Gaga's reliably mad videos

I knew Lady Gaga wouldn't disappoint. We've been hearing this song for a while, but now we get to see this piece of inspired madness. Here's the uncensored 9 minute version, which wouldn't embed, thanks to Vevo. There's also six hundred thousand people singing it themselves to wade through before you can get it, but that's becoming par for the course for any video these days. There's so much garbage, where you have to sit through 10 second ads as well, there's hardly a point anymore watching anything that has corporate sponsorship attached. Oh, by the way, this video is entertaining and all, but it's not nearly as dense and interesting as the last couple or so. There's some Madonna, kill bill, poisoned mayonaise sandwiches, Natural born killers and Thelma and Louise references, but there all quite obvious. Jonas Akerlund, longtime Madonna collaborator is fine, but Gaga should really get Michel Gondry to do her one.

Heffner spends a cool Million on Symbolism...

Weird that it was Hugh Heffner that saved the Hollywood sign, though you would expect him to save the signal that lures many of his models to his doorstep, like a flat, white faced siren. I erroneously assumed that it was already a public landmark, etc. But turns out they had to buy it, and the surrounding countryside. It's bizarre, but typically American to have your most recognisable landmarks privately owned and operated. If they could afford it, someone would probably buy the statue of Liberty and build a housing development there as well. The inevitable decay of a landmark is one of the most interesting things about it. I love those Urban redevelopment plans where an old factory or something is rebuilt into something new and interesting. It's a tragedy that this probably won't happen to a lot of the buildings built today, we just don't know how to build beautiful ruins anymore.

Sit back, relax, really experience the painting...

There's something to be said for getting around the museum virtually and a bit faster. You miss all the detail, the arrangement of the space, but you mostly waste time taking a longer look at paintings that don't deserve it, anyhow. If you don't get it quickly, then what, spend every day looking at the painting as a sort of transcendental meditation? You can do that with literally anything. That's kind of the point of the meditation.. What I mean is, I rarely walk through a museum and am suddenly hit by new revelations about a painting while looking at it. I know that's what's supposed to happen, but honestly, who has the time? there ought to be a fast way to just get the gist of it. Even the descriptions are weirdly long and involving stories usually..

The Cult of Originality

That video was pretty original, wouldn't you say? But it's still self-consciously aping another type of show, even parodying it, and it's certainly not the first to do that. This is the problem with originality, truly totally original works are completely impossible to understand or relate to, there really is no appreciable difference between it and a complete non-sequitur. When talking about originality, you're really taking as a given that's still recognisable as being part of a genre, or an established body of work. We live in more reflective times than in the last century, there seems to be more nostalgia, more influence, more references than ever before. Unfortunately forthose enamoured with the new, this is what it's usually like. The last century saw some entirely new media coming to dominate, and because of that, originality was the in plentiful supply. Those days are over now, we've returned to the status quo of reference in art. But the sustained burst of originality has left us a little different. Reference, homage, parody, when recognised as such, is now less, not more. We're more like late-renaissance artists, in that there is a large past of original geniuses behind us, but we have superior tools and knowledge. In their case it was Christianity that made them superior to the heathens, in our case it's freely available knowledge and technology. But they were relatively humble, seeking to emulate, adding only Christian moral philosophy and emulating in every other aspect, we are still chasing that elusive phantom, the completely original work that everyone regognises as a masterpiece.

Evolution as art...

They're already pretty cool, but the most interesting thing about these things is the design process they go through. The artist is trying to simulate genuine animals by selecting successful traits and passing them along to the next generation. If he manages to build some kind of replication function in, this means we might be looking at a genuine plague of pvc sculptures on Dutch beaches. What if he has to build a predator to thin the herd? The possibilities are legion.