The Grapevine Art & Soul Salon
Views and Reviews
Fishing the Net: Think now of The Grapevine staff perched silently alongside the netstream, relaxed but alert for any passing program that might be of interest to our readers, fishing the net, netting the fish. Here are our catches, offered up as soulfood:
Artist John V. Muntean on Magic Angle Sculpture:
As a scientist and artist, I am interested in how perception influences our theory of the universe. A Magic Angle Sculpture appears to be nothing more than an abstract wooden carving, skewered with a rod and mounted on a base. However, when lit from above and rotated at the magic angle (54.74º) it will cast three alternating shadows. Every 120º of rotation, the amorphous shadows evolve into independent forms. Our scientific interpretation of nature often depends upon our point of view. Perspective matters.
Sand Animation: Kseniya Simonova performing on Ukraine's Got Talent
This remarkable example of an art form called sand animation is engaging, heart and soul, and will lead you to other examples on YouTube. Here, the talented artist, according to a comment below the video, "describes the war in the Soviet Union, which between 1941 and 1945 killed more than 30 million people, ... every 5th citizen of the Soviet Union."
Frans de Waal: Do Animals Have Morals?
A delightful TED lecture on what we are learning about other animals' kinship to humans.
Dare we think of political writing as food for the soul? It could be, if it all didn't taste so ugly. Here's something palatable:
Don Williams: Obama, Rock Star
From the site: Don Williams is a prize-winning columnist, blogger, short story writer, and the founding editor and publisher of New Millennium Writings, an annual anthology of literary writings. His awards include a National Endowment for the Humanities Michigan Journalism Fellowship, a Golden Presscard Award, the Malcolm Law Journalism Prize, Six Writer of the Month Awards in the Scripps Howard Chain and twice Runner-up for Writer of the Year. He is finishing a novel, "Red State Blues," set in his native Tennessee and Iraq. He is also the author of "Heroes, Sheroes and Zeroes, the Best Writings About People by Don Williams" (New Millennium Writings, 2005, sold out) and "100 Columns Strong, the Best Commentary by Don Williams," due out this fall.
And what about those subjects like statistics that stymied many of us in college? Try this lesson:
Hans Rosling, The Joy of Stats, Forbidden Knowledge TV
An award-winning NPR program.
From the site:
On Being is a spacious conversation — and an evolving media space — about the big questions at the center of human life, from the boldest new science of the human brain to the most ancient traditions of the human spirit. The program began as an occasional series on Minnesota Public Radio in 1999, then became a monthly national program in September 2001, and launched as a weekly program titled Speaking of Faith in the summer of 2003....what we cover as "conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas" drives towards ancient, animating questions at the heart of the great traditions and beyond them: What does it mean to be human? What matters in a life? What matters in a death? How to love? How to be of service to each other and to the world? We explore these questions in all the variety, richness, and complexity with which they find expression in contemporary lives. We pursue wisdom and moral imagination as much as knowledge; we esteem nuance and poetry as much as fact. Our guests as well as our radio listeners, podcasters, and readers span many traditions and the spectrum of devotion and agnosticism. We keep finding new ways to listen to them, and they keep teaching us where to go with this adventure.
Copyright ©2012 Barbara Knott · All Rights Reserved