Art world gone mad

You know that, nowadays, anything is art. So this story was probably inevitable:

Artist David Hensel submitted a sculpture to London’s Royal Academy of Arts for consideration for its upcoming “Exhibit 1201” exhibit. But at some point in transit the sculpture, “a finely wrought laughing head in jesmonite,” got separated from its plinth.

You can probably guess what happened next: the Academy blithely selected the plinth for inclusion in the exhibit.

Total number of applicants: 9000.

One wonders what these artists will choose to submit next year. This one’s going to be hard to top.

Actually, the funniest thing about the story is that the Academy has refused to reconsider its selection:

[T]he Royal Academy denies having made an error, for the plinth and hastily carved wooden support were, according to an official statement, “thought to have merit.”

(Ah, the passive voice, last refuge for rogues, thieves, and reality-challenged connoisseurs of art.)

“America is a Lockean nation through and through.”

A wonderfully lucid look at America — and why other countries don’t always understand America — by Jonathan Walmsley at The Philosophers’ Magazine Online.

Walmsley argues that many people interpret American foreign policy in terms of Hobbe’s view of nature (or more often, a caricature of his view of nature) while Americans tend to view our actions according to Locke’s view of nature.

The article is well worth the time to read in full. Here’s a taste:

America’s Lockean outlook is perhaps most apparent in foreign affairs. America sees itself as a benign actor on a moral stage — acting in its own interests to be sure, but viewing its interests as exemplifying the universal values that it embodies as a nation. Moreover, in acting in its own interest, America sees itself as rule-bound and gentlemanly. There is, therefore, no necessity to be obedient to any authority — actions do not require the approval of an authority to be legitimate. Equally, any agreement freely entered into can be left freely and with equanimity. Should it no longer suit the United States to be bound by some international agreement, they have every right to leave it.

The funniest thing for Lockeans is to realize there might be another way to look at it.

The nations of Europe, for example, after a century of devastating conflict, well understand that left by themselves, nations are unruly entities capable of wreaking unrestrained destruction. Said nations are therefore conscious of the over-riding need to have each nation submit to a higher authority. In a fit of post-war sobriety, the nations of Europe volunteered to tie their own hands, that they might not injure themselves through hurting others.

We do need to understand each other better. This article maybe gives a few clues as to how to begin.

Homer on stone

A sarcophagus discovered by construction workers in Cyprus last week bears images based on the Iliad and the Odyssey.

No word yet on whether Homer intends to sue for copyright violation.

(Joking aside, the article says the images are much brighter than those on similar sarcophagi displayed in the Met and the British Museum, which is way cool. Don’t you just love this stuff?)

New review on the block

In Slate, Meghan O’Rourke has a piece about Virginia Quarterly Review, a literary magazine that received six nominations for this years National Magazine Awards.

This made the Virginia Quarterly Review the second-most-nominated magazine, behind the Atlantic, which received eight, and ahead of The New Yorker, Harper’s, New York, and National Geographic, all of which received five. It was as if a scrappy farm team had demolished the Yankees in an exhibition game.

Click the link for the how’s.

This sounds like a great idea

I just found about about this via Zinnian Democracy: according to Mark Hare at the Democrat and Chronicle, Kenichiro “Ken” Sato, 27, a museum art director from Sendai, Japan who has enrolled in a public administration program at Monroe Community College, has obtained a $15,000 grant from Rochester’s Arts and Cultural Council to turn downtown into an outdoor photography museum.

The plan is to hang 300 photos on tall and not-so-tall buildings. About 100 would be large, 100 feet by 50 feet and 15 by 15. The rest would be 5 by 8 feet, displayed at eye level. Some would depict local history, the rest would be selected from photos submitted internationally.

I must say, I have a very good feeling about this.

The end of handwriting?

In The Guardian this week, Stuart Jeffries asks whether writing by hand will become a lost art, as technology increasingly enables us to communicate without it.

He passes on a bit of history along the way. For example, the Sumarian merchants invented a script 5000 years ago, using “a stylus and wet clay to record the ingredients for beer.” Notes Jeffries, “The endlessly inventive outpouring of human writing thus grew out of commercial necessity.”

Perhaps that observation holds the secret to whether handwriting will die. Does it have, today, any commercial necessity?

New, improved fishwrap?

Jeff Jarvis posts a prescription for local news dailies. He suggests cutting out the following:

Stock tables
National business news
Local business news
Personal finance
Critics
TV Listings
Movie Listings
Entertainment listings
Sports columnists
National sports coverage
Sports agate
Comics
Syndicated advice columns
Food, home, fashion coverage
National and international news

“But what’s left?” you ask.

Answer: local news and politics. The improved coverage of which, Jarvis suggests, will actually make a difference in peoples’ lives . . .

Hmmmmmmm.

All Internets is Local

The paradox of “globalization” is that although corporations are able to design commercial infrastructures that span geographical and cultural boundaries, as individuals people still tend to coalesce into, and self-identify as part of local or regional communities. So now we have the “balkanization of the Internet,” to swipe a phrase from today’s Wall Street Journal article, “In Threat to Internet’s Clout, Some Are Starting Alternatives” (subscription required).

Whether from a desire to pique the U.S. or to control its citizens, some countries (China, Germany, some Arabic nations) are designing break-away Internets. They are going to have their own urls. It’s going to be like the spawning of the baby bells, only without such a cute name.

This was inevitable, in my opinion. Of course U.S. programmers aren’t going to understand, or precisely serve, the interests of non-English-speaking people.

That said, I also believe that top-down, politically-driven alternative ‘nets are destined to fray, ultimately. So Joe Totalitarian doesn’t like our party, and goes off to play by himself. His guests are still going to peek over the fence at ours, every chance they get. We’ve got the rock-and-roll Internet, the Internet with the little paper umbrellas in the drinks, the Internet where fun little political fisticuffs break out and nobody gets dragged away and disappeared.

Call me an optimist. But I believe that someday, in the not-too-distant future, someone out there is going to make a ton of money designing tools to bridge a bunch of incompatible Internets that somebody else spent a ton of money building. Such is life. Ain’t it grand?

[tags] Internet [/tags]