Dengl 20 Tymobyl Cwm?

The Tate Modern has opened an exhibition of the work of Cy Twombly (in calling up the website, my google page wanted to be sure I wasnt really after Wombling) - no - but CyTwombly certainly presents a challenge to anagrammers - I failed on my own to make anything coherent in English, and the first website I went to also failed, even with dropping one, or even two - or is that three - of the letters in his improbable name*. Maybe it is not his real name but was born as a handful of pasta letters he took out of a packet and artfully threw them on a glue-based surface ...
coincidentally, I have just received a copy of Kings Parade, a six monthly periodical designed to make me feel good about (and cough up a legacy in my will to) my old college; and that prints a charming picture of Frances Morris who graduated in 1978 in Art History. She is quoted as saying of herself that she was "a rather strident and opinionated person who smoked a pipe and wore women's land army breeches". Many of us change our ways after undergraduatehood, and(?)/but(?) Morris is now "Curator of Tate Modern where, as Head of Collections, International Art, she is in charge of acquisitions for the collection of modern and contemporary art from all over the world".
*might (Pseudo)Welsh accept something like: Tymobly Cwm ?

the Evening Standard gave the assembly a five star mark:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/artexhibition-20646808-details/Cy+Twombly:+Cycles+&+Seasons/artexhibitionReview.do?reviewId=23496933

the spectator, also offered a lot of praise from its art critic

http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/arts/797131/traces-of-self.thtml

yet the Spectator chose to follow its eulogy of twombly with an article from someone who writes seldom, as he is a sculptor who expresses himself that way. Alexander Stoddart has made a much larger than life statue of Adam Smith, unveiled on Independence Day in Edinburgh's High Street.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/arts/797141/how-the-west-was-won.thtml

Stoddart is uncharacteristically articulate and choate for a visual artist. We can see exactly what he represents in his monument to Adam Smith. I can see exactly what he says in his reflections on what he calls modernism, in various arts (I think there might be some challenge to those he includes, whom others might like to categorise as postModern .... - but that's a minor matter, alongside the very cogent and serious case Stoddart makes).

In a crucial paragraph he puts it this way:

The Left, early in the last century, failed to secure direct revolution in the West, so another tactic was adopted — to dismantle the institutions of the Occident in a long, piecemeal slog. The focus fell on the arts, and this explains why the high music and visual arts of today are so startlingly different from anything you might encounter in undeconstructed times. Where the family, say, was singled out as a sinister and coercive societal institution, so certain artistic forms likewise became suspect: the tune; the rhyme; the moulding; the plinth. Today they are half-heartedly trying to reconstruct the family; but the cultural institutions are proving harder to patch up and this can be attributed to something in the artistic forms of traditionalism that the newly barbarised human being deeply dreads. The Modernism of the last century has forged a sub-sensibility, where man is engineered to be a healthy kind of ignoramus — a Superman — unneedful of the analgesic mercies that art of the old sort delivered into the veins of suffering humanity. The pain is the gain — so let’s write poems that are merely chopped prose, boil our testicles to win the Turner prize, build houses that look like washing machines for living in and, if we make statues at all, make sure they are bolted down at pavement level, so we can ‘interact’ with them (usually with some vomit on a Saturday night).

We may expect a lot of people to have been bruised by him, and to hit back. I'm with Stoddart. Good for him and his work and good for the case he has spoken out.

Dengl 19 Will Suicides Prompt A Tighter Rein on Broadcast Violence?

Effects of Contents of Broadcasting (and press?)

A number of fields exist in which concerned observers have alleged that what is shown influences what is done.
Some of these fields or areas include:
violence breeds violence
violence breeds fear
violence and other victim displays breed homophobic,
mysogynistic or other harmful attitudes (and behaviour)
paedophilic examples prompt imitation
lifestyle displays (swearing, taking drugs, overeating ...) prompt
imitation
suicide (in fiction and in fact) prompts imitation

In most of these areas there is a body of research.
Most of these bodies of research contain more studies that suggest imitation occurs, than which fail to show this.
Virtually no studies are reported which show that the posited harmful examples lead to varieties of reflective, positive behaviour.
The exception in the above list appears to be the contention that violence shown, breeds fear (and in somse cases it was alleged in the USA, breeds prejudice).

Three possible interpretatons of this situation are possible:
the general weight of evidence supports the phenomenon of imitation
therefore let society do something
the existence of some 'neutral' or inconclusive studies undermines any
conclusion being drawn from those which suggest imitation occurs
therefore, nothing need be done
none of the effects-indicating studies are wholly watertight (the
general predicament of social science)
therefore, nothing need be done

The American discourse weighing in the direction of harm following problematic display runs into the barrier of the First Amendment to the Constitution which appears to be interpreted to refer to protect 'freedom' (of utterance - rather than from effect) for every form of expression - even those outside the normal political discourse, which it may have been the Amendment's first concern to protect.

