Category Archives: art

Glow

By | | , ,
2 Comments

glow_festival_5_bannerLast night, Glow, the biennial evening to late night gathering down on Santa Monica beach, was fun. There were even some interesting exhibits to look at and interact with, as sort of a bonus! Below (and above) are a few images I took while down there. Click for larger view. Look at the guide on the website to figure out which piece you might be viewing, and go here for links to more photos and so forth. The piece captured in the photograph above, Day for Night, (Santa Monica pier and the carousel in the background) was one of my favourites. See description and information about its creators here. […] Click to continue reading this post →

ArtWalk Walks…

By | | , ,
9 Comments

Faith Machine by Robert Reynolds…And in other news about changes to events I frequent and blog about (see list at end), the downtown LA ArtWalk, which had turned into a monthly street festival (that had very little to do with art, but so what?) that brought downtown alive by attracting people from all over the city, has been canceled, to the surprise of many. I’m shocked by this but at the same time not entirely surprised as I have seen the seeds of this before. (The photo is of a piece entitled “Faith Machine”, by Robert Reynolds, that I saw in Bert Green’s gallery in 2008. Click on the photo to jump to the post about it, and a video showing its lovely breathing action…)

As much as it has moved to being more of a walking city than it is given credit for by most people, something I talk a lot about here, I have to admit that Los Angeles still does not really know how to deal with too many people on the streets. And by “too many” I mean levels that would be regarded as normal in so many other places. The expectation is that too many people (especially in neighbourhoods that are not in the, er, supposedly more genteel West side of the city) is simply a bad thing that is prone to turn into a “problem”. That is always the first reaction. In any case, it is certainly reasonable that some level extra policing is needed for safety, etc., but this is where things get sticky. The increase in policing that is needed to deal with the extra people puts a strain on resources, and there ensues an argument for who will pay the bill. So crowds are simply regarded as clearly negative, instead of an opportunity to build community, express humanity, and for other things involving positive person-to-person connections that this city needs more of. So the thing seems to have been killed because a model for how to foot the bill for extra policing could not be worked out… There may be more to it than that, but that rough model seems to fit the pattern I’ve seen before**.

My main point here is that by LA standards the ArtWalk had grown to become a large crowd, but it was no larger than a typical Summer’s weekend evening in Times […] Click to continue reading this post →

Schiele Surprise

By | | , ,
5 Comments

schiele_kniende-im-orangenOne of the things I am very happy with from my recent explorations in Vienna was my proper discovery of Egon Schiele. Somehow he’d not been on my radar before, and while I enjoyed looking at lots of rock-star famous excellent work by Gustav Klimt, it was Schiele who, out of the two, really captivated me on this trip. (More on another artist later.) So as to not startle you while eating your morning wheaties, I’ll spare you one or two of my favourite drawings/paintings of his that spring most immediately to mind, and instead show you the one on the right, which is very striking (Kneeling female in orange-red dress, 1910). He seems to have had a thing for orange/red, I’ve noticed. Or maybe it is I who notice it a lot in his work. I mostly love that many of his paintings are very much like line drawings with colour added, and since his line drawing work is […] Click to continue reading this post →

New Bounty, and Homeward Bound

By | | , , , , , ,
3 Comments

white_figsBack in Los Angeles, things at home started on a rather pleasant note. I went out into the garden and picked four nice ripe figs off one of the trees, still warm from the sunlight. (Hmmmm… My nemesis, Fluffy, must be napping. Or planning something very subtle.) You can see three of them in my hand to the left. A fourth did not survive the wait period while I got my camera out of my luggage.

Sunday in Vienna was as interesting as Saturday, with more outdoor components than indoors since it was a lovely day, weather-wise. I wandered the city streets a lot, and spent a fair amount of time getting a feel for them, occasionally hopping on the subway (U-bahn) or a tram to nip over large distances, or to rest my feet. Other rest stops involved cafes for a beer, or a cup of tea, and a bit of people watching, reading, or other pleasant sitting activity.

Like Saturday, I saw a lot of art on Sunday, focusing again on Austrian artists primarily, and learning about the Secession movement in particular, and several of the characters associated with it. Fascinating.

