Northwestern took an early lead in Raleigh and never let up, defeating the North Carolina State Wolf Pack 65-53. The Wildcats were lifted by point guard Michael “Juice” Thompson, who put up 22 points on 8-of-15 shooting. Jeremy Nash had just five field-goal attempts, but scored 12 points. John Shurna added 11.

Tracy Smith led the Pack with 23 points.

The Big Ten now leads the Big Ten/ACC Challenge 3-0, with wins by NU, Purdue, and Penn State. Indiana is currently down five to Maryland, but if they can come back, that would virtually guarantee victory for the Big Ten.

Photo: Michael Thompson
Model: Daria Werbowy

Wow! Usual mess Kristen Stewart actually looks gorgeous for this spread! Dressed in Rodarte and shot by Michael Thompson, Kristen looks amazing!

Kristen Stewart, será capa e recheio da edição de novembro da Allure Magazine. Fotografada por Michael Thompson embaixo dos piers nas praias do Estado de Santa Monica (USA).

Kristen, a estrela de Twilight/Crepúsculo,  com apenas 19 anos de idade, mostra ao mundo que é muito mais que uma menininha de olhos bonitos. Ela é uma mulher sexy que todos achavam que ainda não existia. Vejam as fotos:

Um arrazo não?

Leonardo Portela

The following photograph is of the Blood Lamp, a provocative piece by Michael Thompson, which challenges our current relationship with energy. The vessel contains a chemical that produces a chemiluminescence when exposed to blood and can only be used once.

Obviously, in the context of its single use and requirement of a deposit of blood, the piece forces one to reevaluate the source and utility of the energy we consume.

From Mike Thompson:

What if power came at a cost to the individual?

The average American consumes 3383kwh of energy per year. That’s equivalent to leaving the light on in 4 rooms for a whole year. The simple flick of a switch allows us to power appliances and gadgets 24/7 without a thought to where it comes from and the cost to the environment.

For the lamp to work one breaks the top off, dissolves the tablet, and uses their own blood to power a simple light. By creating a lamp that can only be used once, the user must consider when light is needed the most, forcing them to rethink how wasteful they are with energy, and how precious it is.

Assuming that the chemiluminescence is generated through the use of luminol, one could active the lamp by adding hydrogen peroxide, copper, bleach, or other oxidizing agents, but that’s not the point.

In his foreword to a recent collection on the social construction of climate change, Nicholas Onuf writes:

‘As a social constructon, climate change is no one thing. Instead it is an ensemble of constitutive processes, yielding an ever changing panoply of agents and insitutions, fixed in place only for the moment.’ Mary E Pettenger (ed) 2007:xv

Yet in the arguments about climate change, the subject of the arguments is often taken as a given. We forget that just as the carbon dioxide emissions are of human origin, so is the very concept.

Now Prof Mike Hulme, founder of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, has written a book about climate change as a social, cultural, political, religious and ethical phenomenon,rather than a ‘problem’ to be ’solved’. In doing so he has drawn deeply from the well of Cultural Theory. The book refers repeatedly to the writings of Mary Douglas (especially Douglas and Wildavsky 1984), Michael Thompson (particularly Verweij and Thompson 2006) and numerous other cultural theorists, and has a Foreword by Steve Rayner. The book is much too stimulating and multi-faceted to summarise here, but in terms of policy implications the auther promotes Rayner’s idea of the need for ’silver buckshot’ rather than ’silver bullets’, and Verweij and Thompson’s idea of ‘clumsy solutions’ rather than elegant failures.

I’ve written from a similar perspective about climate change, and specifically on what we argue about when we argue about global warming.

Why we Disagree about Climate Change is a timely, wide ranging thoughtful and challenging contribution to the climate change debate. I think it will also stand as a highly accessible landmark text of ‘applied Cultural Theory’, much as Christopher Hood’s 1998 book on public management did a decade ago.  A review will follow.

