Death and Art in the Blogosphere
by Joyce Gemperlein
JANUARY 25, 2010 TAGS:
We deal with mortality through the art of language, pictures, conversation, song, invention and more. Here’s a sampling of stories and blog posts in which various forms of artistic expression touch upon death, transition, loss and memory.
-As her son struggled to survive after being pulled from a swimming pool, a Florida mother twittered his condition and subsequent death. This provoked a firestorm of opinion.
-Baruch Levi Blum’s 10 minutes of life are on film.
-In a radio story, the human friends of zoo animals talk about the loss of their companions.
-Drop everything and watch this thigh-slapping (really!) video in which a heart attack victim sings a ditty (in several voices) about turning his life around.
-Filmmaker Vanessa Roth followed a young woman’s grim journey aging out of the foster care system in Los Angeles. After the woman was murdered, Roth followed up with a documentary about the sad and similar life of her killer.
-Here’s a YouTube compilation of all of the deaths -- even the rat’s and the goldfish’s -- that occur in the 1990 Arnold Schwartzenegger movie, Total Recall. (There’s a lot of neck-snapping and blood, so a sign-in screens out viewers under 18 years old.)
-How many people have ever lived on this earth? How does that compare to the number alive now? It’s a lot of numbers, and it’s easier to picture using graphs.
-Crafty scientists in Holland have grown meat in a laboratory and predict sausage for the world by 2015. This would eliminate the need to kill animals for food and has other benefits.
-Pterodactyls, hippos, Gianni Versace, guilt and atonement. Connecting them is Pablo Escobar, the kingpin of the Medellin drug cartel who was gunned down in 1993 by U.S.-trained police. Now tourists flock to his luxurious ranch. Meanwhile, his son, Juan Pablo, who picked a new name out of the Bogota phone book, has made a documentary to reach out to his father’s victims.
-Pictographs and petroglyphs crafted in rock by long-gone denizens of the Southwest have been saved.
-Save Texas dance halls!
-Preserve pink toilets! Preservationists say television home makeover gurus are destroying, or encouraging the destruction of, historic post-war American housing.
-Italy’s not liking change: Global warming could do in genuine Italian pasta; Venetians held a funeral for their city of canals, which they say is being killed by tourism; and some Parisians argue that nightlife in the City of Light is being legislated out of existence.
-A businessman dies, and a small, painted guitar given to him by Pablo Picasso turns up in Italy.
-It’s the 120th anniversary of painter Vincent Van Gogh’s suicide at the age of 37. But the earlier incident in which his ear was lopped off has always intrigued the public more than his demise. Although most history books say he did it himself, this article says why. And another offers evidence that it was sliced off by his artist buddy and roommate, Paul Gauguin.
-Remember Paper glorifies the look and substance of information you can hold in your hand for a while rather than visit on a screen for a smaller while.
-“I have only this morning discovered the long lost pocket book made out of the skin of the man who shot your father!”
Joyce Gemperlein is a regular contributor to Obit.
-As her son struggled to survive after being pulled from a swimming pool, a Florida mother twittered his condition and subsequent death. This provoked a firestorm of opinion.-Baruch Levi Blum’s 10 minutes of life are on film.
-In a radio story, the human friends of zoo animals talk about the loss of their companions.
-Drop everything and watch this thigh-slapping (really!) video in which a heart attack victim sings a ditty (in several voices) about turning his life around.
-Filmmaker Vanessa Roth followed a young woman’s grim journey aging out of the foster care system in Los Angeles. After the woman was murdered, Roth followed up with a documentary about the sad and similar life of her killer.
-Here’s a YouTube compilation of all of the deaths -- even the rat’s and the goldfish’s -- that occur in the 1990 Arnold Schwartzenegger movie, Total Recall. (There’s a lot of neck-snapping and blood, so a sign-in screens out viewers under 18 years old.)
-How many people have ever lived on this earth? How does that compare to the number alive now? It’s a lot of numbers, and it’s easier to picture using graphs.
-Crafty scientists in Holland have grown meat in a laboratory and predict sausage for the world by 2015. This would eliminate the need to kill animals for food and has other benefits.
-Pterodactyls, hippos, Gianni Versace, guilt and atonement. Connecting them is Pablo Escobar, the kingpin of the Medellin drug cartel who was gunned down in 1993 by U.S.-trained police. Now tourists flock to his luxurious ranch. Meanwhile, his son, Juan Pablo, who picked a new name out of the Bogota phone book, has made a documentary to reach out to his father’s victims.
-Pictographs and petroglyphs crafted in rock by long-gone denizens of the Southwest have been saved.
-Save Texas dance halls!
-Preserve pink toilets! Preservationists say television home makeover gurus are destroying, or encouraging the destruction of, historic post-war American housing.
-Italy’s not liking change: Global warming could do in genuine Italian pasta; Venetians held a funeral for their city of canals, which they say is being killed by tourism; and some Parisians argue that nightlife in the City of Light is being legislated out of existence.
-A businessman dies, and a small, painted guitar given to him by Pablo Picasso turns up in Italy. -It’s the 120th anniversary of painter Vincent Van Gogh’s suicide at the age of 37. But the earlier incident in which his ear was lopped off has always intrigued the public more than his demise. Although most history books say he did it himself, this article says why. And another offers evidence that it was sliced off by his artist buddy and roommate, Paul Gauguin.
-Remember Paper glorifies the look and substance of information you can hold in your hand for a while rather than visit on a screen for a smaller while.
-“I have only this morning discovered the long lost pocket book made out of the skin of the man who shot your father!”
Joyce Gemperlein is a regular contributor to Obit.
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