ubuwaits

“Body is pure. Everything loathsome is the mind, which God...

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:29:00 -0400

“Body is pure.
Everything loathsome is the mind,
which God screws into the body with a lascivious thrust.”

— Anne Carson

Crossing the Longfellow Bridge into Cambridge.

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:21:50 -0400

Crossing the Longfellow Bridge into Cambridge.

Looking out on Boston Harbor after a performance by Anne Carson...

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:00:23 -0400

Looking out on Boston Harbor after a performance by Anne Carson and Rashaun Mitchell at the ICA.

"It is now the capitalist who says, ‘Workers of the world, unite!,’ the better to..."

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 15:20:51 -0400

“It is now the capitalist who says, ‘Workers of the world, unite!,’ the better to dissolve those ‘inefficiencies’ in the labor market (that is, high wages) that arise from political boundaries. The slogan once expressed a hope to organize a body of workers who were dispersed and hence exploitable, whereas now it captures the desire for a mass of ‘human resources,’ exploitable because undifferentiated.”

- Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft

"Let us assume that people will be allowed to read [my work] in about the year 2000."

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 23:54:07 -0400

“Let us assume that people will be allowed to read [my work] in about the year 2000.”

- Nietzsche, in a private letter

Who's interested in startups in the humanities?

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 02:23:00 -0400

On any given day, a quick glance at Techcrunch will be proof enough that a large number of entrepreneurs are eager to replicate the success of sites like Twitter, Foursquare, and Groupon by copying their business models and making slight alterations. Not that there is anything wrong with that. The concepts that these sites have made popular (microblogging, check-ins, group buying) have become integrated into other successful startups.

But I’m convinced that there is room for another type of startup: those that are more about the humanities than technology. Or better put, are an intersection of the two, with the humanities in the starring role and technology made its faithful servant. One part Dada and one part Jonah Peretti.

For me, the most interesting moment in Steve Jobs’ presentation that unveiled the iPad was a slide he showed at the end, that stated Apple saw itself at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts. But if you listen to his comments, it’s obvious that Steve’s using “liberal arts” very loosely (one might even say liberally). He explains the term as describing Apple’s goal of making their products accessible to everyone who picks them up. That’s good user experience, not the liberal arts. (I also can’t help but think that Steve was hinting at another goal: making Apple the dominant supplier for the artifacts of the “liberal arts”: music, movies, and books.)

Despite my breathless comments before its release, I haven’t bought an iPad and have no plans to. If I were to pick one reason, it would be this: I still buy and read paper books. Until I can get the complete works of Nietzsche in a beautifully typeset, DRM-free digital edition that I can share with whomever I please, I’m going to abstain. I don’t think eBooks on the iPad represent innovation in the humanities; they are just faster horses.

We need startups in the humanities precisely because a corporation — even one I admire as much as Apple — should not be trusted as the gatekeeper of the humanities. We need startups that push up against and break down boundaries. True innovation will not be a centralized distribution channel, but a revitalizing of culture produced at the edges, in opposition to, and as correction for, dominant culture. In other words, doing what great art has always done.

Who’s going to start and fund these startups? It might be out of place to seek VCs for these ventures, but I’m convinced that there is a large audience of both artists and technology-minded people who would love to work together. I am one of them. Let’s start a conversation.

This post started as an email to Caterina Fake, whose quick response encouraged me to re-write it for a general audience.

"Never did I trust Fortune, even when she seemed to be offering peace. All those blessings which she..."

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 20:11:58 -0400

“Never did I trust Fortune, even when she seemed to be offering peace. All those blessings which she kindly bestowed on me — money, public office, influence — I relegated to a place from which she could take them back without disturbing me. Between them and me, I have kept a wide gap, and so she has merely taken them, not torn them from me.”

- Seneca

Philip Larkin responds to Epicurus

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:11:00 -0400

There is nothing dreadful in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living.

— Epicurus

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says no rational being
Can fear a thing it cannot feel, not seeing
that this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

— Philip Larkin, Aubade

"Designer’s block may only occur if a designer deliberately aims to create something original and..."

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 14:34:44 -0400

“Designer’s block may only occur if a designer deliberately aims to create something original and extraordinary.”

- Artemy Lebedev, Designer’s block

Slant/Light/Volume installation by Robert Irwin. Currently on...

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 11:43:57 -0400

Slant/Light/Volume installation by Robert Irwin. Currently on view at Walker Art Center.

Irwin’s career is covered in depth in the wonderful book, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees.