Fay Victor Ensemble DVD Reviewed in the DMG Music Gallery Newsletter

In April 2008, the Fay Victor Ensemble went on tour for the first time, performing a couple gigs Upstate New York.  One of the venues,  The Sanctuary for Independent Media,  in Troy, NY, offered the opportunity to record a DVD of the performance alongside the gig.  This was great news! The venue ended up received a grant for a 13-part series of jazz performance entitled Free Jazz from the Sanctuary videos featuring some of the world’s most talented improvisers such as Mary Halvorson, Taylor Ho Bynum, Amiri Baraka, William Hooker,  Ethnic Heritage Ensemble and the Fay Victor Ensemble.  Those DVD’s are available for sale at the Downtown Music Gallery and Bruce Gallanter wrote a review of the DVD in the store’s latest newsletter:

FAY VICTOR ENSEMBLE With ANDERS NILSSON/KEN FILIANO/MICHAEL THOMPSON -
Live At The Sanctuary [DVD] (MediaSanctuary; USA) Featuring Fay Victor/vocals, Anders Nilsson/guitar, Ken Filiano/double bass and Michael TA Thompson/drums.

When experimental jazz vocalist Fay Victor moved to NY a few years ago, little did I know that she would become a fave of those in the know from the downtown scene. I dig the way Fay starts off the first piece with a calm, enchanting solo vocal  intro. It does come from the long jazz vocal tradition of using your voice like an instrument before any recognizable words come it. Ms.Victor has chosen an excellent group of collaborators to work with. You can’t do too much better than Anders Nilsson, Ken Filiano & Michael Thompson. Fay occasionally reminds me of Betty Carter but perhaps goes a bit further out. Anders takes the first of a number of great guitar solos, fusion fans take note: he is the real thing with that swell sustained tone yet never overshadows Fay’s steamy voice. The guitar/bass/drums trio do a splendid job of surrounding and supporting Fay’s voice perfectly throughout this entire set.

Ander’s opening unaccompanied guitar solo on “Joe’s Car” is breathtaking and a  great way to begin this fine piece. Fay’s songs always tell little stories that are interesting to consider. The ever-amazing bassist Ken Filiano sounds wonderful and of course takes a couple of extraordinary solos as well. I dig the way Fay captures the old sound/style of jazz singers of yesteryear but still brings this sound to the present and future with advanced music and lyrics. I like the way the drums and bass kick off “Along the Winding Way” with a spacious freer intro before the voice and guitar come back in. In a few ways this is a perfect set that presents Fay Victor and her band in the best light.
-Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery

DVD  $15

**For ordering and more, click here.
**More info on the Sanctuary for Independent Media and Free Jazz from the Sanctuary series including the other artists involved, click here

I haven’t posted fashion photography in over a few days! Alas, my schedule has been full and time seems to sprint past me. But I’m back with a fierce editorial shot by the genius photog Michael Thompson. This sassy shoot is just what I needed.

PS. Partial NUDITY below…if this is offensive to you in any way, please discontinue your viewing of this post. GRACIAS.

images via toughpuppet

“Toda producción lleva en su núcleo la copia y, en consecuencia, se halla contaminada de falsificación. Cualquier pintura comporta una falsificación puesto que sin importar su realismo se basa inexcusablemente en la reproducción, deliberada o no, digerida, metabolizada, aberrada, de otro modelo anterior. Por este camino fue como la pintura moderna fue escapando de su modelo real y realizándose en sí. El original pues no será nunca el que garantizadamente proceda de la obediente mano del artista sino de su memoria particular. ¿Será concebible imaginar algo sin copiar de algo? Absolutamente no. Todas las obras son una deliberada manipulación de lo visto y recordado. La copia es la materia natural de la creación.” En boca de Vicente Verdú.

