Preoccupations

Links for 2010-09-01 [del.icio.us]

2010-09-02T00:00:00-07:00

Guardian science blogs | Science | guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/aug/31/blogging-digital-media?CMP=twt_iph
Op-Ed Contributor - Google’s Earth - NYTimes.com
"We never imagined that artificial intelligence would be like this. We imagined discrete entities. Genies. We also seldom imagined … that emergent technologies would leave legislation in the dust, yet they do. In a world characterized by technologically driven change, we necessarily legislate after the fact, perpetually scrambling to catch up, while the core architectures of the future, increasingly, are erected by entities like Google. Cyberspace, not so long ago, was a specific elsewhere, one we visited periodically, peering into it from the familiar physical world. Now cyberspace has everted. Turned itself inside out. Colonized the physical. Making Google a central and evolving structural unit not only of the architecture of cyberspace, but of the world. This is the sort of thing that empires and nation-states did, before. But empires and nation-states weren’t organs of global human perception … they didn’t constitute a single multiplex eye for the entire human species."

Links for 2010-08-30 [del.icio.us]

2010-08-31T00:00:00-07:00

Doctorow's First Law
"I'm happy to report that Amazon, to its eternal credit, was delighted to offer my e-books without DRM and with the anti-EULA license language, as was Barnes & Noble and Kobo. Why Amazon's Kindle division was happy to do what its Audible division had categorically rejected is still beyond me … in addition to selling my own works, I also sell upwards of 25,000 books a year through Amazon affiliate links in my online book reviews. This makes me a one-man, good-sized independent bookstore, with Amazon doing my fulfillment, payment processing, stocking, etc. Unfortunately, I had no such luck with Apple or Sony. True to my earlier experience with Apple's iTunes store, Apple has a mandatory DRM requirement for books offered for sale for the iPad. I know many Apple fans believe that because Steve Jobs penned an open letter decrying DRM that the company must use DRM because they have no choice. But this simply isn't true. Sony has the same deal."
Plato's Pop Culture Problem, and Ours - NYTimes.com
"Do we, as Plato thought, move immediately from representation to reality? If we do, we should be really worried about the effects of television or video games. Or are we aware that many features of each medium belong to its conventions and do not represent real life? To answer these questions, we can no longer investigate only the length of our exposure to the mass media; we must focus on its quality: are we passive consumers or active participants? Do we realize that our reaction to representations need not determine our behavior in life? If so, the influence of the mass media will turn out to be considerably less harmful that many suppose. If not, instead of limiting access to or reforming the content of the mass media, we should ensure that we, and especially our children, learn to interact intelligently and sensibly with them. Here, again, philosophy, which questions the relation between representation and life, will have something to say."
In Defense of Links, Part One: Nick Carr, hypertext and delinkification — Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard
"“people who read hypertext comprehend and learn less, studies show, than those who read the same material in printed form” [Carr]. Yet the studies he cites show nothing of the sort. Carr’s critique of links employs a bait-and-switch dodge … For Carr and his sympathizers, links impede understanding; I believe that they deepen it. Back in 1997 Steven Johnson (in his book Interface Culture) made the case for links as a tool for synthesis — “a way of drawing connections between things,” a device that creates “threads of association,” a means to bring coherence to our overflowing cornucopia of information. The Web’s links don’t make it a vast wasteland or a murky shallows; they organize and enrich it. “Channel surfing,” Johnson wrote, “is all about the thrill of surfaces. Web surfing is about depth, about wanting to know more.” As the Web has grown vast, that desire has grown with it. To swear off links is to abandon curiosity."

Links for 2010-08-29 [del.icio.us]

