“It remains to be seen whether much emergent digital work that aims to graft art, science and technology will continue to be shown in museums, endowed by the imprimatur of art theory — or whether the points of encounter will change, too, leaving the humanistic elements behind. If so, will it still be art?”
Tag: 09.13
The New Intellectuals (Made Possible By The Internet)
“New possibilities are opening up for public intellectuals. Internet-fueled media such as blogs have made it much easier for aspiring intellectuals to publish their opinions.”
The Problem With Aesthetic Taste
A critic should have principles rather than aesthetics. He should have tastes, though never at the cost of praising the bad book seductive to his taste rather than the good one that offends it. He should also have prejudices, but not ones that blind him to merit, not ones that have him shouting, every three books or so, “A miracle! A miracle!”
Hatchet Job Of The Year? Bruce Bawer Has At Jack Kerouac
“To read through these seven hundred-odd pages of Kerouac’s staggeringly slapdash effusions set in elegant Galliard, outfitted with the usual meticulous editorial apparatus, and bound – like Twain’s novels and Lincoln’s speeches – in a beautiful Library of America volume is enough to trigger a serious attack of cognitive dissonance.”
An Orchestra All About Community Service
“Nationally reknowned as the ‘suitcase symphony,’ the Raleigh-based orchestra traveled roughly 18,000 miles across the state, performing everywhere from Asheville to Wilmington, from Salisbury to Southern Pines.”
National Design Museum Acquires An App – For Its Collection
“The Cooper-Hewitt is announcing the unprecedented acquisition of an artifact you will never find encased in a plexiglass cube or sequestered in a climate-controlled storage facility. In a physical sense, it doesnt even exist: It’s a piece of software, an app called Planetary, and it heralds the museum’s first foray into intangible items.”
Our Shriveling Consciousness?
“Students increasingly seem conditioned by the fact that much of their waking life is populated by mechanically mediated images in which they can see other beings on screens but those others cannot see them. As a result the viewer can become oblivious to others, having no need to interact or maintain a minimum of civil conduct with them.”
Orchestra Recording Is Dead! Long Live Orchestra Recording
Recording orchestras is changing. Not going way.
David Hockney’s Double-Sided (If Not Conflicted) Relationship With Technology
Part of his aesthetic is still, as Lawrence Weschler puts it, “adamantly hand-rendered”. Even so, Hockney has always had “an uncanny openness to technological innovation, the eager willingness to delve into any and all manner of new gadgetry.”
This 1,600-Year-Old Goblet Shows That The Romans Were Nanotech Pioneers
“The glass chalice, known as the Lycurgus Cup because it bears a scene involving King Lycurgus of Thrace, appears jade green when lit from the front but blood-red when lit from behind – a property that puzzled scientists for decades” until researchers with microscopes discovered the ingenious secret within the glass.