Real 'Girl Power'

As ever, xkcd.

Marie Curie
Lise Meitner
Emmy Noether

Without women like these we'd be all the poorer.
James

Exams! With Guns!

But wait, there's more (journalists) piling in on the VCE exam SNAFU seen first here, with a great quote:

Yarra Valley Grammar student Shannon Dowling assumed she had not studied hard enough when she saw the robot. "I went through a thought process something like this, 'What's that thing? It's definitely a robot. But it's on my history exam, so it's not a robot. But it can't be anything else. LOOK AT THOSE GUNS!' I stared at the image long and hard. It was extremely off-putting because you just don't expect there to be a mistake on your exam, especially one like that."

Yes, Shannon.  I'm with, like, let's ask for people who can set the exam to the standard they mark it to, eh?  (Obviously after the 'look at those guns!' thought, of course.)  But don't worry:

New guidelines governing the use of internet-sourced material in exams will also be issued after an altered version of the artwork Storming the Winter Palace by Nikolai Kochergin appeared in the VCE History: Revolutions exam.

Or "That was embarrassing.  Can we not do that again next year?  There's bound to be journalists on us if we manage a third year running foul-up"...

James

Enhanced History Exam

Quite rightly, we all like to be able to laugh at the exam compilers whenever the rare chance eventuates.  Today we can share a particularly enjoyable example of an exam-board failure, thanks to The Age.

 This is not the correct image, grabbed by a VCAA drone off the interwebz rather than sourced properly.

"THE VCE exam body has been left red faced after a doctored artwork depicting a huge robot helping socialist revolutionaries during the Russian Revolution was accidentally included in this year’s year 12 history exam taken by 5700 students.

 This is the correct image.

"Storming the Winter palace on 25th October 1917 by Nikolai Kochergin, which depicts events during the October Revolution, which was instrumental in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917.
But when students opened their exam this morning they found an altered version of the work with what appear to be a large "BattleTech Marauder" robot aiding the rising revolutionaries in the background.
...
"A spokesman for the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) said the image was 'sourced and acknowledged by the VCAA as coming from the Internet'.
'The image has been altered but the alteration of the image won’t impact on the students’ capacity to answer the examination question,' he said.
'The VCAA will monitor students' answers to ensure that any student who has been distracted by the image will not be disadvantaged.'

 This is NOT history.  It is 'A BattleTech Marauder' - you know, made up.

"It is the second year running that the  Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority has been embarrassed by problems in its end of year exam papers.
Last year popular columnist Helen Razer accused the VCE exam body of plagiarism and breach of copyright after the English exam featured on tattoos by the Melbourne writer without her permission or acknowledging she was the author."

Tut tut tut...  Hey kids, don't lift stuff from random websites for your work, and use 'impact' sparingly.  Just like the VCAA.

James

EDIT:  'But Wait, There's More!'

You're *not* the centre of the universe

From the great xkcd, puzzled that an older civilisation would have got naming rights for much of the world, and understandably puzzled by using relative locations.

(And for those in the northern hemisphere, please also learn 'north' does not = 'up'.)

James

The Museum Time Bomb

Musée des Arts et Metiers as a catalogue and encyclopaedia No.1. Photo: James.

Following on from the Icebergs of Art & Artefact post, I've recently been reading an interesting essay [here] on the role and challenges of the modern museum, by James M Bradburne:

On the one hand, museums that have pursued their traditional educational mission have found that the education they are now expected to provide is increasingly “remedial”—directed at filling gaps in the basic education of an increasingly broad spectrum of users. Increasingly, public funding for museums is tied to meeting specific targets aimed at addressing issues of social inclusion. At the same time, confronted by data that show how limited museums are in providing primary education, the public purse is questioning its return on investment—museums are just too expensive to operate for the relatively brief educational encounter enjoyed (or not) by most users. The cost per visitor of a four-hour visit per year (if the museum is lucky) is out of proportion to the results of a similar investment in the classroom or in the media.

Many questions, much to think about in the context of the museum in society.

Musée des Arts et Metiers as a catalogue and encyclopaedia No.2.  Photo: James.

James

Icebergs of art & artifact

This article in The Age is actually a good general introduction to the realities of museum and gallery storage and display issues. Like the famous example of the iceberg, most museums and galleries have only a small proportion on show; the rest often being out of view, and often (literally) underneath.

The picture above was taken from a staircase in the Louvre, Paris, while the statistics below relate to the National Gallery of Victoria:

"At last count, the collection contained about 67,000 works, of which only around 5 per cent can be on public display in the institution's two buildings in St Kilda Road and at Federation Square."