Ya sabemos que precisamente porque “copiaban” a Platón los artistas no le hacían demasiada gracia. Y es que él estaba convencido de que la mímesis total era imposible y de que la copia no podia acercase cada vez más al original, sino todo lo contrario. Esta se alejaba más y más con cada copia y este alejamiento del original lo concebía como distanciamiento de la verdad (la gran obsesión de Platón). A las copias las afecta la entropía, el accidente, el error: el síndrome del teléfono descompuesto. Este es uno de los motivos que me hacen pensar en Platón como un auténtico radical en busca de algo que considero tan dudosamente existente como es lo original y lo verdadero. Será que me gusta más perderme en la fantasía, lo falso y en alguna que otra copia adulterada de la austera e insulsa verdad. Pero… hablemos de homenajes.

Homenaje. Uno de los artistas más homenajeados ha sido Jean-Aguste- Dominique Ingres, gran maestro en el arte de captar la belleza del cuerpo femenino desnudo.

Julianne Moore. Portada de American Photograph (2003). Michael Thompson.

Grande Odalisque (1814). Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

En este caso no hay duda de que estamos frente a un homenaje. La postura, el decorado, todos los elementos de la fotografía de Thompson están destinados a rendirle tributo a la odalisca de Ingres, pero en una versión infinitamente más púdica (Julianne Moore no se nos aparece sensual mostrando el pecho y  las nalgas como sí lo hace la insinuante odalisca),  y su cuerpo, a pesar de la belleza de Moore, resulta rígido si lo comparamos con la  sinuosidad del cuerpo femenino pintado por Ingres. Intentar homenajear a los grandes es muy complicado, porque confrontándonos a ellos puede que desvelemos de golpe todas nuestras carencias.

Pero no nos engañemos, hay ocasiones en las que el homenaje es tan bueno o casi mejor que la obra homenajeada:

Le violin d’ Ingres. 1924. Man Ray.

Man Ray admiraba la obra de Ingres y se dedicó a realizar una serie de fotografias inspiradas en sus famosos desnudos. Una de ellas nos muestra a la modelo Kiki de Montparnasse en turbante, de espaldas y con dos marcas en forma de  f en la espalda que transforman el cuerpo de la modelo en un instrumento de cuerda. Man Ray sabía que Ingres tocaba el violín, y con esta fotografía guiñaba el ojo al espectador dando a entender que él tocaba a Kiki como Ingres su violín. Fue un gran seductor Man Ray.

La Baigneuse. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. 1808. Musée du Louvre. Paris.

A su vez, Ingres también se inspiró en varias fuentes: los manieristas toscanos (Bronzino), y de un grabado de Jacob Van Loo (Le Coucher à l’italienne) pero sobretodo de Rafael -de quien fue admirador toda su vida- para trazar sus geniales dibujos. Para la “baigneuse” se inspiró en una de las gracias que el gran maestro pintó en la loggia de Psyché de la Villa Farnesina.

Detalle de uno de los frescos de la Villa Farnesina (1518-19). Cupido con las tres gracias. Pintado por Rafael y sus pupilos.

Las mujeres de Ingres son un constante homenaje a Rafael, que le servió de guía para su particular búsqueda: la perfección. Ingres persistió en los mismos temas para alcanzar su ideal. La obra Bain turc (1848-1864, Louvre), retomará años más tarde la idéntica “baigneuse” de su juventud para situarla en el centro del lienzo.

De copias, fakes y de falsificaciones escribiré pronto. Ahora mismo prefiero dejarme seducir un rato más por las bellas damas desnudas de Ingres, de “volupté profonde” (Baudelaire) y casta, sin tiempo ni movimiento, donde todo parece tranquilo, simple.

How do we know the tide won’t wash the beach away?

A couple of years ago a local newspaper reported a certain beach-front resident claiming  “It’s ridiculous to think this beach would ever get washed away by a king tide. I’ve lived here four months and it’s just never happened.” This is an example of an heuristic in operation. The particular heuristic the resident used was this: anything that hasn’t happened within the last four months will never happen. Clearly, it’s a deficient way of thinking (parts of the beach have in fact been washed away), but might there be heuristics that, though not infallible, are useful?

