Stung Eye

I discovered dublog today, much to my work ethic's chagrin. Dublog is a visual arts and culture weblog; many of todays links were culled from it's posts.
While perusing the contents of Virtual Dali the following excerpt from his biography intrigued me:
"To bring up images from his subconscious mind, Dalí began to induce hallucinatory states in himself by a process he described as 'paranoiac critical.' Once Dalí hit on this method, his painting style matured with extraordinary rapidity, and from 1929 to 1937 he produced the paintings that made him the world's best-known Surrealist artist."
Have you ever "found" images hidden in the clouds? Seen faces and flames in the veins of a marble fireplace? Are you able to see past what something "is" in order to discover what it "could be" in relation to it's form, colour and visual complexity? If so, then you too are harnessing the paranoiac critical method. Dali described it as a form of self-induced psychosis, a method through which the user can harvest their own subconscious for artistic fodder.
A perfect example of this can be seen in his piece, Slave Market with the Apparition of the Invisible Bust of Voltaire. Inspiration for this painting is said to have come from the pair of Catholic nuns "seen" by Dali, hidden within Jean-Antoine Houdon's Bust of Voltaire. Nuns hidden in the folds of an atheist's bust!
Dali later incorporated what he called the Oniric-Critical method into his inspiration repertoire. This method was based off the idea that the artist could freeze the images and ideas from their dreams through art for later analysis. While both of these methods may seem somewhat trivial, it should be noted that surrealist artists relied mainly on automatism before Dali revolutionized the genre.

As a printmaker himself, my father would appreciate this page of printmaking techniques. Not only does this site provide a detailed description of each technique, but high-res examples are also provided. Each example image is an image map that can be clicked anywhere for a zoomed in view. Now the only question left to ask is which technique István Orosz used to create this gem.

Elegant Kinetic sculptures.
Functional machines as sculptures.
Algorithmic Art: Software as Genotype.
Beautifully eerie marionettes and the studio where they were born.
The 800x600 Project. 64 pictures. 1 subject.
Detailed psilocybin visions.
What's n3xt?

Art-o-mat: The Art Vending Machine. I want to submit!
Matador Records has lots of great mp3s online.
Beautiful Polaroid SX-70 manipulation galleries: one, two, three.
We mentioned taking over billboards in the comments a while back. The billboard liberation front has been doing it for over 25 years now.
I love other people sketchbooks.
Movies for every mood.
I've always enjoyed judging a book by it's cover.
Old school Monopoly Cards before the old Rich Uncle showed up.
300 love letters.
The art of Nick Bantock, of Griffin and Sabine fame.
Prints, engravings and woodcuts.
Anna Oguienko has put together a very nice portfolio.
Read The Phantom of the Opera online.
Buddhism and Its Spread Along the Silk Road.
The following blogs provided me with many of today's links: Conscientious, Cup of Chicha, plep, Fluxblog, iconomy, Sugar 'n Spice.

Guest entry by Soup and Spoons: Thought without action amounts to little more than mental masturbation. We're slowly becoming a society raised on passive entertainment, afraid to even explore life's challenges, when these challenges and overcoming them are what will lead to happiness. No wonder so many people are on antidepressants, which in my experience, amounts to little more than a sedative that allows you to be happy with how little you've actually accomplished. How sad.
Happiness takes work, apathy is easy. People are growing ever more lazy, accepting of the way things are. The worst example of these people are those that continually spout words and thoughts contrary to their apathetic actions. I'm guilty of this at certain times myself, however I'm continually trying to surround myself with people who will inspire me to action, eventually leaving behind those impotent oracles who feel that verbalization, in enough volume, will somehow miraculously translate into action.
For those that know me personally I'll assume that these feelings of mine are well known, as I've tread this ground several times in the past and you're probably sick of hearing my tounge and lungs express it to you. For those anonymous readers, if you end up on stungeye I'm sure you're probably interested in contributing something to the world yourself, so these ideas definitely won't be new and you might ask why I even bother to mention something that is so obvious. This website is our (mostly Wally's, to tell the truth) way of putting something new (or at least interesting) out into the world, the goal of which is to inspire you to make something even better and hopefully let us know about it. It's all about positive feedback.
If all you do is ingest the content and it doesn't give you the drive to create something yourself then we've both failed....as a good friend of mine says "The only way we can both lose is if you don't try."
******
So I'm considering starting a new company. For $20,000 I'll take you out into the Nevada desert, give you REAL guns and you can hunt these pathetic fools. Have you ever seen a group of men more afraid of women?
How long can shells continue to kill?

Fitting, is it? The very idea the once drove me to near insanity is now the catalyst for positive change. Don't think for a moment that the irony is lost on me; I don't often lose the obvious.
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Graffiti Robots! This one can write on sidewalks. This one can write on roads. Hektor can do the wall work. Impressive. No robots here but they are looking for street art submissions. I wish I had discovered this project a little sooner.
Who knew? Volcanoes can blow smoke rings!
The daily photo project. Watch Jonathan Keller age and change until the end.
A Softer World intrigues me.
Photos by Martin: a travel p-blog.
Does language stunt creativity?
Zero 7's Machinima video for In the Waiting Line. Their video for Destiny is quite beautiful too: [Realvideo - Windows Media]
The art of silk-screening: a video.
An interesting look at the roots of electronic music.
Skinny Puppy sample sources. 'Nuff said.
I just finished reading Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. I highly recommend it. Read it online here.

