Monday, November 29, 2010
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Fragile and The Robust
Beauty and the Beast is a 1991 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation, released to theaters on November 22, 1991 by Walt Disney Pictures. The story is based on the fairy tale La Belle et la Bête by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, who was uncredited in the English version of the film but credited in the French version as writer of the novel. The movie also uses some ideas derived from the 1946 French film. It centers around a prince who is transformed into a Beast and the beautiful young woman whom he imprisons in his castle.
Beauty and the Beast is the perfect couple to represent our concepts because the Beast represents the robustness and Bella represents the fragility. The Beast is a wolf-like creature that is very strong and is very angry. bella instead is a petit girl that is very beautiful sweet and delicate.
J. Frazer, The Golden Bough
(Fragile, p.301a)
It would be idle, perhaps, to lay much weight on evidence drawn from the calendar of flowers, and in particular to press an argument so fragile as the bloom of the rose.
(Robust, p.499a)
These leaves were then distributed to everybody, old and young. When all was ready, a band of robust men, attended by a guard of exorcists, carried one of the cars down to the sea on the right side of the village graveyard, and set it floating in the water.
The Back Swan: on Robustness and Fragility
Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a Lebanese philosophical essayist, scholar and practitioner of mathematical financial economics. He is best known as the author of the 2007 book (completed 2010) The Black Swan. Taleb has been critical of the finance industry and has been credited with making warnings regarding financial crises and making a fortune out of the 2008 crisis. Taleb is an activist and a promoter of what he calls a "Black Swan robust" society as well as aggressive "stochastic tinkering" as a means of scientific discovery.
Three years after the pubication of The Black Swan, Nassin Nicholas Taleb write the new book, where he studies the 2008 crisis, and about the economists should analize and take care of it, with annotations that have the taste of the irony and the skepticism.
Robustness and fragility summerize three years old life of a strong idea, that it’s able to change and modify our mental paradigms. From these meetings it was born "Robustness and Fragility", his new philosophical story where, furnishing us a topographical paper of the Estremistan, Taleb it teaches us whether to move us in a world dominated by the case and by the uncertainty.
Australia's Hot Air Balloon
Australia Post has recently issued a series of 4 postage stamps depicting hot-air ballooning. Released on May 6, 2008, the stamps celebrate the 150th anniversary of the first successful balloon flight in Australia. One-hundred fifty years ago, no one could have imagined that stamps would someday fly across the world attached to letters and carried on jet airplanes.
The earth is the most fragile thing of all...
This stamp was created bye the U.S Postage for Earth Day with the slogan "The earth is the most fragile thing of all..." It's purpose was to create awareness to the public of the fragility of the planet. We find it representative for our blog because it shows how people think earth is so big and robust that it cannot be hurt by us, but the reality of the situation is that everyday we are damaging the earth and its becoming more and more fragile.
Monday, November 8, 2010
The Twin Towers, the crumbling of America
The World Trade Center (WTC) was a complex of seven buildings in Lower Manhattan in New York City that were destroyed in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with six new skyscrapers and a memorial to the casualties of the attacks.
The original World Trade Center was designed by Minoru Yamasaki in the early 1960s using a tube-frame structural designPort Authority of New York and New Jersey agreed to take over the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad which became the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH).
On the morning of September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda-affiliated hijackers flew two 767 jets into the complex, one into each tower, in a coordinated terrorist attack. After burning for 56 minutes, the South Tower (2) collapsed, followed a half-hour later by the North Tower (1), with the attacks on the World Trade Center resulting in 2,752 deaths. The World Trade Center collapsed later in the day and the other buildings, although they did not collapse, had to be demolished because they were damaged beyond repair. The process of cleanup and recovery at the World Trade Center site took eight months. 
The fall of the Twin Towers has represented for all the Western Hemisphere the collapse of the economic power of the United States.
The terrorist attack had two consequences, the first on a symbolic level because the nation that was considered the strongest and “untouchable” was penetrated and attacked in their own soil, and the second one was the exposure of the fragility and vulnerability of this nation, attacked in its most important and world-known economic center.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Ron Mueck
While many artists strive to glamorize, and portray our world to be better than it actually is, others simply find art in our ordinary lives and our simple bodies. Mueck is one of those artists, and is now well known for his super realistic sculptures where he portrays humans at key stages in the life cycle, from birth through middle age, to death.
