Family Unit Circa 1970

Hello. Here is one of my latest paintings 'Family Unit Circa 1970' which can be found at http://www.robertgirandola.com - One area that I am very interested in is this transition from the analog to digital world - in every area from photography to music to our personal records, the very essence of who we are. I sometimes wonder how much of me is a bit and a byte stored somewhere. I know my childhood seems innocent enough, and of course our parents all the more - simpler times. This might seem like a funny connection to this particular painting but I think a lot about the sod farm I grew up near, out in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. It took 30 minutes just to get to a grocery store. Playing was running out into the field and finding old tractors or a silo to throw rocks inside - hearing the echoing crash. And now, half the field is developed with many houses - and where I once ran and played is now 'digitized' in a way, parceled out in tiny plots across a once great field. With the analog television signal going away for good next year and the move to digital – to me, has the same emotional resonance as seeing the fields around my house ‘developed’. Do you sometimes think technology is moving all too fast?

Simpler Times

There is a lot of amazing things that can be done with a digital signal - vast amounts of information can be distributed across hundreds of channels in HDTV. Thoughts, identities, ideas can be ‘taken’ and redistributed in the blink of an eye. When I worked on Family Unit Circa 1970 I wanted to take one of my generations most recognizable icons and re-present it in a way that plays with the idea of analog and digital – I was really trying to simulate that disturbing energy feeling of a television set on the boarder between static and signal – the Brady Bunch functions as memory for me, of that ‘innocent age.’ As a child watching programming from three stations, I remember having to go up into the attic to spin the antenna to just the right spot so we could get a clear picture - I would call down to my brothers and sister 'Can you see it yet? Can you see it?' Flash forward to the present state, the ‘static’ takes on a metaphor of disparate, digital data packets coursing through time and space carrying with it the ‘identity’ of thoughts across hundreds of channels – I feel both excited by the new but pensive - How have you been affected by analog to digital? I'd love to hear from musicians -

Today's Thought - Jung

What did Jung mean by this?  Do we have it backwards?  When we sleep, and dream - are we really awake?  When we are awake, are we really dreaming?  Hovering around this thought -  When you look into your heart, can you begin to realize the world around you is a construct of your thoughts - and those thoughts, like dreams, can be changed?  Can you change the world around you by changing the way you think about it?