Ian Bunn | Political & Popular Culture Arts

Shinzo Abe the 58 year old and youngest post-World War II Prime Minister of Japan and also the President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has been the subject of article by Joseph Stiglitz on the Project Syndicate titled ‘The Promise of Abenomics’. Stiglitz states “…Abe’s program for his country’s economic recovery has led to a surge in domestic confidence. But to what extent can “Abenomics” claim credit? Interestingly, a closer look at Japan’s performance over the past decade suggests little reason for persistent bearish sentiment. Indeed, in terms of growth of output per employed worker, Japan has done quite well since the turn of the century. …as many Japanese rightly sense, Abenomics can only help the country’s recovery. Abe is doing what many economists (including me) have been calling for in the US and Europe: a comprehensive program entailing monetary, fiscal, and structural policies. Abe likens this approach to holding three arrows – taken alone, each can be bent; taken together, none can. …Government efforts to increase productivity in the service sector probably will be particularly important. For example, Japan is in a good position to exploit synergies between an improved health-care sector and its world-class manufacturing capabilities, in the development of medical instrumentation. …There is every reason to believe that Japan’s strategy for rejuvenating its economy will succeed:  the country benefits from strong institutions, has a well-educated labor force with superb technical skills and design sensibilities, and is located in the world’s most (only?) dynamic region. It suffers from less inequality than many advanced industrial countries (though more than Canada and the northern European countries), and it has had a longer-standing commitment to environment preservation. If the comprehensive agenda that Abe has laid out is executed well, today’s growing confidence will be vindicated. Indeed, Japan could become one of the few rays of light in an otherwise gloomy advanced-country landscape.”

Inspired by Joseph Stiglitz, Project Syndicate ow.ly/kuCAs Image source TTTNIS ow.ly/kuCDc

Clive Thompson the 44 year old Canadian freelance journalist, blogger and science technology writer has published an article on the Wired titled ‘No Longer Vaporware: The Internet of Things Is Finally Talking’. Thompson states “…The Internet of Things is the long-prophesied phenomenon of everyday devices talking to one another—and us—online, creating odd new behaviors and efficiencies. Fridges that order food when you’re almost out of butter! Houses that sense when you’re gone and power down! Back in the ’90s, big companies built systems to do tricks like this, but they were expensive, hard to use, and vendor-specific. The hype eventually boiled away. The Internet of Things turned out to be vaporware. Until the past few years, that is, when the landscape shifted from below. … After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, many Japanese worried that the government wasn’t providing adequate data on areas outside the evacuation zone. So some hackers designed customized Geiger counters that automatically updated radioactivity levels on an online map. Soon there were more than 300 jury-rigged all over the country, so the public could see real-time radiation levels. “It was the largest nongovernmental radiation-monitoring network in Japan,” says Chris “Akiba” Wang, one of the hackers. A similar example recently emerged in earthquake prone Chile, where a student modded a seismometer to tweet its readings. It quickly amassed more than 300,000 followers, who were grateful for the early alerts. In essence, the Internet of Things is happening because it has reached the “Apple II stage.” This is the moment when a new technology finally becomes easy enough to use that thousands of people start doing experiments to scratch a personal itch—like Sande with his fan. And the pace of experimentation is going to accelerate, as new gear arrives that makes it even cheaper and easier.”

Inspired by Wired ow.ly/g2h7N image source Twitter ow.ly/g2h1M

Heather Stewart the British business and economics editor for the Observer has published an article in The Guardian titled ‘£13tn hoard hidden from taxman by global elite’ discussing how private banks help the wealthiest to move cash into havens. Stewart states “A global super-rich elite has exploited gaps in cross-border tax rules to hide an extraordinary £13 trillion ($21tn) of wealth offshore – as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together – according to research commissioned by the campaign group Tax Justice Network. …[wealth] leaked out of scores of countries into secretive jurisdictions such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands with the help of private banks, which vie to attract the assets of so-called high net-worth individuals. …The detailed analysis in the report, compiled using data from a range of sources, including the Bank of International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund, suggests that for many developing countries the cumulative value of the capital that has flowed out of their economies since the 1970s would be more than enough to pay off their debts to the rest of the world. Oil-rich states with an internationally mobile elite have been especially prone to watching their wealth disappear into offshore bank accounts instead of being invested at home, the research suggests. Once the returns on investing the hidden assets is included, almost £500bn has left Russia since the early 1990s when its economy was opened up. Saudi Arabia has seen £197bn flood out since the mid-1970s, and Nigeria £196bn.”

Inspired by The Guardian ow.ly/d0EA6 image source Twitter ow.ly/d0Eob

Just bowing rather than shaking hands (March 20th 2012)

Ian McCurdie the UK medical practitioner specializing in Sport & Exercise Medicine, and the Director of Medical Services for the British Olympic Association and Chief Medical Officer for the British Olympic Team, has urged athletes of the British Olympic team to consider not shaking hands with other sports people, dignitaries and officials at the London Olympic Games. McCurdie claims the potential illness and possible injury from picking up germs are a serious threat to an athlete’s performance and suggests the alternative “maybe adopting the Japanese way and just bowing rather than shaking hands”. A spokeswoman for the team attempting to play down the controversy stated “It’s just basic, common sense. We are simply reminding athletes to take commonsense measures, such as washing their hands and using hand foam, to reduce the risk of catching a bug. …It’s the same type of advice many employers give to their employees. … As an official policy, we are not advising our athletes to avoid shaking hands with people.”

