superficiel in depth

The Party Girl

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:29:00 +0000

To get the full range of Cyd Charisse motions, 3 movies are essential: The Bandwagon, the best Hollywood musical, Brigadoon, another one of Minelli's masterpiece and The Party Girl, a colourful film noir by the genius Nicholas Ray.
Charisse was just a perfect evidence that brought out of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly the best of them. Whenever you'd feel blue, she'd give you sun. Whenever you'd feel happy, she'd get you at another level of life perception.

-- Joëlle

Before June or a remake

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Mon, 26 May 2008 20:49:00 +0000

Time... time... time... such a true cliché..
Today i read Madjid's blog and it made me think of my current situation, it's not completely similar but we've taken up a new job at about the same time and we both disappeared from our blogs around then as well. Recently, he wrote that he was reading Balzac and so I was as well. It's an interesting way of keeping in touch, of keeping a social link, it's very ambient, very backgroundish. I'm aware of what he's up to, I can relate to episodes of his life, without even voicing it to him, without active friendshiping. Same as when I read Cati's blog. It's all done in some strange silence, echoing in a common memory.
Some weeks ago, I got a Facebook request from a high-school friend - we haven't been in touch for 15 years or so. But we didn't send each other any specific messages. We're on each other friends' list and somehow that's enough. We know we're "there".
On my AIM list, I see people everyday, I don't talk to them but they're there. It's soothing and frustrating at the same time. Or rather, it's soothing some times and frustrating at others.
I thought for a while that I could do art, research, design, earn money, have a rich and diverse social life, travel, live with my sweetheart, learn how to sing, practice yoga, take care of my home, be there for my family and friends, cook, blog, go to exhibitions, keep on learning, have kids, stay fit, keep my promise of putting up a website for the records I got for my 33rd birthday, volunteering for the Dorkbot, read, sleep at night, altogether in a harmonious and successful way. Instead, when I feel this is not possible, I surf for HOURS on the web, or I watch delightfully tons of movies and Buffy episodes because it's the easiest and quickest way to relax.
Of course, this is my modern Western privilege to have. My job isn't in any way breaking me as a human being, and I just have to work more or less 8 hours per day, for the right pay. In another time and place, I could be working just to survive, to support my family, to hope that it would take my kids further up the social scale. Something about misery my grandparents and, on a smaller scale, my parents did experience. Something that makes me think our president hasn't got the closest clue to what is work.
Then of course, that's when you wonder about progress, hope, existence, purpose.

Before May

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:54:00 +0000

Well, today is the 30th of April - I feel compelled to publish a post before tomorrow, so I can tell myself I still blog regularly, or at least once a month!
I must say it's been hectic in the past weeks - many things to juggle with, including a brand new office hours job, which has been fun so far but that definitely put a strain on my schedule habits.
I have to find the time for doing many things and I must say that at least 2 beloved activities like cooking and blogging are still in need of me adapting to my new life... While another beloved activity that is... shopping does enjoy very well the perspectives of regular income.

--Joëlle.

Tata - tatatata - ta - tatatata - ta - tatatata

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:13:00 +0000

Found in the Top 10 Fan-Made Sweded Films according to Alwayswatching.org.

--Joëlle.

