Art
drorzel | June 25, 2009Just a quick reminder post to note that you can win an advance proof copy of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog in one of two ways:
By captioning pictures of the dog with physics apparatus
By writing short poems about dogs and physics
Regarding the last one, I'm thinking of adding a second poetry prize for "Best poem by somebody who isn't the Cuttlefish." So if you've been intimidated by squidly verse, don't be...
Entries for both contests are open through this Sunday, June 28th.
drorzel | June 22, 2009In a comment to Friday's classical music post, Chris Evo recommended a TED talk by Benjamin Zander that has the goal of convincing his audience that they love classical music:
If you're not able or inclined to watch it, he goes through a Chopin piano piece in detail, and explains how it plays off our expectation of a particular chord sequence. He's a charismatic guy, and it's a great presentation.
It does not, however, convince me that I love classical music.
This isn't a problem that's limited to music, of course. As a general matter, a lot of people confuse lack of enjoyment with lack of…
drorzel | June 17, 2009One of the PDF-only studies that I complained about earlier is a hand-wringing report from the NEA on how public appreciation of art is on the decline. As summarized by Inside Higher Ed:
Compared to the NEA's 1982 survey, the steepest decline was in ballet, which that year was seen by 11.0 percent of college-educated adults, but in 2008 was seen by only 6.3 percent. Declines were seen in every type of art considered: jazz (from 19.4 percent to 14.9 percent); classical music (33.1 percent to 20.1 percent); opera (8.0 percent to 5.2 percent); musicals (40.5 percent to 32.7 percent); non-…
drorzel | June 17, 2009There have been a half-dozen stories in the past few weeks that looked interesting, but didn't even make it into the Links Dump for the day. Why not? Because the stories or studies were only available as PDF files.
I have no idea if this is actually getting worse, but I'm finding this more irritating than ever. It's particularly annoying as there's usually no good reason for presenting the information in question in PDF form-- you could perfectly well present it as an easily linkable and quotable HTML page. Take, for example, this NEA report on the arts-- the one-paragraph note on Inside…
drorzel | June 12, 2009There's a nice write-up about the World Science Festival in the New York Times today:
The second annual World Science Festival, a five-day extravaganza of performances, debates, celebrations and demonstrations, including an all-day street fair on Sunday in Washington Square Park, began with a star-studded gala tribute to the Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson at Lincoln Center Wednesday night. Over the next three days the curious will have to make painful choices: attend an investigation of the effects of music on the brain with a performance by Bobby McFerrin, or join a quest for a long-lost…
drorzel | March 20, 2009The nominees for this year's Hugo Awards were announced last night. The most important category is, as always, Best Novel:
Anathem by Neal Stephenson (Morrow; Atlantic UK)
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury UK)
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen; HarperVoyager UK) — Free download
Saturn's Children by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi (Tor)
Surprisingly, I've already read four of the five. This is either blind luck, or a sign that I'm better in tune with the tastes of SF fandom than ever before. I'm not sure which I'd prefer.
The as-yet-…
drorzel | March 18, 2009In an effort to wrest something positive from the smoking ruins of the fannish precincts of LiveJournal, a number of people (Kate included) have put together a community to raise money to provide financial assistance to fans of color who want to attend Wiscon or some other convention. They're auctioning off a lot of interesting stuff, from books to artwork to personal services.
The community is Con or Bust, and information about how the thing works is also available. If you're interested in supporting this project, either by bidding or offering items for bid, head on over and check it out.
