Turbulent skies of Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” align with a scientific theory, study finds
In 2017, Astrophysicist Trinh Xuan Thuan talked about his admiration for Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night,” revealing how the painter had intuited the colors of the stars long before science. [France Culture | audio in French]
The vision took place at night, yet the painting was created in several sessions during the day [MoMA, NYC]
Patrick Mimran (born 1956 in Paris, France) is a contemporary French multimedia artist, composer, and the former owner and CEO of Lamborghini. […] In 1987 he sold Lamborghini to Chrysler and made, so it is said, «enough profit to be completely satisfied».
{ Wikipedia | Hamlet Hamster }
still { Con Artist (2009), a documentary about Mark Kostabi — not Patrick Mimran }
Mr. Wesselmann, who disliked the term Pop, chafed at being the only major artist of the Pop generation not honored with a museum retrospective in his lifetime. […]
“Wesselmann is a little bit under the radar for no good reason, because he certainly was one of the real innovators in the whole movement,” said Lucy Mitchell-Innes.
art { Tom Wesselmann, Smoker, 1 (Mouth, 12), 1967. Oil on canvas, in two parts. | Tom Wesselmann, Study for Great American Nude #90, 1966. Liquitex on paper. }
Artificial intelligence model detects asymptomatic Covid-19 infections through cellphone-recorded coughs
The researchers trained the model on tens of thousands of samples of coughs, as well as spoken words. When they fed the model new cough recordings, it accurately identified 98.5 percent of coughs from people who were confirmed to have Covid-19, including 100 percent of coughs from asymptomatics — who reported they did not have symptoms but had tested positive for the virus.
The team is working on incorporating the model into a user-friendly app, which if FDA-approved and adopted on a large scale could potentially be a free, convenient, noninvasive prescreening tool to identify people who are likely to be asymptomatic for Covid-19.
also { Detection of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in saliva with Shrinky-Dink© electrodes }
oil on canvas { Tom Wesselmann, Smoker #11, 1973 }
signs of dishonesty decreased trust but only in those who had not previously built a good reputation as honest partners.
On the contrary, those who could establish a good reputation were trusted even when they were no longer trustworthy, suggesting that participants could not successfully track changes in trustworthiness of those with an established good reputation.
lithograph { Ellsworth Kelly, Blue Curve, 2013 }
Is it possible to have a psychedelic experience from a placebo alone? […] We examined individual variation in placebo effects in a naturalistic environment resembling a typical psychedelic party. […] The 4-h study took place in a group setting with music, paintings, coloured lights, and visual projections. Participants (n=33) consumed a placebo that we described as a drug resembling psilocybin, which is found in psychedelic mushrooms. […]
There was considerable individual variation in the placebo effects; many participants reported no changes while others showed effects with magnitudes typically associated with moderate or high doses of psilocybin. In addition, the majority (61%) of participants verbally reported some effect of the drug. Several stated that they saw the paintings on the walls “move” or “reshape” themselves, others felt “heavy… as if gravity [had] a stronger hold”, and one had a “come down” before another “wave” hit her.
images { Left: Marilyn Buck | Right: Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn), 1967 }
{ Maurizio Cattelan, Comedian, 2020 — An Artist Just Ate One of Maurizio Cattelan’s $120,000 Bananas Off the Wall in Miami | Yoko Ono, Apple, 1966 — Apple was first displayed in a London gallery in 1966. It was here that Yoko Ono met John Lennon for the first time. “You know, he didn’t say anything. He just grabbed the apple and had a bite in it.” }
Across four studies participants (N = 818) rated the profoundness of abstract art images accompanied with varying categories of titles, including: pseudo-profound bullshit titles (e.g., The Deaf Echo), mundane titles (e.g., Canvas 8), and no titles.
Randomly generated pseudo-profound bullshit titles increased the perceived profoundness of computer-generated abstract art, compared to when no titles were present (Study 1).
Mundane titles did not enhance the perception of profoundness, indicating that pseudo-profound bullshit titles specifically (as opposed to titles in general) enhance the perceived profoundness of abstract art (Study 2).
Furthermore, these effects generalize to artist-created abstract art (Study 3).
Finally, we report a large correlation between profoundness ratings for pseudo-profound bullshit and “International Art English” statements (Study 4), a mode and style of communication commonly employed by artists to discuss their work.
Physicists have long struggled with a perplexing conundrum: How do we reconcile what we see in the quantum world with what we don’t in the classical world? In a phenomenon called quantum superposition, particles have been shown to shift between particle-like and wave-like states, meaning they’re in two places at once.
But this phenomenon hasn’t been observed with more massive objects—it’s only been seen in the smallest particles, such as atoms, photons, and electrons. That’s beginning to change. […]
Physicist Markus Arndt of the University of Vienna and an international team of researchers have demonstrated quantum superposition in molecules, the largest particles ever tested.
photo { Andy Warhol: Elvis Paintings, Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, 1963 }
When faced with a personal problem people typically give better advice to others than to themselves. This has been termed ‘Solomon’s Paradox’, named after the biblical King Solomon who was wise for others, but not so when it came to making decisions that would have an impact on his own standing.
