Johan Rijpma

Wachtmelodie from johan rijpma on Vimeo.


Johan's works have a great atmosphere. Their strangeness reminds me of Steven & Timothy Quay. While Guizmodo highlighted Johan's latest piece, I'd like to highlight Wachtmelodie, a stop-motion short that mixes photography, rubber bands, and video.

Barack Obama at Fort Hayes High School

Video: A montage of videos of Obama's visit to Fort Hayes H.S.

Yesterday I had the privilege to see & listen to President Barack Obama. He was promoting the American Jobs Act, and he showcased Fort Hayes Arts & Academic High School as an example of what the act could do for other schools across the nation. It was the first political event that I have witnessed, and I was surprised by my emotions which ran from excitement to concern. It seemed as if the whole thing was orchestrated--the crowd responding appropriately at each pregnant pause, at each call-to-action. Of course, this is exactly what good speech writing is intended to do. However, it made me question a crowd's ability for rational thought/discourse in the presence of a dynamic leader. Signs were not allowed within the assembly, but that didn't stop a man & women outside the gates from peacefully protesting for African American reparations [seen & heard playing trumpet at the end of the video].

Content, Kings, and Libraries

 Image: Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work!

What happens when content is no longer king?  What if we do move to a world where the medium is the message?  How will this affect libraries?

I was reading the comment below that was posted on a review for Douglas Coupland's biography on Marshall McLuhan.

McLuhan is a central figure in speaking to what technology does to human beings, as was Jacques Ellul. Both these thinkers are extremely pessimistic so it's ironic that they're celebrated by technophiles. In this contradiction, I think, probably lies the heart of what digital technology is doing to content.
Content was king. Now content is giving way to that new 'something else' that can loosely be described as 'notion' - a creation of sound-bites, images, impressions, misquotes etc that attach to a singular emotion. McLuhan's content is terrifying; McLuhan's notion is however uplifting. We attach to his notion.
I really liked this review of the book.- J.S. Kitololo [Emphasis added]

If devices, such as mobile devices, change how we we think, how we organize, disseminate, and process information, what are the implications for the institutions we've created (i.e. libraries)?  And if content truly is no longer king, do libraries need to place more resources into the medium?