Given the flood of publications on early modern natural history over the last two decades, the detailed and strikingly illustrated Picturing the Book of Nature represents a herculean undertaking.
Arts and Sciences
“Anti-Entropy and Uncle Order”: A Dispatch from William Kentridge’s Sixth Norton Lectures
Over the past 6 weeks William Kentridge has shown the form of the lecture itself to be obsolete. But over the course of his returns to the podium, he has shown us that the lecture’s fate is not so dire as he had induced us —- for seventy minutes at a stretch -— to believe.
“The Bad Backwards Walking” — A Dispatch from William Kentridge’s Fourth Norton Lecture
William Kentridge spoke of the value of using a mirror to re-learn what he already knew how to do; the clear implication was that we are daily surrounded by mirror-images that we do not see for themselves but that hold the potential to alter our relationships to our tools and to our visions.
Fuse Feature: Vertical and Contingent — A Dispatch from William Kentridge’s Norton Lectures
The decisions William Kentridge makes in his minute to-ings and fro-ings are akin to the decisions a poet makes as she works her measure over and over again.
Theater Interview: Viva August Strindberg — The Great Swedish Modernist
August Strindberg’s work unquestionably has not received the degree of popular acclaim in America that it deserves. It’s a bit mysterious, given that major U.S. playwrights — Eugene O’Neill, Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams — have openly acknowledged their debts to Strindberg.
Arts Interview: Cutting Across Mathematics and the Arts — Talking With The Man Who Knows Galileo’s Muse
We need the humanities because we need imagination that works outside the narrow channels where the sciences succeed.
Book Review: A Brave New Perspective on the Arts and Sciences — “Galileo’s Muse”
“Galileo’s Muse” is a gem of a book: shedding new light on a figure as well-examined as Galileo is no simple task. Author Mark Peterson does so with aplomb, while also telling a fascinating story of the evolution of mathematics and the arts.
Fuse Feature: Artisan’s Asylum — A Unique Organizational Mashup
Part of the great experiment that is Artisan’s Asylum: meeting your neighbors, realizing you need someone to help you solder/weld/create a 3d prototype, and then wandering amongst the open workspaces until you meet a co-collaborator.
Arts Commentary: When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Marketing
Revving up marketing machinery raises some uncomfortable questions: Why should donors give funds to a theater if their money is going to pay for focus groups and demographic studies rather than to support the work of artists?