Camminando...

I am realizing how much walking is part of my connecting with the world. And NYC streets offers one of the most exciting views...

Here a few pix from my stroll last night to the usual vernissages hopping

Mid way of the walk: Times Square, as usual

Nendo at Brenda Friedman

AlmagulMenlibayeva"Kurban" at PriskaC Juschka

JeremyEarhart at Goff + Rosenthal

Maya Onoda at Magnan

Is "Wealthy Intellectual" an Oxymoron?

The question arised from a 3 minutes conversation with a friend, during the school drop-off of our daughters.
This casually asked question provoked a series of very important questions (for me) about my work and how my work intersect with life; it is probably one of the most important dilemmas shared by many of us:

How to make a living by creating culture?

Do you have answers?

PLACES | Times Square in New York | The Place where everything becomes a spectacle

I love walking, often 10 miles a day; it helps to make sense of the world. Walking in New York is one of my favourite it makes me appreciate the everchanging the everchanging urban and human landscape.
Here a few moments from my stroll yesterday on my way from Chelsea to the MOMA

FUTURISM | 100th Anniversary

100 years ago, on February 20 1909, the Manifesto of Futurism, by Filippo Marinetti was published in Le Figaro.

Happy 100th Anniversary!

From the exhibition at MOMA, New York

Places: the "Ashram"

Yesterday I spent my annual day at Kripalu, a former ashram which has recently become a crossover between an ashram and a spa. The atmosphere has changed: from a gathering of spiritual minded people practicing meditation and yoga to a more mainstream yet progressive and liberal crowd, focused on fitness, healthy lifestyle and often, life changes. Prices have doubled and the food from strictly vegetarian now includes some meat. Yet the wonderful atmosphere of compassion, tolerance and open-mindness still remains.
The first time I went there, in 2002, I was mainly looking to spend a day practicing yoga and meditation, escaping from my stressful daily routine. And I left energized, with a sense of peacefulness and hope.
On the stairwell there are photographs of Rosa Parks, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and even Einstein. The building is ugly (a former high school), lacking proportions and a relationship with the beautiful natural surroundings ---a lake in the rolling hills of the Berkshires. The dining room is quite unattractive too, but the food extremely tasty and healthy, based on organic ingredients and flavored by many different spices. Kindness, simplicity and quiet are omnipresent. People smile at each other, talking softly; when they don't participate to the many different activities ---yoga, dance, workshops, snowshoeing, hiking --- they read or meditate. A positive energy and calm take place and remains for a few days even after I return to the non-sense and madness of NYC
Every time I go there I think: can we make the world a better place? Yes, we can!

un concetto, un'idea....

Un'idea, un concetto, un'idea
finche' resta un'idea e' soltanto un'astrazione
se potessi mangiare un'idea
avrei fatto la mia rivoluzione.
Giorgio Gaber

Giorgio's lyrics should be a constant reminder.
But ideas are essential. Actions without ideas can lead to disastrous effects.

Logic + Ethics - 1

7 Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.
7 Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
7 Su cio' di cui non si puo' parlare, si deve tacere
Ludwig Wittgenstein "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" (1921)


This morning I woke up with memories of propositions from the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus", one of the most important texts I always referred to in different stages of my life, in different contexts.

Metaphor has always been part of my way of thinking and perhaps, even living...What really stayed in the back of my mind is how proposition 7 of the Tractatus explains so much of the mess in our life...not just about meta-physics, but also about we relates to each other. Lack of communication creates confusion and misunderstanding ---and it is not about religion. It is about interpersonal communications in general. And unfortunately has become the dominating business model, increasing profit by not communicating clearly the terms of the agreement.

Well I will be better continuing with my day, since I do not make a living by thinking, but...is logic merging into ethics? :-)

Geography, Politics and Religions of Cyberspace

My latest experience with web host providers and domain transfers, beside raising my blood pressure (which is usually luckily low thanks to vegetarianism, and daily "cardio-yoga" practice) has been, on the positive, side quite fascinating.
It has been like finally trying to understand and visualize ---my brain needs to translate everything in images and diagrams--- the world of cyberspace. And creating metaphors and extablishing parallels between the physical and the virtual worlds has been quite amuzing.
In cyberspace we can find nations (the web host providers are the rulers), citizens (everybody with internet connection) and the web sites "owners" probably analogous to whoever provides public services in the physical world. The web site owners rent space at the server provided by the host providers, and pay "taxes" to the domain registrars. Above all there is the equivalent of religious authority, whatever cannot be explained in a rational way, the lords or regulators above all. Those you are even afraid of mentioning the name...DNS!!!!! wiki defines them as "a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource participating in the Internet. It associates various information with domain names assigned to such participants. Most importantly, it translates domain names meaningful to humans into the numerical (binary) identifiers associated with networking equipment for the purpose of locating and addressing these devices world-wide"

