MarksterBlog

The age of solid state storage memory is arriving. A 64 GB NAND drive in a MacBook AIR costs $900. Mass production of high capacity NAND drives is only now beginning, though, so their price is at a premium.

I paid $2000 for a 2GB Barracuda drive in 1994. Nowadays, cutting edge drives cost 50¢ per GB (Terabyte and up) and older generation drives cost 35¢ a GB.

Watch for rapid price drops and capacity bumps in NAND drives over the coming months (and more over the years).

But, one of the most exciting things in these drives is speed bumps. A partnership between Intel and Micron Technologies is claiming achieving read speeds of 200 MB/Sec and write speeds of 100 MB/Sec for upcoming NAND Drives. We’re looking at a real speed bump in the near future in transfer rates.

Check out the news here

This evening, a friend called me and asked me if I’d heard of Osama Bin Laden being dead… !!!

I did a Google search, and found an article in Pravda about it, along with a YouTube video of the interview of David Frost, where Benizar Bhutto, quite casually mentions that Osama Bin Laden was murdered by Omar Sheik!!!

Amazing as this sounds, you can verify this - here’s the Pravda article

and here’s the interview, on YouTube:

There’s a shorter version in a link in the Pravda article.

Is this some sort of spectacular gaffe on the part of Bhutto? Or is it a slip of information that’s being kept from us before an important election?

I surely don’t know - but, whatever it is, it’s pretty amazing

What’s even more amazing is that Sir David does not even blink an eye at this astounding revelation - either questioning the validity of the statement or in any way pursuing the subject any further - wouldn’t this be, like, world shattering news?

You tell me

This is a link to an Editorial piece in the New York Times, dated 12/31 that was sent to me.

It seems appropriate

There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country. Sunday was one of them, as we read the account in The Times of how men in some of the most trusted posts in the nation plotted to cover up the torture of prisoners by Central Intelligence Agency interrogators by destroying videotapes of their sickening behavior. It was impossible to see the founding principles of the greatest democracy in the contempt these men and their bosses showed for the Constitution, the rule of law and human decency.

It was not the first time in recent years we’ve felt this horror, this sorrowful sense of estrangement, not nearly. This sort of lawless behavior has become standard practice since Sept. 11, 2001.

More…

Face it time is an illusion. Time is a dimension. What we know as time is motion.

We know that our physical world consists of four dimensions.

We know the three dimensions, X, Y and Z axis; left right, forward - backward and up - down. The fourth dimension is time, or T. We expeerience time in only one direction - forward, but we don’t know time as backward.

Time does have corrdinates, though, just like the other dimensions - let’s call them beginning - end, for lack of a better idea. Time begins at the big bang and ends in the great whimper, or so they tell me.

We experience the illusion of time flowing forward because we are moving along the axis of time from the beginning point towards the end point.

So why does this tell me that we will never make a time machine? Because, our experience of time flowing is movement in the forward direction as the universe expands from beginning to end. In order to make a time machine, we’d have to be able to hit a moving target with such accuracy that Robin Hood’s famous act of splitting an arrow in the bulls eye of a target during a shooting contest would seem like the clumsy act of a clumsy child. With their eyes closed. While sneezing.

Take a moment and count off one second - one-thousand-one. Did you feel it? The movement? You moved forward in time one second, but how far did you move in the other three dimensions?

But, wait, you say - I’m just standing here.

Are you?

You sit on the surface of the planet Earth, which spins on it’s axis while it rotates around the Sun, which in turn, speeds through the Galactic arm of the Milky Way, which in turn, speeds through the Universe as it expands.

Just how fast are you really going, relative to the rest of the Universe, while standing still?

The Earth spins at 1,000 MPH (at the equator, slightly slower the further away from the equator you are).

The Earth rotates around the Sun at 67,062 MPH.

The Sun is traveling at 43,000 MPH.

We’re rotating around the Galaxy at 483,000 MPH.

And, the Galaxy is speeding through space as the Universe expands at 1,300,000 MPH.

So - all told, while you’re standing still, you’re traveling a twisted, winding course through space at a whopping 1,894,062 Miles per Hour, or 526 Miles per Second.

Though that seems like a fantastic speed to be traveling, remember that light travels 186,282 Miles per Second - so, in reality, we’re poking along at a mere 0.28% the speed of light.

Since Time is a location in space, and the flow of time is an illusion created by our traveling through space, it’s easy to see why there really is no such thing as time travel, since, to travel back in time, you’d have to either be able to travel backwards along the axis of T, on a very twisted and convoluted path at the rate 526 miles for every second you want to travel. You’d have to also figure out a way to instantly accelerate to 1,894,062 MPH, move that 526 (for a second’s travel), then just as instantly decelerate to match the speed of the Earth you just passed again.

