The Days in Pictures – Wednesday

"Possible / Impossible" – Clay Sculpture
Originally uploaded by F. Sigorski

The day in pictures – or about wednesday's sensitivities...

Image: "Possible / Impossible", clay sculpture. The sculpture is part of the work "Suddenly this Overview", by Peter Fischli & David Weiss, 1981. The majority of the sculptures from the original series are preserved in the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation, on permanent loan to the öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel.

Mit Blumen Reden

Heute gelesen: "Mit Blumen soll man ja reden. Dann gedeihen sie besser oder so Zeug. Das jedenfalls meint C. Sie ist zur Kur und hat mir ihre Zimmerpflanzen anvertraut. Seit drei Wochen sabbel ich den Töpfen nun was vor. Doch langsam gehen mir die Themen aus und ich habe Angst, dass mir das Grünzeug eingeht. Ich weiss nicht mehr, was ich denen noch erzählen soll!" Link: So Zeug

Sonst Nichts

Schönes Zitat: "Kunststück. Ich bin in dieses Frühjahr sehr wortkarg hineingeschlichen, habe zugeschaut, wie die Blätter wachsen und einiges gelesen. Sonst nichts." Thomas Kapielski, Weltgunst. Quelle: Merve Verlag

Ein Sich Ausdehnendes Universum

Ein Sich Ausdehnendes Universum – Fischli & Weiss, 1984
Originally uploaded by F. Sigorski

es tät mich denn nicht wundern...

(News from Schaffhausen / Factory Time)

Künstliche Intelligenz

Kuenstliche Intelligenz – Fischli & Weiss, 1984
Originally uploaded by F. Sigorski

Die heissen meistens sowas wie HAL. Oder aber haben Mädchennamen wie: Eliza usw.

(News from Schaffhausen / Factory Time)

Vom Drama des Zwergleins

Bild: Pilze, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, 1998
Originally uploaded by F. Sigorski

Vom Drama des Zwergleins. Den Rest der Geschichte habe ich leider vergessen.

(News from Schaffhausen / Factory Time)

Hypnosemaschinen, Helden- und Trauerkränzen

Screenstill von Infra Superman – Invasion aus
dem Inneren der Erde, HongKong 1975
Originally uploaded by F. Sigorski

Geträumt von: Hypnosemaschinen, Heldenkränzen, Trauerkränzen und Rettungsringen aller Art.

(News from Schaffhausen / Factory Time)

Last Week's Notes

Monday: Sigh!
Tuesday: Sigh!
Wednesday: Sigh!
Thursday: Sigh!
Friday: Sigh!

It was like staring at a woodchip wallpaper for 10 hours a day. I was bored shitless... (News from Schaffhausen / Factory Time)

Strange New Cult?

Mac versus PC. The question popped up last week – so I went googling and found an amusing short story on this particular topic.

“I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don’t use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.” - Charlie Brooker, writing in The Guardian.

"I will confess to feeling a little confused, not to mention overwhelmed. Have I joined a strange new cult, full of benevolent smiles of recognition and secret handshakes? Have I, alternatively, signed my name in blood on the application form to become a citizen of the most evil of evil empires? Or have I just bought a shiny new piece of consumer technology, but singularly failed to grasp what all the fuss is about on either side of the argument? Hopefully it’s the last of the three, although I do feel myself increasingly powerless to resist being drawn into the realms of hype and hyperbole. Oh, but you see it’s so beautiful. So perfectly designed. So inspiring. So user-friendly. So intuitive. So shiny. So sleek. So. Just so … Ahem. Please control yourself. No dribbling in public.

The past few days have been full of more than a few palpitations, as I have found myself spending a shockingly vast amount of money - significantly, though, not real money, but rather the sort of hire purchase loan agreement sums that don’t count as tangible pounds and pence either in my pocket or in my sweaty palms - on buying a MacBook Pro. An Apple computer. Mine, all mine. Well, mine in three years time. Until then, Apple Financing and I will just come to a mutually beneficial agreement where I get their laptop and they get a portion of my soul on a monthly basis. Which seems fair, all told.

Geek interlude: If you’re a normal person, please look away now. Gone? Right. 15.4″ matte screen, 2GB memory, 160GB hard drive and, er, some sort of processor type thing of no doubt amazing speed, since you ask. These details were helpfully provided for those of you who care about such things, and would only have asked in the comments if I hadn’t told you. Happy now?

This morning, the credit agreement turned up in the post, following a nervous ten minutes spent hanging on the phone on Friday morning, during which I swore I was about to hear the fateful and demeaning utterance: “I’m sorry, but there appears to be a slight problem with your application for financing. You’re broke, aren’t you?” But no. Not a word of it. They couldn’t have bent over any more backwards to give me what I wanted without fracturing something nasty in the process. And what I wanted was an Apple Mac. Now. Give me it. Give me shiny technology. Mmm.

Oh dear, I can feel that telltale trickle of saliva again. Excuse me just a moment whilst I embarrass myself by dabbing at my mouth with a moist tissue. Finally, all those long, lonely years of loitering suspiciously on the Apple stands at various trade shows are over. No more shall I feel the need to avoid the gazes of security staff as I reach out and touch those sleek surfaces, stroking computers in ways that most right-minded people would probably deem offensive. No, now I will be able to indulge such lustful tendencies in the privacy of my own home - and when I finally receive the item in question, that is very probably what I’ll spend the first few days doing: drooling in an unseemly manner. It could well be a whole week before I even dare to gently open its virgin lid (as it were) and corrupt the keyboard within with the touch of my filthy, unworthy fingers.

I sense that I’m getting slightly carried away again. Look, all I did was buy a computer. A heap of plastic, metal and microchips put together in a superficially appealing fashion. It’s silver-grey in colour. Much like my current laptop, in fact. It’s nice. It cost an almost disgraceful sum of money. Hopefully it won’t have an internal fan that sounds like a small jumbo jet is attempting to taxi down a runway inside the CD compartment. I’ll have to get new software. And accessories. And feed it premium cat food and saucers of milk on a regular basis so that it continues to purr at me. Or something. The MacBook Pro arrives in a few days. Things may then go rather quiet for a while. The only sound you’ll hear from this direction will probably be sighs of sheer contentment. Who needs relationships with real people when you’ve got Apple products? Posted, 5 February 2007 by An Unreliable Witness.