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…

“The massacre of Mesopotamian archaeology”

More reports of the damage done to cultural heritage in the Middle East in The Daily Star (Lebanon) NASIRIYA, Iraq: In the southern Iraq desert, the standing structures of ancient archaeological cities dot the horizon – majestic monuments to times long gone.? Untouched for thousands of years, historic temples, palaces, tombs and entire dead cities…

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…