How to alienate an audience: forget the name of your host, be indiscrete, criticise the Olympics. These were Mitt Romney’s gaffs on his visit to the UK in July (Guardian), and reported as a “gift” to Barack Obama, who claimed in his speech on Thursday that his rival “might not be ready for diplomacy with…More
Spem in Alium
Thanks to Kindles and e-readers you can read anything at home, at work, on the train, or the bus without embarrassment. No one need ever see the book’s cover. Paper books can be left lying around the house for others to pick up. Not so with electronic books. Reading really has become a private affair.…More
Situationist International and the mood of the times
In an articulate concluding statement at Pussy Riot’s trial in Moscow this week, one of their members Maria Alyokhina invoked Franz Kafka (1883-1924) and Guy Debord (1931-1994). The reference to show trials, menace and bureaucracy out-of-control in Kafka’s The Trial is obvious. Debord’s writing seems to be available more freely online than that of other…More
We are all entertainers
Entertainment is everywhere, especially in Edinburgh during Festival season, when the streets are peppered with performers, handbill distributors, costumed actors scuttling from A to B, and late-running Royal Scots Dragoon guards. In an interesting essay of 2002 on entertainment and the Internet, film theorist Richard Dyer noted how entertainment was even then fusing with everyday…More
How the Internet kills curiosity
NASA successfully landed its latest robotic vehicle on Mars 6 August, 2012, which is also the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. I found that fact while browsing the Internet on the theme of curiosity. The coincidence works best if you go with Greenwich Mean Time rather than Pacific Daylight Time … another Internet-discovered factlet.…More
Melancholy and media
In an intellectually astute observation about his own Olympic success, cyclist Bradley Wiggins said, “There is almost slight melancholy. I realised on the podium that that is it for me. I don’t think anything is going to top that. To win the tour and then win Olympic gold in London at 32. I’ll look back in…More
Mad crowds disease
Mobs, herds, battalions, minions, spectators: these are groups to whom we readily ascribe a mood – celebratory, triumphant, ugly, angry, battle-weary, hysterical, frenzied, supportive, enthusiastic, docile. I confess to being moved by the presence of crowds on George IV Bridge in Edinburgh as the Olympic torch relay passed by. I had stumbled across different segments…More
Unearthing the trickster function in Icelandic myth
Loki is tied in an underground cave in the company of a serpent who tortures him with venom. Loki’s occasional writhing causes earthquakes. (139 characters. I’ve just made a tweet out of a saga.) According to an authoritative source, the god Loki plays a central role in the exchange of goods (von Schnurbein, 2000). Loki…More
Maximum graphic
Digital animators have to attend to a lot of detail. Unlike in live action film CGI detail does not come for free. Digital animators and their creative teams have to plan, model, texture, light and render every object, colour, texture and effect. Because of their limited means, independent animation producers and students inevitably have to…More
Synesthesia anesthesia
What colour is cool? Synesthesia is a hot topic amongst artists, and on the Internet. There it is. I’ve just used words from the vocabulary of touch sensation (cool and hot) applied to something visual (colour) and something abstract (a topic). The painter and theorist Wassily Kandinsky went further in describing in terms of heat…More