Just because the topic of Cornell’s Dragon Day has become so interesting, I figured I would post several more pictures from this year’s event. So here’s the new album.
Who’s the fella dressed as Elvis? He may be our link to the truth of who burns the dragon, since he placed then ignited the hay himself…
Notorious UK street artist Banksy now boasts Brooklyn Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Natural History and MoMA in his list of current exhibitions. Thing is his work wasn’t actually acquired by those big NYC museums. He personally brought his art pieces into each of those places and hung them on the gallery walls himself, along with the standard description/plaque you see beside works of art.
The Wooster Collective has the exclusive story and though two of the works were removed after some time, as of yesterday two still remained on display.
The piece at the Museum of Natural History was still there. Here’s that piece:
Banksy said, “They’re good enough to be in there, so I don’t see why I should wait.”
I finally got around to creating an album of some of my favorite photos from the recent trip to NYC. Check it out, and any and all comments are welcome.
There are probably too many shots of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Gates though, but it’s tough to argue their photographic beauty. There’s also several black and white images, a direct response to my work in the Cornell darkroom and the fact that I’ve been tremendously enjoying B&W magazine.
I have explored using several different web gallery software packages, but still like JAlbum for its customizability (if that’s not a word, oops!). The software batch-processes images which saves quite a bit of time, but along with the benefits come some nit-picky quality issues. Sigh. At any rate to share images here it does the trick nicely.
FYI the Rated Films page has been updated but I get too overwhelmed by the length of the list to start adding relevant comments for each film. In the theaters we recently watched Hotel Rwanda and Bad Education. We love Pedro Almodovar’s stories and directing style, but not all people do apparently. I recently came across some reviews of Talk To Her saying it was ’sick and pointless’ and ‘beyond morbid’, so I guess that’s the kind of movie I like then.
Another update to the site - I took out the Ithaca Links on the sidebar to create a separate page full of even MORE Ithaca links. Many of these are resources we used to coordinate our move from Vancouver last summer.
And I suppose we can kiss yesterday’s taste of spring goodbye because I see snowflakes.
A whole lotta fun was had at Cornell today for Dragon Day. It’s an annual tradition where students in architecture build a gigantic dragon, march it through campus then burn it till crisp. It seems a fitting send-off party for spring break, but I can’t say why this was started (in 1901)in the first place.
The parade route covered enough ground to attract at least a couple of thousand people. The architecture students wore an array of bright, glittery and ridiculous costumes while chanting “BURN IT” and racing in circles around sad dragon. I saw a guy dressed as an iPod. Then there was Elvis, some Smurfy girls, fairies and a guy with a plastic rocking horse slung over his shoulders.
I had good position for photos and received enough heat from the bonfire to dry the hair (had it been wet). When only the wire-frame carcass of the dragon remained and its ashes began to settle onto the crowd, people scattered away quickly. But the memories would remain - or the campfire stench would anyway.
Before and after:
Popular and happy, naive dragon
Dead dragon.
This video has been making the rounds quite heavily since yesterday, because it’s just THAT good! The Norwegian group Hurra Torpedo made this video sometime in 1993, obviously way ahead of their time.
Watch it now and enjoy their ingenius cover of Total Eclipse of the Heart featuring bad track suits, bushy beards, Animal-esque kitchen-appliance percussion, naked bums and devil-may-care attitude!
A serious classic :O)
And if you just can’t get enough Torpedo, Matt found this image gallery linked from Metafilter.
I’ve returned from a ten-day trip in the city and it’s taken a couple of days to wind down from the excitement and catch up on some in-my-own-bed sleep. We stayed in at least six hotels, though I’ve lost count of the exact number, mostly in midtown.
Now I’m in the process of determining the best way to manage over 700 images I shot there. Yikes!
First thing I did was process the 3 rolls of black and white film I shot with my little Olympus Stylus point-and-shoot camera. Those are mainly subway pics, taken on the down-low. Some look quite good considering I wasn’t looking through the viewfinder. I printed a couple of tests in the Cornell darkroom and they need some minor contrast adjustment. Returning to the darkroom has been fun after ten years away (since I studied photojournalism and spent several months in the darkroom). The stinky aroma of film developer is familiar once again.
