Ira Aldridge playing Othello in the 19th century, from a painting by James Northcote Humans have a built-in pattern detection facility that is a key method for making sense of things. Making sense is, after all, an essential survival skill. Barraged daily by a firehose of sensory data, we have to employ some means of […]
Month: January 2019
Bad and Better, Both
Henrik Ibsen Humans are not particularly good at assessing large patterns. We can make smaller calls, like noticing that our train is late or determining that an apple is particularly delicious. But assessing transportation infrastructure efficiency or the overall quality of food production? It is like the difference between weather and climate: there is that […]
Sublime Persistence
Trevor Paglen, Blue #3 (Chelsea), detail. C-print, 2016 Stories about architect Louis Kahn‘s legendary tenacity and unwavering devotion to an idea fill the biography of his life by Wendy Lesser, You Say to Brick. Iconic and larger than life, complex while also doggedly singleminded, Kahn is an ongoing symbol of art that comes from relentless […]