Most of us live in a state of general ignorance about our physical surroundings. It’s not our fault; centuries of technological sophistication and global commerce have distanced most of us from making physical things, and even from seeing or knowing how they are made. But the slow and pervasive separation of people from knowledge of the material world brings with it a serious problem.
Blurbs, the quoted testimonials of a book’s virtues by other authors, are now so ubiquitous, readers expect them, first-time authors stress about getting them, booksellers base orders on them. A blank back cover today would probably look like a production mistake. But while readers heft books in their hands and scrutinize the praise, it should be noted that blurbs are not ad copy written by some copywriter; they are ad copy written by a fellow author. “Ad copy” might be a bit harsh, but maybe not.
Aalto University researchers showed volunteers the film My Sister’s Keeper on a screen while the research subjects were lying down in an MRI scanner. The study compared the volunteers’ brain activity, and concluded that holistic thinkers saw the film more similarly with each other than analytical thinkers. In addition, holistic thinkers processed the film’s moral issues and factual connections within the film more similarly with each other than the analytical thinkers.
“The success of a film is usually measured through its box-office revenue, or the opinion of professional critics,” the researchers write in the journal Applied Network Science. “Such measures, however, may be influenced by external factors, such as advertisement or trends, and are not able to capture the impact of a movie over time.”
The Hirshhorn Museum has an artwork that is generated and powered by visitors’ fingerprints and heart rates. Cool, right? But what about the data collected by this piece? Are you willing to just “give” away your fingerprint?
“There is beauty here in exactly the way that Kant meant the word, a beauty that comes from the pleasure of looking at designs that ‘mean nothing on their own.’ … The problem is that … Aboriginal artists aren’t working with anything like a Kantian conception of a free play of the faculties and they have, in the vast majority of cases, no interest in the idea of abstraction as that idea emerged in … painting in the 20th century.”
The Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech is searching for an experienced Director of Programming to lead multidisciplinary performing arts planning, community engagement, and student learning efforts. Responsibilities include curation of a presented season of 25-35 engagements and performances, collaboration with campus and community partners, and thoughtful management of resources. To learn more about this position and to apply, please search for Administrative and Professional Faculty Position Posting #AP0180370 at www.jobs.vt.edu. Review of candidates will begin January 15, 2019 and applications will be accepted until the position is filled.
Virginia Tech’s Moss Arts Center presents renowned artists from around the globe and close to home, with a special focus on experiences that expand cultural awareness and deeper understanding. Our presented seasons typically include large orchestra, chamber, and solo performers, major contemporary and classical dance companies, multimedia events, and thought-provoking authors and speakers. More about the Moss Arts Center and our first five years of programming can be found at www.artscenter.vt.edu.
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If you are an individual with a disability and desire accommodation please contact the hiring department or contact University ADA Serviceshttp://oea.vt.edu/ada-
To understand the crisis liberal democracy faces today – whether we identify this primarily in terms of “populism” or “post-truth” – it’s not enough to simply bemoan the rising cynicism of the public. We need also to consider some of the reasons why trust has been withdrawn.
“[There’s] a sound system that, day and night, fills the place with the din of gunfire and explosions. Getting to sleep can still be a challenge: There are no beds, only thin mattresses on the floor with no pillows or sheets, and heavy, scratchy blankets that create the feeling of sleeping with a dead horse.” And, for brave guests, there’s “the bunker.” And yes, there is a demand for all this.
Contemporary work on music perception embraces a variety of disciplines and methodologies, from anthropology to musicology to neuroscience, to try to understand the relationship between music and the human mind. Researchers use motion capture systems to record people’s movements as they dance, analyzing the gestures’ relationship to the accompanying sound. They use eye tracking to measure changes in infants’ attentiveness as musical features or contexts vary. They place electrodes on the scalp to measure changes in electrical activity, or use neuroimaging to make inferences about the neural processes that underlie diverse types of musical experiences, from jazz improvisation to trance-like states to simply feeling a beat.
“Saint Oscar; Wilde the Irishman; Wilde the wit. The classicist; the socialist; the martyr for gay rights. … So if Oscar’s ultimate genius was to allow us to see ourselves in him, what do we see in 2018? And what is there left still to see in a life that ended prematurely and has been so closely scrutinized?”
While it undoubtedly generates interest, what is actually gained from watching conservators working? Conservation has become an increasingly painstaking and intricate process, in which the conservator might sit for hours peering through a binocular microscope making, at the most, small twitching movements with a cotton swab or scalpel, or entering extensive documentation of observations on a computer. This has limited appeal for a visitor.
The board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences “left intact Rule Two, the one that established that a film” — in...