Lost word

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 20:59:00 +0000

Last week, I went to see the new Gondry's masterpiece, Be Kind, Rewind. In all of his works, what strikes me the most is the brightness of his ideas, of his imagination. In that particular movie, I was touched by his reading of the (hi)story of cinema and of popular culture. But moreover, he subtly demonstrates how we need fiction to function, how we create narratives to make sense of reality and how we tell each other stories in order to connect, to live together (as in a polis) and to get a sense of belonging to a community/a family.
While I was watching the movie, I thought on another brilliant inventor, John Cage. I was then reading a book of conversations between Cage and Daniel Charles, called "Pour les Oiseaux" / "For the Birds" (a wordplay around the birdcage). What got me to think of him was a word that came back often in Gondry's movie: "sueded". In Be Kind, Rewind, the owners of a video club are shooting their own versions of movies like Ghostbusters, 2001, A Space Odyssey, Rush Hour 2, Boyz in the Hood and many more. They qualify their "remakes" as "sueded" because, as they explain, the tapes are "imported from Sweden". In an interview for the LA Times, Gondry said he "wanted a name that meant nothing". And from that he created a verb that means re-doing/re-interpreting/re-creating/re-composing just about anything, including webpages (in the movie's official site, you can find samples of Goolge and MyFace).
But the thing is what are the chances of coming across a word that doesn't exist twice in a week in 2 different contexts? In For the Birds, Cage uses that exact same word in its French verb form "suédé". So of course, after the movie, I go back home and start browsing the book in search of the paragraph, to compare the 2 meanings. But I browsed it again and again, 4 or 5 times, but I lost it. I can't find that word again. I thought for a bit that I dreamed it, that it's all a mix in my head, a Cage-Gondry conspiracy. But I'm convinced I did read it, because I remember thinking what the hell is that word "suédé"? what's the concept behind it? Maybe one day, when there's a digital copy of the book, it'll be easier to look into it. For now, I prefer to play around more obvious concepts addressed all over the book: silence, nothing, void, space, ecology, technology, references to Thoreau, Fishinger and Backminster Fueller..
In a last associated thought (who said again that the brain functions with associations?), reading Cage made me think about a wonderful project that Cati blogged about: "OTTO" created by Duncan Wilson and Manolis Kelaidis at the Royal College of Art.
An excerpt of the description: "OTTO (Greek for ‘ear’) is a device that makes hidden sounds audible. (...) Every object and surface in our environment has a whisper; subtle tremors and vibrations that are usually undetectable to the human ear, produced by the activity and movement of daily life. What if these sounds were audible? How would that change our aural awareness, perception of space and attitude towards objects? Would it be possible to ‘compose’ our own soundtrack using our walls and objects as a new form of instruments?"
For me this is more or less achieving as a standalone technology what Cage elaborated in his theories and his compositions: a way for us to hear the silence, the sound of objects, of our environment and make a sense of it: being an audience and a composer at the same time.

-- Joëlle.

Bare Chemicals

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 09:15:00 +0000

Bare Minerals offers a range of foundations, in the form of powders, based only on minerals, free of preservatives, talc, oil and fragrance which is genuinely an achievement, as even organic make-up brands like Sante and Couleur Caramel can't get there - they both contain talc and fragrance in their compact powder range.
The minerals used are the ones you find in most of existing foundations and tinted creams: mostly iron oxydes (like CI 77491, CI 77492, CI 77499), zinc (CI 77947, CI 77950) and mica (CI 77019) except that they make in the case of Bare Minerals the only ingredients in the composition and the core of their marketing communication.
Yet, when you make the step to buy the product, you're strongly advised if not enticed to buy a kit that will contain on top of the powder you're looking to get, a cream base, an extra shade of the foundation, a terracotta, a translucent finishing touch powder, 3 different brushes and a how-to DVD. If you buy only the powder it costs you 22€, add one of the brushes and it's another 22€ but if you buy the kit, it's 65€ - it's difficult to argue. You can use only the foundation of course, but the guide mentions that perfect make-up is achieved when you follow all the steps: the base, the foundation, the terracotta, the final touch (the "Mineral Veil"). Each of the 3 brushes has a purpose in that process, that turns out to be quite fun to go through. I also appreciate that it doesn't feel like the other heavy and sticky foundations that grim your face and that I avoided using, going rather for the lighter sensation of tinted moisturizers.
But out of the kit, I'm leaving out for sure the base, that strangely the company avoids to mention in their chemicals-free discourse, even though it will "smooth your skin's surface prior to the foundation application".
In this base, you'll find PPG-14 Butyl ether (chemical emulsifier bad for the environment), Methyl Gluceth-20, Cetyl Dimethicone (very bad for the environment), Peg-100 Stereate, Diazolidinyl Urea (a highly toxic preservative releasing formaldehyde), Tetrasodium EDTA (toxic and polluting preservative), Propylene Glycol, Methylparaben, Propylparaben (controversial preservatives), Phenoxyethanol (controversial ether glycol). Incidentally, their powder "Mineral Veil" also contains Methylparaben and Propylparaben.
I find it a pity that Bare Minerals spoil their credibility by carrying these products and by avoiding to address their compositions in their perfect marketing plan.
In the current market of cosmetics, it's a perfect example of the confused discourses that surround us . It's not an organic brand but they use "bare minerals", it's "bare minerals" but 2 of their main products bear chemicals. It reminds me of the situation The Body Shop is in, or L'Occitane. And now L'Oréal just bought Sanoflore, so I think we're heading for even more confusion. The more popular organic ingredients will be getting, the more we'll be facing such contradictions. All the better reason to read carefully the notice on the packaging. "La vérité sur les cosmétiques" (the truth about cosmetics) was one of the 1st books to list, explain and range all the ingredients that can come into the composition of cosmetics. It's followed now by "La vérité sur les cosmétiques naturels" (the truth about natural cosmetics), which shows a public concern about being able to make better choices as the organic market expands.

--Joëlle

Are we dumb!

