Floating Logos

Ratings

4 of 5 stars
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Photographer Matt Siber’s two series of gently manipulated photographs transform the very tall roadway signage found in the Mid-west into eerily beautiful commentaries on advertising. “Elimination of the support structure in the photographs allows the signs to literally float above the earth. In some cases the ground is purposefully left out of the image to further emphasize the disconnect between the corporate symbols and terra firma.” Be sure to see both the first and the second series.

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Lesson Learned

I’ve learned my lesson when it comes to the annual South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. When I first started attending, five years ago, the conference was more than just a critical gathering for everything webby; it also drew considerable power from its intimate scale, from the way it provided an environment in which people normally separated by the far reaches of the Internet could meet and interact on a very human level.

Last year, owing to a hectic travel schedule and personal obligations, I was forced to skip the festival. But secretly, I was somewhat glad to have stayed home. SXSW Interactive had grown so large in the prior year that I worried it might have outgrown its usefulness. My last time attending, the crowds had been bigger than I’d ever seen before, causing the session rooms to be spaced at awkwardly and frustratingly opposing ends of the Austin Convention Center. I couldn’t imagine that the intimacy I found so valuable would survive the ever-growing crowds, and I remember returning from Austin exhausted and feeling as if the book had closed on something special but already receding into the past.

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Watchmen in Greater Detail

WatchmenI’m completely unqualified to objectively judge director Zack Snyder’s film adaptation of “Watchmen” because, between the ages of fifteen and sixteen, I formed a lasting and surely prejudicing bond with the original Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons comic books. While most of my schoolmates were preoccupied with less insular pursuits, I paid good teenage cash for each issue of the mini-series as it was published, rapturously devouring each chapter and patiently, faithfully enduring the long publishing delays that beset the series between chapters.

In spite of all the growing up I’ve done since, all the revelations and disillusions that I’ve been through, I’ve never lost an ounce of admiration or affection for the “Watchmen” story or its characters. For twenty-plus years, I’ve considered it one of the most thrilling, satisfying experiences I’ve had with popular art; it’s still among the best things I’ve ever read.

This then predisposed me to an approving regard for the movie before even taking my seat in the theater last night; as long as what followed was minimally half-good, competent and moderately intelligent, I was sure to be pleased. As it turns out, I enjoyed it not just a little but ecstatically, too. I found it utterly engrossing if glaringly imperfect, and surprisingly smart if heavily grandiose.

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