I got free tickets to last night's Met performance of Paul D. Miller's Civil War Symphony. Known as DJ Spooky, he was the artist-in-residence for the last year during which time he produced an electronic work of music that included a live string quartet, a tin drummer and phenomenal singer. All inspired by the Met's archive of civil war photography, some of which images he used and distorted in the video backdrop during the performance.
It was fantastic.
And I was there because too many people did not want to attend and so there were so many empty seats?!
The Met is to be congratulated for venturing into new territory and inviting unexpected artists to collaborate with the collection. This is what art can enable so well. Young artists to explore the past to create something new.
You can watch it live streamed and decide for yourself (give it a few minutes to begin).
I will grant there were a couple moments when the DJ might have used more experience conducting a live group. And I might have wished that he had been given support in how to make more of the visual aspect. It starts off strong but then became a bit repetitive and I don't think that was successful in promoting any particular idea, if that had been the intention. I wish I might have spoken with him over these past few months, helping him discern depths in his own ideas that could then translate into more sophisticated approaches to the video work. The man is really clever but we all sometimes need to talk through our ideas in order to get at the crux of the concept. As for the music, I have nothing to say. I've been a fan for years and enjoyed hearing this mature work.
Had I known about this performance, been granted free tickets ahead of time, there are so many that I would have invited. As is, I feel lucky to be inviting many, many to the National Arts Club where he will be speaking and performing on Tuesday the 14th.
More then about this amazing artist.
Education for a New World
Salman Khan and Carlos Slim spoke at the NYPL to demonstrably mixed reactions about their collaborative expansion of Khan Academy’s Spanish language offerings. Mr. Slim’s 10 million dollar donation does much to enhance the learning platforms that reaches, as Mr. Khan put it during his talk, “More people each month then Harvard has in its entire history.”
With almost a million YouTube subscribers, and over 250 million videos watched, Khan Academy is certainly meeting its mission to change “education for the better by providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere.” Over 4100 videos provide information in brief 10-15 minute chunks on Algebra I, the History of Dates, the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration, or Health Care Costs in US vs Europe. Anyone can get an education anywhere that has a internet connection, with a few USB keys produced to offer the educational programs to small impoverished communities where many do not have such access.
Who could object to such efforts?
During the discussion, many audience members would laugh uproariously at Mr. Slim's comments. They seemed mostly focused in the back right of the auditorium. Confused by these disturbances, other attendees glanced around, whispering possible explanations to themselves. An ophtalmologist, couldn't see who was making the disruption but suggested that it was being simultaneously translated, but poorly so that those listeners were greatly amused. One PhD student suggested that they must be past students of Mr. Slim who were amused to hear him telling the audience things they had heard so many times before. When the laughter had become increasingly disruptive, a young woman towards the front of the audience stood up and asked loudly: "What's so funny?"
"Carlos Slim's charity pretensions are laughable!" Replied a young man, who blew on a kazoo thus prompting all the other members of this group to stand, blow on their plastic kazoos and throw paper monopoly money into the air that explained Slim's information technology monopoly in Mexico. The fifty or so young men and women, between 20 and 40, dressed nicely, who must have each spent anywehre from $25 to $40 to attend the talk, marched around the room, blowing on their kazoos, quite politely heading towards the exit where security was trying to usher them more quickly.
Carlos Slim is the richest man in the world. Valued at over 63 billion dollars, he mostly made his money by taking advantage of a government loophole in telephony, explains a recent article in the Economist. Mexico Federal Competition Commission is trying to wrench such sweeping control away from Slim's company Telmex. Charges against him range from the mild-mannered tsk-tsking of bad business practices to demonstration-provoking accusations of evil corruption.
No one who has succeeded is clean. Fact.
The NYPL conversation was not about that, however, but rather about Khan Academy and how Slim's $10 million dollar donation will help produce 7000 Spanish language videos, servicing an audience that needs it. Over 10 million people in the United States speak Spanish, and little or no English. These populations struggle to get an education since even though Spanish language books are the majority of most libraries' non-English books, many subjects remain unavailable. In Central and South American, impoverished rural areas make an education difficult to procure. But the challenge exists here, too. In NYC, nearly three quarters of Hispanics drop out of high school. Only 7% of them pursue a college degree. Later, they may realize the value of an education. Khan Academy provides an extensive list of topics that can help someone learn what they need to know, or are simply curious to discover–and soon in Spanish as well.
Salman Khan started the academy in 2009 hiding in his closet. It was the most doors between him and his recently born son. Back in 2004, wanting to help a cousin who was struggling with mathematics, he used Yahoo!Doodle to provide tutorials, but as more people got interested he put the videos on YouTube. A graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School, he'd been working as a hedge fun analyst, but by 2009, realizing the potential for success, he left his job to dedicate his time to building Khan Academy. The operation is non-profit and has benefited from significant donations from Google and the Gates Foundation. Other personal donations have also helped the collection of video lessons grow, so that barely four years later Khan Academy now employs forty-five tech and education specialists.
