Technology and the Arts

Book Review: Hey Look Me Over — “Just My Type”

May 16, 2012
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Simon Garfield’s tour of fonts, Just My Type, is a rollicking, sometimes snarky social history of the design decisions behind lettering from Gutenberg to the iPad.

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Theater Review: Boxed In — “Yesterday Happened: Remembering H. M.”

May 9, 2012
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Dramatist and director Wesley Savick faces a number of fascinating but formidable theatrical challenges, and the generally compelling Yesterday Happened (how could it not be, given its story?) takes an honorable, visually striking swipe at the problems.

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Fuse Feature: “The Riddle behind the Riddle” — A Dispatch from William Kentridge’s Fifth Norton Lecture

April 20, 2012
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Mistranslation weaves through this lecture, for every translation is a mistranslation. But that is what makes them fruitful. As soon as we mis-hear or fail to understand, the brain constructs an instant bit of narrative to bridge the gap in understanding.

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“The Bad Backwards Walking” — A Dispatch from William Kentridge’s Fourth Norton Lecture

April 12, 2012
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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.

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Fuse Feature: Vertical and Contingent — A Dispatch from William Kentridge’s Norton Lectures

April 6, 2012
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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.

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Fuse Dispatches: The Benefits of Doubt — A Dispatch from the Second of William Kentridge’s Norton Lectures

March 30, 2012
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For William Kentridge history accrues, falls dead, is born, washes up, piles up, and may be artfully arranged, but the most powerful place that this accretion might happen is in the artist’s studio, which is a metonym for the human mind.

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Fuse Dispatches: Lessons Drawn — William Kentridge’s “Six Drawing Lessons”

March 23, 2012
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After hearing just the first of William Kentridge’s six Norton Lectures, I have no doubt that this series of “Drawing Lessons” will be one of the most entertaining and enlightening artistic events of 2012.

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Book Review: Unearthing the Lost Culture of Mathematics

February 9, 2012
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Elegantly written, cogently argued, and filled with trenchant artistic analyses, Alexander Marr’s book exemplifies interdisciplinary studies at their best.

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Fun Days in the PARC: Remembering Jacob Goldman

December 24, 2011
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How did it come about that a manufacturer of office equipment developed–and then largely abandoned–the first personal computer?

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Book Review: A Brave New Perspective on the Arts and Sciences — “Galileo’s Muse”

November 29, 2011
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“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.

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