The 600+ digital images, however, are sitting untouched in a folder on my desktop. Managing those is an entirely different (and arguably more complicated) task, mainly to accommodate the multiple uses I have in mind.
I will share some of my favorites here soon (I hope!) In the meantime, I present The (underphotographed) Gates:
Hans Bethe, one of the Twentieth century’s greatest theoretical physicists passed away peacefully last night, at the age of ninety-eight. For Cornell, this is a very sad day. Bethe was very a very important part of the Cornell community. He basically put Cornell on the map as far as physics goes. Today, thanks to his work, Cornell is a world leading physics school, with strong programs in virtually all areas of physics.
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Countless people must have experienced this, right!? I was commenting the other day how surprised I was that I had yet to see any accidents in the city, but now I can say I have. From inside the taxi!
Of course my body’s still intact, and so is the taxi’s for that matter. We were pushing into a dense-traffic intersection when the light turned red and there were still a couple of vehicles behind us. Our taxi was straddling the crosswalk when the van behind rear-ended us with a loud thud and a significant jolt. This sparked gasps and panic-struck expressions from the people crowding the curbside ready to cross. It was actually pretty funny, and the cab driver was calm as could be. He had a quiet chat with the culprit and decided there was no damage to the vehicle. Turned out lucky for the van driver this time.
Yesterday I finally got to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. We took the subway across to Brooklyn and walked back across. The day was perfectly warm to do it, too. I definitely felt vertigo looking down between the wooden slats to see the water about 60 feet below. But it was a quick trek over and a fun little tourist experience.
Then Karl and I toured through SoHo on a photographic mission. We tried to stay a distance apart because I think we came across like stalkers with our lenses in action on those tiny streets. So many tourists though that the locals stop paying attention.
We’re currently staying in midtown and this is the fifth hotel we’re at since I arrived last Friday. It’s hard to recall the room number when you’re in rotation like this. Most of them end with a five. :O)
Well I’m out to troll about, looking for some galleries today. The more I tour around, the bigger the city gets.
Well, Tiff is off in NYC for the next while, so primary blogging falls to me. Unfortunately, I’m busy, but this happy bit of news deserves to be pointed out. Today the supreme court ruled that applying the death penalty to minors (16 and 17 year olds) was unconstitutional. This reverses a 1989 ruling, and hopefully points toward a coming abolition of the death penalty totally (though with Bush in the white house, I doubt it). The ruling was 5-4, the 4 barbarians who would sanction state execution of minors are O’Connor, Scalia, Rehnquist and (shock) Thomas. The strong langauge is probably called for in this case, as the US was (until today) one of only six nations to have state murder of minors. The other 5 included such happy places as Iran, Nigeria, and China. No other democracy engages in a practice this barbaric.
Expect the usual whining from silly conservatives about “activist judges” on this one.
Note that my first link contains some analysis, and links to the actual rulings.
The fall-off of posts here can be partly attributed to the fact that I’m in the city at the moment. I left last Thursday morning and will likely be here for another week. It’s a terrific opportunity to spend some time here since I don’t have to pay for a place to sleep. I am tagging along with a friend who photographs hotels for a living! At the moment we are at the Time Hotel (just off Time Square) and it’s quite a funky joint. Apparently the rates aren’t too bad for New York City either.
As I look out the window now I see giant, fluffy snowflakes blowing by. This could put a damper on doing a whole lot of walking today, but I plan to visit some photography galleries including the International Center of Photography which is only a few blocks away.
Some highlights of the trip thus far have been a leisurely visit to The Gates in Central Park. The ‘exhibit’ has now ended but I snapped some great photos that I’ll post when I return to Ithaca. We spent quite a bit of time in Chinatown one afternoon. And we had a hilarious evening at a tiny triangular gay bar in Greenwich called Duplex where the staff is the entertainment. They performed karaoke-style songs for a full-on patron sing-along. It was like getting the chance to do karaoke but not having to stand onstage or project through the microphone. Great energy there! Oh, a visit to the enormous place where people froth over electronic and camera gear - that’s B&H Photo - was an ultimate experience, too.
Of course I’ve walked the requisite number of blocks that you do when you’re in the city, amounting to about 50 per day I’d say. I’m still armed with a metrocard though, just in case the legs give.
