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the various and sundry creations of sylvus tarn
14jan2022
Heh, maaaaaaybe I will make beads today! (Nope. It's now the day after. Also, apologies for the broken link last time. Forgot to put in titles, which are my visual cue to lemme know whether the link is live. Whoops! Fixed now:) In the meantime, some more digital imaging related stuff—here's an essay nominally on why Marvel films are so de-saturated (even though the superhero comics on which they're based are eye-poppingly bright), but really is more a rumination on color grading since it went digital with the Coen brothers’ classic (& classically based, upon Odysseus) film. I quite enjoyed it, not least because it includes a number of mini-video essays (by various makers, iirc) that gave it a more varied feeling.
12jan2022
Well, I see Independent voter Mr Scalzi has even more withering things to say about Jan 6 than I did, so just read him. Or listen to this hour long report (NYT) on the aftermaths of it on the Capitol Police who suffered far too much.
Also, though I have been stringing, we're back to photography:)
6jan2022
Today is Epiphany, the Twelth Day of Christmas: one reason I like to tune out the pre-Dec 25 celebrations is so I can enjoy the 12 Days of Christmas, which I mostly celebrate by a) leaving the tree up and b) catching up on all the handmade gifts I failed to get done by the Winter Solstice (and there are always some....)
My parents’ generation is dying off, but I still wonder how the couple whose marriage nearly reached three-score and ten felt about their special day being obliterated by the de facto national designation of ‘never forget’ mourning (or—and why yes, I'm still feeling rather cynical) at least public breast-beating.
Or another set, now also dead, whose greatest gift was surely that of the birth of their only child, which now instead of a celebration, is merely known as the Capitol 6th riots. I expect those larger designations were, or in the case of 9/11, already are fading. But it's galling.
5jan2022
Okay, trying to be just a touch more upbeat (or upbeet, as the case may be) today. Photography is indeed an art, but at the level I do it, it seems like cheating—probably because my failure rate is so high: something like...99%?
There's a lot to hate about youtube (& the internet in general) but one thing I do appreciate is that it's brought criticism back into fashion. C.S. Lewis, in The Last Battle, (I think, cuz I can't find it on the intertubes & am too lazy to dig my copy out of my freezing attic) joked in an authorial aside of a character about to tell a story, that people of his (fantasy-based-upon-Middle-Eastern) culture were taught to tell stories the way English children were taught to write essays, except that, ‘people like to hear stories, whereas I never met anybody who wanted to read the essays’.
4jan2022
Hey, another sunny day! I crimped off (what I hope will be) a cool necklace! And made beads with my former student! Life is good—
Oh, crap, Lindsey Ellis got hounded off youtube. So many creators lost (most of ’em women, and why would that be...?) from whom I've learned so much. I can't even find references to Little Light any more... I watched a lot of youtube, especially during the pandemic (before vaccines) and Ellis was a favourite. While I can critique film, usually in terms of either dialog and/or plot, and occasionally lighting, I don't have the framework for it that I do for written works, and so I really appreciated Ellis’ breaking it down for me.
Using Michael Bay Transformer movies, no less. If ever there was permission to enjoy pop culture trash (& I do wonder whether Shakespeare was so considered back in his day...) that series was it.
3jan2022
Like so many, I didn't do much on the posting front last year; and honestly, I have no idea whether this year will be any better. But, hey, let's at least try.
So it's not terribly surprising that I missed posting the last day of 2021 (I guess that's a thing) aka New Year's Eve, because, frankly 2021 sucked, not only because we had vaccines and good N95 masks and people refused them, prolonging the agony but also and especially because one of my family members was one of those “invisible” deaths—people who didn't die of covid, but had other untreated conditions that killed them instead because of pandemic isolation, lack of care, etc. Though my relative had diabetes and heart disease, kidney dialysis patients are a tranche that's been getting hammered. Besides, of course countless medical staff burning out from covid exhaustion. Yeah, let's thank them for their service with PTSD, long covid and actual death.... Huzzah!
