"The prominent literary critic Marjorie Perloff has recently begun using the term 'unoriginal genius' to describe this tendency emerging in literature. Her idea is that, because of changes brought on by technology and the Internet, our notion of the genius—a romantic, isolated figure—is outdated. An updated notion of genius would have to center around one's mastery of information and its dissemination. Perloff has coined another term, 'moving information,' to signify both the act of pushing language around as well as the act of being emotionally moved by that process. She posits that today's writer resembles more a programmer than a tortured genius, brilliantly conceptualizing, constructing, executing, and maintaining a writing machine." --
Kenneth Goldsmith on why "genius" is an archaic concept, and how literature in English has fallen half-a-century behind advances in visual arts and music
posted by bardic
on Sep 22, 2011 -
44 comments
Let me introduce you to the
Lifesaver bottle. This very compact design (in both a
bottle and a
jerrycan form) allows someone to get clean drinking water in seconds. Their filters can last up to 20000 liters in the jerrycan form and 6000 in the bottle form. The price for this technology? $150 for the bottle and $400 for the top shelf jerrycan.
[more inside]
posted by DoublePlus
on Apr 2, 2010 -
72 comments
Joseph Brodsky:
In Praise of Boredom -- from his
Dartmouth College commencement address in 1995. " Boredom is your window on the properties of time that one tends to ignore to
the likely peril of one's mental equilibrium. It is your window on time's
infinity. Once this window opens, don't try to shut it; on the contrary, throw
it wide open. For boredom speaks the language of time, and it teaches you the
most valuable lesson of your life: the lesson of your utter insignificance. It
is valuable to you, as well as to those you are to rub shoulders with. "You are
finite," time tells you in the voice of boredom, "and whatever you do is, from
my point of view, futile."
posted by vronsky
on Aug 20, 2009 -
38 comments
How We Kill Geniuses. "[Elizabeth Gilbert recalls] a story that musician Tom Waits told her years ago. One day he was driving on a Los Angeles freeway when a fragment of a melody popped into his head. He looked around for something to capture the tune -- a pencil or pen -- but had nothing to record it. He started to panic that he'd lose the melody and be haunted by it forever and his talent would be gone. In the midst of this anxiety attack, he suddenly stopped, looked at the sky, and said to whatever force it was that was trying to create itself through the melody, 'Excuse me. Can you not see I'm driving? Do I look like I can write down a song right now? If you really want to exist, come back at a more opportune moment ... otherwise go bother somebody else today. Go bother Leonard Cohen.'" Gilbert explores the idea that we might stifle genius by demanding that creative people be somehow larger than life and something more than human.
posted by sarabeth
on Feb 6, 2009 -
175 comments
Here's to
Ray Dennis Steckler, the independent filmmaker who
wrote, starred (as Cash Flagg) and directed influential films including
The Thrill Killers,
Rat Pfink a Boo Boo, and his masterpice
The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. A visionary artist whose influnce is clearly seen in contemporary cinema, Steckler was prolific (producing movies from 1963 until last year), economical (his films were self-produced, shot on 16mm film and later Hi-8 video), and brilliant (as clearly evidenced in this
dance sequence from Creatures, "The First Monster Musical"). It hasn't been widely reported yet, but fans are mourning his passing. He died in his sleep yesterday, January 7th, aged 70.
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posted by Chinese Jet Pilot
on Jan 8, 2009 -
26 comments
"We do not think our way to right action. We act our way to right thinking." David Milch talks to students in USC class
Religion, Media and Hollywood. Not for everyone but I find pretty much anything this guy says fascinating. Parts
1 2 3 4 5 6.
posted by Manhasset
on Dec 27, 2008 -
19 comments
The legendary
Ken Campbell has died. Interested in
everything, apparantly. Just as excited to visit
Damanhur as he was to go to
CERN, just down the road. Fluent in Bislama, the creole of Vanuatu, into which he translated
Macbeth. Founder of the Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool, which performed epic productions of
The Warp,
Illuminatus! and
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Not quite Doctor Who (he was beaten to the role by former protogé Sylvester McCoy). A fount of knowledge on the theatre, comedy, Fortean strangeness and science and anything else you care to mention, all of which he spun together with extensive flights of imagination into glorious, hilarious one-man shows. Totally irreplaceable, and devastating loss.
