Geek art at its best:

Geodesic dome sculptures by George W. Hart, "sculptor, mathematician, engineer, researcher, writer, computer scientist, and educator". All of his sculptures are made from complex mathematical models; some are constructed with rapid prototyping technologies like laser-cutting and 3D printing.
He has been commissioned to make a laser-cut wooden piece for the Gehry-designed Stata Center.

Botany through photography:

Have acquired unnecessary bundle of exotic blooms for photo project. (I'm photographing geometric patterns and arrangements that occur in natural and manmade things). Am happy cos I have pretty flowers:

Star of Bethlehem, Ornithogalum arabicum
These are very, very cool. The flower buds sort of sprout out from the central inverted-pear-pineconey blob, tearing the blob apart as they bloom into a ball of flowers. The small white flowers smell sweeeet too.




Blue Delphinium
These have a crazy deep blue / purple hue when the flowers mature. Right now my bunch looks pale violet cos all the deep coloured flowers fell off. The flowers have crinkly tails, where the subtly sweet nectar sits :d

(Author's note:
My parents did not raise me as a hippy flower-eating child; I just eat anything edible-looking that's in my way.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Aaaaah! Just found out that these teeny weeny little red spiders are eating my beloved ickle chocolatey plants away....
get your filthy little feet off my plants you.... *goes to power hose / half-drowning plants*

America: on the path of self-destruction? [article from the Guardian]

[On environmental protection and fighting against global warming]

"...The attitude of the White House to global warming was summed up by the online journalist Mickey Kaus as: "It's not true! It's not true! And we can't do anything about it!" What terrifies all American politicians, deep down, is that it is true and that they could do something about it, but at horrendous cost to American industry and lifestyle.

In the meantime, all American consumers have been asked to do is to buy Ben & Jerry's One Sweet Whirled ice cream, ensuring that a portion of Unilever's profits go towards "global warming initiatives". Wow!"

There are many things in this country that I'm still not used to: the way environmentalists are depicted as liberal leftists in the press, the way ppl drive everywhere when you can walk for 20 mins instead, the backwards and inefficient public transport system, the disposability of all things plastic, the gargantuan portions and ppl, and their even bigger appetites for consumption.

To me, there's something fundamentally wrong about this American lifestyle, and it makes me want to move elsewhere where people have a better sense of eco-consiousness and awareness of sustainability.

Catch it if you can...

Just watched Chicken Poets 像雞毛一樣飛, directed by Meng Jing Hui 孟京輝 , newbie Mainland Chinese director / veteran avant-garde playwright. It was so brilliant, I'd recommend it to all cinema lovers. A heady vanguard blend of witty visual puns, fast and furious dialogue, (if you understand Mandarin) playful colour-tones and theatrical sets.

Dad won't be naming my kids...

Dad came up with the name 來福 (Loy Fook) for the Dog, which is rifle in Hong Kong Chinglish; it can also mean "luck come hither" in Chinese, which can either be appallingly old-fashioned or almost uber-hip cos it's so very, very retro. It would be the way really uneducated bourgeois Cantonese name their kids.

Dad started getting silly after thinking about this retro-unfashionableness, (what ppl call "leung" in HKese) and decided his grandsons will have names like 祿來 (Luk Loy) - Rollei, the camera brand or "come wealth"; 壽來 (Sau Loy) - "come longevity". Grandaughters would be called 大嬌 (Dai Giu) - "Big Cutie"and 小嬌 (Siu Giu) - "Small Cutie". English names would prolly become something like Leica, Holga, Nikon, Pentax, etc etc., knowing my dad's obsession with cameras.

Dad, don't you even DARE try that on my offsprings.

Currently obsessed with....

Buying art.

Not postcards or posters, but the real deal (or more like limited edition prints / miniatures that are within my affordability). Very very bad. For wallet and for my level of concentration on more important things in life. (like graduating and finding a job) To add insult to injury, I'm using eBay as my portal to the collectors' sphere.

Works in question -

Martin Parr: Common Sense series, 1998


Takashi Murakami: Kerotan print, 2001


T.M.: Superflat Museum toy figures, 2003

Update: {10/28/2003}

My own set of Takashi Murakami shokugan has arrived!! Shokugan means snack toy, or literally eat play in Japanese, and is usually free toys that come with kids' snacks. Murakami wanted his shokugan's to stimulate the public's interest in contemporary art, and these are intended as a "starter kit" for beginner collector's. [I can tell you the intent is working ;) ]

The Roppongi Hills edition has 6 figures and is produced in an edition of 15,000. Each figure is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity and a small brochure giving the inspiration or history behind each figure. Murakami also cited in detail his different sources of inspiration on each brochure, which I thought was a nice touch.