The majority of large, national or significant collection have the majority of their material in store. A global figure is hard to arrive at, but if we had only one fifth of the world's greatest museums artifacts on show we would be doing much better than the current reality. Some figures of major UK collections here show 90% or more in store - that's less than 10% on show.

Cataloguing is a lot harder than it looks. Some of these artifacts are labelled 'object' because we don't know what it is, while other equally obscure things are classified thanks to specialist knowledge. Consider the cost of this kind of core museum storage across thousands - sometimes millions of objects, and some of the remarkable costings become understandable.

What's immediately obvious from the figures above is the difference between the art galleries (good percentages on show) and museums - ranking in the ninety-percents in store. That has a lot to do with the nature of artworks vs artifacts. And then there are exceptions like the Wallace Collection, mandated to have it 'all out at all times'. (But the Wallace is an all-around exception, being also prevented from loaning anything out, either.)

Another set of figures here come from checking some of the hyperbolistic writings of a currently fashionable writer on the Smithsonian, in the USA. Though most of what the writer puts in his book is tall tales, here the reality exceeds even his grandiose claims.

Some thing are easier to conserve and store than others. Even so, something as solid as stone can suffer from continuing decay from nasties in the air and rainwater, lichens et al. And how many of these church carvings should be preserved? It's a harder call than it may seem.

It is not that there is 90% more 'cool stuff' socked away, but that most collections have huge volumes of middling interest items that are important in the mass, but generally not individually. There's a huge number of other reasons this stuff's in store - including the plain fact that it's embarrassing. Some items can't be on show much (light sensitive works) or for political reasons (a birds egg collection, once an acceptable country museum cornerstone is a hot topic on show in the 21st century).

A collection of Kestrel eggs in the Oxfordshire Museums store. Once not an uncommon collection, from a scientifically minded person, creating such collections nowadays is essentially illegal. Many museums have such collections, inherited or from confiscated by the police. For obvious reasons putting such collections on show needs to be carefully considered, while they also remain an important biological source.

National level collections like this don't store stuff in leaky sheds (or they're not supposed to, anyway) and while the higher levers of security, protection, climate control etcetera are laudable, the usually cost top dollar - for things that ultimately aren't even seen. A (small) percentage will eventually get shown, other items will find a role for research, and a few will be 'deacessioned' a clumsy term for a tricky, and risky, museum task.

What are museums and galleries for?

Andrew Sayers, director of the National Museum of Australia, wrote last year: ''We need to redefine museums as educational resources rather than as buildings where collections are held. In fact, it is probably true to say that collections are seen by governments as more of a problem - the source of demands for ever-increasing storage facilities - rather than the assets they are.''

Some artifacts are of unarguable permanent display status, a few others should be got rid of. It's the huge number in the area between the two poles that provide the museum and gallery challenge.

James

All images by & copyright the author.

An Art Noir

We watched 'The Woman in the Window' (1944) last night, and I certainly found it enjoyable, but very much a film from another time. Directed by Fritz Laing, I didn't realise that it was often cited as one of the seminal films that set what we now know as 'film noir'.

The actual 'woman in the window' is actually in a painting in a shop window, before she appears to the main character - played against type by Edward G Robinson - as a reflection in that same window. It's a bit of a clumsy-clever title for a remarkably suspicious trick at the point the film takes off.

You wouldn't point to it as a genre establishing film on its own accord, and Robinson seems bumbling and out of sorts which may be good acting - or may be seen as a usually scary actor out of place.

Of the small ensemble cast Heidt, the corrupt ex-cop turned 'tail', and now a blackmailer, played by Dan Duryea, is the most convincing, perhaps because he is the only charecter with some snap and dynamism to him; the others often seem like they're sleepwalking. Perhaps the latter befuddlement is what happens in reality to 'normal' people is such a trapped situation, but it doesn't play well.

Whether you like the film or not, there's some interesting takes on it here (film showing 'free will' or not) and here, the latter including some musing on the role of artworks in the period in film:

"Elsaesser wonders if this indicates the revenge of cinema on painting or if the filmmakers are unconscious of the fact that the paintings they include are bad. (Could it be that they can only afford or find mediocre painters to execute them? Or could it be that because portraits of fictional characters in films are themselves fictional, they necessarily lack authenticity? Since the portrait is simply a prop, it does not need to be a genuine or great work of art.) His explanation is as follows: 'the mediocrity of these portrait paintings is less a matter of aesthetics and more a question of ontology… mediocrity being here the effect of a certain void or vertigo emanating from the portrait, or rather its pretence of a presence… it is bad… because of the multiple perturbations it brings to the narrative.'"

