Think.Alexetism

The Last Poker

When you are a saint, and you wake up at 5am, you are no longer haunted by nightmares. You can spend the hours teaching others nifty levitation tricks.

Another piece from my Strawmary Saints series. In this one I take The Last Supper out of context, using an already existing painting, and inserting poker cards in the fingers of stoic anthropomorphic deities. Not all iconoclastic images intend to destroy the symbols they build upon, often they just look to enhance or replace an old system by coopting the signs that feed that culture’s stream of consciousness.

Vera Wang Princess launches!

We at Fluid, Inc in San Francisco recently launched the most awesome site for Vera Wang Princess. It focuses on the fragrances (Original and Glam), and other cool social media content. This particular piece promotes the Vera Wang Contest at Polyvore.com, and for this I designed under Cat Lee’s art direction and Mariano Ferrario’s interaction design.

I must say the site has been quite a success, including the Facebook application we launched for them. This application allows the users to share their princess moments in their very own Vera Wang photo-op. So, what are you waiting for? Check it out for yourself!

Let It Shine!

The Holiday that shall not be named. Almost as scary as Sauron or Voldemort. The true meaning of… what was the name of that holiday again? Yes, religious holidays offer the best moments for average artists (like myself) to engage in iconoclastic behavior. ‘Tis the season for easy targets, falalalaaa-lalalala.

Dr. Seuss Holiday Party Invite

Fluid is having a holiday party next week, and we thought of doing a flyer that mixes the Dr. Seuss children’s book style with cheesy anaglyph 3D art. The intention is for it be fun, to pop out, and to evoke a retro feeling. Also, the inspiration behind the white elephant is that we were originally playing with the idea of having a white elephant gift exchange activity instead of a toy drive.

Hope you enjoy,
-Alex

Nuts For You

Arte de desayuno.

Cataño, Puerto Rico 9/11… Directorio de Explosión

Tonight, 12:25am, thousands of Puerto Ricans were awaken by a huge explosion at Gulf’s oil refinery. The night became day, and everyone got on their roofs trying to trace the origins of the flames. Rumors started running online, conspiracy theories, even spontaneous parties took place as ways to cope with the stress.

I’ve dedicated this blog entry to all things Gulf refinery disaster. Here are the links as they become available. You’ll find photos, videos, jokes, and articles that go in depth regarding what happened tonight. Read the official story at Primera Hora’s page, since they were some of the first people from the media who were on it.

The search topic in Twitter is “#explosionpr” http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23explosionpr

The explosion caused an earthquake of 2.8… http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/Quakes/prp0929602.php#detail

Listen to Univisión’s radio coverage… http://www.univision.com/contentroot/locales/radio/jhtml/NOMETA_stream.jhtml?station=WKAQAM

The actual moment of the explosion, caught on video…

Is that a plane? conspiracy theories?

McDonalds… explosión de sabor.

Kanye West always makes his guest appearance.

I don’t know how this is part of the news coverage, but it is.

Te compras una?

http://qik.com/video/3298106

http://qik.com/video/3298327

Pleneros frente a la explosión en Facebook…

http://radiotime.com/station/s_23401/Noti_Uno_1280.aspx

“You Will Never Know Why” is out!

Today Sweet Trip releases their long-awaited album “You Will Never Know Why.” Here’s some surrealist artwork I did for my personal enjoyment inspired in their music… among other things. Did this using Flash, Photoshop, and my camera.

If you wanna see Sweet Trip live, they’ll be playing this Wednesday (September 30th @9pm) at the Bottom of the Hill venue, in the Mission.

Also, Miike Snow will be visiting Bottom of the Hill 3 days later (this Saturday, October 3rd)… and they’ll be rocking the house as always. A great week for music in San Francisco.

The End Of Twitter? Are Spammers Taking Over?

All good things… or bad things for that matter must come to an end, right? From great trends such as repurposing garden gnomes, to bad ones such as cuddling pet rocks, there comes a moment in which everything becomes obsolete. Is this what is happening to Twitter?

Lately the people who are contacting me on Twitter are not real. They are bots, spammers… entities obsessed in selling me sex or cheap ringtones. Similar to what happened to MySpace just after it peaked it is becoming infected with noise as opposed to real information.

