Digital

“If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it.” -Frank Zappa Inside of every student I've ever taught lives a passionate, curious mind that can either flourish or stagnate, both inside and outside the classroom. The teachers that get it -- that get you -- are the ones that help bring you there, but that is not all teachers, not by any means. I think everyone, by this point in their life, has had experience with at least one teacher that stands out…
In his seminal 1991 essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction," the video artist Douglas Davis writes that digital bits "can be endlessly reproduced, without degradation, always the same, always perfect." This is different, Davis argues, from analogue information. In the past, copying an audio signal -- for example, dubbing a copy of a cassette tape -- always involved an unpredictable loss of clarity, which Davis compares to waves washing on a beach, always breaking slightly differently. But "digital bits, compatible with the new generation of tools that see, hear, speak,…
The Lady of Broken Hearts Natalie Shau Lithuanian artist Natalie Shau works in digital media, mostly using Photoshop. You can see more of Shau's work at her website and at the website of jewelery designer Lydia Courteille, for whom she illustrated a cabinet-of-curiosities themed ad campaign. hat-tip: Haute Macabre.
The Cheerful Cricket and Others (1907)Children's Digital Library The Children's Digital Library doesn't have a sleek interface and it can be a bit hiccupy, but if you poke around you'll find a surprising number of vintage children's books like The Cheerful Cricket and Others (1907) or The Illustrated Alphabet of Birds (1851). Best of all, several of the Oz books illustrated by John R. Neill are here in their entirety! I remember checking these out of the library when I was sick as a child. I think my mom must have charmed the librarian because I remember taking literally stacks of books at a…