Suppose that instead of imagining a problem from the perspective of another you were actually able to have a conversation with yourself about it, but from the embodied perspective of another.
A previous study showed how it is possible to enact internal dialogue in virtual reality (VR) through participants alternately occupying two different virtual bodies – one representing themselves and the other Sigmund Freud. They could maintain a self-conversation by explaining their problem to the virtual Freud and then from the embodied perspective of Freud see and hear the explanation by their virtual doppelganger, and then give some advice. Alternating between the two bodies they could maintain a self-dialogue, as if between two different people.
Here we show that the process of alternating between their own and the Freud body is important for successful psychological outcomes. An experiment was carried out with 58 people, 29 in the body swapping Self-Conversation condition and 29 in a condition where they only spoke to a Scripted Freud character. The results showed that the Self-Conversation method results in a greater perception of change and help compared to the Scripted. We compare this method with the distancing paradigm where participants imagine resolving a problem from a first or third person perspective.
We consider the method as a possible strategy for self-counselling.
synthetic polymer and silkscreen ink on canvas { Andy Warhol, Are You “Different?” (Positive), 1985 }
mimeograph { La Monte Young, Composition 1960 #4, 1960 }
Salmon sushi was introduced to Japan by the Norwegians in 1986
[…]
You are 44% more likely to die if you have surgery on a Friday (1.44% chance) compared to a Monday (1.00% chance). The likelihood of death jumps 82% compared to Monday if you have surgery on the weekend.
[…]
The State of Wyoming Has 2 Escalators
[…]
When women are ovulating, they are (unknowingly) much less likely to call their dads, and when their dads call them, they end the conversation more quickly. However, they’re more likely to call their moms, and the phone conversations last longer.
[…]
Recent seminal works on human mobility have shown that individuals constantly exploit a small set of repeatedly visited locations. The number of familiar locations an individual visits at any point is a conserved quantity with a typical size of ~25.
[…]
The surface area of human lungs is as big as a tennis court […]
You can say “ding dong” but not “dong ding,” “zig zag” but not “zag zig,” and “flip flop” but not “flop flip.” The same strict word order applies to tick tock, riff raff, ping pong, King Kong, wishy washy, etc. This is the rule of ablaut reduplication: if there are two words, the first is i and the second is either a or o. If there are three words, then the order is i, a, o.
image { a performance/installation Warhol did for the now-defunct Finch College Museum of Art, in New York in February of 1972. The project consisted of Warhol vacuuming the gallery rug and then displaying the vacuum and its signed dust bag in the gallery that he’d cleaned. | Blake Gopnik }
Procrastination is a familiar and widely discussed proclivity: postponing tasks that can be done earlier. Precrastination is a lesser known and explored tendency: completing tasks quickly just to get them done sooner.
Recent research suggests that precrastination may represent an important penchant that can be observed in both people and animals.
The value of the art market, which actually hasn’t changed that much over the past 10 years or so, is in the region of $60 billion a year, which sounds like a lot, but actually compared to other industries is not that huge. It hasn’t shifted very much in the last 10 years, but what has changed is the composition of the figure, with the top end much stronger and the middle weaker. […]
There is a concentration on about 25 artists in the art market. Studies (which I cite in my book) have shown that whether we are talking about the impressionists, postwar and contemporary art sales, the highest prices are concentrated on just a few artists. […]
you need to distinguish here between private museums that belong to a very rich person, a billionaire generally these days, and a state museum. In America, a museum like MOCA or LACMA is, in theory, a private museum, and they get their funding from donors on the whole, although they sometimes get it from the local municipality as well, so it’s not a hard and fast distinction, but it’s still worth considering who is behind a given institution.
What has definitely driven the contemporary art market has been the phenomenal growth of private museums who all concentrate on the same contemporary art basically.
oilstick on paper { Jean-Michel Basquiat, Action comics, 1986–1987 }
framed text, glass jars, shelf, hair, fingernails, and skin { Adrian Piper, What Will Become of Me, 1985, ongoing }
Often, damaged works of art end up in the vaults of insurance companies. Once the owner submits a claim on the damaged piece, a team of experts, appraisers, conservators and adjusters offer specialist advice on the artwork’s condition and devaluation. The economics of selling and repairing the work are weighed up, and generally, if the cost of restoring a work is far beyond what it is worth, the work will be claimed as “total loss”. The insurance company will pay out on the policy and, in exchange, retain the broken piece. The “total loss” artwork is effectively declared worthless, unsalvageable by both insurer and owner. From then on it belongs to the insurance company as salvage.
Some of these pieces, though, end up being exhibited by the Salvage Art Institute (SAI), which calls itself a “haven” for written-off works. Conceived by Elka Krajewska, an artist in New York, in 2009 during a chance meeting with a representative of AXA Art Insurance, it took her until 2012 to jump through enough legal hoops to persuade the insurer to donate some of their total-loss works to the SAI. A selection of these works is now on show in “No Longer Art”, a show at BNKR Space, a gallery in Munich.
welded steel, porcelain, wire mesh, canvas, grommets, and wire { Lee Bontecou, Untitled, 1980–98 }