Khan spoke after the kazoo demonstration to explain how positive his own experience has been working with Slim. He was distressed that Slim's finances could intrude on the positive efforts of Khan Academy. Slim shrugged; as the wealthiest man in the world, he is presumably accustomed to being disliked.
There is much to observe in how Khan Academy will succeed, but Khan's comments indicate he is planning for long-term growth. His book One World Schoolhouse explains how much he believes the art of education must change to improve. Education can no longer be didactic. "We don't know what jobs will exist to train people for them," Khan stated at one point, advocating for an education that encourages creative problem solving. The Academy has much to offer, and the lessons are particularly well-designed for delivering information. In my perusal of their offerings, I saw nothing though that would induct people in critical thinking. So why is that missing? I teach it in my classroom when we are discussing 19th Century Women Writers or Composition. It is the hardest thing to teach but not impossible. Khan Academy could cause a revolution if they could show success teaching critical thinking, as they have been able to show success in other educational testing areas. I'm available, Salman, for further discussion!
With almost a million YouTube subscribers, and over 250 million videos watched, Khan Academy is certainly meeting its mission to change “education for the better by providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere.” Over 4100 videos provide information in brief 10-15 minute chunks on Algebra I, the History of Dates, the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration, or Health Care Costs in US vs Europe. Anyone can get an education anywhere that has a internet connection, with a few USB keys produced to offer the educational programs to small impoverished communities where many do not have such access.
Who could object to such efforts?
During the discussion, many audience members would laugh uproariously at Mr. Slim's comments. They seemed mostly focused in the back right of the auditorium. Confused by these disturbances, other attendees glanced around, whispering possible explanations to themselves. An ophtalmologist, couldn't see who was making the disruption but suggested that it was being simultaneously translated, but poorly so that those listeners were greatly amused. One PhD student suggested that they must be past students of Mr. Slim who were amused to hear him telling the audience things they had heard so many times before. When the laughter had become increasingly disruptive, a young woman towards the front of the audience stood up and asked loudly: "What's so funny?"
"Carlos Slim's charity pretensions are laughable!" Replied a young man, who blew on a kazoo thus prompting all the other members of this group to stand, blow on their plastic kazoos and throw paper monopoly money into the air that explained Slim's information technology monopoly in Mexico. The fifty or so young men and women, between 20 and 40, dressed nicely, who must have each spent anywehre from $25 to $40 to attend the talk, marched around the room, blowing on their kazoos, quite politely heading towards the exit where security was trying to usher them more quickly.
Carlos Slim is the richest man in the world. Valued at over 63 billion dollars, he mostly made his money by taking advantage of a government loophole in telephony, explains a recent article in the Economist. Mexico Federal Competition Commission is trying to wrench such sweeping control away from Slim's company Telmex. Charges against him range from the mild-mannered tsk-tsking of bad business practices to demonstration-provoking accusations of evil corruption.
No one who has succeeded is clean. Fact.
The NYPL conversation was not about that, however, but rather about Khan Academy and how Slim's $10 million dollar donation will help produce 7000 Spanish language videos, servicing an audience that needs it. Over 10 million people in the United States speak Spanish, and little or no English. These populations struggle to get an education since even though Spanish language books are the majority of most libraries' non-English books, many subjects remain unavailable. In Central and South American, impoverished rural areas make an education difficult to procure. But the challenge exists here, too. In NYC, nearly three quarters of Hispanics drop out of high school. Only 7% of them pursue a college degree. Later, they may realize the value of an education. Khan Academy provides an extensive list of topics that can help someone learn what they need to know, or are simply curious to discover–and soon in Spanish as well.
Salman Khan started the academy in 2009 hiding in his closet. It was the most doors between him and his recently born son. Back in 2004, wanting to help a cousin who was struggling with mathematics, he used Yahoo!Doodle to provide tutorials, but as more people got interested he put the videos on YouTube. A graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School, he'd been working as a hedge fun analyst, but by 2009, realizing the potential for success, he left his job to dedicate his time to building Khan Academy. The operation is non-profit and has benefited from significant donations from Google and the Gates Foundation. Other personal donations have also helped the collection of video lessons grow, so that barely four years later Khan Academy now employs forty-five tech and education specialists.
Khan spoke after the kazoo demonstration to explain how positive his own experience has been working with Slim. He was distressed that Slim's finances could intrude on the positive efforts of Khan Academy. Slim shrugged; as the wealthiest man in the world, he is presumably accustomed to being disliked.
There is much to observe in how Khan Academy will succeed, but Khan's comments indicate he is planning for long-term growth. His book One World Schoolhouse explains how much he believes the art of education must change to improve. Education can no longer be didactic. "We don't know what jobs will exist to train people for them," Khan stated at one point, advocating for an education that encourages creative problem solving. The Academy has much to offer, and the lessons are particularly well-designed for delivering information. In my perusal of their offerings, I saw nothing though that would induct people in critical thinking. So why is that missing? I teach it in my classroom when we are discussing 19th Century Women Writers or Composition. It is the hardest thing to teach but not impossible. Khan Academy could cause a revolution if they could show success teaching critical thinking, as they have been able to show success in other educational testing areas. I'm available, Salman, for further discussion!
