About the Flaneur
![Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, Rainy Day (La Place de l’Europe, temps de pluie). 1877. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]](http://blindflaneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day_1877_wiki.jpg "gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day")
I walk through my blindness the way I wander down streets in Paris: unfettered and alive, alert to the raw material of the senses. I am a flaneur. Come along with me. Just don’t try to take my arm, unless I ask. What’s a flaneur? Read the first post, Return of the Flaneur to Galerie Vivienne. After that, try Foot Rage and the Blind Flaneur. Then stay tuned.Kiki: Man Ray’s Dada Muse
The legendary Kiki of Montparnasse posed for Man Ray’s Le violin de Ingres (1924). See more from Imaging Paris.Lee Miller: Surrealist Muse
Lee Miller traced a meteoric trajectory from flapper fashionista to surrealist muse. She played the Statue in Jean Cocteau's first movie. Picasso painted her portrait. She apprenticed with Man Ray and later became a noted war photographer for British Vogue. Read more.Miss Tic: Paris Street Art
Poet and street artist Miss Tic isn't exactly a kid in a hoodie with a can of spray paint. Maybe she can still run like hell when the police show up, but can she sprint in high heels? Well-known in international avant-garde circles, her work is exhibited now at the Venice Biennale as well as the alleys of Paris. Read more. See Ethics of Love for a video montage of Miss Tic's provacative poetry. More Paris Street Art.
The Lake and the River
![Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]](http://blindflaneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/isle_royale_fog.jpg "Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]")
I’ve canoed on Lake Superior for almost as many years as I’ve been losing eyesight. I return year after year like a migrating loon to learn the other side of a slow, uncertain process that we could call “going blind.” After 35 years with the lake as my teacher, I know what lies on the other side. I call it letting go of sight. Read Big Water. See more about the Great Lakes.
What is a village? A small place, yes, as wide as the world, layered with histories and stories, where you can walk wherever you want to go. My vision of that place is Yellow Springs 2.0.
Not This Pig
If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in Not This Pig (2003).Re-Imagining Accessibility
![Shepard Fairey’s “Barack Obama/Hope” image went viral during the 2008 election. Then controversy about the image’s source transformed it into the poster child for fair use in the public debate over copyright and free culture. Now FULAB takes “Hope” as its icon [Image source: Wikipedia]](http://fairuselab.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/shepard_fairey_hope_2008.jpg "shepard_fairey_hope_2008")
Re-imagining accessibility through the transformations of culture -- particularly the transformative promise of accessible technology for people with disabilities -- is the work of the Fair Use Lab. What does Shepard Fairey’s Hope poster have to do with accessibility? Read more: Shape-Shifters in the Fair Use Lab [MiT6 2009]Blind Photographers
In the moment when Paul Strand photographed her surreptitiously on the street in New York, the social engineers who created a system for licensing beggars never imagined that a blind woman had culture or could make culture. She herself may not have imagined it. Paul Strand probably didn’t give her much credit for making culture, either. Read more: Curiosity & The Blind Photographer [MiT5 2007] See more on blind photographers.BottomFeeder U.S.A.
![Grant Wood. Parson Weem’s’ Fable. 1939. Amon Carter Museum, Forth Worth.. Steven Biel describes the painting: “Parson Weems, imitating Charles Willson Peale’s pose in The Artist in His Museum (1822), opens a red velvet curtain on the legendary scene: Augustine Washington, elegant in crimson coat, white ruffle, tan breeches, silver-buckled pumps, and green tricornered hat, grasps in his right hand the slim trunk of the bent cherry tree. A row of cherries dangles from the perfectly rounded treetop, mirroring the very cherry-like fringe of the Parson’s curtain. Augustine’s outstretched left palm and furrowed brow signal a serious inquiry. His son George, boyish in stature and dress—coatless, with sky-blue breeches and petite buckled pumps—is manly in his expression. In fact, his white-wigged head is that of Gilbert Stuart’s portrait and the dollar bill. He points with his right hand to the hatchet in his left. Wood chips lie in the circle of soil at the base of the tree, its lower trunk smoothly incised and poised to split off. In the background, a well-dressed slave couple harvests the fruit of a second tree.” [Alt Text Source: Common-Place/ http://www.common-place.org/vol-06/no-04/biel/ ]](http://www.bottomfeederusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/grant_wood_parson_weems_fable_200px.jpg "grant_wood_parson_weems_fable_200px")
BottomFeeder U.S.A.
Tag Archives: OTM
Hamster Cages, Participatory Surveillance, and the Quantified Self
I’m still catching up on news and media I missed last week while I was pondering media theory at MiT7.The conference’s fundamental issue crystallized for me during the Saturday night forum (Power and Empowerment) when Richard Rogers invoked the phrase “participatory surveillance to” suggest the dark side of platforms monetizing user-generated content (a.k.a. “hamster cages”). Unbeknownst to me at the time was last week’s edition of On the Media, devoted to data, with a story on The Personal Data Revolution. It makes me wonder, whose revolution is it, anyway, and whose wallet should I watch? Continue reading
Steven Rosenbaum on the “Curation Nation”
What if instead of relying on search engines to get our information, we relied on each other – friends, experts, journalists – to deliver us information by way of carefully curated websites? Steven Rosenbaum, CEO of Magnify.net and author of “Curation Nation: How to Win in a World Where Consumers” are Creators tells OTM that our curated content future may have already arrived. Continue reading
Ethan Zuckerman the Internet’s Global Impact
On the Media’s Feb. 18 show was recorded before a live audience using a talk show debate format in which the hosts represented two Manichean perspectives on an oversimplified question about the Internet’s role in society. In the show’s second segment, after his name was invoked as the media guru on the Net’s global impact, Ethan Zuckerman walked on stage like Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall to quip, “I think you just completely misunderstand my work.” Nice gag.Here is the audio embed, and below are several takeaway points from the transcript. Continue reading
Locating A Public Sphere On The Arab Street
This week’s images from Tahrir Square in Cairo give a passionate urgency to the metaphor of the Arab street. Since 9/11, American media have used the phrase widely as shorthand for Arab public opinion. But a researcher at York University in Toronto says its meanings are more nuanced. As it’s used in American media, the term often is associated with Irrationality, volatility, and violence. In Arab media the usage is more affirmative, suggesting “main street” or the will of the people. Arab media also apply it globally, speaking in turn about the American street. Why don’t we say that? I hear it as a metaphor for the public sphere, and the free discourse that sustains it. Where else would a flaneur locate it? Continue reading
Matching Social Register to Social Media
The Social Media Ecosystem – a.k.a. the Internet – is overpopulated with blogs and tweets that tell you 5 things you should do to succeed at blogging and tweeting. Anyone contemplating a career change to “social media consultant” should check … Continue reading
Accessibility? Like Twitter, What’s the Point?
Jonathan Zittrain tells a cautionary tale about Steve Jobs on this week’s On The Media. Zittrain’s concern looks to the future of indigenous, decentralized innovation on the Internet, but the implications of his message apply just as well to accessible … Continue reading
Shifting Attention to the Cloud
OTM: Cloud Atlas 010909: “Once, your computer was a box you loaded with stuff that you had to buy and maintain. Increasingly, your computer is a doorway that simply gives you access to a wealth of free services, software and … Continue reading
WWTFD? (What Would Tina Fey Do?)
Not tonight on Saturday Night Live. We have a pretty good idea where she’s headed with that, and it will surely involve a little red meat. No, what would TF do when she reaches for a SoyJoy? (No one, alas, … Continue reading