The UK discourse (without a first amendment) to some extent is influenced by the American one. A professional zeitgeist probably reflects this caution - partly perhaps to keep UK and US interpretations of what needs to be done, in terms of precautions or even of prevention, in parallel.

A recent spate of suicides - mostly amongst teenagers - in South Wales has led to concern and a piece has appeared in The Psychologist monthly, attributed to the BPS' psychology journalist Christian Jarrett. He quotes a less equivocal judgement from an Oxford scientist, in the area of suicide imitation (see below).

http://www.bps.org.uk/publications/thepsychologist/extras/pages$/2008/
suicide-the-media-and-prevention.cfm

The report, necessarily brief, does not distinguish between various "media" (press and broadcasting by inference being lumped together). Some of these message systems are (still ?) regulated, and the extent of influence attributable to each message system may well thus be different. There may also be interactions between message systems.

"Society"appears to be unwilling to tolerate suicide and willing to act on the evidence that it may be influenced by what is shown or said.
Society seems unwilling to tolerate racist attitudes and behaviour and regulates content of mass message systems which may encourage such things.
Society is perhaps less willing to act on similar kinds of evidence with regard to some of the other (violent) dangers above.
It is possible that regulatory response to the dangers of suicide from imitation will influence tighter requirements with regard to other sources of possible malign influence. It is also possible that the 'guilt' of tighter regulation vis a vis suicide will be accompanied with a laxer treatment of other matters. It is thirdly possible that what is done about suicide may have no influence on what is done about other matters.

BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: Music can help people recover from stroke

Dengl 18 BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: Music can help people recover from stroke
first - an abstract of a new study then, my comment:
______________
Given its power to move us, perhaps it's no surprise that a great deal of
research has focused on whether or not music can help people with depression
or anxiety. Now researchers in Finland have asked whether music can benefit
people recovering from stroke. Their study is notable for its sound
methodological quality, and the results are promising: music does indeed
appear to make a difference to patients' cognitive recovery.

Soon after their hospitalisation, 60 stroke patients were allocated randomly
to one of three groups. Those in the music group were provided with a
portable CD player and asked to listen to their favourite music for at least
an hour a day for two months. Patients in the audio book group spent at
least an hour a day for two months listening to audio books of their
choosing. A final control group were not given a listening task.

Compared to the patients who listened to audio books and the control
patients, the patients who listened to music daily showed superior
performance when tested three months and six months later on measures of
verbal memory and focused attention. Crucially, the psychologists who
performed these neuropsychological assessments were unaware of which groups
the patients had been in - making this a single-blind, randomised,
controlled trial. The music and audio book patients also showed reduced
depression and confusion compared with the control patients.

Teppo Sarkamo and colleagues who conducted the research said that music may
exert these benefits by virtue of its wide-ranging impact on brain activity.
Neuroimaging studies have shown that listening to music "naturally recruits
bilateral temporal, frontal and parietal neural circuits underlying multiple
forms of attention, working memory, semantic and syntactic processing, and
imagery," the researchers said. By contrast, the brain activity triggered by
speech without music is less extensive and more focused on the
language-dominant hemisphere (usually the left).

The new finding is consistent with research on animals showing that a
stimulating environment can speed recovery after stroke. Yet the researchers
noted with regret that many stroke patients are left in their rooms without
much stimulation or interaction. "We suggest that everyday music listening
during early stroke recovery offers a valuable addition to the patients'
care," they concluded.
__________________

my comment:

I guess the patients were aged (at least) over 65, and that their preferred music was in the realm of classical or older popular music which was structurally similar to classical music (some slower tempi, some use of triple time)
It is important to specify what music these people did listen to - and even to an analyse, within the music-receiving group, who did best with what.Of course, the location of the stroke and the propensity to benefit from music will likely also be a part of the outcome. One may (sadly) forecast that as the decades march on, music preferences will be for rock-and-later popular music (less use of slower tempi, virtually no triple time). I tentatively forecast (hypothesise) that this will be less useful - regardless of the fact that it is familiar and preferred - in stroke recovery. I have written elsewhere why triple time is so important to more complex mentation (references on request).