Ron Mueck, now working in the United Kingdom, was born in 1958 in Melbourne, Australia. The son of German-born toy-makers, he grew up making creatures, puppets and costumes in his spare time, experimenting with materials and techniques. He started his career as a model maker and puppeteer for children’s films (such as Labyrinth, The Storyteller and etc.). Later he was making photo-realistic props and animatronics for the advertising industry. In 1996 Mueck transitioned to fine art and in 1999 he was appointed as Associate Artist at the National Gallery, London.
Without further ado, let’s take a little virtual museum tour, and explore these mind-blowing photo realistic sculptures by Ron Mueck.
"It wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast."
King Kong is a 2005 remake of the 1933 film of the same name directed by Peter Jackson and stars Naomi Watts, Jack Black and Adrien Brody. Andy Serkis, through performance capture, portrayed Kong.
King Kong may be one of Hollywood's most emblematic characters. The story of the giant ape that falls in love with a beautiful woman, which cosequently leads him to his death. Once again we find another example of a character that seems robust and stong but in the end is defeated because of a weakness, in this case his weakness was the love he felt for the woman that will lead him to his downfall.
Cow and chicken.
Cow and Chicken is an American animated series, created by David Feiss. The series shows the surreal adventures of a cow, named Cow, and her chicken brother, named Chicken. They are often antagonized by "The Red Guy", who poses as various characters to scam or hurt them.
Cow, is Chicken's 7 year old sister, with a weight stated as 600 pounds. Cow looks up to Chicken, who she refers to as "Big Brother". She is often viewed by Chicken as infantile and stupid, and is quickly prone to emotional outbursts. She is the only character to appear in every episode of the show. Cow has employed Blackmail to get Chicken to do what she wants and often attempts to get the other characters to do the right thing. Cow's alter ego is "Supercow", a superhero with the ability to fly.
Chicken, is Cow's 11 year old brother. He can be mean to his younger sister, and even to the rest of the family. He has a powerful ego, but in spite of this, has a powerful conscience, usually only displayed when Cow is in danger. His speech is riddled with malapropisms and sarcasm. Despite being a male, he demonstrated the ability to lay eggs. Chicken is very fond of ice skating. Like other chickens, he cannot fly, and is afraid of flying. Chicken is the only character in the show who knows that his sister and Supercow are the same person.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zXIScJ1LT8
Cow and Chicken are two characters that represent very well each one of our concepts. Cow is the personification of Robust, both physically and in personality. Chicken, instead, is the personification for Fragile.
The lion and the mouse
The Lion and the MouseA lion lay asleep in the forest, his great head resting on his paws. A timid little mouse came upon him unexpectedly, and in her fright and haste to get away, ran across the lion's nose. Woken from his nap, the lion laid his huge paw angrily on the tiny creature to kill her. "Spare me!" begged the poor mouse. "Please let me go and some day I will surely repay you." The lion was so amused at the idea of the little mouse being able to help the King of Beasts, that he lifted up his paw and let her go. Some weeks later, the lion was caught in a net. The hunters who desired to carry the lion alive to their King tied him to a tree while they went in search of a wagon to carry him. |
Just then the little mouse happened to pass by, and seeing the lion's sad plight, went up to him and soon gnawed away the ropes of the net, freeing the lion.
"You have helped me and now I have returned the favor. Was I not right - even a mouse can help a lion!" said the little mouse.
Don't forget: even the smallest friend is worthwhile!
http://www.dltk-teach.com/fables/lion/tale.htm
The Lion and the Mouse is an Aesop's fable. In the fable, a lion wants to eat a mouse who wakes him up. The mouse begs forgiveness and promises to return the favor if ever he is given the opportunity. He also makes the point that such unworthy prey as he should not stain the lion's great paws. The lion is moved to uncontrollable laughter and when he recovers, lets the mouse go, stating that he has not had such a good laugh in ages.