I’ll do a post or two more on Vienna later on, I hope.

I left the city in the evening, heading for a brief stop in London before setting my sights on Los Angeles on Monday. Found myself in the amusing position of watching […] Click to continue reading this post →

Outshine

By | | , , ,
2 Comments

l-640-480-d044a0bd-8d6a-4a37-af29-7487b2205058.jpegI gave my seminar at the workshop yesterday and said goodbye to friends old and new, colleagues, staff, and so on. Today is a hello to tourist mode, with me exploring aspects of Vienna. It is raining today, so it is a good thing that I’d planned to spend a lot of time looking at art indoors.

I’m resting in the cafe at MUMOK (Museum Moderner Kunst), between bouts of exploration of the exhibits. There’s a modern art and modern science (together, and of course modern means early 20th Century) exhibit on the upper floors. They have the usual chatter […] Click to continue reading this post →

A Treasure Trove!

By | | , , , , ,
5 Comments

As I’ve mentioned before, I listen online to Radio 4, one of the BBC radio stations I love for its variety, breadth and depth of programming. Between it and NPR affiliate KPCC, my day is usually rather full of (spoken-word) radio of a wide variety. I’ve noticed that Radio 4 has been doing a programme called “A History of the World in 100 Objects”. The Director of the British Museum does a 15 minute programme on each of 100 objects and talks about aspects of its historical significance. (If you think you don’t like history (maybe bad experiences in school or something like that) this might be a great way back into the subject for you. Not liking a subject is usually, I find, an issue with how it was presented to you and not with the subject itself.) It’s a lovely way of quickly plugging into aspects of world culture in interesting ways, and rather reminds me of the short series that we here at USC in the College Commons called The Cultural Life of Objects, organized by my colleagues Anne Porter and Ann Marie Yasin. (See also the Collections event, and my post about it.)

The BBC series is about half way now, and it has been quite wonderful. I strongly recommend it to you. Here’s the marvellous thing: The entire series can be podcast […] Click to continue reading this post →

Art and Science

By | | , , , ,
2 Comments

e.coli image by shardcoreSome time back I wrote a post concerning E.Coli, and illustrated it with an image that I found on the web. The other day I learned more about the actual source of the image. The painting (click on image to enlarge) was from someone working under the name shardcore, and you can visit their site here. Notably, there are several pieces of work there, and a number of them are of science subjects, and scientists. Shardcore writes interesting notes for some of the work too.

The work is overall quite fascinating, striking, and often very aesthetically engaging. I recommend having a good long look around. To tease you to go there, let me point out a (topical) one for some of us with eyes on the LHC. A painting of Peter Higgs:

[…] Click to continue reading this post →

Categorically Not! – Imagine

By | | , , , ,
1 Comment

yossi_govrin_sculptureThe next in the Categorically Not! series the series of events is tomorrow, Sunday 18th April. It is, as usual, held at the Santa Monica Art Studios. 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. Here is the website that describes past ones, and upcoming ones. See also the links at the end of the post for some announcements and descriptions (and even video) of previous events. (At the right is an image of a beautiful sculpture by artist Yossi Govrin, who is on this week’s program.)

The theme this month is Imagine. Here’s the description from K. C. Cole: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Wonder

By | | , , , , ,
5 Comments

Over at Wongablog, Andrew points to a post he did over at Humanist Life in which he reviews “Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science”, by Richard Holmes. This is one of my favourite topics, and it is certainly a book I’m planning to read, although I have not done so yet.

Andrew writes thoughtfully on the book and the matter in general, and so I’ll leave you to wander over there and have a read of it. To tempt you, an extended (I hope Andrew does not mind) extract: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Road Report

By | | , ,
5 Comments

durham_maptoledo_mapA brief report from the road. My wanderings took me to Toledo. The one half an hour on the train from Madrid (Spain), not the one in Ohio. It actually reminds me a lot of Durham, in England, where I lived and worked for three years. I’ll leave you to look a bit at their geography, strategic history, and so forth, to see why. You can start by glancing at the maps I clipped for you for clues.