A good start at the budgeting point, unfortunately going into art-crit onanism. For what it's worth, and as can be seen in the still from the film (above) it's not a bad painting by any means and a better likeness of the subject than most of the filmic kind. There are plenty of 'great' paintings of people who are frauds, fakes and even actors in role*.

I would agree that generally most artworks in film (where they are created as solo or incidental props for those films) vary from low quality to risible. Other paintings, where the subject of the film is perhaps a painter or their oeuvre, the artwork can be of remarkable standard - I'm thinking of Bratbys in 'The Horse's Mouth'. A film for another discussion, another day.

James

*That's the great Ellen Terry as a truly terrifying Lady Macbeth by a chap called Sergeant.

Technonormal?

An interesting article on the BBC website ranges far and wide, anchored on the concept of what makes sense for the pace of technological change, and what may actually be 'necessary' replacement rates for gadgets and tools. It's very thought provoking, I think.

If technological change feels like a blur now, what'll it be like in 20 years? Night lights, Vancouver. [James]

(Angela Saini's article includes thoughts on sewing machines, the creativity of making and repairing 'stuff' and the ownership of your technology. Unfortunately the dreadful picture selection was done in someone's smoko.)

Much of what the author's got to say makes a lot of sense, but one thing I'd like to have seen is what seems to me to be the benchmark requirement. Personally, I want tools that work, and stay working for a reasonable period of time, without fiddling or demands.

Using Macs, in the personal computing sphere, this has been our experience for getting on for a couple of decades now*. However I recognise that this slow change has been enabled by a remarkably aggressive development and replacement cycle that needs the 'early adapters' our author talks about. The iPad and iPhone and their developed versions may be crack-cocaine for tech-heads, but they are also useful tools and both Bev and I have found the i-tool we use worth having as a tool.

Missing the full command?

I'm happy to take things apart and see how they go; occasionally repairing them too, but I'm not kidding myself I'd ever be able to repair even a dial-telephone, nor am I in a society where me being able to repair one is necessary. On the other hand I'm not interested in the latest tool to impress others, but I appreciate that drive has accelerated technical solutions at affordable prices for many of us. Between the make-do-and menders and the tech-heads may be technonormal?

James - not iJames

*Bev and I both used 'tombstone' Macs for many years, Bev's mother having one before that even. In the late 1990s we had Duncan the iMac, joined by Penny the iBook in 1998 and 1999. Duncan was retired when we emigrated in 2004 and an unnamed flat screen iMac was bought in 2005, and an iBook in 2008 for an around the world trip to replace Penny which didn't have a CD burner etc. Adding to these this year are my iPhone and Bev's iPad 2, both of which have been invaluable and very flexible work and leisure tools. Penny still works, and only Duncan has died, in his case after we'd passed it on.

A couple of great things about the Commonwealth of Australia's coat of arms is that it features native flora and fauna (the former unofficial to the authorised design, the latter integral) and secondly that the kangaroo and emu are both edible. (Try finding a unicorn, and you really, really don't want to try lion or eagle...)

Australian passports. The left hand example, issued in 2001, has differently shaped arms than the 2011 example on the right. The logo below the word 'Passport' actually refers to the fact the document has an electronic chip, and isn't a monochrome version of the Aboriginal flag, although exactly the same layout. The smaller arms on the 2011 issued wallet at the top (back) is different again.

Again the contrasts between Canada and Australia are intriguing in this area, as Canada's arms are essentially a British design with some Canadian additions, while Australia's is so appropriate it actually doesn't use traditional heraldic beasts.

When the Australian arms were approved in 1912, in Parliament, MP William Kelly said:

"The emu and kangaroo are so built that they hardly fit into the heraldic atmosphere, and I think we make ourselves ridiculous when we endeavour to carry on the traditions of the Old World with some of the wild creations of our Australian fauna."

I doubt anyone in Australia would suggest more traditional (and therefore non-native) heraldic animals would be a better alternative nowadays. However, making a full size example of the arms smacks somewhat of the chimps' tea party, but didn't stop Museum Victoria:

In contrast of course, Australia's flag, so vehemently defended by certain conservatives is 25% someone else's anyway, while Canada opted for its own flag in 1965. The contrasts and similarities are worth, I think, noting. Australia's flag can be easily mistaken for any of about a dozen similar designs, and when folded or draped, for that of the United Kingdom. But no-one would mistake the coat of arms as belonging to any other country than Australia. Conversely Canada's coat of arms is distinctive only in its details (maple leaves etc.) while the Canadian flag gets 100% recognition in tests.

Heraldry, eh?

James

University Research

I know this is true, I've tested it.

From the remarkable xkcd.