Today, Jon Lebkowsky writes about Google Video. He didn’t find it very compelling. I didn’t find it very compelling either. In a lot of ways, it seems like it is a lot archive.org.
Jon writes, “I’m waiting for someone smart with a lot of server p

waiting reply
mrs D Halata

Put simply, I think we need to think more about temporality instead of tangibility when we think about ‘the thing itself’.

Read more at http://www.orient-lodge.com/index.php?q=node/view/389

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http://www.boltonmuseums.org.uk/HTML/art.asp

Mark Schultz After a busy summer finishing a paper on copyright and social norms (thanks to Eric for the plug!)…

I think we need to distinguish between the direct aesthetic experience of an object (both pleasure and intended meaning) and the indirect aesthetic experience–our projections of meaning based on the conditions of its creation. For example, religious relics (say Christ’s hipbone) would have little direct aesthetic impact but heavy indirect effects on us. I have seen the actual small wooden chair that Edwin Hubble sat in on Mount Wilson when he discovered that the universe is much bigger than just our galaxy–that there are millions of other galaxies at vast distances. The chair isn’t much to look at, but when I knew that Hubble had his butt in it when he made his discovery…it gave me a (small) relic-like thrill.

My guess is that the relic-effect kicks in when we have some sort of dramatic narrative in our heads about the creator,the context of creation. or how the artifact came down to us. For something like the astrolabe, it’s simply “Jeez, this thing is old, and someone worked really hard to make it, and then it got saved and wound up here. Cool.”

Why is there no substitute? Why would you not be refreshed by an indistinguisable copy? I genuinely don’t understand what an original object has which an indistinguishable copy does not, unless it something immaterial, spiritual. But I know I argue against the grain of our times here.

The focus on authenticity and the original, which seems to be a feature of our culture across many arts, intrigues me. In classical music, for example, the last few decades have seen an obsession with playing period music on original instruments, ie, the instruments of the time in which the music was written. But, 18th century performances were held in rooms without air-conditioning, and often without much heating, so we immediately invalidate all the focus on the original by our modern performance conditions. (If you think air-con is nothing to be concerned with, you haven’t tried to play a trumpet outside on a winter morning!) So, no modern performance, even on period instruments, can be a true replication of the original performance.

I have before me a postcard of Thomas Moran’s famous landscape, “Nearing camp, evening on the Upper Colorado River, 1882″, which shows a majestic bluff, a cathedral of a site, with immense cliffs coloured by the sunset, the sort of painting to grace the entrance lobby of a National Parliament Building or the Senate Room of a rich University. The picture is wonderful! I was so impressed, I went looking for the original, which is held in a gallery not far from me here in NW England (where Moran was born). The original is tiny, not much larger than the postcard I have. A great disappointment that such a majestic image should reside in a painting so small. I don’t think original is necessarily better.