MAIYA & JESSICA

Always surround yourself with people who support and inspire you. It's like playing an instrument with someone more advanced. You learn and improve!

-Jessica for Mirth

GADGETS

A version of the song, From Russia With Love, by ska saxophonist Roland Alphonso, rolled in waves from my computer speakers around noon. Delighted to discover a song that married my piqued-interest in ska and steady affection for James Bond film, I relaxed into the familiar tune and took stock of my surroundings. What occurred to me next had nothing to do with ska music and everything to do with gadgets.

James Bond is famous for utilizing inventive gadgets to save his life in a pinch. Tricked out Aston Martins, everything-but-a-watch timepieces, cigarette guns, secret bathroom peep holes, attaché cases and more are created by the Q-branch to assist Agent Bond in life-threatening scenarios and situations. In almost every film, Q, Bond's gadget mentor, presents new gadgets and explains how they work. Bond casually accepts the gifts, and as the film progresses, each gadget reappears in a more dramatic setting, normally allowing Bond to escape by the hair of his chinny chin chin.

Most American consumers possess a talent for blurring the lines of want and need, resulting in a collection of purchases--thought to be useful but unfortunately covered in dust. Mirth, however, is the people's Q-branch. If Q outfits Bond with life-saving gadgets, Mirth outfits its patrons with life-improvement gadgets. My purchases from Mirth never lay dormant. I find happiness and utility in them every day.

James Bond in a wetsuit topped with a duck from Goldfinger

-Jessica for Mirth

3/4 VIEW

The 3/4 view is a perspective used in image making to capture an object, person or place in the third dimension. As I shot the iPhone photos above, I struggled to reconcile this perspective's purpose--my mind a nerve-like cylinder with lense, breathing in and out, grasping for perfect focus. Do the photos indicate a more or less whole picture of the building? Is this image more whole than my own ideas? How do we process an image with three-dimensional perspective as opposed to one with two? Does this extra bit of information--the twist of an angle or another wall exposed--allow us to perceive more or less? My experience is that we all view the world, its shapes and parallels quite differently.

Walter Benjamin wrote, "The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses."  

-Jessica for Mirth