How you'll be remembered if you become a famous artist.

My friend Michael, who works in a variety of catering capacities at the Seattle Art Museum, sent me this image of the donar table list. Wouldn't you hate to be the one person to order the beef at Remington's or Gaugin's table?

Lately I've been watching all these science fiction films, and noticing the what I assumed were Eames furniture items featured in them. Especially the white table (2001 A Space Odyssey, Soylent Green, Solaris...) which you could practically place bets on how long it would take to show up in "the future." Surprising to me, it's actually an Eero Saarinen from 1956. "The underside of typical chairs and tables makes a confusing, un-restful world," explained Saarinen. "I wanted to clear up the slum of legs."

However, the blue chairs which show up in the helicopter control booth in "Superman" are all Eames all the time.

Anyway, those are my not very deep thoughts involving tables (and chairs).

Quotes froom Wikipedia...

Two great ones relating to science fiction, but could just as easily apply to artistic ideas...

...a term Darko Suvin adapts from Ernst Bloch and defines as "a discrete piece of information recognizable as not-true, but also as not-unlike-true, not-flatly- (and in the current state of knowledge) impossible".[97]Suvin, Darko (1979) Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre

...a great many ((artists)) writers and critics have based their entire careers on the premise that anything that the general public can understand without mediation is worthless drivel. [...] If everybody came to agree that stories should be told this clearly, the professors of literature would be out of job, and the writers of obscure, encoded fiction would be, not honored, but pitied for their impenetrability."[98] Card, O.:Ender's Game, Introduction

Sci- Fi and Seals

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For nearly the last week I've been chilling at the Oregon Coast and immersing myself in a study of sci-fi. This time of year the weather alternates between hail, rain, burst of sun, and grey, so there isn't a lot of reason to go outside. Instead I've been sitting on a courderoy couch, fingerknitting like a fiend, while my friend Andrew curates the basics.

So far the list has included:
Metropolis
Flash Gordon, the Purple Plague serial
Omega Man
Solaris
Godzilla
Godzilla vs. Megalon
2001
Soylent Green
Stalker
The Man Who Fell to Earth.

Today it's Blade Runner... and then there's going to be a little break...

Anyway, what has been kicking around as an idea is how science fiction seems to rely on the misunderstanding of science as the fulcrum on which the story turns. That's where the anxiety comes from. Not quite sure where to go with the rest of that observation.

But in the meantime I read the old issue of Nature that was next to the toilet in the bathroom here in the house of a chemist, and found this article titled "Governance and Environmental Change in the Arctic Ocean" (April, 2009, that had this beautiful map graphic. Perfect sci-fi plot- How witll the Arctic be divided politically after there is no more ice?

And I've been out watching the seals. Which are just so much cooler than anything that can fit in a television.