July 28, 2019
Slapstick is a style of humor involving exaggerated physical activity. The term arises from a device developed during the broad, physical comedy style known as commedia dell’arte in 16th-century Italy.
The ‘batacchio’ or ‘bataccio’ (lit. ‘slap stick’) consists of two thin slats of wood, which make a ‘slap’ when striking another actor, with little force needed to make a loud—and comical—sound. The physical slap stick remains a key component of the plot in the traditional and popular ‘Punch and Judy’ puppet show. Along with the inflatable bladder (of which the whoopee cushion is a modern variant), it was among the earliest special effects.
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July 21, 2019
Fearless Girl is a bronze sculpture by American sculptor Kristen Visbal, commissioned by State Street Global Advisors (SSGA), a large asset management company. The statue was installed on March 7, 2017, in anticipation of International Women’s Day the following day.
The statue was originally installed in Bowling Green, a park in lower Manhattan, facing down the ‘Charging Bull’ (also known as ‘Wall Street Bull,’ a large bronze statue illegally placed there in 1989 by Sicilian artist Arturo Di Modica), but following complaints from Di Modica, ‘Fearless Girl’ was removed in November 2018 and relocated to a nearby spot across from the New York Stock Exchange. A plaque with footprints was placed on the original site.
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June 29, 2019
Public art is art in any media that has been planned and executed with the intention of being staged in the physical public domain, usually outside and accessible to all. Public signifies a working practice of site specificity, community involvement and collaboration.
Public art may include any art which is exhibited in a public space including publicly accessible buildings, but the relationship between the content and audience, what the art is saying and to whom, is just as important if not more important than its physical location.
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May 19, 2019
Virgil Abloh [ahb-loh] (b. 1980) is an American fashion designer, entrepreneur and DJ who has been the artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s men’s wear collection since March 2018. Apart from his work at Louis Vuitton, Abloh serves as the chief executive officer of the Milan-based label Off-White, a fashion house he founded in 2013.
He entered the world of fashion with an internship at Fendi in 2009 alongside rapper Kanye West. The two then began an artistic collaboration that would launch Abloh’s career with the founding Off-White.
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May 14, 2019
Stand on Zanzibar [zan-zuh-bahr] is a dystopian New Wave science fiction novel written by John Brunner and first published in 1968. The book won a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1969.
The story is set in 2010, mostly in the United States. A number of plots and many vignettes are played out in this future world, based on Brunner’s extrapolation of social, economic, and technological trends, such as an enormous population and its impact: social stresses, eugenic legislation, widening social divisions, future shock and extremism.
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April 30, 2019
A bubblegram (also known as ‘laser crystal,’ ‘3D crystal engraving,’ or ‘vitrography’) is a solid block of transparent plastic that has been exposed to intersecting laser beams in appropriately to induce a chemical reaction via heat or photonic excitation, creating bubbles or nodes where the plastic has a different index of refraction.
A complex or highly detailed image occupying a 5 cm cubic volume typically requires the creation of tens of thousands of such points.
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April 27, 2019
Jeremiah ‘Terminator’ LeRoy is a literary persona created in the 1990s by American writer Laura Albert. JT was presented as the author of three books of fiction, which were purportedly semi-autobiographical accounts by a teenage boy of his experiences of poverty, drug use, and emotional and sexual abuse in his childhood and adolescence from rural West Virginia to California.
Albert wrote these works, and communicated with people in the persona of JT via phone and e-mail. Following the release of the first novel ‘Sarah,’ Albert’s sister-in-law Savannah Knoop began to make public appearances as the supposed writer. The works attracted considerable literary and celebrity attention, and the authenticity of LeRoy has been a subject of debate, even as details of the creation came to light in the 2000s.
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March 7, 2019
In Scandinavian folklore, the Sandman is a mythical character said to sprinkle sand or dust on or into the eyes of the child at night to bring on sleep and dreams.
The grit or ‘sleep’ (rheum) in one’s eyes upon waking is the supposed result of the Sandman’s work the previous night. Rheum, also known as gound, is a thin mucus naturally discharged from the eyes, nose, or mouth during sleep.
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February 1, 2019
Eighth Grade is a 2018 American comedy-drama film written and directed by comedian Bo Burnham (in his feature directorial debut). The coming-of-age story follows the life and struggles of an eighth-grader, played by Elsie Fisher, during her last week of classes before graduating to high school. She struggles with social anxiety but produces vlogs giving life advice.
Burnham was inspired by his own struggles with anxiety when he began writing the screenplay in 2014. He had difficulty finding funding for the project until 2016. Shooting began in Suffern and White Plains, New York, in summer 2017. Fisher was cast after Burnham noticed her on YouTube; she led a cast including Josh Hamilton and Emily Robinson. Themes include heavy use of social media, mental health in Generation Z and sexuality and consent.
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January 28, 2019
Twin films are films with the same, or very similar, plot produced or released at the same time by two different film studios. The phenomenon can result from two or more production companies investing in similar scripts around the same time, resulting in a race to distribute the films to audiences.
Some attribute twin films to industrial espionage, the movement of staff between studios, or that the same screenplays are sent to several film studios before being accepted. Another possible explanation is if the films deal with topical issues, such as volcanic eruptions, reality television, terrorist attacks or significant anniversaries, resulting in multiple discovery of the concept.
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January 6, 2019
Super Dave Osborne was a character created and played by comedian Bob Einstein. Einstein’s comedic depiction is of a naive but optimistic stuntman who frequently appears injured when his stunts go spectacularly wrong.
Super Dave is billed as an ‘accomplished’ stuntman, though he rarely succeeds when performing the stunts depicted on-screen. Typically the character will perform outrageous daredevil stunts which often go disastrously awry and result in the appearance of grievous bodily injury. These include such mishaps as riding inside the hub of a giant yo-yo suspended from a crane (the yo-yo broke free of its string and rolled off a cliff into a ravine) and being flung by a catapult inside a giant football (the catapult malfunctioned and ‘spiked’ the football instead of throwing it). After such a mishap, Super Dave would usually appear torn apart, stretched, or otherwise injured.
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December 5, 2018
Richard Jay Potash (1946 – 2018), known professionally as Ricky Jay, was an American stage magician, actor, bibliophile, and writer. In a profile for ‘The New Yorker,’ Mark Singer called Jay ‘perhaps the most gifted sleight of hand artist alive.’
In addition to sleight of hand, Jay was known for his card tricks, card throwing, memory feats, and stage patter. He also wrote extensively on magic and its history. His acting credits included the films ‘The Prestige,’ ‘The Spanish Prisoner,’ ‘Mystery Men,’ ‘Heist,’ ‘Boogie Nights,’ ‘Tomorrow Never Dies,’ ‘House of Games,’ and ‘Magnolia,’ and the HBO series ‘Deadwood.’
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