Something I enjoy doing is seeing what topics are peaking, and reading what people say about them. Tonight, most topics led to dead-end type of results. Most tweets such as “Free ringtones #ATT” or “sexy webcams #ATT,” or other wasteful crap was filling the “ecosphere”… and this repeated all throughout the most trendy topics. It seems the dialogue is being killed by all the fake accounts that are born. I wonder what the ratio is now between real users and fake ones at the moment.

Will there be a time when there are more spammers than real people behind the Twitter accounts? Very likely. But let’s go slightly deeper and wonder… why is this? I know I’m always repeating the same thing, but this is just the plain old manifestation of Garrett Hardin’s Tragedy of Commons. No good system can ever peak in popularity that doesn’t start sucking because there will always be people abusing that system. When you are unable to filter your community successfully, or isolate it for that matter, these things are bound to happen.

I suggest the Twitter executives to monetize on the community immediately, because it is only a matter of time until a good chunk of the people abandon Twitter, and say hello to Tumblr. Ah, the era of short intensities… keeps getting… shorter.

-Alex

Blame Canada’s Health Care? : Miss-In-Scene 9

Latest rendition of Miss In Scene. Inspired in the lame selfish argument against universal health care. If you had to stand in line, in exchange for your fellow brother and sister’s life, would you? Is someone’s life so insignificant that your inconvenience can even be used as an argument in this debate? If that’s the case, then I feel sorry for you.

Did I sound too serious over there? Haha, I’m joking. To hell with the poor… they are fat anyway.

-Alex

The Unluckiest Day: September 17, 2009

Today, September 17, 2009 is the unluckiest day of the year, as explained by Susan Miller. We are going through a very bad Mercury Retrograde (astrologically speaking), and sure, you might roll your eyes now, but you’ll be happy when the bad luck is over, and thankful that I warned you.\n\nIn this entry I’m doing to document (almost by the minute) what unusual things I encounter today, and I’ll try to find out if it is possible that by being aware of your bad luck, you can actually end it.

9:27PM – Pilled it up. Sighs. Funny, I wanted the moral of this story to be more along the lines of “luck is what you make of it”

8:15PM – Realizes I cannot go to tonight’s party… and surely I’ll have to work from home tomorrow.

7:00PM – “Hopped” out of the office.

5:15PM – “Congratulation” messages regarding my newly found disability. Word spreads like fire. Hmmm, or can you spread words like butter?

4:40PM – The massage lady at the office tells me I have flat feet! I’ve been lied to. My feet never developed an arch as certain people who once upon a time prayed for me told me I miraculously did. Now I have to buy special disabled people equipment.

4:30PM – My shirt is inside out!

3:34PM – Tonight is Hicki’s last party. RIP to Hicki nights… I guess I’ll have to go there tonight.

2:29PM – My project manager tells me she loves me The very same project manager who almost didn’t receive my email at 8:34AM. Gasp…

1:58PM – While I’m inside the bathroom, I realize I forget to lock the door. Luckily, I lock it, before any embarrassing naked disasters take place.

1:02PM – I take off my shoe because the pain in my right foot is increasing.

11:42AM – Awkward movement as I slide from left to right trying to avoid coalition with another individual who in turn is also moving left and right. Don’t you hate it? When another person has the same thought process as you, and then you bump into each other. Luckily, he didn’t pickpocket me, I think lol…

11:39AM – As I not go through, I decide to take the street route, a car almost gets me. Slight moment of freak-out. I think I’ve seen this in a Christian movie about the Rapture years ago.

11:38AM – Go outside to get a tuna melt. Construction site in front of me, with ladders and a wet tunnel. The people before me go through. I decide to NOT go through.

10:15AM – Where is my post? There was an error in my iPhone, couldn’t publish it properly. Rescued it from my Drafts folder.

8:41AM – Huge crows rest on top of the building in front of me, and they make their spooky sound. I can only see their sihlouette because the sun is rising from behind.

8:39AM - Next Bus lies to me. It told me the next 30X would come in 7 mins, it came as I was walking. The bus driver closed the door on me.

8:34AM – Work email to my project manager doesn’t get sent. I am aware of how the cosmos is weird, so luckily I verify in my “Sent” folder and realize the email is missing. Have to rewrite it, and resend it.

8:30AM - I get the news one of my best friends is being cheated upon.

8:00AM - Wake up with annoying pain on my right foot. I can still walk.