N in Central Park.

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:50:14 -0400

N in Central Park.

"The performance connected me deeply to past memories, evoking kindred forms of indescribable..."

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:26:47 -0400

“The performance connected me deeply to past memories, evoking kindred forms of indescribable emotion. I was reminded of what I found as a child to be the most profound experience possible – watching the sunset in isolation on the beach. Waiting in the decaying light to be the only body left on the long stretch of sand, I would revel in the cascading shivers that would crawl down my back as water evaporated from my skin and I wrapped myself more tightly in a towel. Facing the sublime extension of the sea, I remember becoming enveloped in a comforting and serene form of abstract loneliness, an empowering type of isolation devoid of any tinge of yearning or melancholy.”

- Matthew Walker, William Basinski’s Vivian and Ondine

Elevator up to mysterious warehouse show.

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 20:43:29 -0400

Elevator up to mysterious warehouse show.

"If you train people to do one thing (recognize shapes, solve math puzzles, find hidden words), they..."

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 16:25:47 -0400

“If you train people to do one thing (recognize shapes, solve math puzzles, find hidden words), they get better at doing that thing, but almost nothing else. Music doesn’t make you better at math, conjugating Latin doesn’t make you more logical, brain-training games don’t make you smarter. Accomplished people don’t bulk up their brains with intellectual calisthenics; they immerse themselves in their fields. Novelists read lots of novels, scientists read lots of science.”

- Steven Pinker, Mind Over Mass Media

"In truth, our belief that the market could fund new music was always as illusory; European touring,..."

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 17:25:16 -0400

“In truth, our belief that the market could fund new music was always as illusory; European touring, heavily state subsidized, has been the real economic motor of experimental jazz/new music for decades, the light at the end of the tunnel of months of scarce and/or poorly paid NYC gigs. The fact that access to Europe was easier and cheaper for NYC musicians than for their LA counterparts is an important factor in the historical productivity of the NYC new music scene as compared with the West Coast.”

- Marc Ribot, The Care and Feeding of a Musical Margin

Walking home at midnight, I saw these roses poking through my...

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 01:00:30 -0400

Walking home at midnight, I saw these roses poking through my neighbor’s fence.

"As it now functions, [Wikileaks] is primarily hosted on a Swedish Internet service provider called..."

Mon, 31 May 2010 15:22:25 -0400

“As it now functions, [Wikileaks] is primarily hosted on a Swedish Internet service provider called PRQ.se, which was created to withstand both legal pressure and cyber attacks, and which fiercely preserves the anonymity of its clients. Submissions are routed first through PRQ, then to a WikiLeaks server in Belgium, and then on to ‘another country that has some beneficial laws,’ Assange told me, where they are removed at ‘end-point machines’ and stored elsewhere. These machines are maintained by exceptionally secretive engineers, the high priesthood of WikiLeaks. One of them, who would speak only by encrypted chat, told me that Assange and the other public members of WikiLeaks ‘do not have access to certain parts of the system as a measure to protect them and us.’ The entire pipeline, along with the submissions moving through it, is encrypted, and the traffic is kept anonymous by means of a modified version of the Tor network, which sends Internet traffic through ‘virtual tunnels’ that are extremely private. Moreover, at any given time WikiLeaks computers are feeding hundreds of thousands of fake submissions through these tunnels, obscuring the real documents. Assange told me that there are still vulnerabilities, but ‘this is vastly more secure than any banking network.’”

- The New Yorker, No Secrets

"Whatsoever of it has flown away is past. Whatsoever remains is future."

Mon, 31 May 2010 12:32:36 -0400

“Whatsoever of it has flown away is past.
Whatsoever remains is future.”

- Augustine, Confessions XI

"The entire impulse behind Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iBooks assumes that you cannot..."

Sun, 30 May 2010 20:52:00 -0400

“

The entire impulse behind Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iBooks assumes that you cannot read a book unless you own it first — and only you can read it unless you want to pass on your device.

That goes against the social value of reading, the collective knowledge and collaborative discourse that comes from access to shared libraries. That is not a good thing for readers, authors, publishers or our culture.

”

- Verlyn Klinkenborg, Further Thoughts of a Novice E-Reader

"I never understood alienation. Alienation from what? You have to want to be part of something in..."

Sat, 29 May 2010 14:52:00 -0400

“I never understood alienation. Alienation from what? You have to want to be part of something in order to feel alienated from it.”

- Boyd Rice, quoted in Noise/Music: A History