A word at the top of the page…

Nothing Is Invisible looks at everything.  What is culture, anyway?  From art to science, from marketing to love, from a desire to learn, share, think, feel, act.  As there is a fair amount of written material one could say that we look at all this a bit through what we call “prose-colored glasses”.  This does not mean, however, that there are any media limitations:  Bring on the visualisations, the sonifications, and all the rest, as well. 

Please, if you’re at all inclined, join us or at least let us know what you think.

If you’d rather send us an email than make comments, as such, please do:  nothingisinvisible@live.fr

Ciao,   pjlr

Open Your Ears! Microtones Are Everywhere!

Greg Sandow, in his blog on ArtsJournal, has written a post entitled “Crossing Cultures” concerning a few of his own personal learning experiences concerning world music (or “World Music”, preferably):  Afro-Caribbean-Guatamalan 18th century classical music (Yes!), Australian-Aboriginal loose-knit melodic-rhythmic cycles (not really improvisations, but highly, interestingly, out there), and Tunisian modal microtones (you can listen to for yourself!), and a snippet of Sibelius!.  And all this in the name of the future of classical (Western) music!  Ambitious, fascinating, a bit complicated, but fun for everyone with ears.  And aspiring to a Night in Tunisia.

nothingisinvisible@live.fr

Charles Dickens Edits His Own “A Christmas Carol”: Notoriously Bad Penmanship

AlisonLeigh Cowan has written a charming article entitled “A Christmas Rewrite, as Dickens Edits Dickens” in the NY/Region section of The New York Times (online) whose timely subject is the currently exhibited (at the Morgan Library and Museum) original 1843 manuscript of Charles Dickens’s seasonal favorite “A Christmas Carol” in Dickens’s own hand and including his own editing, marked on the manuscript itself.  A wonderful insight into the writer’s working mind, the manuscript is exposed open only to page 37 (of 66). 

Even better, perhaps (certainly), than the exhibited manuscript, is the fact that The New York Times has photographed each and every page of this original document in HD and has made it available for your fine scrutiny: Looking over the Shoulder of the Creator of “A Christmas Carol”.  This is great fun.  And, despite one viewer’s comments, Dickens’s penmanship isn’t really all that bad.

nothingisinvisible@live.fr

Writing To Fit The Brain

Jonah Lehrer, in Barnesandnoblereview (online), has reviewed the book “Reading in the Brain” by neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene which attempts to give us an idea how new and amazing reading is.  And new, less than 4000 years old, and amazing, though often taken for granted, reading truly is.  However, Lehrer’s review is not that fine an example of writing, and, for that matter, neither is Dahaene’s book.  After all, he’s a neuroscientist and perhaps, given that, we can excuse him. (Can we really?)

Nevertheless, there are some interesting ideas brought forth in “Reading in the Brain” that are worthy of reflection, even with your hectic schedule:  For example, the idea that the graphics of written language are, at the base, really very limited; another, in a sense the axiom on which the previous idea is based, being that all written language has evolved within the narrow biological limits of our sensory apparatus.  Of course, once reading and writing are learned what you do with them can be very, very interesting indeed.

nothingisinvisible@live.fr

Damien Hirst Interview: “If Slagged, Make More”

Simon Hattenstone has written an article entitled “Damien Hirst: ‘Anyone can be Rembrandt’” (not a catchy title, that) in the Art & Design section of the Guardian (online) which includes a marvelous Hirstian sound-bite interview that offers up a rather good laugh at Hirst, Hattenstone, art and money, not to mention painting.  There’s nothing shockingly new, nor newly shocking, said, but still, we believe that you’ll enjoy another quick look at how ridiculous things can be.  Perhaps you’ll take heart, as we did, in the announcement that “Anyone can be Rembrandt”.  We’ve already dimmed the lights and are looking for some meaningful shadow, some lovely highlights,….

No Love Lost, Blue Paintings, by Damien Hirst, is showing at the Wallace Collection, Manchester Square, London W1 through 24 January 2010. Nothing Matters is at the White Cube, London N1 through 30 January 2010

nothingisinvisible@live.fr

Rediscovering Your Shared Humanity? Maybe Not. No.

Given that one amongst us is currently laughing, crying (from laughing?), and speaking incomprehensibly, as he makes his way through Will Self’s novel “The Book of Dave” (a must read especially for phonix luvvrs), we felt it our collective responsiblity to provide you a link to Geoff Nicholson’s smartly written article entitled “A Jaundiced View” in the Book Review section of The New York Times (online) which reviews (odd that, no?) Will Self’s new book entitled “LIVER – A Fictional Organ With a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes” (Bloomsbury), which sounds quite wonderfully Self-ish.

nothingisinvisible@live.fr

Raisins To Love Sex: The Science Of Desire

Daniel Bergner has written a fascinating (and perhaps a bit long) article entitled “Women Who Want to Want” appearing in the Magazine section of The New York Times (online) that is, let’s say, MUST reading for anyone interested in:  Sex, Desire, Pleasure, Women, Men, Culture, Science, Medicine, Psychology, Psychiatry, Raisins, Rats, and more.  Bergner’s article looks at the work of Dr. Lori Brotto on desire and her current task defining the diagnostic criteria for what is known as hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) in women for the next Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, commonly called the D.S.M, which the American Psychiatric Association (APA) will publish in 2012 or 2013. The D.S.M. is “the bible of psychiatric diseases, from autism to sleepwalking, relied on by researchers and clinicians throughout the United States and Canada”.  Brought into the light, especially, is the socio-cultural context which drives, and is driven by, the definition of the criteria for psychiatric diseases with examples of changes in the criteria, from the 1980s onward, of the definition of homosexuality as a “psychiatric disease”.