Dengl 17 Evil is not, was not, nor ever will be banal

Yet another article or deployment of this deficient term (in the Monthly The Psychologist - January 2008) perhaps adds to the damage the phrase may already have done. The frisson evoked by the formula may emerge from the contradiction in our minds and experience between two notions: one is that evil - the word and the 'thing' itself is bad and potent - loaded highly on two of the three great dimensions of meaning; banal on the other hand is neither evaluatively nor potently extreme. So how, people think, can evil be banal? And if evil is somehow indeed banal - maybe it is not all that evil (in the old sense) as, some investigators seem to say, anybody can, in conducive situations, accomplish evil. Maybe we should learn to live with it.
The solution to the conundrum would have been with us had Hannah Arendt written a phrase to convey that the source or perpetrator of evil may be banal - rather than the evil itself being so. There are some engaging features of prejudice in her perception - for example, that a small, soft spoken man might not contain or inflict evil - but not all perpetrators must be large (ugly) bellowing ogres.
Haslam and Reicher (Psychologist January 2008
http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk/archive/archive_home.cfm?volumeID=21&editionID=155&ArticleID=1291) do, however, in the substance of their article effectively dismiss the apparent paradox - "the true horror of Eichmann and his like is not that their actions were blind ... they saw clearly what they did, and believed it to be the right thing to do". They may have been "blind to" evil itself, or unable to realise and then avoid its essence in their actions. Evil never was, is or will be banal; Hannah Arendt was very misleading in coining such a term; and the evidence by which we can empirically (as well as semeiologically) reject the notion has very helpfully been shown to us.

Dengl 16 What Now for Trafalgar Square - Update on Dengle 11

Problems on a Plinth : The Case of Trafalgar Square

Jackie Wullschlager (Jan 12.13, Financial Times) writes perceptively about the six candidates for a piece on the Fourth Plinth to follow the current non-descript occupant, some 18 months hence. Yet her article is not convincing. A general point should be made before we come to assess the six competitors; this is that the square is essentially a construct rooted in the 19th century; as such the plinth ‘needs’ to be occupied by someone or something which will meaningfully stand for the way in which that century ended, and turned towards the twentieth. Overall, it is shocking that two out of six entrants are considered by her to be “embarrassingly slight” and “conceptually feeble” – judgements with which I agree. This sounds like a criticism of the committee which devised the short list, though Wullschlager does not deal with this implication.
Yinka Shonibare has proposed a “replica” (albeit with batik sails) of Nelson’s Victory, in a giant glass bottle. This indeed has ‘charm and humour’ but raises at least three questions which are not answered. One concerns the properties of materials – can a glass bottle be made of that size? Has Shonibare convinced his judges that he knows the materials can be wrought to deliver his proposal? Secondly, I doubt that the batik sails are an effective ‘symbol of African identity and independence’ – such material originates in Netherlands-controlled East Indies and could be said to represent the colonial trade, however much it is certainly well liked and imaginatively used in West Africa. Thirdly, Shonibare’s argument is weak, that the boat reflects “the story of multiculturalism” – it represents a victory for insular Britain, even if it is later decked out in some semblance of rejoicing in colourful artefacts. Though Wullschlager passes Shonibare by, I would favour his piece from among the six options.
Deller’s stark trashed car may be genuinely shocking – but more in the sense of representing an unconvincing state of the arts today than in saying anything helpful about Trafalgar Square. Though the Square is indeed a site for current anti-war demonstrations these have little connection with the place’s essential history.
Antony Gormley’s idea of an empty plinth inspires Wullschlager to a densely misty passage which might well (though I am not the one to send it there) deserve a place in Pseud’s Corner. She should have mentioned that when a giant wooden chair was put up in Hampstead Heath it became a seat for young copulators, and I suspect that would be copied on the Plinth – unless there was ‘24/7’ policing – not what one wants for a memorable piece of ‘public art’.
Wullschlager therefore chooses Anish Kapoor’s coloured mirrors. More purple prose follows (“concept is .. privileged over individual vision … asserts art’s formal qualities and its capacity, as eternal as the sky, for transcendence’). Maybe this is true, whatever it means, but it has little convincingly to do with the essentials of Trafalgar Square.
I therefore continue to support my notion that a standing figure should be commissioned, of Mary Kingsley, the end-of-the-century explorer in space and in ideas, who had a strong impact on how the western world thought about and acted upon the societies which had been imperialised, and who soon died as a martyr in South Africa.