Inspired by Rachael Brown http://ow.ly/9ARvD image source St Anthonys Hospital http://ow.ly/9ARfX

Crowded groups of dots so dense (January 12th)

Yayoi Kusama the 82 year old Japanese conceptual artist renowned for her obsessive repetition of dots and patterns has a major solo exhibition titled ‘Look Now, See Forever’ at the Queensland GOMA. One of the pieces titled The obliteration room 2011, is an interactive project where a large furnished room of stark white is in the process of being covered with various size primary coloured polka dots, applied by visitors (mostly children). The result according to Artinfo is “a hypnotizing variety of colors and patterns taking over the room like highly contagious rainbow chicken pox. The bare white walls, couch, tables, and lamps play up the intense hues of the stickers, which come in a variety of shapes and sizes… crowded groups of dots so dense that the wall isn’t even visible beneath.”

Inspired by Artinfo http://ow.ly/8lKJt image source yknow http://ow.ly/8lKPq

Satoshi Furukawa the 47 year old Japanese surgeon and JAZA astronaut is currently cultivating cucumbers on board the International Space Station. Furukawa joined with fellow astronauts Russian Sergei Volkov and American Michael Fossum for a six month tour at the Space Station, and is tasked to grow cucumbers as research for future explorations on food self sufficiency on potential long haul flights. Although not permitted to eat the cucumbers grown during this program, the research is hoped to allow future generations of space travelers to do otherwise and harvest their own fresh food supplements. A previous Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi helped improve food standards with preparation techniques, having successfully made sushi while on board the Space Station. Furukawa is assigned as a Mission specialist with a flight engineering designation.

Inspired by the Guardian http://ow.ly/5Diii image source NASA http://ow.ly/5DiaL

Masataka Shimizu the president of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) the world’s fourth largest electric power company based in Japan, was heckled by Japanese politicians as he apologized for causing so much trouble for residents near the Fukushima complex resulting from the crippled nuclear plant’s radiation leak. Shimizu was putting forward TEPCO’s plan for dealing with the plant’s radiation, which was not well received by the lawmakers, nor from public polls. Kirsten Anderberg in her Indymedia blog claims Shimizu has “sold out his own people for personal profits and is now hiding like a damned coward under a rock. It is time we held individuals responsible for the corporate nightmares they create. You are a criminal and you should be publically shamed for what you have done via the Fukushima Daiichi Plant.”

Inspired by Kirsten Anderberg ow.ly/4FPhN image source indymedia ow.ly/4FPeo

Akihito the 77 year old 125th Emperor of Japan in an unprecedented and somber six minute address relayed throughout Japanese television stations where normal coverage was interrupted for the broadcast, described his deep hurt at the tens of thousands dead and missing victims of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami, along with the grievous situation in the affected areas of the damaged nuclear reactors. Authorities are battling to prevent a nuclear catastrophe of unprecedented scale, potentially the worst since the end of the Second World War that required massive rebuilding from the devastating defeat. Akihito called on his people to hand in hand treat each other with compassion and overcome these difficult times. Many Japanese revere their emperor or at least have a fond affection.

Inspired by Elaine Kurtenbach ow.ly/4kvEC image source Shawnc ow.ly/4kvZl

Gilbert Gottfried the 56 year old American stand-up comedian renowned for his trademark loud grating voice as the Aflac duck in the Insurance company’s commercials, has been dismissed from the Aflac duck role following his posting of jokes on his Twitter account about the Japanese earthquake and tsunami disaster. Aflac receives three-quarters of its business from Japan and while quite attuned to Japanese sensitivities in the wake of the disaster, seems to be a gross over reaction to what comedians generally do – make light of grotesque situations in providing a catharsis. Gottfried has deleted the jokes from the Twitter account and found it necessary for some reason to apologize.  Another victim to political correctness and corporate censorship of the arts.

Inspired by Jack Shafer ow.ly/4kvhD image source Slate ow.ly/4kv9e

I did it merely to see if it could be done (September 23rd)

Pearce Delphin whose Twitter name is @zzap is a 17-year-old Australian schoolboy who lives at home in Melbourne with his parents has admitted exposing a security flaw on the social networking site Twitter. Delphin tweeted a piece of “mouseover” JavaScript code which brought up a pop-up window exposing a vulnerability to the Twitter site. He unwittingly caused a hacker attack to the site when the exposed flaw was then used by hackers to affect thousands of other users, causing havoc on the site for about five hours by sending users to Japanese porn sites and replicating worms before engineers could patch it up. Twitter apologized to its millions of users for the cause of the “mouseover” bug.

