Apollinaire + Picasso in the dock

02008-07-30 | Art

Apollinaire and Picasso in the dock Justin Beplate TLS
He had, however, become embroiled in a separate affair involving the theft of three Iberian statues from the Louvre by Géry Pieret, a colourful rogue whom Apollinaire had briefly put up in his apartment in Paris and who had passed on the stolen goods to the poet’s friend Pablo Picasso. Apollinaire later claimed that he had originally tried to persuade Picasso to return the statues to their rightful owner, but that the painter, consumed by the innovations that would give birth to Cubism, was in no mind to give them up, being determined to discover “the arcane secrets of the ancient and barbarian art that had produced them”.

Thanks L.R.

Going Wide-screen

02008-07-30 | Radio

The Scent of Light-Echoes August CD of the Month
The music on The Scent of Light builds slowly, each piece carving out a contemplative space until before you know it, the dynamic has completely changed. A centerpiece of the album is “Silence, No More Longing.” It’s an 11 minute excursion that builds from solo guitar, to multi-tracked guitars adding ambient electronics, bass, percussion, and finally unleashing a quiet electric storm from guitarist Stephen Duros.

John Diliberto takes a look at “Scent of Light” against my whole body of work.

You can read the whole piece here and listen to an audio version here. I love the ending of the audio-version!!

Wordless

02008-07-30 | Uncategorized

How to Save the World
Janet Fitch, the author of the novel White Oleander, writes in this month’s Vogue magazine (not available online) about her ten days of self-initiated silence, and the astonishing effect it had on her. She’d been thinking about a meditation retreat, but when her family wanted to go on a ski trip she wasn’t keen on, she decided this was her chance to try a week of simple silence without the chants and poses.

She began by setting her phone to take messages instead of ringing, and telling callers she would not return calls until the end of the ten days. Then she began going for walks and just waving, instead of talking with, people she encountered who she knew. So far so good.

But she discovered that she was filling the conversational space with reading. So she stopped reading. Writing, offline, was OK, as was listening to instrumental music, but no reading at all: no books, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, movies. That’s when things really started to change. She found she was taking the time to pay attention, to restart things she had dropped, to discover new interests and talents, to cook well instead of indifferently.

Read on.

Computer as furoshiki revisited

02008-07-30 | Computer

Bruce Sterling revisits an article he published in 1993:

Gadget Watch: Computer as furoshiki revisited
“Computer as furoshiki” is a highly speculative vision of the personal computer as it might evolve if freed from certain current material constraints. The furoshiki is an intimate and ubiquitous accessory to Japanese daily life. It’s nothing more than a large square of tough, well-made cloth, usually with a handsome pattern. The furoshiki is used, among other purposes, as a grocery bag, a book-tote, and a decorative wrapper for ceremonial gifts. In its simplicity and multiple uses it is little different from a cowboy’s bandanna, except that the skill in wrapping and knotting furoshikis is more arcane.

The computer-as-furoshiki is the computer as a large square of lightweight, flexible cloth. It is not, however, “cloth” as that material is currently understood. The furoshiki’s display screen is formed by thin bands of color-emitting optical fibers, which are wide enough and bright enough to mimic the scan-lines of a video display terminal. These display-fibers are interwoven with other fiber-optics carrying data. A second kind of fiber is densely interwoven; it consists of room-temperature superconductive wire, possibly a novel form of buckminsterfullerene for strength and flexibility.
(Via Beyond the Beyond)

Read on.