerely and humbly, not as an attack at all. Lucky for us, we get to have this conversation at all.

And if I'm wrong about anything, by all means anyone, feel free to point it out with the same candor I think I've used here.

This is a really great discussion, and I must say I'm having a hard time figuring out who's right.

What I DO know is that there is no harm in posting this, sharing information with the rest of the world that is not personally sensitive, so I'm doing it.

http://imocopter.blogspot.com/2008/01/british-government.html