SFMOMA – The Art of Participation 1950 – Now
Life Squared [link], our installation in the online world Second Life, is currently part of the exhibition The Art of Participation 1950 – Now at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Life Squared – web link and gallery link. More links – Linden Lab/Second Life and Wired magazine The exhibition, curated by Rudolf Frieling, is [...]
Hershman – Strange Culture – Sundance
Stanford Humanities Lab at Sundance Film Festival On Monday 22 January and Wednesday 24 January our experimental facility in the online world Second Life will host the première of Lynn Hershman’s new movie “Strange Culture” as part of the Sundance Film Festival. In 2004 artist and college professor Steve Kurtz was preparing for a [http://www.massmoca.org/ [...]
Mortal remains, guilt and the loss of the past
Press release from the Ministry of Culture in the UK UK National Museums Get New Powers To Return Human Remains Nine national UK museums, including the British Museum and the Natural History Museum, have this week acquired powers to move human remains out of their collections as the Government brought section 47 of the Human [...]
Charles Redman on environmental politics
It has taken me too long to get round to reading Charles Redman’s great book Human Impact on Ancient Environments – Arizona, 1999. I came to the book because of the upcoming exhibition at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford, of the photographs of Edward Burtynsky – they foreground massive environmental impacts. [Link] We need a [...]
Invented traditions – the case of the Percy family
Alnwick Castle, Scottish borders – Northumberland UK – home of Harry Potter As I prepare for a month of fieldwork along Hadrian’s Wall in the UK and north into Walter Scott country, never mind the rock art and superbly preserved agricultural landscapes, I came across a new attraction at Alnwick Castle, the fabulous medieval border [...]
Tim Webmoor on social software and heritage politics
Great talk last night from Tim Webmoor at our New Media workshop at Stanford. He is working at the fabulous site of Teotihuacan, Mexico, on different attitudes and understandings of the site – local and beyond. Teotihuacan has become emblematic of the Mexican state and Mexican heritage. I posted some comments last year from Meg [...]
archaeological fakes in the German academy
A fascinating item today in the Guardian – History of modern man unravels as German scholar is exposed as fraud Flamboyant anthropologist falsified dating of key discoveries Luke Harding in Berlin It appeared to be one of archaeology’s most sensational finds. The skull fragment discovered in a peat bog near Hamburg was more than 36,000 [...]
The Brick Testament
In the light of my recent posts about creationism [Link], contemporary culture and the science wars [Link] and then the Barbie Doll Bronze Age [Link], Cornelius (Holtorf) has put me on to The Brick Testament. Yes – the Bible in lego bricks … The death of Jacob by The Reverend Brendan Powell Smith
surreality – Barbie dolls in Minoan Crete
Stringy Carter has put me on to an extraordinary web site – Minoan Culture, a Discussion by Frederick John Kluth of Kent, Ohio Barbie as prehistoric matriarch He has created a series of scenes from his reading of Minoan Crete using Barbie dolls … not the usual gendered interpretation of Minoan culture and society! But [...]
creationism, intelligent design and redefinitions of science
Suzanne Goldenberg writes an informative summary today in the Guardian of the latest stage of the creationist debate in the US – Religious right fights science for the heart of America. Classroom confrontations between God and science are under way in 17 states, according to the National Centre for Science Education. In Missouri, state legislators [...]
Joseph Beuys and the archaeological
Tate Modern London. I am still reading today’s Arts section of the Guardian – this time Adrian Searle’s preview of the Tate Modern’s new exhibition of Joseph Beuys [Link] Beuys wasn’t being mischievous or disingenuous when he said there was nothing to understand (in his work). He may have been wrong to believe everyone could [...]
Foresight, design studies, the long term, and archaeology
Last Friday Bill Cockayne (Stanford Humanities Lab Assoc. Director) and I (also in my role as co-Director of Stanford Humanities Lab) were at the local office of DaimlerChrysler – RTNA (Research and Technology North America). In response to their request, we were proposing a project to research the future of car culture, with a focus [...]
screen cast – media archaeology from Jon Udell
The heavy metal umlaut Now this entry is going to sound very esoteric to many of you. But please persevere and watch the linked movie. This is about the future of cross-disciplinary collaborative research. In the Metamedia Lab here at Stanford, we make much of the facility of our social software (like the Metamedia pages [...]
forgery and illicit antiquities – the importance of narrative
From the Guardian today – Forgers ‘tried to rewrite biblical history’ Hundreds of biblical artefacts in museums all over the world could be fakes, it has emerged after Israeli investigators uncovered what they claim is a sophisticated forgery ring. Four men have been charged with the faking of some of the most important biblical discoveries [...]
sham archaeological science in the academy
Glasgow TAG conference – the cows come home to Monte Polizzo. A few years ago now I left I field project in Sicily after just two seasons. I was very angry because I felt I had been forced out by people who didn’t want to listen to my concerns. Angry at my wasted effort, because [...]
archaeology – the “materialities of its discourse” – depressing lecture halls
Mike (Pearson) and I presented a series of performed lectures in the first years of the European Association of Archaeologists annual meetings across Europe – 1991 through 1996. Performed lectures – raising the level of expressive demands upon presenter and audience with intellectual content uncompromised – intermedia presentation dealing in the textures of archaeology and [...]
hobbit hominids – data property rights
Hobbits locked away as scientists argue – Science – www.theage.com.au It has been a plague of archaeological research since the beginnings of the discipline in the eighteenth century, and a contemporary scandal, though few speak out about it. So I hear that the hobbit hominid remains have been locked away by a palaeontologist in Jakarta [...]
Mike Pearson and theatre/archaeology
Mike Pearson, performance artist, was in Stanford this week. We wrote the book Theatre/Archaeology together. He talked to our New Media Workshop about recent work of his, and then to the Archaeology Center about his research into what really went on in the expeditions to the Antarctic back in the early 1900s. Both were provocative. [...]
Bulgaria’s golden archaeological hopes
BBC item today Bulgaria’s ancient Thracian heritage has been thrust into the spotlight this year with a number of key archaeological discoveries in the so-called “Valley of the Thracian Kings”. The golden treasures are attracting international attention and there is a push to make the Thracian heritage Bulgaria’s trademark abroad in a bid to boost [...]
another unique species?
A BBC article on the new species of homo UK | Magazine | Eton or the zoo? raises some excellent questions. How would the new species be treated? If it is such a close relative, would we give these people the vote? The discovery of homo floresiensis reiterates what anthropologists have been saying for a [...]
Classical pasts and presents – the avant-garde, counterculture and ancient Greece?
Jody (Maxmin) has directed us to a review of an exhibition in New York City – “Mirrors to the Past: Ancient Greece and Avant-Garde America” is at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, 111 Amsterdam Avenue, at 65th Street, Lincoln Center, (212) 870-1630, through Jan. 8. The Hellenic Festival, presented by the [...]
the power of the monument – more on Dennis Oppenheim and Stanford
A bunch of comments on the veto by John Hennessy, Stanford’s President, of Dennis Oppenheim’s “Device to root out evil” from sculpture.net. Dennis was also in the New York Times this week – [Link] My blog entries – [Link] [Link] [Link] [Link]
Remix Radio Show This Sunday in San Francisco! | Creative Commons
Earlier this week I was airing the matter of copyright and intellectual property in connection with academic citation, pulling it all into the issue of democratic cultural creativity. [Link] The The Creative Commons blog announces a radio show this Sunday on the art of remix in a broad perspective – from Roman intertextuality to DJ [...]