Art made from memes and open data
Dec. 16th, 2006 04:42 pmHere are the things I like with the letter G, as requested by pants_of_doom. There are very few surprises inside, but it's a pleasant list:
- Graphs - vertices and edges or just well designed presentations of data, I like them all
- Gift economies - be a capitalist to the world, but be a communist with your friends and family
- Games - board, mind, video
- Green Day - and I'm not ashamed of it, although I recognize that maybe I should be
- Gin martinis - 2 parts gin, slightly less than 1 part dry vermouth, shaken and then two olives on a toothpick. Briny and strong and tasty and strange, it's halfway between the original recipe (half gin, half vermouth, dash of bitters) and today's bizarre fetish for gin and ice chips briefly held near a vermouth bottle.
- Geeking out - making random webcrap and/or fixing things. It's not at all surprising or out of type that I like this, but I really really do.
- G rated movies that are subversive and interesting. Babe: Pig in the City, the muppet movies, the Iron Giant, and others (recommendations?).
- william Gibson books - Pattern Recognition in particular. He's the first SciFi author to write fully realized good science fiction set almost entirely in a socially and technologically plausible present. His books aren't particularly dated yet, and the trite parts are only trite because his ideas have been ripped off by everyone who followed him.
- Gelato - when made well, it is perhaps the perfect dessert. We ate it twice a day in Italy.
- Georgia - the font, not the state. A serif font (yay!) designed for easy reading in electronic form. A bit of the new (electronic display) a bit of the old (serifs) and a really pleasant reading experience at almost all sizes. It's the only font I've been able to read long electronic texts in, in large part because it's made for exactly that. Serif fonts are easier to read, but electronic displays have such a low resolution that it was impossible to have them look good, so ugly sans serif fonts have taken over. Georgia shows that it doesn't have to be like this! More on fontage can be found here: http://didi.com/brad/colophon.html
I've since realized that I missed one:
- Grafitti art - The Wooster Collective is having a big art show in a soon-to-be remodeled beautiful old brick building in New York. I can't go, but I can look with admiration at the collection of images from visitors and exhibitors. That is some very cool stuff. Grafitti is one of the last art forms that is still mostly underground (by law!), and the best in the world have been gathered to show their work in a legal, legitimized show. If you can, you should go/have gone. Remodeling begins tomorrow, and my only question is: why would anyone want to cover the beautifully painted brick walls with drywall? I hope the eventual occupants of the condos elect one-by-one to show off their strikingly beautiful structural walls. They bought a condo with built-in art, I hope they actually look at it.
I'm interested to get an alphabetic list of what my friends like. If you've already answered, please link your answer below. If you'd like to participate, then I'll happily give out letters. Eventually, I'll do some wacky web2.0 buzzword-compliant mashup of all the responses.
Again, if you want to play, comment and you'll be in. The alphabet will be filled in as people rise to the challenge.