- Edward Said met Jean Paul Sartre in 1979: “For my generation he [Sartre] has always been one of the great intellectual heroes of the 20th century, a man whose insight and intellectual gifts were at the service of nearly every progressive cause of our time. Yet he seemed neither infallible nor prophetic. On the contrary, one admired Sartre for the efforts he made to understand situations and, when necessary, to offer solidarity to political causes. He was never condescending or evasive, even if he was given to error and overstatement. Nearly everything he wrote is interesting for its sheer audacity, its freedom (even its freedom to be verbose) and its generosity of spirit.” – London Review of Books
Tag: 06.00
THE PICTURES DO LIE
Can history be told objectively on film? “My point here is that all makers of filmed history, when they come to the point when they must decide which image to choose, where to cut a sequence, or what to lay down on the music track, are not so much in search of objectivity, as they are engaged in the act of cobbling an evocatively credible yarn. The license they take is the same as the poet’s in the act of choosing or inventing or reworking a trope or a rhyme scheme — that is to say, “poetic license.” – Culturefront 06/00
RICHARD SERRA on —
— art, museums and life: “I think basically I’m not interested in people following my work or making work like my work. But what does interest me is the notion that if you do a lot of work it means there’s a potential for other people to understand that a lot of things are possible with a sustained effort and that the broadening of experiences is possible and I think that’s all art can be.” – Coagula
RICHARD SERRA ON ART, MUSEUMS, AND LIFE
“I think basically I’m not interested in people following my work or making work like my work. But what does interest me is the notion that if you do a lot of work it means there’s a potential for other people to understand that a lot of things are possible with a sustained effort and that the broadening of experiences is possible and I think that’s all art can be.” – Coagula
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI LAMENTS POETRY
“Today in the United States, the poet has no real place or status. In Latin America and in some European and Middle Eastern countries, poets are still honored in society, but in North America what other city except San Francisco appoints a poet laureate every year?” – Exquisite Corpse
MODERN STRADIVARIUS?
A biochemist claims he’s discovered exactly why violins made in Stradivari’s day are so magnificent. And he’s begun turning out his own instruments, which have been “bought for as much as $15,000 apiece and reviewed favorably by members of the Cleveland Quartet, Chicago Symphony, and New York Philharmonic. Yehudi Menuhin played one, on loan for 15 years.” So why aren’t musicians flocking to Joseph Nagyvary’s workshop? – Discover Magazine
CLAP WITH ME
Why is it that audiences at the end of a performance they like often end up synchronizing their clapping? “According to Steven Strogatz, a mathematician at Cornell University who has studied synchronization for 20 years, the same set of mathematical principles governs the phenomenon wherever it occurs – be it among applauding people, flashing fireflies, or roomfuls of grandfather clocks.” – Discover Magazine
COMMUNIST FILMS
Ever notice that are virtually no American films about communism? Despite the fact that communist dictators would make great villains for great dramas, “the simple but startling truth is that the major conflict of our time, democracy versus Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism–what The New York Times recently called “the holy war of the 20th century”–is almost entirely missing from American cinema.” – Reason 06/00
META-HYPERTEXT
- What is a text? How does your understanding of the author’s intent and references change your experience of the text? And where does hypertext take you? “Consider the possibility that every written work is a hypertext, a fabric of many works woven together. Despite how original, unique or authoritative any text might appear to be, it’s really a hypertext with links into hundreds or thousands of other works.” – *spark-online
THE GOOG ONLINE
The Guggenheim Museum’s most ambitious architecture may have nothing to do with Frank Gehry. The Goog has bet the budget equivalent of one of its land galleries on developing a radical “virtual” museum online. “Though much has been made of the marriage of computers and architecture, the computer is still used chiefly as a facilitator—a tool to help conceptualize or produce a final object. But what of an autonomous digital architecture—an architecture that is conceived of, rendered, built, and exists and is experienced solely on the computer?” – Architecture Magazine