Author: Matthew Westphal

Top Posts From AJBlogs 02.23.17

Music and Design
Why do we talk about “seeing” bands or orchestral groups? How did album jackets and photography of musicians … become important parts of music’s aura? Is a rock video a betrayal of what music is really about? … read more
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2017-02-23

The stories we weave are incomplete…
It’s Black History Month again, and though I haven’t blogged about it, it’s been on my mind. I’ve thought of it when I’ve gone to the Kennedy Center, and seen that their most visible gift shop this month features Chinese New Year. … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2017-02-23

What’s Going On in Opera?
The news that Darren Keith Woods was summarily fired after a sixteen-year extraordinarily successful career as General Director of Fort Worth Opera added to some odd news from Vienna a short time ago seems inexplicable. … read more
AJBlog: OperaSleuth Published 2017-02-23

Portland Jazz Festival: Hearing The Home Folks
In addition to presenting big national names, an appealing aspect of the PDX Portland Jazz Festival is that it taps into the deep reservoir of talent in the Pacific Northwest. Two cases … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-02-23

 

Am I The Apple? More Talk About The Nature Of Consciousness

Tim Parks: “How is it that we experience the world? How is it possible that the environment we live in, the objects we use and see, touch and taste, hear and smell, are both patently out there and simultaneously, it seems, in our heads? After four long conversations, … Riccardo Manzotti and I are no nearer to establishing what consciousness is or where it resides. Today, then, we have set ourselves a simple task: to review all the ways philosophers have supposed a subject might relate to and become conscious of an object.”

Remember Second Life? It’s Still Here, And It’s A Haven For The Disabled

“Unlike traditional gaming, Second Life is governed by few rules. Residents can customize their avatars in an infinite number of ways. They can fly and teleport as easily as they can walk, run, and jump. They can build bespoke homes and islands almost from scratch, … marry a Second Life lover, take a rocket to the moon, or simply tuck themselves into bed at night. For many disabled residents, who may spend 12 hours a day or more in Second Life, the most important moments and relationships of their lives happen inside the virtual world.”

Why ‘The Society Of The Spectacle’ Is More Important Now Than It Was 50 Years Ago

Well, you probably know why. “With its descriptions of human social life subsumed by technology and images, it is often cited as a prophecy of the dangers of the internet age now upon us. And perhaps more than any other 20th-century philosophical work, it captures the profoundly odd moment we are now living through, under the presidential reign of Donald Trump.”

‘Walden’, The Video Game

“The world’s most improbable video game plunges you into a virtual Walden Woods, where you can ‘live deliberately,’ as Thoreau famously put it, replacing drudgery in the pursuit of material comfort with a quest for spiritual fulfillment in harmony with nature. ‘It’s an attempt to make a game that has a kind of stillness at its core,’ says its lead developer, Tracy Fullerton.” But is that what players use it for?