Controversy in Type Perfection- Helvatica

I'm not a typegrapher. I have never immersed myself in the world of type, text, and symbolism. So to watch Helvetica and become fully warped into this world of letters and text blew my mind. They were so rigid and avid about their work of a dying race, it was amazing to see how these people become more than just people who design the type we use, but the process in which they go through to do so. They transform into architects of language, building text and letters like masons. But over the decades of type, one has become the perfected type of modern-day man. Helvetica. While those argue it's the perfect usage of type to get a message across clearly without contorting the context, others argue it's downfall is for the same reasoning. Because I myself don't know the classically proper way to critique type, I have no idea which side to part onto. But! As the time goes by here in school, maybe I will come to learn.

The Decaying, Fantastical Dream World of "Decasia"

In a vortex where time  and space, decay and the reality of what a fantastical dream may be, Bill Morrison's "Decasia" has captured the vintage- weathered look of film to a new extreme of innovation. Scary, yet set in a reality generation forgotten, Decasia captures the images of ages past that have literally rotted away to leave only the tatters of what the film used to be.The images become liquified in an odd embrace to the art of film that distorts the story and film into fantastical, yet decrepit and frightening memories of what had been.
Morrison plays on the notion of the decayed coming back to life- being what had once been back into the public eye for what they had originally been and reenergizing the film in such a way that it becomes a sort of "Frankenstein"-esque movie of pieces sewn together to form a new life form. Throughout some of his films, he has a scene of a literal birth of a child, or at least an implication of such. Paradoxed with what he tries to bring about and give life back into his films, these flashing images of birth and death of the film through decay create a vortex for which time and space collide within his films... A horridly fantastic ways of pushing the envelope of what his medium can do.
So here's to Morrison, the Doctor Frankenstein of modern film. Well done. :)    

Originality in an Uncreative World

http://www.lilithgallery.com/arthistory/modern/The-Work-of-Art-in-the-Age-of-Mechanical-Reproduction.html




It has occurred to me that art nowadays is... limited. Traditionalists and Modernism have taken their course, dividing the art world between what is art, and what is merely populist brainwash. I find it interesting that this writer has taken the time to explain what an artwork's 'aura' is- the living quality that captures an essence that holds you in your path to take you in. This element of his work, combined with what he explains as art that lacks this essential essence (via films, and easily reproduced work such as photographs) is such a limiting approach to what art is. True- this writer has a statement, and drags quite a bit of information into supporting that thesis. But art, no matter what form or in what medium, is art. The aura of the work may be different by worlds apart, but there is still a presence to the work, no matter how mediocre or awe-inspiring. Art can still capture the world by storm- after all, it is the force that drives countries into actions in times of war as this writer has expressed in his epilogue. 
More is to come later, opinions shall be posted later this week~