rant time, I'll try and keep this short,

So 8bit brings up a lot of good points in his post but I have to write a rebuttal because it feel like Hubski is shitting on TPAB because of his post. Yes TPAB was food for the masses of white middle class college age children (see me) and they will probably give up an arm and a leg to buy Kendrick's shoes. But all I can see in that post is anger at white people, the problem isn't Kendrick it'd goddamn white people. We suck, I know, but blaming Kendrick for pandering to white people just because of the delivery of his message isn't the problem with this album. Kendrick made an album talking about his struggles, white people got on board and were stupid about it aka what happens with most of pop culture. You don't get mad at Jean Michelle Basquiait for making art that was prominently bought by rich white socialites, so don't get mad at Kendrick for having a shitty fanbase. The album itself is great just as Baquait's art is great, but don't dissregard a great composition just because white people jumped on the bandwagon.

Guys, I feel like I'm the only one remembering that Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly came out this year. Easily leaps and bounds ahead of every other rap album I heard this year and probably my pick for Album of the Year. Also seconding Carrie and Lowell.

Got to go do my civic duty and vote on Monday. Canadian elections or something. Also, good news, it seems like there's a much larger voter turnout this year.

Oh boy, don't get me started. Here are a few artists I like that I feel are doing well for themselves but you'd miss them if you weren't super into contemporary art.

Janet Cardiff and George Bures-Miller

Okay, so you might know these two , but if not, seriously, the last time I was outright blown away by art (jaw hanging open, absolutely speechless) was when I saw their show. All their works are interactive so anything I say here will do them no justice, but let me explain my favourite Storm Room. You walk up a ramp into what looks like a box large box made of plywood. When you get inside however, the inside is modelled like the inside of a rural Japanese dentists office. There are windows and rain pours down outside the room (yes real water). Water leaks from the ceiling into buckets. The thunder and lighting make huge sounds when they go off. The room is so small abandoned you feel insecure in this raggedy place. You know the storm isn't real but damn, you still feel scared, like the roof won't hold. And all this is within a gallery. Seriously check them out.

Micah Lexier

This guy is just plain fun. He recently won the Governor General's award for the Arts in Canada and damn did he deserve it. Most his works takes humorous views about time and capturing single moments. The thing I like most about his work is that everything is super is very carefully made and planned, keeping only the most important information to communicate an idea, and yet each of these minimalist works is based on some chaotic process. In the following A Minute of my Time, December 7, 1998, (22:02-22:03) he used a watterjet to cut a massive steel plate in the exact formation of a line he impulsively drew. The line is messy and chaotic, but the steel is fixed, imposing and solid. Its a great dichotomy.

Ken Matsubara

Last one I swear. This guy is a super cool Japanese artist with each work giving you that sense of wonder back. All his works appear to be simple sculptures, but upon a closer inspection, you see that each one has a video hiding on it somewhere, often of water. All about memories and connection with the past and the inherent connection of man to nature. I don't really want to write any more, so I'll just leave these here.

http://kenmatsubara.com/WORKS/Storm.mp4

http://kenmatsubara.com/WORKS/Paper1s.mp4

other things I like atm

Basquiat, Nam June Paik, Jenny Saville, Irving Penn, Xiao Guo Hui, Matthew Barney, Robert Gober, Anslem Kiefer, David Altmejd, Cecily Brown, Charles Ray, Yoko Ono

So now we have high grade consumer FDM printers for cheap, high grade consumer laser cutters for cheap (relatively) and high grade SLA printers for cheap. All we need now is SLS printers that aren't a million dollars, and polyjet that isn't half a million. Consumer prototyping and fabrication has never been more accessible, we just need a few more patents to expire to really kick things into high gear.

I'm hoping to save up for this, the Tiko, and maybe a Peachy if they come out with something a little better quality.

I am pumped to go to Oktoberfest. It turns out Kitchener/Waterloo has a massive Oktoberfest, the second largest in the world. This is exciting!

And then I'm going to have to attend Canadian thanksgiving with a hangover from hell. Wish me luck!

Things I like: The face has so much colour! So often people go into painting portraits and don't realize how much variance skin can have. You did great on that, even getting lots of blue in there too.

Things I dislike: that frame (sorry)

http://www.pokemon.com/us/play-pokemon/worlds/2015/

They stream it and everything, mostly comprised of high level cards and video games, but this year they had a tournament for Pokken. You can watch some of the highlights on Pokemon's youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/user/pokemon/videos

Alright Hubski,

I left the community I was really enjoying for awhile because life got in the way. So I'm sorry and I hope you can take me back. Do you like roses?

Anyhow, my month or so since I last posted, well, I got a job. But it's in a city about a 3 hour drive from my home. So I spent the past few weeks getting ready for that and moving out. I now live with one of my best friends because he goes to university here. I attended the homecoming and didn't move for a full 24 hours after passing out at 4pm. Day drinking is dangerous kids. My girlfriend is now in Switzerland and sadly didn't pass her courses as I talked about like a month ago. I don't know what's gonna happen in terms of our relationship when I need to go back to shcool and she can't attend, so that worries me, but I can put that off until December. Also, before I moved I went to New York and Boston. I got to see some cool art (the new Whitney is amazing) and I attended the Pokemon World Championships.

