Over 800 technology obsessed “futurists” — some with bleached ’80s rocker hair, long ponytails, and rainbow socks with cowboy boots — gathered this weekend at the 92nd Street Y to discuss the Singularity: a point in time in the future when technology progresses so rapidly that man and machine become one and machine intelligence (artificial intelligence or AI) may surpass human intelligence. Michael Vassar, the president of the Singularity Institute, says once the Singularity happens, nothing will be the same: “Humans living in the post-Singularity world will be as powerless as jellyfish are in today’s world.”
Ron Arad, whose show Ron Arad: No Discipline opened at the MoMA in August, recently gave a talk at the 92nd Street Y as a part of their “Dialogues with Design Legends” series. While the dialogue in question was meant to be between moderator Daniella Ohad-Smith and Arad, the talk quickly became an open forum between Arad and his audience. From the moment he walked on stage in a hat that looked like a stiff milkmaid’s bonnet and opened his lecture with “Any questions?,” it was a free-for-all. Read More »
Bernard Schwartz directs the 92Y Poetry Center, and chief among his vocational duties is putting together 92Y‘s legendary lineup of literary readings and events each year. Just as diehard Harry Potter fans lined up for midnight showings of Half-Blood Prince earlier this summer, 92Y tickets are coveted and eagerly awaited among lit nerds. This year’s agenda includes poet Charles Simic, novelist A.S. Byatt, Sam Shepard, John Irving, and other assorted writerly heavy-hitters. Tickets go on sale today, August 3, and cost $10 for those age 35 and younger. After the jump, Bernard Schwartz recalls some of the center’s highlights, invokes a maritime metaphor, and tells us what we can expect this season. Read More »
Free speech and social equality champion Ron English’s Abraham Obama is arguably one of the most recognizable images of the 2008 presidential campaign — second only to his friend Shepard Fairey’s iconic HOPE posters. But did Fairey take his work on a ten-city tour while shooting a documentary about the experience? Nope. English did, though, and the resulting film is like a weird mix of Jackass and a who’s-who of street art’s elite. After the jump, English speaks with Flavorpill about why Boston hates street art, how little money artists really make, and what he’s planning to do with a bunch of paint and 20 cows. Read More »
It’s no longer National Poetry Month, but that doesn’t mean we’re willing to abandon the genre. Tonight at the 92Y, the four winners of the 2009 92nd Street Y “Discovery” Poetry Contest — Bridget Lowe; Jynne Dilling Martin; Jeffrey Schultz; and Annabelle Yeeseul Yoo — who were chosen from a pool of over 900 submissions, will read from their work. (The annual award, a collaboration with the Boston Review coordinated by editor Timothy Donnelly, “recognizes and celebrates the achievements of poets who have no yet published a first book.”) To help Flavorpill prep for the evening, past Discovery winner/contest co-judge Mary Jo Bang — whose most recent book, Elegy, earned this rave from the New York Times — hopped on the phone with us to chat about how poetry is taught in schools, why it deserves to be as prolific as pop music, and what this award means for the four lucky recipients. Read More »
Doree Shafrir is an editor at the New York Observer. If you regularly read this site, you might’ve seen mention of one of her recent pieces, “The Hipster Grifter.” Jessica Grose is Managing Editor for Double X, Slate’s soon-to-be site for women. (For now you can find her on The XX Factor blog.) This my long-winded way of saying that if ever there were two women destined to team up and create virtual lightning in a bottle, it’s them. Which is exactly what happened when they launched PostcardsFromYoMomma.com. Read More »
Perhaps Mike Reiss looked like a cartoon to me when I saw him speak last Friday night because when I think Reiss, I think The Simpsons. After all, the man has been a contributing writer to the show for 20 years, even spearheading the comedic touch for the third and fourth seasons. Or it could be the fact that he’s had a character based on his likeness. In Season Two, Lisa falls in love with her substitute teacher Mr. Bergstrom. When Reiss insisted that the animators give the character some kind of deformity, “they made him look like me,” he recalled. Read More »
In her new book, Susie Orbach probes the mind/body dichotomy, and the cultural phenomena and technological developments that have made the issue much more complicated since we took Women’s Studies 101. Read our thoughts after the jump, and catch Orbach in conversation with Gina Kolata tonight at the 92nd Street Y if you live in New York.
Orbach, who wrote Fat is a Feminist Issue and advised former bulimic Princess Diana, presents examples of individuals whose physical afflictions are rooted in various childhood traumas. These examples make it clear that our psychology affects our bodies as much as our surroundings, and that it’s almost impossible not to pass perverted versions of your own body issues onto your offspring. Sweet!
Psst: We hear from a very reliable little birdie that there are still a handful of tickets to Reasons to Be Neil LaBute at the 92YTribeca tomorrow night, which is where we’ll be, front and center. This is the most recent reason why we love Neil LaBute. Well, that and the fact that in spite of the fact that he’s busy gearing up for the upcoming Broadway production of his play reasons to be pretty, he agreed to talk to us on the phone tomorrow for a few precious minutes.
Neil LaBute! Ah! We’re not going to be able to sleep tonight.
By the by, f you’ve got any questions you think we should throw his way, be sure to leave them in the comments. And if you’re planning to be at the 92YTribeca, do let us know. We hate sitting at these things by ourselves.
