Decipher

“Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 11:08:58 -0400

“Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge: the serenity to accept the things we cannot predict, the courage to predict the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” - Nate Silver

"Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are able to see anything."

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:46:54 -0400

““Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are able to see anything.””

- Saul Bellow via Christopher Hitchens’ Mortality (p. 89)

explore-blog: Christopher Hitchens – and other icons – on...

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 07:44:34 -0400

explore-blog:

Christopher Hitchens – and other icons – on criticism.

“A graphic representation is not merely a drawing, but...

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 00:25:01 -0500

“A graphic representation is not merely a drawing, but often entails a heavy responsibility when deciding on how to proceed. One does not ‘draw’ a graphic representation in a solid form; instead one constructs it and rearranges it until every relationship between the data has been revealed.” – Jacques Bertin, 1977 (quoted by Sandra Rendgen in INFORMATION GRAPHICS, Taschen, 2012)

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people...

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 16:52:16 -0500

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” –Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

artandsciencejournal: Eve Andrée Laramée distillation...

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 21:09:02 -0500

Eve Andrée Laramée

Eve Andrée Laramée

Eve Andrée Laramée

Eve Andrée Laramée

Eve Andrée Laramée

artandsciencejournal:

Eve Andrée Laramée

distillation /ˌdɪstɪˈleɪʃn/ n. 1 the action of purifying a liquid by a process of heating and cooling. 2 the extraction of the essential meaning or most important aspects of something.[i]

Apparatus for the Distillation of Vague Intuitions by American artist Eve Andrée Laramée consists of an array of tall metal stands, clamps, PVC tubings, glass beakers, flasks and vials. Although much of the equipment looks standard from afar, the installation is a dysfunctional and mythological sort of laboratory that highlights the inherent but often unnoticed subjectivity in scientific inquiry.

First conceived in 1994, Apparatus for the Distillation of Vague Intuitions has been showcased in numerous exhibitions including Facts Are Slippery[ii] at Rice University Art Gallery and Unnatural Science[iii] at MASS MoCA.

In this fantastical and visually dazzling Apparatus, many of the glassware are hand-blown with various cloudy or luminous turquoise solutions and copper wires attached to large exotic flowers contributing to the spectacle of a giant chemistry experiment gone amok.

Upon close inspection, a second level of complexity is revealed by the seemingly unscientific words and phrases such as “HANDFULS”, “LEAP IN THE DARK” and “UNNECESSARY EXPLANATORY PRINCIPLES” delicately etched into the glass, exposing a sense of insecurity and imprecision behind the process of science.[iv]

Last but not least, Apparatus for the Distillation of Vague Intuitions not only evolves and adapts through each incarnation in different contexts, its state of being also changes over the course of any one exhibition setting as water evaporates and metal gets oxidized. This double temporality mirrors the fluidity of science and the obsolescence of new technologies.

In her artist statement, Laramée affirms, “I am interested in the ways in which cultures use science and art as devices or maps to construct belief systems about the natural world. I try to draw attention to areas of overlap and interconnection between artistic exploration and scientific investigation, and to the slippery human subjectivity underlying both processes. Through my work I speculate on how human beings contemplate and consider nature through both art and science in a way that embraces poetry, contradiction and metaphor.”[v] In an interview, Laramée further iterated the similitude of the process of art and science by saying, “To me, my art is my research. While my work has its place in the art world and the art market, what really drives me is the research. I make art about the things I am passionately interested in that I do not understand.”[vi]

- Siu Yu

[ Images from USA Projects]

“In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal...

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 17:20:30 -0500

“In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies-the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”

-Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited, 1958

explore-blog: An interesting look at how much various American...

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 22:43:52 -0500

explore-blog:

An interesting look at how much various American cities spent on books as gifts this holiday season.

Reality: Two Views At the close of World War II Picasso is said...

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 18:42:52 -0500

Reality: Two Views
At the close of World War II Picasso is said to have been confronted by an American soldier who complained that he could not understand Picasso’s paintings because everything was distorted; the eyes were displaced, the nose in an odd place, the mouth twisted beyond recognition, and so on. “And what do you think a picture should look like?” asked Picasso. The G.I. proudly whipped out his wallet and showed a tiny photograph of his girlfriend: “Like this!” Picasso studied the photograph and said, “She’s kind of small, isn’t she?”

– taken from Robert L. Solso’s The Psychology of Art and the Evolution of the Conscious Brain

“While reflection, cognition, and interpretation of art...

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 13:29:11 -0500

“While reflection, cognition, and interpretation of art are all enhanced through our memory for past experiences and subjective logic, it is the intrinsic structure of the brain that provides the canvas on which perceptions are painted… Art and science contribute to this magnificent process, each providing its own view of what the world is, each telling its truth about a single reality.”

- The Psychology of Art and the Evolution of the Conscious Brain by Robert L. Solso

"We have confused knowing more with knowing better. The exponential growth of scientific knowledge..."

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 23:20:56 -0500

““We have confused knowing more with knowing better. The exponential growth of scientific knowledge made possible by trading breadth for depth is accompanied by the exponential growth of ignorance of how all scientific findings fit together into one known reality.””

