Movies offer amazing computer generated special effects. But there are still complexities that require hours of work-arounds. “In practice, while algorithms for individual components (fire, water) already exist, integrating them all together has proven to be hideously complicated.”
Tag: 12.07
One Artist’s Project: Live Inside A Shopping Mall
“Michael Townsend and seven other artist-squatters established a makeshift apartment in an unused and apparently unnoticed 750-square-foot storage space within the building’s bowels. Beginning in 2004, the group’s members lived in their apartment-in-a-mall for weeks at a time, surviving on takeout from the food court.”
The Guerrilla Poets
“Drive-by poetry… entails loading the students into a van, cruising around a commercial area in Trenton, and pulling over near targeted pedestrians. One of the students sticks his or her head out the passenger window and serenades — or accosts — the startled pedestrian with some passionately recited lines by Walt Whitman or Pablo Neruda.”
The Over-Hyping Of Denis Johnson
Denis Johnson’s ‘Jesus’ Son’ is regarded by some as the best American book of the past 25 years. Why? “Underlying the hype is the silly notion that if a work introduces plenty of characters and traipses after them for enough years and pages, it is ipso facto ambitious.”
Does Genius Stand Apart?
“In earlier ages, there were men who were recognised by their contemporaries as among the supreme imaginations of all time. Our age lacks living cultural heroes, and it should be no surprise if this leads some commentators to lay more weight on our inheritance from the past–that is, on the canon.”
Internet Radio That Beats All
“Radio is, of course, the great survivor medium, a century old and still occupying more hours in the average American’s week than network television–and just about every other type of entertainment, too. But given what’s out there for free, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would bother to pay for a satellite subscription.”