Not yet, anyway. This video took a lot of work: The makers talk (in an IEEE Spectrum interview) about how they went about making it: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance Aaron Saunders, Boston Dynamics’ VP of Engineering, tells us where Atlas got its moves from …Strictly speaking, the stuff going on in […]
Tag: performance
Zombies, Performance and Eating (study)
“This article examines how food can be used to access the zombie in performance as a means to reconfigure the eating body.” – explains Dr Jenny Lawson of Leeds University,UK, describing her data-gathering project Eating Minds which was undertaken in 2014 in Stockton UK. “The personal zombie-food-fantasies disclosed in Eating Minds were evocative of private […]
Becoming with sheep (art project)
Danish artist and researcher Charlotte Grumm explores (amongst other things) the constitutive relationship between subjectivity and materiality and the mattering and un-mattering of reality. With this in mind, the artist relates what she did in 2015 as part of this exploration : “I, Danish artist Charlotte Grum, connected myself to a sheep for 5 weeks […]
‘Unperformable’ music – an ontological approach
There are some musical works which are, in some way or another, impossible to perform, viz. they are ‘Unperformable’. But how many varieties of unperformable music are there? Professor Wesley D. Cray of Grand Valley State University, Allendale, US, investigates the subject in a new paper for the British Journal of Aesthetics, finding that there […]
Finger-Lengths Pointing at Academic Performance, They Say
A further advance in the campaign to find meaning and importance in a person’s relative finger lengths: “2D:4D Asymmetry and Gender Differences in Academic Performance,” John V.C. Nye, Gregory Androuschak, Desirée Desierto [pictured here], Garett Jones, Maria Yudkevich, PLoS One. 2012;7(10):e46319 “We provide the first evidence of a non-linear, quadratic, relationship between 2D:4D [the relative […]
Sandcastles in academia (part 3 – building and mobilities)
Following along from the question ‘What’s the point of building a sandcastle?‘ we might perhaps go on to ask, ‘What exactly is a sandcastle?’ Authors Professor Michael Haldrup, and Professor Jonas Larsen of the Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change Space, Place, Mobility and Urban Studies, Roskilde University, Denmark, give explanations in their essay […]
Long-term results: Should You Trade Stocks Randomly?
The Ig Nobel Prize-winning Italian researchers who demonstrated the benefits, for organizations, of promoting people at random have turned their analytical weapons on a new target. Their new study examines what happens over the long term if one randomly, rather than systematically, chooses stocks: “Are random trading strategies more successful than technical ones?” A.E. Biondo, […]
Putrefaction of Diogenes Postponed
If you read only one scholarly article about the putrefaction of Diogenes postponed, perhaps that article should be: “The Putrefaction of Diogenes Postponed: Memento mori in the work of Robert O. Lenkiewicz (1941-2002),” M.A . Penwill, Performance Research, vol. 15, no. 1 March 2010 , pp. 110-22. DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2010.485771. BONUS: The Lenkiewicz Book Project centers […]
Musicology: Handel’s “Messiah”, the embarrassing backstory
This performance of Handel’s “Messiah” shows a side seldom seen by the public: (via Jane Tankersley) BONUS: The scholarly work “Performing Messiah as Handel wished” BONUS: The scholarly work “Handel’s Messiah—the story: Behind the greatest music ever sung” BONUS: A more traditional performance, sort of:
Some Men Have Heads Built for Success or for Evil
A new line of American-British research suggests that the shape of a chief executive officer’s head can indicate how well his firm will prosper. The shape also predicts whether the chief executive will act immorally. The research offers a mathematical tool that financial analysts can add to their professional kit bag: the chief executive officer’s facial width-to-height […]