The Art/Science (Non?)Divide Building
worldsfair | July 23, 2008
Just a quick note. Although it's been a while, a few of us are meeting for drinks on Friday night (July 25th) at The Revel Room in Gastown, Vancouver (8pm on). It just so happens that it's about the 500th Day Anniversary of the Science Scouts.
What's this? Well, it's this. Think: science plus badges plus raising a pint in celebration and you're getting close.
If you happen to be in the area feel free to drop by - better yet, let us know by replying to the facebook page.
bcohen | July 14, 2008A cropped excerpt below from the full strip called "Faith," at Cat and Girl (do go see the whole thing):
worldsfair | July 9, 2008Isn't this picture great?
This is from a book called Rotten Island, which was written and drawn by William Steig (best known for his books, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, as well as Shrek). Anyway, Rotten Island chronicles a place that begs:
What would happen if every creature on land and sea were free to be as rotten as possible? If every day was a free-for-all; if plants grew barbed wire; if the ocean were poison? That's life on Rotten Island. For creatures that slither, creep, and crawl (not to mention kick, bite, scratch, and play nasty tricks on each other), Rotten Island is…
bcohen | July 7, 2008
Alphametics, viseopoetics, I don't even know if I'm typing this right.
Do you know what these are? I don't entirely understand them, but I know someone who does.
But what's the gist? Oh right, alphmetics. These are word games. And math. Or math. Kind of. But not Sudoku.
Where do you find them? Katelyn Sack runs a Friday contest over at her wonderfully rich site. Go there. Solve them. Feel free to leave me the answers as well.
Here's one from a few weeks ago.
VIOLENCE
+ SILENCE
--------
PEACE
"Assume base 10. Go figure."
Go here for another one. And/or here.
Incidentally: Katelyn is…
worldsfair | June 19, 2008Once again, Chris Jordan with a commanding use of aesthetics. This is as remarkable as it is horrendous. Go below the fold to zoom into the image.
bcohen | May 1, 2008"What seems a detour has a way of becoming, in time, a direct route." R. Powers, Three Farmers...
Preface | Pt. 1 | Pt. 2 | Pt. 3 | (Sidebar 1) | Pt. 4 | Pt. 5 | Pt. 6Pt. 7 | (Sidebar 2a) | (Sidebar 2b) | Pt. 8 | Pt. 9 | Conclusion
[Note: if you're new to the series, don't know what's going on, and want a shortcut, I'd say you can start with Part 3, skip the sidebars, and still cut a reasonable swath.]
It was gravity. Gravity gives us the answer. Not sunlight, not the pathetic fallacy, not Olga the tour guide, not forensic expertise about the shine off the cannonball. Gravity. So there…
bcohen | April 29, 2008Preface | Pt. 1 | Pt. 2 | Pt. 3 | (Sidebar 1) | Pt. 4 | Pt. 5 | Pt. 6Pt. 7 | (Sidebar 2a) | (Sidebar 2b) | Pt. 8 | Pt. 9 | Conclusion
Richard Powers, in his debut novel Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, constructs a story about the identity of the three farmers in August Sander's 1914 photograph of that name. The novel takes on not just the three farmers, but three storylines too. The many characters in his three-thread narrative each, in some way, contribute to the larger story about technology, photography, philosophy, and knowledge. I've touched on as much in earlier parts to this…
worldsfair | April 28, 2008I wrote about this over at Terry, but will reprint here as well
This is interesting, if not a bit alarming. Essentially, this story follows a trail of individuals that even Kevin Bacon would be proud of.
The cast includes: a UBC student, her sister (also a UBC student), a senior level biology course, the course's teacher and the course's teaching assistant. As well, there is another teaching assistant - this one from the History Department (not Biology), and for the rest of us here, this TA is sort of the antagonist. Oh, and the aforementioned biology course focuses on the theory of…
worldsfair | April 18, 2008Today at the SCQ, there's an awesome piece that imagines Charles Darwin being brought back to life for next year's bicentennial celebration. As well, the piece is written in the context of him checking out the proposed (and, hopefully by then, built) replica of the H.M.S. Beagle. Better still, it's being presented as a pin-up for your locker room needs.
This is all spear headed by a group over at the HMS Beagle Project: the piece itself written by Peter McGrath (one of the co-founders) and illustrated by Diana Sudyka (do check out her album cover and music poster work - it's wonderful).
As…
worldsfair | April 14, 2008Presumably, art and sciences interact a little like this?
The Science Creative Literacy Symposia is a new fieldtrip program offered at the University of British Columbia, and is designed to provide an engaging outreach experience for students at the Grade 6/7 level. Here, the intent is to combine elements of science exploration with expository creative writing with the aim of fostering skills in written literacy, scientific literacy, as well as develop appreciation in interdisciplinary connections.
- - -
Hosted by the Advanced Molecular Biology Lab at the Michael Smith Laboratories, and by…
worldsfair | April 9, 2008Recently, I picked up a copy of the latest 3x3 Annual (No. 4 to be exact), and was perusing through the great artwork that it compiles. Here the entries (about 250 pages worth) are essentially on display via a competition format, and if looking at a wonderful array of graphics is your kind of thing, then this kind of publication can't help but be a treat.
