You know, one of the under-recognized benefits of the web is that its enabled new forms (or maybe micro-forms) of creativity, or new veins of expression. We can thank the reduced costs of technology, the simplification of tool and the democratization of the audience for this explosion in creativity.
I was reminded of this today while watching the latest episode of Zero Punctuation (a bit NSFW). Produced by a witty Englishman named Ben Croshaw, it’s an animated series of juvenile, raunchy, hilarious game reviews. I’ve never played most of the games he’s reviewed, but it’s always five minutes well-spent. Here, for example, is his take on Dante’s Inferno (rated mature for lots of cuss words and, uh, suggestive scenes):
In a small way, this is a new form of game review: clumsy animation + rapid-fire, rude commentary. It looks nothing like the text-based game reviews of the past twenty years, nor does it bear much resemblance to, say, Siskel and Ebert’s TV chat from the cheap seats.
Another example of new forms is Pomplamoose’s videos. I’ve written about them before, but I like how they describe their work as a ‘VideoSong’:
This cover is a VideoSong, a new medium with 2 rules:
1. What you see is what you hear (no lip-syncing for instruments or voice).
2. If you hear it, at some point you see it (no hidden sounds).
I also like that they’re thinking about their craft, and eager to articulate to their viewers. Here’s an example of what they’re talking about:
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t include my friends at Common Craft who, judging by their multitudinous imitators, have spawned a very popular new form. Their latest video explains augmented reality in two minutes and sixteen seconds.
Last year at Northern Voice I gave a talk entitled “From Permalink to Profound: Where is the Art in Social Media?” I think these examples, while not truly social, certainly make use of the collaborative, instant-feedback nature of the modern web.
As usual, we took a bunch of photos while south of the border. The other border. Here’s a slideshow of all 60 photos, and here’s my three favourites (click to embiggen):
I prefer not to look like a total slob, but I don’t particularly like shopping. I seriously considered using Trunk Club, a service where a virtual shopper buys me clothes, sends them to me, and I choose what I want to keep and pay for. I’ve also been meaning to try out IndoChino for years.
I haven’t gone that far yet (though I think it’s coming). In the meantime, I’ve outsourced some of my more casual shopping using two services. The first is the famed t-shirt company (and crowdsourcing case study) Threadless. I joined the Threadless 12 Club, a service which sends me a t-shirt a month for about CAN $250. I just received the first one:
I also recently discovered Manpacks, a service that will mail me socks, underwear and basic t-shirts periodically. I’m getting two of each every three months. Again, my first shipment just arrived:
The socks and t-shirts are black, while the underwear are, uh, of various colours. That adds a frisson of unpredictability to each order. This latter service reminded me of 10socks, a Danish company that will ship you ten pairs of numbered socks. I discovered, tried and reported on those socks six (six? six!) years ago.
Seamus, a database administrator, has decided it’s time to move on from his current job at Microsoft. He’d really like to move south to California and maybe work at Google or Apple. Instead of just giving in his notice and heading south, he posts his intent to leave and his desired new employers on DraftDayDeal.com (not an actual website).
The website notifies HR departments at Microsoft, Google and Apple. It offers the latter companies the opportunity to make a trade–sending another willing employee to Microsoft in exchange for Seamus. Maybe Google has a grumpy technical writer (Tina, perhaps?) yearning for a new gig. Maybe she’s posted her eagerness to move to Seattle on DraftDayDeal.com, too.
That’s today’s bad idea: an online marketplace for trading employees. Of course, every employee starts with a proverbial no-trade clause, and it’s only through their actions that they can post their interest to the site and begin the process. When they do, companies can try to finagle a trade so that they receive value in return instead of simply losing an employee.
I don’t think this idea would ever fly. HR departments aren’t exactly renowned for their innovation and openness. I like talking about it, though, because it highlights two under-recognized facts:
Much as they may speak to the contrary, employees are just assets to your average company. If the last two years of economic downturn taught us anything, it’s that.
Employees need to behave like entrepreneurs and consultants inside their organization. It may not seem that way, but employees are masters of their own fate and (to borrow another sports phrase) free agents most of the time.
I think that a site like this might emphasize both these ideas. Additionally, it might bring some transparency to organizations as good or bad employers, much the same way Jiibe does.
It’s probably more of a thought experiment than a tenable idea. What do you think?
Note to Loyal Readers: I’m aware that this is the fourth theatre review I’ve posted in the last three weeks. Never fear, that should be enough for a while.
Last week I was invited to the opening of “Paradise Garden”, the premier production by Arts Club Theatre Company of Lucia Frangione’s (yet another Canadian playwright who deserves a Wikipedia entry) new play.
Set “off the coast of the Gulf Islands” (an in-exact phrase if there ever was one), “Paradise Garden” tells a story of star-cross love between Day, played by Kevin McDonald, a slacker Islander who’s inherited the rambling family estate, and Layla, the daughter of Turkish parents who’s renting on Day’s property. Layla, played by Frangione, ministers to her dying mother and clashes with her stubborn, traditional father. On the other side of the hedge, Day struggles to find his way in the world among the wreckage of his parents’ divorce–she’s a fake-breasted cougar and he’s a curmudgeonly pot farmer. Both characters suffer from a delayed childhood–they’re still under their parents’ wings, despite being in their late 20s when the play opens.
Listening to Frangione’s text, I remember that I’d seen another of her plays, “Espresso”, a few years back at Pacific Theatre. Both plays are rich with lush imagery, as evocative as her name. She’s got a knack for rapidly leading us from the mundane to the visceral without forcing the transitions. “Paradise Garden” is wordy, but in a light, spoon-fed kind of way that’s totally forgivable.
