Are your political beliefs dictated by the architecture of your brain? “Is there something intrinsically reductive or fatalistic in connecting political values to brain functioning? No more so than ascribing them to race or economic background, which we happily do without second thought. Isn’t it more dehumanizing to attribute your beliefs to economic conditions outside your control? At least your brain is inalienably yours — it’s where the whole category ‘you’ originates.”
Tag: 08.22.04
Where Is San Jose’s Medici?
No region has ever attracted as much capital or created as much wealth as Silicon Valley in the 1990s. But unlike great historical centers of money and creativity, San Jose has not developed its culture. “If San Jose is to realize its destiny as one of America’s major cities, cultural development needs to be taken as seriously as economic development. The potential of local organizations is enormous. What they lack is the sustained private investment and unabashed ambition for greatness such funding allows.”
Scientists Challenge Hockney Theory
“In 2001, David Hockney … published his theory that great artists including Jan van Eyck and Caravaggio used lenses and simple cameras to ‘trace’ images onto canvas. But at the International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR) in Cambridge on Thursday, a group of leading computer experts will show that a central image that he used to prove his theory shows clear signs of human error.”
Ship Of Media Art
An odd mix of participants – “ambient DJs, academics, experimental arts promoters, nutty conceptual artists, hard-bitten journalists and certifiable, electronic nerds” – recently boarded a ship to hash out issues in electronic arts. “Like some variant on the archetypal ‘ship of fools’, the International Symposium for Electronic Arts 2004 decided to transport itself by boat from Helsinki (Finland) to Tallinn (Estonia), creating a hothouse for performers, discussions and socialising.”
Copymight – Plagiarism In The Digital Age
Plagiarism is big business. And there are plenty of websites waiting to help you out. “Many companies sell term papers, essays and book reports by the thousands, for as much as $250 a pop, all just a click and Mom’s credit card away, and all in the privacy of an undergraduate’s dorm room.”
Making Games Look Like Movies
Video games are looking more and more like movies. But the game industry is also looking more like the movie business. “The entire industry is looking more and more like filmed entertainment. Soon a handful of hits will drive the entire industry. Video game executives say they have no choice if they want to make their $11 billion industry as mainstream as the movie business.”
What Kind Of Dancer Is A Mark Morris Dancer?
“From the start, Morris has gone in for nonconformity when it comes to the bodies he chooses to animate his work. Instead of selecting for uniformity and conventional notions of a physical ideal, he has regularly assembled a miniature motley society of the small, the stocky, the lushly ample, the tall-and-skinny beanpole type, the delicate, the blunt, and, yes, a few whose ballet teachers may have had high hopes of placing in one of those finalists-only classical companies that go by their initials. The flat-footed and those whom the gods of turn-out have not favored have their place with Morris, as do the fresh and frank American girl and the sultry glamour girl (Betty and Veronica, if you will), the beach hero and the fellow into whose face the beach hero kicks the sand.”
Denver’s Darwinian Proposition
With the addition of a new Clyfford Still Museum project, Denver’s list of cultural projects has grown large, with a half-dozen major fund-raising efforts threatening to bump into one another. The city’s mayor is unconcerned. In the city “there is an unending level of needs. Does that mean you turn away a new opportunity? No. It comes down to some form of Darwinian selection. What a community truly cherishes and values, it will support.”
Defending History (But What About The Historians?)
A year-and-a-half after Keith Windschuttle published his book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, the Australian academic world is “still anguishing over its impact. It is terrified of what he will do next. Windschuttle struck at the heart of the accepted view of Australian colonial history in the past 30 years – that the settler society had engaged in a pattern of conquest, dispossession and killing of the indigenous inhabitants. The facts, he said, did not stack up.”
The Set-less Movie?
Hollywood is awaiting the release of a new movie with high anticipation. It was filmed without any locations or sets, those supplied by computers. “If it becomes a hit, the implications for filmmaking are enormous. The action-filled adventure with spectacular special effects cost around £40 million – less than half the budget for a similar film made in conventional fashion. Because there were no sets to construct, it did away with the need for production designers, art directors and carpenters. It could be the most important cinematic breakthrough in years.”