Hidden inside … *

* (restored)

 

_______________

… furniture

 

_________________

… blur

‘You could say that Iraqi artist Halim Al Karim is an interrupted being. You wouldn’t blame him, after all he was forced to spend three years living alone in a hole in the ground covered by rocks since he opposed Saddam’s regime during the Gulf war.

‘Throughout that time his only interaction with the outside world was through a Bedouin woman who brought him food and water on occasion and thus kept him alive.

‘Al-Karim has since emigrated to America and is currently living in Dubai. He says: “My works are concerned with ongoing and unresolved issues, especially as they relate to violence. The main challenge for me is to identify and stay clear of the historical and contemporary elements of brainwashing. The out of focus images, imply an uncertainty of context, time and place. These techniques, which have become the hallmark of my work, are means to overcome the effects of politics of deception and, in turn, transform me and the camera into a single entity, seeking a greater truth”.’

 

______________

… Central Park

‘You won’t find it on any official maps, or find sign posts to show you the way. Tens of millions of visitors come to enjoy Central Park every year, but very few know that hidden away in the middle of the park is a mysterious cave. It’s so ancient it predates Central Park itself! The cave has been the site of murder, suicide, assaults, and secret trysts. In the late 19th century it was even the home of a runway school girl for a while.

‘Whilst much of Central Park was sculpted into picturesque lawns, tree-lined avenues and lakes, Olmstead and Vaux deliberately created some wilder, more overgrown places; chiefly that maze of hills, winding steps, and lush, thick undergrowth they called the Ramble; “a wild garden away from the carriage drives and bridal paths.” And lurking in the midst of this idyllic reverie is the hidden cave – to find it requires keen eyes.

‘The cave was sealed up in 1934, leaving only the entrance, sealed with bricks. For this secret hideaway was not just an ‘Eldorado of pleasures’ but the sight of many nefarious crimes. Assaults and deaths were common here in the obscure cave.’

 

_______________

… homes

 

_________________

… games

‘Where is the secret room in Nicholas’ weird adventure 2? Keep clicking on the drawing in the shop and he will give it to you and DON’T PRESS THE RED BUTTON then play until you find a castle not the one with the gate put the drawing in the shredder and there you have it!!:)

Once i told the tavern owner that i wont pay the 50 GP for another week and he attacked me, so i couldn’t buy his teleport rune to the tavern, and it happened to me with other merchants. There are several secret solutions. The best one is to kill his wife and cast the oblivion spell on him, but then you see her dead body in the market every day.’

 

‘The Monkey People can be found on the first playable level of Halo 3. If you follow these instructions you can spot them hiding in the jungle, and then … nothing. You can’t kill them, but if you shoot them they actually bleed (only real characters do that). Note that they all look exactly the same only in different sizes, which suggests that they might be the product of genetic experiments or excessive inbreeding. For all we know, the monkeys might keep decreasing in size right down to a subatomic level. A lone Monkey Man can be found in a different, much harder to reach part of the level (it’s actually outside the game map and you can only get there by killing yourself and respawning in the right place).’

 

‘lluminati is a standalone card game that has ominous secret societies competing with each other to control the world through sinister means, including legal, illegal, and even mystical. This is not funny but a sad truth. Please give your heart to Jesus.’

 

‘I remember there used to be a mod for 1.6 that basically allowed co-op play for half-life and had a ton of maps made by a very strange individual that had nothing to do with much of anything? It’s had to explain but it was like dropping LSD made of old internet memes and 1.6 coding. Colored lights everywhere, weird music, things that just made no sense at all, so on. If you found the ‘red’ map and followed it, you’d find hidden tunnels behind walls leading to some sort of burial chamber, with plots of bone-filled dirt in the walls. Dark rooms full of barely audible whispering. Things would almost always get more abstract as you went on, meaning eventually you’d be in some sort of void. From what I’ve read, only 8 players ever found that void in the game, and 6 of them later committed suicide. Coincidence?’

