Archives for 2009

MTIV: New Media Design

June 14, 2009 by Roy Johnson

new media design principles, plus tips on inspiration

Hillman Curtis is one of the new generation of multi-media designers – with a background in writing and rock music rather than art college. This is his credo on the process of professional new media design – which is centred on listening carefully to what clients want, and helping them to articulate their ideas. It’s a glamorous production, with big margins, glossy paper, and double-spread photos.

In the first part of the book he spells out his approach to designing and managing projects. He gets his stimulus from magazines, movies, and other people’s Web sites, collecting examples of good design for inspiration. One of the main purposes of this book is to communicate this personal enthusiasm – which he does very well.

You feel as if you’re only a couple of steps away from your own award-winning designs. The down side is, he doesn’t go into any technical detail on how to do it. In the central section of the book he gives examples of the people whose work has inspired him – graphic designers Saul Bass, Kyle Cooper and Joseph Müller-Brockman, painter Mark Rothko, plus film directors David Mamet and Sydney Lumet.

I’ll visit a gallery, buy or borrow a few CDs, see a couple of movies, and study my favourite movies on DVD. I’ll read art history, film theory … and of course I immerse myself constantly in design books and magazines.

It’s interesting to note how the possibilities of motion and the Web has led to these Flash designers thinking of themselves as directors of sixty second movies which must deliver a theme, plus a coherent and complete experience.

When it comes to the technical matters discussed in part three, he hands over the baton to other writers, so what we get is a series of essays from experts. These are on colour theory, design with grids, font construction, and Web page layout. These are quite useful primers, particularly if you want a quick introduction to HTML and XML. He also includes a chapter on usability from Steve Krug’s excellent Don’t Make Me Think, and a there’s a finale encouraging would-be movie makers to try their hands at digital video.

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Hillman Curtis, MTIV: Process, Inspiration and Practice for the New Media Designer, Indianapolis (IN): New Riders, 2002, pp.240, ISBN: 0735711658

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Nabokov’s Complete Stories

September 24, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a critical examination of Nabokov’s collected stories

Nabokov’s Complete Stories is an analysis of the fifty collected tales included in Nabokov’s Dozen (1959), A Russian Beauty and Other Stories (1973), Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories (1975), and Details of a Sunsetand Other Stories (1976).

In 1995 Nabokov’s son Dmitri edited and issued a single volume of Nabokov’s complete collected stories. This edition contained stories which had emerged since the author’s death and some very early works that Nabokov himself did not think were worth republishing. Studies and critiques of these earlier works are being added as a supplement here.

• Introduction

Part I – Apprentice Years: Stories 1924 – 1929

• A Matter of Chance
• Details of a Sunset
• The Thunderstorm
• Bachmann
• Christmas
• A Letter that Never Reached Russia
• The Return of Chorb
• A Guide to Berlin
• A Nursery Tale
• Terror
• The Passenger
• The Doorbell
• An Affair of Honour
• The Potato Elf

Part II – The European Master: Stories 1930 – 1939

• The Eye
• The Aurelian
• A Bad Day
• A Busy Man
• Terra Incognita
• Lips to Lips
• The Reunion
• Orache
• Music
• A Dashing Fellow
• Perfection
• The Admiralty Spire
• The Leonardo
• The Circle
• Breaking the News
• In Memory of L.I.Shigaev
• A Russian Beauty
• Torpid Smoke
• Recruiting
• A Slice of Life
• Spring in Fialta
• Cloud, Castle, Lake
• Tyrants Destroyed
• The Visit to the Museum
• Lik
• Vasiliy Shishkov

Part III – American Notes: Stories 1940 – 1951

• The Assistant Producer
• That in Aleppo Once…
• A Forgotten Poet
• Time and Ebb
• Conversation Piece
• Signs and Symbols
• The Vane Sisters
• Lance
• Conclusion

Additional Stories

• Additional stories

Vladimir Nabokov: The Collected Stories – Amazon UK
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Vladimir Nabokov web links
Vladimir Nabokov greatest works
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Vladimir Nabokov life and works

Nadine Gordimer – a guide to her writing

November 17, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Nadine Gordimer (1923—2014) was born into a privileged white middle-class family in the Transvaal, South Africa. She began reading at an early age, and published her first story in a magazine when she was only fifteen. Her wide reading informed her about the world on the other side of apartheid – the official South African policy of racial segregation – and that discovery in time developed into strong political opposition to apartheid. She attended the University of Witwatersrand for one year. Her first book was a collection of short stories, The Soft Voice of the Serpent (1952). In addition to writing, she lectured and taught at various schools in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. She was awarded the Nobel prize for Literature in 1991.

