art and letters
The Alexander Mosaic, as well as other later artistic and experimental evidence, shows that the visual conventions of writing affect art. The Alexander Mosaic was found in a house buried in Pompeii in 79 GC when Mount Vesuvius erupted. The mosaic is probably a copy of a painting that Philoxenos of Eretria made about 310 [...]
Tagged: antiquity, illuminated manuscripts
COB-29: modern bureaucratic art
Modern bureaucratic art is unjustly deprived of the spotlight it deserves in leading museums and galleries in Washington, D.C. The Hirshhorn’s museum’s ongoing exhibition, The Panza Collection, leads the way with a needed expansion of artistic appreciation. One work exhibited is Lawrence Weiner’s REDUCED. The exhibition documentation explains: Lawrence Weiner gained international recognition in the [...]
onanomastic knowledge
Douglas – that’s Scottish for a bog man who did just half a day’s digging.
writing emerged from accounting
Writing is much more socially complex than making art and making music. Art and music draw on natural forms and make sense at a low level of neurological processing. A single person could invent a form of visual art or music that might be engaging to many others without a specific investment in teaching them. [...]
Tagged: text
captions: helping users, helping yourself
YouTube now supports video captions. Captions are uploaded as a separate text file. YouTube also provides automatic translation of these captions into many languages. Web tools for creating caption files are free and easy to use. I recently used overstream to create captions for a docudrama some friends and I made. Making captions takes time [...]
Tagged: YouTube
Ichiyo School
A brief, coy, near-smile from a supermarket check-out girl. Does she know that I’m — a poet?
real-time visual communication
Real-time visual communication using a mobile phone doesn’t seem to be happening. Working with Kodak, Motorola announced early this month the Motozine ZN5. It’s relatively cheap mobile phone with a high-quality digital camera. Sharing a photo with this device means uploading the photo to a website or emailing it. So the Motozine ZN5 isn’t a [...]
Tagged: video
social relations in ancient Mesopotamia
Ancient Mesopotamian legal codes had broad purposes. For example, the Code of Hammurabi, written in the city of Babylon about 1760 BGC (about 3768 years ago), declares as its purposes: to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the [...]
Tagged: ancient Mesopotamia