Category: Art
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Condescending Cultural Critique
When we evaluate movies, TV shows, and other media products that are intended to be seen by a large, mass audience, we often take two positions at the same time: What I really think of this What will Someone Else think of this? (where Someone Else is a social demographic different from your own) We…
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My New “Sketchbook”
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The WordPress blog admin “Dashboard”, where I am currently typing these words. If you look closely, maybe you can see what kinds of things I might be posting here in the future. I have what I fancy to be interesting ideas just about all the time, and usually when this happens I like to start…
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A Tale of Two Libraries 2: The Morgan Library
I’m no architecture critic, but when I read the New York Times review of the just-reopened Morgan Library & Museum a few weeks ago (with words like “dazzling”, “mesmerizing”, and “triumph”) I knew I had to visit as soon as I could. So immediately following my class field trip the other day, I dismissed my…
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A Tale of Two Libraries 1: Mapping and Thinking at the NYPL
Yesterday I took my FIT students on a field trip to see the Places & Spaces: Mapping Science exhibition at the Science, Industry and Business Library of The New York Public Library. It’s a modest little show consisting of several dozen examples of maps, globes, and information graphics — as exemplified by Edward Tufte’s much-beloved…
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Science vs. Art: Visualizing Alien Life
Long-lost Yes album cover. I recently saw a documentary about the search for extraterrestrial life, and I was struck by how even hard science is sometimes fueled at least in part by pure imagination and creativity. And I thought about how design itself is, at its best, as much based on raw, unfiltered inspiration as…
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Review: Don Quixote
Today (amazingly the 410th anniversary of the deaths of both Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare) I’ve finished reading the classic Don Quixote Parts I and II. What an unforgettable journey, and what an eye-opener! A four hundred year old book (Parts I and II were published in 1605 and 1615) that in many ways…
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Writing Technologies: From Cuneiform to Cyborg
In a previous post, I mentioned the “Technologies of Writing” show I saw during SXSW at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center. Since then, I’ve had several occasions to think about the exhibit again. So I thought I’d go a little more into some of the highlights from the show and share some of the related thoughts…
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NYC Gets a Gehry
Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp is building a new headquarters on Manhattan’s west side in Chelsea. And it’s a Frank Gehry building! This is exciting news, and there’s lots to see and talk about even now, long before the building is even completed. New York’s Architectural Draught We’ve all seen Gehry’s signature works over the last decade…
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Averaging Gradius
Everyone bunches up near the top to escape the enraged atomic volcanoes! [continuing the theme of my previous post, here’s some more multiple-exposure stuff…] Check out “Averaging Gradius“, a great project by “Mr. R. LeFeuvre” at The New Gamer. This amazing video uses multiple-exposures to compare the game playing tactics of ten people playing “Gradius”,…