Aesthetic Gain

A simple outlet for a soul with an infinite number of questions
believermag: Tao Lin asked the people on his mailing list if, after reading his email, they would “look around and calmly gather 5 things at random and (without thinking about what you’re doing) leisurely stack those 5 things on top of each other and photograph it with a smartphone.” 52 people responded. The result is a beautiful and relaxing and loose and easy and oddly moving and quietly revealing work of art, which can be seen in its entirety here.

believermag:

Tao Lin asked the people on his mailing list if, after reading his email, they would “look around and calmly gather 5 things at random and (without thinking about what you’re doing) leisurely stack those 5 things on top of each other and photograph it with a smartphone.” 52 people responded. The result is a beautiful and relaxing and loose and easy and oddly moving and quietly revealing work of art, which can be seen in its entirety here.

explore-blog:

Is there a biological advantage to being awestruck? Jason Silva synthesizes recent research and opinion.

Got change for a paradigm?

heressomeawesome:

Droids Battle It Out in a ‘Dubstep Dispute’

‘Join this lovable crew of droids as they solve their differences the only way dubstep robots know how.’ I recommend doing so in fullscreen HD with your fanciest headphones.

Imagine if every single argument erupted into music like this, or if we rapped or sung instead of shouted and screamed. Then maybe, war might become just a tad more bearable.

Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man’s emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.

—Leo Tolstoy on art, along with other great definitions from antiquity to today (via explore-blog)

Tolstoy’s Art = Truth

(Source: , via explore-blog)

The New Inquiry: Your Friends and Neighbors

thenewinquiry:

The story, if you choose to believe it, is that Is Anyone Up was started in 2010 by a man named Hunter Moore. Having lost the fortune he won from a sexual-harassment settlement at a retail job, he moved to New York after putzing around in Australia, looking for a life. He did hairstyling for…

thenewinquiry: What we pin, post, and “like” allows us to demonstrate our refined tastes, to declare publicly what we deem picturesque. Part of the pleasure of using Pinterest stems from declaring this shirt, photograph, or coffee mug represents “who I am,” designing a self as Steve Jobs would a phone. Identity is performed not as through a transparent window but through the logic of mediated and curated imagery. Pinterest lets us immerse ourselves in ourselves, awash in a never-ending torrent of our own taste. Thus, the danger of Pinterest, as Bon Stewart has argued, is that it might foster an uncreative, Stepford Wife version of the self based on the currency of the repinnable.  -Nathan Jurgenson, “Picture Pluperfect,” The New Inquiry Magazine, No. 3: Arguing the Web  Support TNI ——> Subscribe for $2 (Image via)

thenewinquiry:

What we pin, post, and “like” allows us to demonstrate our refined tastes, to declare publicly what we deem picturesque. Part of the pleasure of using Pinterest stems from declaring this shirt, photograph, or coffee mug represents “who I am,” designing a self as Steve Jobs would a phone. Identity is performed not as through a transparent window but through the logic of mediated and curated imagery. Pinterest lets us immerse ourselves in ourselves, awash in a never-ending torrent of our own taste.

Thus, the danger of Pinterest, as Bon Stewart has argued, is that it might foster an uncreative, Stepford Wife version of the self based on the currency of the repinnable. 

-Nathan Jurgenson, “Picture Pluperfect,” The New Inquiry Magazine, No. 3: Arguing the Web 

Support TNI ——> Subscribe for $2

(Image via)