Nadine Gordimer was a writer who started by picking up the modernist baton from authors such as Virginia Woolf, and she is one of the few writers who has taken the techniques of modernism a few steps further. She does this particularly in her short stories, where like Woolf she uses the genre as an experimental kitchen for her longer prose works such as her novellas and full length novels. In fact some of her shorter fiction is more interesting in terms of formal experimentation than her novels, many of which are often rather long and formless – although this is a purely personal opinion.

Her writing is always interesting politically – and she never shirked the difficult issues raised by the legacy of white European domination in South Africa. She’s also an excellent observer of what might be called the politics of gender or sexuality. She writes about the physical relationships between women and men in a way which is honest, frank, revealing, and unsparingly unsentimental.

Some passages in her work render the sexual tensions between men and women more accurately than any writer since D.H.Lawrence – and they have the novelty of often being presented from a woman’s point of view, though she is perfectly capable of writing from a male perspective too. She’s also very good at dealing with issues of sex at the level of furtive assignations and sweaty armpits – something often ignored by serious writers.

Her most experimental work is in some of the short stories; the longer stories and novellas such as July’s Children are nearly as successful, but her novels have not seemed so tightly controlled – with one magnificent exception. The Conservationist which lays bare the whole issue of the white European in black Africa.

The Conservationist (1974) concerns a white industrialist who farms his land (with native help) at the weekend and genuinely wants to make his presence a positive contribution. But most of all he wants to preserve his power and his privileged way of life – despite being surrounded by poverty and suffering. He just doesn’t understand that the indigenous population are the natural owners of the land, and the result is disastrous – for him.

It’s a marvellous novel which summarises the situation in South Africa in the 1980s – but in a way which casts a shadow right up to the present day. The other issue which this magnificent book conveys is the sense of place which is so important to life in South Africa. The native Africans are dispossessed – yet they are at one with the land. Immigrant landowners might try their best to ‘own’ and ‘cultivate’ the land, but they are never ‘at home’ on it.
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Jump Her development as a writer of short stories is wonderful. She starts off in modern post-Checkhovian mode presenting situations which have little drama but which invite the reader to contemplate states of being or moods which illustrate the ideologies of South Africa. Technically, Nadine Gordimer experiments heavily with point of view, narrative perspective, unexplained incidents, switches between internal monologue and third person narrative (rather like Virginia Woolf) and a heavy use of ‘as if’ prose where narrator-author boundaries become very blurred.
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Selected Stories As her work matured, her style and methods underwent a similar development to those of Virginia Woolf. Some of her stories became more lyrical, more compacted and symbolic, abandoning any semblance of conventional story or plot in favour of a poetic meditation on a theme. There are some stories which make enormous demands upon the reader. Sometimes on first reading it’s even hard to know what is going on. But gradually a densely concentrated image or an idea will emerge – the equivalent of a Joycean ‘epiphany’ – and everything falls into place. Her own collection of Selected Stories are UK National Curriculum recommended reading.
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The following extract from The Conservationist gives some idea of her robust prose style, composed of dense, powerful imagery, rich vocabularly, gnarled syntax, and sinuous prose rhythms.

The weather came from the Mozambique Channel.

Space is conceived as trackless but there are beats about the world frequented by cyclones given female names. One of these beats crosses the Indian Ocean by way of the islands of the Seychelles, Madagascar, and the Mascarenes. The great island of Madagascar forms one side of the Channel and shields a long stretch of the east coast of Africa, which forms the other, from the open Indian Ocean. A cyclone paused somewhere miles out to sea, miles up in the atmosphere, its vast hesitation raising a draught of tidal waves, wavering first towards one side of the island then over the mountains to the other, darkening the thousand up-turned mirrors of the rice paddies and finally taking off again with a sweep that shed, monstrous cosmic peacock, gross pailletes of hail, a dross of battering rain, and all the smashed flying detritus of uprooted trees, tin roofs, and dead beasts caught up in it.