Whew!

But wait - there’s more - you will have to hit your target with perfect accuracy. Not just extreme accuracy, but such perfect accuracy that being off by even a gazillionth of a second could leave you, say, feet trapped in the sidewalk, or, maybe your head smashed in the ceiling, or, even worse - sitting in high orbit watching the planet wizz away on it’s twisted course, or maybe slapped by Jupiter as it flys by (oops!).

But wait, you say - what about creating a worm hole? Can’t we just punch a hole in space and travel through a worm hole from one location (present) to another location (past/future).

In theory, yeah. But, think about what it takes to make a worm hole. If you know the answer to that one, let me know and I’ll steal the Nobel Prize from you. Think about the energy you’d need to harness to power the worm hole - like, what, on the order of a black hole? Or several?

And, then again, you need to think about not only placing, with perfect accuracy, the two ends of the worm hole where you want to travel - to and from, but you’ll need to constantly adjust your placement, with perfect accuracy, in a space that is extremely dynamic in four dimensions - and then holding those two ends in relative position as all of the coordinates dynamically shift in four directions, not always in the same directions and not always at the same rates, but at very fantastic rates of change. With perfect accuracy.

Nope - methinks not - no time machines in my near future.

That is unless those infinantly evolved beings mentioned in Carl Sagan’s book “Contact” suddenly show up and school us.

Gold is an indestructible element, which means that all of the gold that was mined throughout human history is still out there.

Man has mined 145,000 metric tons of gold throughout the millennia.

A metric ton = 1,000 kilograms, or 32,150 troy ounces. At $739 a troy ounce (as of Sept, 2007), a metric ton of gold is worth $23,800,000.00

370 metric tons of gold were mined during the California gold rush of 1849-1854, or .3% of the total gold mined in history.

The governments of the world hold 29,800 metric tons in their vaults, or 20% of all the gold ever mined.

Of that, the United States is the largest hoarder, with holdings just over 8,000 metric tons, or 20% of the gold held by governments, and just shy of 6% of the total amount of gold that has been mined.

Ironically, it’s the private holdings of the women of India who have the largest gold holdings - they hold over 13,000 metric tons of gold, woven into the fabric of their Sari’s and turned into jewelry. This represents about 9% of all the gold ever mined.

It seems the women of India are richer than us.

“I eagerly await new concepts and processes. I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance. Such systems will have their own inherent and inescapable structural characteristics, and the artist and functional practitioner will again strive to comprehend and control them.”
- Ansel Adams
forward to his book “the Negative”, published January, 1980

Resistance is futile
Some galleries require “silver gelatin” prints - they do not accept inkjet prints when selling photography. It’s probably not worth your while to peruse this particular gallery, unless there is some particular or personal reason to do so, if you are doing digital photography and printing inkjet. They have developed a niche market in this realm. Convincing a single gallery for a single person is probably more effort than it’s worth to you, personally. Market pressure will serve more persuasive to the gallery owner than an individual, as their choices are driven by such.

If their choice is due to ignorance, then they are in the position of limiting their future options to grow and will find themselves out of business in a few years.

Spinning Gold out of Gelatin
Silver Gelatin is as much a marketing term as is Gicleé. It’s a term used in the “Fine Art Collection and Museum” world to build a mystique for the client. This is a particular and finicky world, built more on mystique and perception than anything else.

If you absolutely insist on exhibiting at this gallery and the owner refuses to budge on an inkjet print, get Lightjet prints, which are “Silver Gelatin” prints.

Giclée:
Refer to the prints as fine art digital prints or pigment prints or the like. The use of giclée is limited these days to galleries and décor art and the many venues which sell fine art reproductions. It has limited usage in the ultra fine art market places and the hotography galleries and museums. Though they are all the same images and printed on the same machines, giclée has become downgraded to decor art and the like.
– Jack Duganne

AEsthetics
Mistaking technology for art
It’s about the idea, stupid. Selling a piece of art based on the medium is ludicrous. Picasso painted on plywood and used house paint when he went to the south of France. Was his work less valued because of it? He scribbled on walls with a piece of charcoal he pulled from the fireplace when he went to dinner at a friends house - should that “graffiti” have been washed off?

Art is about human intellect, and it’s the ideas embedded into the art that count - the aesthetics, the thoughts, the ideas, the mind. The technology is simply a vehicle to carry these things. Making art should be technically agnostic. An artist should choose the medium which fits the vision and the idea best. Technology serves the artist, but does not disqualify an act of creation from being art, or valuable.

