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Wednesday 29 February 2012
Saturday 25 February 2012
Watch a Live Feed of This Weekend’s Spectacular Planetary Alignment
The moon, Venus, and Jupiter — the three brightest objects in the night sky — will be putting on a dazzling celestial show shortly after sunset both Feb. 25 and 26, coming together in a tight triangle. With any luck, you might also spot tiny Mercury down near the horizon just as the sun goes down.
People all over the world can check out the performance just by stepping outside and looking westward. If snowstorms or general chilliness drive you inside, you can always watch the spectacular event live on the Slooh Space Camera feed, starting both nights at 6:30 p.m. PST. You can also watch a live hangout on the group’s Google Plus page.
Planets can be distinguished from stars in the night sky because they don’t twinkle. This is because they are much closer to us and their light doesn’t get completely distorted by Earth’s atmosphere.
The planetary alignment will continue through the end of the month, with Venus and Jupiter inching ever closer. By late February, the two worlds will appear less than 10 degrees apart, able to be hidden behind an outstretched clenched fist. In March Venus and Jupiter will continue converging until, on Mar. 13, they will be only three degrees (or about two fingers) apart.
If all this isn’t enough, turn around and face eastward during this time to spot the bright red dot of Mars rising shortly after sunset. Mars will grow slightly larger in the sky as it gets nearer to Earth, coming closest around Mar. 5.
Jeremy Deller - Joy in People
BBC2's The Culture Show this week featured the work of Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller, who is about to have a major exhibition at the Hayward Gallery called 'Joy in People'. Deller is not a conventional artist, more an organiser of events. He has been involved in re-enactments of battles between striking miners and the police, brass bands playing acid house anthems and a carnival in Manchester celebrating the street culture of the city. The common theme in his work is the love of popular culture and community. Visit his website to find out more about this fascinating artist.Wednesday 22 February 2012
Andy Warhol's legacy lives on in the factory of fame
15 minutes of fame? The artist whose radical ideas galvanised the 1960s art world continues to dominate the market and permeate popular culture – 25 years after his death.
On 22 February 1987, Andy Warhol died unexpectedly in a New York hospital after a routine operation on his gallbladder. Yet 25 years on, the artist described by Truman Capote, quoting Wilde, as "a sphinx without a secret" has never gone away. Not only does Warhol dominate the art market, with his work accounting for one-sixth of contemporary art sales, his influence permeates both high art and popular culture.
Warhol's work is rarely out of circulation in galleries. A show at the De La Warr Pavilion in east Sussex closes this week, but another, of his portfolio prints, starts at Dulwich Picture Gallery in London this summer. The artists he influenced are even more visible. Next month, artist Gillian Wearing, who once photographed herself dressed as Warhol, will show a retrospective of her work at the Whitechapel, while Jeremy Deller, who hung out at Warhol's studio, the Factory, in the summer of 1986, is just about to launch a retrospective at London's Hayward.Yet it is the sheer range of Warhol's work which has made his influence all-pervasive. As Wearing puts it: "Warhol left his mark in many more ways than his actual work". As well as the paintings, and the films he made of acolytes of the Factory sleeping, taking drugs or, in the case of the self-explanatory Blow Job, receiving oral sex, Warhol created a celebrity magazine, Interview; produced the Velvet Underground's first album; wrote (or dictated) voluminous diaries, and was impresario and mentor to a host of "superstars" – followers who came to find fame, or soak up the atmosphere, and became the subjects of his work.
Read more @ The Guardian
Monday 20 February 2012
What Is Culture For You?
Film created by the youths of Konratpunkt (Germany), for the euro-Mediterranean forume " What place for Culture in Europe of tomorrow? " Montepllier (France), July 2-3, 2009, as part of European plan EUROMEDINCULTURE (s) Citizenship
Monday 6 February 2012
Your Teen’s Search for Identity
They try to strengthen their own identities by excluding those who are not like themselves. Their bodies kick into overdrive. They find themselves disoriented, scared and alone. They become moody, secretive and sarcastic. You don’t recognize your own child. What happened to the child you used to know? The answer: adolescence.
