Illustration corner from BibliOdyssey

This week's image in Illustration Corner is a beautiful lithograph: 'Hooded falcon close up' from 'Traité de Fauconnerie' by H Schlegel and AH Verster de Wulverhorst, courtesy of one of my favourite blogs, BibliOdyssey. I think I've mentioned it before, but this post on falconry is gorgeous and I love the way the curator combines images with text and book-lore. I also have a weakness for natural history type-paintings -see Audubon for more lovely birds which may pop up in Illustration Corner in the future! The picture to the left is in the same book. And the one below is by Audubon. In any case its worth mentioning BibliOdyssey as a rich source of book illustrations/fount of obscure knowledge again!

The Brothers

This has quite a tenuous link to the theme of our discussions - technology and social media and their role in our lives. For all the talk of allowing 'connectedness' to occur, most people know instinctively that social media dont go far in creating real, life-sustaining connections between people. The Guardian has some lovely photos and very brief excerpts from a new book by photographer Elin Høyland called 'The Brothers.' Call me soft but by the 12th photo I had a lump in my throat. The photos aint bad either!

The Copyright on the Internet Maze...

The Lauging Squid is a site dedicated to unique and interesting art, culture & technology and is one of the few really continuously worthwhile things I follow on twitter. If you're struggling for someone to follow, they get my vote. But I digress...the other day they tweeeted a link to an article about Stefanie Gordon who took a photo of Space Shuttle Endeavour's final launch from her airplane seat and tweeted it to her followers, and the moderate brouhaha that ensued (disclaimer: linking device heavily subsidised by the emperor) ;).
This segues nicely into our debate on creative commons, copyright and how the internet (and social media such as twitter) are muddying (or expanding) the copyright waters. Copyright law seems likes it's always been labyrinthine and now has a whole new battleground to unfold on. One interesting thing I found out was that using Twitpic (which you use to share pictures on Twitter) automatically gives Twitter the right to sell your photo, should you stumble upon, photograph and tweet a newsworthy event. You can sell it...but so can they! Which would obviously devalue your photo in the event of your selling it. Having said that, the woman in question did pretty well out of the whole thing, and the articles above give a balanced look at the issues involved. All in all it seems like having the murky presence of copyright somewhere in the background of your thoughts when using any technology is probably both wise and ethical if it makes you think twice before sharing (your own, or somebody else's) work - particularly if you're a big corporation,(thats you, CBS News!!)... a credit wouldn't hurt!

What would you save if your house/squat/apartment was burning down?

Last bit of Friday fun...this is a new blog dedicated to documenting people's favourite and most meaningful possessions. I think I'd save my old photos (from before computer-days!), my box of personal documents (containing everything from certs and qualifications to old hand-made valentines cards and diaries), my two cameras (a 70's Canon A1 I inherited from my uncle and my little digital), my phone, and ...my life! Most of the rest of what I want to own (teapots, plants, rugs, beautiful antiques) I dont own yet and thus only exists in my head... so I guess there are advantages to being young and relatively possession-less!

What would you save?

Illustration Corner

Time for another quick change to welcome the weekend. American artist Kris Lewis studied illustration but has become known for exquisite oil portraiture which looks somehow modern and classical at the same time. The one I'm featuring in Illustration Corner is called Sleep. It follows on nicely from Yoshimoto Nara's Cosmic Girls, which looked like they were in a pleasant dream. The picture below is called Low Tide. And you can read more about Kris and his work either here or on his own website.

Inaugural book review - Accordion Crimes

My inaugural book review is about the first book I've read since I was liberated from my studies. Actually that's only half true- I was using it to dislodge the vagaries of information literacy from my brain at night before sleep for the last month. And technically I'm not finished but I've got less than 30 of the 500-odd pages of the book left and feeling the familiar loss of a good book already. As I dont think the ending will weigh too heavily on my feelings about it, it's review time!
It's not a new book, so there are plenty of better, more comprehensive reviews elsewhere, but here's my take.
This is a book which I loved reading, despite its lenth, dark undercurrents and somewhat brisk dispatching of most of the characters. It follows the trail of a green button-accordion across the United States from its passage from Sicily in 1890, and from immigrant to immigrant's child and beyond. Along the way it's lost, sold, given away, and stolen by a colourful variety of characters. Part of what makes the story flow is the emotional investment most of the down-trodden owners make in the similarly misused and abused musical instrument. They recognise in its wail of misery a kindred spirit which comforts them at their lowest moments. There is a historical bent to the novel and Proulx's flair for grimy detail give each of the ages and places the accordion passes through a distinct odour, flavour and feeling. Some of the characters are unlikable and their demise draws little sympathy, but I got quite attached to a few of them and was sad when they met their wonderfully grim ends. The book says a lot about America's treatment of its immigrants - from Germans and Poles to French and Irish, all find the place a harsh and unforgiving land where dreams serve only to remind them of their own naiveté.
I've often wondered at the previous lives of some of my second-hand items (in fact I think this book was second or third or who knows how many hands!) so I enjoyed the detailed vignettes of the owner's lives and cultures, and how each one made the instrument their own. Highly recommended for an entertaining, sad, and sometimes disturbing read.

