Notes & Links by Casey A. Gollan on
art, design, creativity and technology on
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Writing on Hey, Hot Shot!

Yesterday I woke up thinking about how much I like Mondays, but I actually like Tuesdays even more. Every Tuesday since April I’ve had the opportunity to pick and write about an interesting entrant to Hey, Hot Shot! (a.k.a. Contender) over on the HHS! blog. While the entries have no bearing on the actual judging process, I relish writing them (alongside Youngna, Stacy, and several awesome interns, who post on every other weekday). Collectively, the posts are a kind of snapshot of what photographers are out there making these days.

I’ve posted a few before, but here’s a list of all the interesting photographers I’ve written about so far: Ryan Boatright, Maya Økland, Tim J. Veling, Alexander Segreti, Candace Feit, Joao Margalha, Miti Ruangkritya, Kevin C. Moore, Joshua Dudley Greer, Alan Thomas, Mark Lyon, Alex Arzt, Marion Belanger, Ozant Kamaci, Kate Stone, Luis Belmonte Díaz, Sarah Sudhoff, Bruce Cunningham, and Robert Forlini

Some seriously exciting work! Even though the competition closes in just 5 days, we’ll be blogging about a different Contender every weekday until September, when the five Hot Shots are announced. I’m off to write my next post, look for it later today.

I make thought-webs on my iPad because I am FROM THE FUTURE. But, seriously, I’m in the process of writing something that includes all of these words:

Time, History, Documentation, Function, Self-consciousness, Paranoia, Terror, Media, Technology, Ubiquity, Public/Private, Distribution, Sharing, Facebook, Internet, Shoebox, Media, Dreaded Vacation Slideshow, Books, Photography has changed, We have changed.

…and maybe a few more.

School and work have been encroaching (in a really, really good way) upon my internet time, so you know.

April Challenge Status: not going well at all.

New books + magazines which I am desperately trying to find space for:

Yay!

notes.caseyagollan.com/random

My start page for the last several months has been Google.com but I just switched it to notes.caseyagollan.com/random. Every time I open a new Safari window, I will be randomly shown one of 2,122* posts from Notes + Links. I’m thinking that it might drive me crazy, but also help me retag, improve, or delete weird old content. This appeals to me partly because I like to think of this more as a database than a “blog.”

* as of the time of writing, not including this post

Around 13 Billion Years Ago, the comments on things that I post on the internet were contained in a tiny ball that could fit in the palm of your hand.

A couple of weeks ago the American Museum of Natural History (@atAMNH) tweeted:

I copied this into my notebook, as I sometimes do with weird little facts and phrases that I like, and also posted an inverted (space!) version on my Tumblr and Flickr.

There it sat in relative obscurity for the next few weeks, but today when I was checking my Flickr it reported a pretty big spike in views of this image tracing back to Tumblr.

It turns out that a Tumblr user named Blua who “doesn’t want to be famous on the internet” accidentally made me kind of famous on the internet by setting the ball rolling on over 700 likes and reblogs of my silly notebook page. Anyway, what I wanted to point out is how freaking hilarious some of the comments are—as in, they actually made me laugh out loud.

The fatalist:

*a tiny ball that could fit in the palm of your hand [whose gravitational field was so strong it would suck you in at a infinitely violent speed, rip your frail body apart, and most likely turn you into some inhuman matter after the big bang]. —insertironicsentiment

The realist:

except for, wouldn’t you also be in that ball? —auntumnwake

The romantic:

If i had that ball, i’d wrap it in ribbons and bows and give it to you. —richpickings

The skeptic:

no, i’m sure it wasn’t. —dvndvy

The evolution evangelist:

So really, I love this. I think the universe is so amazing and cool. It’s even more amazing that all these seemingly coincidence atoms created us! I honestly cannot understand why religious people don’t believe in evolution. Where did Cain’s wife come from, huhhh? Scientists often say that learning more of the universe makes them believe in God even more. And that’s true. The universe is such an awesome spectacular place. Full of mystery and some explainable phenomena. I can’t even contain how cool it is. :] —justlikeamy

The Quantum Mechanical theorist:

& then the ” Big Bang ” happened & what is holding the universe from expanding is called Dark Matter. —kdgutierrez

The teenage girl:

amazingggggggggggggggggg <3 —taniaa

Not even sure what to make of this one:

Our whole universe was in a hot dense state haha love the Big Bang theory :) —need-want-love

Echoing my sentiments:

This is somehow inspiring to me. —nikkiraffail

The Machiavellian:

i guess thats pretty cool… i could be the master of universe… woah :D —lehani

The pessimist:

now is just giant complicated shitness —reitarawrs

Thank you, internet. Have I mentioned how ridiculous and great I think you are?

Was up late last night collaborating with the JBP crew on cramming all the major art fairs, museums, some nice galleries + shops, a Taco Bell, and TWO zoos onto the back of Jason Polan’s—awesome!—hand drawn map that we’re handing out this weekend at the fairs. 8pt font to the rescue!

Oh, and jenbee is making me blush:

This is the back of the printed version of our opinionated map + guide to the 2010 NYC Art Fairs, painstakingly, logically and gorgeously laid out for us by the if-I-wasn’t-so-goddamned-principled-I’d-pluck-him-out-of-undergrad-and-give-him-a-fulltime-gig Casey Gollan.

Copies will be exclusively distributed in our nifty Art Fair Survival Kits, which we’ll be distributing to a few hundred fortunate fair-goers. Assembled in our rather handsome and reusable totebags, our kits will include this map, a swank city guide from Daily Candy, primping materials, things to eat (popcorn, for instance) and other surprises. And also: plenty of room for all the art-fair related things you’re bound to accumulate during your travels.

We’ve also got an online version of our 2010 NYC Art Fairs map here — less visually delightful, sure, but highly useful! (No popcorn though, you have to find us in person for that.)

(via jenbekmanprojects)

Threw together a bunch of images from the /tagged/maps and /search/maps pages of Notes + Links yesterday while brainstorming for a project to map a journey. I was really happy to be able to find instant images + backstories on lots of these images, some of which I remembered only vaguely. It was a good reminder of how useful this site is, but also how incomplete it is. During the presentation, I kept remembering things that I like but never posted and thinking, “AHHH I have to add that before I forget again!”

The plan is to take my collected personal data (5 Year Diary, Foursquare, Last.fm, Mousetracks) and do something-to-be-determined that makes it more interesting or at least less sterile.

If I had to compare my spending on books to one of the states of matter (solid, liquid, or gas) it would probably be gas, because my book-buying consistently expands to fill my bank balance. What I mean to say is that I just bought We Feel Fine: An Almanac of Human Emotion by Sep Kamvar and Jonathan Harris and it’s amazing. You can look at spreads from the book online and also play around with the wonderful application on which the book is based.