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

Let's all email: rememberingsteve@apple.com

Zéro de Conduite

My Intuitive Computer: He Asked Me A Few Questions To Help Me With My Grammar

Paris: Crise de Foie

 

DJ Medhi, Layton, Winehouse: A Dead Famous Person or The Collective Ritual

The death of famous people does something funny to the common people left behind. It's not quite like loosing a friend with whom you've actually talked to, established a reciprocal relationship with, it's more like loosing a collective notion, idea or product embodied by a human. 

Obviously everyone agrees that death is a sad event - it's difficult for humans to conceive of their own mortal nothingness - but when it comes to celebrity deaths it generally turns out to be this really great opportunity to connect with all the living people left behind. Over and over again similar things occur: facebookers change their facebook statuses quoting their last words (Jack Layton), tweeters tweet #allmythoughtstothefamily (DJ Mehdi), bars play their music again (Amy Winehouse), the highest-grossing documentaries of all time are produced (Michael Jackson), prices skyrocket (Lucian Freud) and solo shows sell out (Alexander McQueen); and all this with the best indications that they were simply geniuses, that success and death are anecdotal.... 

Overall a virtuous circle gets established through general mobilization: everyone wants to partake in this collective mourning or performative event where the famous person's death and life get washed-down, simplified and commodified into a tasty digestible narration. Unlike those that are still alive, famous dead people can't disappoint. Unlike those that are still alive, famous dead people get closer to home and in a sense become more alive than when they were actually alive.

Consuming a famous dead person is both an attempt to belong to and by those left behind and an honest mechanism of panic in front of oblivion.

Hence, because DJ Mehdi died earlier this week, as a way to confront death and in the hope to be part of a collective CBC played this - I never knew he produced it, but Tonton Du Bled was a huge hit when I was 15 keeping it real in Sèvres:

Strandbeests sur les Plages Hollandaises: Vent, Mer, Insects et la Deconstruction du Mouvement

Trouvée sur http://www.onsitereview.ca/

London Riots Then and Now: Different Genre But Both 'Ugly'

Source: The Guardian, British Film Institute

Glass Making in the Sahara: In Between Techno-Miracle, Beautiful Imagery and Awe for Nature's Very Small and Infinitely Large

The Friendly French Province

Source: National Geographic, April 1964

Curating Questions and the Multi-Narrations of Health/City

I went to the Power Coorperation Fellows' talk at the CCA last Thursday, where the three young architects presented their collaborative curatorial project entitled Health/City. Since the beginning of the summer they have been conjunctionally working on ways to present their topic without supporting a thesis in relation to health in cities directly but rather advocate a version of urban health history that, like history in general, is however you perceive it.

It is with this in mind that they chose 100 health related images from the CCA's collection: the low-brow magazine cover from last month with the eco-friendly building, air conditioning industry catalogues from the 1950s, 19th century slum maps, passages from novels discussing military asphyxiation... With this initial (mostly visual) base they mapped out the various thematic passageways between items (such as the 17th c. plague doctor can be linked to a slum map through the theme of epidemics, but also to a toilet bowl through smell). The point here is that this cluster of links and images form a multi-narrative understanding history. While the website isn't up yet, the fellows are planning on putting this network of information online by the end of the month - the website would let the visitor/browser create/curate his or her own version of health history by deciding which images to link with one another. 

I enjoyed the talk. I enjoyed the talk because it wasn't a self-congratulatory architect's attempt at philosophy but rather a real try at asking questions about the nature of curating, collecting and knowledge and coming up up with a tangible platform as an answer. Some audience members suggested that the lack of curatorial structure could be disorienting for users or let the project fall flat; others also pleasantly name dropped architects for extra useful images. I think both of these thoughts wouldn't have crossed people's mind if the project hadn't been qualified as a CCA project. Indeed in a way this project's quality and flaw are the same: from the talk it seems that it is more of an exercise in curating and anthropology than an architectural thesis materialized through a curated space. This is obviously totally great by me, and exceptional really because for a discipline - curating - that prides itself for creativity, depth and original-thought, interdisciplinary perspectives and multi-medium exhibitions remain ridiculously too few and avant-gardiste. 

Basically it's very exciting to see the CCA promoting such initiatives, and I'm looking forward to seeing Health/City online to get a better grasp of my version of urban health history. 

"At Maxim's in 1968, a model wears a swimsuit from the Mia-Vicky line"

Source: an irrelevant article in the New York Times

Taste for Beer and Inclination for First Date Sex: Data on Dating

I recently discovered the most insightfully fascinating blog. Written by the good people behind OkCupid, on it they compress their users profiles' data into these simple graphs with powerful one liners: they objectify people, correlate oral sex and eating habits, and activity on twitter with masturbation probabilities. It's amazing!

My favorite so far links beer appreciation with the potentiality of sleeping with someone on a first date:

How amazing?

Weirdly the same day I heard about this blog, I finished an old New Yorker article on online dating that mentions it. In the article we learn about the science and math behind meeting a significant other, potential differences between the photo pauses that attract men versus those that attract women, the OKcupid founders' marital status, and the religious rigor behind eHarmony's experiments. About the blog we learn that the data is based on the analysis of 34,620 couples and that, according to its author, Nick Paumgarten, the blog's purpose "is to attract attention: the findings, like the quizzes [in its early days the site's four Harvard math majors founders attracted members through quizzes] are to lure you."

Not so sure about being lured by OKCupid, but totally lured by human beings.

Akon's Daddy Has Talent

Mor Thiam is Akon's father. Strong heritage wouldn't you say? Selon Wikipedia on peut le retrouver en Floride, Orlando entre les giraffes et les singes du Animal Kingdom du Walt Disney World Resort. Ça vaut peut-être un retour en enfance?

What Everyone Must Carry Around

Via informationisbeautiful

Amazement: Royal Technology and Canadian Identity

This is old news (currently it's all about Kate being anorexic and pregnant) but when the princely couple was on Canadian territory I couldn't stop ranting about how after coming up with the "How Canadian Are You, eh?" app in January, Citizenship and Immigration Canada launched their second digital tool the "Royal Tour” app for free on itunes. I too asked myself why the Ministry didn’t go straight for the “Tips on How to Reproduce in A Canoe” app, till I realised that the political answer to the Ministry’s first app's title was another of Canada’s idealised traditions: the Royal Family.

I know that the sense of belonging countries provide are not easily defined notions with clear inputs, straightforward mechanisms and direct results. And I have no qualms with the British monarchy particularly: if anything kudos to them for getting the Britons to perpetuate their feudal capitalistic family. Nor do I have qualms with the newly-wedded royal couple enjoying Canada; nor am I arguing that Canadians should deny the importance the British and the Crown played in shaping the country.

My qualms or rather amazement - I'm French originially so all of this royal stuff is amazing - stem more from the degree of pride Canadians and government took with this arrival and visit - as if Canada needed so desperately to be acknowledged by the royal gaze to feel valuable. And not only has the government taken pride in this, it's also done everything to subsidise the tools to encourage its people to believe that the level of this couple’s happiness in the country defines Canadians' worth.

If a star-savy US Weekly or another tabloid sponsored an app to stalk and discuss Kate’s outfits, this would have been another issue all together, but that an elected staff meant to focus on the delicate issue of heritage, collective memory and cultural identity, finds William’s white cowboy hat and the couple’s canoe trips worth a nationhood's attention - that seems ttally wrong or absolutely amazing.