A Modern Totem

A Mod­ern Totem

I saw this strik­ing image from boing boing of what I con­sider a mod­ern totem or tiki statue. A group of Dutch artists carved a tree trunk into the shape of a full-sized stand-up arcade video game.

It’s an inter­est­ing work on a num­ber of lev­els, but this medium and style of video game is slowly going away. The iconic image of this style of arcade game seems dated in the world of per­sonal video game sys­tems, hand held gam­ing and the inter­net. I sup­pose there are still arcades, but this style of game sys­tem belongs, like the Jedi Knights, to an older more civ­i­lized time. Like the 80’s.

Per­haps some­day peo­ple will puz­zle on the mean­ing of this totem and it will be as unrec­og­niz­able as the fallen Moai of Rapa Nui or Easter Island. If video killed the radio star, who killed the arcade game?

Daily Doodle for Sunday, January 25, 2009

A doo­dle of a sad tiki lost in the woods.

Click for a larger image.

Edited for date correction.

Doodle of the Day for January 20, 2009

My doo­dle of the day is back on track. This one is the first in a series of Star Wars themed doo­dles. I call these doo­dles “Star Wars Kids.” Click for a larger image.

Doodle of the Day for November 24, 2008

I try to draw every­day. Mostly I only have time for doo­dles and such like, but you might find them kind of fun, so here is my first doo­dle of the day!

Doo­dle of the Day for Novem­ber 24, 2008.

O Devine Poesy…

Mosaic of the Muses, Roman Museum of Sabratha, Libya. by Sebastià Giralt

Make this site live for us in its many bear­ings, O Muse…

In the great book “The War of Art” by Steven Press­field he details how he begins any cre­ative ven­ture by call­ing on the muses for suc­cess. He does this by recit­ing the open­ing lines from the T.E. Lawrence trans­la­tion of The Odyssey; when Homer calls on the muses to speak through him and aid him in recit­ing the tale of the return of clever Odysseus to Ithaca. This seems like a good idea to me, espe­cially for my first post. So here is my call on the nine muses for aid and inspi­ra­tion for this blog, port­fo­lio and podcast.

“O Divine Poesy, god­dess, daugh­ter of Zeus, sus­tain for me this song of the various-minded man, who, after he had plun­dered the inner­most citadel of hal­lowed Troy, was made to stray griev­ously about the coasts of men, the sport of their cus­toms, good and bad, while his heart, through all the sea­far­ing, ached with an agony to redeem him­self and bring his com­pany safe home. Vain hope-for them. The fools! Their own wit­less­ness cast them aside. To destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun, where­fore the Sun-god blot­ted out the day of their return. Make this tale live for us in all its many bear­ings, O Muse…”

- from the Odyssey, by Homer; Trans­lated by T.E. Lawrence