Helvetica

I really enjoyed this documentary.

Before viewing this film, I never really thought about how many businesses use Helvetica as their prominent font, but now I notice so many signs that use this font. I thought it was interesting that they have the original metal printing alphabet (i don't know what exactly it is called) in that warehouse. It made it seem even more sacred and venerable.

Normally when you think about a documentary dedicated solely on a type font, you might think that it could be potentially uninteresting, but Gary Hustwit did a wonderful job making Helvetica engaging. I worked on the yearbook in high school for a few years and I've always been interested in new fonts, I'm often exploring dafont.com and looking at all of their different fonts. But the thing that I love about Helvetica is how timeless it is. Massimo Vignelli said this during his interview and I completely agree- Helvetica will always be in style, and you really can say whatever you feel in this font (he was way more eloquent, that was my horrible paraphrasing)

Decasia

I thought that Bill Morrison's film Decasia was overall very profound. It was erie and bizarre, especially the parts involving children and nuns. The idea of the film was incredibly unique, and I thoroughly enjoyed the various ways the film was decaying. The music worked very well with the film and really tied everything together perfectly. I had a hard time trying to watch the Decasia in it's entirety because my eyes are very sensitive to flashing busy lights and I get terrible migraines too often. I don't think we should have watched the whole thing in one sitting because it was a lot to take in and agitated my eyes badly. It would have been nice to watch it in segments so that we then could have talked about different aspects and would have noticed more that way.

My Collages

Scans

Dandilions

My first visual memory was probably when I was two or a bit less.

We are at my old house, small and pink set back from the quiet street.

The loop of the driveway winds past the greens of the bushes and trees in the front yard, gravel.

My fathers motorcycle, silver and shiny, sits close to the front door.

I am small in my father's arms, his jacket is like a blue fleece blanket.

The sun is shining and warming the leaves of the hydrangea plants.

I hear the gravel grumbling beneath his feet.

His moustache is scratchy on my forehead.

We are walking to the street, to the mailbox.

He leans down to let me pick a dandylion and

I set the pieces free with my breath

Response to Walter Benjamin

This was a dryly written but interesting piece to read.

The author talks a lot about replication, and how their pupils who practiced the craft.

But replicas cannot always be exact. Reading this at first brought to mind the large stone gods and goddesses statues made by the Greeks to honor mythology. But when the Romans tried to emulate their process, they got the balance completely off which is why Roman Statues normally have a random tree stump that the god is leaning on. Without this stone stump then the large statue would've fallen over. I don't believe that replicas are always a good idea

Before reading this I hadn't thought of photography as a form of replication.

And I couldn't really understand the bit about the magician : "The surgeon represents the polar opposite of the magician. The magician heals a sick person by the laying on of hands; the surgeon cuts into the patient's body. The magician maintains the natural distance between the patient and himself; though he reduces it very slightly by the laying on of hands, he greatly increases it by virtue of his authority. " I could not figure out the relationship between the photographer and the painter