We can only guess from the profile.
Imagination
What More About Picasso?
We had mentioned in an earlier post encountering this source of interesting observations, and now another from the same (click on the image for the full thought and information about the exhibition):
The idea of Picasso always precedes the experience of seeing Picasso’s art. Looking at drawings from the artist’s early years in the Frick Collection’s cramped basement, I wondered what we can say about Picasso that hasn’t already been said. I’ve previously encountered this question with artists whose reputations (and market value) are in such high esteem that it is almost impossible to see the work as separate from the artist’s image. Even in this small show, with works that look decidedly un-Picasso, I found it difficult to view the drawings as anything other than work of this great artist.
Arctic Circle, Stop Motion
Imagine being talented enough to make that short, brilliant piece. Now imagine being that talented and having the opportunity to share the stage with the master:
I recently took part in a presentation at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox and had the opportunity to screen The Arctic Circle for Tim Burton. After the screening, I had a few minutes on stage to get his reaction and ask a few questions.
The art is the thing, but watching the young artist on stage with the master is fun too…
Two Degrees Warmer?
Among our favorite topics, Paris is always a welcome reason to say something about the avant-garde, including with regard to serious environmental issues.
Continue reading
Wonderful Krulwich
…somebody has been dropping glorious little paper sculptures into libraries and museums all over Edinburgh, Scotland, and we’ve just heard … that there are now three more…
3 Minute Wonders: You Get What You Pay For
It is easy to be skeptical about the relationship between buzz and art, where buzz is meant to be a synonym for meaningful discussion. At 2:23 in this clip one person eloquently suggests that this is art because it has generated discussion. But has it?
Do Not Tresspass
Life Mein Ek Baar, Featuring River Escapes
Every minute of this is fun. The 35th minute is particularly fun for those of us based in Kerala because members of our organization join the stage with the stars of this show.
About five months ago we were approached by a film production company about a show they were filming for National Geographic Channel. They told us that River Escapes was recommended to them as having the best houseboats in the Kerala backwaters (a bit of music to our ears). Then they proposed that their Kerala episode should be based on our houseboats (we danced to that music).
Necessary Versus Sufficient
There are needs, and there are wants.
A toothpick sculpture? Not necessary for San Francisco to demonstrate its greatness (as might have been an underlying objective of the commission). Not sufficient for that purpose either.
Almost Missed It
It is just the way things are. My reading list/pile is always longer/taller than I have time for. And living between the rice fields and spice-laden Western Ghats I do not have access to the kind of bookstores we took for granted while living elsewhere. Amazon does not deliver in India, nor would I put a penny in their coffers until I have the sense that they are not trying to monopolize the book trade, not to mention everything else.
Even if I had access to a great book store I might not have picked this one up off the shelf, though I admire the author’s writing. I have not been in the mood for anything too canonical or Great lately; rather merely useful, interesting, lesser reading. Short- and long-form journalism tend to be my standard fare. There was something in the pile with Greenblatt’s name on it, a magazine article, that I kept burying for months and which persistently kept resurfacing. Continue reading
No More Smirking
Daniel Goleman, a superb interpreter of scientific findings, provides a look inside the mind of the Dalai Lama in a brief video, a quote from which here:
Question: What does meditation do for the brain?
Daniel Goleman: Well, the Mind & Life Institute catalyze these experiments where high, you have to say, Olympic level meditators came to brain imaging labs in the West and have their brains studied while they did different meditation practices. And what they’re finding is brain configurations that they’ve never seen before. These are different brains. For example, the left prefrontal cortex, just behind the forehead, is the center of positive emotions or part of the key… key part of the circuitry for that. And when these monks meditate on compassion, it lights up, it activates to a level that just never seen in ordinary life. And they’re finding, you know, a range of specific… state specific effects like this.
