Archivos mensuales: julio 2015

El gran John Cage en la tele, en el programa concurso I’ve Got a Secret, interpretando su obra «Water Walk». De la interacción con el presentador (que está fumando!!!!) mi momento preferido es cuando Cage le corrige y dice que él hace música.

Y también queda en evidencia el enorme sentido del humor de Cage:

Before the performance, the host assures the audience that it’s fine to laugh, perhaps even encouraging it. “These are nice people, but some of them are going to laugh. Is that alright?” he addresses Cage. In his soft voice, Cage answers, “Of course. I consider laughter preferable to tears.”

What ensues reminds me of being at the theater when audience members laugh at awkward or taboo scenes as a way, I think, of coping with an uncomfortable experience that wasn’t intentionally funny. Hysterical laughs follow the clunk of ice cubes in a cup; the gulp of water entering a jug; and the slam of radios falling onto the floor. Cage repeats the same actions in a willful, structured manner, though the order of sounds — which over time echo and sit in the air — is never predictable.

The audience’s flippant reaction is at odds with what we normally think of Cage — there is a certain seriousness attached to his work. Yet watching Cage onstage it’s clear he had a sense of humor or that at least he was unfazed by others. At one point, the host reads a review in the New York Herald Tribune of Cage’s then-recent album: “Certain compositions of his are really a delight to the ear. This is something that cannot be said of quite a few other Cage items.” Cage, in response, gives a wide, lighthearted smile.

John Cage’s 1960 Game Show Performance

También: 4′ 33″ y Ulobit homenajea a John Cage. Y cómo no, John Cage«>esta cita perfecta.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1J2PyO0Q40

Vale, no será el primero, sólo el más antiguo conocido. Pero qué bonito:

Andrea Amati constructed the instrument in Cremona, Italy, and through his sons several generations would make the Amati name integral to stringed instrument evolution. “He influenced all of the violin makers up to this day, including Stradivari and Guarneri,” said Ken Moore, Frederick P. Rose curator in charge in the Department of Musical Instruments. “He is credited with being the father of the modern violin. Before him there were all sorts of shapes and sizes, and he standardized things and also made templates so he could produce the instruments a bit faster. He really was the one who created the formula for violin making to this day.”

Origen: Tracing Back to the World’s Oldest Known Cello

Siempre hay alguien dispuesto a decir lo que tú piensas de una película. El primer párrafo es perfecto:

Bad movies are one thing. We know how to deal with them. But Minions isn’t bad, exactly. It’s perfectly neutral – the most impressively flavorless movie in many a long age. I’ve found preparing to review it has been something of an exciting race against the clock: would I be able to finish writing before every last memory I had of the experience of watching it had evaporated away? Given how hard it was to remember the beginning of the movie by the end of it, dear reader, I was not optimistic.

Origen: Antagony & Ecstasy: SIDEKICKS: THE MOVIE

De las tres, me ha gustado mucho esta escultura de dos árboles perpetuamente tirando de un muro de jardín. Que los árboles estén tan «construidos» como el muro me parece que le da toda la gracia.

Gabriela Albergaria’s “Two Trees in Balance” (2015) presents an aesthetically formal conflict between a garden wall and two improvised elements of nature. Neither enclosure nor sanctuary, as gardens have historically been, the two composite trees, made from salvaged pieces of wood, are suspended in perpetual tension as they pull against either side of a 10 foot concrete block wall, an evocation of the forces of gravity and organic growth that tend to pull down the structures humans erect.

The artist propagates her idea from found branches and trunks gathered throughout the city and  reconstructed into the semblance of trees with the aid of bolts and metal straps. Grafting, a common horticultural technique of cutting and fusing to reproduce multiple plants from a single rootstock, is evoked by Albergaria’s construction methods. The reconstituted trees recall the long tradition of gardening that in consort with architecture, served the psycho-socio-political need to define and demarcate nature into domesticated and wild zones.

Origen: Vantage Points: Three Works at Socrates Sculpture Park

Qué listo era Nietzsche. Dan ganas de leerlo y todo:

Here is my thought for the day: Nietzsche basically thinks morality, good and evil, were invented to enable trolling. That is the value of this value, such as it is. When he says we are decadent, he means Western civilization has turned into an endless comment box, filled with folks trolling. No one has even read the original blog post that set it all off. Eventually the trolls start trolling themselves, for lack of any non-trolls to troll. Trolling the trolls feels like non-trolling, but it’s really just supertrolling. Untermensch als Uberzwerg! (This is Zarathustra’s penultimate insight.) There needs to be some non-trolling way to get past all trolling. The one thing no true troll truly feels is joy, hence Nietzsche’s emphasis on the need to be joyful and affirmative. Also, truth. The one thing every troll pretends to care about. The one thing no troll cares about. Which reminds me: English psychologists, what’s up with that? Are they just sealions, sealioning us? It’s fascinating to ask what truly motivates them! Are they cruel or cunning or simply clueless? Or some combination of all three! Do they know how they look? Also, derp. Philosophy is derpy. This is a key Nietzschean insight. All those footnotes to Plato amount to a flerped herp of derp. Also, the internet as shame culture. “What do you consider the most humane? – To spare someone shame.” Nietzsche would not have liked the way the internet has turned out. In fact, when he complained about democracy, he was really just complaining about the internet. Right?

Origen: The Genealogy of Trolling — Crooked Timber

Cuánto ingenio, la verdad:

As part of a long series of functional sculptures by New York artist Sebastian ErraZuriz, the Wave Cabinet merges the form of a credenza with an elaborate system of 100 wooden slats that allows the piece to open in rolling, wave-like patterns. Like many of his other novel designs, ErraZuriz says h

Origen: The Wave Cabinet Opens Like a Paper Fan

Interesante:

Kawakami nos traslada a una tienda de objetos de segunda mano, propiedad del señor Nakano, donde pasa toda la acción. La voz parlante es Hitomi, una joven japonesa que, a falta de una mejor ocupación, ocupa el puesto de dependiente de dicha tienda y su voz personal e íntima se hace muy característica y llega fácilmente al lector. Nakano es, sin embargo, el personaje alrededor del cual girará la historia, capítulos cortos concentrados en uno u otro objeto. En la tienda del señor Nakano no está solo Hitomi, sino también Takeo, el chico que ayuda en las recogidas de objetos, y la hermana del señor Nakano. Juntos crean un ambiente familiar que Kawakami logra transmitir con facilidad a través de las palabras de esta novela corta.

Origen: El peso del aire: La calidez íntima de Kawakami

La genealogía hacia atrás: PGarcía y antes PSmith.