drorzel | March 5, 2009Two announcements of science-related festivals have turned up in my email in the last week or so:
The second annual World Science Festival will be held in New York June 10-14 this year. They feature an impressive array of speakers again, including Nobel laureates (Physicists David Gross, Frank Wilczek, and William Phillips), well-known authors, distinguished scientists, and actors. Last year's festival was a huge success, by all reports, and let's hope this year's is as good. And, hey, it's not during DAMOP this year, so I might even be able to make the trip down if anything looks…
drorzel | February 2, 2009There's a mini media blitz underway promoting Denis Dutton's new book The Art Instinct. He was on the Colbert Report last week, he's reviewed in the Times, and he's featured in this week's Bloggingheads Science Saturday:
While it's kind of entertaining to listen to John Horgan struggling to get a word in edgewise, I'm kind of skeptical about the book. Dutton's argument is that human aesthetics are, contrary to the claims of the academic art establishment, more universal than socially constructed, and can best be understood through evolution. Or, to be more precise, through evolutionary…
drorzel | January 18, 2009Arts & Letters Daily has an item announcing the death of Andrew Wyeth (the link goes to the New York Times obit). This is noteworthy to me because he's one of a very few artists whose work (in poster form) has ever hung on my wall. Specifically, this painting, titled "Soaring":
I picked it up at a poster sale when I was in college, because I needed something to cover the institutional grey wallpaper in my dorm room, and I wanted something different from the standard-issue Dali posters. I liked the general look, but what sold me on it was realizing that the birds in the picture are…
drorzel | August 4, 2008Last weekend's post, The Innumeracy of Intellectuals, has been lightly edited and re-printed at Inside Higher Ed, where it should be read by a larger audience of humanities types. They allow comments, so it will be interesting to see what gets said about it there.
I may have some additional comments on the issue later, but it's a little hard to focus while going crazy waiting for FutureBaby.
(There's also a tiny chance that this will be noticed by some of my colleagues, which could be interesting. I know that some of them read the Chronicle of Higher Education religiously, but I'm less…
drorzel | July 27, 2008A question raised in comments to yesterday's rant about humanities types looking down on people who don't know the basics of their fields, while casually dismissing math and science:
[I]t occurs to me that it would be useful if someone could determine, honestly, whether the humanities professors feel the same sense of condescension among science and engineering professors.
This is obviously not a question I can answer, but I agree that it would be good to know. So, how about it?
drorzel | July 27, 2008Having admitted that I know noting about fine art, here's an opportunity to prove it...
A week or so ago, I was in the Schenectady library looking for something else, and noticed a book called Categories: On the Beauty of Physics, which is packaged in such a way as to make it difficult to attribute, but appears to be the work of Emiliano Sefusatti, John Morse, and Hilary Thayer Hamann, a science writer, artist, and art expert, respectively. It's subtitled "Essential Physics Concepts and their Companions in Art & Literature," which sounded very Clifford Johnson, so I figured I'd give it a…
drorzel | July 26, 2008I know nothing about art or music.
OK, that's not entirely true-- I know a little bit here and there. I just have no systematic knowledge of art or music (by which I mean fine art and classical music). I don't know Beethoven from Bach, Renaissance from Romantics. I'm not even sure those are both art terms.
Despite the sterling reputation of the department, I never took an Art History class when I was at Williams, nor did I take any music classes. They weren't specifically required, and I was a physics major-- my schedule was full of math and science classes, and between that and the boozing,…
drorzel | May 14, 2008I feel a little bad about posting a long ranty thing about stupid and annoying art at the Met, because every time I go there, I find something new and really impressive. For example, the renovations underway in the museum forced me to cut through the European Decorative Arts section, where I never go, because who wants to look at a bunch of over-decorated bedrooms? But in passing through there, I stumbled across a couple of Italian rooms that were really cool-- this trompe l'oeil studio, and a neighboring reconstructed chapel with strange Escher-like geometric figures done in wood inlay on…
drorzel | May 14, 2008Having done a whirlwind and somewhat disappointing swing through the Museum of Natural History, I strolled across Central Park to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to get me some culture. I guessed correctly that it was less likely to be choked with middle-school kids, and I never fail to find something interesting to look at.
Of course, art being art, I always find some crap, too, so let's get that out of the way first. Also, it's easier to blog snidely about art I didn't care for than to explain the wonders of the stuff I did like.
We'll start off easy, though, with the Gustave Courbet…
drorzel | March 21, 2008The Hugo Award nominees for this year have been released. The category I care most about is Best Novel, where we have:
The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins, Fourth Estate)Brasyl by Ian McDonald (Gollancz; Pyr)Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer (Tor; Analog Oct. 2006-Jan/Feb. 2007)The Last Colony by John Scalzi (Tor)Halting State by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit)
Does Robert J. Sawyer have secret mind control powers, or something? The Chabon is a fantastic book, Scalzi's book is the best thing he's written, the Stross is very good and he's a buzz-worthy author, and I've…