February 13, 2012
Culture industry is a term coined by critical theorists Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) and Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), who argued in the chapter of their book ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment, ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,’ that popular culture is akin to a factory producing standardized cultural goods – through film, radio and magazines – to manipulate the masses into passivity; the easy pleasures available through consumption of popular culture make people docile and content, no matter how difficult their economic circumstances.
Adorno and Horkheimer saw this mass-produced culture as a danger to the more difficult high arts. Culture industries may cultivate false needs; that is, needs created and satisfied by capitalism. True needs, in contrast, are freedom, creativity, or genuine happiness. This was reference to an earlier demarcation in needs by Herbert Marcuse.
Continue reading →
Posted in Art, Money, Politics |
Leave a Comment »
February 13, 2012
Bathos [bey-thos] (Greek: ‘depth’) is an abrupt transition in style from the exalted to the commonplace, producing a ludicrous effect. While often unintended, bathos may be used deliberately to produce a humorous effect. If bathos is overt, it may be described as Burlesque or mock-heroic.
As used in English bathos originally referred to a particular type of bad poetry, but it is now used more broadly to cover any seemingly ridiculous artwork or bad performance. It should not be confused with pathos, a mode of persuasion within the discipline of rhetoric, intended to arouse emotions of sympathy and pity. Continue reading →
Posted in Art, Humor, Language |
Leave a Comment »
February 13, 2012
Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing or humorous because of its deliberate ridiculousness. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being ‘cheesy.’
When the usage appeared, in 1909, it denoted: ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical, and effeminate behaviour, and, by the middle of the 1970s, the definition comprised: banality, artifice, mediocrity, and ostentation so extreme as to have perversely sophisticated appeal. American writer Susan Sontag’s essay ‘Notes on ‘Camp” (1964) emphasised its key elements as: artifice, frivolity, naïve middle-class pretentiousness, and ‘shocking’ excess. Camp as an aesthetic has been popular from the 1960s to the present.
Continue reading →
Posted in Art, Humor, Language |
Leave a Comment »
February 13, 2012
Kitsch [kich] (loanword from German) is a form of art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value. The concept is associated with the deliberate use of elements that may be thought of as cultural icons while making cheap mass-produced objects that are unoriginal.
Kitsch also refers to the types of art that are aesthetically deficient (whether or not being sentimental, glamorous, theatrical, or creative) and that make creative gestures which merely imitate the superficial appearances of art through repeated conventions and formulae. Excessive sentimentality often is associated with the term.
Continue reading →
Posted in Art, Language, Philosophy |
1 Comment »
February 13, 2012
Paul Sturgess is an English-born basketball player for the Harlem Globetrotters. At 7 ft 7.82 in (2.3322 m) and 320 lb (150 kg), Sturgess was the tallest ever college basketball player in the US, is the tallest professional basketball player in the world, and is taller than any basketballer ever to play for the NBA. He joined the team in 2011 with fellow rookie, Jonte ‘Too Tall’ Hall, who at 5 ft 2 in (1.57 m) is the shortest ever player and is 2.5 ft (77 cm) shorter than Sturgess.
Sturgess wears a size 21 shoe. Examinations as a teenager revealed that his growth is healthy and not the result of disorder, rather he possesses familial tall stature, that is to say his height is genetic. His biological father is 6 ft 9 in (2.06 m) and there are other tall members in his family although his mother is 5 ft 5 in (1.65 m) and his younger sister is 5 ft 6 in (1.68 m). Sturgess was always tall but a growth spurt between the ages of 16-17 resulted in a foot (30 cm) of height added within a single year. Sturgess enjoys playing many other sports and before concentrating on basketball also played golf and soccer.
Posted in Games, Humor |
Leave a Comment »
February 12, 2012
Myrmecia, often called bull ants, is a genus of ants found almost exclusively in Australia. These ants are well-known for their aggressive behavior and powerful stings. The venom of these ants has the potential to induce anaphylactic shock in allergic sting victims. As with most severe allergic reactions, if left untreated the reaction may be lethal. Bull ants eat small insects, honeydew (a sweet, sticky liquid found on leaves, deposited from various insects), seeds, fruit, fungi, gums, and nectar. They have larger eyes, and hence better vision, than most ants.
The bull ant famously appears in the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s major work, ‘The World as Will and Representation,’ as a paradigmatic example of strife and constant destruction endemic to the ‘will to live.’ ‘But the bulldog-ant of Australia affords us the most extraordinary example of this kind; for if it is cut in two, a battle begins between the head and the tail. The head seizes the tail in its teeth, and the tail defends itself bravely by stinging the head: the battle may last for half an hour, until they die or are dragged away by other ants. This contest takes place every time the experiment is tried.’
