Living Numbers

Back in early January I gave a presentation for a local group of men who get together regularly to hear lectures and to engage in discussion on various topics, theology most frequently, but also economics, science, moral/ethical/social issues, literature, and the arts. My presentation was focused on an overview of biblical numerology, the study of the significance and symbolism which Scripture assigns to certain numbers, and how we see that significance confirmed virtually everywhere we look, both in the natural world of God’s own making, and in the creative works of mankind. Along the way, I take numerous excursions into the disciplines of geometry, music, biology, architecture, the visual arts, and astronomy. An audio recording of the lecture as well as a pdf of my accompanying Keynote presentation are available here. There seemed to be a good deal of enthusiasm among the group for this topic, and the whole process—preparation, presentation, follow-up discussion—was a great deal of fun. My thanks go out to our hosts (Tom and Sylvia Singleton) and all the other folks who were in attendance. Perhaps there are others out there who would also take an interest in this topic, and if you have a chance to listen and/or browse through the pdf, I trust you will find it fascinating. And as always, I’d be delighted to hear your feedback, as well as any additional insights of your own on the topics covered.

American Airlines Rebrand

With all due respect to Massimo Vignelli, some of whose objections are legitimate, on the whole, this is nonetheless simply AWESOME!

CD Package: Christ is Our Cornerstone

I was recently privileged to provide the packaging art for this collection of wonderful and inspiring psalms, hymns and service music by my friend and composer-extraordinaire, Gregory Wilbur. You (whoever you are) should get a copy!

Dave Brubeck: 1920-2012

Such a talented, genial man will be sorely missed, but fondly remembered. Take a few minutes to watch this truly magical moment.

Computer Repair AND Graphic Design…

I was confronted with this yesterday, while stopped at a traffic light during a family excursion to Chattanooga. There are so many levels of messed-up here—not the least of which is a hand-rendered version of a logo (at bottom) that I actually illustrated (in one of its many iterations) a number of years ago.

The Raft, The River, and the Robot

Here’s another book cover—prominently featuring illustration this time!—that I recently finished for L. B. Graham. Quite obviously, I hope, The Raft, the River, and the Robot is a dystopian take on Huckleberry Finn. Lots of fun, this one was!

Anonymous

Though it has received decidedly less notoriety and far fewer accolades, Anonymous is nonetheless for lovers of Shakespeare what Amadeus is for lovers of Mozart. That is to say, its strength lies not in historical or biographical accuracy, but rather in the delightful way that it highlights the wonder and fascination that are evoked by the subject’s body of work.

Utilizing the foundational premise (a rather hotly contested minority position within the academic community) that the historical William Shakespeare did not produce (indeed, could not have produced) the works that have been attributed to his name and that they come to us instead from the pen of his contemporary, Elizabethan courtier Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, this film layers on a good deal of highly-conjectured though artfully contrived what-if-ing to present one possible (to use the term liberally) scenario that might account for this mother of all literary misattributions. Is the proposed scenario a plausible one? On the whole, hardly—no more so than the assertion that it was Salieri who commissioned Mozart’s Requiem Mass, or that he actually murdered (or at least attempted to murder) his infinitely more talented rival. But let’s remember first of all that Shakespeare himself (whoever he was) took a good deal of historical license in his own plays, for the sake of—shall we call it—“dramatic enhancement”, so why should any cinematic treatment of his life necessarily be judged by a higher standard?

Let me get just a few caveats out of the way at the beginning:

If you’re not freshly read-up on all the movers and shakers of the day, both literary and political—and possibly even if you are—the rather constant flash-back/flash-forward interplay that is the film’s dominant modus operandi will likely prove to be somewhat bewildering.

The Puritans are typically and rather unnecessarily slandered, maligned, and misrepresented. Others have set that record straight quite effectively, so I won’t bother to get into it here. (Although I do have to point out that, ironically, while it would be a stretch to classify the historical Cecils as Puritans, a Puritan connection of some sorts between Shakespeare/de Vere has been proposed.)

