must...sleep...now!

dkmon48

after some hesitation, i decided that including words in these drawings isn't a complete sacrilege, as long as they make sense together. maybe i'll learn a thing or two about typography in the process, hm?

dkmon49

i realized that i was actually a day behind, so NOW i am officially caught up! who knows how long that will last, now that i'm going to have to work like a normal human being and sleep on schedule. if you're in the New York area, come check out the SCOPE international art fair: i think it's free, and you can come gawk/gag at contemporary art from all over the world with yours truly.

headphones = antisocial

dkmon47

good hip hop is like a good conversation: the words captivate, invite reflection, inspire response.
bad hip hop is like talking to a dude who quotes way too many Will Ferrell movies: the words irritate, invite sarcasm, inspire guesses of source until you stop listening and just focus on the noise around his voice.

Today, I listened to a lot of Jurassic 5, which restored a bit of the passion for music I didn't realize had been dwindling with every industrial corn mixtape fodder I hear attempting to compensate for its formulaic filler by beefing up the product with all the essential/usual veterans and criminals and banking on their insanely idiotic/catchy campaign slogans to push releases. I'm not saying it's wrong to have a signature style--it definitely helps distinguish one rapper from the millions of others reaching for the stars out in myspace. But when the only style concerned is that of the rapper's obscenely decadent life, the music just becomes an echo of his celebrity, fading dumb and dumber with each baaallliinnn'!

It's the same thing with food (and any product, for that matter): it's easy to forget that you eat at McD's because it's fast, filling, and has the brand power to convince you that it's soo bad that it's good. But when you decide to go to that local restaurant where all the ingredients are farm fresh and each burger is carefully prepared with consideration to detail (good style points!), you'll remember what good food really tastes like and wonder how you could have put that other garbage in your body for so long and maybe that's why you've been getting fat, breaking out and your girlfriend's breaking up with you.

That being said, of course I'll still listen to all those fast food joints...sometimes there's nothing else that will satisfy quite like a Fat Joe slammy with all the Lil condiments. But hopefully I'll be a bit more conscious about my daily music diet until the industry upgrades and restriction won't be as necessary.

business + pleasure = pussiness and b-leisure

caught up! the first few are more recent (i'm too lazy to fiddle with this image loader, and really...does it maatter?)


dkmon44
tried to experiment with transparencies and colors to create an icy, alien landscape.
don't know, seems kinda video-gamey to me.

dkmon45
this dude's black face freaaaks me out...

dkmon46
memory-laden furniture

dkmon39
i like this guy's eyes...wearily inquisitive, like an old dog lying by the door

dkmon40
already nostalgic!

dkmon41
these types of drawings are always fun to do because they're just straight up freestyling and each resulting splatter has such a flexible interpretation on its own existence.

dkmon42
face is kinda like those kuba/kota masks, les desmoiselles style, yeah? or maybe more like Viola in Two Sisters (short animated film by Caroline Leaf--she scratched each drawing directly onto the frames of the film, which is absolutely mental!).

dkmon43

the color plague gripping fashion sickens

wine, dine, grind

swaying on the lego yellow
stamping out sooty snuff
the accordion echoes, never sounded so soulful
more tannin on the tongue
flavors less tinny heard
mitten smooch sendoff across the tracks
wave, wave sway ease a smile slow, let that flat carry it now
wafting, wavering, wooooooosh
stand clear of the closing doors please

introducing a new breed

*EDIT - I forgot to name the music for this piece:
Snack n C'mish - Palms Out Mix vol.1 - Midnight Run
Also, to distinguish these from regular dkmons, I'll be labeling them under muse.ic, but continuing the count.

muse.ic38

I have music playing almost all the time, and with a growing bookmark folder already packed with diligently updated mp3 blogs (combined with my avid collector spirit), I am finding myself aurally inhaling hundreds of songs at a time without really stopping to savor the subtle flavors in each. Since this could lead to a serious case of binge-hearing, I've decided that as part of my dkmon project, I will choose songs to analyze, dissect, and articulate visually--an exercise that seems to be a natural progression of the course of my interests over the past half-year...

When I took animation over the summer, I became familiar with the powerful correlation between sight and sound. Though I've seen enough music videos and Looney Tunes cartoons to know that the two work closely together, I wasn't really aware of this correlation as expressed in films by innovative "visual musicians" as Oscar Fischinger(whose work was solicited and then mutilated by Disney for Fantasia) and Norman McLaren, where it appears as an abstraction of the senses which attempts to articulate a certain philosophy of art that extends beyond aesthetics and includes the spiritual. In my art history class during fall term, I learned that Wassily Kandinsky (whom some claim as the Father of Abstraction) likewise based his methodical analysis of the psychological properties of color, form and arrangement on the "spiritual vibrations" he felt while listening to music, which he explored in depth in his Composition and Improvisation series.

While I'm not so sure I would call them "spiritual vibrations", I do believe that there is a visual vocabulary for music, as with anything else. Though the principles are pretty much the same as those which govern graphic arts, I find myself reluctant to equate such a commercial expression with something I find so personal...hm.

Maybe I would call them spiritual vibrations after all...

In any case, this will be my last post until Sunday. I'm headed back up to school for some business and pleasure, and will report back on whether they should indeed be unmixed.

cold coma

dkmon36

zzz

ahead of the game

dkmon37

i forgot that i had already drawn dkmon36 and drew one for today before realizing i was doing extra work. since the one i just drew is a direct expression of how ridiculously cold it is tonight (and reportedly will be tomorrow, eeek), i'll put it up now so that you may project all your frost-induced pain and discomfort onto this freezing fellow, who will take it and like it (he's kiiinda into S&M).

when life gives you lemons...

...eat a miracle fruit and taste lemonade.

Miracle Fruit - a fruit that masks sourness and accents other flavors for approximately 30 minutes at a time with no reported illnesses or side-effects (besides foodphoria), yet is banned in the US by the FDA. They sure know how to kill a party.

Maybe if enough people blog about this, there will soon be dealers for these taste-altering substances everywhere. Spread the good word, sprout those seeds!

Here's an interesting article on how the Japanese are using the fruit to lose weight: a miracle diet at last!

resisting B tendencies...

it's funny because it's true
(check out more relational observations in index form here)

a sofa slinky!

this would be perfect for a nomadic college kid...or the furniture-fickle...or anyone who knows how to appreciate functionality. too bad there seems to be no info on this magically morphing couch thing yet, though given that i saw this via boingboing, i'm sure that by the time i wake up tomorrow afternoon, there will be relevant updates...like where i can go to find out that i can't afford this ridiculously practical and necessary addition to my life.

uh...

dkmon35

the horrid result of an experiment in flat coloring
i think that's a monkey in a kimono hiking up a hill with Doughboy eyes.
huh.

daily double

dkmon34

Jeopardy is stuck in the 90s capsule forever with afternoon Nickolodeon family game shows (remember What Would You Do? oh man...) and Rosie Perez in White Men Can't Jump. There's something comforting in that.

blechhhh

dkmon33

too much matador or meds?

bringing whimsy back

dkmon32

she sips tea daintily, dreamily, daily.