Posted in Death, Philosophy, Science |
Leave a Comment »
February 12, 2012
Rolling shutter (also known as line scan) is a method of image acquisition in which each frame is recorded not from a snapshot of a single point in time, but rather by scanning across the frame either vertically or horizontally. In other words, not all parts of the image are recorded at exactly the same time, even though the whole frame is displayed at the same time during playback.
This is in contrast with global shutter in which the entire frame is exposed for the same time window. This produces predictable distortions of fast-moving objects or when the sensor captures rapid flashes of light.
Continue reading →
Posted in Technology |
Leave a Comment »
February 10, 2012
Nero is a British electronic music act consisting of Daniel Stephens and Joe Ray with Alana Watson a vocalist, who are best known for producing drum and bass, dubstep and house. Daniel Stephens and Joe Ray were both born in 1984 and spent their childhood in suburban Northwood, London.
Ray played classical guitar and Stephen, encouraged by his jazz-loving father, played cello. By the time a mutual friend introduced them at the age of 15, Stephens was attending the specialist music school at Pimlico. Outside school both were making electronic music on home computers. They began working together at 17, setting up a studio in Stephens’ bedroom.
Posted in Art |
Leave a Comment »
February 10, 2012
‘Stevenote‘ is a colloquial term for the keynote speeches given by former Apple CEO Steve Jobs at events such as the Worldwide Developers Conference and previously the Macworld and Apple Expos. Jobs’ vibrant speaking style and manner of exciting the crowd was legendary. Because most Apple product releases were first revealed to the public in these keynotes, ‘Stevenotes’ often caused substantial swings in Apple’s stock price.
In late 1996, Apple purchased NeXT, and Steve Jobs returned to Apple after a 12-year hiatus following his forced resignation from the company in 1985. In mid-1997, he gave a keynote address in which he presented a detailed report on the company’s status. The keynote featured an appearance by Microsoft CEO Bill Gates by satellite. Jobs announced a partnership with Microsoft comprising several key agreements that, according to Jobs, would benefit Apple and allow it to recover from its prolonged decline during the early and mid 1990s.
Continue reading →
Posted in Money, Technology |
Leave a Comment »
February 10, 2012
Reality distortion field (RDF) is a term coined by Bud Tribble (who still works at Apple) at Apple Computer in 1981, to describe company co-founder Steve Jobs’ charisma and its effects on the developers working on the Mac project. Tribble claimed that the term came from ‘Star Trek.’ Later the term has also been used to refer to perceptions of his keynote speeches (or ‘Stevenotes’) by observers and devoted users of Apple computers and products.
The RDF was said by Andy Hertzfeld (member of the original Apple team) to be Steve Jobs’ ability to convince himself and others to believe almost anything with a mix of charm, charisma, bravado, hyperbole, marketing, appeasement, and persistence. RDF was said to distort an audience’s sense of proportion and scales of difficulties and made them believe that the task at hand was possible. While RDF has been criticized as anti-reality, those close to Jobs have also illustrated numerous instances in which creating the sense that the seemingly impossible was possible led to the impossible being accomplished. Similarly, the optimism which Jobs sowed in those around him contributed to the loyalty of his colleagues and fans.
Posted in Humor, Money, Technology |
1 Comment »
February 10, 2012
Stippling [stip-uhl-ing] is the creation of a pattern simulating varying degrees of solidity or shading by using small dots. Such a pattern may occur in nature and these effects are frequently emulated by artists. In a drawing or painting, the dots are made of pigment of a single color, applied with a pen or brush; the denser the dots, the darker the apparent shade—or lighter, if the pigment is lighter than the surface. This is similar to—but distinct from—pointillism, which uses dots of different colors to simulate blended colors.
In printmaking, dots may be carved out of a surface to which ink will be applied, to produce either a greater or lesser density of ink depending on the printing technique. Stippling may also be used in engraving or sculpting an object even when there is no ink or paint involved, either to change the texture of the object, or to produce the appearance of light or dark shading depending on the reflective properties of the surface; for instance, stipple engraving on glass produces areas that appear brighter than the surrounding glass.
Continue reading →
Posted in Art, Technology |
1 Comment »
February 9, 2012
Divisionism [dih-vizh-uh-niz-uhm] (also called Chromoluminarism) was the characteristic style in Neo-Impressionist painting defined by the separation of colors into individual dots or patches which interacted optically. By requiring the viewer to combine the colors optically instead of physically mixing pigments, divisionists believed they were achieving the maximum luminosity scientifically possible.
Georges Seurat founded the style around 1884 as chromoluminarism, drawing from his understanding of the scientific theories of Michel Eugène Chevreul, Ogden Rood and Charles Blanc, among others. Divisionism developed along with another style, pointillism, which is defined specifically by the use of dots of paint and does not necessarily focus on the separation of colors.
Posted in Art |
1 Comment »
