Thanks for The Tanks
Last night, The Tanks opened at Tate Modern. The converted oil tanks are now devoted to showing time based media such as performance, film, and sound works. This marks a pivotal moment for contemporary art, as the biggest space devoted to this kind of media. Artists must respond to the spaces they are given to show in, so as galleries get larger, so do the artworks. The Tanks will allow artists to realize ambitious works in ephemeral media to one of the largest art audiences in the world.
They were designed by Herzog & de Meuron who also designed the pavilion at the Serpentine this year with Ai Weiwei.
The Telegraph: “The Tanks, Tate Modern, review”
Marclay’s Record Collage
Christian Marclay has explored the fusion of fine art and audio cultures, attempting to visualize sound or change it from audio format to visual formats such as sculpture, collage, installation, photography and video. For his ‘Body Mix’ series (1991-92), he stitched together album covers into works to create strange phantasms of music and culture – such as Deutsche Grammaphon conductors with the slender legs of Tina Turner – that bring to mind Surrealist ‘Exquisite Corpses’. This transformation of musical instruments or objects to create visual puns is an essential component of Marclay’s work.
“I’m interested in the sounds that people don’t want.” - Christian Marclay
Marclay began his exploration into sound and art through performances with turntables in 1979, while he was still a student. Early work includes a series of ‘Recycled Records’ (1980-86), fragmented and reassembled vinyl records that became hybrid objects that could be played, replete with abrupt leaps in tone and sound.
New MacBook Pro brings together all the best features of Apple products in laptop
The new MacBook Pro is out in the world, featuring incredible screen resolution on a screen that packs over 5 million pixels into fifteen inches. The eye-popping viewing experience is akin to the iPhone or iPad, but this is the first retina display available on a computer. Mashable has taken photos of some images side by side on an old Macbook and the new.
The downside is that software has not yet caught up with Apple’s screen innovation, so only classic Apple programs will reflect the improvements - iPhoto, Safari, Final Cut, iMovie, etc. but updates are on the way for Chrome and Kindle.
Apple has also introduced another significant but less apparent big change in computer technology. Hard drives have been completely replaced with flash drives. Flash drives have many benefits, they are much more durable, because there are no mechanical moving parts. They use less battery and are much smaller, allowing computers to become thinner. Flash drives were used for the Macbook Air. They are more expensive than hard drives, but this is the first time that Apple has been able to balance the benefits with the price tag, bringing you the first fully functioning laptop without a hard drive.
For those sonically inclined, the dual stereo speakers and double microphones sound amazing. Apple designers say that two mics are better than one for cancelling out white noise more effectively, making for a better Skype chatting and also making way for Mac OS Mountain Lion talk to type dictation software.
NYTimes: “MacBook, a Point Shy of Perfect”
Mashable: “Retina MacBook Destroys Regular MacBook: 15 Eye-Popping Examples”
Wired: “Hands-On with the super slim MacBook Pro with retina display”