I was less forgiving of a device in which the lead characters spoke of themselves in the third person. There didn’t seem to be a rationale for this trope–neither character was particularly alienated from their true selves–so it just felt forced. I could have also done without Adam and Eve metaphors (maybe that’s more in the staging than the script?), and some criticisms of Canadian culture felt tired.
Capillaries or Seaweed?
The cast was strong, though the female actors felt more fully realized, more comfortable in their skin. McDonald, in particular, took a long time to find his feet. He’s got a lot to balance in maintaining Day’s laissez-faire outlook while still seeming appealing enough to overachieving Layla’s. Frangione gives Day an unexpected educational upgrade in the second act, probably to satisfy this requirement.
Photo by Ross Den Otter
Morris Ertman and Ted Roberts seemed to struggle in realizing Frangione’s vision of the setting. She provides tons of on-stage business and textual indications about the setting, but Roberts’ set seemed to be more a compromise than a bold statement. I either wanted less set, and we rely on Frangione’s words, or a totally realistic set. In any case, the actual set featured a kind of over-sized blue capillary system above a pool and archway. We spend 120 minute wondering why it’s there, and the payoff doesn’t quite feel worth the effort.
I sound like I’m down on the production, but I’d recommend “Paradise Garden” to somebody looking for an inoffensive but pleasing night at the theatre. It runs through April 11 at the Stanley Theatre. There’s some nudity, mostly of the male variety.
I’m only a casual baseball fan. I know what a squeeze play is, how to throw a split-finger fastball and what it means to hit to the opposite field. Hardcore fans, of course, can recite Cecil Fielder’s career ERA off the top of their head, and can judge how their favourite player will hit by the way his knees bend in the batter’s box.
If you take a baseball fan to a cricket match, they’ll get the general idea. They can understand how runs are scored, and players put out. But they’ll miss the layers of nuance and detail that they customarily recognize at the baseball diamond.
So it is with me and opera. I feel confident in my ability to review theatre, and even musicals, but opera is my cricket. In particular, I’m unfamiliar with the theatrical traditions of opera, and unable to evaluate the competency of the singing, a huge component of the experience. Nevertheless, onward.
Nixon Goes to China
About a week and a half ago, I was invited to the opening of “Nixon in China”, the latest production from Vancouver Opera. I wouldn’t normally jump at the chance to see opera, but I understood this to be one of the most important operas of the 20th century. Plus, I’ve never seen a modern opera before–this one premiered in 1987.
And it’s a big deal for Vancouver Opera. This is the Canadian debut for “Nixon in China”, and the production budget was the most they’d ever spent on a show–$1.4 million.
The opera tells the story of President Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. Just as many historical operas are populated with kings, queens, lords and ladies, so this one’s case includes Nixon and his wife, Chairman Mao and his wife, Chinese Premier Choi En-lai and Henry Kissinger.
The show is big. There’s the huge cast, with about 50 performers and a similarly large orchestra. The sets were sparse and iconic–oversized images of flags or the characters and stark red lines. The set design decisions all seemed a little obvious, and they neither served or detracted from the piece.
It’s big in duration, too. –three hours long, with two intermissions. There’s even a (murkily lit) ballet that interrupts the second act.
The libretto is a three-hour prose poem, concerned more with evocative images than with plot or storyline. That’s no surprise, as it’s written by poet Alice Goodman. John Adams’s music is rich and dense, drawing from sources as diverse as Wagner, Gershwin and contemporary film scores.
This seems to be the crux of where modern opera and musical theatre diverges. Opera sacrifices narrative cohesion and complex plots for sonic complexity and the freedom to be more abstract.
“I Came Here For Fun”
So what did I think? I’ve been thinking about the opera for the last week and a half–that’s why this review is so late. I’ve been probing my memory of the performance for some contemporary relevance. I can see how, in the dying days of the Cold War, “Nixon in China” might resonate. But how does it speak to me today?
I searched, but I couldn’t find much meaning. I enjoy abstract art, but only when I can extract some concrete messages or ideas from it. Ten days later, what can I take from “Nixon in China”? Maybe something along the lines of “sometimes cultural gaps are too broad, and can’t be bridged”? I left unsatisfied.
And I wasn’t alone. I overheard some season ticket holders sitting next to me, and one said to the other, “I have to keep reminding myself that I came here for fun”.
Then I think about this opera’s price tag: $1.4 million for four performances? Surely that’s at least three times the budget of a play at the Arts Club or Playhouse–a lot of money to spend on four nights of inaccessible art. Imagine distributing that money among twenty innovative theatre companies. At $50,000 a piece, you’d end up with some pretty awesome art.
Knowing it’s towering position in opera history, I really wanted to like and be moved by “Nixon in China”. Instead, it left me cold and weary. I rarely leave a theatre performance thinking, simply, “man, I didn’t get it”. Maybe I ought to just stick to baseball?
I was in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, on our way to Mexico, when I spotted this sign. It was on the inside of the door to the men’s bathroom in an airport lounge.
How odd that it’s in the men’s bathroom and phrased in the first second person like that?
The app I really liked is called VanPark 2010, and overlays metered parking rates on top of a map of downtown Vancouver.
Lots of geeks abstractly advocate the power of open source and open data, but this seems to be a great example of how opening up data can help the average citizen. I requested a feature where the user enters an address, and the app highlights the cheapest parking within, say, 500 meters.
And can we take a moment to recognize the awesomeness of Bing Maps’ Birds eye view functionality. It truly is the eye of God.