Problems on a Plinth : The Case of Trafalgar Square

Jackie Wullschlager (Jan 12.13)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f046f266-bfe0-11dc-8052-0000779fd2ac.html
writes perceptively about the six candidates for a piece on the Fourth Plinth to follow the current non-descript occupant, some 18 months hence. Yet her article is not convincing. A general point should be made before we come to assess the six competitors (who have been chosen by a committee within the ambit of the Greater London Authority; they have put forward in January, their idea of how they would replace the current structure on the Plinth). The general point is that the square is essentially a construct, of public space, vistas, and iconic statues, rooted in the 19th century; as such the plinth ‘needs’ to be occupied by someone or something which will meaningfully stand for the way in which that century ended, and turned towards the twentieth.
Overall, it is shocking that two out of six entrants are considered by the Financial Times' Art critic to be “embarrassingly slight” and “conceptually feeble” – judgements with which I agree. This sounds like a criticism not just of the artists bu also of the committee which devised the short list.
Yinka Shonibare has proposed a “replica” (albeit with batik sails) of Nelson’s Victory, in a giant glass bottle. This indeed has ‘charm and humour’ but raises at least three questions which are not answered. One concerns the properties of materials – can a glass bottle be made of that size? Will it have to be welded or b lon? Will it have to be in plastic? Has Shonibare convinced his judges that he knows the materials can be wrought to deliver his proposal? Secondly, I doubt that the batik sails are an effective "symbol of African identity and independence" – such material originates in Netherlands-controlled East Indies and could be said to represent the colonial trade, however much it is certainly well liked and imaginatively used in West Africa. Thirdly, Shonibare’s argument is weak, that the boat reflects “the story of multiculturalism” – it represents a victory for insular Britain, even if it is later decked out in some semblance of rejoicing in colourful artefacts. Though Wullschlager passes Shonibare by, I would favour his piece from among the six options.
Deller’s stark trashed car may be genuinely shocking – but more in the sense of representing an unconvincing state of the arts today than in saying anything helpful about Trafalgar Square. Though the Square is indeed a site for current anti-war demonstrations these have little connection with the place’s particular history.
Antony Gormley’s idea of an empty plinth inspires Wullschlager to a densely misty passage which might well (though I am not the one to send it there) deserve a place in Pseud’s Corner. She should have mentioned that when a giant wooden chair was put up in Hampstead Heath it became an exalted seat for young copulators, and I suspect that would be copied on the Plinth – unless there was ‘24/7’ policing – not what one wants for a memorable piece of ‘public art’.
Wullschlager therefore chooses Anish Kapoor’s coloured mirrors. More purple prose follows (“concept is .. privileged over individual vision … asserts art’s formal qualities and its capacity, as eternal as the sky, for transcendence’). Maybe this is true, whatever it means, but it has little convincingly to do with the essentials of Trafalgar Square.
I therefore continue to support my notion that a standing figure should be commissioned, of Mary Kingsley, the end-of-the-century explorer in space and in ideas, who had a strong impact on how the western world thought about and acted upon the societies which had been imperialised, and who soon died as a martyr in South Africa.

Dengl 15 Some Road Safety Conundra

If and when we creatures from below Hadrian's Pale enter true Lothistan we find a drivescape which is both puzzling, threatening and distracting - puzzling because nowhere (out of towns) does it say what a speed limit may be, in the jurisdiction one has entered (not do locals, upon enquiry, seem to know - or to let on if they do ...), threatening because there seem to be either actual speed cameras at very many points along the way, or the semblance of cameras (boxes with diagonal stripes - though these may carry feed for local zebras ...), and distracting because all the attention thus focused on photo-options takes one's mind away from other aspects of the road scene, let alone the marvellous countryside, AND there is the Chief of the Lothians Police Forces instructing his minions to remove the pencils from behind their ears and write letters to brave people who have ventured north, demanding payment for driving at supposedly illegal speeds (though vehicles protected with little blue signs with a diagonal cross are able, evidently, to go as fast as they please). And, of course, there are many jurisdictions south of the Pale where things are as bad - some even more stringent.

Now, I have come across an article which first of all helps one feel less guilty about driving, or at least wanting to drive sensibly, on whichever side of Hadrian's Pale one inhabits. It may also help change how the roads are run - though don't summon up too much hope - there are entrenched interests, not least those of the makers and installers of speed cameras, and the ways in which central (even Lothian?) government funds trickle into even-more-local administration coffers without being 'ring fenced ...'; then, there are the latter-day Savanarolists who would have us all in brown robes spun out of echt all-bran, with the remains of any body-heat evaporating from our tonsured tops, and nasty metal and electrical machinery abandoned - somewhere - possibly joining the tens of millions of television and radio sets which are due for dumping when the digital age dawns upon us....(these might be stacked up neatly within the giant cubes soon to be redundant, too, at Torness, Orford Ness and similar places)

I am only a learner in this world and am pursuing the website(s) advertised in the articles I attach, for a start.
www.safespeed.org.uk
If you are interested, there is a great deal more via Mr Smith's website .....