The licenses taken with reality occasionally approach the absurd. These would include the presentation of the Tudor Rose as an actual flower (the simultaneously red and white rose is a purely heraldic device), and the idea the Queen Elizabeth’s funeral procession took place on the frozen Thames River. (No doubt the latter was contrived by director Roland Emmerich simply because it would provide opportunity for a few seconds of some way-cool CGI footage. And, admittedly, it does, but he should have saved that for a much-needed screen adaptation of Tim Powers’ Anubis Gates, which I read for the first time just this past summer. After seeing this film I think he might be a really good candidate to pull that off, but I digress…) And then of course, there’s the big whopper of a “revelation” towards the end—the most brazen conjecture of them all in a film packed full of them. I won’t give it away, but let’s just say it will definitely color any subsequent re-viewings.

But those flaws duly noted, the strengths of this film are considerable: There are some really fine performances by just about everyone involved. The sets and costumes are superb. (De Vere's study is a source of fascination in itself.) The footage is generously but tastefully interspersed (in my opinion) with some really beautiful and convincing CGI depictions of Elizabethan London. We are treated to some extraordinary and compelling re-creations of Shakespearean theatre as imagined in the intimacy of its original setting. Several of The Bard’s plays are given this treatment, most prominently Henry V, one of my personal faves, and the presentations are quite stirring.

And this last point leads me to say that, if at any point the film approaches genius, it is in allowing all of the intrigue to serve as a decorative frame for the art itself. It is the plays and poems themselves, as well as the emotions they inevitably conjure up in others—wonder, delight, awe, rapture, jealousy—that assume and retain center stage, leaving all questions as to their authorship to fade silently into the wings. And most importantly, this film provides potent affirmation that art and artistry vastly overshadow politics as long-term molders of human society, the latter fading to mere incidental importance with the passing of time. As this film’s version of Ben Jonson so memorably reminds us:

“My lady, you, your family, even I, even Queen Elizabeth herself will be remembered solely because we had the honor to live whilst your husband put ink to paper.”

America's Bloodiest Day

One hundred and fifty years ago today, Union and Confederate forces clashed just outside of Sharpsburg, Maryland, along the Antietam Creek, in what marked the bloodiest single day in American military history. (The day’s casualties on both sides totaled around 23,000, which, to put that number in perspective, is roughly double the Allied casualties suffered in the D-Day Invasion eighty-two years later.) The battle was effectively a draw, but it did put an end to the Confederates’ first attempted invasion of northern territory. Although the Battle of Gettysburg, fought almost a year later, is generally regarded as the turning point of the War, a strong case can be made, as here, that Antietam’s significance was perhaps even greater. And the fact that the entire campaign turned upon the “accidental” loss and discovery (by hapless Union soldiers) of a detailed copy of Lee’s plan of battle provides a profound lesson in how the the inscrutable operations of Divine Providence should never be dismissed or discounted, whether in relation to the most mean and humble or to the most grandiose of human affairs.

The Battle of Antietam (or Sharpsburg) also holds the distinction of being the first battle whose aftermath was extensively recorded and displayed in photographic form, to jarring effect in an era which still clung to a highly romanticized view of warfare. Alexander Gardner’s images of dead and decomposing corpses were displayed a month later at colleague Matthew Brady’s gallery in New York City. One review famously noted: “We recognized the battlefield as a reality, but a remote one, like a funeral next door. Mr. Brady has brought home the terrible earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our dooryards, he has done something very like it.”

CD Package: Jamie Soles, Giants & Wanderers

Jamie Soles is simply in a class all by himself. If I were to say something like “he’s the best children’s Bible-song artist I know of, bar none”, true as that might be, it would fall woefully short. While the majority of his repertoire is slanted toward the younger end of the spectrum, where it has undeniable appeal, the depth and maturity of his lyrics, as well as his musical craftsmanship, guarantee that listeners of all ages will find plenty to delight in.