Book nooks

Wouldnt it be nice to curl up in here? (Image from 9GAG)

Or have a day to root around in here? (cant remember where i found this but its a bookshop somewhere!)

Illustration Corner

You might have noticed that the images in Illustration Corner are starting to vary from illustrations to prints, paintings and what have you. However, 'Image corner' doesnt have the same ring to it and I refuse to stick to one type of image so we'll just keep going...I'm contrary like that. I felt like a change this morning, I've turned a corner, as I finished the last assignment needed for my diploma on Friday (yay!) So, fresh images for fresh eyes (well actually they're a bit bleary at the moment)...I've got Yoshimoto Nara in the corner this morning - he's a well-known Japanese artist and I think his pictures are enchanting. The one to the left is 'The girl with the knife in her hand', and the one in the corner is called Cosmic Girls, and you can read a little about him and see more of his pictures here.

Illustration corner - a Leonard Baskin special!

Leonard Baskin was a Jewish American artist who engraved, printed, sculpted, illustrated: you name it he did it. And he did it well! He's one of my favourit print makers ever, I love his style; I first came across him when I was studying comparative literature and was looking at the war art/prints of Otto Dix, and I found one of his Holocaust prints (see below) which was perfectly desolate. Having said that his bird-man type prints are my favourite, and the new image (Indian head with Bird Hat) in Illustration corner is courtesy of him.

Creative Commons

I'm going to be the dissenting voice here and say that I think Creative Commons is great. I don't know a huge amount about it but what I've read would indicate that it simply offers a more web-based, social-media-friendly flexibility to copyright. Obviously creators of works need to apply a good amount of thought before making the decision about whether to go CC or C, and which type of licence to go for, but that's kind of for the best! For something like a blog it makes complete sense to me; on the web the lines are blurred between sharing and copying - but (without knowing about CC before) I'd picked up on the fact that bloggers always attribute who owns what when using content from other blogs/sites/images etc. With something like a blog the idea is to get people to read your blog - otherwise you're in a vacuum and its no fun. If a well-known blogger namedrops you in a post you get a thousand extra people who wouldn't noramlly know where to begin finding you are clicking on links to your blog. I think its broadly indicative of the new ways in which communities regulate themselves and share at the same time. I'm not using Flickr yet but I cant wait til we get there! Flickr uses CC. However, if you did want to make money from your photos you might need to double-think...But for me the bottom line is that people borrow ideas all the time and build upon them to make something new.

Cats and dogs

I'm a dog person! But I like a sprinkling of cats too. And I'm definitely an illustration person. Plus I know there are definitely some cat people amongst you. Therefore in a happy marriage of cats and illustrations I present this book: I Like Cats by Anushka Ravishankar and Various Indian Artists. I found it in Julia Rothman's inspirational book-loving blog Book by its Cover.
If you've never seen this blog and you like books take a peek, she really appreciates books as covetable, keepable objects.

Take a bite, you know you want to.

Apple is now the most 'valuable' brand in the world, surpassing Google! and according to a new survey - "with a 246% increase in brand value to $19.1 billion — the greatest leap of any company in the survey — Facebook made its debut on the top 100 chart at number 35." (must be all the bleeping adds!)
Full story here on Mashable.

Illustration corner update

Today's image is a weird one! It's by Gervasio Gallardo, and was found on Artfix.com.
For more of his weirdness go there or here.

Librarything and the democratisation of cataloguing

Like the New Kid, I've had a librarything account for months and failed to make full use of it. I only entered 3 books into it and did one review, but the recommendations I got were actually not far off the kind of stuff I might perchance read:

Automatic (30 new)

* Shadows on the Hudson
* Clark Gifford's Body
* A Friend of Kafka
* René Leys


Member recommendations (3 new)

* Miss Lonelyhearts & the Day of the Locust
* The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
* The Catcher in the Rye

Having said that; I'd read the back of a shampoo bottle if given the time. And the shampoo bottle. And again the question of what algorithms lurk behind the whole thing pops its head up! Regarding the site itself, at first glance it seems a little complex - which I suppose makes it rich if you had the time to explore...but who does? Also as others have pointed out, nothing beats a personal recommendation. Except this way there's no obligation to read/like/justify why you didn't read/like!
This has so much potential for libraries! - "Give your patrons exciting new content, including recommendations, tag clouds, series and awards data, a virtual shelf browser, and the ability to write reviews. Pick and choose which enhancements you'd like." We might have too many books for this though. But watch this space...applications like librarything get the technology down and eventually it trickles down into common usage.
(Image above courtesy of The English Muse Blog via Lolita.)

Wake up and smell the algorithms

Hey all,
First and foremost I must point out that the title for this post isn't mine; it was a tweet I found (by @davebarbush)on the TED Blog along with this great video of a TED talk given by Eli Pariser about the tailoring of your internet searches and how what you might think is an open book is in fact filtered to the nth degree. If you have a spare 9 minutes it'll tell you how algorithms are the new librarians/journalists! Enlightens and entertains in one go.