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 17:54:00 +0000

The Story of Stuff is a wonderful 20 minutes animation movie about the chain of links behind our modes of production and consumption, and its impact on the environment. It explains clearly some economic and marketing concepts, like "externalized costs", "planned obsolescence" and "perceived obsolescence", that keep this chain going by way of our gullibility and our self-depreciation.
Every time I buy something, even if it costs 50 cents, I wonder who I buy it from, where it was made, at what costs, if I really need it, why I buy it, for how long I will use it and how I will dispose of it. Some times, I do buy things on a whim, or because I do need to feel better about myself for few minutes and it's easy to do so with shopping or just because it's fun. But I try to always question my purchases and never take them for granted. It brings a stronger awareness each time, and eventually I get to ask the same questions to the people I buy the stuff from, even if they don't have the answer - at least, it puts me back in the active part of the chain - where I can consciously exert my "consumption power".
I like the idea of buying second hand goods, of recycling jam pots for my cooking spices and herbs, of giving, lending and borrowing books, of renting DVDs, of downloading music, of sending ecards, of looking for unique handmade crafts around the world, of not caring to get the latest plasma screen (or any TV for that matter) and of staying away as much as possible from plastic, processed food, waste-generating products and chain stores / major brands items. It's not always easy, but it's actually a lot of fun because I get to play around with my habits, my temptations and my imagination.
I read an interview of Starck today in Le Monde where he addresses harsh criticism against [product] design and defines it as "useless". I don't think we should understand that point in a very literal way but I agree with him when he says "We don't need more. We need less and better." It's probably one of the greatest task designers will ever have to undertake. We have so much already, how do we think creation, production and use when we don't need more and we shouldn't make more?

--Joëlle

Freeze!

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 21:51:00 +0000

I love this video that Jonah sent me. This improv group reminds of me the excellent Prangstgrüp already mentioned in that blog.

--Joëlle

Sweet Tooth

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 09:56:00 +0000

I have a problem with sugar. I'm addicted to it. I don't drink alcohol much and it's usually wine, I smoke cigarettes very occasionally, I love to cook and eat healthy food, I practice yoga regularly, I never drink coffee or sodas and instead all day long, I drink water and green tea (without sugar of course) and yet, almost every day, I have to have my hands on something sweet, since I'm a child. My teeth and I share the history of that relationship with sugar. And now I have to stop. I think this addiction (not mine, in general) should be acknowledged as a wide public concern. The health problems related to sugar consumption in western society are known and becoming more and more serious (the main ones are tooth-decay, itself being an underestimated major health risk as a whole, diabetes, and obesity). Sugar has started to be used more prominently in cooking in the 18th century as it became widely popular. Today, there's hardly any refined food that doesn't contain massive amount of it. Just take a look at some of your stuff in your kitchen cupboard, even the salty stuff. You don't need to get your daily fix of candies to get the dose. Which is why people are so hooked up on refined food actually.
In his book Anticancer, the doctor David Servan-Schreiber shows that in 1850, a westerner would consume 10 kg of sugar per year, in 1920, it would be 30 kg and in 2000, it would be 70 kg. In this essay, he establishes a relationship between refined sugar consumption and cancer, as cancerous cells "feed" on sugar.
As I'm thinking about all this, an article I read some time ago comes back to mind. The writer Nick Tosches wrote last year for Vanity Fair a wonderful article, "If You Knew Sushi", taking a glance at the recent popularity of sushi in America. I had never made the connection he made but it makes a lot of sense:
"America is addicted to sugar, but it seeks increasingly to veil its addiction. Power Bars. Sounds healthy. Main ingredient: fructose syrup. Almost 25 percent sugar. The guy, Brian Maxwell, who got rich selling these things, selling sugar as nutrition, swore by them and croaked at the age of 51. Eat a Power Bar and nobody gives a glance. Run up a bag of dope and people look at you funny. I don't get it. How about a nice, large Tazo Chai Frappuccino Blended Crème from Starbucks? Sounds healthy—I mean, after all, chai—and classy too: crème? Sugar content: 17 teaspoons.
A killer sugar addiction, a preoccupation with health, no matter how misguided, and pretensions, or delusions, of worldly sophistication. Sushi perfectly satisfies them all.
In a nation that never ate much fresh fish, it's interesting that eel sushi is so very popular. I mean, from fish sticks and Filet-o-Fish sandwiches to conger eels? "Mommy, Mommy, I want eels, I want eels." This can't be understood other than in light of the fact that the sauce, anago no tsume, used in confecting eel sushi is a syrupy reduction made with table sugar, sake, soy sauce, and the sweet wine called mirin, and that during this reduction caramelizing causes the browning sugar to grow in mass through the formation of fructose and glucose. [...]
As for the other types of sushi, they are all made with rice to which both table sugar and sweet rice vinegar have been added. Gari, the pickled ginger served with sushi, is also made with rice vinegar and table sugar. If it's cobalt pink rather than pale rose in color, it has been treated with a chemical bath of dye and extra sweetening agents."

