The value of fiction | Tomorrow Museum

This is an aside titled 'The value of fiction' dated 3/19/09

Economists Tyler Cowen and Robin Hanson on the value of fiction. Also from New Scientist: How novels help drive social evolution. “A study of the way that people respond to Victorian literature hints that novels act as a social glue, reinforcing the types of behaviour that benefit society.”

Posted by Joanne on Mar. 19, 2009

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- "Writing and reading allow one consciousness to find and take shelter in another. When the minds of the reader and writer perfectly and inimitably connect, objects, events and emotions become doubly vivid – more real, somehow, than real things. I have spent most of my life seeking out these connections and attempting to create my own. Today, however, the pleasures of literary connection seem leftover and familiar. Today the most consistently pleasurable pursuit in my life is playing video games. Unfortunately, the least useful and financially solvent pursuit in my life is also playing video games. For instance, I woke up this morning at 8am fully intending to write this article. Instead, I played Left 4 Dead until 5pm. The rest of the day went up in a blaze of intermittent catnaps. It is now 10pm and I have only just started to work. I know how I will spend the late, frayed moments before I go to sleep tonight, because they are how I spent last night and the night before that: walking the perimeter of my empty bed and carpet-bombing the equally empty bedroom with promises that tomorrow will not be squandered." - Tom Bissell. His new book Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter is released in June.
  2010-03-21 01:52:33
- Why, as Lauren Collins mentions in the New Yorker, did everyone wait to talk about Tino Sehgal's "This Progress" until after the show was over? I really like Dan Visel's post about it. McKenzie Wark, Ashton Applewhite, and Bob Stein were all interpreters! Less attention is given to the equally perplexing, if not quite transendent, The Kiss -- you know, the two teenagers goin' at it in the lobby. Here is my photo. There is just something about the moment you walk in and think they really are two drugged up and in love NYU freshman, and avert your eyes but stare at them at a safely voyeuristic angle from above, while walking up the rotunda. From that angle you realize the staging and choreography of their moments. The Kiss is in slow motion. It is more of an autopsy of an encounter than anything erotic. Maybe that I liked it just means I need a boyfriend. The Kiss was performed on "loan" from MoMA to the Guggenheim. They own it (It “was one of the most elaborate and difficult acquisitions.") Craziness. In you are in Ontario, apply now. Holland Cotter reviewed #class for the NYT, mentioning the panel An Xiao put together and I moderated, (my name is spelled wrong in that particular review. The first time I've seen it misspelled with out an "a".) If there's one thing you read this week, make it Enrique Ramirez on atemporaliy. Two podcast about sound art. A Party of Suicides. I wish I could go to Short Circuit! John Foxx is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the release of Metamatic. Oh yeah, Gary Numan is DJing. Also, he's collaborating on something with Iain Sinclair. James Franco's movie is aparently quite good.
  2010-03-21 00:30:47
- Here's an interview with Jerry Brito, the reason this website looks so nice, talking about his project Earmarkdata.org. Also, check out his Surprisingly Free interview with Ethan Zuckerman.
  2010-03-20 11:44:51
- A perfectionist is someone who finishes the backside of a drawer, which I consider completely unnecessary. - Helmut Krone. Krzysztof Kieślowski's grave. Post Internet. The cult of busy. Émilie Simon has a keyboard, a Tenori On, a Doepfer and a steampunk arm. The Bygone Bureau redesigned and an interview with OKTrends. Star Wars Modern on fascist fonts (more.) Tattúínárdælasaga, Star Wars in Old Norse. Would you pay $31.95 to read Vollmann on the Kindle? New Zaha Hadid designs for a business center outside Venice.
  2010-03-14 04:18:28
- Living in Boston, I've seen a number of extraordinary people give talks and presentations, but last year at the Harvard Film Archive, Kathryn Bigelow struck me as particularly brilliant. Bigelow was a painter before she was a film maker. A downtown artist, a fellow at the Whitney Museum, a student of Vito Acconci and Susan Sontag. Her first film, made in grad school, featured Sylvère Lotringer and Marshall Blonsky. But her action films aren't a rejection of her background, rather, they expand on it. She has made a deliberate decision to speak to as wide an audience as possible, and in doing so never sacrificed her vision. Her favorite word to describer her work is "experiential." In an excellent post, the best thing I've read about her work yet, Steven Shaviro, further explains this quality of "sensory immersion." Of course her win is a milestone. Especially since it means the issue of women in film longer a question of capability. More women than men are in the Whitney Biennial this year, and they had the strongest work. Kathryn Bigelow won because she made the best film. Here she is with Charlie Rose. Near Dark is the perfect movie to watch at 5 am. Such an inspiration.
