SiouxWIRE Snippets 10

Revealed: millions spent by lobby firms fighting Obama health reforms
Chris McGreat, The Guardian
Six lobbyists for every member of Congress as healthcare industry heaps cash on politicians to water down legislation

Free will is not an illusion after all
Anil Ananthaswamy, New Scientist
Champions of free will, take heart. A landmark 1980s experiment that purported to show free will doesn't exist is being challenged.

Reading Kafka 'enhances cognitive mechanisms', claims study
Alison Flood, The Guardian
Subjects who had just read Kafka's The Country Doctor were better at recognising patterns in grammar test, psychologists found

Artists Test Limits as China Lets (a Few) Flowers Bloom
Ian Johnson & Sky Canaves, The Wall Street Journal

How the Internet strengthens dictatorships
Evgeny Morozov, TED

SiouxWIRE Snippets 9.0

Cannes: The decline of the world's leading film festival
Geoffrey Macnab, The Independent
Busy, expensive, and bureaucratic?

Wines Pleasures: Are They All in Your Head?
Eric Asimov, The New York Times
As an art, the perception of wines is dependent on more than what's in the bottle.

There's Beauty in Limbo
Chloe Veltman, ARTSJOURNAL
How should we approach unfinished artworks and why do we feel compelled to finish them?

Older Brain May Really Be a Wiser Brain
Sara Reistad-Long, The New York Times
"When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong."

Little Orphan Artworks
Lawrence Lessig, The New York Times
"In a digital age, knowing the law should be simple and cheap. Congress should be pushing for rules that encourage clarity, not more work for copyright experts."

Hearing music that isn't there
The British Psychological Society, Research Digest Blog
An interesting piece on musical hallucinosis.


“I see a new, pervasive and global condition of fundamentalist violence directed against dissident images and thought”
Chris Bratton, The Art Newspaper

SiouxWIRE Snippets 8

A Midget Among Giants
Paul Constant, The Stranger
Microsoft, Starbucks, Boeing and others contribute to local non-profit organisations in Seattle so why can't native Amazon share even a bit of last year's $476 million profit?

"We like our Venuses young"
Germaine Greer, The Guardian
Germaine Greer on the Miley Cyrus-Vanity Fair controversy. (Not bland like Leibovitz's photographs.

Libet Redux: Free will takes another hammering
Research Digest Blog (The British Psychological Society)
"(U)sing modern brain imaging methods, Chun Siong Soon and colleagues have replicated and extended Libet's famous study - once again reinforcing the notion that our sense of free will is an illusion."

M. Night Shyamalan: A Preliminary Report
Lesley Brill, Senses of Cinema
An overview of Shyamalan's work. NOTE: There are spoilers for all of his films as each is discussed in some detail.

Video Snippets (4)

SiouxWIRE Snippets 7

Museums should beware of being used as marketing tools
Adrian Ellis, The Art Newspaper

Making a bloody mess of the art world
Jessica Lack, Guardian Unlimited

The end of an artist-gallery relationship, from both sides
Edward Winkleman, edward_winkleman

Pocket Pads
Lenora Chu, MetropolisMag.com
"­As concerns about the environment grow, a few architects are betting that buyers will want radically smaller homes."

The Countertraffickers
William Finnegan, The New Yorker
"Stella Rotaru is a repatriation specialist. Her main task is bringing lost Moldovans home. Nearly all her clients are victims of human trafficking, most of them women sold into prostitution abroad…"

Mind Your Business: You Will Lose All the Rights to Your Own Art
Mark Simon, Animation World Network
Found via Mrs. Deane, the new orphan art legislation seems to be putting the onus of copyright on the artist's shoulders; and beware Corbis and Getty...

W.H. Auden: The Art of Poetry No. 17
Michael Newman, The Paris Review
Brilliant interview with W.H. Auden.

Do Schools Today Kill Creativity? - Sir Ken Robinson, TED

SiouxWIRE Snippets 6

No wonder the art scene is so white
Bidisha, Guardian Unlimited
It wasn't much of a debate, but an ICA talk ended up revealing plenty about the prejudices and privileges which riddle the art world

What is diversity in the arts?
Mark Ravenhill, Guardian Unlimited
'There's no diversity problem in the arts,' my friend said. 'As long as you're middle class'

Man with a Country
Seyed Mohammad Marandi, Guernica
Iran's USA scholar says it's not just American politics that demonize Iran, it's the culture, including books and films

A rare case of artists advocating censorship
Kenneth Baker, San Francisco Chronicle
The shock of the protest lies not only in its vehemence but also in the fact that it involves the rare spectacle of artists, including many SFAI faculty members, advocating censorship.

What house-builders can learn from igloos
Dan Cruickshank, BBC News
The igloo's apparently simple design masks an engineering marvel and could teach modern builders a thing or two, says Dan Cruickshank, who helped build one for his new TV series.

Schooling the Artists' Republic of China
David Barboza, New York Times
With a booming art market, commercial pressure is trickling down to the academies.

The Unholy Trinity
Bernard Marcadé, TATEetc.
Bernard Marcadé on Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia

SiouxWIRE Snippets 5.0

Can the art of a paedophile be celebrated?
Finlo Rohrer, BBC News
Is the merit of a work of art dependent on the morality of the creator?

How to: Hop Trains
Andreas Trolf, Fecal Face
A non-comprehensive guide to hopping freight trains across America - fascinating.

Suffering for Sale
Anne Tornkvist, Guernica
"Photojournalists can make a killing in galleries with war photos. Should they?"
Why be an artist?
Gavin Turk, Guardian Unlimited
From a historical perspective, Gavin Turks asks, "Why make art?"