And just so you know, if you like your tomato-sauce pasta and your pizza so much, be aware that most of time, the acidity of the tomato has to be compensated by... sugar, which is what makes the sauce so good of course (you can replace it by bicarbonate if you want). And the bread we eat from the bakery,.. also another issue..., is a lot of time filled with sugar even though it's not even a sweet bread.
So there you go, the sweet tooth hides in everyone of us.
But if it's harder to track the sugar in the common savoury stuff we eat, I should be able to get rid of the more obvious stuff.
So I categorized (I like to categorize) sweet food in 7 groups - with levels of difficulty on how to get rid of it to help me get aware of what are the things I really can't do without.
The 3 easiest groups to get rid of by far - for me - are 7. snacks, whether sweet or - falsely - salty (because they're so junk), 6. refined/frozen desserts (because they're not so good, except some recently discovered soya-based creams, not too sweet for once), and 5. desserts in restaurants (fairly easy to get over them, because unless the restaurant is really really good, they tend to always be disappointing),
The other 4 groups are trickier: 4. "pâtisseries" and "viennoiseries" (cakes and croissants from the bakery - the fact that bakeries tend to be of lower and lower quality in France helps but what do you do when you pass by Ladurée and you see that pistachio macaroon waiting for you or when your darling comes back on Sunday morning with freshly baked croissants?) 3. candies and toffees (they are so junker than all the other junk but the repetitive / compulsive action in the eating action is so rewarding somehow), 2. cookies (extra tricky because some industrially-made cookies are amazingly good: I get instant gratification for instance with the "petit beurre" that is topped with a milk nut chocolate bar and I even get to have 12 of them in one pack!), 1. homemade cakes and cookies (by my mum, my friends and myself - I am tempted often and this is where I can never resist temptation - at least, I try to avoid cooking them even though it's the funniest stuff to cook).
addendum: breakfast cereals that literally make my day are just impossible to take out of my diet but I notice that some of them are swamped in sugar (if you ditch the Kellog's line at least, that's a better step). Oh and of course ice-creams in the summer are quintessential (but I do love naturally the ones where the maker cares more for flavor than for sugar)...

I tried to stop my compulsive behavior before, but I failed many times. If you want to withdraw effectively from a drug, the best way is to stop taking even the smallest amount of it for the rest of your life. But sugar is not like the other drugs, if you're addicted to tobacco - it's easy to identify what you have to do. But sugar is everywhere, in almost everything we eat and comes hidden in hundreds of different shapes and even behind our best friends, like honey or fruits. And so as you start the day innocently with a freshly mixed fruits juice, the body sends you the signal: "fructose is a good start, now where's the real stuff?"

Art without Money

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 18:43:00 +0000

Radio Libertaire is broadcasting on the French FM since 1981 - it's the radio of the Fédération Anarchiste, functioning as they say "without a god, without a master and without advertising" (what better would you want?). You could think it's an obscure channel, that only 23 seventy year-old anarchists listen to but its audience is actually quite decent, cosmopolitan and diverse, thanks to open, activist and indeed free-spirited programs. Even people, like me, who are not really radio listeners have a bit of affection for this atypical media (another one like that is Radio Aligre).

This Monday, 14th of January, I'm invited to chat with other people about interactive art, on the Radio Libertaire bi-weekly art show "Muzar", hosted by the curator Nathalie McGrath, between 9.30 and 11 am.
So tune in on 89.4!

With me, will be talking:
- Muriel Ryngaert, in charge of the audience and cultural policy at the MAC/VAL
- Jérôme Delormas, director of Lux Valence, and director of the future "centre Gaîté Lyrique des arts numériques et musiques actuelles"
- Stéphane Maguet, director of the digital art gallery Numeriscausa
- Antoine Schmitt, artist

