Tichkematse a Scout, an Early Smithsonian Institution Employee, a Cheyenne and an Illustrator

Browsing the tiny subsections of the American Natural History Museum's website is incredible.

It's a window into all these lost details and individual destinies and moments that, combined, have shaped the "New World." The 19th century in North America was mostly a time of grimness and doom for the Native tribes, and Squint Eyes's Cheyenne people weren't excluded from the genocide; but his drawings and destiny illustrate the grey zones of when the white men met the North American's land.

Tichkematse (Squint Eyes) was a Cheyenne Indian, raised to a life based on buffalo hunting in the southern Plains. Caught by the United States government between 1875-1878, he was imprisoned and learned to read and write English. Once released he attended school in Virginia before coming to the Smithsonian, as one of the institution's earliest employees between 1879 and 1881, to conserve and display bird and mammal specimens.

In July 1885 and for three years, Squint Eyes enlisted in the USA Army's newly formed companies of scouts. The scouts provided assistance to regular Army troops in patrolling the Cheyenne and Arapaho Reservation and the Cherokee Outlet. It was there that Squint Eyes completed drawings that depict Army officers, civilians and Cheyenne scouts engaged in hunting - an important part of Cheyenne cultural heritage and a favorite pastime of officers and enlisted men.

During his life he also accompanied a government expedition traveling in the remote Florida waterways to the Seminole tribe. And worked with anthropologist and linguist Frank Hamilton Cushing on Indian sign language (there were many languages spoken on the Plains so the various tribes had developed a shared language based on gestures).

source:

http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/squint_eyes/squint_eyes.htm

http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/scout/

A Little Technology History and a Little Apple Ode

found at http://blog.oliverphillips91.co.uk/

Extinction: The Last of Vietnam's Rhinoceros Sondaicus Annamiticus Was Officially Killed

Embroidering Socialite: Mourir Auprès de Toi

Olympia Le-Tan has created an enterprise, called Olympia Le-Tan, that embroiders and sows with ribbon, string and felt some of the most beautiful clutches I've seen. Following the 'return' of the done-by-hand-with-love movement, all the embroidering is done by a cute Japanese girl in the 2nd arrondissement in Paris, and results in products selling for a month's worth of the legal minimun wage in France (SMIC).

She's also a great extroverted socialite, so if you want any information about  her date of birth, who her parents are, when she's in New York or Paris, what she looked like when she was 6, or who her favorite manga character is, just go check out her blog.

In any case earlier this year she worked with Spike Jonze and Simon Cahn on a felt embroidered-based short. Since the clutches' designs are reproductions of vintage book covers and their success based on a lot of socialite hyping, the filming was done in the setting of most Litt majors' and other American tourists's wet dreams, Shakespeare and Co. Like the clutches, while the result is remarkable by its aesthetic and required manual labor, Olympia's unabashing use of her person, socialite connections and stereotypes make it hard for me not to think of this as a marketing strategy more than an honest creation.

Tweeting About an Earthquake: Techno-Cynic vs. Techno-Philosophically

The Twitter blog has two time-based mappings of the Tweet flows coming in and out of Japan, to and from the world around March 11th's earthquake. It makes for eloquent visuals on factual matters such as, where networks of information gather and exchange, how technology enables humans to decimate information in seconds and what areas are excluded from these connected hubs (large parts of Africa); or helps you draw more anecdotal multiple hypotheses such as Hawaiians use Twitter more than Alaskans, more Hawaiians have Twitter accounts than Alaskans, Hawaiians have more empathy towards earthquake victims than Alaskans, Hawaiians like Japanese people More than Alaskans,  there are more Hawaiians than Alaskans, etc...

But these maps also hint to the ways humans cope, even maybe internalize information in an age where 30% of humans are connected to the internet. In my mind there are two ways to see it: either as a techno-cynic, technology enables people to appropriate content without needing to process it, Twitter is a mean to brag about being part of networks of people in the know; or more techno-philosophically, technology is simply an extension of a 'natural' human trait, by which humans partake in collective trends and happenings rather superficially to simply be social humans. In either versions the information itself becomes second to the process of sharing - be it someone famous' death like Jobs's (6,049 tweets per second), a pregnancy (Beyoncé's baby got 8,868 tweets per second after her MTV video performance) or an earthquake, the actual occurrence matters less than the amount of people that could be interested in the news, and hence the amount of humans the tweeter could impress or connect (be) through.

 

Not So Failing Failures and Urban Art Interventions

This summer Barcelona-based production company, El Cangrejo, directed the adorable short "L'Equip Petit," about a soccer team that never scores. Here's the trailer of their latest creation, "The Last Ones," and what appears to be another beautiful looking documentary. The story isn't clear but it hints at their recurring interest in the ones society considers failures: in "L'Equip Petit" it was six to seven year olds that couldn't put a ball through the net, and here it may be a group of store owners that desperately need people to walk through their area (instead of malls and super stores?) - and use plastic bottles and communal imagination and work to do so. 

Commodifying "The Riots" Into Bad Fashion Spreads

On August 15th 2011 the New York Times' T published an interactive feature about the fashion of rioters (quote): "What do you wear when protest and mayhem rock your world? Reports from three epicenters of street style: London, Cairo and Tokyo." (already by this point you sense something deep).

The feature was, I'm guessing, an attempt at merging the glossiness of style with the heaviness of a political critic - an equation, that, although with high potential is difficult to pull; often ending by being neither one nor the other. 

In this case the glossy part failed because visually there is no common pattern, recurring theme, resembling aesthetic or conducting feeling: it simply brings together Paris Match-type imagery, celebrity spotting paparazzi pics and street photography with nail art, flag outfits, awkward pedestrians and Japanese women dressed like 17th century Louis the 14th court duchesses. 

And as for the political take, granted these three cities had a rough spring/summer 2011 season with unhappy people and civil unrest - Tokyo with its nuclear, Cairo with its ruler and London with its pissed off youth - but otherwise nothing really links them together. And if there was, it wouldn't be style.

Yet the T tied these violent, unreassuring and tumultuous events together, bundling them with random shots taken (we're guessing) during the 'riots' and by so doing draining all meaning from the motivations that caused them: they commodified the 'riots' into a really bad fashion spread. 

Recently, on the other hand, I discovered Lucifer Youth Film's music video for their song 'Dirt' that does a much better job at using, and in a sense, commodifying images of pissed off people rioting. I'm not sure  where the WU LYF stand with the Egyptians or the British rioters but in their music video at least it doesn't boil down to scarves and weddings celebrations, unlike in the T. 

Vitalic's Dogs in Slow-Motion + The 'Cats & Dogs 2's Narrative = A House Music Blockbuster

Vitalic is a pretty awesome electro musician. His song Poney Part 1's video with jumping dogs in slow motion gained a bit of fame back in the day - I think it would qualify as an indie success - and has had 2,131,300 views on youtube since its upload in January 2006. Swedish House Mafia's recent Save the World has gotten 29,755,208 views since May 20th, and qualifies - I think - as a Summer hit and house music phenomenon. Both videos abuse the incredibleness of dogs in slow motion although the latter has a little too much cheese in its visual (and musical?) mix for me.

All Together Now

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