This Aeon Original video explores that unifying feeling of group ‘electricity’ that lifts us up when we’re enthralled by our favourite sports teams, participating in religious rituals, entranced by music – and, yes, dancing the night away.
Author: Douglas McLennan
An Argument Against The Concept Of Intellectual Property
The ubiquitous use of ‘intellectual property’ began in the digital era of production, reproduction and distribution of cultural and technical artifacts. As a new political economy appeared, so did a new commercial and legal rhetoric. ‘Intellectual property’, a central term in that new discourse, is a culturally damaging and easily weaponised notion. Its use should be resisted.
The Universe Is Unfathomably Big. And Our Understanding Is So Small…
As we attempt to grapple with this bleak post-human future, we must also confront the question of what humans can hope to understand. Parts of the physical world are understood. They can be observed and described by theories—but much of it cannot. Human observation bumps up against stark limits. Human reasoning is not limitless either, but it does allow us to think through what might in principle be “over the horizon.”
Francesco Clemente Talks About The Conditions For Good Art
“I work best on commission. I work best when the situation is the opposite of when someone says ‘Do whatever you want.’ I’m not a fan of that situation. I don’t want. My job is not to want. My job is to be, so it’s a good situation when I can bounce back to other people’s minds, and listen to other people’s thoughts. I love to be proved wrong.”
Research: Evidence That The Internet Isn’t Necessarily Polarizing Us
If the most polarized population uses the Internet and social media the least, to suddenly point a finger at technology says more about our anxieties about the rate of technological change than about what has actually happened to us. The fact is that this twenty-two-year-old dynamic of polarization can’t easily be associated with the Internet.
Can Blockchain Reform A Broken Scholarly Publishing Industry?
With research increasingly open to the public, scholars can’t expect readers to know who everyone is and which journals are reputable. Blockchain can offer additional information and reassurances about the review process. Today that level of trust is primarily an asset of the corporate publishing oligarchy. Blockchain might democratize it.
Man Disrupts “Fiddler On The Roof” Performance With Nazi Shouts
The man, who had been seated in the balcony, began shouting “Heil Hitler, Heil Trump.” Immediately after that, “People started running,” audience member Rich Scherr said. “I’ll be honest, I was waiting to hear a gunshot. I thought, ‘Here we go.’ ”The man was escorted out a few minutes later and the show continued.
The Art World Defined By Price? A Little Simplistic, Isn’t It?
Nathaniel Kahn’s documentary poses the question “What is the relationship of art to money?” to a handful of prominent figures in the contemporary art world, including richer-than-god Koons, Sotheby’s chairman Amy Cappellazzo, self-styled populist critic Jerry Saltz, and the painter Larry Poons. Their answers, while often brazen, land ambivalently, creating an incomplete portrait of an art world that seems completely resigned to the status quo.
Stan Lee’s Secret To Managing Creative People
Keep talent busy was just one of the lessons I took from Lee’s example. A second, but equally important lesson, was don’t censor talent. Lee preferred to let his talent sort out the creative details. He remembered working on a comic strip that used the word pogo stick in the punch line. The editor felt that pogo stickwouldn’t resonate with rural audiences, and he instructed Lee to change the gag so that the punch line had the word roller skates instead. It deflated the joke, but Lee changed it anyway. The strip was eventually dropped, and Lee said, “this type of censorship, to me, is almost indecent.” When you hire an artist to do a job, you let them do the job. Lee elaborated, “It seems to me that if a person is doing something creatively, and he feels that’s the way it ought to be done, you’ve gotta let him do it.”
Why Are Movie-Makers So In Love With Van Gogh?
He has been anointed—and travestied—as the ideal of the modern artist, even by those for whom art, modern or otherwise, is at best a diversion and at worst a scam. Everybody knows about the cutting of his ear, or cracks cruel jokes about it. His name is as famous as that of Picasso, but Picasso has been mythologized as a monster of control, whereas van Gogh, it is agreed, lay at the mercy of the uncontrollable.