This post follows on from one a while back about how we know what we think we know about ‘how things really are.’ I’m seeking to develop a way of characterising grid-group cultural theory as a set of four ecologically efficient social learning heuristics.

Given that we don’t actually know how stable the beach is, or indeed anything much about how things really are:

We use heuristics…

When we don’t know how the world really is, we use heuristics.  This kind of thinking is what the beach-front resident was doing – and using the heuristic ‘beaches are pretty stable’ isn’t stupid, otherwise no one would go on beach holidays. Mostly it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But in many cases it can work better than the alternatives. ‘Beaches are unstable’ is true for most  property developers, but generally untrue for sunbathers. Here’s an example of a relatively efficient heuristic: lost in a big city we could use an algorithm to infallibly find our way back to the hotel, such as ‘always turn left unless you’ve been that way before’. But it would be entirely impractical and take far too long. Instead we use a few heuristic rules such as ‘walk down the widest looking streets until you come to a landmark you recognise’ etc. All the time we take short cuts by using heuristics. It’s not perfect, but on the whole it’s quite efficient (that’s an heuristic about heuristics, by the way).

I am hypothesising that grid-group cultural theory typology offers a matrix that produces four alternative heuristic organisational frameworks, depending on our view of group membership (Group) and public classification systems (Grid).

Heuristics always produce partial knowledge

We don’t know what the world is ‘really like’, so any totalizing characterisation will be at best partial. If it was as simple as the mechanistic world that is the setting of a cellular automata problem called the density classification problem , for instance, we would fail to represent it correctly in (at the very least) some 12% of cases.  Even in simple mechanistic systems such as this, total knowledge appears to be impossible. The density classification problem takes place in an environment with just two possible states (on or off, one or zero), but Grid-group cultural theory suggests that in the real world, not only is there noise and complex topology – it also makes sense to think of four rather than two states (think of paired light bulbs: on-off, on-on, off-on and off-off).

This complicates the analogy with the density classification problem, but it may be hypothesised that some of the salient features of the binary configuration of the latter would still apply in a system with four possible states. In particular there would still be a per centage chance of knowledge failure. The other three cultural biases step into the breach when one cultural bias alone fails to account for observable events.

The efficiency of heuristics may (in some cases) be measured

It seems an heuristic approach to knowledge gathering may be more efficient than alternatives, even though it is still far from perfect. In particular, it appears simple heuristics are efficient in complex contexts. More research is to be found in Efficient system-wide coordination in noisy environments Andre A. Moreira, Abhishek Mathur, Daniel Diermeier, and Luis A. N. Amaral

“In the density-classification problem, each unit has to evolve toward the correct final state with only local information about the current configuration of the whole system. As discussed above, the sophisticated strategies devised to solve this problem rely on an organized structure of interactions, in which the units need to have a precise notion of the state of their neighbors, as well as the position of the neighbors in the network. Although these strategies perform well in idealized environments , in real-world decentralized systems the environment is rather more complex. It thus is reasonable to hypothesize that in real-world systems the units make their decisions by using simple heuristics that are robust against errors and do not depend on the precise structure of interactions. A plausible heuristic to reaching a consensus is to adopt the majority state of one’s neighbors.” p.12087f.

“Our results demonstrate that noise and topology critically affect the performance of strategies for achieving global coordination and information aggregation. Rules such as GKL, which perform well in noiseless, regular environments, are inefficient if complex topologies and noisy information transmission are present. In contrast, simple heuristics such as the majority rule investigated here are efficient in exactly such environments. Because real social and natural networks are characterized by noisy transmission and complex, small-world topologies, our findings provide an explanation for the observed use of such social-learning heuristics by animals and humans. Furthermore, our results suggest that decision rules cannot be evaluated in isolation from the environment of their system. That is, their success in coordinating behavior and aggregating information depends on both the rule and the typical environment in which it is used. In this sense, the majority rule is ‘‘ecologically efficient’’; it is well suited to interaction systems that resemble the real world. Put together, our findings hint at the possibility that networks and ecologically efficient rules coevolve over time.” p.12090