Names in essays

August 24, 2009 by Roy Johnson

sample from HTML program and PDF book

1. Names are always given capital letters when they are:

proper nouns	James Smith
particular places	Europe, East Anglia
days of the week	Wednesday, Friday
months of the year	June, November
public festivals	Easter, Christmas
organisations	British Broadcasting Corporation
institutions	House of Commons
titles	Archbishop of Canterbury

2. Capital letters are not necessary when a noun is being used in its general rather than its particular sense:

Manchester University / a university education

the King of France / kings and queens of Spain

3. Names which are formed from adjectival use of nouns do not take capital letters:

french doors indian ink roman numerals

4. The plurals of most names are formed by the addition of s

the Andersons the Joyces the Frys

5. Where the name ends in s, ch, or sh the plural is
formed by adding es:

the Rosses the Marshes the Finches

6. The following example, taken from The Guardian of 15 October 1991, combines the names of the Prime Minister, two political parties, an institution, and an organisation:

The Tories yesterday raised the stakes in the continuing battle over the credibility of John Major’s National Health Service assurances when they accused Labour of twisting statistics and the English language to sustain its claim that Mr Major is engineering a “creeping privatisation” of the service.

7. Capital letters are also used for the names of:

public thoroughfares	Bois de Boulogne
civic holidays	Christmas Day
geographical names	Straight of Gibraltar
important events	World War II
trade names	Xerox, Jaguar, Kleenex

8. Where an English form of a foreign place-name exists, it should be used:

Dunkirk Moscow Munich Naples Venice

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Narratives in essays

August 24, 2009 by Roy Johnson

sample from HTML program and PDF book

1. Narratives are accounts that describe a sequence of events. When answering questions which concern events in a sequence, you should avoid drifting into merely retelling the ‘story of what happens’. This is called narrative paraphrase. This feature often occurs in fiction, poetry, drama, history, film, politics, or anything else which involves events which take place over a span of time.

2. The temptation to retell the story will always be strong, for two reasons:

it is always a lot easier than answering the question
it gives you the feeling that you are answering the question – when you are not

3. Remember that almost all essay questions require that you construct an argument which should be illustrated by evidence and examples drawn from your study materials. It is not enough merely to retell a story.

4. Select that one incident, character, event, or phrase which illustrates the point of your argument, then stop! You should resist the temptation to discuss ‘what happens next’.

5. If you discover on re-reading your essay that it is full of phrases such as ‘and then he…and then she … following this they … and then next they’ – something is likely to be wrong. Pick out the one point which provides the evidence you require, and eliminate the rest.

6. Obviously, if a question asks you to discuss a succession of events, you would normally deal with them in the sequence that they occur. Even in such cases however, you should keep in mind that merely recounting them as a narrative does not constitute discussion, analysis, or evaluation.

7. If the question asks you to analyse a series of events, you should split the account into its most important topics. Each one of these elements might be identified in turn – and then analysed. Resist the temptation to get caught up into the ‘story’.

8. Essays dealing with history or political issues of the past are normally and most logically written in the past tense.

Within six weeks of the revolution Cossack armies and other ‘white’ forces were already mustering in south-eastern Russia; the Ukraine, egged on by French and British promises, was in a state of all but open hostilities against the Soviet power; the Germans, in spite of the armistice, were a standing threat in the west.

E.H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923: Volume One, Penguin: 1984, p.167

9. Some people try to give a sense of vividness or urgency to their writing by re-casting narratives in the present tense. The result can seem modish and posturing. This should be avoided in academic writing.

Here is the last example, re-cast into what’s called the ‘dramatic present’ tense.

Within six weeks of the revolution Cossack armies and other ‘white’ forces are already mustering in south-eastern Russia; the Ukraine, egged on by French and British promises, is in a state of all but open hostilities against the Soviet power; the Germans, in spite of the armistice, are a standing threat in the west.

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Natural Selection

June 19, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Gary Giddins on Comedy, Film, Music, and Books

‘A critic,’ Philip Larkin once declared, ‘is a man who likes some things and dislikes others, and finds reasons for doing so and for trying to persuade other people to do so.’ Gary Giddins has been doing this for many years. In several collections of jazz journalism (including the recent Weather Bird) Gary Giddins has conveyed his enthusiasm for and devotion to the music and its practitioners. This latest book Natural Selection includes pieces on jazz, but also illuminating essays on silent movies, film noir, TV shows, DVD and CD releases, Norman Mailer, Ralph Ellison, Classics Illustrated, Friedrich Durrenmatt and the Jewish novelist Soma Morgenstern.

Giddins’ firm conviction is that ‘jazz and film have much in common, beyond parallel births, changing technologies, and competing bids as America’s pre-eminent cultural love child. They are resolutely manipulative arts. Music continuously mines emotional responses; movies are structured around emotional releases, whether musical, comic, tear-jerking, shocking, pornographic, or suspenseful. Musical works and movies usually exist in concise units of time, their effectiveness dependent on tempo, rhythm, contrast, style, and interaction’.

