Archive for March, 2005

500 | Franklin Einspruch
http://www.artblog.net/?name=2005-03-24-06-44-500

Schools of Thought, The Madness of Consensus | Carra Leah Hood
http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0502/08-hood.php
“The world in 2005 bears little or no resemblance to the world that Shakespeare inhabited; however, this lesson still holds true. Today, the free exchange of intellectual ideas?thought to be the primary activity, for instance, of professors and students on college and university campuses’ is constrained in ways similar to those on display in Act 2 Scene II. Those who have less authority might pursue lines of inquiry, both in classrooms and in scholarship, that follow up on, apply, or restate authoritative positions. They are at less risk for receiving a low grade, for being rejected or criticised by their colleagues, and for losing their jobs if they do so. This type of teaching and learning, writing and research creates a sort of consensus, sometimes referred to as schools of thought, that at their best challenge and at their worst prohibit imagination. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern could not imagine uttering the words, “Denmark is a prison.” Their language and their structures of imagination are restricted by their economic and their social roles and, because of both, the expectations of their audience. In 2005, those in all social positions can imagine speaking such a critique; however, some might elect not to, self-censoring solely for the purpose of achieving one personal goal or another – a grade, professional recognition, or promotion.”

Which brings up today’s GR – the bullshit roundup. As you may already be aware, Princeton philosophy prof Harry Frankfurt has published a book called ‘On Bullshit’, and there has been some stuff about it on the net. – Timothy
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On Bullshit | Harry Frankfurt
http://www.tauroscatology.com/frankfurt.htm
“One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, or attracted much sustained inquiry. In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves.”

Towards a Marxist Hermeneutics of Total Bullshit | Scott Martens
http://pedantry.fistfulofeuros.net/archives/001201.html#more
“I intend to start by sharing what I really think here, then proceding to shed some light on this situation through the application of bovinocoprotics. (From the Latin bovinae – cow, and the Greek κοπρος – feces.) Then, I need to actually start writing. […] we are confronted with the the problem Frankfurt poses at the beginning of his essay: One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. If the Enlightenment has been a war on bullshit, it seems that the bullshit is winning. Orwell, lacking Frankfurt’s work to draw on, actually foreshadows him in 1984: ‘All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers, but they could not afford to encourage any illusion that tended to impair military efficiency. So long as defeat meant the loss of independence, or some other result generally held to be undesirable, the precautions against defeat had to be serious. Physical facts could not be ignored. In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four. Inefficient nations were always conquered sooner or later, and the struggle for efficiency was inimical to illusions.’ Orwell’s Oceania is not the land of the Big Lie – for the whole point of doublethink is to not lie – but the land of bullshit: A complete disregard for the truth about things and the defense of the processes that sustain that disregard.”
Thanks to Amish Morrell for letting me know about this

At a crossroads: Peter Plagens on the ‘postartist’ | Peter Plagens
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_6_43/ai_n11852071/print
“It’s no surprise that ‘postmodern artists are caricatures of artists,’ Kuspit goes on to say. ‘Disillusioned about art, they still have illusions about themselves–about what art can do for them (not what they can do for art), namely, make them rich and famous, or at least newsworthy if not exactly noteworthy.’ And out of his discontent, Kuspit comes up with an idea encapsulated in a term that, for me, is the best gloss on the whole current situation: the ‘postartist.’ The majority of art promulgated by serious galleries and contemporary museums in major cities no longer has much to do with aesthetics. Contemporary art has abandoned its function as the visual wing of the house of poetry and morphed into a fecklessly ‘transgressive’ subdivision of the entertainment industry. It’s now commercial pop culture writ esoteric, whiny and small. What Hughes long ago labeled ‘the shock of the new’ quickly became ‘the academy of the new’ (literally, in MFA programs), which has in turn updated itself into ‘the industry of the new.’ At the same time, artists have cunningly made themselves critic-proof.”

Inkjet Printers Offer Biology Breakthrough | Emily C Kumler
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,117318,00.asp
“If you think injecting ink into a printer cartridge might damage your printer, try filling it with animal cells. That’s what they’re doing at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina, these days. In the name of science, researchers have developed a way to print sheets of solid animal tissue by filling Hewlett-Packard and Canon inkjet cartridges with animal cells, or ‘bio-ink.'”

New machines could turn homes into small factories | University of Bath
http://www.bath.ac.uk/pr/releases/replicating-machines.htm
“Research by engineers at the University of Bath could transform the manufacture of almost all everyday household objects by allowing people to produce them in their own homes at the cost of a few pounds. Dr Adrian Bowyer in front of a rapid prototype machine. The new system is based upon rapid prototype machines, which are now used to produce plastic components for industry such as vehicle parts. The method they use, in which plastic is laid down in designs produced in 3D on computers, could be adapted to make many household items.”NOTE: In addition to the story, there is a link to an audio file on this page

Taste for meat made humans early weaners | Anna Gosline
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6921
“A taste for meat prompted early humans to wean their children at a young age. The idea explains why we now wean our infants years earlier than other great apes. […] the nutritional benefit of eating meat at a younger age would have helped children’s brains to grow and develop more quickly. Human brains grow three times quicker than those of chimpanzees.”