Two-thousand-light

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 13:22:00 +0000

The fun of New Year's wishes has started for few days, and I receive all kind of nice things, by SMS, email or in Facebook... Hardly with postcards anymore, although there's always one or two that manage to survive the electronic way. I saw on TV last day an archived news report from the Seventies that was mentioning the booming industry of Xmas / New Year's wishes cards in France, following the success of Hallmarks and the sort in the States. The illustrations on the cards were particularly over cute and way too sweet, with cats or littles girls and boys or flowers... I don't think I miss them too much. But it was interesting to be able to compare the old connection modes with the new ones.
I got a really nice card last year from Yaeko, a woman I had met randomly in Kyoto (a bike story). In Japan, indeed, there's still a strong tradition to send your wishes by way of cards and available for that are amazing designs, sometimes using origami, paper cuts, depths and embosses.. a beautiful selection can be found at Ito-Ya in Tokyo Ginza, the temple of paper products.
But with the expansion of means of communication and the number of possible contacts that come with it, it's time consuming - and expensive - to write and send letters to hundreds of people. Yet, electronically, I have a lot of fun trying to come-up with something creative. I think it's Anne with her look at that kind of work, which for her sets the tone of her social communication, who made me want to have a go at it.
So there it is, with a mix of two pictures I took with my Lomo camera in september 2001 - one was in the fields of the Fontevraud Abbey and the other one at a party in Karlsruhe. I wanted to get across the idea of lights for this year, in a peaceful and vivid reverie setting, in a way to wish to my friends peace of mind and freedom of imagination.

The year of the Rice

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 13:07:00 +0000

For my birthday, David offered me (besides a "33 Tours" of course) a Cuisinart rice cooker. Some could argue it's not very birthdaypresenty nor romantic nor passionate, but the truth is it's gradually changing my life for a better and higher spiritual dimension in which food takes yet another turn - I started to use it just few days ago and I immediately wondered afterwards how it was that I could be 33 and never have used a rice-cooker before? It's not only one of the most perfect tool ever invented to facilitate daily life but it also induces creativity, benevolence and pleasure.
The grace with which you get to prepare simple food, whether it's rice, broccoli or salmon makes you a better person. Because you not only feel like you have a greater respect for the ingredients that come into your meal, but you also get to enjoy a super yummy dish at the end. And I who thought a rice cooker was just a steam + dull food maker! How naive and prejudiced...
Among all the fun I have with the cooker, one is more inspiring that the rest: it brings rice more frequently into my life, and when I say rice, I say Basmati, sticky, Thai, Arborio, red from Camargues, Japanese for sushi or onigiri, etc... The world at my table! Of course, you can also cook other cereals, like quinoa, boulgur, semolina and most of all the beans, vegetables, fishes and some meats, with just some cups of water and pressing a button. I'm looking forward to try dozens of recipes I've put aside, mainly from Japan and Thailand. Personally, I couldn't start the year better than with the expectations of eating creatively, healthy and mostly deliciously (with a minimum cooking effort). Ah when technology meets food... the history of the world cultures lies just there...

--Joëlle

Make a move

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 14:40:00 +0000

Yesterday I moved house... again, after 2 months. A friend of mine who was helping me asked if it hadn't been too difficult to pack all the boxes, - I answered that I was used to it as I have been moving a lot in the past years - and then, I recalled where I lived. So, if I make the count, in 10 years, I lived in a dozen of different places, not including the many times I used my parents' home for transitions, boyfriends' hangouts or short work-related stays in different countries.
So those were my addresses for the past 10 years:
- rue de l'Adjudant Réau, Paris 20e (for 1 and a half year)
- rue Condorcet, Villejuif (for 6 months)
- café Weidinger, Lerchenfelder gürtel, Vienna 15 (1 month and then 7 months)
- Liechtensteinstr, Vienna 9 (3 months)
- rue de Beaune, Paris 7e (5 months)
- rue Juliette Dodu, Paris 10e (5 months)
- St James' Wood, Dublin 8 (1 year)
- Blackhall Place, Dublin 7 (15 months)
- Eblana Villas, Dublin 2 (1 and a half month)
- rue Tiquetonne, Paris 2e (5 months)
- rue du Faubourg Poissonnière, Paris 10e (for 1 and half year)
- rue Albert Camus, Paris 10e (2 months)
and now... rue Parmentier, Montreuil - for a beautiful new adventure!

33 and 1/3

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 15:42:00 +0000

Last day, I was walking home and I was thinking about being 33 soon, and what to do for my birthday. And then my mind wandered around the number 33, as I remembered the George Harrison album called Thirty-Three and 1/3. That's probably as I made that connection that I understood what I wanted for my birthday: music in the forms of LPs. So, I sent an email to my friends asking them to send or bring with them an LP of a band or an artist that have been important in their lives. And during my birthday party, I would play a song from the album of their choices.
Today, I also noticed that Harrison released 33 and 1/3 in 1976, he was 33 then... I probably knew about that fact when I was 14 or something but then I was probably not very sensitive to it, until now.. like an LP, what comes around goes around.
My favorite song from this album is undoubtedly Crackerbox Palace.

Quel est donc ce froid que l'on sent en toi?

