ART

I have been finding some mind-blowing art on the Internet lately. So, time to share!

Garfield Minus Garfield
This site is so simple, clever, and funny. It's just Garfield comic strips with Garfield removed. Look at this one, for example:



The more of these you read, the deeper and funnier it gets. Here is the creator's description:

Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American Suburb.

1 Year Performance Video
This is a continuous video stream of two guys doing stuff in separate cells for a full year. That's right, the video lasts a year. You can log in and keep track of how long you've been watching, so if you need to go live your life for a few hours, you can turn off your computer and then pick up where you left off. Well, pick up where you left off sort of. Its actually a collection of video clips that are shown to watchers based on the time of day. For example, I'm watching them now at 9:12 AM, so they are doing "morning things". If I turn it off and log back in at 11:00 PM, they'll be up late doing night things, like sleeping, I assume. So it's kind of a test of the viewer's commitment to the piece. As they put it:

In the work, we mimic endurance without doing the labor. We also know the audience can just close the browser and walk away. No one needs to suffer on this one. The failure is built-in at the front end.

I don't know what I'm going to do about this. I love being crazily committed to something (see also NaNoWriMo 2005 & 2006, and writing a poem for every work day), but this is pretty monstrous, and frankly, I'm scared. Like, down to my shoes. For now I have it going on the TV via the Wii's Internet Channel. Just passed 3,000 seconds of watching.


Wooden Mirror
It's a mirror, but it's made out of wood! Basically a computer converts information from a video camera to simple black and white or something, and then a bunch of blocks with different shades of darkness arranged in a big plane individually spin to the necessary shades to "reflect" the whatever is in front of it. Sounds confusing. I'll let YouTube assist:




Finally, I'd like to share one of the best art websites of all time. Click here, and enjoy! (Make sure you crank the speakers!)

BRIAN OUT.