Category: Arts and Culture

Took some much-needed family time away from the bathroom project last weekend to visit Sonoma’s Cornerstone Gardens, “an ever-changing series of walk-through gardens, showcasing new and innovative designs from the world’s finest landscape architects and designers.” Amazing collection of immersive landscapes and other outdoor installations. Photos by Amy and me.

On the way in, took a call from Birdhouse customer Artefact Design & Salvage. 20 minutes later, entering Cornerstone, discovered that Artefact resides on the very same grounds, so finally got to meet the crew and walk through their jaw-dropping collection as well. World gets smaller.

Afternoon, sipped a root beer and sat in the shade watching a bi-plane pulling loops and barrel rolls, far removed from daily compression. Life is rich.

Nice photos of public art on the West Bank: Banksy vs. The West Bank. In fact, lots of great visuals at Wooster Collective.

Visited the Walker Art Center in Minnneapolis today, amazement around every corner. Stunning to find the actual tub in which Yves Klein had his naked models dip before applying themselves to large white canvases in the early 60s, saturated in the cosmically deep hue IKB. International Klein Blue was a color invented and patented by Klein, bluer than blue, virtually the only color he ever used. And yet, despite his total commitment to IKB, Klein refused to touch paint. Wish I had jotted down the quote since I can’t find it referenced on the web, but laughed out loud when I read something to the effect of “I would never stoop to dirty my hands with actual paint” … more stuff about distance and control… picturing these poor models bathing in the deepest blue, throwing themselves against white muslin, and Klein standing back, directing traffic, the total puppeteer. An absurd power trip with absurdly beautiful results.

People are getting smarter. Remove the periodic recalibration of IQ tests that keep the mean IQ at 100, and you find that average intelligence is rising as the decades pass.

For the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell covers Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad Is Good for You. Johnson pins causes for rising IQ on the increasing complexity of pop culture. As much energy as we spend pointing fingers at the idiot box for dumbing us down, TV puts “greater cognitive demands” on us today than it did 30 years ago. Compare the simple, linear, single-plotline pace of “Dukes of Hazzard” with an episode of “The Sopranos” or “Desperate Housewives” and you see a marked uptick in complexity and the demands put on the viewer to keep track of multiple threads and do lots of “filling in” (less is spelled out for the viewer). Johnson sees the same trend in video games — steadily increasing complexity putting ever-greater intellectual demands on the player.

Most of the people who denounce video games, he says, haven’t actually played them—at least, not recently. Twenty years ago, games like Tetris or Pac-Man were simple exercises in motor coördination and pattern recognition. Today’s games belong to another realm. Johnson points out that one of the “walk-throughs� for “Grand Theft Auto III�—that is, the informal guides that break down the games and help players navigate their complexities—is fifty-three thousand words long, about the length of his book. The contemporary video game involves a fully realized imaginary world, dense with detail and levels of complexity.

Have to say I’m a hard sell on these points, but it’s not an unconvincing argument. Might make a good summer read.