& a blog

i will off to ireland it just a few days to shoot a documentary on gaelic games. the documentary is sponsored by an at&t “new media” fellowship and was organized by the watson institute at brown. i’m thrilled to be off to ireland (it is a birthright trip in many ways) but i am almost [...]

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In 1993, Cyan published a game called Myst marooning the nascent gaming world onto a mysterious island whose parts interacted like some sinister engine waiting to re-stoked after countless years un-used. The cover featured a perspectival overview of the island, with a shadowy man falling down towards it. The island was the game, the player [...]

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over the summer, i got a chance to see gustav klimt’s beethoven frieze nestled in the basement of the architecturally stunning (but otherwise uninteresting) secession building. having had no idea before of the mere existence of the beethoven frieze i was totally stunned by the beauty and scale of frieze. measuring at least 6 feet [...]

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Now that the internet has become an ambience, we have become enveloped by it. Just ten years ago, society traveled to the internet. It was something somewhat site-specific, a cafe, a library, a corporate office. At that point, the internet still had a certain physicality- one could move into its reach, and, more importantly, out. [...]

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I have long believed that film students and critics need a real (or reel if you will excuse the pun) tool for critically annotating film. Now that DVD technology has advanced enough, I imagined a program or even a simple plugin that would enable movie viewers to take notes on a film.
The program would work [...]

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the non-profit newspaper idea appears to be getting some traction. from early op-eds in the new york times kicking the idea around, to senator Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) introducing a bill to establish a non-profit status for newspapers, it appears that some people have begun to actually try to solve the problem, not just analyze it.
the [...]

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i’ve been taking an outstanding film theory class with phil rosen this semester. rosen, it tuns out, is kind of the reigning critical perspective on the authors we are reading: eisenstein, bazin, munsterberg, etc.
a couple of weeks ago, in an attempt to both exorcise my creative demons and begin assessing the necessary theory [...]

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its been a long time since i’ve read a paper copy of the new york times. its been an even longer time since i read a copy of the boston globe. yet everyday, i manage to peruse these publications in great depth, because their websites have become better and better, and i am spending more [...]

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doubt is an actor’s vehicle, a film of great performances, but without any real drive to its narrative. where philip seymour hoffman, meryl streep, and amy adams put in exceptional performances, they seem to be almost freestyling through a listless and contrived story-line. perhaps this artificiality has something to do with the fact the doubt [...]

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we’ve all been to the opera, right? we know what it means. we’ve been witness to it’s permutations and parodies. we know what it sounds like, feels like, looks like. we know what it means to issues of class, western civilization, and elitism. we’ve all been to the opera, but we’ve never actually sat down [...]

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