Information is a verb (continued)

The beginnings of a digital dark age? Just came across this perceptive piece about digital archives in SAP INFO “Digital Information Will Never Survive by Accident” – an interview with Neil Beagrie of the British Library. (This came to me via the excellent blog – Stoa.org.) Here is an excerpt: Mr. Beagrie, in modern societies…

Dennis Oppenheim and the material power of art

I chair the Panel on Outdoor Art at Stanford – we acquire pieces for the sculpture collection and consider offers of donation. Stanford’s collection is one of the best on the west coast. Like Colin Renfrew [Link] I think there is a strong convergence of interest in materialities and time that brings together contemporary art…

augmenting past realities – and a connection with artificial intelligence

How should we reconstruct the past? Is the ideal Virtual Reality and photorealistic simulation? A CGI (pre)history? Under the supposition that this would be like it was back then? My line is that this would be the death of the past. It forgets the material ruin, the archaeological condition that is our cultural and historical…

early photography and archaeology – a matter of hygiene

Chris (Witmore) has sent me some comments about his fascinating research into early photography and archaeology – Conze at Samothrace Although photography had been used in the context of archaeological practice for some time, it was only with the Samothrace excavation volumes that photographs were placed directly into the publication (Conze, Hauser and Niemann 1875…

Patrick Roddie at Burning Man 2004 – corporealities categorized

Photographer Patrick Roddie has just posted his images of Burning Man 2004 – [Link]. The categories of this epic exploration of corporeality: blue – chests – children – couples – dust & dance – etc – feet – hands – hips – masks – me – men – meta – music – night – paint…