So. I know I'm late. I finally got around to reading The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall, and if I'm writing about it on my blog, you should understand that means something. The book takes bites from The Matrix, Memento and Jaws. The DaVinci Code should probably be thrown in there as well, except that Hall doesn't telegraph his passes (as my high school basketball coach used to tell me I did with mine), and he certainly doesn't hold your hand throughout the plot.
Where to start?
First off, the reason I bought it was because I like novels that have visual thought somehow. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon come to mind. I'm a graphic artist; what can I say? These novels, however, didn't affect me like TRST.
Secondly, the novel is written in such a way that different readers can come to different conclusions. I know, I know. How is that possible? My best possible answer is that it just is. Hall, who is British, meant it to be that way, and he basically says so in the title. With a British accent, "The Raw Shark Texts" sounds an awful lot like "The Rorschach Tests."
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
The official Web site, www.rawsharktexts.com, has many discussions on what readers believe is going on. Look under the "Unspace Exploration Committee" link, and see for yourself. I would suggest not allowing yourself any spoilers (the "Crypto-Forensics" link) before you have a chance to read the book, but after you've finished, you'll probably be heading there for answers.
But guess what? There aren't any. And Mr. Hall is tight-lipped, as well he should be.
I also love how this book is still developing. New things are coming out in new editions, games have been played online about it and Hall has even developed Raw Shark Texts "negatives" (From the site: "For each chapter in The Raw Shark Texts there is, or will be, an un-chapter, a negative. If you look carefully at the novel you might be able to figure out why these un-chapters [are] called negatives.").
Please read the book. Then get back here and tell me what's going on.
I was pretty startled to hear the news about the falling of Wall Arch at Arches National Park in Utah. Here's the National Park Service article. We made a trip out there two years ago, and that particular arch was one I remember well because of its proximity to the hiking trail. A stone wall blocked one side and the Wall Arch spanned along the opposite wall with the trail sandwiched between. The structure seemed very delicate at the time, but I got that same impression with most of the arches we saw there. It was a humbling feeling knowing those stones could topple on our heads at any moment.
When we arrived in NY in April, it was late on a Sunday evening.
I had a Polaroid emulsion transfer accepted into this year's Westmoreland Art Nationals. It's actually four transfers together on one piece of watercolor paper. I didn't do many of these; at the time I was just experimenting with the process and had access to a Daylab Copy System. I had done direct Polaroid image transfers a few years back using film and photos straight out of my dad's old Polaroid that he had brought back from Korea when he was stationed there in the army (1959-ish). But this time I wanted to use copies of 35mm photos that I had already taken.
I've finished my first entirely Flash Web site for Ohiopyle Weddings. I still have way too many things I want to do, but don't know the ActionScript to do them, and don't know the correct terminology to be able to search for the scripting on the Internet. Still, it's functional and basically attractive, and best of all, approved by the clients!
This image was accepted into the Westmoreland Biennial which ran from May 11 through June 8. The exhibit included 83 works of art from 80 different artists who lived within a 125-mile radius of Greensburg, Pennsylvania.
So we did a SketchCrawl at the Pittsburgh Zoo a couple weeks back. I didn't get a lot of drawing done, but I did learn some things, mostly about myself.
