Arts
Head Cam Horror
Artist Wafaa Bilal is undertaking a year-long project which involves taking a photograph every minute. That may sound like it requires an extreme amount of commitment, but he’s taken it a step further by having a camera inserted into the back of his head (in a body piercing studio). Unfortunately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, his body [...]
The Secret History of Board Games
Ever wondered who came up with the world’s favourite board games and where they got their inspiration? For example, Anthony Pratt, a WWII fire warden, thought up Clue/Cluedo during Nazi air raids, and originally called it Murder! And it turns out that Monopoly looks suspiciously like a board game patented by a Quaker woman 3o [...]
The Dying Art of Writing Well
Does your writing “favor length over brevity, ornateness over simplicity, literalness over figuration”? If so, you aren’t alone according to English professor Ben Yagoda, who has noted that his students seem incapable of writing concisely and clearly. And it’s something that’s increasing with the Internet generation. Read more on The Chronicle.
The Composer – Rashaad Newsome
Think classical music and hip hop don’t mix? Not according to video artist Rashaad Newsome. He’s cut together footage from rap videos to Carl Orloff’s Carmina Burana (in the UK, you’ll know it as the music the X Factor judges come on stage to) and the result is mesmerizing (and jaw-droppingly awesome when seen on [...]
The Nanny Photographs
Vivian Maier, was an eccentric, shy nanny who worked for wealthy families in Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s turns out to have been leading a double life as one of the most talented photographers of the 20th century. But nobody knew this until an author researching a book, John Maloof, bought a job lot [...]
In Almost Every Picture
Every year, 88-year-old Dutch woman Ria van Dijk visits a fairground shooting gallery ad picks up a gun. And every time she scores a hit a camera flashes and her photo is taken. She’s been visiting the shooting gallery almost every year since 1936, and the series of pictures taken chronicle her life since she [...]
Stop Motion Sculpture
Artist Nina Paley took her camera, and some volunteers, to the Met Museum in NYC and took photos of 914 statues and then combined them to make a moving, morphing, evolving sculpture. Her thesis is that all work is derivative – whether or not video manages to prove that it’s a mesmerizing watch. Read how [...]
Unconventional Autobiographies
Another literary list from Flavorwire: this time a list of inventive autobiographies that put bland celebrity offerings in the shade. Check out: The Box: Tales from the Darkroom by Gunter Grass, in which he fictionalizes accounts of his life from the perspectives of his eight children; My Prizes by Thomas Bernhard examines the life he [...]
Rewriting the Original
Flavorwire has compiled a list of authors who have rewritten classic stories (often with a twist) without ruining the original. Their examples include: On Beauty by Zadie Smith – a retellling of Howards End Weight by Jeanette Winterson – a reworking of the Atlas and Heracles myth The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski [...]
The Real Peggy Olsen R.I.P.
Phyllis Robinson, who died on New Year’s Eve 2010 aged 89, was one of the advertising pioneers when she was appointed to run the copy department at a new agency Doyle Dane Bernbach and she was called “the first great modern advertising writer” by former Esquire art director, George Lois. She was responsible for successful [...]
