Category: ideas

“Film has become fact on DVD. It has left the cinema and joined us for drinks, an emancipatory moment for the last of the great western art forms. Books and music have always furnished our rooms, but to have film as a point of home reference, like Oxford English Dictionary and the complete works of Shakespeare, signals a revolution in cultural reception and, inevitably, creation.”

The Guardian newspaper launches an international project to bring artists together. “Imagine if you put fourteen artists from seven different countries in a room together. What would they talk about? What would they learn? What would they reveal? Simply put, that’s what imagine art after is all about. We can’t put those artists together in one room – they’re in locations as far-flung as Tehran and Tirana, London and Lagos – but, using the web, we can showcase their work, put them in touch with each other and get them to talk.”

“Great critics are rare birds; rare birds need a welcoming aviary and the zookeepers are not on the lookout for such special and specialist breeds of plumage any more. Over time, the priorities have shifted towards ‘personality’ writers with no background in their subject. The long, slow haul of a career as a critic, with its period of apprenticeship, dedication and accumulation of wisdom and experience – as exemplified by Andrew Porter – is suddenly becoming a thing of the past.”

“99. Celebrities who write children’s books and celebrities who go to Iraq to write about the war… 84. David Cronenberg’s brain… 66. The chick lit avalanche… 21. Tied! Kathy Bates wielding a sledgehammer and Kathy Bates stepping into a Jacuzzi with Jack Nicholson… 7. December 1895, Paris: The Lumière Brothers give the first-ever public screening of a motion picture. A shot of an approaching train sends screaming audience members running for cover.”

“‘Serious gaming’ is the idea of using gaming technology, gaming theory and those kinds of things to understand complex dynamic processes. For example, powerful computer hardware and software have been used for years to help train pilots and other operators of complex machines. And as graphical capabilities continue to expand, such simulations have expanded to other areas — virtual worlds where soldiers can learn how to fight in urban surroundings, or doctors can practice difficult surgical procedures.”

“It has always been the function of artists to tell the narrative of our times in a way that isn’t filtered through big-media spin or the historical revisionism of academic pundits. Recent and historical precedence tell us that it should be young people, and particularly the artists among them, who are most passionately voicing this narrative. But they’re not. In fact, there is a critical lack of voice among young artists, and I believe that art schools are to blame for this crisis.”

“Almost out of earshot, questions are being asked about whether it is wise for the United States’s cultural image to be shaped exclusively by the marketplace. More specifically, with Washington now dusting off public diplomacy as a strategy to combat rampant anti-Americanism, is it time to revive cultural diplomacy? The purpose would not be to mute American popular culture. Instead, rather than trying to compete for the attention of the masses, cultural diplomacy would aim to persuade political and intellectual elites of the virtues of American civilization. This approach is now being quietly promoted by several arts lobbies in the United States.”

The modern world is too damn noisy. Car alarms, beeping microwaves, chirping beepers, cell phones that play that hideous 50 Cent hook… it’s all just a bit much, isn’t it? “The people who make all these things obviously think we’re idiots. That without their constant, irritating reminders, we’d go wandering off, our minds blank, to drool down our shirts or spend 30 minutes tying our shoes. The world is noisy enough without adding completely useless aural pollution to the mix.”

Michael Chorost would like to listen to Ravel’s Boléro. But since 2001, when the last of his already feeble hearing left him lost in a soundless world, he hasn’t been able to. Chorost has been a guinea pig at the forefront of the cochlear implant industry, which uses surgical implants and computer technology to allow deaf people to “hear” by stimulating certain parts of their nervous system. But while such technology can allow the deaf to decode human speech, music is a wholly different (and far more complex) matter. Still, Chorost is a determined music lover, and years of trial and error eventually lead him to a breakthrough. “It’s like going from being able to tell the difference between red and blue to being able to distinguish between aquamarine and cobalt.”

“In recent years intellectual property has received a lot more attention because ideas and innovations have become the most important resource, replacing land, energy and raw materials. As much as three-quarters of the value of publicly traded companies in America comes from intangible assets, up from around 40% in the early 1980s. In information technology and telecoms in particular, the role of intellectual property has changed radically. What used to be the preserve of corporate lawyers and engineers in R&D labs has been speedily embraced by the boardroom…”