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 16:22:00 +0000

Months ago, I had thought of blogging about this video. And then I forgot. And then last week, I remembered.
It's one of the most famous French-produced music video, when the genre blossomed in the mid-eighties. Since 1985, "Marcia Baïla" by les Rita Mitsouko is a song that have made people danced wild in most home parties - it's a bit like Billie Jean, in that it never fails to get people on the dance-floor even when everybody is lingering on in the kitchen, trying to re-invent the world in conversations. It's "the" party song, full of life, of energy, of freedom and yet, it talks about... death and cancer (of the dancer Marcia Moretto). It's probably also one of 1st example in France when the success of a song is not only due to the lyrics and the music but also to the video. Directed by a young creative talent at the time, Philippe Gautier, it soon became the reference. He incorporated influences from other art disciplines: dance (flamenco and modern jazz), painting and performance. 8 graphic artists were involved (Richard Beaudemont, Nina Childress, Jeff Gravis, Anne-Iris Guyonnet, Ricardo Mosner, Sam Ringer, Xavier Veilhan, William Wilson). And of course, costumes were designed by newcomers Jean-Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler. When the music TV channel, TV6 started to broadcast in 1986, it was one of the most popular videos. And every time I watch it now, I see myself as a kid in front of the TV, dancing to it, trying to follow the surreal movements of singer Catherine Ringer. My mum regards the song as one of her favorite, ever. In regards to music, it was also very different from the usual french pop, actually I'm not even sure there was anything such as french pop... Les Rita Mitsouko managed to bring to a bewildered mass audience a concentrate of indie and pop from the UK and the States.
We have the music video as a trace of that time as it truly epitomizes the eighties extravaganza in France, and let's not forget the simple pleasure of watching and listening to it. It still is in every way modern.
Fred Chichin, the composer and guitar player, half of les Rita Mitsouko, died last week of cancer at 53. I love his George Harrison look-and-feel in the video.

Truth or Dare

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:28:00 +0000

Yesterday, at the New Industrial World Forum, taking place at the Centre Pompidou, I attended the talk of Florence Devouard, president of the Wikimedia Foundation, in charge of managing and running Wikipedia.
The relationship between a tool, its aesthetics and the content created never seemed more obvious to me than when I heard her describe the many stakes of Wikipedia. As the service has been under the harsh fire of many critics for years, notably in the academic and media fields, the discourse of its representant was expectedly defensive. And I did agree with most of her arguments, it's hard to stand against Wikipedia when it's been so useful, simple to access and so open on the collective knowledge.
But one of her points was strongly worrying. As she described what was for her a great aspect of the tool - the openness on languages and cultures of the world (as in not everybody speaks English, Spanish and French and live in the Western world) - she supported her reasoning by saying that indeed every subject has many truths and that Wikipedia allows them all to be voiced. And then that's when it stroke me that the design of the Wikipedia tool and service was indeed supporting in its core that assertion. So in order to make her point, she used a specific example, underlying how Wikipedia can be used to offer a balance of views on a given subject, in particular when for instance French people have a say more easily than African people. In substance her quote was "I look forward to reading African francophones expressing themselves on Wikipedia, for instance on subjects like feminine circumcision and western Sahara" (implying that their opinions would be different than those of the French). Now with the 1st problem with this statement: there's an insinuation here that a point of view on a subject is submitted to nationality or ethnic belonging. Well, if all French people or all the African francophones would think one way and agree on everything, that'd be some piece of news! But more seriously, the way she phrased her reasoning could be easily understood that she meant that as a French person, I would voice arguments against feminine circumcision while an African person would advocate for it. Fortunately, we know it's not that binary.
The second subtext is even more problematic: one would tend to think that any opinion can be said on a subject - in itself, a reasonable point - and that they're all worthy and even necessary. Indeed, in the name of freedom of expression, and a currently trendy relativism, all "truths" are equal, all points of view are valuable and they all worth a space of expression. This is for me where the danger is. I don't believe you can wipe out historical context, experience and critical analysis.
Ironically, I think a part of the academic world, in order to play it very 2.0, is trying to get back in the race of demagogy: the recent invitation of the Balliol College of Oxford University made to the negationist David Irving, many times condemned in Germany and Austria, in a debate on the limits of freedom of expression is very revealing in that matter.
No, there aren't always many truths. It's not a science dissertation, where you could keep on questioning even that aluminium is a metal. I believe in making sense as you write an essay, and somewhat educating your audience towards an awareness of oneself as a human being responsible for others and for the ecosystem he's part of.
It's funny that in a forum addressing the "digitalization of design" in the light of the new uses of technology, the organizers didn't plan a time for questions from the audience, which in a way was an interesting echo to another of Florence Devouard's observation, that it's very frustrating for active Internet users if they're in a situation where they can't give a feedback (to what they read in the media for instance). So I went to find her at the end of the session to exchange thoughts on what seemed to me a big issue. She was quite receptive in general - a lot of people came to talk to her, sometimes passionately, about other things. I waited for my turn and exposed the problem I saw in her talk, we talked a bit and I like to think that she realized that some of her phrasing was inappropriate. Wikipedia has many great challenges, at the level of its ambitions. She told me for instance that one of the current problem she was facing was that in some articles, edits by women were systematically rejected by the male users. Now, how do you solve that?

