John Sargeant’s performance on the BBC Newsnight Review show yesterday was bizarre. He managed to say the n-word twice during a discussion of Django Unchained, and later described parts of a TV programme as “American bullshit”.
Among those watching the show, some wondered whether the BBC would receive complaints. Others applauded Sargeant’s no-nonsense approach. I found his language tiresome.
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Category: Diary (Page 99 of 301)
Things that happen to me, or things I do
It is often said that Jorge Luis Borges would have loved the Internet. The non-linear journeys we take, forking paths through the information, the near-infiinty of it all, are themes mirrored in his writing. I imagine his interest would have been piqued by the exposure of a hoax on Wikipedia.
From 1640 to 1641 the might of colonial Portugal clashed with India’s massive Maratha Empire in an undeclared war that would later be known as the Bicholim Conflict. Named after the northern Indian region where most of the fighting took place, the conflict ended with a peace treaty that would later help cement Goa as an independent Indian state. Except none of this ever actually happened. The Bicholim Conflict is a figment of a creative Wikipedian’s imagination. It’s a huge, laborious, 4,500 word hoax. And it fooled Wikipedia editors for more than 5 years.
Last Sunday I visited the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill, London Borough of Lewisham. It is a fanastic place, with an eclectic mix of exhibits – a collection of musical instruments, an aquarium, some natural history rooms, &ct. It also has an impressive cafeteria!
In its Gallery Square exhibition space, the museum is showing a great little photography collection, The London Look. The pictures are the winners and runners up of a competition run by the museum and The Londonist website. The winning photos by Robbie Ewing and Pete Zelewski are brilliant, but my favourite is this image, ‘Tube’ by Ed Walker, who has written a post on street photography, and getting in close to take the shot.
Tube, by Ed Walker
She could be the character in my short story, Northern Line Lovers.
An Instagrammable photobomb, by theycallmemouse on Flickr.
I have become an avid listener of the Overthinking It podcast. It is a few guys, chatting via Skype from disparate locations in the USA, shooting the breeze about popular culture.
A recent episode (an atypical two-hander between Matthew Wrather and Peter Fenzel) is called ‘Schroedinger’s Instagram’, and discusses in depth the pop-cultural implications of the recent purchase of Instagram by Facebook. In doing so, they cruise by many of the obsessions and diversions of this blog.
- The rise of the ‘selfies‘ (i.e. a digital self-portrait).
- Our obsession with taking our own photographs of events that are being recorded anyway…. event if we are actually taking part in that event (c.f. Malia Obama at the Inauguration, Olympians at their opening ceremony).
- Compulsive documentation, stepping out of a moment in order to photograph it.
Wrather and Fenzel talk a little about party photos and holiday snaps. The way in which people ‘pose’ for ostensibly candid photos has always fascinated me. I know people who make a peace ‘V’ with their fingers, or open their mouths as if the excitement of the moment has overcome them… but then they lapse into a rather glum repose once the flash has fired. They are consciously creating an inaccurate facade for Facebook.
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Ever since my intimate involvement with Sweet Fanny Adams in Eden, Internet-only art has been one of my recurring interests. Most recently, I noted the delightful xkcd cartoon that only really works properly online, using features available in computers. Art that is not simply a recording of a performance that took place in some place and time. Art that is not simply a scan or representation of something that exists on a wall or street corner somewhere. Art that you cannot experience anywhere but on a connected device. Art that could not have been created before the twenty-first century.
Here are two more examples, both extremely simple, both aesthetically pleasing on the surface, and both with an added beauty because of the collaboration that is inherent in their creation.
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