Category Archives: art
Arts in The Church
A Question of Quality vs Participation
I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about how art in the church ought to work. That’s not really true–it wasn’t really about art, per se, but about the issue of quality. How important is it that we do things with professional-grade quality? This applies directly to art, of course, and honestly, [...]
Music Composed by A Computer
or Where Does Art Get Its Meaning
Here’s a fascinating article about a guy who wrote software that composes music. The whole article is really interesting, but this quote jumped out at me: Cope thinks the old cliché of beauty in the eye of the beholder explains the situation well: “The dots and lines on paper are merely triggers that set things off [...]
Calling Creative Risks ‘Good’
I read, today, an excerpt from a book called Nurturing Artists in your Local Church by a guy named Joshua Banner. This line stuck out to me: We simply need to be curious and demonstrate that we believe what artists are doing is important—to call their creative risks “good” just as the Creator blessed his own [...]
Synthesizing Schizophrenia or Who Is Billy the Kid?
A Review of I'm Not There
Last night, I finally watched I’m Not There, the rather surreal take on Bob Dylan, with 6 different actors portraying him. It was surprisingly good. Surreal and confusing, but good. First of all, I didn’t realize that none of the characters play Bob Dylan, per se–they all play ASPECTS of him, a Woody Guthrie-idolizing kid, a superstar [...]
A Review of W.S. Merwin’s Pulitzer Prize Winning Book: The Shadow of Sirius
I decided a few weeks ago that I was going to start reading the Pulitzer Prize winners for literature and poetry. Every time in the past, I’ve read a Pulitzer winner (Walking to Martha’s Vineyard and Gilead for example) I’ve always really enjoyed them. So I got W.S. Merwin’s book of poetry, The Shadow of [...]
Owning Digital Media
or Hoarding the Bits
Today, I was reading an exploration of solutions to the problem of infinetly reproducible content, and happened onto an interesting paragraph. Tycho, the author writes: I said, a few weeks ago of the whole DRM issue, that I thought “we needed to get away from the whole ‘owning bits’ metaphor for content distribution.” The whole [...]
Doing Design in Open Source
Mark Boulton did the redesign of Drupal’s website and posted recently on the relationship between design (both aethestic and UX) and development (pure coding). I’m going to bypass his main point (I’m not sure I understood it) and focus on my disappointment with one of his points, namely that “Great design requires a singular vision.” [...]
Derek Webb, Art, and Reform Theology
On the way to O’Hare, I listened to a couple Nick and Josh podcasts. The first was with Derek Webb. He had some really interesting ideas about art, or more particularly, Christian art (or the unreality thereof). He said that art ALWAYS reflecting the heart of the artist creating it. Always. This is intresting to [...]
How Haiku Is Like A Photograph