2010-08-30T00:00:00-07:00

URBAGRAM
"Urbagram is a set of interlinked concepts, models, speculations, probings, essays and artefacts based on urban systems. Cities are complex systems — emergent wholes irreducible to their component parts — part living; as dynamic networks of human flows and social interactions, and part built; as an evolving infrastructure and architecture that defines a morphology. As a greater understanding of the benefits of self-organisation brings us to explore decentralised approaches to urban policy, new models and analytical work based on complexity science can inform our understanding of both what the city is and what it could be."
Kindle 3 Browser Photos, Video « Kindle Review – Kindle 3 Review, iPad Review
Plotting Doubted in WikiLeaks Case - NYTimes.com
"one of Mr. Assange’s close friends in Sweden, who said he had discussed the case in detail with Mr. Assange and one of the women, said he was “absolutely sure” that what was involved were personal animosities and grievances that flowed out of brief relationships Mr. Assange had with the women. The man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issues, said that the volatile mix that led to the two women’s seeking criminal charges against Mr. Assange involved his celebrity in Sweden and the ill feelings that erupted when the two women discovered they had been competing for his attentions. “This wasn’t anything to do with the Pentagon,” he said. “It was just a personal matter between three people that got out of hand.”"
Ephemera: The Mac tool for Instapaper & ebook reader enthusiasts
"Two-way Instapaper.com sync for your ebook reader."
About the old and new Kindle features - Instapaper Blog
Three New Features: Universal Player, Watch Later and Roku on Vimeo Staff Blog
"Q: How do I use the new Universal Player? A: Starting today it is the new default embed code and is available via the embed button on any Vimeo video. Just copy and paste like any other embed code. This new embed code is available for any video, new or old. Q: What about all the old embed code out there? Do I have to manually replace it with the new Universal Player embed code? A: Yes, however we've built something to help. We've written a small Javascript snippet that you can add to your site to that will automatically upgrade old embed code. You can learn more in the FAQ."
Oxford English Dictionary 'will not be printed again' - Telegraph
"“The print dictionary market is just disappearing, it is falling away by tens of per cent a year” [said] Nigel Portwood, the chief executive of OUP … Mr Portwood said printed dictionaries had a shelf life of about another 30 years, with the pace of change increased by the popularity of e-books & devices such as the Apple iPad & Amazon’s Kindle. Simon Winchester, author of ‘The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary’, said the switch towards online formats was “prescient”. He said: “Until six months ago I was clinging to the idea that printed books would likely last for ever. Since the arrival of the iPad I am now wholly convinced otherwise. “The printed book is about to vanish at extraordinary speed. I have two complete OEDs, but never consult them – I use the online OED five or six times daily. The same with many of my reference books – and soon with most. “Books are about to vanish; reading is about to expand as a pastime; these are inescapable realities”"
Bundle o’ Updates « The Open Library Blog
"There are new Send to Kindle links alongside all the ebooks you can read via Open Library. That’s in addition to viewing the gorgeous hi-res scans in the BookReader, downloading a PDF, plain text, ePub, DAISYs and MOBI."
New Kindle 3 Review (hands-on) | Amazon Kindle 3 and Kindle DX Review and News Blog
A map for the Anthropocene | Wired Science | Wired.com
"Two years ago, ecologists Erle Ellis and Navin Ramankutty at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, released a map of the world’s biological areas, traditionally known as biomes. … They updated the definition of biome to reflect how human beings used the land … this was much more relevant to the 21st century, with more than six billion people using more of Earth’s water, energy and matter than any other species, than classical biomes that didn’t account for humanity’s influence. They called their newly-defined areas “anthromes,” short for anthropological biomes. … Ellis and Ramankutty have come out with a new set of maps that show how anthromes have changed since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. “You now have a biosphere that’s completely transformed by people. Biology goes on in the human context, not the natural,” he said. “And given the idea that most of ecosystem form and process is created by and ruled by human activity, how did it get to be that way?”
The Long Tail: Coming Up Short. | Monday Note
"To sum up, go ahead, pour time and resources in boosting the Long Tail — as long as you enjoy a big and profitable head. —frederic.filloux@mondaynote.com"
A Toolkit for the Cognitive Container | Monday Note
"there is no doubt the app phenomenon will significantly impact the way we consume news: apps might become their main cognitive container. They won’t be as rich as a website, but they are likely to enable more focused usage. Consider the upside in the absence of links: On a web site, a link in a story means leaving it to go elsewhere. In an app, as the link uses an encapsulated browser instance, the reader doesn’t feel she’s leaving the story, the environment stays the same, the UI remains consistent. This results in a more immersive experience, like in a physical newspaper, or in a book where reading is not disrupted by context changes. Apps will be a good vector for complex writings (quantum mechanic vs. celebrity gossip) even though compulsive foragers will blame the impossibility to comment, share, propagate, squabble around contents."
The Gutenberg Parenthesis: Thomas Pettitt on parallels between the pre-print era and our own Internet age » Nieman Journalism Lab

