On May 13th, on my way to a friends apartment, we stumbled upon the set of Ben Stillers new movie right outside the 125th St. subway exit. They were filming in the middle of the street. What struck me the most was that one of the façades of the building had been completely redone (cast, cement, wood, paint… it looked absolutely real and solid) for the film.
Really? No building façade will do?
Day 4 started with a corporate presentation (we got to choose, and I attended the one by Pfizer) at 7:30am, in which Pfizer`s Senior Vice President of Research and Development talked about the rapidly shifting way in which big pharma is working, and mentioned an unacceptable fact that should make us all reflect on how much the patent system is broken:
Pfizer has 98,000 employees… and 31,000 lawyers!
The rest of the day I attended classes by Catherine Tucker, Brian Halligan, and a speech by Dean David Schmittlein.
Interviewed by Aurora Muñoz for Zoom News about the Mega case.
Last Sunday I went to see Searching for Sugar Man bio/docu/pic at Lincoln Plaza Theaters.
Two South Africans set out to discover what happened to their unlikely musical hero, the mysterious 1970s rock ‘n` roller, Rodriguez.
While the movie is a very good one, and the story quite powerful (not only a human story about an incredible musician called Rodriguez, better than Bob Dylan if you allow me the heresy), there are two aspects that go well beyond the typical in this kind of documentary:
Hugo sends me this amazing song/video made in Minecraft. Of course, that leads to 10 more, 14 more… there are so many!
When you make the tools available to the people, and allow them to create (in this case under the safe harbor of “parody”) wonderful things happen. Its NOT all about the money, profit, control... Its about imagination, art, creativity, culture. Thats how it happens: copying, re-using, mixing, adjusting, modifying.
For a few years I have accumulated art projects and pictures, in that oh-so-common delusion “one day I will start working on this and…”
Well, reality, resource constraints, day-to-day life… are all excuses not to take ones passion and live it. So I am going to live it. How? I dont know. But the first step is to share, and to make accessible, my plans, ideas, and projects.
So HERE ARE MY ART PROJECTS (tumblr), and HERE ARE MY PHOTOGRAPHS (500px).
After playing with it for a while, beyond it limitations (light, format, movement…) here are the two biggest pitfalls with the Lytro camera:
It is still for Mac OSX only. They NEED to come out with Open Source / Free Software (both their software AND platform support for GNU/Linux).
Picture library size and location. BIG unresolved issue.
