“Throughout his life, Cage remained a cultural omnivore. Interwoven into Selected Letters are comments that reveal how his life and art were informed by his study of the I Ching and Zen Buddhism, his burgeoning interest in mushrooms (making him an amateur mycologist), and his embrace of a macrobiotic diet. He aspired to have “all distinctions between art and life removed.” His blending of Eastern and Western artistic traditions placed him at the center of the American avant-garde of the 1950s and ’60s.”
Tag: 12.31.16
Info, Info Everywhere, And We Know Less Than We Think: Pico Iyer On What 2016 Taught Us About ‘The Information Age’
“We’ve never been in a position to devour (or deliver) as much information as we are today, in the age of 24/7 news cycles and social media. We’ve never been so tempted, therefore, to forget that the pool of knowledge is limited; it’s the pool of ignorance, speculation and misunderstanding that is infinite.”
Ancient Sites Destroyed In Syria Rise Again, Virtually, In France
A team of archaeologists, architects, and software engineers sent drones around historic buildings and ruins, collecting many thousands of measurements and images so that monuments like Palmyra, if and when they’re destroyed by ISIS, can be recreated in 3D in safer locations.
How “Reality” TV Is Struggling To Portray Real People
“Television has long had a fraught relationship with the ‘regular’ person. Many of its shows, from Leave It to Beaver on down, have relied on the power of aspiration—the ideal family, the ideal group of friends, impossibly beautiful people inhabiting impossibly beautiful places—to amplify the appeal of the ‘normal’ worlds they’ve served up to their viewers… Those shows and their many, many counterparts claimed to embrace averageness; they also, however, scene after scene, treated averageness as something to be overcome.”
Six Questions For The Art World As We Enter 2017
“Once, perhaps, the contemporary art world was composed of small, more or less local communities of struggling creatives who scraped along by helping one another and relying on the munificence of the occasional wealthy doyenne (who typically had bohemian leanings). But, for a while now, that art world has really been an art industry, vast and global in scope, epitomized by mega-galleries with dozens of employees and multiple locations, and patronized by the winners of the global economy who see new artworks as the ultimate status-boosting luxury commodity.”