saul leiter
[New Design Observer] Saul Leiter is sitting in the corner of his East Village studio apartment nibbling on a madeleine. The room is dense with photographs and paintings, piles of books, partially worked canvases, stacks of newspapers, and a collection of cameras, watches and pens, the last of which are arrayed like bouquets in cups. The putty-colored walls are peeling and a bank of north facing windows are without shades. “If you’ve spent a good part of your life being ignored, there are great advantages. People leave you alone.” He’s been left alone for almost forty years. “People are very taken with the idea of success. Everybody wants to be successful, except me.” (read)
smart yoghurt
[WSJ] One of the deepest mysteries of the human mind is that it doesn’t feel like part of the body. Our consciousness seems to exist in an immaterial realm, distinct from the meat on our bones. We feel like the ghost, not like the machine.
This ancient paradox—it’s known as the mind-body problem—has long perplexed philosophers. It has also interested neuroscientists, who have traditionally argued that the three pounds of our brain are a sufficient explanation for the so-called soul. There is no mystery, just anatomy.
In recent years, however, a spate of research has put an interesting twist on this old conundrum. The problem is even more bewildering than we thought, for it’s not just the coiled cortex that gives rise to the mind—it’s the entire body. As the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio writes, “The mind is embodied, not just embrained.”
The latest evidence comes from a new study of probiotic bacteria, the microorganisms typically found in yogurt and dairy products. While most investigations of probiotics have focused on their gastrointestinal benefits—the bacteria reduce the symptoms of diarrhea and irritable bowel syndrome—this new research explored the effect of probiotics on the brain. (read)
entr’acte
what’s in watts?
[Guardian] Spindly spires twinkle above the low rooftops of Watts. This part of Los Angeles is poor. At the metro station, black teenagers hang around hoping to cadge a used day-pass. At least they do until a police car turns up.
I make for those glittering pinnacles, literally following glimpses of them above yards with furious dogs and a shop that is a hole in a wall, until finally I come into a quiet residential corner where the sound of Latin American radio music drifts from well-kept houses. All by themselves on a plaza, madly soaring in timeless pride, hover the Watts Towers. (read)
let there be light
[Rhizome] Renowned light artist James Turrell (1943, Los Angeles) was first associated with the American Minimalists that emerged in the 1960s such as Donald Judd, Robert Morris, and Frank Stella. Today Turrell is known more as an installation artist who uses colored lights to sculpt space and disorient perception. Currently Turrell lives in Flagstaff, Arizona, near the Navaho reservations, where he continues to oversee the completion of his monumental land art project at Roden Crater, an extinct volcano that the artist has “been transforming into a sky observatory for over three decades.” In honor of the recently opened James Turrell Museum in Colomé, Argentina, the only museum worldwide dedicated specifically to the artist’s career, this article discusses highlights from Turrell’s rich body of work and introduces the new Turrell Museum, where many of these pieces reside. (read)
edvard’s eye
32,000 years ago
[Science] More than 30,000 years ago, prehistoric humans in Europe began drawing animals and the occasional human on cave walls, along with handprints stenciled in red ochre. More than 300 cave art sites are known in Western Europe, such as Chauvet and Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain. But only a few have been found in Central Europe. Now a team of French researchers and Romanian spelunkers has announced finding a new painted cave in Romania that could be more than 30,000 years old. The discovery suggests that prehistoric societies across Europe were linked by a common artistic culture. (read)
berlin improv
the way of ai weiwei
Left: Ai Weiwei’s “Fountain of Light”, 2007. Right: Vladmir Tatlin’s “Tribute to the Third International”, 1920.
canyon meadows
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HOWEVER FALLIBLE 