The Art/Science (Non?)Divide Building
bcohen | November 16, 2006Says Slate.com: "Boston artist Rosamond Purcell repurposes the old, the burnt, and the mangled."
They (Slate) have a slide show about/from Purcell's new book, Bookworm. Check it out here. Go ahead. I'll wait. No worries.
Waiting...waiting...waiting...
Okay, now you're back.
The first caption notes:
Over the years, Boston artist Rosamond Purcell has photographed goliath beetles and translucent bats culled from the backrooms of natural history museums; a collection of teeth pulled by Peter the Great; moles flayed by naturalist Willem Cornelis van Heurn; and scores of worn and weathered…
worldsfair | November 15, 2006
Image resulting from tree "painting" by Douglas-fir for two minutes
Nalini Nadkarni, a tree canopy researcher and a National Geographic regular, was kind enough to let me publish this interest piece that looks at the intersection of science and arts.
In essense, she explores the notion that lack of empathy for flora such as trees, is partially mitigated by its stationary status, and so goes on to explore whether how mobile trees actually are. To do this, she essentially adheres a paintbrush to a twig on a branch, and places a canvas in proximity. What's produced is essentially a "painting…
worldsfair | November 15, 2006Here is some silliness to get back in the swing of things. Composed whilst waiting for Ben (Cohen) at the Vancouver Airport, recently rejected by McSweeney's, and likely to make an appearance at one of my sites in the not so distant future.
Still, I was (and still sort of am) seriously considering shopping a better version/take of this piece to a place that "pays per word", mainly because it would be deliciously ironic to get compensated for words like "Uuuuhhhggg", "Gggrr", and "Rrrrn."
HAN SOLO AND CHEWBACCA WEIGH IN ON THEIR NEW HYBRID MILLENIUM FALCON.
HS: Well, so far, it seems like…
bcohen | October 31, 2006The Silencer (being performed in Blacksburg, VA, on November 1, 2, and 3, ahead of its London opening in 2007) is a play about Global Warming and Climate Science. How about that, a play about global warming and climate science. Not your everyday occurrence. I can't say if it's Michael Frayn-level theater, but I can say that it's not the usual approach to confronting climate science issues.
Here's a summary of the play:
Dr. Brian Heath must decide whether to protect his family or publicize his alarming findings about the impending threat of climate change. His predicament stands for our…
worldsfair | October 17, 2006
In so far, as one of the hats I wear, yesterday I had a meeting to discuss collaborations that would provide a visual art experience capable of focusing on a concept of sustainability. I was hanging out and chatting to some of the folks at our Fine Arts department to see if there are any cool ideas where an event or activity could be launched, that had the added of effect of folks talking about things of a sustainable nature.
Most important, of course, was the idea that this event could somehow reach out to the "non-converted." That is somehow appeal to a broader audience, and not the…
worldsfair | October 11, 2006
"I'm not entirely sure if I became a rational scientific person by nature or nurture. Whether it is genetic or whether it is the obvious result of too many years of study. Whatever the case may be, I am a slave to my curiosity, and sometimes I swear I bleed science. To me, everything needs an answer, deserves an explanation, or craves a solution. Even Ben.
And it would not be a stretch to say that I have known Ben for his entire life. In fact, I was even there at his birth - an intense, wet and happy event that will forever resonate in my head. Not all that surprising when you consider that…
bcohen | October 5, 2006Listen: genius is genius.
Here's what we know: Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" is genius. This need not be argued, as if we had to argue that the greatest scientific and technical accomplishments were genius - relativity, quantum theory, polio vaccine, the human genome, that programmable Roomba vacuum cleaner. We already know it to be true. Jeff Tweedy's work on YHF is genius, in the sense of all great forms of human creativity. It's a subject for appreciation.
(and one that goes along with Dave's recent music appreciation posts here, here, and here. If not here too.)
Originally…
bcohen | October 1, 2006For reasons of postal error, I now receive Science every week. Every. Single. Week. Who knew? I have a hard enough time keeping up with the New Yorker's weekly pattern, and now this. These people, you people, just keep doing science. (Incidentally, then, Jonathan Cohen of Virginia Tech -- I am neither Jonathan nor at Virginia Tech (anymore) -- I've got your Science magazines if you're looking for them.)
A few weeks ago AAAS printed the results to their "Visualization Challenge 2006." The images are stunning. I can't even imagine which ones didn't win. Below are a few of my favorites.…
worldsfair | September 20, 2006Although I recently had a piece on the art of vanity searching of the motif DAVIDNG, here is an interesting art project that revolved around "Davids" in general.
(From Geist)
In Winnipeg in 1993, Micah Lexier put an ad in the local newspaper looking for males named David. Hundres of people responded, and he asked the first David of each age one to seventy five, to be photographed at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. The result was an exhibition of life size portraits entitled A Portrait of David. Ten years later, Lexier, with the help of the Winnipeg Free Press, located many of the original…
worldsfair | September 7, 2006I have to say that I was seriously upset by hearing that Steve Irwin was killed recently, and by a Stingray barb no less. It's kind of strange actually, because I was just about to submit a humour piece to Seed where I did a little play on words with the name "Crocodile Hunter."