Now read the first part of this post: How do we know what we think we know? (Part 1)

Resources

Complex adaptive systems
http://www.cs.unm.edu/~forrest/cas-class/readings-2006/lansing-complex-adaptive-systems.pdf

Majken Schultz 1995 On Studying Organizational Cultures: Diagnosis and Understanding. Published by Walter de Gruyter, 1995

On two dimensional cellular automata, see http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/ca/85-two/

Real Estate marketing tends to be, well, conservative. To put it mildly. In fact, when I look at the marketing collateral (in which my images are often featured prominently), they tend to look as if they were designed in the mid-80’s.

So I was stoked when one of my long-term clients, Michael Thompson, asked me to shoot a series of photos for his new self-promotional brochure. Michael wanted to avoid all the clichés that dominate his industry. He also wanted a very photo-centric brochure, with a minimum of text. Finally, he wanted the images to be evocative, even startling, and he didn’t necessarily want to be featured prominently in any of them.

Very, very cool. (rubs hands together)

A series of creative meetings ensued, with Michael, myself, Quentin Bacon (who would be doing graphic design and video), Donna Hanson (who does freelance marketing consulting), and Adele Wong (who did the writing). Michael was open to pretty much any idea that was pitched, and over the course of many hours and lots of coffee, we considered dozens of ideas, including some truly wild ones.

Left to right: Michael, Adele, Quentin

One of the most common photos in real estate is the portrait of the agent standing in the half-open door of a fabulous house, like the butler welcoming the Viscount home from the opera. That was the last thing we wanted to do, but still, we needed an opening shot that placed Michael in the context of real estate, and grabbed people’s attention.

My idea was to turn the “doorway” shot upside down, and place Michael, in suit and tie, on the roof. The message is that he’s different from the crowd (“Whoa. Is that guy on the roof?”), and also places him in a superior place, ‘on top of things’.

Michael and I spent an afternoon driving the neighborhood he specializes in, and between Michael’s endless anecdotes about the history of the neighborhood (this is the area that burned in 1991), we looked for good rooftops. This involved repeatedly knocking on the doors of total strangers and asking if we could conduct a dawn photoshoot on the roof of their house. We got a few blank stares, but no one, NO ONE, turned us down outright! In my experience, the wackier the proposal, the more likely it is to be accepted. If we had asked if we could shoot a simple headshot on their front lawn, they probably would have called the police. But put a guy on the roof, wearing a suit and doing email? No problem.

In the end, the winning location was a former client of Michael’s. I made some scouting photos, and we talked with the homeowners at length. I was surprised at how open they were to the idea, until I learned that their kitchen has been the location for several Pottery Barn photoshoots, productions that made our little project seem quaint by comparison.

We scheduled the shoot for a Wednesday morning. I arrived at about 5:30 a.m., and the rest of the crew trickled in soon after. I wanted the dawn light because the shot would feature (depending on the angle I chose) either trees/rooftops or the classic SF Bay view as the backdrop, and that’s a west-facing view either way. Had we shot this in the evening, I’d have been shooting directly into the sun. I wanted to utilize the sweet, warm light of twilight, which meant an early alarm clock and the “other” twilight! Quentin set up his video equipment, and Michael and I went up to the second-floor balcony that we were using for access to the roof.

The tiles were pretty slippery, and we didn’t really want to test out the $2 million insurance policy I had taken on the property, so Michael went across the roof barefoot (to protect the ceramic tiles), using a towel to keep the moss and dirt off his suit. Once in position, he put on his shoes, opened up the laptop (my old one), and we waited for the light to get “right”.

I made some shots from the balcony, but the real prize was going to be the photos made with the San Francisco Bay as a backdrop – in this area, that view is immediately recognizable and would really anchor Michael in the neighborhood.

