Flip This House

Anyone want to take bets on how long A&E’s series Flip This House stays on the air? Over/under 3 months? Any takers?
A corollary, but safe bet, is when this show will be renamed Foreclose This House; I guess the producers would need a whole new cast with a markedly different skill set when that happens.

On Text

KawaraKawara, originally uploaded by SHSH
My love of typography and letters brings me often to two different, but complementary artists: On Kawara and Jenny Holzer. While both artists use type and form to create beautiful works of art, the comparisons end there. Kawara’s Today series feature a stark hand-lettered date on a solid field; a date with no context. Whereas Holzer’s work (below) is a self-contained phrase or assemblage which can stand alone – almost monadic.
Holzer Installation
That is why experiments in this realm are so exciting. Especially when you look at work in either a Structuralist or Post-Structuralist manner. In other words, the meaning and the text are do distinct, but rather coupled and viewed through such lenses as culture, education, context, etc.
A few years ago a group called the “Salute the Rough Guys” were plastering signs throughout New York City with witty slogans set in beautiful type. Most of the posters were decrying the current (circa 2006) art scene as shallow and over-hyped.
Art
Another great recent example of typographical art is Jenny Beorkrem’s posters of city neighborhoods from San Francisco to Brooklyn. There is such a great demand of her work that many of the silkscreen versions are sold out. The work captures a snapshot of neighborhood names (which often mutate) on landforms which are often unchanging.
Ork Design
While Beorkrem’s and Kawara’s work are both analogous by connecting their work to specific contexts, only Beorkrem’s is the work which is explicitly connected to place, time, and a discreet context. The dialectic from context to monad could be represented as:

  • Beorkrem – Time, place, space
  • Salute the Rough Guys – Time & context
  • Kawara – Time
  • Holzer – Monad

Fed cuts interest rates to 3.5%

Chicago Board of TradeChicago Board of Trade, originally uploaded by eddymanzano

The Fed just cut rates by .75 in an emergency action today:

The Committee took this action in view of a weakening of the economic outlook and increasing downside risks to growth. While strains in short-term funding markets have eased somewhat, broader financial market conditions have continued to deteriorate and credit has tightened further for some businesses and households. Moreover, incoming information indicates a deepening of the housing contraction as well as some softening in labor markets.

The Fed is expected to cut another .25 off the rate next week at their usual meeting.
Today will be a bloodbath.