Links for 2010-08-27 [del.icio.us]

2010-08-28T00:00:00-07:00

A Dream About Augmented Reality Fiction - O'Reilly Radar
"the "ebook" we were developing was actually a movie that took place in an augmented reality overlay projected directly onto the mind's eye, mixing what the author had imagined with what the viewer was actually seeing and experiencing at the time. Every version of the movie was different, because the story had to be overlaid on what the viewer was encountering in the real world. … augmented reality could be an important component of a new kind of storytelling … I share this dream as a reminder that the fiction and entertainments of the future may have a very different form than the fiction of today. The first metamorphosis is just to change the medium, in the way that the paper map or atlas morphed first into online mapping sites. But eventually, we'll get much deeper, as mapping is today morphing into augmented reality layers (from Yelp reviews or Foursquare check-ins to Google Street View) superimposed on walking or driving directions delivered on a phone."
List of Chromium Command Line Switches « Peter Beverloo

Links for 2010-08-26 [del.icio.us]

2010-08-27T00:00:00-07:00

Top 10 YouTube Videos About Internet of Things
via bruces (Twitter)
john chris jones : the internet and everyone
welcome to optimism: A short rant about games, play and storytelling
"We're here to create strong, provocative relationships between great companies and their customers. Games and new ways of storytelling are a fantastic and incredibly exciting way of doing that."

Links for 2010-08-25 [del.icio.us]

2010-08-26T00:00:00-07:00

Poor families bear brunt of coalition's austerity drive | UK news | The Guardian
"Britain's leading independent tax experts today flatly rejected the coalition government's claims to have shielded poor families from five years of austerity when they described George Osborne's emergency budget as "clearly regressive". In a direct challenge to Treasury claims that the package of spending cuts and tax increases announced in June was fair, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said welfare cuts meant working families on the lowest incomes – particularly those with children – were the biggest losers. The IFS said it had always been sceptical about Osborne's claim that the budget was "progressive" but added that this instant judgment had been reinforced by a study of proposed changes to housing benefit, disability allowances and tax credits due to come in between now and 2015."
russell davies: 5 things
"With a working life that could easily last another 40 years, probably longer than any of the industries I currently know anything about, what should I be doing next? My answer - learning - more learning about people and organisations. Because they, at least aren't going away." "how to get the web in and out of physical stuff. Putting it in the world rather than layering it on top." "The Internet of Products" "I've been thinking about how Labour might win the internet. (The obvious answer being - put Tom Watson in charge.)" "they're bored. They've done that. The web is baked. They're wondering what to do next. I'm loving watching that. I'm wondering too. Will there be another thing as big? Will the invisible high school fragment? Will they settle into middle-edge and do letterpress?"
Truce called in battle over ebook rights | Books | guardian.co.uk
CKA Limited - Apple Focused Consultancy & Service
CANCOM UK - The Apple Mac Specialists
Timeline of things I've done (Phil Gyford’s website)
Beautiful work. via Matt (Twitter)
tweetalondoncab
"To use London's 'virtual cab rank' all you have to do is follow our @tweetalondoncab account on Twitter and send us a Direct Message to book your cab. It really is that simple. Send us your travel requirements and we will reply to you almost instantly with a booking confirmation. Alternatively if you simply want to make an enquiry or obtain a quote for a future journey, just send us the details and we will respond promptly. You will find our prices are more than competitive!"

Links for 2010-08-24 [del.icio.us]