It's been a busy month.

I was actually referring to the more abstract works he does like this:

but the argument still holds. He actually uses squeegees for both types of painting, so while one is realistic and the other is abstract, to use a bad cliché "they're two sides of the same coin". The process needed for a single work of art is more deep than most people realize and I hope you find inspiration in looking at the difficult processes that modern art hides a little more.

I'm hopping on to make a quick (shit, it's long) point about development and experimentation.

One of the things that might be missing from your analysis of "modern" art is that the production value and experimentation just aren't there. Let me assure you that they are. In fact in most cases production is be one of the defining features of an artwork (after all it is VISUAL art).

Let me try and break that down a bit. So Da Vinci tried to do something more along the lines of a secco rather than a fresco for The Last Supper, correct? He abandoned the old methods and tried to find a better method for preservation and appearance of the colours. Well similarly, we can analyse the works of the abstract expressionists in this fashion. They wanted to change the way paint was perceived, abandoning the old methods of trying to replicate images and instead letting paint, be paint. The pinnacle of abstract expressionism is in fact experimentation and a rebellion from older methods; painting on floors, using colours based upon your mood and painting shapes that resemble nothing in our current world. One could say that the production was the most important thing for them. Behind every great piece of art, there is hours upon hours of experimentation and production testing.

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For some more specific examples, look at Gerhard Richter. He makes abstract paintings by dragging a squeegee across his paintings. However if you watch his process, it is by no means as easy as it would first seem. He always has 2 paintings that he's working on in his studio, and he'll every day apply more paint if he's dissatisfied with what is currently on the canvas. By this process he continually builds up layer after layer, a porocess which usually takes several months. He might leave the painting for a month only to come back and completely erase it with more squeegeeing.

Similarly, Jeff Koons developed a technique for applying colour to mirror polished stainless steel. Yes, those balloon animals are indeed stainless steel. This is by no means an easy process and he had to go through a lot of work to make his art stand out by using new experimental techniques. (though he's been coasting on those techniques for some time now).

Also, shout out to another mech eng student.

Sigh, I feel like I should comment and add to the discussion but I might just end up ranting. I'll try and keep this short.

I believe that there is good and bad art, I'm undecided on how much of that is objective versus subjective though. The problem is that far too often, we only want to analyse art on the aesthetic beauty of a piece. In reality, what makes a piece good or bad is the message it conveys and the impression the piece leaves on your conscience, as well as it's ability to communicate those ideas. Similar to music, dance or any other art form, the visuals are nothing more than the medium to communicate ideas. To put this into perspective, it's like analysing an album for it's chord progression versus the themes presented in the album. Similarly, finding importance in the sentence structure versus importance in the author's message. The problem the man in the video has is that he holds the medium to a higher standard than the idea.

There is always something amazing about someone who can execute their medium to the highest degree. Ideas change and each new artwork offers a new perspective. Medium on the other hand (in the case of art aesthetics) can get boring if you see the same thing over and over again, or a lack of depth in the ideas. In my opinion this is what has been driving the constant desire for new aesthetic looks, no matter how contrary to traditional values of aesthetics they are.

On a side note, I would take most things Prager University says with a grain of salt. They are not a real university, just a youtube channel that likes to publish clickbait titled videos with a heavily right wing stance on most of their issues. Things like dropping the A-bombs was the correct choice, modern art sucks, feminism is wrong and Christians being the most persecuted religion. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but Prager University really gets my blood boiling.

I have been helping her out, but its tough. At the end of the day I can only help her study, I have no control over how her exam goes. We've both finished four exams already and the last one is tomorrow. All that's left is to hope for lots of part marks and that the finals in her stronger classes went very well.

I'm finishing up exams for the summer term. I have one more final and then I'm free.

While this is great I'm scared about by best friend (and recently girlfriend). The school requires you maintain an average above 60 each term or you have to repeat the term. Due to the nature of the co-op program, there are 2 streams of students that alternate between school term and working. If she fails here, which she is fairly certain will happen, it will put us on alternating streams (I'll be in school while she's working and vice versa). That means that I won't see her until our streams coincide which will be towards the end of undergrad. I feel like these last few weeks are the only ones I'll have left with her and I'm not ready to part ways.

I love Cornell. The pieces read like three-dimensional sketchbook pages. I can't even tell you the amount of times I've wanted to stuff something in my sketchbook but it just won't happen due to the 3D nature of our world.

On the topic of assemblage though, check out Ken Matsubara. I saw him at an art fair last year it blew me away that something like that could be made. Videos playing on the bottom of glasses of water, or inside a stool and many inside little boxes similar to the ones Cornell made.

http://kenmatsubara.com/WORKS/Paper1s.mp4

http://kenmatsubara.com/WORKS/Storm_Barber.mp4