GUESS WHAT...TELEVISION MOMENTS INSPIRE US TO CREATE

Ninety-nine percent of American homes have a television that the average person watches four hours a day. Television is reaching viewers like no other medium has done before; it captures our ears, our eyes, and often our hearts to the characters and news stories that pour out of the speakers. Before his death in 1987, Andy Warhol began a portfolio focused on important TV moments, which spoke to the idea that some the most memorable times of our lives are staring at TV screens. In the late eighties there were plenty of popular TV moments to fill the portfolio, but the only one he completed was of Buzz Aldrin’s moonwalk in 1969. It’s a theme throughout Andy’s work that the best art reflects on the happenings in society.
My original love of all Warhol art was the simplicity of it. It’s not extremely difficult to make a screen print compared to one of the massive realist paintings in the Louvre. Yet, I still preferred Warhol’s pieces to anything I’d seen before; this was in complete contradiction with what I thought art was at the time. I believed it was the effort and skill that was the basis of art, and the ability to be patient and persistent with your medium. Andy flipped my world around because suddenly this simple art that could be pumped out of a printer was more eye-catching and meaningful than a tirelessly worked Manet. It wasn’t just the process that intrigued be either, but the banal subjects he used. They were of soup cans, bananas, shoes, cats, and then the pictures that we’ve all seen hundreds of times like Marilyn, Mickey, and Mona Lisa. The images weren’t just pretty, but they gave me feelings and memories that I had not associated with art until that point in my life.
The moonwalk affected me in a very peculiar way. First I looked at the piece and realized it was on the moon, and then noticed the pinks and blues. I glanced over the white blur in the flag and artistically placed lines in the drawings. The significance of a piece never seems to hit me right on, but I slowly ease into meaning and deeper context of the work. The moon landing is an important period in our history- a time of patriotism and national unity. It represents the conspiracy theories and how television can blur the lines between fact and fiction. It’s the mystery of space and a fear of the unknown. There is so much conveyed with a single image that we’ve all seen many times before, but when its colored and blurred and hung in a museum it’s no longer just a picture. It’s social commentary.

GUESS WHAT...IS THE DRIVING FORCE OF INNOVATION

I think we are all interested in this subject of how to be creative and come up with new ideas. I like Stephens ideas a lot and I think it's very refreshing to find someone NOT bashing the Internet and fast passed life style of today. I'm very glad to live in the technological age, and while I'm not much of a fan of face book, I do enjoy blogs and forums. More good things come out of our interconnectedness than bad, and I'm sick of all those middle-aged haters (sorry mom)! Bravo to Stephen! It's a lovely presentation, and much more refreshing than a boring old power-point. God- I hate those things.

GUESS WHAT...CAN MAKE YOU MORE SUCCESSFUL

This isn't the answer that you want to hear. According to a study done by a Columbia Business professor, people who are sad and/or depressed are more innovative, creative, and successful. I know! You thought those rainy days were getting you down, but really they're just making you more artistically inclined.
The study had a group of people go into a room with a desk and audience where they would speak about their goals and dreams. There was a group that had a positive reaction from the audience (smiling, nodding), a group that was given negative reactions (frowning), and a group that had no reaction (the control group). After their speech, the participants were asked to make a collage, which was graded by professional artists for creativity. Surprise, surprise- the negative group performed better than the positive group.
I guess it is perquisite for an artist to have a troubled past... and thank goodness for teen angst. Wow- I never thought I'd say that.
Kudos to Jonah Lehrer for posting about this phenomenon on his blog- Frontal Cortex

GUESS WHAT...IS SITTING AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEAFLOOR

Jason de Caires Taylor is a sculptor, who explores the lines between art and environment by making art and turning it into a part of nature. The sculptures he creates of normal human life are put at the bottom of the ocean and left to coexist with marine species. Over time, they turn into artificial reefs that house fish and are essential to the oceans ecosystem.

If you go look at his site you'll notice how much more beautiful everything looks with a little bit of coral on it! The colors are fantastic and the shapes are bizarre...but it's the kind of bizarre that makes something interesting. Here's a link to Taylors gallery.

GUESS WHAT...OLIVER AND CHUCK CAN'T SEE IN A MIRROR

My absolute favorite scientist- for no other reason than his bashful personality, lovely oxford accent, and wonderful stories- Oliver Sacks, and the famous portrait painter Chuck Close are both face blind. They can't remember faces- even their own. Radiolab did an amazing short on these two men that I think you should listen to. It has a lot of deep commentary, with a little humor and wit on the side. My favorite part is when Oliver says, "There are other things besides human beings..." that was great; Chuck is also hysterical- he talks a lot about the humor in his neurological condition, which makes his take on the disease very appealing
It's also interesting seeing the artist and the scientist talk about the different ways that they deal with the condition. I've always thought that scientists and artists are wildly similar- we're obsessive people. Chuck and Oliver are obviously both deep thinkers, who have analysed themselves and how they deal with there conditions.
Anyway, you'll hear when you listen...