First at Ninety
Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker
Screenwriter Millard Kaufman discusses his debut novel 'Bowl of Cherries' and looks back on a life of writing.

SiouxWIRE Snippets 4.0

Another fresh batch of links to various articles of interest from the last fortnight:

My life as a smoker (audio slideshow)
Alan Sillitoe, BBC News
Alan Sillitoe reminisces on a life of cigarettes as a ban on pub smoking looms.

Who is an artist(and who decides)?
Joerg Colberg/Ed Winkleman, Conscientious / Edward_ Winkleman
The scientist who can't bear to be called an artist

The novelist who got beaten up by his own characters
Giles Foden, Guardian Unlimited
A French author has been assaulted by the neighbours he wrote about. What are the responsibilities of writers who describe people still living?

Art on the cutting edge?
Brigitte Werneburg, Sign and Sight
Is today's art no more than the fashion of the day? Are there only niches in art, each with its own cutting edge?

Dreaming in code
Andrew Blum, Metropolis Magazine
Jonathan Harris distills the Web’s infinite avalanche of thoughts, facts, and feelings into exquisitely framed portraits of humanity.

Save our film heritage from the political vandals
Colin MacCabe, Guardian Unlimited
The dismantling of the British Film Institute.

Fractured Franchise
Louis Menand, The New Yorker
Are the wrong people voting?

The perpetual myth of free energy
Professor Sir Eric Ash, BBC News
"Marvelous things can happen in this world."

SiouxWIRE Snippets 3.0

Another week, another collection of snippets from the net.

How I Spent the War - A recruit in Waffen S. S.
Günter Grass, The New Yorker
A fascinating and frank insight into Günter Grass.

Eliciting Poignancy
Jim Johnson, (Notes on) Politics, Theory & Photography
An interesting example of how a photographer and/or editor can manipulate the impact of an image. (source: Conscientious)

How To Be An Alaskan Fisherman
Corey Arnold, Fecal Face
A cross between a how-to guide, travel journal, and photo log. Just what it says on the tin.

A Hell of an Experience
Leon Vitalli/Jamie Stewart, The Reeler
Insight from actor and long time Stanley Kubrick collaborator Leon Vitalli.

Filming Frank Gehry
Sydney Pollack, Guardian Unlimited
Pollack's observations and realisations while working on the documentary 'Sketches of Frank Gehry' with commentary on the pitfalls of depending on world opinion for validation.

Khaela Maricich Interview
Miranda July, The Believer
A confectionary from Miranda July. What is the Blow?

The Eighth Samurai: Tatsuya Nakadai
Chuck Stephens, Criterion
A look back at the five decade long career of Japanese screen legend Tatsuya Nakadai.

SiouxWIRE Snippets 2.0

In the second of the snippets collections, here are a few more links to articles and posts that lifted their head above the parapet.

Shock and gore
J.G. Ballard, Guardian Unlimited
J.G. Ballard's analysis of Un Chien Andalou

To the Big Bang and Back
Ulrich Woelk, Die Welt / Sign & Sight
"As the Large Hadron Collider at CERN prepares to go into action, astrophysicist and author Ulrich Woelk takes us on a journey to the origin of things"

The Year of the Locked Room
Hester Westley, Tate Etc.
An interesting look back on one of the more radical episodes of British art education.

Shock news: older writers can also be quite good
Miles Johnson, Guardian Unlimited
I never even considered the marketability or age of a writer so this is a rather surprising perspective on publishing.

Gary Kurtz interview
Ken P. /IGN
A fascinating and candid insight into filmmaking.

'Till the Day That I Drop
Dan Kois, The Believer
An in depth defense of Robert Altman's much maligned "Popeye".

The Ninth Art
Abi Bliss, BBC Collective
The strange relationship between "fine" art and comics.

The source we drink from
Olga Martynova, Neue Zürcher Zeitung - Sign and Sight
Oberiu (the "Association of Real Art") - Who were the Oberiuts?

On the importation of culture
Alex Cox, personal webpage
Filmmaker Alex Cox ruminates on the link between Liverpool and Corinto, Nicaragua

"Cinema Studies"
J.M. Colberg, Conscientious
Joerg wonders why some can't accept photographs to be photographs.

SiouxWIRE Snippets

I've decided to start a regular post of articles that have caught my eye. It should be noted that I don't always agree with the central message of these snippets, but they have unanimously made me think for at least the duration of a couple coffees and cigarettes.

Lunar Light
Karen E. Steen, MetropolisMag
Harnessing the light of the moon to transform urban spaces

Vanishing Point: The Last Days of Film
Wheeler Winston Dixon, Senses of Cinema
Cinema's move from celluloid to digital

Freedom of Expression?? Telling the truth??
Rebekka Gudleifsdóttir, personal blog
Some background to the story of Yahoo censorship on Flickr - Read HERE(BBC)

The museum of 2007 is an atrocity exhibition
Maev Kennedy, Guardian Unlimited
High brow vs. Low brow? Or just plain idiocy? Commentary on the Museum of 2007.

The Saga of Todd Goldman
Amid Amidi, Cartoon Brew
How multi-millionaire Todd Goldman accidentally steals artists' work

Remove the price tags and take your pick
John Windsow, Guardian Unlimited
Is there a link between a painting's artistic merit and its market value?

If you treat artists like entertainers...
Joerg Colberg, Conscientious
Another great observation from Joerg.

Laissez-Faire Aesthetics: What money is doing to art, or how the art world lost its mind
Jed Perl, The New Republic magazine

The Monster is Afraid: The Elephant Man, David Lynch
Serge Daney, Cinema Scope