Art is a small thing, though an expensive one, compared to the media. It is a vibration in a museum; it deals with nuances that have no “objective” importance. It is not even a very good religion. But once it gives up its claims to seriousness, it is shot, and its essential role as an arena for free thought and unregimented feeling is lost. The pop sensibility did much to take these claims away, dissolving them in the doctrine that the medium was the message. All that slogan came down to was the idea that it no longer mattered what art said. Manifestly, this was not enough: the human animal is an animal that judges, and even in a culture split as disastrously and in so many ways as ours the problems of choice, taste, and moral responsibility for images still remain. In fact, they get harder. But the rock on which the avant garde as it had once defined itself (the conscience of the Western middle classes) sank was that art no longer controlled that responsibility.
“
| — |
Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New (1991)
|
Happy Bastille Day! Saw this today and thought of vous…
Raoul Dufy, July 14 at Le Havre (1905)
Liverpudlians vote with their handbrakes
Spot the artwork competition: Cristina Iglesias, Towards the Sound of Wilderness (2011), installation view
But the management makes it look/sound like so much fun.
modernandmaterialthings:
If you become conversant, you can then maybe move to France, where the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSL) has banned from television and radio the words “Twitter” and “Facebook.” The words can be used in news stories, but if a TV network would like its viewers to follow it on Facebook, it will now have to say the more indirect, “Follow our social networking sites.”
The new rule goes back to a 1992 law that defined these kinds of product mentions as advertising. “Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are many other social networks that are struggling for recognition?” said Christine Kelly, a spokesperson for the CSL. “This would be a distortion of competition.”
Oh the French and their ever-changing and opportunistic definitions of ‘public space.’ No veils? No Twitter? What’s next? A ban on English and English speakers trying to speak French?
Makes perfect sense n’est-ce pas?
![anxiaostudio:
nprfreshair:
After losing both of his legs in a climbing accident, biophysicist Hugh Herr says he became motivated to do something worthwhile with his life. Today he runs the Biomechatronics group at the MIT Media Lab and designs better prosthetic limbs for other amputees: “My biological body will degrade in time due to normal, age-related degeneration. But the artificial part of my body improves in time because I can upgrade.” [complete interview here]
Amazing look at future of prostheses. Today, hipsters wear fake glasses; what was once an impairment is now an enhancement. Could the same one day be true of prostheses? —axm](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lppyoqPRuE1qd9dz2o1_500.jpg)
