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Expose Yourself - art, music, video, film, writing

LATEST

HushPuppies
Olivier Jourdan (vocals), Wilfried Jourdan (keyboards), Franck Pompidor (drums) and Cyrille Sudreaud......read more

Porochista Khakpour
Porochista Khakpour was born in Tehran, Iran in 1978 and her first language is Farsi. She was raised......read more

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[random inspiration]

dogma
But boys and girls, there is no need for dogma, or tell me, would you be among those that booed Bob Dylan for going electric? Would you be there among those who threw tomatoes (even if only verbally)? Its only new equipment,and new equipment will bring new sounds, I mean, it has been over ten years that Radiohead gave in and said "Ok, mr. computer, ok". Sticking to the roots, they say. The roots of what? All I can see is the branches, and they look so exciting. They move in all possible directions, while the roots are stuck there in the ground, immovable. I dig it, I dig it, I do swear by all chuckberriness, but I do prefer the surprises of where the wind and the growth will take these new branches of pop pop pop music. - Ricardo Domeneck

more random inspiration >>

NEWS

11-07-07 A Rhapsody On Pink "Pink is the colour of hypocrisy. The heyday of pink as we know it began in 1859, when a new pigment was isolated from coal-tar and called after the nearby town of Magenta. The new colour had never been seen before; it was not part of the spectrum of white light. It had never been seen in painting or in decoration." More about this in The Guardian (UK)
11-06-07 How Music Influenced Art (Or Is It The Other Way Around?) "It is tempting to see a connection between the breakdown of old styles in music and the visual arts from the mid-to-late 19th century onwards. Were the impressionistic works of Monet and Debussy both expressions of the same spirit? Were Matisse's "jazz" cut-out pictures of the mid-20th century linked to the postwar bebop revolution?". See newstatesman.com for more about this story.
11-06-07 A Small Dance Company In A Tiny Country The population of Iceland is tiny. But still, the country has a dance company. Perform a program 10 or 15 times and the entire population has seen it... See Newsday.com for more about this story.
11-06-07 Brain Myth - The Differences Are Sexist "Boys and girls are different because their brains are different. This idea has driven bestsellers, parenting articles, and even - increasingly - American education. The problem is, a hard look at the real data behind these claims suggests they are simply untrue." See the Boston Globe Online for more information.
11-06-07 Rescuing The Music That Sounds Like Music Samuel Barber's lush, beautiful opera, Vanessa, was a hit with critics when it first opened in 1958, but it was quickly blasted by the modernists who ruled the musical/intellectual roost at the time. Now, it's being restaged by New York City Opera, and Anthony Tommassini says that "it's hard to imagine today what anyone found so objectionable in the opera." See the New York Times Online for more information.
11-06-07 Euro Film Awards Shortlist Released The nominations are out for the European Film Awards, with the Oscar-winning biopic, The Queen topping the list. "The Queen faces stiff competition in the best film category from Romanian drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, winner of the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Other films shortlisted in this category include The Last King of Scotland and La Vie en Rose, also known as La Mome." The awards will be handed out December 1 in Berlin. See the BBC for more information.
10-31-07 The Future Of Music - Vinyl? Talk to almost anyone in the music business' vital indie and DJ scenes and you'll encounter a uniformly optimistic picture of the vinyl market. The size and presence of the artwork, the division into sides, the better sound quality, above all the involvement and work the listener has to put in, all make it the format of choice for people who really care about music. Read the rest of this article on Wired.
10-31-07 Air Guitar Gets Some Respect Air guitar has shed its social stigma. The days of the lonely, teenage nerd standing before his mirror are over. Air guitar has come out of the bedroom and now proudly struts its stuff in public. In the past decade, a whole subcultural community based on the cult of air guitar has emerged. There are clubs, competitions, records, associations, fans and even air guitar stars. And now comes Air Guitar Nation, a documentary that chronicles the phenomenon. More about this on The Times.
10-31-07 Do Porn Laws Apply To Mainstream Hollywood Films? The US Supreme Court hears arguments about whether a law barring child pornography could be applied to popular award-winning movies like Lolita, Traffic, American Beauty and Titanic. "The justices appeared to support the pandering provision of a 2003 federal law that makes it a crime to promote, distribute or solicit material in a way intended to cause others to believe it contains child pornography." Find out more on Yahoo!.