In the teenage years, young people begin their quests for identity. To help you understand your child’s adolescence, Les Parrott, Ph.D., a professor of psychology, offers the five most common ways in which teens demonstrate their struggles with identity:
Through status symbols. Adolescents try to establish themselves through prestige — wearing the right clothes, having the right possessions, from stereos to sunglasses. These symbols help form teen identities by expressing affiliation with specific groups.
Through forbidden behaviors. Teens often feel that appearing mature will bring recognition and acceptance. They begin engaging in practices they associate with adulthood — tabooed pleasures — such as smoking, drinking, drugs and sexual activity.
Through rebellion. Rebellion demonstrates separation. Teens can show that they differentiate themselves from parents and authority figures, while maintaining the acceptance of their peers.
Through idols. Celebrities may become “models” for teens who are looking for a way of experimenting with different roles. They may identify with a known figure, trying to become like that person, and in effect, losing hold of their own identities. This identification with a well known personality gives teens a sense of belonging.
Through cliquish exclusion. Teens often can be intolerant in their exclusion of their peers. Since they are constantly trying to define and redefine themselves in relation to others, they do not want to be associated with anyone having unacceptable or unattractive characteristics.
Sunday 5 February 2012
Smiley Logo
There is a famous scene in Forrest Gump. One day the eponymous character, played by Tom Hanks, goes for a run – and doesn’t stop. For more than three years he jogs across America, attracting acolytes who keep pace behind him. When a truck drenches Forrest with mud, a fan hands him a yellow T-shirt to mop his face.
After Forrest returns it, the man discovers that the mud has imprinted the cloth with a simple design: a schematic smiley face, consisting of two narrow oval eyes and a beaming grin with dimple-like creases at either end, contained within a circle. It’s a “Eureka!” moment: the man recognises the potential of the design at once, and we understand that he will start flogging similar mass-produced merchandise.
Forrest, of course, is a fictional character. But the man with the yellow T-shirt is an amalgamation of two real-life brothers from Philadelphia who are credited with turning the smiley face into a global fad.
Whatever its origins, the smiley has now been a prominent part of Western visual culture for half a century. Perhaps the secret of its success is its simplicity. What it stands for can be easily moulded by its context.
“The smiley face has gone through the same evolution as the baby-boomer generation,” says the American journalist Joan Gage, who is researching a book on the subject. “In the Sixties, he symbolised happiness, innocence and the American dream. By the Seventies, he was taken over by LSD and drug culture. Then there was the emergence of Watchmen. And now contemporary artists like Banksy have adopted the smiley face as a symbol of evil. I think they’re commenting on modern society: they’re rejecting the America of the Sixties. It’s a political statement.”
Read the full article @ The Telegraph 3/2/12
Saturday 4 February 2012
Groups: Goths
The goth subculture is a contemporary subculture found in many countries. It began in England during the early 1980s in the gothic rock scene, an offshoot of the post-punk genre. The goth subculture has survived much longer than others of the same era, and has continued to diversify. Its imagery and cultural proclivities indicate influences from the 19th century Gothic literature along with horror films and to a lesser extent the BDSMculture.
The goth subculture has associated tastes in music, aesthetics, and fashion. The music of the Goth subculture encompasses a number of different styles including Gothic rock, Deathrock, Ethereal, and Neoclassical. Styles of dress within the subculture range from deathrock, punkand Victorian style attire, or combinations of the above, most often with dark attire, makeup and hair.
Source: Wikipedia
Francis Bacon - In my room: personal places and their wider cultural significance
The exhibition, Francis Bacon: A Terrible Beauty is bursting with photographs Bacon used, pages he ripped from books to use as reference (later in his career he preferred to paint from photos than live models), his sketchbooks, notes, paintings, doodles. Everything the gallery could salvage from his studio that showed a personal insight into the life of this artist. The most breath taking part of this exhibition is in the second room. They took his studio from London and recreated it in a huge glass box; walls, ceiling, floors and contents, all arranged to how it was when Bacon worked in it.