 

_________________

… the desert

‘Art does not always want to be seen – at least, not easily. Since the 1960s, some of the most memorable works of art have been hidden in remote places, or knowable only through photographs.

‘The latest such elusive treasure is a swimming pool created in the Mojave desert by Austrian artist Alfredo Barsuglia. The pool is full of clean blue water, whose appeal under the fierce sun in the middle of the desert must surely be amplified hundreds of times, set in a white, modern structure with pool-cleaning equipment supplied so you can leave it as you found it. You are also asked to bring water to replenish the pool.’

 

________________

… portraits

‘The first photographic images in the late 1820s had to be exposed for hours in order to capture them on film. Improvements in the technology led to this exposure time being drastically cut down to minutes, then seconds, throughout the 19th century. But in the meantime, the long exposures gave us a few unmistakable Victorian photography conventions, such as the stiff postures and unsmiling faces of people trying to remain perfectly still while their photograph was being taken.

‘Seems children were just as squirmy then as they are today, because another amusing convention developed: photographs containing hidden mothers trying to keep their little ones still enough for a non-blurry picture. These fantastic portraits of children all contain their mother and one father, disguised as chairs or camoflauged under decorative throws behind them.’

 

_____________

… Melrose Place

‘Conceptual artworks were secretly used as props on primetime television series Melrose Place. The artists worked with the show’s scriptwriters to ensure that the artworks had relevance to the plot, even though the audience had no idea of their existence.

‘The pieces were specially designed by art collective the GALA Committee. The group was led by Mel Chin, who gathered fellow artists along with faculty and students from the University of Georgia and California Institute of the Arts under the GALA Committee umbrella.

‘So when Courtney Thorne-Smith’s character, Alison, works from her couch while pregnant, the quilt she is under is stitched with a pattern of the chemical structure for the abortion drug RU 486. The drug was illegal in the US at the time.

‘Some of the interventions included material that evaded the censors at the Federal Communications Commission, like a set of bed sheets printed with graphics of unrolled condoms – images of which were banned from public broadcast.

‘Motivated by the idea that network television could prove a more powerful site for public artwork than a physical place, they pitched the idea to the Melrose Place producers, who agreed to the unconventional product placements.

‘The artists were not paid by Spelling Entertainment; instead, the project was independently funded by arts institutions like the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (MOCA), Grand Arts in Kansas City and The Rockefeller Foundation.’

Reconstruction of the Melrose Place bar location Shooters

75 unique bottles behind the Shooters bar detail the health and social issues relating to alcohol consumption throughout history.

An emblem of the African continent replaces the white circle on an Africa Is the Eight-Ball, a reference to the ubiquity of racism.

The Target Audience dartboard reflects the target audience of Melrose Place, women aged 18 to 49.

 

_____________

… a boulder

‘Swiss studio Bureau A has concealed a wooden cabin inside an artificial rock and transported it to a remote site in the Swiss Alps.’

 

______________

… candles

‘This spectacular vary of high finish candles are some things fully new and exciting. Along with award winning packaging and eleven divine fragrances, every candles with jewelry hidden inside additionally contains an additional special hidden surprise. Revealed from the wax because the candle burns could be a hidden treasure, a spectacular ring. There are over 50 different styles of rings that range in value from $25 – $7,500. Every candle is carefully hand-crafted in New Zealand and are a fabulous gift that will be always be treasured.’

 

______________

… Minecraft

‘Marcuss Persson, better known to the gaming community as Notch, is the man who created a world one block at a time, and an indie empire to go along with it, in the cultural phenomenon that is Minecraft. During a conversation between Notch and SpyParty’s Chris Hecker at GDC 2012, Persson teased there’s still some undiscovered secret in Minecraft, though no additional details were provided on what it might be. With how rabid and dedicated the Minecraft fan base is, I find it very surprising that any stone would be left unturned. When you consider the millions who play this game and all the time logged, this secret has to be buried very deep in the game. I wonder if it is some sort of uber secret recipe or dungeon. According to some Notch has hinted elsewhere it is a hidden recipe, according to others Notch has stated it is NOT a recipe. One big hint is that it “may or may not have something to do with time”. Notch said that the secret rare item was more rare than wearable cloaks that only Mojang employees could obtain, which, considering said cloaks are unobtainable by regular players, made the secret rare item pretty darn rare indeed. Lots of people think that it might have something to do with the new phases of the moon. Personally, I think whatever it is will rather be triggered by a certain player’s action or by a special seed for the world generation. It won’t be anything huge I’m assuming, but hopefully they prove me wrong with a HUGE idea! I dont care how big or small it is, I will love it all!’

