Food for thought
Since this is such a thoughtful group, here is something to noodle uponst (if your of the mind). The fellow over at http://www.typedown.com/external-01/news/yahoo-wordnews.php has created some sort of Yahoo API that results in showing the 'news' words of the day. The bigger the word, the more often it has appeared in the news. Try not to mind that the page is uglier than smushed worms. What it shows is rather profound. After you take a look at it head over to http://new-art.blogspot.com/ and read the April 2nd post.
posted by EThunk at 10:10 AM
4 Comments:
That is truly a powerful image, especially right now. The world has lost a great leader and we are in a time of transition.
Cool stuff Ethunk.
They say the best art is that which causes us
to look beyond the work and into ourselves.
Especially art that makes us notice our "feelings."
To the degree that these words evoke feelings,
the piece works. I, of coursewould like to see
the artist take the thing one step further and
figure out a way to pick appropriate typefaces
for the words, based on how people feel.
This would have to be a context sensitive exercise
I suppose, which would scan all the articles
looking for emotional cues, then correlating
these to a set of fonts.
Probably impossible.
The next best thing would be to chose a font that is emotionally neutral so that the "reader/viewer"
is left to supply all the emotional content.
My opinion of the typeface this artist uses is that
it is too masculine. Flick might recommend the use
of Optima, and that would probably be good.
Even so, what about the non-English speakers
as per the article?
How about a variation that shows the pictures
that we all see? It would be just as good philosophically, because it would demonstrate
how we're being shaped emotionally by the
media we are exposed to.
Thanks for the fun!
I agree on the design and art comments (although there is some mighty programing happening)...the part of the new-art blog I found most interesting follows.
"...while we forget the weight of the words that keep showering us endlessly. The words, here, stand alone, sometimes connected into phrases, often not. And we have to create the stories, write them, pronounce them for ourselves. We have to make sense of the raw information, deprived of the comforting context of the articles that contain it.
It is only important to remember that this is not a reflection of the world, or even of the media world, but of the world that is most heard on our media: the English-speaking, US-centric world. It is globalization in the narrowest of senses, underlining the common denominators and excluding the unique. For the acute observer, Fischer's work is also a warning."
Yeah, that's what I got.
The scary part is that there used to be
a lot more conversations going on
(like this one).
But these days, more and more of us are getting
all our cues from the ubiquitous mass media.
That's why I think people are gravitating
to Blogs and hashing out their own set
of values.
It's kind of like going back to being tribal
(in perhaps the only way we still can).
Here's to never letting anyone control the internet,
regardless of how much crap goes up on it.
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