Valleywag
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valleyspeak
The classics of art, translated into geekspeak
As undergrads, Silicon Valley tycoons didn't have the time to appreciate the finer things a liberal arts education had to offer. They were far too busy coding away in their dorm rooms and plotting to take over the world. Now these poor lads and lasses face a Herculean task whenever they're confronted with, say, Rodin's "The Thinker" at the Legion of Honor — they just don't know what to make of it. More »
Yahoo has gotten itself into trouble with Sunnyvale and an artist whom the company hired to satisfy a public-art requirement of new corporate property in the Silicon Valley city. It turns out that the grass-cum-wire landscape became more overgrown than intended, so Yahoo took a weed whacker to the whole thing. The butchery "devastated" the artist. Maybe she can get a motivational speech from Jerry Yang as a pick-me-up? [WSJ]
art
Silicon Valley's golden men
This weekend's must-see movie isn't anything out of Hollywood — it's "Living Pictures/Men in Gold" at SFMOMA, a 40-minute video homage to seven Silicon Valley rich dudes. Created by French artist Sylvie Blocher, the video includes interview-montages with Snocap's Rusty Rueff, former Apple exec and "recovering assoholic" Jean-Louis Gassée, Eventbrite's Kevin Hartz, McDougall Creative's Eric McDougall, Eight Inc.'s Wilhelm Oehl, and Mayfield Fund's Chamath Palihapitiya (pictured). Yep, that's only six — no idea who the seventh is, though Kathy Levinson, formerly of E-Trade, had her footage rendered unusable due to "technical problems." Mmmm-hmmm. Read the Chronicle story for several good sexmoney quotes from the stars, and let us know your opinion if you see the exhibit.
googleplex
Ancient acrobat statues puzzle Googlers
As a (perhaps) final coda to the Googleplex map errata, lots of readers phoned in with declarations or speculations regarding the acrobat statues outside Building 45. Were they in fact leftovers from when Adobe lived there, and did they have some nominal relationship to Adobe's Acrobat products? Or did early explorers find these statues in the Spanish colonial days and decide this would be an excellent place for an office park?More »
googleplex
"Dreams in High Fidelity"
Regarding our map of the Googleplex, commenter Spastic Colon notes:You forgot to mention Scott Drave's Electric Sheep installation in the main Google lobby. Also, where can one find Larry & Sergey's gallery of Burning Man photos? I know they exist somewhere in the halls of the 'plex.The Drave installation is actually called "Dreams in High Fidelity," a "painting that evolves" — in other words, a really purdy high-def screensaver. If you know where the Burning Man pics are, by all means say so.
recycling
Google ganks Adobe art?
Item 10 on our map of the Googleplex is a pair of circus-y statues outside Building 45. A reader reminisces:I remember those sculptures of acrobats outside of an Adobe building. Perhaps building 45 used to be used by Adobe, and the artworks remain? I had wondered at the time if there was a correlation between the name Adobe Acrobat and the sculptures.Provenance call! Know where the acrobat statues came from? Say so.
google
Human browser: Slightly more coherent than a Web 2.0 brochure
A new video raises the bar for the "we make crazy not art" set. Christophe Bruno feeds keywords into Google, which returns search results that are fed through a text-to-speech program to a human wearing headphones. The human spews out the text stream. The net result feels like watching Rocketboom. More »
cell phones
Hey you, yakking on the phone! Get a booth!
Does anyone have Cell Phone Plague (known to historians as "the Yak Death") worse than Silicon Valley? (Okay, probably Seoul, but the Koreans will always beat us.) The VCs and sales guys chatting it up on the street — as well as the ad kids calling Mom — should take a hint when "portable phone booth" art projects start popping up. More »
google
Hmm. A Joan-Miro-inspired Google cartoon. I like it. Designed by Larry Page's baby niece or something, right?
More »
Google Miro: brilliant or toddler?
Hmm. A Joan-Miro-inspired Google cartoon. I like it. Designed by Larry Page's baby niece or something, right?
More »