- Our War on Ourselves: Rethinking Science, Technology, and Economic Growth (p. 58) by Willem H. Vanderburg

literaryjukebox: I will never be a brain surgeon, and I will...

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 10:20:23 -0500

literaryjukebox:

I will never be a brain surgeon, and I will never play the piano like Glenn Gould.

But what keeps me up late at night, and constantly gives me reason to fret, is this: I don’t know what I don’t know. There are universes of things out there — ideas, philosophies, songs, subtleties, facts, emotions — that exist but of which I am totally and thoroughly unaware. This makes me very uncomfortable. I find that the only way to find out the fuller extent of what I don’t know is for someone to tell me, teach me or show me, and then open my eyes to this bit of information, knowledge, or life experience that I, sadly, never before considered.

Afterward, I find something odd happens. I find what I have just learned is suddenly everywhere: on billboards or in the newspaper or SMACK: Right in front of me, and I can’t help but shake my head and speculate how and why I never saw or knew this particular thing before. And I begin to wonder if I could be any different, smarter, or more interesting had I discovered it when everyone else in the world found out about this particular obvious thing. I have been thinking a lot about these first discoveries and also those chance encounters: those elusive happenstances that often lead to defining moments in our lives.

[…]

I once read that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I fundamentally disagree with this idea. I think that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of hope. We might keep making mistakes but the struggle gives us a sense of empathy and connectivity that we would not experience otherwise. I believe this empathy improves our ability to see the unseen and better know the unknown.

Lives are shaped by chance encounters and by discovering things that we don’t know that we don’t know. The arc of a life is a circuitous one. … In the grand scheme of things, everything we do is an experiment, the outcome of which is unknown.

You never know when a typical life will be anything but, and you won’t know if you are rewriting history, or rewriting the future, until the writing is complete.

This, just this, I am comfortable not knowing.

Debbie Millman (previously) in Look Both Ways: Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design

Song: “Mystery” by Beth Orton

iTunes :: Amazon :: Back to Brain Pickings

libraryjournal: chicagopubliclibrary: “Everyone you will ever...

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 00:05:02 -0500

libraryjournal:

chicagopubliclibrary:

“Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.”

Happy birthday, Bill Nye! Born November 27th, 1955.

The Chicago Public Library has a large selection of Bill Nye books. Click here to check out the list.

This is just great life advice. Happy birthday, good sir!

Nice to meet you!

Seeing the source… HTML -> structure CSS ->...

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 20:32:00 -0500

Seeing the source…

HTML -> structure

CSS -> style

tumblr tags -> theme

“some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle...

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 10:43:51 -0500

“some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what’s going to happen next. delicious ambiguity…”

– gilda radner

(photo: playtime with a broken icepack)

Here’s my best shot in trying to attend TEDxSandyHillWomen: “I...

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 10:12:16 -0500

Here’s my best shot in trying to attend TEDxSandyHillWomen:

“I am a working chemist at the National Research Council’s Human Health Therapeutics Portfolio and an aspiring librarian with a strong interest for the arts and humanities. My biggest passion in life is to learn from others’ perspectives while constantly reevaluating my own. Much like walking through an art gallery and being confronted by perplexing artworks, it is delightful to discover the world anew from a different angle. In the advent of new technologies and social media, how can we become more engaged with the overwhelming amount of information out there? How can we shape today’s education system to better prepare our children for the future? My various tutoring and volunteering experiences have taught me that true innovations germinate from where one can freely explore opposing ideas and alternatives. As we navigate through the sea of data and misinformation in the 21st century, it is my firm conviction that libraries will play a vital role in helping us to connect the dots over the ever-changing knowledge creation process.”

Regardless of whether I get to attend this TEDx event, this much is clear to me now. Better save up for my MLIS…

Cold Specks - Holland (Official Video) (by...

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 19:15:00 -0500

Cold Specks - Holland (Official Video) (by artscrafts)

“Into dust we will all return…”

“Senator Eugene McCarthy once compared the journalists...

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 18:33:49 -0500

“Senator Eugene McCarthy once compared the journalists covering his 1968 presidential campaign to birds on a telephone wire. When one got up to fly to a different wire, they’d all follow. When another flew back, the rest would too. Today this metaphor needs an update. The birds still follow one another’s leads just as eagerly-but the wire need not always exist. They can be and often are perched on illusions…”

- Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday
Ch 16. The Link Economy: The Leveraged Illusion of Sourcing (p. 153)

“Social media isn’t a set of tools to allow humans to...

Sat, 10 Nov 2012 22:34:03 -0500

“Social media isn’t a set of tools to allow humans to communicate with humans. It is a set of embedding mechanisms to allow technologies to use humans to communicate with each other, in an orgy of self-organizing… The Matrix had it wrong. You’re not the battery power in a global, human-enslaving AI, you are slightly more valuable. You are part of the switching circuitry.”
– Venkatesh Rao, “The Greasy, Fix-It ‘Web of Intent’ Vision”, http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/08/17/the-greasy-fix-it-web-of-intent-vision/

"In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order."

Sat, 10 Nov 2012 09:10:12 -0500

““In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.””

- Carl Jung