Ambiguity kills everything in User Experience (UX) design and research. And yet, the field itself is perplexingly ambiguous, "With the lack of consistency and simplicity in how we define UX, we've stripped it of its meaning and, more importantly, reduced the job to a mere buzzword," as Yazin Akkawi states. For example, what is the [...]
Reading Warhol’s 129 Die in Jet!
This post is prompted by a question my friend, Louis, asked on Facebook yesterday: I've written about the Orly Crash and the significance that tragedy has had on the development of Atlanta's arts communities for Burnaway. Here's my response to Louis and I thank him for prompting me to write this down. Depending on what you [...]
Modes of Knowledge-Making and Identity Politics
Adrian Piper, Catalysis III, Documentation of the performance,1970, Photographs by Rosemary Mayer, Collection Thomas Erben, New York © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin; via whitehot magazine. What follows are my lecture notes for my class on Contemporary Art at Georgia State University. During this class we were discussing Carrie Mae Weems, Kara Walker, Betye [...]
Why Do You Think You Want More Art Criticism?
Andrea Fraser "Museum Highlights" (1989); via Frans Hals Museum It's that time of year again when someone in Atlanta writes about arts journalism, this time from my friend, Andrew Alexander. Andrew asks readers of the Saporta Report to imagine an Atlanta without arts journalism. And, as is the custom, there are generalized complaints from folks [...]
Aesthetics and the”Morality Wars”
Wesley Morris wrote an essay worth considering for The New York Times Magazine in which he diagnoses some cultural activities of the recent years. Morris terms our moment as being caught in "Morality Wars," which he links to the "Culture Wars" of the 1980s and 90s. The NYTM website has the header text for this [...]
Conspiracy, DMing, and Epistemic Anxiety
There is an enlightening bit of journalism about the Qanon phenomenon written by Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins over at NBCnews.com that has prompted me to write this morning. I'm not familiar with the specifics of the conspiracy being unfurled by the Qanon media ecosystem, but I do like a good conspiracy. This is in part [...]
CFP for ISCP at the 2019 APA Eastern
The International Society for Chinese Philosophy (ISCP) plans to host two panel sessions at the 2019 Eastern Division Meeting of American Philosophical Association (APA) on January 7-10 in New York City, NY. The ISCP will be co-sponsoring a special session with the Karl Jaspers Society of North America (KJSNA) at the APA Eastern this year. [...]
On Understanding
Our course is now turning its attention to a simple question: how do we know? In this section of the course we'll be considering responses to this simple question presented by René Descartes (born in France in 1596, died in Sweden in 1650), John Locke (born in England in 1632, died there in 1704), George [...]
Danielle Allen’s “Rhetoric, a Good Thing”
In this chapter from Talking to Strangers, Dr. Allen points out that: In political controversies, there will always be logical arguments for a counterposition, on the basis of exactly the same facts. In this circumstance, no amount of logical argument will determine which speaker to trust. Audiences will turn to assessments of character, and so our [...]
Why Does Socrates/Plato Maintain that Learning Is Recollection?
Learning objectives Analyze Socrates'/Plato's theory of learning Discuss role of noumena and phenomena in their argument. What do we recollect? In order to answer this, we must look at the trail left in the dialogue. The initial premises are that souls (ψυχη, psyche) exist and that there is a dimension of Perfection and Truth (this is [...]