Shooting from the roof of my car, I was able to shout instructions to Michael (no doubt the neighbors were amused) and over the course of the next hour or so we made a series of photos:

The straight-up portraits are interesting, but to my eye, it’s the ones with the laptop that really make the statement. Why is he on the roof with a laptop? That little element gives the photo much more depth, and engages the viewer in a way that the others don’t.
By the way, while the drop off the near side of the roof was only one story, the drop off the back was two stories, onto a very steep canyon rim. It was scary up there!

Here’s a few outtakes:

This is the second of a four-part series about shooting an ad campaign for a Real Estate broker. Also in the series:
Boomers
Multiplicity
A Clear and Present Kitchen

an undergraduate-graduate conference on “aristotle in the 21st century.” the link is here. along with john drummond (who’s at fordham), they’re going to have michael thompson as a keynote—yes, thompson as in thompson, who wrote life and action. i like thompson, and i like to what effect he deploys aristotle. i read his book last fall, when it came out, and was for a few months engaged in a number of different conversations about it—exciting, at least; so i have to think the conference conversation will be lively.

Next Wednesday The Fay Victor Ensemble will have our debut performance at John Zorn’s space the Stone!  The monthly revolving curatorial system keeps the venue and the programming fresh and guitarist Brandon Ross is curating this month and invited the FVE to take part. We’re thrilled and I hope you will join us.

We’ll perform music from our upcoming  release,  The FreeSong Suite and unleash our wacky, witty strange show with lots for you to enjoy.  The details are below.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 15 2009

The Fay Victor Ensemble

FV-voice
Anders Nilsson-guitar
Ken Filiano-bass
Michael TA Thompson-drums

The Stone
10PM Set
One Set Only

$10 Cover

Corner of Second Street and Avenue C
F,V Train to 2^nd Avenue
www.thestonenyc.com

This is an amazing month of music too!  Check out the calendar to see when folks like Meshell Ndegocello, Lizz Wright, Vijay Iyer, Myra Melford, Mark Taylor and Duck Baker just for starters…

John Tory, hoping to hand Toronto back to Miller again.

I am a Toronto homeowner. I am a small-c conservative and a big-C Conservative. I have seen the NDP’s union and activist-owned David Miller turn a mediocre city into a disastrous one over the past five years.

I have met John Tory. I like John Tory. I supported John Tory in 2003 when he lost to Miller, a socialist in disguise with zero public profile. I supported John Tory as leader of the Ontario PC party against Dalton “Not a Leader” McGuinty in 2007. I supported a massive failure both times, when the man snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

John Tory is a nice guy. Good businessman. Good husband and father. Good connections. Smart as a whip. Would love to play golf with him.

JOHN TORY IS A POLITICAL FAILURE. HE HAS THE POLITICAL INSTINCTS OF A ROAD PYLON. HE WILL HAND TORONTO BACK TO THE NDP AGAIN IF HE RUNS FOR MAYOR YET AGAIN.

There are two men I can see who could galvanize the public against the leftist-unionist block that is destroying this city. If you think a Mel Lastman-style unpolished firebrand is best to advance a common sense agenda, support Councillor Rob Ford, Etobicoke North Ward 2. If you think a more polished, serious, hard-working potential media superstar with less small-c conservative cred, but who came from nothing and whose thinking always seems to start with individual citizens and local neighbourhoods, support Scarborough Centre Councillor Michael Thompson.

Listen: you can make a business deal with a smile and a pat on the back. You can solve corporate problems on the golf course. But you can’t win an election against leftists without fire in the belly. You can’t win an election against leftists without the instincts of a shark. You can’t inspire the people if the people can’t identify with you. The people can’t identify with John Tory, and they never will. John, get out of the way, stop sucking the energy out of the opposition room, and let a competent politician do what it takes to bring down the blood suckers.