My net connection is down at home. Be good while I'm away.

I just uploaded a bunch of new stickers, collages and sketches to the images section. Let me know what you think. Alright?
The 4 day long weekend was nice. It was full of long walks, rollerskating (old school 4 wheel stylee), the zoo, stickering, markets, drinking, dancing, good food, good friends, good times... and a little bit of beat-boxing.
Audiogame is fun to play with. Rolito Land is a strange place to explore. Esao Andrews is creative. (Via metafilter and sublimate)

Art:

• A beautiful time lapse image of the sun moving across the sky
• Check out the handmade books!
• The philosophical meaning of art?
• Amazing crop circles
• Visual sound waves can be pretty
• An essay on social art forms
• A new batch of against the reality submissions are now online, mine included.
• The birds are hypnotic over at sublimate
• I added a new sticker series to the Images section. Wonder sparks!

Music:

• A sound gallery of strange musical instruments
• Nude as the news music reviews
• The long lost art of album packaging
• Open source sounds
• Ambient city soundscapes
• Cinematic Orchestra and Blue Quarter play the Pyramid tonight. I will be there with bells on.

News:

• Bush's Vietnam
• Deflation - The US economic situation in plain English.
• Venezuela may soon barter for oil in Euros instead of US dollars - Iraq tried this and look where it got them.
• The Dominion - A new Canadian independent newspaper.

Misc:

• I am John's brain - What exactly is this martian in our heads?
• Which book - A neat way to discover new books tailored to your tastes.
• Blogger has gone through a re-design. I hope my archives start working again.
• I forgot all the 'vias' again. There goes my blogging etiquette.

Mark's blog is now a travel log. Check out the Peruvian adventures.
I've been devouring rion.nu: Graffiti By The East River, Graffiti Fairies, Jose Maria Sert Murals, Grungy Hipster Street Art, Niagara Falls.
The doors of perception.

I spent some time at the lake this past weekend. Some of this time was spent helping my dad clean out my grandpa's garage/workshop. The breadth of my grandfather’s knowledge always amazed me and the workshop confirmed this amazement. Everything from gardening to electronics repair to carpentry and woodworking to mechanical know-how was represented in the form of tools, books, parts and inventions. The contents of the garage made me ponder the following: With the current emphasis on specialization in education and work are men like my grandfather (i.e. a jack of all trades) a thing of the past? Is there a place for a type of ‘renaissance man’ in today’s world?
The workshop clean up was followed by a trip to the local dump. I wish I had brought along my camera; it was a sorry sight. Everyone should be forced to bring their own garbage to the dump on a regular basis. I try to reduce, reuse and recycle as much as the next guy but this landfill made me feel guilty and sad. There should really be next to no garbage produced by a society as technologically advanced as ours. Organic waste can be composted. Packaging can be drastically reduced by the manufactures and recycled by the end user. Consumer products can be explicitly designed for reuse and recycling. New material taxes could be imposed on manufactures and used-material tax exemption could be applied. Garbage could be a thing of the past!
Speaking of garbage... check out the photographs of Edward Burtynsky. (Via sublimate)
What does music look like? The interactive java applet, The Shape of Song is an attempt to answer this seemingly paradoxical question. 37 exposures has a collection of binaural soundscapes recorded with multiple mics placed at ear level. Listen with headphones on and enjoy. Design 70 has a great collection of retro and funky furniture/objects. (The preceding links were amassed via Things Magazine)
Check out the alien graffiti over at rion.nu.
Neal has a nice photolog over at halftone.org.
Do Make Say Think play the pyramid this Saturday.

My May 31st mention of Pinback's Offcell has been driving traffic here via google. Hello Pinback Fans! Check out today's song of the week (offline) and then leave a group or album suggestion as a comment. Much respect.
Today will be a link propagation day. I won't be including the 'via's today as I forget where I discovered most of these sites. Long live memes.
We'll start with the woodcut prints of Félix Vallotton and other selected woodcut artists. Next, you can explore the homepage of Ariel Dolan an independent software developer and artist, living in Ramat-Gan, Israel. The dolls gallery is particularly of interest. And there is always the art of Rachell Sumpter, (wouldn't this piece make a great stencil?) The Morning News is running a piece by John Warner on consumerism called branded for life. Shane Glines draws girls. Brian Mung makes flash cartoons. Polylog is a forum for intercultural philosophy.
Wander-lust has closed it's doors. I'm sad to see it go.
Heaven Gallery lead me to the following gems: Remixed GI-Joe. Siebren Versteeg. A garbage robot. Mark Denardo makes music with a gameboy.
The Dining Rooms released a new album! (See the above 'song of the week' for a sneak peak.)
From the soulseek homepage:
"Soulseek Records is an offshoot of Soulseek, a file-sharing application dedicated predominantly to the free trade of electronic music and the promotion of unsigned artists. Cen-Art, the third release from Soulseek Records, is a compilation of downtempo, ambient, chill-out tracks created especially for the restaurant/lounge/art gallery of the same name, located in Barcelona, Spain. Cen-Art is exclusively available on Soulseek as a 256kbps mp3 release, including hi-resolution artwork. Search for slsk003 or cenart and start downloading."