Audio-Visual Bliss:

| 10 MB | Quicktime required |

[img from Illegal Art]

Michal Levy's Giant Steps builds happy colour lines and cubes to the rhythm of John Coltrane's Giant Steps, creating a fun imaginary space as the music progresses.

A sweet bit of animation done in Maya.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This + a hot bath with one of them Lush bathbombs + 9 holes of golf next to the red-golden woods = Perfect Friday afternoon :)

According to mum we got a new dog. A 3 month old German Shepard... like K9. Parents haven't been creative enough to name it yet, so it's called "Jek Yeh", the animal term for the thing or the blob in Cantonese. Feel bad for Dog... really looking forward to see it, or pictures of it. *hint hint parents*
------------------------------------------------

It's really rare that I find myself wanting to cry, but can't, cos of a brain-tearduct incoordination. So this heart-sinking feeling will just be here until I find something else more depressing. I'm hoping this is PMS....

On another note, my PMS is getting worse and worse with age. What will happen to me when I'm 25? Will I become a schizo lunatic bitch?

googling for the movie Unknown Pleasures, and I find...

this instead!

hmmm... eye candy... (un?)known pleasures indeed ;D

What not to do when you have a midterm that you haven't yet studied for, a five page paper that you haven't started writing and an installation that is taking an eternity and a half to make....

1. See Kill Bill
2. with freshmen / sophomore youngsters
3. who have never seen any Tarantino's movies / were too young to appreciate the brilliance of Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction, and walk out cos they couldn't take the silly gore.

Now I feel old AND useless...

Why is my subconscious in the gutter?!?!

must avoid sleeping at random hours to stop having weird kinky PMSy-hormone-induced dreams.....

dream #1:
Making out with non-existent-in-reality bf. Very nice long snog... we snuggle but he suddenly gets up and leaves. I woke up in my annoyance.

dream #2:
I'm on my way to a gym / dojo for some unknown sport practice. As I walk through corridors to the gym, I'm undressing and taking a shower as I walk. As I walk around stark naked with the shower head I bump into a white girl in my photo class, who's dressed in hakama and just heading out of the dojo. I meet an attractive teamate with short blonde hair who's one or two years above me, we greet. She then picks up my torn up polo shirt, smells it, and says, "Hmm I miss the smell of bra straps! Smells just like my old girlfriend." Then she says cheerily, "See you around chicken!" and heads off to the gym. For some unknown reason, I gloat in euphoria.
Another latino team mate in basketball gear asks me, "Did she just call you 'chicken' like you're her pet?"
Me: "I dunno, I try not to think about these little things so it won't bother me."

I know the conscious part of my brain has been malfunctionning for a while, but not the subconscious part too.... one too many Freudian art history lectures on Surrealism and Dada mayhap?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

British schoolboy uniforms past and present: [via Geisha asobi]

Look they have Eton and Harrow! (sorry bros, Winchester didn't make it there...seeing how you guys wear normal suits and not starchy historical costumes or straw hats)
and they also have the Royal Hospital School. It's even crazier to think that me mate Claudia has just started teaching there.

Wonder if a website for girls' uniforms exist. CLC would have made it there with our heinous, what my mum calls "duck shit" green uniforms.

forget about yoga and pilates....

Sword-waving is in again, according to Hollywood movies. Suddenly the idea of getting my head whacked 100's of times in an hour looks appealing.... *goes to fish out old kendo gear from dust*

or not, seeing how I'm already deficient in the cerebral department.

Go see!

... the latest Richard Serra sculptures at the Gagosian Gallery in NYC. They were so cool! I was really psyched that I finally got to see one in person. Would have loved to sit / crouch faetus style in the middle of that gorgantuan rusted steel elliptical vortex for all day, all wrapped up in my own cacoon of thought and fuzzy jumpers... reality bites dunnit?

Just finished 王文華's 61 � 57. Gotta stop reading these harlequin novels... they totally fuel my unrealistic romantic expectations!
But damn, reading corny books is such a great escape from midterms and doomed-to-fail art projects.