He proceeds to apply this apercu to (among others) Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis and the Marx Brothers. Chaplin he suggests ‘ruined numerous comedians who wanted our tears but didn’t possess his equilibrium (Jerry Lewis, Jackie Gleason, Steve Martin, Robin Williams, and Billy Crystal for starters’). The Marx Brothers ‘were grown-ups pretending to be children, pretending to be grown-ups.’

Jerry Lewis (‘Idiot Semi-Savant’) might be adored by the French, but they are mercifully unaware of ‘the sanctimonious talking head who sapped the affection of a generation with horrific television appearances.’ Bob Hope, a comic movie actor to be taken seriously, became dated as a glib and increasingly unfunny comedian, ‘increasingly sanctified as the rich, conformist, golfing buddy of every White House duffer.’ Jack Benny (not widely known in Europe, but a household name in America) ‘may be the only great comedian in history who isn’t associated with a single witticism’.

Various iconic screen stars receive their succinct dues. Greta Garbo ‘reminds us that the cinema is the ultimate expression of voyeurism: her close-ups are her money shots’. A young Marlon Brando ‘gave American actors new modes of being racked with ambiguities’. Of the latter-day Brando, Giddins asks: ‘Excepting Orson Welles, has any other actor cloistered himself in so much fat?’

Bing Crosby (Giddins is his biographer) ‘is the most conspicuously neglected of the Golden Age of Hollywood stars’. So far, so good, but the critical faculty seems alarmingly absent from Giddins’s claim that Doris Day (‘Blond and Beaming’), was ‘The coolest and sexiest female singer to achieve movie-musical stardom’. Moreover, many of the film/DVD reviews collected here are bogged down in often tedious technical detail.

Not surprisingly, Giddins is at his considerable best in jazz reviews – which include refreshing reassessments of Glenn Miller, and Billie Holiday. Miller has long been dismissed by critics as ‘a humourless purveyor of diluted swing, banal novelties and saccharine vocals’ but is now being celebrated as the creator of ‘a sound that clings remorselessly to the collective memory.’

Both Miller (and Fats Waller) ‘humble critical stereotypes and show ways that jazz and pop once enriched each other, and might still’. But reviewing The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, Giddins finds it almost totally worthless, with entries on jazz – ‘which one might argue is the essence of American music’ – only found after much searching.

Elsewhere, he suggests that ‘there is a correct way to sing Cole Porter, much as there is a correct way to act Shakespeare’ and commends Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney and Ella Fitzgerald as ‘accomplished Porterphiles’. Giddins confesses to be a life-long admirer of Duke Ellington. ‘People often describe their first time with Duke Ellington in terms of losing their virginity, and for me it seemed like the next best thing’.

In an excellent piece on ‘Jazz for the Eyes’ (The Sound of Jazz/Jazz on a Summer’s Day), Giddins writes of Lester Young’s single-chorus, 39-second tenor solo on the TV (not studio) version of Fine and Mellow, that it is ‘so sublimely constructed that after you’ve heard it a couple of times, it becomes part of your nervous system, like the motor skills required to ride a bicycle’. As for the vocalist on this number, Billie Holliday: ‘if it is possible for two people to make love while one partner is playing the tenor saxophone 10 feet away from the other, that is what Young and Holliday were doing.’ And ‘Billie’s pantomime of pure pleasure embodied a sensual appreciation of the music in a way no actor has ever succeeded in doing’.

Jazz on a Summer’s Day also had its share of ‘indelible jazz images: Anita O’Day ‘in a feathered hat and black sheath dress with white fringes, thrusting her glottis at Sweet Georgia Brown‘; trombonist Jack Teagarden ‘grinning as though he’d crashed an unexpected party while Chuck Berry rocks Sweet Little Sixteen‘, and Louis Armstrong recounting his unlikely answer to the Pope, when asked if he had children – ‘No, Daddy, but we’re still wailing’.

Giddins is particularly mischievous at posing and then answering questions. One example must suffice. In a review of the movie White Palace, Giddins ponders the prevalence of oral sex in recent films and asks: ‘What’s with all these blowjobs?’ His answer: ‘They represent Hollywood’s latest code for breaking the ice, for reaching out and touching someone, for initiating a sincere and meaningful relationship. No more kissing on the mouth, no more ‘What was your major?’ Just cut to the fly, followed by a shot of an actor faking instantaneous ecstasy.’ Partly autobiographical, Natural Selection is also an artful work of ‘intelligent design’. Giddins persuades us to revisit some of the movies and books, and all of the jazz performances he so obviously enjoyed reviewing – and sharing.