‘Do people really think this is it? LIES. Notch is Swedish retard. I thought it would be a rainbow sheep. Notch tweeted that we can all stop looking for the secret now, since it was “very minor”. He also pointed out that he never said it was a big secret, but the internet over-hyped it. LIES, LIES. That is the stupidest bull shit I ever heard. That being the big secret is just fake in all kind of ways. I’m a member of a secret Minecraft society so exclusive it makes the Illuminati look like a Costco, so I should know. Maybe that so-called big secret is a secret message? One day we will have mince rafts. Whatever a mince raft is.’

 

_______________

… Milan’s manholes

 

___________________

… text

‘We often talk about “hidden text,” but in reality what is hidden text? Hidden text is also known as “invisible text” or “fake text.” Hidden text is often used for spamming the search engines. But many smart search engines, such as Google can detect the use of hidden text. To give a simple definition, hidden text is text on a Web page which is visible to search engine spiders but not visible to human visitors.

‘You should not use hidden text to get high ranking in search engines. Search engines can detect certain forms of hidden text algorithmically and when they do they will automatically drop the offending site from their index. By hiding keywords in hidden text, you may be able to trick the search engines for a limited amount of time. Anything that hides text from a browser, but is still in the body of the document, will be indexed by the search engine spiders. But the use of hidden text can cause search engines to permanently ban your website.

‘Some years ago, search engine optimization consisted of putting a group of phrases together with as many repetitions as possible to make up a keyword tag and, if necessary, putting the same text in a hidden form at the bottom of the pages. This was a very easy method of getting visitors, but some people overused this approach, to the point of abusing the system. Because of this abuse, search engines took action to stop this kind of search spam. The effect of this is that the actual keyword tag is virtually useless now.

‘The most successful form of hidden text is not so much hidden as ignored. This is text placed between comment tags like this . Comment tags are actually intended to be used as an aid to whoever is editing the source code at a later date and as such comments are not of course displayed in the browser. There are methods to make this text ‘readable’ or at least detectable in browsers, but they are illegal, and best of luck finding and learning them. But, to give an example, while it may not look much from the highlighting, the coder has managed to hide over four thousand words, sixteen pages of keyword rich hidden text in a single body of text. This must be approaching a world record and here is a small sample:’

Kenneth Goldsmith ‘HIDDEN TEXT / HIDDEN CODE’

 

_________________

… Fight Club

1. ‘The Tyler flashes. Before Tyler officially enters the Narrator’s life when they’re sitting together on the plane, he appears six times in the film. Once he’s riding a moving walkway at the airport (that appearance isn’t included on this list, since it’s not hidden). Four of those times, Tyler appears as a subliminal flash that occurs when the Narrator has a moment of frustration or anger during his insomnia daze. These, of course, create the foundation for Tyler.

2. ‘Tyler as a waiter. The fifth time Tyler appears? When the Narrator is in the middle of his early traveling montage and he’s watching TV in his hotel room. A group of waiters on screen all say “Welcome.” If you look carefully, Brad Pitt is in the front row of waiters, on the far right.

3. ‘No incoming calls. This is a quick, subtle hint early on that Tyler isn’t real. When the Narrator’s condo blows up, he calls Tyler from a payphone, with no answer. Then, a few seconds later, the phone rings. As the Narrator goes to answer it, the camera zooms in on some text on the payphone that reads, “No incoming calls accepted.” In other words — Tyler could not have called him back, because this phone cannot ring.

