Posted on

Book: The Heart, Frida Kahlo in Paris by Marc Petitjean

 

“Marc Petitjean grew up in a house where Frida Kahlo’s painting, The Heart, also named Memory, hung on one of the walls. Uncovering the story of how the painting was given by Frida to his father, Michel Petitjean, he unfurls not only a passionate love affair between them in pre-Second-World-War Paris, but also a back story about Frida’s paintings around the time and the intersections between France’s surrealist circles and contemporary politics.”

 

Enjoying this half invented book with lots of name dropping of French artists in the thirties. Interesting.  Here is the art in question 

 

Listening on Scribd

 

and reading on Kindle.

So many people! I’ll bring them in and their art as I did with another book Optic Nerve (blog post)

I’ll start with Frida and then Diego Rivera

Continue reading “Book: The Heart, Frida Kahlo in Paris by Marc Petitjean”

Posted on

The Ballad of the Drover

 

Across the stony ridges, across the rolling plain,
Young Harry Dale, the drover, comes riding home again.
And well his stock-horse bears him, and light of heart is he,
And stoutly his old pack-horse is trotting by his knee.
Up Queensland way with cattle he travelled regions vast;
And many months have vanished since home-folk saw him last.
He hums a song of someone he hopes to marry soon;
And hobble-chains and camp-ware keep jingling to the tune.
Beyond the hazy dado against the lower skies,
And yon blue line of ranges the homestead station lies.
Thitherward the drover jogs through the lazy noon,
While hobble-chains and camp-ware keep jingling to a tune. Continue reading “The Ballad of the Drover”

Posted on

How language shapes thought – All In The Mind – ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

How language shapes thought – All In The Mind – ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation): “It’s been controversial for centuries but new empirical research suggests that language has a powerful influence over the way we think and perceive the world. Lera Boroditsky from Stanford University suggests that Japanese and Spanish speakers have a different sense of blame, and some Indigenous Australians have a different sense of space—all because of the language they speak.”

Click to play & download
language-shapes-thought.mp3

Posted on

Shakespeare Sonnets – Evolution – Kim Hill – Brian Boyd (and relationship)

Loved this discussion:

Click to play & download Bryan Boyd Interviewed by Kim Hill

Here is the book:

Ref=sib dp pt

Kindle

I will read the book. But as I listened I was burning to join in on the discussion. I have since my days studying under Prof. Robert Bigelow in the late 60s at Canterbury had an understanding of “gene pools”. The concept makes sense of how some things might benefit the survival of a species even when individuals do not have more babies.

Brian Boyd touched on this lightly in the interview, I’ll be interested to see if he does this more fully in the book.

The point is this: if lyrical poetry (or anything else) is useful to the group then only a few need to have a gene for it, and even if they individually don’t have more babies, the group as a whole might survive and a neighbouring group who does not have that gene in their pool might not.

I’ve been thinking about this in relationship to the purpose of monogamy. It seems that it has a special place in healing wounds from childhood. But this typically does not happen till after the crucial childbearing years, in the second reflective half of life. I think of the powerful impact even one or two healing couples can have in a group. They can foster relationship education as well. They might influence psychological health, and more robust grandchildren.

PS

Bigelow’s book here: Amazon – The Dawn Warriors

Posted on

Podcasts I’ve enjoyed lately

I’ve been using Pocketcasts on the iPhone. First one I’ve liked in all these years. The iTunes one never satisfied and the way I used to do it – was clumsy. But it worked and was essentially what did on the Palm.

Casts (as it also gets called) has a sharing function so I can easily pop them inhere from time to time. — though not the full audio. So the links might no work. When there is one I really want I’ll post the whole thing. The pocket cast links work only on the iPhone (or Android?) if you have the app.

__________________________________________________

Are Computers Creative?

Studio 360 from PRI and WNYCEpisode:

http://www.pocketcasts.com/share/ttW4ML

I did follow this one up:

I liked this show. Why dpi these AI programs never use the Internet, Wolfram Alpgha etc? Siri creates its own search … I think the big breakthrough will come when they link all of these things – the music – art and writing and all search through some higher entity.

I just noticed the words “higher entity” I just mean a meta engine. Ha.

NewImage

__________________________________________________

RNZ: Saturday MorningEpisode: Kim Hill

Chris Szekely – Rahui and libraries

http://www.pocketcasts.com/share/s6Ur45

I like this and I have the book!

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU1110/S00196/rahui-an-exceptional-new-childrens-book.htm

NewImage

__________________________________________________

WeAreMany.org

Ways of Seeing: The Art Criticism of John Berger

http://www.pocketcasts.com/share/ODAn7Y

All the talks at the Chicago socialist conference are here. I like some of them.

Listened to this just as I was given this book

NewImage

__________________________________________________

RNZ: Saturday MorningEpisode: Kim Hill Saturday Morning 19 May 2012

Art with Mary Kisler – Angelica Garnett

http://www.pocketcasts.com/share/7TLKXO

NewImage

NewImage

I like stuff about the Bloomsbury group. Bohemians.

Untitled

NewImage

I now have the Kindle Sample”

__________________________________________________

Mac Power UsersEpisode:

Mac Power Users 56: Mail

http://www.pocketcasts.com/share/1s4pG1

Very long and a bit boring but what a resource if you want to understand Mail on the Mac.

__________________________________________________

Posted on

Archetypal Tendencies

I’ve been reading Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants. One of the central thesis of the book is that evolution is not only driven by adaptation. There are two other forces at work: structural forces, ie the laws of physics and contingency, luck. What if Beethoven did not have a piano?

I’ll post the picture that impressed me again:

Camera Roll-47

This is a central idea (from the book):

The progression of inventions is in many ways the march toward forms dictated by physics and chemistry in a sequence determined by the rules of complexity. We might call this technology’s imperative.

What is stirring me to write this post is that I listened to a podcast today on Tech Nation, Moira Gunn interviewing Adrian Bejan – details

Click to play & download Adrian Bejan

 

It is uncanny, and totally in line with the Kevin Kelly theory of what is inevitable that these tow come up with the same ideas. This is the time when we make a shift from classical darwinism, to incorporate something marx might have called dialectical materialism.

 

More about & by Adrian Bejan here:

His book on Amazon:

Design in Nature.

0f5a21c6baf1d8156bdfdee5749b7e18

This theory, Bejan calls it “Constructal Law” governs everything. From his book:

The constructal law is revolutionary because it is a law of physics—and not just of biology, hydrology, geology, geophysics, or engineering. It governs any system, any time, anywhere, encompassing inanimate (rivers and lightning bolts), animate (trees, animals), and engineered (technology) phenomena, as well as the evolving flows of social constructs such as knowledge, language, and culture. All designs arise and evolve according to the same law.

What excites me is that the same law – or rules of complexity, a law about change really, governs the psyche too. I think Jung was onto this with archetypes. These structures hare universal across cultures.