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posted by Grangousier
on Sep 1, 2008 -
16 comments
Who is Alexander Grothendieck? [PDF]
This lecture is concerned not with Grothendieck's mathematics but with his very unusual life on the fringes of human society. In particular, there is, on the one hand, the question of why at the age of forty-two Grothendieck first of all resigned his professorship at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (IHES); then withdrew from mathematics completely; and finally broke off all connections to his colleagues, students, acquaintances, friends, as well as his own family, to live as a hermit in an unknown place. On the other hand, one would like to know what has occupied this restless and creative spirit since his withdrawal from mathematics.
posted by Wolfdog
on Aug 17, 2008 -
31 comments
In the years after leaving MST, Joel Hodgson of Mystery Science Theater, and his "smarter brother" Jim Hodgson, worked on a new movie-repurposing concept for USA Networks. The introduction for the test clip read:
"
The Jolly Filter segment is a proof of concept test for a new film process. You will first view 2 minutes of the original film 'Rollercoaster' and then the same 2 minutes utilizing the JollyFilter technique.
"Note: If you find yourself getting bored during the original 'Rollercoaster' footage, don't worry, this is normal."
(SLYT, but an awesome one.) [more inside]
posted by JHarris
on Jul 27, 2008 -
50 comments
Madman or genius? Well... madman. But being confined to an asylum (with one of his symptoms described as "manic invention") didn't keep
Karl Hans Janke from developing elaborate theories of
atomic energy, flight,
space travel and the history of humanity, creating over 4,000 complex drawings and even models over 40 years of incarceration for paranoid schizophrenia.
[more inside]
posted by Shepherd
on Jun 2, 2008 -
4 comments
You folks out there in MeFi Town been keeping up with the
water themed
MeFi Music Challenge? There's been some mighty fine uploads for you to check out! But if there was
ever a piece of music deserving the
water tag, it's
this drenching wet masterpiece by Brazil's brilliant, eccentric musical genius
Hermeto Pascual, in which Hermeto and his band play bottles full of water, and flutes full of water, and, well, the lake. Música da Lagoa: water music at its very best. And its very wettest.
[more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Jul 6, 2007 -
8 comments
Yoshiro Nakamatsu aka Dr. NakaMats has invented everything, other than all the other stuff that the rest of us have invented. He has 3218 patents to his name. (Edison had
1093.) Among his many inventions? The compact disc, the compact disc player ('natch), the digital watch, a unique golf putter, the
floppy disk (!), and a water-powered engine. Besides being the founder of the
World Genius Convention (where the world first learned of ingenuity of
ADR ceramic disks, for instance),
Dr. NakaMats was voted by the US Science Academic Society as one of five greatest scientists in history - in the company of Archimedes, Michael Faraday, Marie Curie, and Nikola Tesla - and he plans to live until 144!
posted by humannaire
on Feb 23, 2007 -
27 comments
This is NSFW. It's crass, crude, cheap, rude, nasty and vulgar. This is a one link 10 minute YouTube video that shows cannibalism, fire, nudity, nerds, fried sperm, rednecks, and perversion aplenty. It is certainly not to everyone's taste, but that's because it's the Butthole Surfers'
BBQ.
posted by Elmore
on Feb 16, 2007 -
49 comments
Jorge Luis Borges "excerpts from two of the six Norton Lectures that Jorge Luis Borges delivered at Harvard University in the fall of 1967 and spring of 1968. The recordings of these six lectures, only lately discovered in the Harvard University Archives, uniquely capture the cadences, candor, wit, and remarkable erudition of one of the most extraordinary and enduring literary voices of our age. Through a twist of fate that the author of Labyrinths himself would have relished, these lost lectures return to us now--in Borges's own voice."
In English - mp3
posted by vronsky
on Jan 10, 2007 -
46 comments
