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Things I like today
Fossils radically alter ideas about the look of man’s earliest ancestors
A treasure trove of 4.4-million-year-old fossils from the Ethiopian desert is dramatically overturning widely held ideas about the early evolution of humans and how they came to walk upright, even as it paints a remarkably detailed picture of early life in Africa, researchers reported Thursday. From the LA Times.Harun Farocki Rodney Graham
“The exhibition H F | R G brings together the visions of two contemporary artists, Harun Farocki and Rodney Graham, whose work has a great deal in common, not least their film and video and their interest in the medium and its history and in self-representation.
Harun Farocki and Rodney Graham present film-based installations reflecting four themes that structure their respective bodies of work: the archive, the nonverbal, the machine (and devices), and editing. Both artists will produce a new work for this exhibition.
In this video by Christophe Ecoffet, the curator of the exhibition, Chantal Pontbriand, talks about the concept of the exhibition and the work of the two artist.”
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
This is recording (that’s BBC copyright) where the Director of recorded programmes talks about why the BBC would record programmes. It’s from 1942.
Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie playing Hot House.
Video: David Simon talks about his work at the TV Festival ("Fuck the Casual Viewer") with Charlie Brooker
From the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival website (that is one mother-fuckin’ long title):
Creator of The Wire, David Simon won widespread critical acclaim for his uncompromising portrayals of inner city America. Discussing his early career as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, Simon will reveal how his first hand experiences have shaped his subsequent work including Homicide: Life on the Street, Emmy-winning mini-series The Corner and more recently Generation Kill in which he adapted the experiences of another journalist. Talking about upcoming projects, he will also discuss the role of the media, the breakdown of urban society and his relationship with the viewers.
TOTAL CRISIS PANIC BUTTON in which Los Angeles crosswalk instruction signs are made a little more relevant
This is from the church in Crest which I visited (ie popped into to take some pictures) while in France recently. I liked Crest so much I want to live there. But, as a character in Bliss and other stories by Katherine Mansfield (an aside: I keep thinking she’s called Jayne Mansfield which is all wrong. Maybe not so wrong - I have no idea what Katharine Mansfield looked like.) remarks Je ne parle francais.
Oh, nearly forgot the thing(s) I like: Joan of Ark (chicks in armour and pageboy haircuts); St Joan (the Bernard Shaw play with Anne Marie Duff) but perhaps most of all the Bill and Ted joke: Joan of Ark as Noah’s wife.
Three things I like: Art Blakey, Humphrey Lyttelton and Lee Morgan (pictured). This is from Jazz 625 that was on BBC4 recently and available for a while on iPlayer. Not a famous Jazz Messengers line up - Bobby Timmons and Wayne Shorter had left by the looks of it - but the tenorist John Gilmore is no slouch himself.
It’s always the bloody cat. It’s Wonky.
