it appears the phrase “the new normal” is actually quite a popular phrase to describe or construct notions around for contemporary fine art practice (see the new normal mixery).
However this title from an article written by Tom Holert and published February 2006 in the art world’s glossy monthly, ArtForum (60% ads, 30% paperweight, 9% writing, 1% blog-worthy), takes its origin from an exhibition that took place at the end of 2005 titled “On Normality: Art in Serbia 1989-2001″ and refers back to the word normality, which the author says in the 1990s in Serbia
became a kind of ideological password, part of a code meant to sublimate societal antagonisms through the invocation of “the nation” or of a postcommunist version of capitalism, or both.
full article on Flickr - page 1, page 2
Plaxo was originally used by this blogger starting many years back as an online address book or rolodex. Moving house every few months, including between different countries, meant it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to keep track of who was where, what their phone number was, etc. - also because a growing number of my peers were following the same nomadic living patterns. I started using Plaxo to compile and keep track of all of this data, knowing that no matter where I went to in the world I could always access the Internet (even from a library public PC) and retrieve the data I was looking for. Plaxo’s most-useful function for me was their Address Book, with database fields for multiple emails, phone numbers, integrated maps, etc. Very useful. These days Plaxo is looking to increase its membership base by supporting social networking functions such as integrating the ability for Plaxo members to share Flickr photos, calendars, etc. Well, either way, I noticed when recently inputing a new entry in my own address book that the address bar of my Firefox 3 browser included a coded reference to normal:
I absolutely hate MySpace. I never never ever never refuse to visit it. Refuse to utilize it as a ‘resource’ or ‘tool’ or anything of the sort. I hate the auto-loading music, the layout, the impossibility of finding what you’re looking for (what ARE you looking for on MySpace anyhow!). Still, someone forwarded in this link to talknormaltalknormal user, some band based in Brooklyn, and it’s impossible to pass up.
Some band. on MySpace. that’s all it is. talknormaltalknormal
this headline screengrab taken this afternoon from the BBC website caught my attention for its use of the word normal to describe the should-be diplomatic status quo between Russia and Georgia which has more or less been put on hold ever since Russia’s incursion into Georgian sovereign territory.
the BBC’s headline refers to a quote by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, and what he actually said was,
We have determined that we cannot continue with business as usual.
the BBC merely recoded his wording from usual to normal. And subsequently a new expression - business as normal - was borne!
full article here
Enough with the gaming and virtual references to normal, the above images are from a real-world postage machine, Normal Preset apparently referencing standard 1st class postage rates for letters and packages, accessible via a quick touch of a button! Too bad I couldn’t find the manual for this thing, as I’m sure it would have been jam-packed with instances of Normal. I’ll keep hunting!
more geekathon-normal going on here, this screengrab is from the options menu of Activision’s late-2007 release Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, at times set in parts of the world that pit US marines (or UK SAS operatives) against Russian ultranationalist forces, ironic considering the current political turmoil and conflict in North Ossetia, Georgia, the former Soviet bloc country.
It would seem “Normal” is a standard term in gaming development to describe menu options and variables, and so being somewhat of a geek gaming enthusiast, I reckon there’ll be more where this came from!
or so this postcard-quote by Derek Jarman - the short-lived but prodigious English film director and artist - tells me:
Wowee it’s a good day! As if a small serving of normal tracking isn’t already at capacity (after a completely empty July), then someone actually sends in the first submitted what is normal? sighting! More odd, the submission was sent via a cell phone, courtesy of ‘vzwpix.com’, which is Verizon Wireless’s online site for user’s to manage their phone’s content. Wowee! Was it sent live? Shot in the wild? What is it, anyhow!?
A quick google search revealed what my suspicion somewhat hoped for, that not only is the phrase ‘normal readers’ indexed by the notorious googlebot, but it references a book that Google has also digitized for online reading!
A three-volume set by May Louise Harvey, the user-submitted image above shows the ‘THIRD BOOK’. Google has digitized the FIRST BOOK. The three grabs below show the only instances of normal I can be bothered to find in this title - it’s content otherwise being too much of a bore to troll through.
Even with a glance I couldn’t figure out why it’s titled what it’s titled.
Joe Torre, easily regarded as one of the best active managers in baseball - even if his Dodgers are merely .500-hovering all season - and who will no doubt enter the pantheon of baseball for his commitment to the game, the players, the fans and again the game, recently admitted following the Manny Ramirez trade to Los Angeles that part of his managerial repertoire includes conducting “normal meetings”:
“I don’t know what my thinking is right now. Manny obviously will be in the middle of that lineup, and we’re just going to have to, as we go along, try to figure it out. I’ll probably get the whole team in there together before we break up for our normal meetings just to sort of give them some thoughts. I really don’t know who’s going to get impacted the most on this thing.”
[via MLB article]
Continuing today’s geekathon-game posts:
Type or Die. Write or I’ll Bite!
Just a couple of the taglines for the SEGA franchise title House of the Dead (1996) which was later ported and modded to kill zombies with your keyboard instead of a game-gun. Originally an arcade game (no shit, see image below), the above images are from a PC (Windows) port of the game. A more-recent version has been ported to the Nintendo DS Lite for Japanese players looking to improve their English writing skills (see here) - but some of us are forever attached to our keyboards (be they Qwerty or… Dvorak!) so if you’re looking to improve your typing skills while killing zombies and zombie-bosses:
image from Wikipedia entry for Typing of the Dead
(also see Typing of the Dead gamespot page)
From one of the opening sequences of the CAPCOM title Okami, this shot shows Issun, the game’s guide embodied as a bouncing bug, asking the sun god Amaterasu, “The tree’s returned to normal, huh?”
Just before, the Kamiki Village tree was under some sort of curse. Issun would often ask or state things in a reverse manner, but it must be questioned, what is a “normal” tree?