2010-08-25T00:00:00-07:00

Seth's Blog: Moving on
"Traditional book publishers use techniques perfected a hundred years ago to help authors reach unknown readers, using a stable technology (books) and an antique and expensive distribution system. The thing is--now I know who my readers are. Adding layers or faux scarcity doesn't help me or you. As the medium changes, publishers are on the defensive.... I honestly can't think of a single traditional book publisher who has led the development of a successful marketplace/marketing innovation in the last decade. … as the methods for spreading ideas and engaging with people keep changing, I can't think of a good reason to be on the defensive. It's been years since I woke up in the morning saying, "I need to write a book, I wonder what it should be about." Instead, my mission is to figure out who the audience is, and take them where they want and need to go, in whatever format works, even if it's not a traditionally published book."
Kevin Rose - blogg - Why Apple's iTV Will Change Everything
via Stowe (Twitter)
Pasta&Vinegar » Blog Archive » Urban screens as skeuomorph
"Mark Shepard offers an insightful critique of urban screens. He basically posit that they operate as “skeuomorph” in the evolution of urban informatics. … For Shepard, these transitional artifacts enable to soften the transition between technological phases. As he points out, “Artifacts (and by extension ways of thinking) of one moment are carried forward into the future by simulating aspects of the past“. Quite an inspiring quote I think. Using this notion, he then explains how urban displays are based on a longstanding model of information access and distribution in public space that is old (and flawed): the fact that we need to access MORE information (and that it should be broadcasted to a “public”)". via http://twitter.com/agpublic/statuses/22009539422

Campagne sur Aude [Flickr]

2010-08-09T15:11:38-07:00

Preoccupations posted a photo:

Church

Facebook, 2010

2010-05-02T21:15:49+01:00

Where would we be without Facebook? For one thing, I could be spending time much more happily — reading, writing, gardening, walking … instead of trying to follow the labyrinth that is Facebook.

The developments announced on 21 April have taken some time to digest and even now I’m not satisfied that we’re clear what differentiation there is for users below the age of 18. But in any case, I noticed last autumn that some users applying for university places were tidying up their profiles and photo albums — and, of course, for a number of these young students their eighteenth birthday was then upon them or imminent. Time-clocks ticking, biologically and digitally.

I posted something on our intranet today about the latest changes. The context and purpose required my having to overlook the good in all Facebook announced. Chris Messina wrote about this, as did David Recordon and DeWitt Clinton. But, as Tom Watson re-tweeted, ‘Facebook privacy settings are the new programming your VCR’ and, as several friends found, the post-f8 experience was … trying. (See Tony Hirst’s Keeping Up with Facebook Privacy Changes (Again) and Why I Joined the Facebook Privacy Changes Backlash…)

I would love, too, to have got more into my intranet posting of danah boyd’s latest writings on privacy, personal data, trust, context and the web (see, eg, Putting Privacy Settings in the Context of Use (in Facebook and elsewhere); Facebook’s move ain’t about changes in privacy norms — ‘Privacy is about having control of a situation. It’s about controlling what information flows where and adjusting measures of trust when things flow in unexpected ways. It’s about creating certainty so that we can act appropriately. People still care about privacy because they care about control’; Privacy and Publicity in the Context of Big Data — ‘Privacy is not about control over data nor is it a property of data. … it’s about having control over a situation. It’s about understanding the audience and knowing how far information will flow. It’s about trusting the people, the situating, and the context. People seek privacy so that they can make themselves vulnerable in order to gain something: personal support, knowledge, friendship, etc.’). But I hope I hinted at some of this just enough.

The difficulty with something as complex as these latest changes is not to put the reader off entirely and I asked a couple of folks, a student and a colleague, to vet the post first, fearing it was a swamp of detail. But as John (student) said: ‘On the issue of the information being a “swamp”‚ there’s not much anyone can do about it: Facebook privacy settings appear deliberately difficult to learn about and change. It reads well in despite of this.’ Kind words — and here’s the posting (it may have use beyond its immediate … context).

*****

Facebook and Privacy — May, 2010

‘it may be best if you just assume that everything on Facebook will be public from now on and act accordingly’

— RWW: Facebook’s High Pressure Tactics: Opt-in or Else

Last December, Facebook changed its privacy settings. These and their implications were summarised on our intranet at the time.

On 21 April, Facebook announced a number of further, complicated changes. Some of the features users now need to understand include the following. All have privacy implications. (Note: if you have previously adjusted your privacy settings and not accepted Facebook's defaults, your experience of one or more of these new features may differ in some ways from what follows. You should check.)

