The Convergence of Art and the Internet | Metaviews

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Excerpt from review by JuliaPM 01/10/2011 on Metaviews

read the full article here:

http://metaviews.ca/the-convergence-of-art-and-the-internet

"....I was most curious about the free exhibit, because we're still seeing new directions for how the internet disrupts both meanings of the word free - how we think about liberty (personal and societal), and how we assign value to things. Seth Price's essay "Dispersion" is both an inspiration for the exhibit and a part of the exhibit, where it is the eponymous essay in Essay with Knots. From a New Museum article about his work: "Price discusses attempts by conceptual artists to circumvent the structures of the art world and the art market by co-opting the distribution-oriented, communicative media associated with popular culture."....

I love it when Nabokov is vindicated: Nabokov Theory on Polyommatus Blue Butterflies Is Vindicated

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A male Acmon blue butterfly (Icaricia acmon). Vladimir Nabokov described the Icaricia genus in 1944.

By CARL ZIMMER
Published: January 25, 2011

Vladimir Nabokov may be known to most people as the author of classic novels like “Lolita” and “Pale Fire.” But even as he was writing those books, Nabokov had a parallel existence as a self-taught expert on butterflies.

He was the curator of lepidoptera at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, and collected the insects across the United States. He published detailed descriptions of hundreds of species. And in a speculative moment in 1945, he came up with a sweeping hypothesis for the evolution of the butterflies he studied, a group known as the Polyommatus blues. He envisioned them coming to the New World from Asia over millions of years in a series of waves.

Few professional lepidopterists took these ideas seriously during Nabokov’s lifetime. But in the years since his death in 1977, his scientific reputation has grown. And over the past 10 years, a team of scientists has been applying gene-sequencing technology to his hypothesis about how Polyommatus blues evolved. On Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, they reported that Nabokov was absolutely right.

“It’s really quite a marvel,” said Naomi Pierce of Harvard, a co-author of the paper.....

Read the full article on the NYTimes

A Very BIG Whoot!: Havas Takes Majority Stake in Colleen DeCourcy's Startup - Advertising Age - Agency News

Former TBWA Exec's New Social-Media Shop Is Dubbed Socialistic

Posted by Maureen Morrison on 01.24.11 @ 12:00 PM

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- Ad agency holding company Havas has taken a majority stake in Socialistic, a new social-media shop helmed by Colleen DeCourcy, the former chief digital officer at Omnicom Group's TBWA.

Colleen DeCourcy

Colleen DeCourcy

--> The startup will work with social platform application programming interfaces (commonly referred to as APIs) to create content and mobile applications, branded digital products, digital out-of-home executions and in-store experiences. To build out its staff, Socialistic plans to recruit application technologists as well as journalists, writers and videographers.

"One of the things we fundamentally believe is the critical importance of digital," said David Jones, global CEO of Paris-based Havas Worldwide Global and CEO of Euro RSCG Worldwide. "Historically in our business the competitive difference among agencies has been talent. Now I believe that it's talent and technology. Colleen is one of the most brilliant digital people. The future is social media, mobile and location, and Socialistic is designed to play into that space...."

Read the full post:

http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=148313#

When Walter Murch speaks, I listen: Why 3D doesn't work and never will. Case closed. - Roger Ebert's Journal

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Read the full post on Roger Ebert's blog. Here's a portion of the letter:

"Hello Roger,

I read your review of "Green Hornet" and though I haven't seen the film, I agree with your comments about 3D.

The 3D image is dark, as you mentioned (about a camera stop darker) and small. Somehow the glasses "gather in" the image -- even on a huge Imax screen -- and make it seem half the scope of the same image when looked at without the glasses.

I edited one 3D film back in the 1980's -- "Captain Eo" -- and also noticed that horizontal movement will strobe much sooner in 3D than it does in 2D. This was true then, and it is still true now. It has something to do with the amount of brain power dedicated to studying the edges of things. The more conscious we are of edges, the earlier strobing kicks in.

The biggest problem with 3D, though, is the "convergence/focus" issue. A couple of the other issues -- darkness and "smallness" -- are at least theoretically solvable. But the deeper problem is that the audience must focus their eyes at the plane of the screen -- say it is 80 feet away. This is constant no matter what.

But their eyes must converge at perhaps 10 feet away, then 60 feet, then 120 feet, and so on, depending on what the illusion is. So 3D films require us to focus at one distance and converge at another. And 600 million years of evolution has never presented this problem before. All living things with eyes have always focussed and converged at the same point...."