10-31-07 Police Crack Down On New Orleans Culture Funeral processions are an essential element of New Orleans culture, and the impromptu variety in particular --- honoring the passing of someone of distinction, especially a musician -- are a time-honored tradition in neighborhoods like Tremé, which some consider the oldest black neighborhood in America. But police have cracked down on the processions, amid charges they're attacking New Orleans culture. Read more on Salon.
10-22-07 Dennis Wilson documentary to premiere on Flasher.com A brilliant documentary about Beach Boys drummer, singer and songwriter Dennis Wilson will have its world premiere on Flasher.com. The documentary, "Dennis Wilson Forever," was produced and directed by Billy Hinsche. The first part will run on Flasher.com on Monday, November 5. Other segments of the documentary will be premiere each Monday through Friday for two weeks. Dennis Wilson was was known as the wildest of the Beach Boys, yet interviews with dozens who knew him best show that he was a warm, charismatic, highly creative and gifted singer, songwriter and musician. He was revered by his musical peers, lauded for both his vocals and songs, was considered a sex symbol of popular music. He drowned on December 28, 1983 while diving off a yacht. Billy Hinsche's documentary includes interviews with a vast number of those who were close to him over the years. The 80-minute documentary will be presented in Internet-friendly segments on Flasher.com Flasher.com is part of Flasher Factory, Inc. The web site features numerous exclusive video conversations with cutting edge creative talents in music, visual arts, motion pictures and video. Since its launch a year ago, Flasher.com has witnessed spectacular growth in viewers, making it now the key site for the creative fields.
10-22-07 How Music Works In The Brain? The original part of memory is the memory of actions and procedures and sequences, starting with crawling and walking. This part of memory also includes musical and textual sequences." It seems to be involved in the way some tunes replay themselves in our minds even after we're tired of them. It may also account for the way that musical and textual memory tends to work best with long units of information - on whole phrases in sequence, rather than on individual notes and words. More information on The Globe & Mail.
10-22-07 Why Poetry Should Be Front And Center The truth is most Americans have lost touch with the best of what poetry is: a record of some of civilization's greatest writers--and wisest people--taking on the questions and emotions that define us. So why aren't we reading poetry? More about this on Huffington Post.
10-22-07 Bored At That Play? (Check Your Email) Once upon a time, checking your watch was the state-of-the-art response to a theatrical moment that bored you. The gesture can even exude a bit of critical panache: A universal pantomime for 'Get me out of here!,' it's a succinct and crisp and relatively unobtrusive expression of personal pique. But now, the Treos and BlackBerrys and the multitasking superphones that do everything except rotate your tires are more than a momentary sideshow for the ticket buyer who might be less than enthralled with the main event. Read the entire article on Washington Post.
10-19-07 Slutting Up Vivaldi Was Vivaldi a preening sexpot who used his rock star-like fame to feed his voracious appetite for virginal teenage girls? Well... um, no, probably not, actually. But that first sentence grabbed your attention, didn't it? So it's no surprise that several recent books and an upcoming Hollywood "biopic" are using that same exaggeration as their main come-on. Read all about it on The Times.
10-19-07 Museums Learn To Mimic Hollywood In the era of movies with elaborate special effects and video games with graphics that cause players to marvel at the feeling of being inside the game, its no wonder museums are scrambling to keep up. For many, the answer to a more sophisticated audience and one with, perhaps, a shorter attention span is interactivity and immersion. Science and childrens museums have long trafficked in hands-on, sensory experiences. Now, with improved technology, the experiential exhibit is reaching new heights and turning up in a variety of venues. Find out more on The Christian Science Monitor.
10-19-07 Booker Finalists To Be Distributed Free Online The Man Booker Prize has been criticised over the years for selecting dark, unreadable and worthy tomes unlike the winners of other more populist literary prizes. Now, in the week that Anne Enright became its 2007 winner, it is shaking off criticisms of being elitist and out of touch by taking the radical step of placing all its shortlisted novels online, available free to anyone worldwide. Read more on The Times.