Dorkbot #7

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 21:41:00 +0000

The next Dorkbot Paris is taking place the 1st and 2nd of december, during the festival Les Mondes Hors Pistes" (Worlds off tracks) which celebrates the 10 years of the tv show "Tracks" from Arte and it's taking place in the fashion designer Agnès b. gallery space.

Our program proposes various workshops, installations, and performances:

** Workshops **

- Mouse and keyboard hacking, by Jean-Baptiste Labrune and Vincent Roudaut

- CCTV cameras hacking by Karl Otto Von Oertzen and Alexandre Berthier

- Switch on, switch off, by Joëlle Bitton and Julien Dorra
Discovering the basic principles of interaction.

- Recycling audio tapes by Harold Schellinx

** Objects and installations **

Works by Claudia Mannigel, Emmanuel Ferrand, Stéfane Perraud, Armel Barraud, David Steinberg, Dana Gordon, Jean-Baptiste Labrune and LLND

** Performances **

- Bobby vs Predator by Benjamin Cadon

- Travelling (alternative dadaist version) by Joëlle Bitton and David Krutten

- Improvisation by Otso Lahdeoja

Back to basics

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 19:16:00 +0000

Users can't believe it's free.. the interface design is sleek and elegant, the game is an all time winner, the use is convenient: it's Quinn alias Tetris on your Mac machine.

Striking!

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 16:37:00 +0000

Today marked the end of the strike, the subway runs pretty much as usual, nobody is complaining anymore. It's as if nothing happened. During the last 10 days, the TV news kept on showing us how unhappy people were that they couldn't go to work and how angry they were that a minority would go on strike to keep their privileges, namely an early retirement.
Contrary to common beliefs, a long strike like this one is pretty unusual in France. The last one of a similar importance was in december 1995, 12 years ago. It lasted 3 weeks and ended just in time for the Christmas shopping. Because if there's something that French people love to do more than to go to work is to go shopping. I was last Saturday at the Galeries Lafayette gourmet, full as ever, at the heart of strike period and somewhat people managed to come all the way down there, with all the nearby subway and train lines down, and there were no TV cameras to show that the strike was after all not so constraining for the French economy.
I can understand the arguments of the train workers, they're right - why would they want to keep doing after 50 such a tedious job? And also, I can understand that in the configuration of our economy maintaining early retirements is not really possible anymore. So why not using this opportunity to question the relationship to work itself? With the current president "work more to earn more" Sarkozy, the notion of work as the ultimate modern value is statufied. But the real revolution is to be able to choose a job that makes you happy or at least that you wouldn't want to leave "early" in your career or that maybe is not getting you at the end of the day to burn your life with alcohol, and anti-depressants and cocaine. The leaders of the economy are exploiting the need for people to get a job that will at least sustain basic expenses - all they care for is to make sure they are profitable, and that in a nice convenient loop, they can spend the small money they earn in a desperate gesture cynically called "pouvoir d'achat" (consuming power) which is the only power they will ever feel in their life: because when you've been spending your day feeling "you're nothing" at work, all you can do is buy and buy more at your turn to feel "you're something".
This actually puts the act of consumption at the heart of the next revolution, between ecological, political and economical awareness: what you buy, how you buy it, where you buy it, why, etc... More and more, I'm interested in alternative theories like "décroissance" or "degrowth". It's fascinating because it puts the problem upside down and for that only, I like it.
And finally, as it was the case in 1995, this strike was very valuable if only for one thing: rediscovering the relationship to the city, to the ways you move in it, to the ways you get from one point to another, and to time (for instance, instead of making sure I want the shortest time spent between the place where I am and where I should be, I have to think of what I'm going to do in the time that I wait - mainly walk - and through what part of the cities).

"The biggest twat in Manchester...