GUESS WHAT...MAKES UP AN OMNITRIANGULATED SURFACE

Triangles! Yes, how anti-climactic.
This whole post is dedicated to the beauty and genius of the Geodesic dome, which was designed in the 1940's by a man with a wonderful name- Buckminster Fuller.
Buckminster was a cool guy. Funny thing is that he wasn't a very good student, and struggled to grasp concepts in geometry when drawn out on a chalkboard. This is a tad ironic considering his genius in geometry is how he became famous. Kinda reminds me of my bestie Madelyn's blog post on failure..., but back to Mr. Buckminster.
After studying at Milton Academy in Mass., Fuller upgraded to the Harvard experience, which apparently didn't suit him so well. He was expelled from the institution twice: he said himself that he was a nonconforming misfit in the fraternity environment. Only years later did he go back and finish his education. (and receive a total of 47 honorary doctorate degrees)
Fuller created his Geodesic dome while teaching at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. He wasn't the first to think of the concept, that had been done by a Dr. Walther Bauersfeld thirty years earlier. Fuller improved and patented the dome, which is why he receives the recognition.
Beyond beauty, the geodesic dome's design is what made it so practical. It was made out of straight slabs of glass of whatnot and put together in the shape of a circle- the circle is important because it is the shape with the least amount of surface area and most volume. This allows for the most enclosed space with in the least amount of materials making it economically and environmentally friendly.
Buckminster also engineered the term "spaceship earth"...he was a cool dude.

GUESS WHAT...MAKES ALL THE HOT GUYS DO DRUGS

My friend Emily is a YouTube phenom who wrote and performed a new song called 'How Come All the Hot Guys are Potheads?' on her channel. It is wonderful, true, and thought provoking. The lyric 'My dream boat is sinking- it OD'd on your new meds' truly spoke to me.
Why do all the hot guys do drugs!!! I've got a theory. First we need to assume that drug use is caused by biological, psychological, and social factors- Biological factors being the most important since looks are also hereditary. So if someone has two good looking parents who do drugs they are also likely to be good looking and do drugs.
Then we have to make a bit of a leap and assume that good looking people are more popular. This isn't too far off considering social people respond positively to good looking people (anti-social people respond more strongly and negatively to poor looking people). Social factors in drug use are mainly peer pressure, and assuming that pretty people have a lot of peers than they are more likely to have pressure.
Psychological is the hardest. The psychological factors include psychological disorders and a lack of purpose. This could be passed on like the good looking traits due to poor parenting, but this is most likely unrelated to looks and instead influences the subculture drug use.
Okay, I'm done. Here's the video- it's a tad bit hard to understand, but if you go to the YouTube version there are lyrics. Beautiful, funny, and insightful lyrics.

GUESS WHAT...YOU CAN DO WITH A WEATHER BALLOON, IPHONE, CAMERA, AND A LITTLE IMAGINATION

Check this out! While I was doing some research for a future post I found this awesome, homemade (well, as homemade as a professional director/ producer can make) video of the earths atmosphere. It looks exactly like you think it does, but the cool part is that the camera was made by little Max Geissbühler and big Luke Geissühler (who directed Helvetica and Objectified). This is so cute and cool- I want to be a director/father/science enthusiast/sort of inventor/cool person when I grow up!

Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

GUESS WHAT...I FOUND IN THE ARCHIVES

Since I'm not watching the shows this season and loath the collections from last fall, I've been finding a bunch of insperation from the past. One of my favorite collections ever came from a B-class desginer named Catherine Holstein. I don't believe that she's still designing her own line, but her first collection in fall '08 has inspired my 'look'. Here are a couple favorites.
Here's the rest of the collection on Elle.com- CATHRINE HOSTLEIN

GUESS WHAT...HAPPENS WHEN YOU GOOGLE THIS!!!

It's October, bitches! And in this episode of Zoé 2.0 we're going to use a search engine to make fun of the masses!

As you know, intelligent reader, google is set up so that the things that are googled and linked the most, are shown first on the results page. Simple enough. But also, the more popular your site is, the more power your links have on the search engine.

Here's an example. Mark starts a site called...marktalk.com. He gets a whole bunch of hits over a period of time and a whole lot of links to his site. Slowly but surely, he creeps his way up the google results page for 'Mark'. Marks friend Tim decides to start a site too named Timspeaks.com, and Mark decides that he's going to put a link to Tims site on his own. While it took Mark a long time to reach the top five of the google results page, with that one link Tim is already on the first page and creeps his way up from there.

This is why people spam popular sites like YouTube and various blogs. When someone comments on a popular site with their http:// it's like Mark putting another link on his site.

Okay, now that that this is over with, i dare you to type stuff into google like...What is-; How do-; Why does-; The biggest-; the best-; twilight fans- and so on just for the fun of it. Don't even press enter, just let google do its fancy guess work.