Jon: Get ready to throw away 30 minutes of your life….

….by working for google with out getting paid.

Early this afternoon, I was doing what I always do on Saturday mornings:

• I woke up.
• Didn’t shave.
• Realized everyone else was at work.
• Became lonely.
• Started drinking (box) wine at noon.
• Got drunk and looked at stupid stuff on the internet for three hours.

Exciting, I know! Well, while trudging around google, I found this “game” they have up that you can play. It is called Google Image Labeler. The concept is very simple:

• You are randomly paired up with a stranger somewhere in the world.
• You proceed to “label” random pictures from google image search for two minutes.
• Everytime both you and your partner think of the same word, you win points!
• yay!

This is, of course, just a way for google to increase the accuracy of there image search with out having to pay a bunch of people to participate in actual research studies. How tricky…

AND HOW FUN!!! I wasn’t able to stop playing until the neck and eye pain from staring at the computer  got too severe! TRY IT OUT! Oh, and by the way, I don’t recomend getting drunk off wine while you attempt to play this game. Hand eye coordination and cognitive brain functions are mildly important for winning.

PS: If you search for “google image labeler” in google image search, this is one of the first pictures that comes up! How gross/awesome! That’s like looking up the word dictionary in the actual dictionary, and there just being a picture of  an adorable kitten in a basket.

Jon: I Love Duane Michals! (part 2)

I wrote about my appreciation for photographer Duane Michals (b. 1932) in a post when we first began this blog (which of course means no one read it). Risking being a bit redundant, I’m going to talk about his art some more. The catalyst for this post is that in a week Em and I are going on a trip to San Francisco, and I’m going to get to see one of his pieces in person for the first time. This is a pretty big deal for me because he was one of the first artists who ever grabbed my attention. The Museum of Modern Art in S.F. owns one of Michals most famous pieces, “Things are Queer”. It is a series of several photographs, which someone has been kind enough to make into a video on youtube:

 

 When searching for additional pictures by Michals for this post, I was frustrated by the lack of examples on the internet. Most of my favorite pieces by Michals were unfortunately nowhere to be found. I think this is due to the scale of many of his most accomplished works, which are frequently long drawn out pictoral stories, like this one:

“Paradise Regained” (click for larger scale)

Michals is arguably most famous for his use of hand written narratives that accompany many of his photographs. Interestingly, this combination works to astonishing ends. Frequently, a touching juxtoposition is created between what we see in the picture and  the emotions implicated in the text.

“This is My Proof”

TEXT:

“This photograph is my proof. There was that afternoon when things were still good between us, and she embraced me, and we were so happy. It did happen, she did love me. Look see for yourself!”

Michals is also famous for the sense of humor apparent in many of his works. He acomplished this without being over the top or sacrificing the maintained aesthetic of his more serious pieces . In my experience, this is very rare in the world of photographic art.

“Who is Sidney Sherman”

(sidenote: You know that photographer who is famous for taking “funny” pictures of his dog? Like it’s the only thing he does and the art world loves him and thinks he is so hilarious? I fucking hate that guy.)