Impressions

[thorfinn]

The Rat sighted...

For various reasons (doing some contract programming on the side), I am currently in the 3AW building. Outside, there is a man in a rat suit, holding a placard with the words "Trust Me!" on them. According to the lovely receptionist, I'm one of the few people that actually figured out that this meant we had the Prime Minister The Rat in the building. As if the two Feds and two uniform coppers standing outside wasn't enough indication... Sheesh.

Earlier this week, mark_latham was wandering out of the building the same time I was wandering in... He smiled at me, in that "Oh, look a punter, hello!" kind of way. Not a bad smile, might even have been sincere. Pro'ly not, though, more likely the standard pollie "Oh look, a humanoid, activate smile reflex" programming at work.

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Impressionists@NGV

Well, seedy_girl and myself were naughty and skipped MUCS to go see The Impressionists exhibition at the NGV. We'd tried to go on Sunday, but at 11:00 when we arrived the ticket buying queue was about an hour long (we got to skip that thanks to being NGV Members) and the queue to get into the exhibition after that was about an hour long also. We decided instead to go wander around the Art of Zen exhibit and also the surrounding Asian Pottery exhibit, after buying our tickets, and we'd come back Wednesday, when they were open to midnight.

Anyway, on returning Wednesday 19:00 or so, the ticket buying queue was over 2 hours long, but there was no entry queue - straight in if you had tickets. So, we went straight in... Place was very crowded, so we did a bit of bouncing around to the lowest density areas, rather than doing it in a perfectly ordered fashion. Having looked at the exhibit, I concur with nigelw's assessment... Impressionism is JPEG (i.e. lossy-compression) for oil painters. Bigger brush paintings (like Sisley and Pissarro) are equivalent to "low quality JPEG" and small brush paintings (like James Tissot's Le Bal) are "high quality JPEG".

The same basic principle is involved - the fact that human vision is a very imprecise and fuzzy thing, mostly constructed after the fact inside the visual centre of the brain. This means that you can construct a close approximation of the image you want to evoke, and that will be sufficient to provoke the brain into thinking it has seen the image. Use the sharp focus parts of the eye and look carefully, and you can break the illusion of the image, but take a broader impression and it looks fine. All in all, very cool.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/raven_/]

We looked at the queue last Friday at 10am, and decided that we'd skip it, and see what we were really there for - Man Ray.

wow. It rocked. :-)

[thorfinn]

*nodnod* We saw the ManRay whilst it (and we) were in Sydney, and enjoyed it muchly.

[http://users.livejournal.com/raven_/]

Aaaaaaah, cool. It surprised me that so many of the images were so small... then... DUH, they're originals.

:-)

Very very faboo. There was a couple more things I wanted to see, but I was getting hypo by then, so we went to find food.

[andricongirl.livejournal.com]

I saw the impressionist not long after it opened on a wednesday morning and it was still packed out. i thought it be a quiet day to go :]
I want to go to the man ray exhibit. but when theres not many people so i can get up close to see them. but thats going to be impossible I think :]

[http://users.livejournal.com/raven_/]

Yeah, we were lucky with the time we picked.

10am on a Friday morning, before skool holidays. It was empty, we were the first people there.

[elindal.livejournal.com]

Well - we were there at about the same time. Pity we missed each other.

fraerie went to see it on Tuesday. She said it was good, but would have been better if not for being so crowded. Whenever she stepped back to see them from a distance, which is the way a lot of the Impressionists are best seen - people would get in the way.

She said it was good, but the effect was ruined for many of the paintings.

[zey.livejournal.com]

Your experience with Latham sounds a bit better than mine with Geoff Gallop (WA Premier now, Opposition Leader then). Very sour expression on his face as he was leaving the lift. Guess he'd had one of those days ;-).

[thorfinn]

Was it in election time, though? I bet Latham doesn't go 'round doing that all the time... But in the midst of election fever, the "smile at punters" reflex is going to be cranked way up.

[lukeii.livejournal.com]

So I should buy my tickets online to go tonight?

[thorfinn]

Definitely, unless you're a member. Do anything to avoid the ticket buying queue.

[lukeii.livejournal.com]

Oh no!

The website isn't selling tickets anymore!

Looks like I'll be queueing

[frou-frou.livejournal.com]

We were at the NGV last night too...must have just missed you. Were there to see the Man Ray but discovered too late that late closing was only for the Impressionists.

Saw that show not long after it opened, on a weekday. Still busy but doable. Nice show! It looks like being members of the NGV isn't a bad idea either (we're going to try again for Man Ray - perhaps on a Sunday - and hope it's not too crowded

[thorfinn]

NGV Membership is definitely good. Couples membership is especially value for money.