I enjoyed it quite a bit, although I shall have to go again to explore more thoroughly. […] Click to continue reading this post →

Waterfall

By | | , , , , , , , ,
1 Comment

My Walkabout finds me in Madrid for a little while, and I find myself reporting joyfully on rain, once again. Not because it has been raining an unusual amount here, but because of a production I went to the other night. It was primarily a dance event, celebrating and dramatizing the work of poet Frederico Garcia Lorca during his time in New York in the 1920s. The choreography was by (I’ve forgotten… will find ticket and update shortly) [update: Blanca Li. Title: ¨Poeta en Nueva York¨] with flamenco as the primary form, mixed with several other dance traditions. dance_theatre_stillThere was a lot of good and enjoyable work to see, but I’ll admit to being blown away by the theatre’s (and associated production staff’s) ability to suddenly create a rainstorm on the stage, and sustain it for a prolonged period while one of the dances (using the water, as you can see) used it to great and stunning effect. I had to sneak a (no flash and no disturbing of neighbours of course) photo for you. Click for larger view.

A bit like the first time you saw Jurassic Park back when it was first released and utterly groundbreaking visually, I (and maybe you?) spent time thinking, “this is amazing!”, “how did they pull off this illusion?”, before concluding that maybe the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Categorically Not! – Grand Challenges!

By | | , , , ,
Comments Off on Categorically Not! – Grand Challenges!

So yes, the Categorically Not! series was a bit thin on the ground in the last several months. I think KC was a bit busy travelling to tell people about her Frank Oppenheimer book.

Well, it is back on the calendar, and I probably should have mentioned it earlier, but the next one is tomorrow, so I thought I’d remind you. Remember that the series of events is 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. Here is the website that describes past ones, and upcoming ones. See also the links at the end of the post for some announcements and descriptions (and even video) of previous events.

The theme this month is Grand Challenges!. Here’s the description from K. C. Cole: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Essence

By | | , , , , ,
Comments Off on Essence

Today I’ve got to give a guest lecture in a class of KC Cole’s at USC’s Annenberg School. I’m supposed to talk on the theme of Art and Science. I’ll cover a number of aspects, I expect (have not written it yet), but it put me in mind of two posts I did a while back on the subject. One was over at Correlations (remember that?) and the other, called Transcendence, was here. I thought I’d reproduce some of the Correlations post, called Essence, here. The back story was that I was working up a contribution to SEED magazine (the December 2007 issue I think) which was doing a cover story on Science and Art, and… well, I’ll let the 2007 me tell you the rest:

While working on the contribution, I was hugely conflicted, for many reasons (variety of themes, variety of pieces, art forms, only 100 words, etc…) and another major theme struggled for dominance – “essence”. How both science and art strive to identify the essential truth about a subject. My original contribution that I submitted to the editors to get their feedback on whether I was on the right track for what they were looking for therefore had a bit more of this in it, and referred to two pieces of art (I eventually chose one and focussed on developing and rewriting around that, using the “transcendence” theme). The piece I used that did I did not use for the final article is perfect for illustrating the “essence” theme, and so to provoke some thoughts in you […] I include it here, along with some fragments of the paragraphs I was playing with at the time:

[…] Click to continue reading this post →

Gone East, Looking West

By | | , , , , ,
9 Comments

This is exciting! Today I decided to explore the new extension of the Gold line for a little while. atlantic_stationThere’s something deeply satisfying about seeing a prominent public works project of such obvious value to the community finish the construction phase and begin regular service. I was away in Europe at the opening of it in mid-November and so today was my personal little inauguration ceremony. It runs South and then East from downtown’s Union Station to Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles. Yes, you can take it all the way from Pasadena to East LA without changing trains (and similarly in the other direction) and so there’s an incentive to explore. (I’m hoping this will motivate some of the people I know in Pasadena who rarely leave it to actually get out and explore Los Angeles for real…)

I wandered the streets a little bit at one or two of the stops and of course I also sat on the trains looking out of the window and at the people around me. As with many […] Click to continue reading this post →