“Trafalgar Square is a position for national heroes, where the machinery of established values whirrs away. So I thought let’s try and question this English obsession with heritage and values – let’s have a real person up there who hasn’t ever been idealised or idolised and see what happens. It’s about what you think, feel or do when…”
Tag: 06.29.09
The Art Project, The Waffle Shop, And A Little Sociology
“It was supposed to be a two-semester community artistic social experiment for a Carnegie Mellon University art class, videotaping hip late-night crowds discussing what was on their minds while they ate waffles. But the combination of homemade treats and homegrown reality show has proven to be an unusual recipe for success since Waffle Shop opened its doors last fall.”
Malcolm Gladwell Ponders The Cost Of Free
“Giving something away means that a lot of it will be wasted. But because it costs almost nothing to make things, digitally, we can afford to be wasteful. The elaborate mechanisms we set up to monitor and judge the quality of content are, Anderson thinks, artifacts of an era of scarcity: we had to worry about how to allocate scarce resources like newsprint and shelf space and broadcast time. Not anymore.”
Make Music Festival On A Global Scale
On June 21st “New York joined more than three hundred cities–including Montevideo, Djibouti, Kabul, Hanoi, and Sydney–in celebrating Make Music, a global sonic bacchanal that takes place each year on the summer solstice. The ritual began in France, in 1982…”
So You Think You Can Dance (Good Thing, If You Want A Mate)
“Dancing is believed to be important in the courtship of a variety of species, including humans.” Studies indicate that women are especially attracted to men who have bodily symmetry and who move in a coordinated, balanced way.”
The Summer Hollywood’s A-List Stars Failed To Sell The Movies
“Hollywood’s movie studios, hopeful that marquee-name actors would push their summer box-office receipts to record levels, are finding that the heavyweights aren’t winning over audiences like they used to. With all but a couple of big-budget films already opened, the summer of 2009 is shaping up to be one of the worst on record for Hollywood’s A-list talent.”
The Internet Is Vulnerable – A Plan To Save It?
“A series of catastrophic failures seems to suggest that the internet is rather more vulnerable to accidents, earthquakes or misplaced ships’ anchors than people thought. At tens, perhaps hundreds, of places around the world, the net seems to be hanging by a thread. It badly needs upgrading, but clearly we can’t just tear up sections of the network and rebuild them from scratch.”
Dave Brubek Makes A Comeback (At 88)
“Though recovering from various maladies and the side effects of their treatment (which temporarily robbed part of his left hand of feeling), Brubeck played with the zest of old, and then some. In fact, the melodic ardor of his work exceeded expectations, as if the pianist was trying to pack as much meaning as possible into every note.”