4. ‘White boxers. During the course of the movie, Tyler and the Narrator intentionally dress in opposite ways — Tyler is flamboyant, the Narrator is corporate and buttoned-down. The only place they’re identical: Their boxers. When the Narrator is ordering IKEA furniture at the beginning of the movie, he’s in plaid boxers. As soon as he moves into Tyler’s house, he begins wearing white boxers… the same exact ones Tyler wears as he bikes around the house.

5. ‘Seven Years in Tibet. This was a little inside joke of production design. When the Narrator is sending Marla out of town, there’s a marquee in the background for the movie “Seven Years in Tibet”. A movie that starred Brad Pitt.’

(continued)

 

_______________

… embroidery

‘Vintage photographs without a doubt carry with them something from the past but to Maurizio Anzeri, his work is not about preserving or celebrating the past. “I don’t want to be nostalgic. When I work on them, to me they become very present. The catch is that at some point these photographs were to some people really important and suddenly they ended up in a box,” he says. When confronted with his portraits it’s as if Maurizio wanted to create a passage for the character to escape from their present form. You can see that a part of them is still there and the other part has become something else. “I think that what makes them work is that the image and the embroidery at the top feed each other,” he explains. He has no intention to cover or to erase. “It’s about feeding another dimension,” he says. For Maurizio, the physicality of puncturing a needle in the actual image “is an action of penetration”. “I have been told many times that one of the characteristics of my work is to cover when there is nothing to cover. And I like that and it’s not even hidden the fact that there is nothing to cover,” he explains.’

 

_______________

… your face

‘The expression of a given face at a specific time is conveyed by a composite of signals from several sources of facial appearance. These sources include the general shape, orientation (pose), and position of the head, the shapes and positions of facial features (e.g., eyes, mouth), coloration and condition of the skin, shapes of wrinkles, folds, and lines, and so forth. Some of these sources are relatively fixed; others, more changeable. The most important source of change in facial expression is the set of muscular movements produced by facial muscles, which provide the most substantial changes in facial appearance over short time durations and contribute most to nonverbal communication by the face. Other shorter term origins that may contribute to expressions are blood flow and glandular secretions. As a generalization, muscular activity contributes expressive variation on a background of more slowly changing or static expressive sources. These latter sources include the sizes, positions, and shapes of fleshy tissues, hair, teeth, cartilage, and bones.

‘Corresponding to the several sources of expressive information in the face are the many nonverbal communication messages that the face can provide. Some of these messages are validly related to characteristics of the person behind the face, some are fabrications of the viewer unrelated to the real person, and others lie somewhere between these two extremes. Much of the research on the face is centered on discovering the messages that fit into these different categories. Another perspective on the range of facial messages is to consider objective description, such as a list of physical anatomical measurements, as an anchor for veridical information, and ever more abstract generalizations or inferences about characteristics more remote from these specific observations becoming increasingly difficult to verify.

‘A further difficulty for interpreting the face is that the appearances produced by one source of facial information can interact with another, producing a mixture, as mentioned above, that can hide, mask, or interfere with the messages conveyed by each source. The structure of facial nonverbal communication is complex.

‘The facial muscles are like elastic sheets that are stretched in layers over the cranium, facial bones, the openings they form, and the cartilage, fat, and other tissues of the head. These are the muscles of facial expression, acting singly and in combination. The diagram below shows a simplified view of how the facial muscles are actually arranged. Move the mouse cursor over the list of facial muscles and click on a facial muscle of interest to see more information. Most of the muscles have a short video that illustrates the appearances that are produced when the muscle acts. Innervation and blood supply are also indicated.’

