painting

Creativity in a Touch-Screen World

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

The first time Delilah crawled it was to get my iPhone. No joke. Even before that she seemed interested so we would let her play with certain apps, taking video of herself, creating drawings, creating sounds etc.

A few days ago I was sitting at my computer doing something with our Taxes when Rachel brought her in for me to watch for a few minutes. As I set her on my lap she immediately reached for the keyboard. Not to ever stifle creativity, I tossed up Notepad and let her at it. She struggled for a few minutes and tapped a few keys and eventually ended up with this:

1 ` 1Q IYXZJG  nm hnmws SDEWQIOJHI9

Not spectacular by any stretch of the imagination.  But what got me was that a few years ago this would have been her limit.  Keyboard and mouse interactivity is something that takes a while to develop and at 6-9months she just wouldn’t have the skills to do manipulate our archaic input devices.

Not so, any more.  The following works were all created by Delilah on my iPad in the Kid Paint app:

Artistic masterpieces? No.

Impressive for a 6-9mo old? Hell yes
(Note: some help from me to pick colors and utensils and to restart the app when she accidentally closed it, but that’s it.)

Additionally, she’s composed some music using Beatwave: Beatwave Music Composition

If you don’t have it,
Get Beatwave on iTunes (FREE!)

Would any of this have been possible 5 years ago? Maybe, if you had a million dollars worth of touch screen equipment. She did this with a $500 1.5lb device. I think the age of the Dynabook has arrived.

Man the future is gonna be crazy. I can’t wait till she’s teaching me this stuff.

Main Street Rochester NY

~ randyaa ~ 2 Comments

Until a recent trip to the Memorial Art Gallery – to take advantage of Free Museum Day – I had no idea that the Main Street Bridge in Rochester NY was originally covered in structures much like the original London Bridge.  There’s an excellent history recap of Main St available on the RocWiki if you’d like even more of a history lesson.  An archaic style of bridge like that somehow makes me think Rochester hasn’t always been as behind on the times as it is now.  After all, they had the good sense to remove it.  A small digital copy of a painting of the Bridge can be seen below or see the full version at the Memorial Art Gallery.

Rochester Main Street Bridge – Colin Campbell Cooper

It’s always impressive to go and view Artwork in your local city.  Even a small city such as Rochester houses some famous Artwork by names you’ll recognize.

This next painting is one of my favorites at the Gallery from an Artist I’d previously not heard of.

The Exorcism of the Waves – Alessandro Magnasco

Art is never finished only abandoned

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

Moon Woman - Jackson Pollock

Could you imagine putting your elbow through a painting you just purchased for 139 million dollars? I think I’d get sick. I just read in Maxim that the most expensive painting ever purchased/sold was a Jackson Pollock. I wasn’t familiar with any of them so I did some searching and I can’t believe anyone would be willing to pay anything for them. This one seemed to be one of the more popular ones.

Ryan was talking about this video the other day and I had to check it out. Please do not watch if you are easily offended.

I’m not even going to begin to try to explain where or how I found this one but its worth a look.