Creators Project: Joachim Sauter’s interactive installations

Update: Watch the talk here:

With installations as far and wide as Tokyo and Berlin, there can’t be many figures as well-versed on the potential for immersive and reactive artistic experiences to affect spaces in a global way as Joachim Sauter.
His contention, that after 15 years staring at screens looking for information we’re ready to start exploring [...]

By Jack Riley | Arts | Saturday, 17 July 2010 at 5:38 pm

Picture the past

The picture library created by Mary Evans, who died this week, remains a beacon of civilised scholarship in an increasingly philistine world. Long may it continue.

By C J Schuler | Arts | Saturday, 17 July 2010 at 5:37 pm

The Guardian, David Miliband and Torture

“Is David Miliband, the former foreign secretary and current candidate for the Labour leadership, right to protest that none of this happened on his watch? No.” Thus The Guardian leading article on “torture” yesterday.
By which of course it meant Yes.
The Guardian this morning has grudgingly and misleadingly corrected its slur:
In a leader yesterday [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 17 July 2010 at 5:32 pm

Couldn’t Make It Up: the Non-Union Picket Line

Michael Ezra at Harry’s Place has spotted a fabulous story in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. A union in Washington DC, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters, is paying non-union members to picket a building in protest against work being carried out there by non-union workers. The non-union picketers are paid the minimum wage to [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 17 July 2010 at 5:15 pm

Will necktie fatwas unravel Iran’s leadership?

And now number 366 of my Questions to Which the Answer is No, asked by Sylvie Stein at Foreign Policy.
It seems that there is a theological dispute between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs in Iran over the wearing of ties.
Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, normally close ally of the Iranian president, said: “I say to him [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 17 July 2010 at 3:10 pm

Are ageing lefties in denial?

Grateful to Oliver Kamm for drawing my attention to number 365 in my series of Questions to Which the Answer is No, asked by Jon Kelly at the BBC:
A study is being used to support the theory many educated, middle-aged left-wingers are in fact conservatives who can’t admit it. Is this true?
As Oliver says, no. [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 17 July 2010 at 2:37 pm

As clear as technical “mud”

As BP suddenly becomes a British company again – the capping of the oil spill at the Deepwater Horizon rig seems to be working – I apply the full weight of pedantry to the The Independent’s reporting of this and other important matters in this week’s Errors & Omissions column:
A report on the Business pages [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 17 July 2010 at 11:00 am

Paying for university: a middle way

It would preserve the best bits of the tuition fees system (the financial link between the student and the university) while also recognising that not everyone who graduates ends up with the same material benefits

By Ben Chu | Eagle Eye | Friday, 16 July 2010 at 7:25 pm

The Mail’s poison

Today’s Daily Mail recycles The Guardian’s latest hard-to-follow reports of British “complicity” – a favourite word with Blair haters of right and left. The leftie moral posturing of the Mail on the issue of torture is hard to understand except in the context of Paul Dacre’s hatred of New Labour, which happily coincides with the [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Friday, 16 July 2010 at 5:44 pm

The Friday Playlist – Bret Easton Ellis edition

Inspired by the devilishly smart online campaign for Bret Easton Ellis’ Imperial Bedrooms (see thedevilinyou.com), which includes a Spotify soundtrack to the novel, for this week’s Friday Playlist I’ve tried to expand the idea out by using music references from Ellis’ entire ouevre (with a little help from the film adaptations of his work too).
As a piece [...]

By Larry Ryan | Arts | Friday, 16 July 2010 at 4:20 pm