Forget takeout, eat a print-out | Celeste Biever
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6983&feedId=online-news_rss20
“It is not quite the stuff of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but the fare coming out of Homaru Cantu’s kitchen is just as bizarre. In Roald Dahl’s famous children’s book, chewing gum is made to taste like a three-course meal. Cantu, a cordon-bleu chef, has modified an ink-jet printer to create dishes made of edible paper that can taste like anything from birthday cake to sushi. ‘You can make an ink-jet printer do just about anything,’ says Cantu, who is head chef at the Moto restaurant in Chicago, US, and a keen advocate of the high-tech kitchen. The printer’s cartridges are loaded with fruit and vegetable concoctions instead of ink, and the paper tray contains edible sheets of soybean and potato starch. Cantu then prints out tasty versions of images he has downloaded from the web.”

Speaking of tongues | Martin Jacques
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/history/0,6121,1435748,00.html
“From his rich picture of why major languages have waxed and waned, it is clear that there is no single model: on the contrary, while Ostler does his best to categorise and conceptualise, there are in fact almost as many models as there are languages. For all the hubris about the rise of English and how it will rule the world’s tongues for ever, it is sobering to reflect on why languages that in their day seemed utterly irresistible in their dominance and prestige, spoken across large regions of the world for thousands of years, were eventually eclipsed.”

Crime fighters brought to book | Jo Tuckman
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1432483,00.html
“Police in a sprawling working-class suburb on the edge of the Mexican capital are to fight crime with a new weapon: books. The leftwing mayor of Nezahualcoyotl, Luis Sanchez, has ordered all 1,100 members of the municipal police to read at least one book a month or forfeit their chance of promotion. ‘We believe reading will improve their vocabulary and their writing skills, help them express themselves, order their ideas and communicate with the public,’ Mr Sanchez said. ‘Reading will make them better police officers and better people.'”

But for those readers than, this is what it’s about:

The Canada Council is like the United States’ N.E.A. In my circle, I hear that artists outside of Canada are jealous that we get all these grants, but that’s not true. The Canada Council only supports 8% of those that apply, which means that there are rumours of favouritism and of cliques, and it creates the myth of prestige, so that 3 years after you graduate from artschool, you too can submit your name into this lottery for $3000. If the jury thinks your work is ‘great’, you get your taxable cheque and get to inspire envy and jealousy amongst your peers. Now, the Canada Council wants to change all this. They want to start giving out greater funds to the more established cliques, people who have somehow already been able to manage without their support. Artists who have benefited either from past funding or believe in the prestige-factor, are complaining and writing petitions, seemingly wanting to maintain the system as it is, while fearing future vindictiveness from the Council for opposing its suggested course of action.

Oh Canada!

– Timothy
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Art heist | Soloman Fagan
http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2005-03-10/news_story2.php
“Remember, the Council’s funding has not increased over the years to keep up with inflation ? but how does cutting developing artists’ funding remedy this? One board member told me ‘sustainability’ was the buzzword in discussions. But the two grants that individual artists can receive in four years could hardly sustain anyone at the old rates, let alone the proposed chopped ones. […] According to Balkan, the Council wants to focus on ‘breakthrough’ artists like Janet Cardiff. While I agree that Cardiff is doing excellent work and deserves support, in the context of the proposed changes her selection raises some disturbing questions. Will we let an international system of biennales determine Canadian cultural value rather than Canadians themselves? Is an artistic criterion being established that equates technological progress with cultural value? […] Apparently, one of the rationales for the drastic reallocation of funding to ‘senior’ artists is the high cost of producing pieces like Cardiff’s. This is art on the scale promoted by the international system in which countries send their representatives for collective mega-exhibitions. Here, full-room ‘installations’ of live nude female models or live tropical butterflies, à la Vanessa Beecroft, Matthew Barney or Damien Hirst, can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars to produce. How can Canadian artists, with a current meagre $34,000 in the senior category, ‘compete’ with those who can mount works of such magnitude? While gigantism and expensive technologies are all the rage at large exhibits, it’s unclear how promoting Canada as a ‘global competitor’ in the culture wars will benefit anyone here at home. Perhaps the idea is to garner established artists a higher profile and thereby raise the status of the discipline nationwide, hoping this will ‘trickle down’ to the rest of us. But this is hypothetical. It’s the young and less privileged artists who will suffer the financial brunt of the experiment.”

A genius explains | Richard Johnson
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1409903,00.html
“Daniel Tammet is an autistic savant. He can perform mind-boggling mathematical calculations at breakneck speeds. But unlike other savants, who can perform similar feats, Tammet can describe how he does it. He speaks seven languages and is even devising his own language. Now scientists are asking whether his exceptional abilities are the key to unlock the secrets of autism.”

Idealist and realist; Albert Einstein’s free spirit | Yehuda Elkana
http://www.signandsight.com/features/18.html
“Finally, it is an important legacy of Einstein to take popular science seriously, and to encourage it being written by excellent writers who know science and reflect upon it. It is well-known that Einstein ascribed his early awareness of problems, and his overview of them, to having read at an early stage the series of popular science books by Aaron Bernstein. These books left a deeper mark on him than is usually acknowledged. We talk much nowadays of the ‘public understanding of science’: often it is presumed by working scientists – even by some of the best of them – that the issue is a popular explanation of technically difficult points like how a nuclear reactor works, or what in technical terms constitutes cloning. But they are wrong: what the public needs is an argument about problem-choices, the place and importance of chosen problems in the context of social needs but also of the map of the state of science, risks and chances.”