Marketing Mozart and Warhol
At a birthday party yesterday evening, I found myself in a conversation with a man who wanted to know about what was going on in the art world today. Somewhat flummoxed by his belief that anyone could actually answer that questions, I asked him what galleries or museums he had last visited. He said he did not really know where to go. He wanted to see today's great artists, though. You know, the Mozart and the Warhol of today.
I think the record inside my brain came to a screeching halt. I blinked and with sincerity replied that if Warhol followed Mozart for him then I really had no idea what to suggest.
I really had no idea what he meant. Trying to explain, he launched into a story about how Warhol drew daisies in a field when he was six while other children played. And the daisies were really well drawn. He knew how to draw! So it wasn't just a soup can because he could draw. My confusion grew. But, I tried to suggest, Warhol isn't significant because he could draw well. It's his ideas, I proposed, that were catalysts. (I did not here go into any of the arguments about whether the ideas belonged to Warhol or whether he simply took other people's good ideas and ran with them, as he might have learned working in a marketing firm; nor whether there is any significance to Warhol's presence in the screen printing factory when the works were being produced, as my sense was that the conversation could better maintain its cocktail party parameters by evading these denser theoretical issues.) But he could draw, the man repeated. Yes, but nobody cares about that, I said perhaps a little too bluntly.
Nobody values Warhol's line or color or artistry. It's the symbols that he permitted to resonate across art. It's the ideas that others have found in his work that made him significant. Warhol was great for creating a cultural artifact out of the new industrial and mass consumerist lifestyle of the post World War II United States. From the new major global power came its first self-generated cultural production.That, as a nation, we have come to embrace that one cultural production about industry and consumption with a nationalistic fervor–one which still resounds in much seemingly cutting-edge, "ironic" contemporary art–is simply because the United States is so young, culturally speaking, and hasn't yet learned that to shift out of one cultural identity into another, must then be followed by shifts into others. Warhol was great, but he wasn't great like Mozart, I said finishing my rant. The two are totally different. If you had asked Mozart what makes the bars of this sonnetina any good, he could have told you. Warhol could not explain his own work except to embrace what others said about it.
He nodded. There's nothing wrong with that, I added. Great art doesn't require the artist to explain it (how boring!) but if the work is a response to an ideology or theoretical paradigm, maybe they should? I asked. He nodded.
Does anybody care about Warhol in Europe? He asked me. My brain spun like a top trying to get a fix on where we were. Here was a man whose work oversaw the development of assorted optical programs, who was married with a six year old daughter, and he really did want to learn more about art from this conversation. I could tell simply from his earnestness. But I could not continue in this vein without having my own head explode.
As much as anywhere else, I replied getting up to get another drink, but don't forget that he still doesn't have his own chocolate candy.
I believe he nodded at that.
I think the record inside my brain came to a screeching halt. I blinked and with sincerity replied that if Warhol followed Mozart for him then I really had no idea what to suggest.
I really had no idea what he meant. Trying to explain, he launched into a story about how Warhol drew daisies in a field when he was six while other children played. And the daisies were really well drawn. He knew how to draw! So it wasn't just a soup can because he could draw. My confusion grew. But, I tried to suggest, Warhol isn't significant because he could draw well. It's his ideas, I proposed, that were catalysts. (I did not here go into any of the arguments about whether the ideas belonged to Warhol or whether he simply took other people's good ideas and ran with them, as he might have learned working in a marketing firm; nor whether there is any significance to Warhol's presence in the screen printing factory when the works were being produced, as my sense was that the conversation could better maintain its cocktail party parameters by evading these denser theoretical issues.) But he could draw, the man repeated. Yes, but nobody cares about that, I said perhaps a little too bluntly.
Nobody values Warhol's line or color or artistry. It's the symbols that he permitted to resonate across art. It's the ideas that others have found in his work that made him significant. Warhol was great for creating a cultural artifact out of the new industrial and mass consumerist lifestyle of the post World War II United States. From the new major global power came its first self-generated cultural production.That, as a nation, we have come to embrace that one cultural production about industry and consumption with a nationalistic fervor–one which still resounds in much seemingly cutting-edge, "ironic" contemporary art–is simply because the United States is so young, culturally speaking, and hasn't yet learned that to shift out of one cultural identity into another, must then be followed by shifts into others. Warhol was great, but he wasn't great like Mozart, I said finishing my rant. The two are totally different. If you had asked Mozart what makes the bars of this sonnetina any good, he could have told you. Warhol could not explain his own work except to embrace what others said about it.
He nodded. There's nothing wrong with that, I added. Great art doesn't require the artist to explain it (how boring!) but if the work is a response to an ideology or theoretical paradigm, maybe they should? I asked. He nodded.
Does anybody care about Warhol in Europe? He asked me. My brain spun like a top trying to get a fix on where we were. Here was a man whose work oversaw the development of assorted optical programs, who was married with a six year old daughter, and he really did want to learn more about art from this conversation. I could tell simply from his earnestness. But I could not continue in this vein without having my own head explode.
As much as anywhere else, I replied getting up to get another drink, but don't forget that he still doesn't have his own chocolate candy.
I believe he nodded at that.
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