Community Pages: a new kind of Page, replacing interests and activities. These pages are public.
Connected Profiles: opt-in, but ‘if you refuse to link to these new Pages, your profile information will be removed and your profile page will be left empty.’ — RWW: Facebook’s High Pressure Tactics: Opt-in or Else
Connections: treated as public information.
“Like” button: ‘When you click the button on an external website, you authorize Facebook to publish your activity to your Facebook profile (which, in turn, will also be published to your friends’ news feeds). Also, when your friends visit the external site, they will see that you’ve visited that site, too.’ — PCWorld: Facebook: 5 Privacy Settings You Must Tweak Now
Instant Personalisation (currently, this involves just three sites: Microsoft Docs; Pandora; Yelp). The “Allow” checkbox for Instant Personalization is on by default — you have to opt out. If you don’t opt out, ‘when you visit these sites, they can pull in information from your Facebook account, which includes your name, profile picture, gender and connections (and any other information that you’ve made visible to the public).’ — PCWorld: Facebook: 5 Privacy Settings You Must Tweak Now

There’s a summary and “translation” of most of these terms (along with some others) on the EFF site: A Handy Facebook-to-English Translator. If you’re on Facebook, you should read this.

Within a week of the April announcement, 50,000 websites had already integrated with Facebook’s new social plugins (such as the “Like” button), including major sites such as CNN and The New York Times.

You also need to appreciate that Facebook applications access your personal data:

… many everyday Facebook users were shocked to find that applications (like quizzes) could access almost everything on a user profile, including hometown, groups you belong to, events attended, favorite books, and more. What’s worse is that your profile information becomes available to developers when your friends take the same quiz. — RWW: How to Delete Facebook Applications (and Why You Should)

That last point is important: for example, ‘Even if you opt out of Instant Personalization, there’s still data leakage if your friends use Instant Personalization websites — their activities can give away information about you, unless you block those applications individually.’ — EFF: A Handy Facebook-to-English Translator.

Whereas until 21 April Facebook apps could only store your data for 24 hours, now your data can be retained indefinitely.

All Facebook users would do well to look at another EFF post, Facebook’s Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline (‘Watch closely as your privacy disappears, one small change at a time!’). From there:

Since its incorporation just over five years ago, Facebook has undergone a remarkable transformation. When it started, it was a private space for communication with a group of your choice. Soon, it transformed into a platform where much of your information is public by default. Today, it has become a platform where you have no choice but to make certain information public, and this public information may be shared by Facebook with its partner websites and used to target ads.

Last week, Nick Bilton, Lead Technology Writer, The New York Times, reported on Twitter:

There’s huge value to personalisation and to sharing information. As Mark Zuckerberg wrote on 21 April: ‘if you’re logged into Facebook and go to Pandora for the first time, it can immediately start playing songs from bands you’ve liked across the web. And as you’re playing music, it can show you friends who also like the same songs as you, and then you can click to see other music they like’.

But personalisation means accepting some loss of privacy and you need to assess the value and the “risks” of this for yourself. Above all, users want to be in control of the context in which their information is used and when a company makes changes which affect this you simply must re-assess the situation.

The advice at the top of this page should be heeded: ‘it may be best if you just assume that everything on Facebook will be public from now on and act accordingly’.

A video and some links you may find helpful:

(the blog post referred to in the video: EFF: How to Opt Out of Facebook’s Instant Personalization)

PCWorld: Facebook: 5 Privacy Settings You Must Tweak Now

RWW: How to Delete Facebook Applications (and Why You Should)

Facebook: de-activating your account (you need to be logged in to Facebook to see this link)

Facebook: deleting your account (you need to be logged in to Facebook to see this link)

Newspaper Club

2010-03-30T15:11:53+01:00

Last week, just as term finished, the team behind a school magazine, Black & White, published issue 72. What made this issue different was that they had chosen to run with Newspaper Club. Kudos to Tom Turner (Year 12) for leading the student team in this new venture. (I should make it clear that, beyond chatting early on with Tom about Newspaper Club, I’ve played, and play, no part in this.)

I love what Newspaper Club is doing. I’ve got five of their things. Things Our Friends …

The BBC/AHRC 8 Essays,

James’s intriguing, enigmatic and playful Immanent in The Manifold City — or, How To Travel Through Time In The Nineteenth Century, a celebration of Walking Stewart,

Buy it!

Chris’s As It Is To-Day, ‘A 12 page newsprint periodical collecting and collating the best of literature from travel guides, treatises, pamphlets, books, receipts and ephemera. Each looks through the lens “of to-day”, revelling in the present and present history, whether from the 18th Century or the 20th.’

