We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. … I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that. -Thomas Edison, inventor (1847-1931)
Spirals
Below is the piece I made during the Erasmus intensive on Composition at my university this past fall, October 2011.
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/33711374 w=500&h=281]
29,000 words/second
Blame
Corporations, corporations, corporation…the root of all evil. Faceless disembodied entities that are ruining the world, the environment and now the political system in the United States by their ability to funnel unlimited amounts of cash into the coffers of willing politicians. The Supreme Court of the United States blocked a ban limiting how much corporations could spend on political campaigns.
It is all the fault of corporations. These mindless soulless beings that wreck havoc in the world, utterly uncontrollable.
But what a minute…don’t these corporations have presidents and CEOs and board members?!?
Aren’t those the people who are actually making the decisions, the bad decisions that we all hate?
And isn’t it possible to find out who these people are?
So why don’t we go after these people more? Instead of saying that corporations are ruining the political system, why not actually name the people who are making the decisions? Why not put a face to those actions?
Yes, that would be harder to do. It is much easier to say that the corporations are at fault as opposed to naming every Tom, Dick and Harriet who sits on the board of those harbingers of doom. It is much easier to blame(and here I will automatically lose this argument, some say, by invoking Hitler) Hitler than all the generals, colonels, captains, corporals who also decided to kill people.
Corporations…Hitler…it is much easier to demonize a single entity than all the actual individuals involved.
Is it any more effective?
Cleaning
Dish washers wash dishes.
Hair dryers dry hair.
What do vacuum cleaners do?
Looking at Rembrandt
The quotes below are from an article on brain scans on people who are looking at Rembrandt paintings.
Some snippets below –
“Brain scans revealed how much the enjoyment of art is influenced by the information given to the viewer.”
“The study showed the strength of suggestibility in such artistic responses.”
“The pretension-puncturing experiment suggests that the appreciation of art is strongly linked to the accompanying information – rather than an objective judgement.”
“This warm glow of aesthetic pleasure was absent when the viewers looked at an image they had been told was fake. Instead the brain activity was associated with strategy and planning, as though the subject was trying to work out why this was not an authentic painting.”
This shows how context can be made to increase or decrease viewers’ enjoyment of a static object. Is this a good thing?
What does this mean for live arts? Could audiences be told that the piece they are watching is a fake Bausch, or a fake Cunningham? Or do a piece as faithfully as possible by someone else and call it your own?
How much does it cost to rent an FMRI?
Art vs. Craft
In craft there is a right and a wrong.
In art, there is neither.
Short Stories
Short stories are literature for people with commitment issues.
Allusion/Illusion
Theater uses illusion and allusion.
Dance uses neither.
Form and Content
Theater is that in which the form and the content are different entities.
In dance, the form and the content are the same entity.