Drawing inspiration from the likes of James Jordan and Peter Leithart, Jamie’s songs avoid the trite moralisms and rather superficial sentimentality that are all too prevalent within the genre in favor of an approach that revels in typology and narrative. There’s moral instruction to be gained for sure, but just as in Scripture, the moral lessons (which are often, however well we might think we know our Bibles, not exactly the ones we assume are there or the ones expect to find) are woven into a tapestry of richly ornamented symbolism, and stories—within stories, within Story—of breathtaking beauty, featuring characters of achingly familiar humanity.

So I was of course deeply honored when Jamie asked me to design and illustrate his latest album package, Giants and Wanderers. There’s even a very moving song about Bezalel featured in the mix, so need I say any more?

Book Cover: Avalon Falls

Whew! As should be evident from the frequency of my posts for the last 2-3 months, I’ve been fairly inundated with work, which is a great problem to have, so I’m not complaining! But now that I’m at least out in front of the wave (for now, anyway) I should have a steady stream of new work to show off in the coming days. Here’s one to kick things off: author L. B. Graham contacted me back in the spring to do covers for a couple of his upcoming titles. Avalon Falls is a crime novel, which represents something of a new departure for L. B., who has built a solid reputation heretofore as a fantasy author. Set in a fictional small town in Colorado, the story incorporates elements of murder, suspense, and psychological angst—all or most of which you can hopefully infer from the cover art.

The "Soap Opera Effect" and the Tenacious Power of Associations

I’m sure this is really old news for all of my friends involved in film or video production, and I'm pretty sure that I had read or heard about it somewhere myself previously, but I had my first-ever first-hand experience with it this afternoon, and it was pretty startling.

We were visiting my in-laws, who just got a new HDTV (my own family is still stuck in the 20th century in this regard), and one of the Harry Potter movies was being broadcast on network TV. After maybe 60 seconds of viewing I began saying out loud “Why do I feel like I’m watching a soap opera?” I pulled out my iPhone and started to Google, and, sure enough, the string “new tv soap opera effect” popped up by the time I had keyed in the first three words. This article explains what’s going on quite effectively. Long story short, for at least the past 40 years or so, most made-for-TV productions have, for reasons of cost-effectiveness, been shot on video rather than film. The effective frames-per-second rate for video is typically twice that of the long-established standard for film: 60fps for video vs. 30fps for film. (Actually, the standard is 24fps for film, but without getting too technical, a fairly insignificant conversion up to an effective rate of 30fps has been standard practice for decades when converting celluloid for TV/video presentation.) Modern HDTVs typically come with a default setting (which can usually be tweaked or disabled altogether via a little bit of digging through the menu options) which impose an effective rate of 60fps (or even greater in some cases) on everything.

These facts make for a fascinating case study of technological irony and the durability, for better or for worse — in this case almost certainly worse, of subliminal associations. The irony stems from the fact that, while objectively it’s an undisputed fact that 60fps results in much more fluid and life-like moving imagery (especially great for sports viewing), the overall cheaper production values generally associated with TV/video as compared to film are likely to cause a viscerally negative reaction from viewers when they encounter something that they know is supposed to be in the latter category but which has been translated into the former. It just immediately looks and feels wrong. Really wrong.

I would hypothesize (someone’s probably done a doctoral dissertation on the subject already, and I’m sure there’s plenty more to read online, but I haven’t bothered to delve any further yet) that the above holds true for folks who are roughly my age and older, who grew up with a sharp line of demarcation between TV and film, but falls off rapidly among younger viewers. Indeed, my thirteen-year-old son was able to acknowledge the difference, but still favored the 60fps/120hz setting anyway. And with the transition of the film industry to digital technology really picking up steam in recent years, it’s a sure bet that directors and producers will be less and less willing to be tied down to an arbitrarily lower standard of visual quality, imposed only by the expectations of “old fogey” viewers like myself — nor am I necessarily arguing that they should be, various factors being more-or-less equal. But the transition is definitely going to take some getting used to for us old-timers. Case in point: all you Tolkien fans better brace yourselves, because this will factor into Peter Jackson’s production of The Hobbit, set for release this coming December, in a big way.

Ab-solutely Shocking!

But looking on the bright side, the price of being suckered (adjusted for inflation) has gone down dramatically!