July 17. The Fun Park store was kawaii overload. So many cute plush faces! Also weird Japanese humor, like a dog sitting on the toilet reading. A Shiba lying on its side eating a potato chip is fine, though. Laziness seems to be a key component to this kind of animal humor. This is demonstrated by the huge popularity of Gudetama, whose name literally means lazy egg.
The Shiba comes in a blind box, meaning you get one of the designs shown on the box, but you don’t know which one. The poses include video gaming, napping, binge watching, online shopping and relaxing in a hot tub. The toilet pose is titled “Timeness.” ???? There are several machines you can spend a dollar on to try to hook a cute stuffy. In Tokyo I saw entire shops filled with machines like this!
Next I changed gears to visit the nearby David Brower Center, which houses offices for environmental and social justice organizations. There are two art exhibit areas on the ground floor, along with artwork in the hallways of the other floors, all open to the public.
The large format video exhibit, Worm’s Eye View, featured extreme close up videos of natural settings with ambient audio. It was pretty and well composed but more like wallpaper than art, IMO. So I didn’t feel too bad co-opting it for some selfies. I also have a thing for stairwell photos.
The California Forest Project photos were the most detailed large scale photos I think I’ve seen. They’re composed of hundreds of photos shot in a grid, meaning the photographer, Stefan Thuilot, moved the camera between shots. The scenes look realistic but with an almost surreal amount of detail.
In several of them I saw an unexpected parallax effect; the trees in the foreground seemed to move slightly to the left vis a vis the ones in back as I walked past, left to right! Apparently, this is considered a fault in photography but I thought it was magical. I tried to capture it in the video but I don’t think it worked.
The kinetic sculpture in the lobby is the Tule Wave by local artist Reuben Margolin. For locals, the Center is open every weekday and it’s free to visit. On the second floor is a library of nature photo books you can peruse.