And now this from school:

There was a very peculiar thrill to seeing the impact at school of Black & White appearing in newspaper format. Walking into our staff room and seeing it being read by several colleagues and knowing how it had been made … as clichéd as it sounds, here was something both familiar and new.

Chris’s newspaper went with me to London last week. I loved it. You can read about the background to it on his own blog: the past is a mirror of the future.

By the time As It Is To-Day got to me, I’d just about stopped treating these newspapers as things–I–should–handle–carefully and was actually ready to read them like newspapers. So on the train, amidst all the copies of the Metro and the Evening Standard, I read As It Is To-Day, issue 1, the London Special. I could quote lots here, but you should go buy a copy — it’s very good.

From Hints to Railway Travellers, 1852:

It is well to have a newspaper—or say this book—in your hand, to resort to in case tiresome people will talk—a purpose that railway travelling was never intended for.

From The Heart of London, 1925:

In two thousand years’ time will there be brambles growing on Ludgate Hill, I wonder, and will a shepherd graze his sheep in Piccadilly Circus? It happened to Thebes and Carthage … There are great days in store for those who will shake up our dust and worry our ghosts, and even attempt to discover our gods.

(And, of course, I liked this from London As It Is To-day, 1851: ‘Within a short distance of St Paul’s, is situated the Post Office, the Money Order Office, St Paul’s School …’.)

Who's programming the TiVo?

2010-03-22T23:27:42+00:00

Last Wednesday, it was my great pleasure to welcome Jimmy Wales to talk at school: ‘Wikipedia and Wikia : Free Culture for a Free World’. About 300 students and staff came to hear him, filling our main hall. Feedback has been very warm and appreciative (‘the best talk I’ve been to in my five years here’, ‘a once in a lifetime opportunity’, ‘the ethos of Wikipedia/Wikia is so inspiring’). We filmed the talk and Jimmy’s given us his slides and we’ll be posting these. I’m very grateful to him for coming, fitting us in during a short visit to London.

Early on in his hour with us, Jimmy asked how many of those there had ever edited Wikipedia. He reckoned about 80% of the students had. I wasn’t expecting that high a figure. As Chris said to me the next day, at the Guardian Changing Media Summit, the fact that that is going on, with no-one knowing the extent of it until the question is asked, is really appropriate to the nature of the project and the software.

There was a moment at the Guardian event that I hadn’t been expecting, either: Jimmy asked the media crowd how many of them had edited Wikipedia — about 30%. He then told them about the previous day: ‘yesterday I spoke at St Paul’s and the percentage was about 80% — so you’re behind. But don’t feel too bad about it: my daughter programs our TiVo.’ :) I heard some gasps from his audience.

The best unexpected moment on Friday of last week came when I was teaching ICT to a class of 13 year-olds: I must have said in passing how some folks at the Guardian event had tweeted about what Jimmy had said and, without my prompting, two of the class immediately searched Twitter (on “st pauls school”; “#cms2010 pauls” is, unsurprisingly, my search — same results):

Two savvy, fast 13 year-olds, an impressed teacher and an excited class.

Just before Jimmy Wales came to school, I found out that we have a young student likely to become a Wikipedia admin. If this happens, he’ll be the second student (to the best of my knowledge) to become an admin whilst still at school here. (Alex became one in his final year with us — 2007/8.)

A parent wrote to me last week about his son editing Wikipedia: ‘in today’s interconnected way, this is the way to go and who knows what will happen then — expert status will allow him to develop other skills and is an asset in and of itself. It has also provided amazing learning for him.’

I find all this quite remarkable. We can grow so used to discussing change and the way young people now engage with the world, and we need experiences like those of last week to get us to look up and take stock again.

Wikipedia has played such a part in bringing about these new kinds of engagement.

Autonomy

2010-03-21T13:01:52+00:00

Arriving early at a conference venue (also last Thursday), I discovered Regent’s Canal. This is the name of a houseboat — moored a stone's throw from York Way, just a few minutes from King's Cross.

