Digging for Meaning

just saw this ted talk about photography . Edward Burtynsky took photographs depicting oil's expansive role in our societal regression. few things to be noted here. exhibition.. he chose large scale format. medium as imposing and striking as the content. content.. the right politics. content/idea comes first. photograph/execution/medium comes later. so often than not, this is what happens. with digital photography, you take gazillion pics and then decide later on, while photoshopping it, what should the pic mean. its appalling as it has crept into professional and serious art photography too. a good photographer manages to restrict the meaning of what he wants to say, while he is bloody clicking the pic. though, one may get away with 'artistic expressions' and altered motives somewhere else... but that somewhere else has become ubiquitous and concrete motives have gone into margins. well, i am culprit of 'lending meaning' to existing frame as well. ya well, hazards...

just saw this talk on TED. Its the usual evangelical white man's talk to other white men about the need for understanding a people as a people rather than a 'problem' or a 'situation'. its about the 'shadow city' as he calls the slums in developing world. its an interesting talk and an earnest attempt in the right direction. However, in their politics to humanize, they tend to absolve the other forces at work. earlier in his talk, he talks how these shadow cities are expanding and more and more people are trooping in, without questioning why is that the case. he talks of how the shadow cities lack basic amenities of life but all these cities are built on hope and freedom. true, but what is making the people uproot themselves culturally, socially, materially and move to inhuman filth-holes in hope of what? while everyone should be able to enjoy his rights, at the same time he need not be elsewhere, far from his home to enjoy those rights and freedom. compou...

People. stand up and give me some listen. There's some kickass mighty awesomish research going on the west coat of US. check this out --> collegehumor The video is a demonstration about microsoft's new products - seadragon and photo synth . The reason I am so kicked about this technology is its potential to revolutionise the way we perceive and organize digital information. This has humongous sociological implications. Seadragon essentially aims to change the way we use screens, from wall-sized displays to mobile devices, so that visual information can be smoothly browsed regardless of the amount of data involved or the bandwidth of the network. It promises : Speed of navigation is independent of the size or number of objects. Performance depends only on the ratio of bandwidth to pixels on the screen. Transitions are smooth as butter. Scaling is near perfect and rapid for screens of any resolution. Combine this with Photosynth which takes a large collection of photos ...