I know that he'll be sorely missed in my household, having made some serious kiddie street cred by appearing in a Wiggle's video. Besides which, I think he was one of the funniest things ever on TV, and I mean that in only the best of ways. (BBC obituary here)
- - -
THE CROCODILE HUNTER BECOMES THE PLANET HUNTER…
bcohen | September 1, 2006Somehow I thought the quote below might go with the "Letter to the Dead" poem I posted yesterday. So I will offer in in the same vein of not-too-much-pre-commentary. It's just a quote. But it does a few things:
Ties the very idea of knowledge to the idea of progress in yesterday's poem (how strange to speak about the "idea" of knowledge, isn't it?)
Evokes an elegant image of Nature, eternity, and essence (though brings with it the danger of having me be perceived as associating with essentialism, which I won't weigh in on now)
It has a kind of six-degrees feel, the way in which the…
bcohen | August 31, 2006Oh, how to load a question, eh? And a dangerous one, at that.
I mostly think of this topic, of progress and science and technology, as one of faith. Saying that doesn't explain much about what I'm talking about, but I don't intend here to be unnecessarily obscure. Rather, here's a poem instead of a diatribe or monologue or pontificatory (not a word) uber-blurb. It's by a Portuguese poet, and I thank WG for sending it along.
Affonso Romano de Sant' Anna
"Letter to the Dead" (2000)
[translated from the Portuguese]
Friends, nothing has changed
in essence.
Wages don't cover expenses,
wars…
worldsfair | August 29, 2006Geez, it looks like our traffic stats are really taking a beating lately, so I am compelled to assume that this has something to do with the whole Pluto thing.
I mean this isn't too much of a stretch is it? Well, o.k. maybe it is.
Actually, the day it was announced, I ended up hanging out and going for drinks with a group of bioinformaticians and one science philosopher. To be honest, it didn't seem to be a big deal to any of them, which I found really surprising. In fact, one of my conversations that day (thursday I think) went like the following:
ME: Dammit, Pluto is no longer a planet…
bcohen | August 25, 2006It's all that.
Ars Medica, or The Ars, as British hipsters call it, is a fascinating "literary journal that explores the interface between the arts and healing, and examines what makes medicine an art." It's run out of Toronto, begun by a group of doctors (one of them my cousin), and really tip-top. So far they've had three issues, each with an eclectic mix of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and art. I don't know their future plans, but for the websites claims, so I don't know what the next issue looks like. But the first issue looked like this:
All I'm saying is, this is a nice middle…
worldsfair | August 24, 2006Well, it looks like units of our Psyche Strainers are shipping robustly. So much so, that we are perhaps close to thinking about bankrolling a possible movie venture. In this respect, we're thinking specifically of adapting a screenplay from a previous SCQ piece called "WHO IS THE GREATEST SCIENTIST OF THEM ALL,", but having taken a lesson from the "Snakes on a Plane" phenomenon, we have decided to promote this venture as "SCIENTISTS DOING ULTIMATE FIGHTING."
Catchy right? And assuming the Pysche Strainers continue to do well, we figure we can raise enough funds to attract even the…
worldsfair | August 16, 2006Two things seem to be front and centre lately on the media circuits, one of which being the HIV/AIDS conference, and the other (in direct contrast) is the release of "Snakes on a Plane." Both have a viral connotation, whereby HIV is suitably obvious, and the movie has more to do with information disemination.
It's all very intriguing though - that is, this concept of a viral mechanism of getting information out there. The "Snakes in a Plane" is certainly a good example of this, and in fact, as far as I can tell, most everything reported about the movie is more to do with this aspect, rather…
worldsfair | August 10, 2006Mr. Vonnegut has quite the extensive collection of silkcreens you can purchase at his website, and even includes a genetically flavoured piece, called "One-Liner #3 Genome"
As well, here's an interesting one called "Intelligent Design," which I don't get - although maybe that is the whole point?
bcohen | August 8, 2006There is a triple theme here, circling around cabinets of curiosity, which I'll get around to eventually. How about a picture first.
Frontispiece from Museum Wormianum depicting Ole Worm's cabinet of curiosities
But first. A few days ago we linked to a site on the "Longest Running Scientific Experiment," at the Athananius Kircher Society. I'm still not sure what the site is, or the Society I should say, but it's, let's say, curious. Someone--Wamba--commented that it reminded them of the Museum of Jurassic Technology, which was just right. What a perfect connection. The MJT was the…
worldsfair | August 3, 2006I just read Ben's post on an article recently published at the Columbia Journalism Review, and also agree at the neatness of the quote as highlighted in the title of this post. It just brought me to mind of like minded graphic I saw during a presentation by David Orr, whilst he was here at UBC in January.
This graphic, I think, illustrates the same point in an even more potent manner. Here, you can see the interface of the "unknown" simply increases (and in a exponential manner at that), as knowledge is acquired. It simply nails home the notion that, in reality, the more that becomes…
bcohen | August 1, 2006Science and metaphor aren't just for Lakoff and Johnson anymore (okay, they never were, but Metaphors We Live By (1980) was the first thing to pop in my head). From the Toronto Star comes a story, "It's Like This, You See", about the topic. I'll quote their header:
The ability to think metaphorically isn't reserved for poets. Scientists do it, too, using everyday analogies to expand their understanding of the physical world and share their knowledge with peers
The story hits on string theory and Darwin and Velcro and the Greeks. And includes this nice quote from Jan Zwicky, at UBC (I…