Mark Forscher » notes

Arizona

mark — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 15:59:19 +0000

Pittsburgh

mark — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 03:21:37 +0000

The Tale of Roberto’s Scary Night

mark — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:46:26 +0000

Roberto Gonzalez Rey
October 2011

Filmed in Brooklyn, NY
by Mark Forscher

The Creators Project

mark — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 17:01:01 +0000

3 Days in Iceland

mark — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 23:52:05 +0000

Starring Song Isabel Hee
Music: “Summer Storm” by Day Might Same
Filmed by Mark Forscher

The 9/11 Memorial

mark — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:22:36 +0000

Iceland Highlights

mark — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 13:35:49 +0000

Þingvellir

Our ride for travelling the Golden Circle

Gullfoss waterfall

Faxi waterfall

Kerið crater

Reykjavik

Blue Lagoon

Song Bird

mark — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 01:49:42 +0000

Song Bird from garbnzgh on Vimeo.

“My name is Song and I’m going to tell you the story of how a baby bird attacked me.”

Filmed in Brooklyn, NY
by Mark Forscher

Starring Song Isabel Hee

9/10/11

Gallery Opening Tonight

mark — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 13:13:37 +0000

I have some new work in an art show curated by Regina Bresler. There’s an opening reception from 7-10pm tonight at 1501 Broadway in Brooklyn. I’ll be out of town for the opening, but check it out if you can.

On Cargo Cults

mark — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:31:55 +0000

Great analysis by Adrian Hon in The Telegraph on “Unbound: The Crowdfunding Cargo Cult” on the perils of copying a product or service without understanding the fundamental incentives, mechanics, or ideas that make the product or service unique. Hon starts with the story of an isolated island called Melanesia in the Southwest Pacific:

Until the Second World War, its inhabitants had few encounters with technology or war, let alone planes and tanks. When Japanese and American soldiers arrived to set up bases, the Melanesians would have been astonished to see planes setting down on their newly-cleared runways disgorging massive amounts of materiel, medicine, food, weapons and clothing.
It would have been difficult for the Melanesians to grasp the reasons why the soldiers were there, or the vast and complex logistics chains that produced the planes and the weapons that moved the supplies around. And so when the soldiers left, taking their supplies with them, the Melanesians did what made perfect sense to them – they imitated the US soldiers by clearing the forest, building wooden control towers, carving headphones, and they fruitlessly waited for planes to arrive with cargo.
Today, we call the Melanesians’ behaviour a ‘cargo cult’ and use the term to describe anyone else who imitates superficial features of a system (in this case, military logistics) and hopes to replicate the original’s success, without any thought or understanding of the intrinsic workings of the system.
Though the cargo cult story is fairly well known, it’s hard to believe that anyone could be short-sighted enough to repeat their mistakes – yet there are countless examples of cargo cult thinking from the small to the massive, all showing how tempting it is to believe that the success of others can be copied as easily as an MP3.