This. Picture. Is. DOPE! Seriously. Do I need to explain why I like this picture? I shouldn’t have to. Sigh. I need a vacay.

image via Jedroot

Am plecat de la o discuţie pe blogosferă (http://roxanaiordache.wordpress.com/). Roxana Iordache întreabă : “DĂIANU PRIM-MINISTRU? DINESCU DESPRE BĂSESCU”. Au urmat o sumedenie de reacţii pe blogul respectiv. Citez câteva :

+Radu Portocala spune:  sâmbătă 16 mai 2009 la 12:50:11 am Dl Daianu s-a pierdut in 1976. Ce mai conteaza daca-i devine prim-ministru lui Basescu? Pentru ca stiu ce-o sa-mi raspundeti, am sa va rog sa-mi dati un alt exemplu (unul singur ajunge) de ofiter care si-a dat demisia din DIE. Si inca ceva. Stiti care era partea nevazuta a activitatilor Institutului de Economie Socialista unde a lucrat dl Daianu?

blogideologic spune: sâmbătă 16 mai 2009 la 8:31:08 am Deci tot Dinescu trage sforile ? Ca şi la loviluţie?

Roxana Iordache spune: sâmbătă 16 mai 2009 la 9:19:28 am @blogideologic. A tras el sfori atunci? 

blogideologic spune: sâmbătă 16 mai 2009 la 10:17:27 am @ Roxana “A tras el sfori atunci? ”   El a fost marioneta ?

blogideologic spune: sâmbătă 16 mai 2009 la 10:19:28 am @ Radu Portocalan  “Dl Daianu s-a pierdut in 1976.” Bună observaţie.

Roxana Iordache spune: sâmbătă 16 mai 2009 la 10:35:11 am @blogideologic. Cred că una din explicaţiile principale pentru situaţia în care ne aflăm ca societate după 20 de ani este că facem în continuare jocul vechilor structuri. Ţinta au fost mereu victimele, nu autorii. Sunt puşi la stâlpul infamiei cei care au recunoscut şi care nu au făcut rău nimănui, nu cei care rămân necunoscuţi şi fac rău în continuare. E atât de simplu încât nu putem să nu complicăm.

blogideologic spune: sâmbătă 16 mai 2009 la 10:44:32 am @ Roxana Chiar că nu înţeleg. Mircea Dinescu a fost o “victimă”?

Roxana Iordache spune: sâmbătă 16 mai 2009 la 11:41:23 am @blogideologic. Titus, m-am referit la paradigma Dăianu.

blogideologic spune: sâmbătă 16 mai 2009 la 1:09:33 pm @ Roxana, @ Radu Portocală   „paradigma” Trăim nişte vremuri extraordinare, favorabile pentru noi. Poate că ar trebui   să analizăm „paradigma” în cadrul unei analize de structură organizaţională. Şi această analiză chiar să ne folosească. Părerea mea este că analiza „paradigmei” nu poate fi realizată fără idei împrumutate de la Émile Durkheim, Michael Thompson şi Michel Clozier. Ultimii doi arătau că lupta de clasă simplificatoare marxistă, a „conflictului vertical”, trebuie înlocuită cu analiza unei epure a „reţelei”. Însă, repet, sunt idei noi în cultura noastră, şi ar fi nevoie de o şcoală să le dezvolte. Unde sunt proiectele lui Constantin Noica ? Cine a lucrat pentru ca ele să dispară?

Titus Filipas

Frankie Muller cuts a cake baked in his honor for helping the Los Alamos Fire Department as part of his high school work program. Courtesy photo

Los Alamos High School student Frankie Muller received an appreciation party hosted in his honor Tuesday by the Los Alamos Fire Department.

The Fire Department showed their gratitude to Muller for all his efforts helping them through his high school work program.

Muller helped both the Fire Administration and Training divisions through his high school work program.

“Frankie did a great job on everything we asked him to do from shredding paper to acting as an injured patient for our last recruit academy training,” said Assistant Fire Chief/Fire Marshall Michael Thompson.

“We will miss his help but we look forward to him possibly returning as a Los Alamos Firefighter, which is one of his future goals. All of us at the fire department wish Frankie well in his future endeavors.”

