January 2008
51 posts
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How Starlings Fly in Formation →
“Current computer models assume that each bird interacts with all birds within a certain distance. But the new observations, however, show that each bird keeps under control a fixed number of neighbours - seven other starlings - irrespective of their distance, which is the secret of how they stick together.”
“It is true that in the height of enthusiasm I have been cheated into some fine...”
– Keats
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Anti-Work Movements
Robert Kurz is a German Theorist whose works have been all but neglected here, with only a few (often clumsy) online translations available. He came to attention in Germany shortly after the Reunification, when a book of his accurately predicted and seemingly defined Germany’s resulting economic slump. Kurz’s critique is Marxist in origin, but oriented around one fundamental change...
Symbols.com →
Internet Sacred Texts Archive →
Cliche Finder →
Silva Rhetoricae →
Online guide to rhetoric by Dr Gideon Burton of Brigham Young University. One of the most thorough and useful writing guides I’ve ever come across.
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Just received in the mail: →
Guy Debord’s Art of War.
Novels on Cellphones →
From the NYTimes: “Out of the Fortress,” showed up on tens of thousands of mobile telephone screens on Friday. It is the text-message novel, a new literary genre for the harried masses in a society that seems to be redefining what it means to be harried. Weighing in at a mere 4,200 characters, “Out of the Fortress” is like a marriage of haiku and Hemingway, and will be...
Shoes
I have become, quite by accident, one of those unfortunate men who has a shoe collection.
“After a certain point, it becomes obvious that the bar exists to ensure that the...”
– Erich
“I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art — and much...”
– Duchamp
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Rösselsprung
Early in Culture and Value, Wittgenstein quotes a poem by Frida Schanz which he says he took from a “Rösselsprung.” This was my first introduction to the term, and a little research turned up the excellent site http://www.ktn.freeuk.com by George Jellis which has a thorough history of all things related to “The Knight’s Tour.” The Knight’s Tour is an age-old...
Redhotpawn.com →
I’ve been playing a lot of online chess via this recently. Quite excellent.
“I don’t use the accident. I deny the accident.”
– Pollock
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Nabokov's Last Work →
Apparently there’s some issue as to whether Nabokov’s last, unfinished work should be destroyed, as per his wishes. His wife failed to do it, and now his son may or may not. As someone who fully intends to have a Viking Funeral (wives, dogs, and all worldly possessions with me on the pyre, as God intended), I say they should burn it. It amounts to only 30 pages, after all. Conversely,...
“Good and evil have their origins in a few errors carried out to excess.”
– Paul Eluard
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Authenticity and Value
In an article in the NY Times about the Magna Carta being sold for over $21 million, James Gleick says the following:
“The value of the particular item sold at Sotheby’s eight centuries later is entirely different. It’s a kind of illusion. We can call it magical value as opposed to meaningful value. It’s like the value acquired by one baseball when Bobby Thomson batted it out of the Polo...
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The False Category of Originality
The 20th Century was instrumental in at least one significant change in human culture — by its end, everything could be documented. While it remains to be seen if, in this century, everything will be documented, this much seems obvious: everything not documented is either dismissed as having no value or it is ascribed the highest of values. Either it never happened, or knowing it happened...
“Children are a perpetual, self-renewing underclass, helpless to escape from the...”
– Orson Scott Card
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Some Thoughts on Current Art
I’m not sure how I really felt about El Anatsui’s show “Zebra Crossing” at Jack Shainman Gallery. They’re visually quite something: huge colorful tapestries composed of liquor bottle-wrappings, metal foil, and copper wire. It’s impressive in that obsessive-compulsive way where you imagine the amount of work — from collecting the parts to constructing the...
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Commercials by Roy Andersson
Roy Andersson, writer and director of Songs from The Second Floor, has also made a lot of commercials over the years. All of them feature his unique style and black humor. Apparently, he’s got a new movie, We, The Living, completed last year.
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On Italy
They renamed a town-square honoring Gramsci to New York City, as tribute to 9/11.
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Books Bought in France
Guy Debord — Potlach (1954-1957) Pierre Lusson, Georges Perec, Jacques Roubaud — Petit Traite Invitant a La Decouverte de l’Art du Go Georges Perec — Alphabets La Bibliotheque Oulipienne — Volume 4 La Bibliotheque Oulipienne — Volume 5
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New Poetry by Jacques Roubaud →
A nice piece from a forthcoming book of Roubaud’s poetry, Exchanges on Light, La Presse, 2008. Translated by Eleni Sikelianos.
“Having finished the pyramid, one recalls the circle.”
– A R Ammons, Sphere: The Form of a Motion
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Not So Golden Lights
Outside the Maritime Motel in NYC were trees wrapped tight in golden Christmas lights, but to the lens of my cellphone they appeared to be a myriad of colors. Color is really just a by-product of perception, a visual and aesthetic manifestation of light. That disparity between how the camera sees the lights and how my eye sees the lights, suggest to me that somehow “the absolute” can...
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Antony Gormley's "Blind Light"
One of the more engaging pieces of art I experienced this past year was Antony Gormley’s “Blind Light,” a room-sized glass cube completely filled with white mist. Once you enter you quickly lose the ability to see more than a few feet past arm’s length. Space and direction lose meaning inside, and for the first few moments I stumbled along with short tentative steps, unsure...
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