A film you enjoyed: A Scanner Darkly

A Scanner Darkly is a movie written for the big screen and directed by Richard Linklanter, as an adaptation based on the novel of the same name, written by Phillip K. Dick (author of other stories that have been turned into a movie like Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report).
I saw it for the first time maybe around june or july in 2005. I was watching on the internet some pages about design, about portraits made of superposed layers of solid color in the computer, when i found that in this movie was used this technique, along with another animation technique called rotoscoping, in which animator trace over live-action film movement, frame by frame, for use mainly in animated films and publicity.

The story is set in the near future, where a powerful drug know as substance D has become a great problem in the United States, a drug that makes split the conections between both user's brain hemispheres causing multiple personalities. In the movie, the main character is an undercover member of the police who is directed to spy his friends, being all of them included the cop, substance D users.
I like it a lot because of the visual treatment and the great story that has, you should watch it sometime.

Beautiful Chile: Death Valley

One of the most beautiful places in Chile i visited in my life is the Death Valley, near San Pedro de Atacama. I went twice, once about six years ago and the other about two years ago. Both times i went with my family, but the last time, besides my parents and my brother, my cousin Camila went also. That time we went sandboarding to the Valley and was awesome so we spend hours and hours there. The sand dunes were soft and so high that when sandboarding we pick a really great speed.
The landscapes are amazing, the Death Valley is made of a mixture of orange sand and gigantic spacelike brown stone. The rocks and the cliffs have forms that have been twisted through time by the winds of the desert and the sunsets are a beautiful sight indeed.
I recommend this place to everyone, it is located less than an hour from San Pedro and it's one of the places that is still free of charge to visit. To acces most of the other famous places in the area now you have to pay some money because of some laws about national patrimony and tourism. So that's it about the desertic north of Chile.

A Work of Art: Roger Garland.

Two Trees of Valinor is the name of his piece of art. The Artist name is Roger Garland, a great fantasy artist who painted some art rellated to the J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth novels. He collaborated around 1980s in some illustrated calendars and some say that he has a style in his drawings that look pretty simmilar to what Tolkien himself imagined when he wrote books like The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion and The Hobbit. This painting i posted is one of those used in the calendars and precisely in one of this calendars i saw it maybe about ten years ago in the annual book fair that takes place in La Serena, in the fourth region. It brings to my mind those times when i was little and went to the book fairs with some fammily and spent hours watching from here to there, trying to decide wich book to buy, because unfortunately in Chile books are really expensive.
Well, back to the picture,this one is basically about this two sacred trees that are suposed to be in a paradise lost in time and place at the beggining of the times. I really like the colors in it, they give to the painting that sort of "being dreaming" effect.

Catching Up: The City of the Future

Victory City is just crazy!!! I mean, it's all right with the incredible organization of the space, the really clever ways to improve life quality of the people who are suposed to live there and how the city works on maximum efficiency... but what will happen if entire cities dissapear. I am not talking about the buildings, i'm talking about the population. If this "small" Victory Cities can hold so much people, suddenly a great percentange of an old city's population will be gone. I think that will affect deeply the economy of the old cities, because of the sudden lack of workers or professionals, the hospitals and other public services can not afford to be understaffed. Besides, i don't know if it could be a beatiful sight to live in a city that is different to another Victory City as is different one mall from another. The particular character of a city will be replaced with a beatiful and sterile picture of life. I maybe prefer to live in my old and scratched city.

Catching up: The Best

In this post i'm supossed to write about who i think it's the best designer or architect. The fact is that being a designer myself, i don't have a favourite one, so i'll write about one of my favourite artist: H.R. Giger.
Hans Ruedi Giger is a graphic artist and a sculptor born in 1940 in Chur, Switzerland. He is well known for his design work in the movie "Alien", and his particular graphic style. His style it's a mix of surreal imaginary, nightmarish landscapes, fetichism and creatures known as biomechanoids (some kind of mix between humans and machines), resulting in a dark work that he has shaped in the form of tables, chairs, mirrors, sculptures, album covers, paintings and books. In his work you can see the influence of artists like Salvador Dalí, Jean Cocteau and Erns Fuchs. He has his own museum in the city of Gruyères and has opened thematic bars around the world (New York, Tokio, Switzerland). His work can be seen in movies like Alien the eight passenger, Species, Alien 3 y Poltergeist 2.
I think he is just great because he started his paintings as an art therapy for a sleep disorder he has, called night terrors, characterized by extreme terror (screams, moaning) and a temporary inability to regain full consciousness (usually people with this disorder can't even recall they have this episodes). He has turned his problem into a marvelous and original form of art, turning himself into an icon of modern surrealism.
Right now i have some posters of his art, because buy an original is just impossible (the prices are too high!) and i'm saving to buy a book about his work and his life.

Catching up: Good Technology

My favourite piece of technology? I got to say, my mp3 player and my headphones, definitely. They are the most appraised devices i own. Although they are not really expensive, with the best sound and lots of memory like an ipod, they are a piece of vital importance in my daily routine. I use them every single day when i go out, walking in the streets, traveling in the subway, on the bus, flying on an airplane, everywhere. I like to listen music a lot, to listen while watching the place i'm passing by, while thinking about the university, domestic things, life or anything, enjoying being isolated from other noises. I can go everywhere with a couple of albums and usually it takes me like a week to listen all songs.
Sometimes when i'm out in the street and the mp3 player runs out of battery, it's chaos, i hate when that happens because it's like the magic world i'm immersed suddenly disappears and i'm back in the noisy and grey city, and my journey becomes bored. Given the situation, i try not to forget to charge it everyday when i get home.
It has happened, anyway, that music distract me so much sometimes i almost die because of not listening to the cars when im crossing the street jajajajaja.

Spending money on some rags

Buying clothes was my topic for this week's activity, in wich we have to write at first fifteen questions about the topic that was given to each one of us. After struggling for a few minutes without completing the fifteen required, the task was reduced to ten (uf!! jaja) Then we were suposed to interview three of our classmates with the famous ten questions. Those are posted here:

1) What was the last piece of cloth you bought?
2) What kind of clothes you like to wear?
3) What is your favourite clothing to buy?
4) How often do you buy clothes for yourself?
5) Do you have any favourite store where you buy clothes?
6) Do you like people to bou clothes for you on your birthdays?
7) What's the best clothing you have ever bought?
8) What was the most expensive clothes you have bought?
9) Do you prefer to buy clothes on retail stores or boutiques?
10)Who do you like to buy clothes with?

Well, the three classmates i interview were Nicolas, Aileen and Nancy, of whom i wrote their answers so i can wrote a little bit about their lives and how they relates themselves with the art of getting dressed. The three of them appeared to be cool people with their clothes, using nothing really fancy and shiny, where t-shirts, jeans and trainers were the common answer to many of the questions. As usual anyway, i can conclude Nicolas, as many man, spend less money than the girls on clothes, declaring himself to look for the cheap clothes rather than the expensive and exclusive ones.
With regards to the last question, about who they like to go out with them to buy clothes (the three of them didn't understand it well so probably i wrote it wrong) their answers varied from going alone to going with a brother, mom or an exboyfriend.