June 7, 2012
The evolutionary origin of religions theorizes about the emergence of religious behavior during the course of human evolution. Humanity’s closest living relatives are common chimpanzees and bonobos. These primates share a common ancestor with humans who lived between four and six million years ago. It is for this reason that chimpanzees and bonobos are viewed as the best available surrogate for this common ancestor.
Anthropologist Barbara King argues that while non-human primates are not religious, they do exhibit some traits that would have been necessary for the evolution of religion. These traits include high intelligence, a capacity for symbolic communication, a sense of social norms, realization of ‘self’ and a concept of continuity. There is inconclusive evidence that Homo neanderthalensis may have buried their dead. Elephants are the only other species known to have any recognizable ritual surrounding death. Ecologist Marc Bekoff, however, argues that many species grieve death and loss.
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June 6, 2012
The Neo Geo is an arcade system board and home video game console released in 1990 by Japanese game company SNK. The MVS (Multi Video System), as the Neo Geo was known to the coin-operated arcade game industry, offered arcade operators the ability to put up to six different arcade titles into a single cabinet, a key economic consideration for operators with limited floorspace.
With its games stored on self-contained cartridges, a game-cabinet could be exchanged for a different game-title by swapping the game’s ROM-cartridge and cabinet artwork. Several popular franchise-series, including ‘Fatal Fury,’ ‘The King of Fighters,’ ‘Metal Slug,’ and ‘Samurai Shodown,’ were released for the platform. The Neo Geo system was also marketed as a very costly home console, commonly referred to today as the AES (Advanced Entertainment System).
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June 6, 2012
Sanwa Denshi (‘Three Harmonies Electronics Company’) is a general electronics manufacturer, but is best known internationally as a leading manufacturer of arcade parts; i.e. joysticks, buttons, coin feeds etc.
Its parts are commonly used in Japanese arcade machines and held in high regard by custom builders (especially in the fighting game community).
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June 6, 2012
Vedanta [veh-dahn-ta] was originally used a synonym for the part of the Vedas (Hindu scripture) known as the Upanishads (the appendix to the Vedic hymns, which are passed down orally). ‘Vedanta’ is the end of the Vedas both literally and metaphorically: it bookends the Veda, but is also in some ways ‘the purpose or goal [end] of the Vedas.’ By the 8th century CE, the word also came to be used to describe a group of philosophical traditions concerned with the self-realization by which one understands the ultimate nature of reality (Brahman, the godhead, the divine source of being, through which all emanates).
Vedanta can also be used as a noun to describe one who has mastered all four of the original Vedas. The Vedanta is also called Uttara Mimamsa, or the ‘latter enquiry’ or ‘higher enquiry,’ and is often paired with Purva Mimamsa, the ‘former enquiry’ (usually simply called Mimamsa), which deals with explanations of the fire-sacrifices of the Vedic mantras and the Brahmanas (expositions of the Vedas).
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June 5, 2012
Matt Mullican (b. 1951) is a American artist and son of abstract painter Lee Mullican. He received his BFA from CalArts in 1974, and rose to prominence as a member of the ‘Pictures Generation,’ a group of artists know for their appropriation of images from the consumer and media saturated age in which they grew to maturity.
Mullican’s work is concerned with systems of knowledge, meaning, language, and signification. Mullican also works with the relationship between perception and reality, between the ability to see something and the ability to represent it. Mullican has taught and lectured at Columbia University, The Rijksakademie (Amsterdam), The London Institute, Chelsea College of Art and Design, and The School of Visual Arts (NY).
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June 5, 2012
Jim Woodring (b. 1952) is an American cartoonist, fine artist, writer, and toy designer. He is best known for the dream-based comics he published in his magazine ‘Jim,’ and as the creator of the cartoon character Frank, a bipedal, bucktoothed animal of uncertain species with a short tail, described by Woodring as a ‘generic anthropomorph’ and ‘naive but not innocent,’ ‘capable of sinning by virtue of not knowing what he’s really about.’ The character design is reminiscent those of old American animated shorts from the 1920s and 1930s, such as from Fleischer Studios.
Since he was a child, Woodring has experienced hallucinatory ‘apparitions,’ which have inspired much of his surreal work. He keeps an ‘autojournal’ of his dreams, which have formed the basis of some of his comics. His most famous creation is fictional—the pantomime comics set in the universe he calls the Unifactor, usually featuring Frank.
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June 5, 2012
assume vivid astro focus (avaf) is both an alias of Brazilian-born New York-based artist Eli Sudbrack, and the name of an international group of visual and performance artists, with French multimedia artist Christophe Hamaide-Pierson as a main collaborators. Sudbrack was born in 1968 and moved to New York in 1998.
He exhibited there in 2000, at which time he used the name Superastrolab, switching to assume vivid astro focus in 2001, the name always rendered in lowercase. The name derives from two musical sources: Throbbing Gristle’s album ‘Assume Power Focus,’ and the band Ultra Vivid Scene. avaf’s work includes painting, drawing, photography, film, and digital technology.
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June 5, 2012
DEARRAINDROP is a Brooklyn-based artist collective formed in Virginia Beach that incorporates diverse disciplines to create multifaceted sculptures and installations. Their work includes painting, collage, video art, large-scale, interactive installation pieces, and hand-fabricated musical instruments.
Part of the collective’s operating philosophy is modeled on the ideal that the greatest human capability is the ability to work together to achieve a larger goal. Joe Grillo and Laura Grant founded DEARRAINDROP in 1998 as a clothing line, Billy Grant joined subsequently. They have also worked with digital artists Owen Osborn and Chris Kuscinski, as well as painter Alika Herreshoff.
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June 5, 2012
Kenny Scharf (b. 1958) is an American painter who lives in Brooklyn, whose works consist of popular culture based art with made up science-related backgrounds.
Scharf came to prominence in the 80s interdisciplinary art scene making sparkly, pop-ed, and monstrous paintings and installations.
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June 4, 2012
Retro-futurism is a trend in the creative arts showing the influence of depictions of the future produced prior to about 1960. Characterized by a blend of old-fashioned ‘retro’ styles with futuristic technology, retro-futurism explores the themes of tension between past and future, and between the alienating and empowering effects of technology.
Primarily reflected in artistic creations and modified technologies that realize the imagined artifacts of its parallel reality, retro-futurism has also manifested in the worlds of fashion, architecture, literature and film.
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June 4, 2012
Alternate history is a genre of fiction consisting of stories that are set in worlds in which history has diverged from the actual history of the world. It can be variously seen as a sub-genre of literary fiction, science fiction, and historical fiction.
Since the 1950s, this type of fiction has to a large extent merged with science fictional tropes involving cross-time travel between alternate histories or psychic awareness of the existence of ‘our’ universe by the people in another; or ordinary voyaging uptime (into the past) or downtime (into the future) that results in history splitting into two or more time-lines. Cross-time, time-splitting, and alternate history themes have become so closely interwoven that it is impossible to discuss them fully apart from one another.
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June 4, 2012
The Family Trade is the first book of a British writer of science fiction and fantasy writer Charles Stross’ alternate history series ‘The Merchant Princes.’
The first novel introduces us to journalist Miriam Beckstein, who finds herself in a parallel world in which her extended family holds power.
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