Educated Optimism

Art and the drones

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 03:23:21 -0500

How are we trying to make sense of drones - through popular culture and art? Fascinating blog with a lot of very useful links.

Reading Havi Carel’s stunning book ‘illness’ -...

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 10:55:28 -0500

Reading Havi Carel’s stunning book ‘illness’ - should be required reading for everyone.

Day 365 - Bristol Lido

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 06:08:54 -0500

Day 365 - Bristol Lido

Such a beautiful bridge

Sat, 27 Oct 2012 16:43:32 -0400

Such a beautiful bridge

New Public Thinkers 'invisible revolution' event 29th Feb

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 04:11:38 -0500

New Public Thinkers 'invisible revolution' event 29th Feb

My 2012 LWF talk

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:06:05 -0500

My 2012 LWF talk

Jay Lemke's re-engineering education papers

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 06:48:06 -0500

Jay Lemke's re-engineering education papers:

Not sure why I’ve not got round to reading Lemke in the original until now, but his paper ‘becoming the village’ is about the best, most accessible, most theoretically informed summary of why schooling needs to change that I’ve read for a while

Social Lab

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:06:05 -0500

Social Lab :

The intro reads - ‘Welcome to Social Lab - part investigation, part experimentation and part playground.’ - what’s not to like?

This doesn’t mean it’s spring though. It’s...

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 12:12:05 -0500

This doesn’t mean it’s spring though. It’s still midwinter.

Flying in over Kent on Tuesday

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 12:09:05 -0500

Flying in over Kent on Tuesday

This is someone else's take on the Tomb of the Wrestler

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:27:08 -0500

This is someone else's take on the Tomb of the Wrestler

Magritte Exhibition at the Albertina

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:23:00 -0500

I spent last Monday walking around a freezing cold Vienna, my scarf wrapped over my nose, my hat jammed down, hands in pockets. To escape from the cold we ended up in the Albertina, a beautiful art gallery/royal palace with a permanent exhibition that includes strangely unadvertised exquisite sketches by Michelangelo as well as a sort of ‘100 painters everyone has to see before they die’ romp through from Monet to Picasso. The luxury of a weekday in an art gallery meant time to stop and stare at each picture, and I was completely swallowed up by the sheer indulgence and pleasures of tracing Emil Nolde’s brushstrokes in Forest, and refreshed by the simplicity and peace of Cezanne’s ‘farm in Normandy’.

As we had time, we also visited the new Magritte Exhibition, which is really the reason I’m writing this. I was alternately so irritated and enamoured of this exhibition

and, by the end of it, so completely bludgeoned by the ideas, that I had to write about it to work through what I was thinking.There are hundreds of images in the exhibition, paintings, commercial artwork, films and photographs. There is a sense of abundance that allows you to gradually sense the rhythms in the ideas.

To begin, I was, honestly, bored. The early paintings, when Magritte is still closely associated with the Parisian surrealists, are dull, earthy colours and seem overly obsessed with an idea that seems banal in today’s post-Saussurian world, when the gap between the signifier and the signified is taken for granted. The constant play on representation, the famous ‘this is not a pipe’, all seem to have little longevity in an era when these ideas are now taken for granted.

But then, the break with the Parisians, and light and colour comes into the work. It is still intentionally flat, but the sheer exuberance of the ideas and the themes hits you. There is image after incongruous image that, I realised, challenge you to create narratives that reconcile these images yourself. These are paintings that assume an intelligence and a playfulness in the viewer, that assume you are part of the process of constructing them. A dark red room,

Beautiful bark and lichen on a redwood at Stourhead

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:56:59 -0500

Beautiful bark and lichen on a redwood at Stourhead

“To each era its art, to art its freedom”. A...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:09:39 -0500

“To each era its art, to art its freedom”. A seriously confrontational call from the Vienna Secession. And today? This idea manifests itself as eerie empty packaging in the contemporary exhibition. Downstairs, the Klimt Beethoven Frieze is still breathtaking.

Sunshine and long shadows on frost this morning. Good start to...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 06:08:43 -0500

Sunshine and long shadows on frost this morning. Good start to the day.

orbooks: A sneak peek at The New Inquiry’s beautiful new...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:35:57 -0500

orbooks:

A sneak peek at The New Inquiry’s beautiful new digital magazine! Keep your eye out as their re-design and subscription site goes live next week…

This gonna be maybe like the first issue of Time, or The Daily Mail

Another good question for our times

Paul Mason’s new book - I’d guess this is worth...

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:28:27 -0500

Paul Mason’s new book - I’d guess this is worth checking out

Bristol Interesting Games Festival

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:33:55 -0500

Bristol Interesting Games Festival :

Silly and Brilliant, city-wide games - I hope it’s happening again this year, if not, it’s still worth having a look at these from the last few years. The video of 2009 festival also has a great Beirut soundtrack. Cheers me up every time.

The wonderful Adam Nieman's blog - visualisation, education, ideas - originator of the famous Space Signpost

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 16:17:06 -0500

The wonderful Adam Nieman's blog - visualisation, education, ideas - originator of the famous Space Signpost

Video of my LWF Talk 2011

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 08:06:05 -0500

Video of my LWF Talk 2011