Along with his actual studio are photographs of the ajoining two rooms, which housed his kitchen and bathroom which were in one room, and his bedroom and living room which were one room. It was a bizarre living arrangement, but what was odd, was the polar opposite of these two rooms compared to his studio. The studio was a chaotic mess, but his living quarters were absolutely spotless, not a thing out of place, every item had its space, straight and tidy, this was a huge insight into his private life.
Edited from: karlaburns.com
Wednesday 1 February 2012
Charlie Brooker: I'm all for sharing, but why the online obsession with revealing every detail of your life?
Sharing. Now there's a basic social concept that has somehow got all out of whack. The idea behind sharing is simple. Let's say I'm a caveman. I hunt and slaughter a bison, but I can't eat it all myself, so I share the carcass with others, many of whom really appreciate it, such as my infirm 86-year-old neighbour who hasn't had a proper meal in weeks because he is incapable of killing anything larger than a woodlouse. Have you tried grilling a woodlouse? It's scarcely worth the effort.
But it's not all bison meat. Let's say I am still a caveman. The other thing I share is information: the thoughts inside my head or stirring tales of the things I have done. I grunt a hilarious anecdote about the time I dropped a huge rock on a duck and an egg popped out, and mime scandalous gossip about well-known tribesmen. I'm the life and soul of the cave-party.
All this sharing served a purpose. It kept the community fed, as well as entertained and informed. Now zip forward to the present day and, like I say, sharing has somehow got all out of whack. A small percentage of the population hoards more bison meat than it could eat in 2,000 lifetimes, awarding itself huge bison meat bonuses on top of its base-rate bison meat "salary". I say "bison meat". In case you hadn't noticed, I'm using it as a clever metaphor for money.
Sharing is for the rest of us. Not sharing money or bison meat, but personal information. Where we are. What we're doing. Share it! Make it public! Go on! It's fun!
Increasingly, I stumble across apps and services that expect me to automatically share my every waking action on Facebook and Twitter. The key word here is "automatically". Take Spotify, the streaming music service. I have written before about my admiration for Spotify, about what a technical marvel it is. A world of music at your fingertips! Incredible!
The love affair was doomed. Spotify recently reinvented itself as a kind of adjunct to Facebook and has subsequently adopted some truly hideous "social features". For instance: it will tell other people what you're listening to, live. Yes, you can switch this feature off. That's not the point. The point is that it does it by default. By default. IT DOES IT BY DEFAULT.
When Sony launched the Walkman back in the late 70s, its main appeal was that for the first time in history you could stroll down the high street listening to Neil Diamond belting out Sweet Caroline and no one could judge you for it. It made you the master of a private world of music. If the Walkman had, by default, silently contacted your friends and told them what you were listening to, not only would no one have bought a Walkman in the first place, its designers would have been viewed with the utmost suspicion.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for sharing thoughts, no matter how banal (as every column I have ever written rather sadly proves). Humans will always babble. If someone wants to tweet that they can't decide whether to wear blue socks or brown socks, then fair enough. But when sharing becomes automated, I get the heebie-jeebies. People already create exaggerated versions of themselves for online consumption: snarkier tweets, more outraged reactions. Online, you play at being yourself. Apply that pressure of public performance to private, inconsequential actions – such as listening to songs in the comfort of your own room – and what happens, exactly?
It'll only get worse. Here's what I am listening to on Spotify. This is the page of the book I am reading. I am currently watching the 43rd minute of a Will Ferrell movie. And I'm not telling you this stuff. The software is. I am a character in The Sims. Hover the cursor over my head and watch that stat feed scroll.
You know how annoying it is when you're sitting on the train with a magazine and the person sitting beside you starts reading over your shoulder? Welcome to every single moment of your future. Might as well get used to it. It's an experience we'll all be sharing.
Yes, sharing. A basic social concept that's somehow got all out of whack.
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