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 shape of history
interbreeding Neanderthals?
Great story in the Washington Post a couple of days ago – Caveful of Clues About Early Humans. Archaeologists have been exploring an almost inaccessible cave in Romania, diving through icy underground sumps and making dizzying vertical climbs for the sake of a collection of fossil human remains washed into the cave 35,000 years ago….
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…
rural pursuits – crop circles and prehistory
On the subject of rural relationships [Link] [Link], Tim Dilworth, freelancing for National Geographic TV, contacted me last week about crop circles around Stonehenge – and we are definitely in the season for this kind of thing … Here are some extracts from our conversation. TD There are a couple of points I’d really like…
loss and history’s physiognomy
An elegy for the UK countryside Item in the BBC Magazine. Half a century ago, probably even in the last two or three decades, the UK countryside had a definite purpose. It was essential to the entire country, because it was where much of our food was produced, which meant employment. Today we depend on…
cupboard under the stairs
more of the abandoned apartment in San Jose [Link] [Link] [Link] [Link]