A Pair of Beautiful Blogs

Silent Beauties – just fantastic, I don’t know how they manage to find so many rare, lost and abandoned little films, let alone how they then find time to upload them! Though the focus is on the more obscure films that are not represented elsewhere, this is one of the most active blogs on my blogroll, there’s always something new, well actually it’s usually something old, of course…

It is astonishing that this is a privately administrated site run by enthusiasts, it appears more like a ‘National Archive’ of some specialist museum or university, except that the content is of international interest and value. The majority of the content is, as the name suggests, silent movies and early documentary films and being without sound these easily bridge the language barriers. This is a huge resource and one of the most valuable media blogs on the www – really useful for teachers and cultural historians and just really interesting for personal perusal… check it out for some ‘quiet time’.

If you prefer your media with sound, why not try:

Cathode RayTube – another site that fills me with awe and admiration at the sheer volume and quality of the content that regularly uploads. This is the blog of the erudite Frank Collins, a long established ‘critic’ and general fount of knowledge for cult TV and genre cinema, particularly British SF and Horror, but he also casts his roving eye over comedy and classics.

This blog will evoke nostalgic pangs in many readers, of a certain age, but can snap them out of it with content that brings them bang up to date with what is happening in cult media today. The writing is intelligent and perceptive and will approach popular programmes, and overlooked classics, with the same sort of critical respect usually reserved for those high-brow ‘arty’ films… if you are studying media make sure you have a read of this before you tackle any of your essays. The main thing that makes this a most rewarding read is not its clear and flowing style (which is abundant), but that it enhances enjoyment – for example, try watching an episode of Doctor Who, then read the review and watch it again. You will see what I mean…

Best Art Resources On-line

Often 'clever', usually entertaining and accessible, always informative, the Artchive is a huge virtual 'museum' with multiple galleries and an extensive arts library. Mark Harden has collected a list of most of the most important critical theory in one section and in another section you will find good quality images of most of the most important works from art history in a well-organized set of galleries with accompanying notes that often qualify as essays. In the 'Juxtapositions' section you will find reviews and some thoughts expressed in various modes of post-modern cross-referencing...

ArtLex is a dictionary of art for everyone interested in art production, collection, or history. You will find articles on thousands of art terms, along with images, pronunciation notes, great quotations, and links to other resources on the Web. Michael Delahunt is at the hub of this extensive resource and has woven a web of meaning that spills beyond the pages he administrates, making ArtLex a portal to the arts on the internet.

Both of these inspiring websites have headed the reading lists I have been handing out to students for years now. They are well designed and the writing is clear. Both sites are run by people who know what they are talking about and the content is well-validated. I suggest these as 'first-ports-of-call' for any web-based research into art and artists.

Another really useful on-line resource is Olga's abc Gallery. Here you will find basic biographies of many important artists along with many good quality scans of their keyworks. The best thing about Olga's is the layout of the galleries: thumbnails arranged in chronological order. So what you get, 'at-a-glance', is a visual history of an artist's work and its development through their careers. They claim to have more than 10,000 images on-line...

The blog to accompany my history of art textbook, Evolution of Western Art, is also a good 'stand-alone' resource that provides a visual chronology of the major developments in western art over several millennia from pre-historic to the twenty-first century!

EVOLUTION OF WESTERN 

ART

To keep up with contemporary art as it happens I like to visit MocoLoco - a lively and continually up-dated blog-style resource that covers contemporary arts, crafts, design, architecture and media. Most of the features are image-based, making this a feast for the eye, but when you see something you like, there are ready made connections to other articles for you to follow along with links to relevant web-sites and resources. There are also well-selected international exhibitions listings with sample pictures.  The MocoLoco layout can be unorthodox - hint: scroll sideways, get lost, enjoy

...and if that is not enough, there is plenty of current arts content at 

 The Guardian | Culture ...

Only born once...

NB: Since uploading this review, borndigital seems to have been wiped from the web! I feel like I've lost touch with an old friend, and the www community has lost a great resource... but why? (The conspiracy theories can start here.)

The website http://www.borndigital.com/ is the definition of a cool.com... It has been around since the 'ancient times' of world-wide-web weaving, with its first uploads in 1994. Since its birth, the site has been often imitated - accept no substitutes! For the 'retro-cyber-chique' design alone it is well worth a visit. It retains the internet aesthetics of the 'hacker ethic', from a time when information and the internet was still striving to be free and to champion freedom - of information, speech, thought, expression...

Broken down into sections that look like fragments from the conscious and subconscious of Timothy Leary, the content is indexed into loose categories such as: Spirit/Consciousness/Magic, Politics/Sacred Cows, 'Sampledelic Meltomedia', Art and 'LSD' (contains flashing imagery, and then some!).

Browsing the site is like going to a dinner party with fellow boffins, artists, acid-heads, philosophers, techno-geeks, 'flaming liberals' and well-read nerds. The content is abundant and the essays and texts will inform, incite, excite and challenge. So have a look for yourself, but be warned, the mind that does not bend snaps sooner.

Information is Beautiful

"The eyes and minds of beholders..."

I just bought this lovely book by author-designer-thinker, David McCandless, a contributor to Wired magazine and The Guardian newspaper, amongst other things. He uses visual communication and infographics to clarify many complex issues, uncover what have been generally perceived as accepted truths to be, well, clearly not truths at all, and to make some very sharp cultural and political observations via crisp colour-coded diagrams that are more than the sum of their parts...

Much of the graphs and graphics are lovely to behold, regardless of their sometimes very serious and worrying content. Their poetic 'balance' is often reminiscent of minimal art such as the grids of Piet Mondrian, or Suprematism, whilst others look like bauhaus designs or its antithesis, Pop Art... and like Pop Art often reappropriate the symbols of our everyday environment. And these visuals, unlike some minimalist art, convey very clear and easily assimilated meaning.

Anyway, rather than reading my words describing his visuals, why not just take a look at his rather excellent and generous website: Information Is Beautiful. Yes it is.