“I’m going to show you two kinds of nothing. The first is a small patch of space, way, way out in the universe, remote from everything, with nothing in it, no stars, no planets, no bits of dust, no debris, no atoms, not even one. It’s as empty as empty can be. And next, I’m going to show you a painting. Except it isn’t a painting, it’s a canvas, on which you see…absolutely nothing. No marks, no paint, no human gesture. It, too, is totally empty. It was made by the American artist Robert Rauschenberg.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
‘S**t’ – The Four-Letter Word That Got Rush Into All That Trouble
“‘Slut’ is a charged word even when it’s just used metaphorically. … And it is hard to imagine ‘slut’ being reclaimed the way ‘queer’ was, as a respectable label for academic programs and cultural centers. … Maybe someday ‘slut’ will be as comically dated as ‘bounder’ or ‘cad.’ But in recent times, it has actually become stronger and more offensive.”
Should We Stop Calling It ‘Islamic Art’?
“The very concept of ‘Islamic art’ is alien to the cultures that adhered to Islam, but that apparently has never troubled the scholars who hold forth on the subject in their books as in their university lectures. … The denial of cultural identity in such a meaningless phrase is deeply resented in those Islamic lands, which have ancient cultures that are considerably longer than any West European nation.”
New Boss Works To Turn Israel Ballet Around
General manager Lea Lavie, who began working at the company in 2009 and replaced co-founder Hillel Markman on relatively short notice late last year, is working on eliminating an accumulated deficit of roughly $1.6 million, increasing audience (attendance has nearly doubled since she arrived), and introducing some basic business practices to the company’s administration.
Better Living Through Virtual Reality
“The shift to a world where virtual experiences are common – and almost as intense and meaningful as real ones – presents powerful psychological opportunities.” Says the head of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Laboratory, “We think virtual reality is a way to change very entrenched behaviour.”
Noise Weakens The Sense Of Taste (Is This Why Airline Food Has Such A Bad Rep?)
“A study conducted by the food company Unilever and the University of Manchester wanted to find out whether background sounds affect the perception of flavor. They found that people rated foods less salty and less sweet as noise levels increased. When noise levels decreased, the perception of those tastes increased.”
Sergei Polunin Commissions Ballet About James Dean
The impetuous Ukrainian dancer, who famously walked away from his Royal Ballet position in January, commissioned a former Covent Garden colleague, Valentino Zucchetti, to create a solo work about the impetuous 1950s movie star, a longtime hero for Polunin.
The Spam E-Mail That People Made Friends Over
“The more people replied, the more people demanded to be removed, and in increasingly hostile tones. … Then, a strange thing happened. Camaraderie broke out amid the spam. … Dozens of people traded contact information. And just like that, what started as a petty annoyance, a blight common to our interconnected lives, became something quite different.”
California’s Napa Valley Symphony Closes Down
“The board of the Napa Valley Symphony Association voted Thursday night to ‘suspend all operations and to explore the wisdom of dissolving,’ according to chairman Michael Enfield.” He said that saving the orchestra “would require an immediate source of funding that is not in evidence.”
Middle Age, A Triumph Of Human Evolution
“Compared with other animals, humans have a very unusual pattern to our lives. We take a very long time to grow up, we are long-lived, and most of us stop reproducing halfway through our lifespan.” Middle age “adds two healthy decades after the babies stop appearing – two decades which most other animals simply do not get.”