Though not a “fun” read, in the end you’ll no doubt feel that it was well worth the time (not really that long) and you’ll quite likely feel, as well, that perhaps you’ve learned something…and something useful, to top it off.  Especially if you’re human.

nothingisinvisible@live.fr

Ware4 Art, Thou Whitney

Having collectively spent many, many seriously joyful hours on many, many days looking, seeing, and learning at The Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC we’re happy to see that Judith H. Dobrzynski has written an short, practical review of the Museum’s newly redesigned website.  Entitled “The Whitney Debuts Its Latest Acquisition: A New Website”, Dobrzynski’s article appears in her ArtsJournal blog “Real Clear Arts” and is well worth the quick read.  Then, of course, you must go to the new Whitney site and read about the sunrise/sunset project, and all the other fascinating goings on (including online access to the permanent collection!).

nothingisinvisible@live.fr

Never Enough Evolution…

Being firm believers that one can never (or almost never) speak enough about evolution, especially in view of the numerous and increasingly vocal groups whose world concept has insuffficiently, ahem, evolved to embrace the fact, we felt obliged, though admittedly tardively, to remind all of you that yesterday (24 november) was the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s masterwork “On the Origin of Species”.  Leaving others to debate whether or not someone else may have had the idea prior to Darwin, we’d like to point out an article written by the wise and lovely Olivia Judd entitled “An Evolve-By Date” in the Opinion (!!, see what we mean, not the Science) section of The New York Times (online).  Being exhaustively trained artist-scientists, as we are (right!), we would like to suggest that evolution is as much of an opinion as death is.  On second thought, that’s probably not a good comparison as it appears that there are many people who have an opinion about death, too.  In any case, evolution theory, in its contemporary form, though theory, is based on an enormous body of data derived from detailed study and is without any doubt the best framework for understanding the biological world in which we live.  So there.  Any questions?

In case you have just landed on our planet, or would like to learn a bit more about Darwin and evolution here is a Wikipedia link.

nothingisinvisible@live.fr

Engage In A Richer Narrative, Immerse Yourself In Other Worlds

Out title, paraphrased from Jeff Gomez’ paraphrasing of  Henry Jenkins in Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, as included in Nick de la Mare’s article “The Power of Transmedia Experiences - Another approach to knitting narratives together” in Creativity (online), (phew!), is not really anything new to artists, and seemingly not that new to media “creative” types (read advertising, PR and other marketing communications ilks), either.  That doesn’t mean that it’s not interesting; it is.  It’s essentially what “multi-media art” has been about for, well, forever.

De la Mare’s take on it makes it all, naturally enough, more easily discussed, designed, manipulated, produced and, in the end, billed to clients (the cost of which will be included in the products these “clients” sell, and so, in the products we buy from them, meaning everything we buy).  The technology is here (or there), or most of it is, and our collective technology/media behavior is certainly about up to par.  So, in the probably not particularly distant future, we will no longer see a TV show made into a movie made into a video game with all of the associated products (t-shirts, and all that) developed along the way.  What we will see, it seems, is the use of each of these media to tell their part of the story in their own quintessential way thus, in the end, offering us the aforementioned “richer narrative” and the, no doubt refreshing, opportunity to “immerse ourselves in other worlds”.

So churns the minds of those whose mission, so critical in this time of global economic crisis, is to motivate us to buy more things.  Rest assured, the future is in good hands.

However, and honestly, the simplicity of tone and “terminology” in the article offers perhaps a less abiguous way to look at and discuss the idea of “transmedia experience” as distinct from “multimedia experience”, and that’s nice.  Isn’t it.

nothingisinvisible@live.fr

Vase Is This.

Designboom blog has covered the opening of a show entitled “VASE vs. VASES” at Helmrinderknecht Contemporary Design Gallery in Berlin (through 9 January 2010).  The show includes works of a rather astounding variety, though all are vases or ideas of vases, shall we say.  Practically minded, the notion of vase as commodity is posited and thus, logically enough, all the works are for sale.  Prices are apparently as diverse as the vases themselves.

Being the ex-(mad)-scientists we are, we couldn’t help but be very fond of the RGB vase (photo below!!) by Oscar Diaz stirring up warm memories, as it does, of studying with Dr. Dorothea Jameson ( here and here) in another universe long ago and far away.

                          

RGB Vase by Oscar Diaz (edition of 8…)

nothingisinvisible@live.fr