10-18-07 100 Guitars On A Stage (And They're Electric) Symphony No 13, subtitled Hallucination City, was first performed in New York in 2001, and has been heard half a dozen times since then across the US and Europe. As with all the performances, the call goes out for recruits for the London show: 100 volunteers, all unpaid, must supply their own guitar and amp, be able to read music, and (to paraphrase) ought to have some idea what they're getting themselves into. Find out more on The Guardian.
10-18-07 The Art of Sex A London exhibition showcasing erotic art through the ages is rekindling old debates on art and pornography. "The exhibition throws light on how different cultures at different times have viewed sex. What it reveals above all is how styles of art have changed over the centuries, while human beings and their desires have essentially stayed the same. Read all about this on BBC.
10-18-07 Is Serious Fiction Dying? Whether fiction really has lost authority in our culture is a difficult question to answer. The situation is different in Canada and the United States, for one thing. The events of Sept. 11, 2001, dealt a blow to the New York publishing industry from which it has not yet completely recovered. Literacy is also declining in that country. Owners of independent bookstores in Toronto, specializing more in high-end products, do not agree that literary fiction is on the downswing. Read more about this on Daily Mail.
10-17-07 The Ancient Appeal Of Swearing The strange emotional power of swearing--as well as the presence of linguistic taboos in all cultures-- suggests that taboo words tap into deep and ancient parts of the brain. In general, words have not just a denotation but a connotation: an emotional coloring distinct from what the word literally refers to, as in principled versus stubborn and slender versus scrawny. More information on The New Republic.
10-17-07 Iranian TV Gets A Makeover TV in Iran is changing. Analysts say the new programs are part of the government's bid to use television as a more effective instrument to shape public opinion. Most series still have clear political messages, though they are conveyed with much more subtlety than in the past. Read more about it on The New York Times.
10-17-07 Professor Pleads Guilty In Kurtz Art Case A genetics researcher at the University of Pittsburgh has pleaded guilty for obtaining biological materials for a friend's art exhibit. Robert Ferrell was indicted in June 2004, along with Steven A. Kurtz, a former Carnegie Mellon University art professor and founding member of the Critical Art Ensemble, which uses art to examine the impact of science and technology on consumer culture. Find out more on Pitytsburgh Post-Gazette.
10-16-07 Hollywood's Email Protocol Today, thanks to Hollywood's crack-like obsession with gadgets, certain protocol persists when navigating our brave, new, cursor-blinking world. Consider yourself cc'd: Breaking rank is taboo, even over the Internet. Read more on Los Angeles Times.
10-16-07 The No-Name Movie Critics And Their 5 Seconds Of Fame Desperate for praise, movie studios often make blurb-stars out of local movie critics. The studios typically scour critics' published work for favorable comments, and often seek permission to use a snippet or two in an ad. Some movie representatives ask critics for blurb-ready comments in the lobby of a theater immediately after a screening, long before the critics have published or aired their reviews. Find out more on Washington Post.
10-16-07 Turkey's Robust (And Growing) Book Trade Turkey has had a rough few years literary-wise. But "in terms of its position between east and west, Turkey is expected to be a significant player in the book trade. Book production in the country is currently growing at a rate of 25% a year - 32,750 books were published there last year, up from 9,491 a decade before. The number of Turkish publishers has also doubled since 2000, now standing at more than 1,700. More information on The Guardian.
10-15-07 How British Art Has Changed The traditional role of the artist has changed beyond all recognition - and we feel that change on the institutional side of the art world as well. Read more on The Telegraph.
10-15-07 What Gore (The Movie) Did For Gore (The Man) An Inconvenient Truth didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize - Al Gore did. But the former veep's smash-hit documentary certainly played a large role in bringing global attention to climate change, and many credit it with helping to effectively end the debate over the existence of the problem. So how did a low-budget film concept based on a speech Gore had been giving since the 1980s evolve into a global warning? More about this on Washington Post.
10-15-07 Did Katrina Create Better Schools In New Orleans? The destruction of the New Orleans public schools was part of the larger human tragedy that befell the Crescent City, but it is not a loss that many residents are mourning. Before the flood, New Orleans had become a poster child for what is wrong with urban education in America. What has happened since the disaster, however, is redefining urban public education. More about this on Boston Globe.