Kolbert, Kerala & Clouds
Reading this post from Elizabeth Kolbert, a familiar cloud of doom came over me. Read almost anything she writes, and you will know what I mean. She writes most frequently about seemingly intractable environmental problems, and those about climate change have the most intense effect on me. But ignorance is not an option, so I read. The cloud lasted about seven hours, and parted just now in a most interesting manner. As if my head were just lifted out of the sand. First, the portion that stuck with me:
Since we can’t know the future, it is possible to imagine that, either through better technology or more creativity or sheer necessity, our children will be able to find a solution that currently eludes us. Somehow or other, they will figure out a way to avoid “a 4°C world.” But to suppose that an answer to global warming can be found by waiting is to misunderstand the nature of the problem.
Rapt
Sometimes it takes another person’s perspective on a familiar place or object to see it in a new light–drawing an outline around a space highlights an additional dimension. Be it a Parisian bridge that is crossed by thousands daily without a second’s thought, or pathways through Manhattan’s Central Park, both locations represent an aspect of the “heart of the city”. (For centuries, the Pont Neuf has literally been the heart of Paris, connecting the Île de la Cité with the left and right banks of the Seine, and the eponymous nature of Central Park requires little explanation.)
Rube Goldberg; Self-Portrait
Different Tastes, Together
I had a thought once about couples where one person was a vegetarian and the other was a meat eater. It seemed like they could really never share a meal and have the same experience without one person–usually the omnivore–compromising to suit the mutually agreeable meal. To a normal, well adjusted human being, this is a totally banal observation that wouldn’t warrant losing sleep over.
But to us at Studiofeast, we thought it’d be cool to do a meal where an omnivore and a vegetarian could both share the same meal without the former forgoing meat or the latter having to try flesh. That was the seed of an idea that grew into our most recent dinner: a 7 course meal with an omnivore and vegetarian option where each corresponding course looked identical across the meat/vegetable line. And on July 17th, we seated 40 guests–20 omnivores on one side of the table, 20 vegetarians sitting opposite them–and served them our Doppelganger Dinner.
See the whole story here. Continue reading
Scraping Hell’s Attic
The Sulphur-Bottom Whale
The sulphur-bottom whale is the largest mammal on (or under) the earth’s surface; many speculate that it might be the largest animal ever to have inhabited our terraqueous globe. These immense creatures can typically grow to between eighty and a hundred feet long, with the largest specimens caught suggesting that the whales might exceed one hundred and ten feet in length! The weight of the sulphur-bottom whale is commensurate with its size: they can weigh between one hundred and one hundred and fifty tons. For comparison, the largest elephant ever recorded weighed a mere twelve tons. If the sulphur-bottom whale rolled over in its sleep Continue reading
What Wind Can Do
Milo has commented on the next generation of wind harvesting in an earlier post, but the use of technology is only bound by the limits of inventiveness and imagination. Even in resource poor parts of the world opportunities are available to dreamers who see the possibilities in what has been discarded.
The Drunken Bumblebee
A snapshot of the inebriated bee. Click for higher resolution!
No, it’s not a new mixed drink.
I was sitting on a bench a few days ago when I noticed something interesting Continue reading
Rotam fortunae non timeo!
Rotam fortunae non timeo -- "I do not fear the wheel of fortune!"
“Mortal men travel by different paths, though all are striving to reach one and the same goal… happiness,”[1] or so says Boethius, the great Roman philosopher. I think we can all agree that, no matter what we want to do or how we choose to do it, our ultimate goal is happiness. It is “the good which once obtained leaves nothing more to be desired.”[2] It doesn’t necessarily take a philosopher to realize this, though; approach any random person and he or she will probably confirm that a happy life, is, of necessity, a good one.
But what is happiness? We say we are “happy” when we get an A on a test, win an important sports game, or finish a grueling paper—but what do we mean by it? The joy from these moments, however real at the time, begins to appear ephemeral in retrospect. Think back to the 6th or 7th grade: do you still glow with warmth when you remember getting a 93 on an Earth Sciences test (if you remember at all!)? Continue reading
Through the Looking Glass
Hoopoo by Textile Artist Abigail Brown
Question: What would a Natural History Museum look like in Wonderland?
Answer: Abigail Brown’s studio.
The Victorians were avid collectors, and there’s something deliciously Victorian about the detail and precision with which textile artist Abigail Brown practices her craft, bringing the winged world to life with bits and pieces of cloth that each carries their own history. Continue reading
Organikos 