[inner/outer frontalis] [corrugator] [procerus] [depressor supercilli] [inner/outer orbicularis oculi] [nasalis] [depressor_septi] [levator_labii] [buccinator] [caninus] [risorius] [zygomatic_major] [zygomatic_minor] [depressor_labii] [orbicularis_oris] [masseter] [triangularis] [mentalis] [platysma] [levator of the upper eyelid] [incisive muscle of the lips] [other facial/head muscles]

 

________________

… Justin Bieber

*

p.s. Hey. ** Joe, Hey, Joe. Obviously great to see you! Oh good, Ponge is great. Take care ’til soon. xo. ** sam jenks, Greetings, sam. No, we’ve been working on UK screenings for months, but it has proven to be difficult. We haven’t found venues there that have been interested yet. A bit surprising and strange, but that’s been the situation. But I was working on two London possibilities yesterday. We’re determined to screen the film there, and we will somehow. Hopefully good news before too long. Thank you for asking and wanting. ** _Black_Acrylic, He’s terrific. We remain just sort of chilly and often wet over here. It’s getting pretty old, I must say. ** Steeqhen, Thanks for the rec. I’ll watch for it. Resting scares and bores me for the very reason you mention. Plus I don’t seem constitutionally able to do it. Thanks about the Triskel. ** Laura, Hi! I didn’t fully follow your thoughts on Ponge, but they were very interesting. The script and I are chasing each other. Hopefully I’ll wind up on top. Yes, I read that the powers that be don’t want to let ‘Adolescence’ be a singular, good thing but intend to drag it out thinking more money can be made and more critical acclaim accrued. ** James Bennett, Yes, I guess there must be Gevais superfans out there, but what a strange idea. I don’t know that Jim Dodge book, but there’s a kind of Agota Kristof thing in her writing that excites me to no end. Luck with the excitement plus hassle. xo, me. ** kenley, Yeah, the people I interacted with in TO, if an outsider can call it that, were pretty warm-ish and not foreign seeming to an LA guy. Not sure if I can pinpoint exactly why. A vibe, as, yes, we LA types like to say. I remember Vancouver feeling and kind of looking SoCal-like, but I don’t remember the people. It was, like, ages ago. Luck galore escaping application hell as needed. Aw, thanks, about ‘Closer’. ** Carsten, Oh, no, I was probably thinking of the French self-styled environmental activists who tried to get his Pompidou explosion/event canceled. Haha, yes, and yet some of the most serious, daring artists I know are huge sports fans. I used to be very into baseball when I lived in LA, so I’m kind of in that camp a teeny bit, although I haven’t gone whole hog over soccer/football over here. But I do think it’s a beautiful sport. I can’t remember that Schnabel film, but, boy, problems not withstanding, he is an infinitely better filmmaker than he is a visual artist even so. Nice quote there, and, yeah, fragrantly applicable to Ponge. ** HaRpEr //, Stephen M. is a sweetie. I curated an art show years ago in NYC and titled it ‘Brighten the Corners’ without asking and he wrote me a thank you note. ‘Self-indulgence’ is one of lazy, skittish thinkers’ favorites, yeah. ‘Pretentious’ too. Kay Gabriel is such a smarty. I’m sorry to hear about the confrontation. Curious because yesterday I randomly had to listen to ‘Nude as the News’, but it was to pump me up. ** darbz (⊙ 0⊙ ), I always feel sympathetic towards bus drivers for some reason, and when they pull shit like that, I tell myself they probably deserve the little joy they get from being cruel. A friend who’s loose with their Criterion password is a friend indeed, except over here where there is no Criterion, but even then the givers are well meaning friends. ** Uday, Um, I don’t have a specific memory, but, given that I love Ponge, it’s certainly very possible that I propped that book here in some earlier context or other, yes. I’ll look for your email, thanks. ** Nicholas., Hi, pal plus period. I don’t know who Tim Dillon, but I’ll find out. My up has been pretty predictable aka film stuff and Paris highlights when possible. Dinner: one of my usuals: Capellini pasta with a combo of tomato and mushroom sauce smeared with two forms of grated cheese, and too much of it in last night’s case. Keep keeping on, mister. ** Right. Today I’ve restored a really, really old post that looks and seems really, really old, and I’m counting on that dated quality giving it a certain charm. See you tomorrow.