10-12-07 Artist Implants Ear In Arm A performance artist has had a human ear impanted in his arm. The Cypriot-born eccentric Stelios Arcadious spent 10 years searching for a surgeon willing to perform the controversial operation. Find out more on Daily Mail.
10-12-07 Charles Schulz - A Life In Cartoons The new bio of the Peanuts creator offers insight into Schulz's character through his work. The cartoons themselves -- however telling as illustrations of things the biographer has discovered about Schulz -- are rich works in their own right. They fall somewhere between art and literature; but those categories really don't matter very much, because they create their own little world. The biography derives its meaning from the cartoons and not vice versa. Read more on InsideHigherEd.
10-12-07 How Words Mutate Much like the evolutionary theory of Darwin, who was himself intrigued by the concept of a linguistic family tree, the new findings show how individuals can unwittingly influence changes in the 'species' of their shared mother tongue. Like genes, words undergo ruthless survival-of-the-fittest pressure and those that are less central to daily life are subject to mutation, according to their study. Read all about it on Discovery.
10-11-07 Soviet Modernism Finds A Powerful Ally Russian billionaire politician Sergey Gordeev, 34, is making a name for himself in the art world with his acquisition and preservation of Soviet-era architecture. With his fingers in so many pies, it can seem as though Mr. Gordeev's hands hold the fate of one of the greatest legacies of 20th-century Modernism. And while the preservationists who once feared him now fervently praise him, they privately admit to some disquiet. Find out more on The New York Times.
10-11-07 Artists Gotta Eat, Too When you hear of an artist or musician receiving a $50,000 grant, you probably imagine him using the money to create more art or music, or to launch some exciting new venture previously beyond the realm of affordability. The truth is more pedestrian - most artists use at least part of the money from grants to pay for basic essentials of life - doctors' appointments, a new pair of glasses, even house payments. More information on The New York Times.
10-10-07 Cuba's Golden Age Of Music Fades With Aging Stars Many of Cuba's Golden Age stars are elderly or have died. From the late 19th century and well into the middle of the 20th, Cuban popular genres, most of them dance music, swept the world: habanera, danzan, son, conga, rumba, mambo, cha-cha. And there's salsa, which is mostly old Cuban genres reworked for modern tastes. Only American music has had a broader and deeper reach globally.ork, or more deliberate piece of mischief requiring investigation, prior to the issue of a ban... More about this on Miami Herald.
10-10-07 Hollywood Prepares For November Writers' Strike The harsh rhetoric surrounding the WGA negotiations plus the guild's recent move to seek strike authorization have convinced execs that the threat of a Nov. 1 strike may be very real. A possible lockout is also being discussed.ork, or more deliberate piece of mischief requiring investigation, prior to the issue of a ban... Find out all about it on Variety.
10-10-07 Erratic Behavior Caused By Unrelated Brain Fluctuations From the mid-1990s onwards, brain-scanning techniques have revealed variable brain activity that appears unrelated to external stimuli and occurs even when a person is asleep or anaesthetized." Now scientists say they have "the first direct evidence that internal instabilities - so-called 'spontaneous brain activity' - may play an important role in the variability of human behaviour. Read more on New Scientist.
10-09-07 Vandals Slash Serrano Photos In Swedish Gallery Around 3:30, half an hour before closing, four vandals wearing black masks stormed into a space known as the Kulturen Gallery while shouting in Swedish, "We don't support this," plus an expletive. They pushed visitors aside, entered a darkened room where some of the photographs were displayed and began smashing the glass protecting the photographs and then hacking away at the prints. Read more on The New York Times.
10-09-07 Copyright Run Amok The organising committee for a certain upcoming sporting event has decided it would be "disproportionate" to prosecute the author of a book called Olympic Mind Games for breach of copy-right. But, under no less than two acts of parliament, it could if it wanted to. In claiming copyright on a word, the organisation dedicated to the promotion of the competition to be held two years into the next decade is both following and extending a dangerous trend. Read more on The Guardian.
10-09-07 Some Problems With Philip Glass' New Civil War Opera It browbeats its audience with ham-fisted messages, hampered by a libretto that seems to have been stitched together on deadline, and then, above all, there's Glass's unremitting music: two hours of minor chord progressions, throbbing and tunneling into our brains like a migraine, as unforgiving as war. Read more on San Jose Mercury-News.
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