Los Alamos Firefighters responded to the following calls from the community throughout the month of April:

• Fires – 2
• Emergency Medical Svc. – 97
• People Falling Down – 3
• Motor Vehicle Accidents – 2
• High Angle Rescues – 0
• False Alarms – 18
• Other Minor Calls – 26

Total April 2009 Fire Department Calls – 148

It could have been worse. It could have involved animals, too.

But as it was, I had non-professional volunteer adult models, about 15 children running around and watching (OK, maybe it was only 3, but it seemed like 15), 2 children who were also non-professional volunteer models, one of whom was expected to run through the set naturally. Also a video guy trying to get footage in between takes. Oh, and actually, there was a big dog present, though not part of the shot.

So, no – this was not my usual day of shooting empty interiors.

The project was to make a lifestyle-type photo of my client, Michael Thompson (the guy in the photo) meeting with his client (played by Donna Hanson, who does freelance marketing consulting; the 2 kids we recruited from the neighborhood) in a busy kitchen, evocative of a typical household in the early morning. Kids to get ready for school, Mom running late for a meeting, sort of chaotic.

Donna & Michael

This was part of a much larger project, including the Rooftop shoot, that is essentially a campaign promoting Michael as a busy Real Estate professional. There was a video component being shot, as well as a new website being designed. After many hours of brainstorming with Michael’s team of creatives, we settled on a series of photos.

Michael wanted to produce a multi-page brochure that really stood apart from the typical real estate collateral. He wanted a bare minimum of text, allowing the photography to tell the story, but he also wanted to avoid all the clichéd photos that we’ve seen again and again….the realtor handing the keys to the proud new homeowners….the realtor standing in the doorway of a fabulous house, like Vanna White….explicit photos showing specific activities.
Instead, he wanted evocative, surprising (even startling) photos that would (hopefully) retain people’s attention and bring them to a positive conclusion without being too heavy-handed.

So, back to the kitchen shot. I had this shot totally pre-visualized, down to the smallest details. I mean, I knew exactly what I wanted. Donna and I spent an afternoon location scouting, visiting half a dozen potential kitchens to use as our set, but when we walked into this one I knew immediately that this was The One. It matched what I had in my mind’s eye so well it was almost creepy. Here’s one of the scouting photos I made that day:

As you can see, I was already homing in on the comp I would ultimately go with.

On the day of the shoot, I showed up about an hour early, to get set up and make a beauty shot of the kitchen as a gift to the homeowner (who had handed over her kitchen to a bunch of strangers for the afternoon).

Then, I began to construct my action shot. I had to not only keep the kitchen lit, but also make sure my models were appropriately lit as well. Ultimately I had 8 lights involved, about half for the room, and half for the talent.

The premise of the shot was Michael coming to his clients’ home in the early morning to get her signature on some sort of important document. The chaos of a typical weekday morning swirls around them; the boy eating his breakfast at the counter, the girl running somewhere with her book bag. Everything was carefully coordinated, from the props to the wardrobe of each person.

Once I had everyone positioned right, we worked on facial expression and gestures. It was a lot to keep track of! The boy had to be eating his cereal but not look awkward; Michael and Donna had to be focused on the documents but not have their faces turned away from the camera too much, and not smiling in a fake way but not scowling or frowning, either. The girl had to be running full-tilt towards the camera but not crash into me, and she had to do it about 25 times in a row.

She was the champ of the day – without her acting skill the shot would never have happened. She was able to come busting around the corner of that kitchen island again and again, flawlessly, while I ripped shots off hoping to catch one when everyone was perfect. And that’s what I got – ONE perfect shot and a bunch of almost-but-not-quite ones.

It was months later, when I was re-watching “Clear and Present Danger” with my girlfriend, that I saw Jack Ryan’s kitchen (in the movie) and realized that I had modeled the entire scene on that kitchen! Even the orange juice container! You never know what’s influencing you.

This is the third of a four-part series about shooting an ad campaign for a Real Estate broker. Also in the series:
Boomers
Multiplicity
Up On the Roof