Duplicate Array | Tomorrow Museum

This is an aside titled 'Duplicate Array' dated 11/4/09

Image of the day: an antique chaise with a landscape dripping over it from FAT’s exhibit, “Duplicate Array” at Galerie Lucy Mackintosh in Lausanne. “Lie back and dream of England.”

Posted by Joanne on Nov. 4, 2009

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- Americans Doing More, Buying Less, a Poll Finds: "The Department of Labor’s time-use surveys show... compared with 2005, Americans spent less time in 2008 buying goods and services and more time cooking or taking part in 'organizational, civic and religious activities.' Just as tellingly, evidence can also be found in culture. While one new study shows that attendance at museums and cultural events dropped from 2002 to 2008, it has climbed in 2009 at many major institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago. Movie attendance was also up 5 percent in 2009, and in the world of the Walt Disney Company, product sales have declined as the company’s theme parks enjoyed a 3 percent increase in visitors last quarter."
  2010-01-03 08:48:50
- Rebecca Mead doesn't like what we're calling this decade. "Arguably, a grudging agreement has been reached on calling the decade 'the aughts,' but that unfortunate term is rooted in a linguistic error. The use of 'aught' to mean 'nothing,' 'zero,' or 'cipher' is a nineteenth-century corruption of the word 'naught,' which actually does mean nothing, and which, as in the phrase 'all for naught,' is still in current usage. Meanwhile, the adoption of 'the aughts' as the decade’s name only accelerates the almost complete obsolescence of the actual English word “aught,” a concise and poetic near-synonym for 'anything' ... To call the decade 'the aughts' is a compromise that pleases no one, and that has more than a whiff of resigned settling about it." While I'll agree there's something significant in how it takes until the last few months of the decade to decide on a name for itself, "aught" is far less obscure that Mead suggests. Wolfram Alpha is useless for finding out how many high schools perform the Music Man each year, but I'd wager it's quite a lot... meaning there are thousands and thousands of people out there familiar with its frequent references to building a church in "aught six" or graduating in "aught seven." It may not be a frequently discussed common cultural reference like Citizen Kane or The Catcher in the Rye, but because The Music Man is so frequently performed, lots of people actually know the script. Maybe you played a townsperson once or your neighbor's daughter did. (is there's a theater term for this?) Anyway, I think the "aughts" can be contributed to Prof. Harold Hill, and I wouldn't be surprised if "oh four" and "oh five" become "aught--" looking back.
  2009-12-30 23:39:16
- It's really, really hard to write about yourself, photograph yourself, or film yourself without annoying people, but Ross McElwee somehow has a knack for it. Sherman's March is a must-Netflix, if you haven't already. Now Steve Carr (Daddy Day Care, Next Friday, Paul Blart: Mall Cop) wants to turn it into a film. Now, when McElwee was shooting every minute of his life in the last 70s and early 80s, it was extremely bizarre, today, it wouldn't alarm anyone. Given this, I really hope Carr uses the opportunity to reflect on our over-cameraed era.
  2009-12-30 22:45:11
- Unica Zurn's writing and art is what I turn to when I'm looking for inspiration, so it's no surprise “Unica Zürn: Dark Spring,” at the Drawing Center, was one of my favorite gallery shows this year. It left me with a greater appreciation of her genius, and also with a longing for the days when art and literature (and film and music) were not compartmentalized. Curator João Ribas won the International Association of Art Critics' (AICA) annual award for Best Show By A Non-Profit Gallery or Space. Ribas is now the curator at MIT's exceptional List Galley.
  2009-12-30 22:37:17
- At age eighteen, Vic Chesnutt went from a reckless young man to a wheelchair-bound quadriplegic. All of his close family died off by the time he hit 25. He’s struggled with substance abuse. He owes $50,000 in medical bills. And yesterday, the 45-year old songwriter confessed to NPR’s Terry Gross that he’s tried—unsuccessfully—to kill himself at least four times. Here's that interview. Gutted to learn he succeeded.
  2009-12-25 01:05:41
- These tracks were most frequently deleted by the Last.fm community from their scrobbles in October 2009. (via.)
  2009-12-24 16:51:16
- "For the past 3500 years of the Western world, the effects of media — whether it’s speech, writing, printing, photography, radio or television — have been systematically overlooked by social observers. Even in today’s revolutionary electronic age, scholars evidence few signs of modifying this traditional stance of ostrichlike disregard." - Marshall McLuhan in a 1969 Playboy magazine interview unearthed by Next Nature. This past decade has certainly put an end to that.
  2009-12-23 21:17:58
- "The minimum wage machine allows anybody to work for minimum wage. Turning the crank will yield one penny every 5.04 seconds, for $7.15 an hour (NY state minimum wage). If the participant stops turning the crank, they stop receiving money. The machine's mechanism and electronics are powered by the hand crank, and pennies are stored in a plexiglas box." (via.)
  2009-12-22 01:31:59
- I've watched Cannibal Holocaust, Ichi the Killer, and plenty of other disturbing things but for some reason this is the most disgusting thing i've seen in my life: Stevie Ryan, yes, that Little Loca, eats makeup in an ad campaign for Raw Natural Beauty to prove its naturalness.
  2009-12-21 02:33:23
- The Bygone Bureau has a roundup of the best new blogs of 2009 including picks from Waxy, Fimoculous, The Morning News, HTML Giant, and me. This is also a tiny feminist victory as I clearly win in total number of subscriptions. 749 to be precise. I'm the Annie Oakley of RSS! Yeehaw! The quickest "Mark All Read" draw in the ether!
  2009-12-16 09:44:00
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