Anyway, one of things I had a chance to look at this morning, was their animation category, which is presented in full here. The winner entry entitled "Tyger" is just luscious to watch, and definitely has some strong environmental…
worldsfair | April 3, 2008...and maybe he's a little on the bitter side.
Anyhow, Timon Buys has been doing a great job of looking after the Science Creative Quarterly's FILTER site, and today he put up something that is all kinds of awesome. link (also to hi-res version)
I'm curious - for those of you in the research arena - how often does this match your sentiment?
worldsfair | March 28, 2008Boy, talk about consumption. Great music video featuring the digital art prowess of Chris Jordan.
We offer this as a follow-up to last summer's "What We Waste," a post on Jordan's work that was part of a larger discussion of consumption patterns and energy (cf. E-trash , What We Eat, and this larger conversation on e-trash with Lizzie Grossman).
worldsfair | February 29, 2008Worst Science Job 2007 - Hazmat Diver
Dave Semeniuk over at the Terry blog has posed an interesting question. Namely, what are the worst jobs in the humanities? (Another pandering to the two culture debate?)
The question is framed around the report that Popular Science annually releases on the "Worst Jobs in Science." But, thinking about it, I wondered if it was easier to think of such bad employment opportunities in science, because you get to think of worst case sensory situations (i.e. stuff that stinks, stuff that is icky), or worst case hazardous situations - dangerous chemistry,…
worldsfair | February 29, 2008(Speaking of the arts and science divide) a couple weeks ago, I ran a few lab exercises that revolve around the use of software to city planning, especially as it pertains to issues of sustainability (there's even an online version available here).
Anyway, since time was limiting and large part of the exercise was active discussion between students, I took the liberty of asking all the students to write their names and Faculty on a nametag. As well, I thought it would be interesting to ask them to place a single wish on that same name tag. The idea being that perhaps you could get a sense…
bcohen | February 27, 2008I have a guest post today over at The Education of Oronte Churm. It's called Too Much Culture But Not Enough to See. Please be obliged to confer.
Coincidentally, Russell Jacoby has a column in The Chronicle of Higher Ed on the same subject (of the place and merits of binaries) called "Not to Complicate Matters, but ...". He offers towards the end that "It is true that fixed oppositions between good and evil or male and female and a host of other contraries cannot be upheld, but this hardly means that binary logic is itself idiotic." Recognizing his point but seeing it differently, I'm not…
bcohen | February 26, 2008Preface | Pt. 1 | Pt. 2 | Pt. 3 | (Sidebar 1) | Pt. 4 | Pt. 5 | Pt. 6Pt. 7 | (Sidebar 2a) | (Sidebar 2b) | Pt. 8 | Pt. 9 | Conclusion
...continuing from Sidebar 2a (you might read that first before continuing on below)
All of the above (Sidebar 2a) interested me in its own right but truly startled me when set beside a simultaneous set of little essays on-line about Stalin and the bomb. Lawrence Weschler discusses a tale Solzhenitsyn told about applauding for Stalin. At a Communist Party meeting, Solzhenitsyn wrote--and here I abbreviate the longer telling of the story--that everyone stood…
bcohen | February 25, 2008Preface | Pt. 1 | Pt. 2 | Pt. 3 | (Sidebar 1) | Pt. 4 | Pt. 5 | Pt. 6Pt. 7 | (Sidebar 2a) | (Sidebar 2b) | Pt. 8 | Pt. 9 | Conclusion
"Synchroneity. All times at one. My hobby."*
This one's about bombs and mercury and milk and Communists and theater and world history. That's all.
Daston and Galison's Objectivity (See Preface, Pt. 1 and Pt. 2) begins with a quick prologue setting up the basic ideas of the book. That prologue tells of the physicist Arthur Worthington, who in the 1870s had first hand drawn the results of his experiments in fluid dynamics--"untangling the complex process…
bcohen | February 11, 2008 I continually write my own biography by my actions, mixing involvement with knowledge, accountable to those moments when both drop away to reveal the act of mixing--something a priori recognizable. This process doe not differ measurably from the way I come to understand others, my time, or past times. Memory, then, is not only a backward retrieval of a vanished event, but also a posting forward, at the remembered instant, to all future moments of corresponding circumstance.
We remember forward; we telegraph ourselves to our future selves and to others: "Rescue this; recognize this, or…
bcohen | January 22, 2008Preface | Pt. 1 | Pt. 2 | Pt. 3 | (Sidebar 1) | Pt. 4 | Pt. 5 | Pt. 6Pt. 7 | (Sidebar 2a) | (Sidebar 2b) | Pt. 8 | Pt. 9 | Conclusion
As I was saying, I love that Morris gets peeved at the expert's claims for certainty. It reminded me immediately of the grad student seminar experience--and any humanities or social science grad student has certainly had it, if not all graduate students--where the one student defends his philosophical premise by stating that it is "obvious." Says Morris, in words I wish I'd pulled together in Philosophy of Science 6504:
Nothing is so obvious that it's…