View Larger Map

‘London has innumerable facets …’

The electric garden of our minds

2010-03-21T12:04:23+00:00

Last month, on my way back down the Euston Road after seeing the window displays at the Wellcome Trust, I had time to go to the Gagosian Gallery for Crash — Homage to J G Ballard. The experience was of overload, but I got the chance to pop back again last Thursday. Two visits certainly paid off.

… only a commercial gallery of this pulling power could manage the loans to flesh out Ballard’s text so grandiloquently; no museum could have responded so quickly, or quirkily, to the novelist’s death last year. The idea of a visual tribute to a writer is so marvellous and generous that one wishes it was as standard as a memorial service or an obituary. — Jackie Wullschlager, FT

As some reviewers have suggested, there are works on show here that seem … a little beside the point. All the same, some of these are striking:

Works with an, at-best, tangential connection to Ballard stand out, foremost being Paul McCarthy’s “Mechanical Pig”, an astonishingly life-like plastic sow cruelly wired up to machinery, twitching and heaving in a tortured coma. This freakshow attraction goes beyond sensationalism to bring us face to face with our mechanised use of livestock, and is a great example of contemporary art’s relationship with impact advertising. I was mesmerised by its laboured breaths, each one threatening to be its last. — Ballardian

I liked … the Eduardo Paolozzi:

Three decades before Andy Warhol immortalized the Campbell’s Soup can, Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005) was crowding childhood scrapbooks with images of American popular culture he found in old magazines, newspapers, and comic strips. … As the novelist J. G. Ballard noted in his introduction to General Dynamic F.U.N., “Here the familiar materials of our everyday lives, the jostling iconographies of mass advertising and consumer goods, are manipulated to reveal their true identities.” Nothing is as it seems and irony abounds. Lady Godiva rides a motorcycle; Christ’s image is profaned as a paint-by-number; flesh turns green and lettuce grows blue. Paolozzi reconfigured unrelated images to form a tangle of references and connections, leading viewers in as many directions as there are ideas, images, and products in our modern world. — Saratoga Today

The artist’s friend and sometime collaborator, J.G. Ballard, described General Dynamic F.U.N as a ‘unique guidebook to the electric garden of our minds’. … For Paolozzi, the modern age, exposed as ephemera, is a necessarily fragmented collision of visual stimulus and influence, and his work is a ‘health warning for an uncreative and thriftless society’. — Southbank Centre

The Warhol, Green Disaster (Green Disaster Twice), 1963 (reflected: Richard Prince — Elvis, 2007):

The Jane and Louise Wilson DVD projections:

Peter Campbell, writing in the LRB (about the exhibition’s catalogue):

On the page facing Allen Jones’s Archway (a sculpture in the Heathrow Hilton, Ballard’s favourite London building), you read that ‘sitting in its atrium one becomes, briefly, a more advanced kind of human being. Within this remarkable building one could never fall in love, or need to.’ Even when the overlap between a work and anything Ballard wrote is accidental, or vague, there is common ground in his attention to the look of things. He saw them as a painter might. His language was precise and often technical: his vocabulary when cars are involved is that of a maintenance manual; his sex scenes look like an atlas of anatomy.
‘I’ve always wanted really to be a painter,’ he said in 1975. ‘My interest in painting has been far more catholic than my interest in fiction … I’ve said somewhere else that all my fiction consists of paintings. I think I always was a frustrated painter.’ He not only envied visual artists, he believed in their power. ‘I didn’t see exhibitions of Francis Bacon, Max Ernst, Magritte and Dalí as displays of painting,’ he wrote in 2003. ‘I saw them as among the most radical statements of the human imagination ever made, on a par with radical discoveries in neuroscience or nuclear physics.’ … In the catalogue Will Self writes of Ballard’s ability to see the nature of what has grown up around us: ‘Bleak man-made landscapes, technological, social and environmental developments and their psychological effects – these are aspects of the dystopian society we all live in now. Ballard may have started out as a science fiction writer, but his texts now read as social fact.’ …
Ballard’s sense of something wrong with the world our appetites and ingenuity have created makes ordinary things – suburbs, roads and high-rises – look different, as they might in the lurid glow of an approaching storm. It is a gift to art that has been appreciated.

The Independent has a nice gallery piece where Charlotte Cripps talks to some of the artists involved. Loris Gréaud:

J G Ballard was not in the future but in the ultra-present.