Political Arts | Ian Bunn Visual Artist

My digital art work is essentially politics and art. It’s about iconic people, places and events of our day.  Recorded visually through daily compilations of manipulated digital images, posted online and disseminated via online media and social networks. The works are diaristic in nature that metaphorically record a spectator’s experience of the contemporary digital age.  The resulting work intentionally has a painterly aesthetic acknowledging my historical painting practice.

Adapting Pop Art’s notion of mass media imagery into a context of the contemporary digital age, the work draws on a myriad points of reference. Utilizing fractured images to provide an allusion to the digital noise pounding away daily into our sub consciousness.  The work is essentially popular culture arts, diverging from the traditional Pop Art notion of a pronounced repetition of a consumer icon, instead this work focuses on the deluge of contemporary digital content. The compilation of the fragmented imagery is vividly distractive, not unlike cable surfing or a jaunt through Times Square.

This digital photo manipulation art work is premised on the basis that Pop art in its beginnings, freeze-framed what consumers of popular culture experienced into iconic visual abstractions. With the advent of the techno age, visual information circulates in such quantities, so rapidly and exponentially, that to comprehend a fraction of it all becomes a kind of production process in itself.  Hence this work considers fragmented elements of Popular Culture through an artistic and conceptual exploration of specific people and events of the day.

www.ianbunn.com

Life has been spent working towards this moment (September 14th)

The revolving door for the top job in Tokyo remained with current Japanese Prime Minister, the 63 year old Naoto Kan.  Kan unlike his predecessors, managed to retain his job as the Prime Minister and head of the ruling DJP (Democratic Party of Japan) after convincingly defeating his challenger Ichiro Ozawa, the somewhat tainted powerbroker of the party, having been challenged after only three months into the job. Japan has suffered from a lack of consistent policy as a result of the leadership changes, exacerbated particularly at a time when this third largest economy of the world has a strengthening currency while in the context of a deflating economy attempting to support significant issues such as escalating aged population and national public debt that is twice the economy’s size.  Kan has vowed to reduce public spending and borrowing.

Political Arts | Ian Bunn Visual Artist

My digital art work is essentially politics and art. It’s about iconic people, places and events of our day.  Recorded visually through daily compilations of manipulated digital images, posted online and disseminated via online media and social networks. The works are diaristic in nature that metaphorically record a spectator’s experience of the contemporary digital age.  The resulting work intentionally has a painterly aesthetic acknowledging my historical painting practice.

Adapting Pop Art’s notion of mass media imagery into a context of the contemporary digital age, the work draws on a myriad points of reference. Utilizing fractured images to provide an allusion to the digital noise pounding away daily into our sub consciousness.  The work is essentially popular culture arts, diverging from the traditional Pop Art notion of a pronounced repetition of a consumer icon, instead this work focuses on the deluge of contemporary digital content. The compilation of the fragmented imagery is vividly distractive, not unlike cable surfing or a jaunt through Times Square.

This digital photo manipulation art work is premised on the basis that Pop art in its beginnings, freeze-framed what consumers of popular culture experienced into iconic visual abstractions. With the advent of the techno age, visual information circulates in such quantities, so rapidly and exponentially, that to comprehend a fraction of it all becomes a kind of production process in itself.  Hence this work considers fragmented elements of Popular Culture through an artistic and conceptual exploration of specific people and events of the day.

www.ianbunn.com

Today inter-relations demand a new paradigm (August 16th)

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak proposed a plan to reunite South with North Korea.  He suggested a tax to pay for the expected costs.   To mark the 65th anniversary of Korea’s independence from Japanese occupation, Lee said in a speech “Today inter-Korean relations demand a new paradigm.”  Also stating in the speech “It is imperative that the two sides choose coexistence instead of confrontation, progress instead of stagnation. The two of us need to overcome the current state of division and proceed with the goal of peaceful reunification.”

Politics and Art | Ian Bunn Visual Artist

My work digital art is essentially politics and art. It’s about iconic people, places and events of our day.  Recorded visually through daily compilations of manipulated digital images, posted online and disseminated via online media and social networks. The works are diaristic in nature that metaphorically record a spectator’s experience of the contemporary digital age.  The resulting work intentionally has a painterly aesthetic acknowledging my historical painting practice.

Adapting Pop Art’s notion of mass media imagery into a context of the contemporary digital age, the work draws on a myriad points of reference. Utilizing fractured images to provide an allusion to the digital noise pounding away daily into our sub consciousness.  The work is essentially popular culture arts, diverging from the traditional Pop Art notion of a pronounced repetition of a consumer icon, instead this work focuses on the deluge of contemporary digital content. The compilation of the fragmented imagery is vividly distractive, not unlike cable surfing or a jaunt through Times Square.

This digital photo manipulation art work is premised on the basis that Pop art in its beginnings, freeze-framed what consumers of popular culture experienced into iconic visual abstractions. With the advent of the techno age, visual information circulates in such quantities, so rapidly and exponentially, that to comprehend a fraction of it all becomes a kind of production process in itself.  Hence this work considers fragmented elements of Popular Culture through an artistic and conceptual exploration of specific people and events of the day.