Category Archives: literature

Really Excellent

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This was originally posted on Cosmic Variance on May 3rd 2006. It was a report on the Categorically Not! event that took place on 23rd April 2006, entitled “Really?”. I’ve decided to reproduce it here as a happy memory of the wonder that Artist and Educator Bob Miller brought into the lives of many. (See next post.) It was a marvellous event overall (probably my favourite Cat Not! event), with several excellent presentations, and so I’ll reproduce the post in its entirety (with slight corrections) to give you a sense of the evening. -cvj
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Well, apologies to all concerned for taking so long to post this, but here it is. The Categorically Not! two Sundays ago was -as usual- extremely enjoyable and informative. This one was all about Illusion, in some sense, the theme being “Really?”.

categorically not! Really image

We started out with a few opening remarks by Bob Miller, who specialises in what categorically not! Really image some might call “light art”. He’s well known for creating a large number of wonderful works using light and shadow, several of them forming the cornerstone of exhibitions in the Exploratorium in San Francisco, for example. Have a look at the “lightwalk”, linked here.

Bob did not talk much, because he wanted everyone to just play, learning from getting involved. And play they did. He’d been up all night preparing (with KC Cole’s help) various fun things for people to do (see the table in the picture above, for example). All simple, and all with a little printed explanation about what to do, and the operation of the thing they were playing with or effect they were seeing.
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Even More for my Reading List

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Aha. I’ve been meaning to get around to some Doris Lessing for a long time. The Academy is trying to tell me something:

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2007 is awarded to the English writer Doris Lessing “that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny”.

Do you have any favourites of hers you recommend?

Here are some passages from her biography on the Nobel site, talking about some of the works that really got her a great deal of wider recognition, emphasizing her important intersection with other genres such as feminism and science fiction (to pick […] Click to continue reading this post →

MacArthur Mashup

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The MacArthur Fellowships were announced today. These are particularly great, as it’s awarded across so many different fields, and I always learn about interesting work going on by reading the synopses at the website. Congratulations to all recipients!! Before I point to the list, I’d like to make a plea that will, of course, go unheeded.

Please please, people of the media, stop calling them “genius grants”. Just stop. By way of explanation, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the term just seems to strike the wrong tone about what these things should be about. It seems to me to push the recipients away as being “other” rather than encouraging us all to embrace the qualities that they are being encouraged to show by getting the fellowships. Ok, that’s the end of my plea.

Here’s a reminder of what the Fellowship is about (extract from their site): […] Click to continue reading this post →

Point of View, II

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The second of the Point of View campus events in the Visions and Voices series is on Thursday. It is at 7:00pm at the Gin Wong conference center (which is near Fine Arts and Architecture, by the way.) See the bottom of this post for some earlier events of this type, and this post for the background on Visions and Voices.

This time we’ll have a Poet, a Dancer, and a Physicist! Here’s some blurb that KC Cole (my co-conspirator in this business) wrote about who is appearing and what they’ll be saying:
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Categorically Not! – Vulgarization

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The next Categorically Not! is Sunday 25th March. The Categorically Not! series of events that are held at the Santa Monica Art Studios, (with occasional exceptions). It’s a series – started and run by science writer K. C. Cole – of fun and informative conversations deliberately ignoring the traditional boundaries between art, science, humanities, and other subjects. I strongly encourage you to come to them if you’re in the area. There’s a new website showing past and upcoming events here. You can also have a look at some of the descriptions I did of some events in some earlier posts (such as here and here), and the description of some of the recent special ones on Point of View and Uncertainty that I organized with K. C. as USC campus events (here, here (with video) and here).

Here is a description from the poster for the upcoming programme: […]
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