Asteroid, baby II, and why art is beautiful /  by Mirena Rhee

Why is this canister with charcoal beautiful? It's just a metal thing with a bunch of rocks in it, right?

Well, it's because of what's behind the picture.

For only those who know though. We know that a bunch of really smart people at NASA had this crazy idea, and then some of them sat down and engineered a really difficult spacecraft, devised procedures, machined elements, and tested and tested again. Then they had to launch it into space and make sure that it got to some faraway place in space and execute a series of absurdly crazy series of steps to scoop a sample from an asteroid. Get back, crash to Earth but stay intact for them to collect what's inside. This is as insane engineering as it gets. Now when you look at this object you already know all of these things otherwise this object is not going to be meaningful to you.

Imagine that it is the same with art.

Perhaps not everything but most of the great art is a product of a series of great decisions that started when the artist was probably five. Maybe there is a lot of art out there that is just not to our taste or we don't understand well which is totally perfectly fine. A work of art is a product that is often judged against the entire body of work of the artist, this is the reason why we have what we call collectors of art. It is just difficult to know what you're looking at unless you know the processes involved, the materials, a bit of history of art, the artists themselves, and many many other things. You have to understand the materials on a fundamental level. You have to understand why oil paint is beautiful and what is a successful use of materials. You have to be competent in the kind of message the artist sends. Because no artwork appears in a vacuum. There's a lot of motivation behind work.

You have to be versed in art to understand it or to create it. You have to be versed in engineering to engineer.

Visa probably knows me better than I know myself, thinking the thousands of bits of data they collected about me over the years, they probably know how often I brush my teeth and worse /  by Mirena Rhee

They know when I sneeze or have a headache cuz I'm directly at the store buying something. I wonder if they have a vault somewhere where they watch carefully and clapp and giggle whenever they get a card chirp. Or they would go “oh she's one size up underwear”, or “stop the cheese”, or I can't believe you just ate your weekly groceries.

The AI art tech bros /  by Mirena Rhee

One of the biggest problems with the tech bros is that they've never actually seen a work of art in person. Even if they've seen it they never understood it cuz it requires an investment. Art's kind of arcane so you need a lot of time on your hands to get to know it, and it's not a profitable hobby.

It's like if you have only seen a picture of a laptop on the internet would you know how to operate it? You got to get your hands on it and put some time in. You wouldn’t even know which side is up.

It amazes me that all the AI tech bras think that they're making art simply because they do some adult coloring book type of exercise. They have no clue how difficult it is to move color-reflecting molecules on a canvas and make it not look like an ass. Cuz they've seen pour paintings on youtube and pencil sketches on Instagram.

Not only it is difficult to make it look like something other than an ass, but to get people to keep it around for 500 years is like a fucking miracle.

Don't forget that the tech bras were into the monkey JPEGs. But it is a very very rare JPEG!

People often confuse the JPEG of a monkey with an actual monkey, like if you download it it’ll jump out of the screen and start scratching its balls. It's not the same, brah.

The ugliest pieces of shit I've seen in my entire life /  by Mirena Rhee

https://twitter.com/ARTiV3RSE/status/1748519975659151597

Only a dumb tech bro could think that this is in any way outstanding. I wouldn't even put it the bathroom of a gypsy disco. I'm kind of glad that tech bros don't understand art, they think that art is some colored areas. Art is beating yourself up everyday about the emotional things that eat you up and that keep you up at night. But none of the tech bros ever took any meaningful paths in fine art or music to understand that art is not about perfection but art is about profound flaws, and art is the artist and has nothing to do with coloring pixels. For the same reason you cannot design and build a Tesla overnight, you cannot make an art piece overnight by clicking a few times on the keyboard.

For the same reason that all of the tech bros will be forgotten and all the great art will live forever or for as long as humanity exists. And they can absolutely do nothing to change that fact. Because art pieces that carry on for a few hundred years are very very difficult to make and you have to put on sweat and tears for years. But hey you can indulge the eyes of the other tech bro idiots sitting on their toilets in between sucking each other's souls.

I'm really glad that all the tech bros are not skilled enough to put the abominations they create in the physical world, and their extasms will only last a few seconds, unlike the hundreds of years of the art that they so poorly Photoshop.

I am profoundly disappointed by companies like Apple who only have factories in China and deprive Americans from learning to manufacture amazing technology /  by Mirena Rhee

This is a big mistake and we will regret it. I am not buying an apple device again until they establish at least one US factory. Tim Cook is a shortsighted moron if you ask me. People complain about crime in the US? So what happens to kids when they can’t look forward to cool jobs and exciting future? They break into your fucking cars that’s what happens.

What these supposedly smart people don’t realize is they are destroying the fabric of the very society that birthed great designs. They think that making kids good consumers will make them happy. Nonsense. You think that the kid that works at McDonalds and wears an apple watch is happy? No, you are only happy when you are accomplishing, the greedy motherfuckers will never understand that participating in the great adventure is more valuable than buying it in the store. What hunter would be happy if you dump a dead deer at their door step? Go and stuff yourselves with motherfucking stocks and company valuations while the stores are locking up toothpaste in fucking safes. By taking your factories abroad you are destroying the future pride and accomplishments of the next generation. You are gonna be eating the dust of it soon cause they are not gonna have the money to be getting all the stuff that you are making. The golden goose of the American consumer will shrink down to a scruffy chicken.

I am not in the cult of famous film directors but Perfect Days movie by Wim Wenders is the epitome of how I see life, minimalism, and the world, and my love for Japan and feelings from my Japan visits /  by Mirena Rhee

Movie Perfect Days, the main character’s bedroom

Perfect Days is a Profound manifesto for Simple Living and Minimalism.

I have never before seen anyone either in movies or books express exactly how I feel about life and the world, and what I think the perfect aesthetics of living looks like. This is the absolutely perfect movie that I have ever seen in that it aligns absolutely with my personal philosophy.

Although this film is about a toilet cleaner main hero, nothing in the film is about toilets, the way nothing in Japanese rock and sand gardens is about rocks, sand or gardening.

This is such an incredibly beautiful object /  by Mirena Rhee

“Only 2 inches, or 5 centimeters, wide, NASA’s tiny but mighty retroreflector, called a Laser Retroreflector Array, has eight quartz-corner-cube prisms set into a dome-shaped aluminum frame. The device is simple and durable, scientists say, requiring neither power nor maintenance, and can last for decades. Its configuration allows the retroreflector to reflect light coming in from any direction back to its source.”

It looks like a little crystal planet.

I'm still fascinated by New York City /  by Mirena Rhee

Due to the fluidity of my circumstances, I've had to take very many jobs which involved working with many different classes of society. In one of the jobs, I would go from a 50 million penthouse to the projects on 10th avenue in Chelsea and speak to a guy while behind him rats were zipping around, in his apartment. At some point, I interviewed a doctor who lived in a penthouse apartment on top of the Hudson Yards building and then back to the projects on the corner, where I had to make sure the drug dealer lookouts knew I was not the cops, child protection services, or immigration. And then I drove a 2-ton postal truck through Times Square.

I remember once I had a show out of town and couldn't go and instead had to clean the toilets of an Airbnb, so I would take my gloves off and check out the pictures from the show on my computer that the gallery director sent me.

Once I made a paintable dress for one of the wealthiest art patrons in New York City, in her own skyscraper. That summer I cleaned the local park, I remember one day a customer came out of the toilet and because there wasn't a mirror he adjusted his hairstyle in my sunglasses.

I will write the most fascinating book about New York City. There isn't going to be any partying or booze but life. Like they say, this is not a drill.