So far nothing terrible exciting. It becomes uncredibly cool when the metaphor is transformed into reality and you try to imagine (and for me to visualize) what happens when you transfer from one host provider to the next. "Physically" you transfer your files, billions of bytes, from on one server to the other. Quite easy to understand so far. And you transfer the domain name.
This is where the magic happens! This is the Neverland of Cyberspace! Your billions of bytes are parked in two servers. But when you enter the name of your site during the transfer, time stands still and the screen is blank! I am mesmerized by watching with happening with spaceink.net as I write.

The blank screen is like...the passage from purgatory to hell or paradise, the sleep-wake cycle , the emptiness of buddhism, the void of the mind in zen meditation, almost a mystical experience. In the world of cyberspace you are just a blank space: your thoughts which you materialized in text, images, and sounds are dematerializing again, waiting for the magical moment of the DNS to reappear and be reborn.

Welcome to cyberspace!

sky-spirals.org should be back soon

The problems with aplus.net have been solved!

The week seem to have a good beginning I can finally focus on real work:

1. dvd --include commentary, add menu
2. axesmundi press web site
3. finish graphics design cover for poetry book

Still to deal with the accountant from Hudson and prepare for not profit stuff, a lot to do but...

"To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe." Anatole France

thought...

"pensando ---col mio vecchio, col mio

stupendo privelegio di pensare..."

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Are intellectuals disappearings?

Web Host Provider and loss (hopefully temporary) of www.sky-spirals.org

My former web site provider aplus.net has made impossible to transfer the www.sky-spirals.org domain, check what happened to the site. They have also posted unauthorized charges to my credit card after I cancelled (by email, by phone and following exactly their procedures in their web interface) the account a week before the automatic renewal. I will have to waste more time going to the credit card charges dispute. A consolation token: I am not alone, see http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4RNWN_enUS297US297&q=aplus%2enet+fraud

In this mess I am realizing how the Internet adminstration (web host providers, registras, domain registrars) lacks regulations and clear understandable rules for the consumers.

www.sky-spirals.org is important to me! It is not just a name, but is about a vision, many projects, ideas and yes, is about creating a place where anybody can think (and act) about to contribute to make the world a better place, living in harmony with ourselves and the enviroment.

Internet "owners" (you know whom I am referring to): transfering a doman should not be a nightmare!

My week in review: of "legalized" ....: accountants, web hosting providers, real estate taxes

The past monday I had in the weekly task agenda the following:
1. DVD: add a menu to the dvd and film the commentary
2. Finish graphic design of cover and layout for Irene's poetry book
3. Prepare proposal for the "Cosmology of the Divine Commedy"
4. Prepare portfolio of work to be submitted to the AIA RFP
5. Web design for Axes Mundi Press web site an
6. Change web host and transfer domain names and files.
7. Add posts to this blog on several recent exhibitions of minimalist art in NYC

It was a quite dense agenda, but not overwhelming. Of all the listed task I was only to accomplish no. 5 and part of 6. All my time of a 10-hour working day (including weekends) has been spent dealing with dishonesty and disfunctionality, laziness. See upcoming posts for details.

Please comment and share your experiences.

What this blog was supposed be...and what is evolving into

When I started this blog I was anticipitating sharing views of the world through the eyes of artists looking at other artists work and writers writing on other writes' writings. Or viceversa. And musicians posting clips of their compositions. And poets posting poems.

The blog was supposed to be about making culture and our contributions to the world of images, words and sounds. A journal of aesthetics and sharing our perceptions and thoughts.

So far it has not happened. I am realizing how a big portion of my time is instead wasted to solve problems derived by around other people's disfunctionality and dishonesty. This last week has been a confirmation of it. Perhaps the blog could be about how we view the world in this context and how solve (or try to solve)all the unnecessaries related events. And the blog could be about how being an intellectual (as somebody using critical thinking) can help ---or perhaps hurt?

Please comment.

axes mundi press

axes mundi is a bilingual (English and Italian) series of publications united by a common intention: the shaping and sharing of trans-disciplinary ideas and experiences.A "wholistic" approach to knowledge and life motivates the series, which involves philosophy, art, architecture, science, poetry, and criticism, derived from such forms of human communication as text, image, and sound. The series is designed for different formats, including the printing page and multimedia:

Atlas is the label for artist books, essays, poetry collections.
Omphalos includes interactive CD-ROMS, audio CDs and DVDs.