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: social media
Al Jazeera Listening Post: Shining a Light into a Media Black Hole in Libya
Via Al Jazeera English: From the media black hole that was Libya, shocking videos illustrate the revolt. Also, South Africa’s best known political cartoonist: Jonathan Shapiro. Continue reading
Curating a Revolution in Real Time
Where does curation end and advocacy begin? The Feb. 25 edition of On the Media has two segments with NPR staffers (Sarah Abdurrahman and Andy Carvin) who are pushing the boundaries in new journalism. 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
Al Jazeera: “Social Networks, Social Revolution”
The second part of “Empire” is an excerpted panel discussion held at the Columbia Journalism School in New York City on Feb. 14 in the heady aftermath of Hosni Mubarak’s downfall. The moderator is Al Jazeera’s Marwan Bishara; the panelists are Amy Goodman, Clay Shirky, Carl Bernstein, Emily Bell, and Evgeny Morozov. Continue reading
Proto-Tweets from Egypt: “Arrested” & “Freed”
Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, tells a story on NPR Fresh Air about the first time he realized that the social media platform was becoming a tool for global citizens. Continue reading
Boobquake 2010: You Go, Girl!
Stephen Colbert finds there may be something to Boobquake, after all. Not the Rabelaisian dimension, but scientifically proven cause and effect. After-shocks continue to rumble. Continue reading
If “Carla+Sarko=Over’ Blame It on Twitter
After a week-long media feeding frenzy reiterating rumors that CARLA Bruni and Nicholas Sarkozy are splitting up, Times Online parses every jot of evidence pointing blame at Twitter – and a deeply held French cultural tradition respecting the peccadilloes of power. Continue reading
It’s Helen Keller Day in Second Life
Virtual guide dog Max makes new friends in Second Life. [Image source: Robin Roar/Flickr] Learn more about Helen Keller Day on the Second Life Wiki, and see the Flickr pool.
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