“The only law governing creativity is the act of creation itself”
–Frank Herbert

The role technology plays in art
Technology plays a very important role in art - it shapes it and changes the way we express ourselves. Changes in technology, which change the art, has always been met with resistance. Why? It challenges the status quo. Those guys who are have established themselves have invested their lives in a technology which is (by now) established. They might have started out as the young upstart, adapting new technology in their day, but they are now comfortable, making a living, and that living is threatened by new ideas which the new technology has opened the doors to - so the “establishment” will, out of hand reject new technology.

An example of this is Impressionism. It was created by the invention of commercial, pre-prepared tube paint. Before this invention, you needed to mix your own paints (which in itself was an art-form and took more time to do than to paint a painting). Tube paints allowed artists to set up their easles out of doors, to paint on the spot, to portray the light impressions throughout the day, as those conditions changed - it revolutionized the art-world. But, when it hit the scene, it was rejected so soundly by the established art world that Impressionist artists had to form their own salon - the Salon de Refuse (the refused artworks). Chemical photography, in all of it’s various forms (from glass through “Silver Gelatin”) has met the same type of resistance. Technical changes in an art-form does change that art-form, it drives that art-form, and it channels that art-form by opening up new avenues of expression, technically, which weren’t accessible before.

“A new medium will first imitate an old medium that it closely resembles, and do it poorly. It will then imitate the old medium, but do a better job than the old medium. Then it will find it’s own voice and will delve into territory which is new and totally unanticipated.

Only then is a new medium mature.

You can gauge the degree of maturity of a new medium by where it stands on the above evolutionary cycle. ”
- Mark Jaress

We are at the transition between imitation to a near perfect level and branching out to new frontiers in the evolution of digital imaging - it has yet to come into it’s own. Those people who can’t see this will be left in the dust in a year or two.

Digital imaging isn’t traditional.
Define traditional photography, please! I’d argue that Mathew Bradey and Edward Curtis were the traditional photographers. My point, of course, is that, technically, aesthetically and practically speaking, photography is a moving target. With each change in technology comes a new look, new aesthetics, new sensibilities, etc. It always has and always will change.

Questions about archivability
• Archival chemical photography is an iffy thing. There is no such thing as an archival color print in chemical. B&W prints can be made archival (to museum spec’s) if they undergo an archival wash - and my bet is that most photographers don’t go this extra step unless what they’re preparing is specifically for that market, which is rare. Ask the guy if an archival wash is a mandate to submission, too? If not, he’s not only undrserving his client, he’s not being forthcoming in the archivability of the prints he’s selling.

A Forward looking perspective vs a Backward looking one
• Being exclusive to chemical photography is backwards looking. It is putting them into the position of being either an antiques dealer or so conservative that they serve a cliental who isn’t interested in art per say, but is instead a collector for nostalgia. A forward looking gallery looks for new ideas, new frontiers in art, new people and new concepts.

Face it, a baqckwards looking view is really about nostalgia and, ultimately, about antiques, it ain’t about art.

This gallery may have developed that cliental who is looking for nostalgia. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s his living and how he’s carved out his niche, and you have to respect him for that, And, again, face it, there’s a lot of photographers out there with extensive portfolios from the glory days who need and deserve to monetize their life’s work. But, in the end, it’s a backwards looking point of view.

Digital cheapens art
This is a statement I hear a lot - and from “intellectuals”. Digital opens doors and enables. In doing so, people who would be excluded from creating art are included. The result is that a lot more people are creating a lot of art, and the bulk of that is crap. This doesn’t mean that art itself is cheapened, it just means there’s more volume out there. Great artists, great art will still be created, and it will rise to the top of the heap. Great artists are born, and they will express themselves by whatever means is available to them, and be recognized. Digital currently opens doors to creative with talent who would have been excluded pre-digital due to personal circumstances, economic difficulties, etc, so, in the long run, digital enriches art. And, the longer view is that the lowering the barriers to entry in creating art will redifine our aesthetics (which are, after all, a human construct, which we, as a society, can define any way we want). Imagine, a thousand years from now, the society recovering from the stone age we were driven into by nuclear war discovers some digital paintings done by a 10 year old and printed on her Epson - what a masterpiece from the height of the technical age!

To name a few more prominent people who print digitally:
Greg Groman, Jay Maisel, John Paul Caponigro, Douglas Dublbler, Stephen Wilkes, Anne Geddes, Robert Farber, Melvin Solosky and Vincent Versace.

Chuck Close runs a digital print alalier in Washington DC right now.

In fact, nowadays, it’s a shorter list to name those who DON’T shoot, edit and print digitally.