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 12:48:00 +0000

being played by the second biggest twat in Manchester” is what Peter Hook, New Order’s bassist, said, commenting on Steve Coogan’s casting as Tony Wilson in 24-hour Party People. Claire told me yesterday Wilson had died last summer - news travel very fast nowadays... It came up as we were wondering how it was possible the Happy Mondays survived from all the drug intake - they played this week at Festival des Inrocks in Paris. I remember when I saw them by chance like 15 or 16 years ago at a signing in the Champs-Elysée Virgin Megastore, I didn't have money to buy their records then but I had a George Harrison tape with me which all the band members signed, incredulous and amused at the object. Soon after, I got the "Pills, thrills and bellyaches" CD for free, as I called Barclay, the french label distributor, and told them I wanted to make a review for a school magazine we were editing in our high-school. Lisa, Cécile, Sophie L. and Sophie F. and I called the magazine "Fulbert" - we made 2 editions in total, wrote articles with hidden names and it had a little success of its own. Tony Wilson's death makes me think about the current music industry and how it is so far away from the way he dealt with his own label, Factory or the bands he helped (Joy Division, New Order, Happy Mondays) plus all the DJ's he put forward at the Hacienda, the club he opened as a way "to give back to the people". He was maybe a twat indeed, and a desastrous money manager but he made more things for the music than all the current label managers will ever dream to do, just out of passion and pleasure. If all the music industry is interested in at the moment is to find how to keep on cashing on all the rights that are being lost to downloading, then it's for sure going to die. But I'm not convinced it's a wrong thing after all.

Photos from Japan and Scotland

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 22:03:00 +0000

This year I mainly traveled to Scotland and Japan.
Here are selected pictures of those two trips.
"You got the look" shows digital color pictures from Scotland, my vision of the RockNess festival that took place last June near Inverness (I still have a folder of black and white pictures I took with my Contax throughout my stay earlier this year but I didn't have the time to make a proper selection - will take care of that soon).
"Summer stroke" is a look at the first part of my stay in Japan with hints at beach time in Kamakura, a beautiful day-walk in Fushimi-Inari temple in Kyoto with Julie and a short visit to Manabe-Jima.
"Looking for the shadow" shows the last days I spent in Japan between Takayama in the mountains and saying goodbye to friends in Tokyo.
For those 3 sets, I used the flash automated gallery from Photoshop CS3 for a change, it's quite a time-saver, but probably less satisfying because I couldn't really annotate the pictures as I usually do.

--Joëlle

Music for the global warming

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 10:46:00 +0000

Radioz is a small online community of friends who are each publishing every now and then a music playlist, powered by the friendly Zanorg radio system, that can be added to any website. For his 11th playlist, David invited me to participate and share the tracks selection.

To celebrate the sweet and savoury flavours of the autumn season, we prepared a 17-tracks playlist that follow on from each other, as one track answers the temptations of the previous one. The first proposal is mine, then David's reply provokes a chain reaction...

You can listen to the songs separately or - even better - as one track (mixed more or less as in a radio station) by selecting "Mix radioz 11" at the end of the tracklisting (it takes a bit longer to load).

The playlist is available as you pick "David" (1st name on the list) from the radioz homepage.

Enjoy!

--Joëlle.

Call for project - Dorkbot Paris / festival Tracks

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:12:00 +0000

Our next Dorkbot Paris event will take place the 1st and 2nd of December during the festival "Get off the Tracks", for the 10 years' birthday of Arte tv show "Tracks", in partnership with Agnes B. and happening at the designer's exhibition space in Paris.

During those 2 days, we will organize small workshops and exhibit various works related to electronic arts, recycling and techno-hacking.

If you want to participate and propose workshops, objects to exhibit, etc.., contact us as soon as possible and send us an email at dorkbotparis (at) dorkbot.org with your detailed proposal.

Side note : each participant should provide his own material.

Looking forward to hear from you..

The Dorkbot Paris team.

Portrait, Instored

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 09:07:00 +0000

My work is featured in the magazine SVM MAC this month, on a 4-page focus, including a portrait written after interview by the journalist Laurence Beauvais, and 3 pages of visuals. In addition, the visual that served as a basis for the "Abstract" exhibition's flyer opens the creative section of the magazine in a full page. I'm rather pleased about this opportunity of publicity. The portrait is nicely written, almost too flattering actually and it's not easy to project myself onto it, yet it shan't come in the way of my rejoicing. I expect the interview to be available online next month.

Portrait, Restored

noreply@blogger.com (Joëlle) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 07:32:00 +0000

A new look and feel for my online portfolio: the content is restructured around a denser information architecture and the colors are darker. I thought that after almost 3 years since I first designed it, it needed some face lift like when you redo the painting in your house. It also makes better sense that way in my current job hunting strategy, the efficiency of which I'll report about later...