  2010-03-09 10:31:04
- Marina Abramovic (in conversation with Laurie Anderson) explaining how she prepared the artists performing her work at the MoMA "I took them to the countryside — no eating, period, swimming in the cold river, all sleeping in the barn — in the beginning of September to create the community, to see what the strengths are, what I can do and what I cannot do. It’s OK to change your mind. But I’m talking about 36 people changing [their] minds, so they really have to have the stamina and dedication and mental health to stay there for three months. Anything can happen. This is unknown territory that we have to explore." An unforgettable show. More on the connection between performance art and economic crises. And her star-shaped home. Tino Sehgal show at the Guggenheim, another highlight of my week. A parent of two of the performers writes in WSJ Speakeasy. His son says, “People don’t understand the piece, dad... I ask them if they want to follow me and they say no and walk up the rotunda without me. Only five people said yes. I got like 20 nos.” Big travel plans. Any readers in Detroit especially want to get in touch? James Parker goes on “the wisdom of jet lag.” Mundane Tokyo. Pink Noise at the Movies. 5 Great Works Of Internet-related Art. Art Fag City on the Whitney Biennial ("Its good.") And also a review on the non-art show art show The Independent. Collaborating on the Computer with William S. Burroughs (A followup to Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, and the Computer.) Dr. Seuss used precisely 236 different words to write The Cat in the Hat. An Elvis impersonator with an Elvis picture in his passport, made it through security in Amsterdam Schiphol airport.
  2010-03-07 02:01:50
- Recently I read a story with the Hilobrow gang for the 2nd episode of “Parallel Universe: Pazzo.” Here's the podcast.
  2010-03-07 01:46:05
- "[There] are futurists and there are fictioneers, and we excel at different things." - Elizabeth Bear (While you are there, check out Charles Stross' series of posts on "Common Misconceptions About Publishing.") And their novels, of course, are very much recommended.
  2010-03-01 12:58:53
- I don't know why I keep doing these. But here's another podcast in defense of anonymity.
  2010-02-28 06:05:33
- Like CD jewel cases, paperbacks, and other things, for better or worse the internet makes redundant, gone will be handmade "Missing" posters. Google's Person Finder made me pause and think how far we've come. And of course I'm thinking about 9/11. Townes Van Zandt singing about his daughter. Here's Dan Fox on Spacemen 3, and "The many uses of the Zeitgeist," and pretentiousness, "The optimist sees pretension as innocent, tragicomic even: excess of effort, a lack of awareness that ambition might exceed capability, being unable to laugh about your own limitations. In this sense, it’s related to certain aspects of camp – to what Susan Sontag described as ‘the sensibility of failed seriousness’. (What often lurks behind pomposity is sad insecurity.) The cynic recognizes pretension only as the cousin of affectation, one of the dark arts of charlatanry; disguises to pass yourself off as something you’re not, talking yourself up, showing off about commodities or experiences you’ve acquired. But one quality of pretentiousness is a willingness to at least have a stab at something, for better or for worse, and you can only accuse someone of pretentiousness if you can identify both what is being aspired to, and just why it is that the person in question fails to make the grade." New one from Jon Rafman. Best game of Twister EVER. The Atlantic on Matt Kirschenbaum's work in video-game preservation. Brett Easton Ellis wants James Franco and Angelina Jolie to play Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan. China Mieville writes about JG Ballard, whose childhood home was just gutted. Luzinterruptus, replacing traffic with literature. The Power of Text (and Google Search Stories). Bunch of Pavement links, Gold Soundz is my favorite. Against speculative design competitions. Neoteny is the retention of childlike attributes in adulthood. UK's web heritage at risk. When in your life were you most afraid to talk to strangers? "When I talked with (adult) friends about the experience, some wondered if kids today are acculturated to be more afraid of strangers than kids were in generations past. I'm not so sure this is true. Until I was about ten, I was scared to ask for directions or talk to strangers in public. I don't think I was afraid of the strangers--I was afraid of exposing and embarrassing myself." I don't think I ever stopped being afraid, I just learned to hide it.
  2010-02-28 05:59:35
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