Later, the lion is captured by hunters and tied to a tree; the lion roars with all his might so that someone might help him. The mouse hears the lion's pleas and frees him by gnawing through the ropes. The moral of this story is stated in the last line of the fable:
- Little friends may prove great friends.
Another Aesop fable with a similar moral lesson concerns a slave who removes a thorn from a lion's paw, and the lion later comes to the slave's rescue.[1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion_and_the_Mouse
Lion and the Mouse is the perfect couple to represent our concepts because they represents the robustness and the fragility. The Lion is the king of the jungle that is very strong, big and is also very angry. Mouse instead is a small, helpless that is very crafty sweet and delicate. But then at the end everything changes, the robust turns into the fragile and the fragile into the robust.
Pepsi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40DykbPa4Lc
In this Advertisement we can see the story of a fragile boy that becomes a warrior. We can also see how robust objects seem fragile in the boy's hands.
Johnny Bravo
Johnny Bravo is an American animated television series created by Van Partible for the Cartoon Network. The series stars a muscular beefcake young man named Johnny Bravo, who dons a pompadour hairstyle and Elvis Presley-like tone of voice personality. Plots typically revolve around him trying to get a woman that he has targeted throughout the episode to fall in love with him. He is often beat up or stunned by his target or companions, or gets ditched by them in the end.
Johnny Bravo is a funny character because he pretends to be all strong and robust but in reality he is really very sweet inside and care a lot about his friends and his mother.
Frida Kahlo: Inspiring Life
Frida is a 2002 biographical film which depicts the professional and private life of the surrealist Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. It stars Salma Hayek in her Academy Award nominated portrayal as Kahlo and Alfred Molina as her husband, Diego Rivera. The movie was adapted by Clancy Sigal, Diane Lake, Gregory Nava, Anna Thomas and Edward Norton (uncredited) from the book Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahloby Hayden Herrera. It was directed by Julie Taymor. It won Oscars for Best Makeup and Best Original Music Score.
As we told in a previous post the life of Frida Kahol was inspiring, in such a way that it became a movie. We wanted to post this trailer because this movie illustrates the fragility of her body and the hard things she had to endure during her life. But this movie shows how she used all mer pain and transformed it into beautiful paintings.
The Robust God Devouring His Fragile Son
Saturn Devouring His Son is the name given to a painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya. It depicts the Greek myth of the Titan Cronus (in the title Romanised to Saturn), who, fearing that his children would overthrow him, ate each one upon their birth. It is one of the series of Black Paintings that Goya painted directly onto the walls of his house sometime between 1819 and 1823.
Goya depicts Saturn feasting upon one of his sons. His child's head and part of the left arm has already been consumed. The right arm has probably been eaten too, though it could be folded in front of the body and held in place by Saturn's crushing grip. The god is on the point of taking another bite from the left arm; as he looms from the darkness, his mouth gapes and his eyes bulge white with the appearance of madness. The only other brightness in the picture comes from the white flesh and red blood of the corpse and the white knuckles of Saturn as he digs his fingers into the back of the body.
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| Francisco Goya 1819–1823 Oil mural transferred to canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
Goya may have been inspired by Peter Paul Rubens' 1636 picture of the same name. Rubens' painting, also held at the Museo del Prado, is a brighter, more conventional treatment of the myth: his Saturn exhibits less of the cannibalistic ferocity portrayed in Goya's rendition. However, some critics[who?] have suggested that Rubens' portrayal is the more horrific: the god is portrayed as a calculating remorseless killer, who – fearing for his own position of power – murders his innocent child. Goya's vision, on the other hand, shows a man driven mad by the act of killing his own son. In addition, the body of the son in Goya's picture is that of an adult, not the helpless baby depicted by Rubens.
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| Peter Paul Rubens Saturn, Jupiter's father, devours one of his sons, Poseidon 1636 Oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
This is yet another example of how Mythology becomes an inspitarion of art. In both of this paintings the artists show the fragility of the life in the hands of the god while he savagely devors his son. In both paintings the god is portrayed as strong and robust, while the rapresentation of the son varies alot from one painting to the other. In Goya's painting he shows only his life less body, while in Ruben's painting he shows the excruciating pain in the fragile baby's face.
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