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Gary Giddins, Natural Selection: Gary Giddins on Comedy, Film, Music, & Books, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp.432 , ISBN: 019517951X

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Nerds 2.0.1 – A Brief History of the Internet

June 13, 2009 by Roy Johnson

TV programmes of interviews with Internet personalities

Robert Cringely’s Triumph of the Nerds won legions of computer-skeptical and computer-naive viewers with its mix of minutiae and hip techniques. Going one step further into the digital maze, Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet operates as a sequel of sorts to the surprise docu-hit. Just as its precursor chronicled the rise of empires built on computer software, Nerds 2.0.1 collects interviews from key players in the development of the Internet.

Fashionably hip in its visual feel, the film begins by amassing data on the net’s crowning, collaborative irony: conceived in the Pentagon during the counterculture’s smokiest high point by members–dare it be said–of the military industrial complex, the Net developed on the axis of university research networks and Deadhead (as in the Grateful Dead) electronic bulletin boards.

Much of the rest has become history, but Internet and computer industry pundit Robert X. Cringley makes the narrative a jumping, attractive embrace of being a nerd. Interviews with Bill Gates, Mark Andreesen, and Steve Case make these three hours (three tapes slipcased in a nice box) fly by.

This video series is an excellent addition to the material available on computer history. It moves at a fast pace and provides interviews with many of the key people in the industry. It does not cover every aspect of computer history, but it does fill in some gaps that other references missed. I encourage anyone interested in computer history to add this video series to their library. Excellent footage, nicely put together.

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Robert X Cringley, Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet, VHS Video (3 tapes) ASIN: 6305128235

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Netbooks – The Missing Manual

October 3, 2009 by Roy Johnson

small, portable, light, and cheap

I bought my first netbook just after the first Asus EeePCs were launched. At that time they were in short supply. Now the shops are full of them. You’re spoilt for choice. But what’s the difference between a netbook and a notebook (you might ask)? Well, netbooks are smaller, cheaper, and many of them use open source software such as Linux operating systems and the Open Office suite which does away with the need for (expensive) Microsoft programs.

They are also designed to be low on power consumption, and they don’t come with floppy or CD drives: you use USB ports instead. They have automatic Internet connection, and assume that you’ll be emailing, downloading software, and maybe even storing your work on the Web.

But one thing’s for certain: they won’t come with any user manual. That’s why this best-selling series from O’Reilly exists – to plug the gap left by equipment manufacturers who can’t keep up with support for their own product development.

Because netbooks have been such a huge success, versions using Windows have rapidly appeared, to cater for people who don’t want to tangle with new software. Fortunately, Jude Biersdorf’s book takes both Windows and Linux versions of netbooks into account. She shows you how to choose a netbook that will deliver what you require, then how to set it up using either of the most popular operating systems.

Even experienced computer users may not be comfortable in dealing with all these novelties all at once. She’s quite right – you’ve got to consider any shortcomings against the big advantages these devices offer. The keyboard might be a bit cramped, but the whole thing weighs just three pounds! Mine fits comfortably in my overcoat pocket.

If you’re new to Linux (she uses the popular Ubuntu version) there are full instructions on finding your way around. It’s very simple, because everything is based on big, clickable icons. The fact is that, even though open source software is completely free, it looks very much like Windows and Apple Mac when viewed on screen. All these interfaces are eventually starting to look the same.

She then deals with connecting peripherals. Your netbook won’t even have a mouse – so there are full instructions, and tips for downloading the latest drivers and software.

That’s where netbooks are really good : they update themselves all the time, and two clicks takes you to the latest version of whatever you want.

There’s a section on connecting to the Internet. You might not even need this. Mine recognised my home broadband as soon as I switched it on, and it’s never been a problem since.

But just in case you’re a first time user, she shows you how to set up an email account, how to make it secure, and how to navigate the web using a browser – Firefox and Google Chrome are recommended.

When it comes to standard use of computer software, most users will require a word-processor, spreadsheet, PowerPoint-type presentation – and so on – which are collectively called an office suite. She shows you how to deal with the stripped down version of the Microsoft Office Suite – which costs between $100and $150. I don’t know why she bothered, because she then goes on to deal with Open Office and Google Docs – both of which are free. You can even store your information on line with Google, which is a cost-free form of back-up.

[Why are all these services free? Because storage space price is plummeting, and these companies want you as a potential customer on their books.]

If you haven’t already got one, she shows you how to set up an email address and make full use of your browser to download extra tools – with the emphasis very much on free I was glad to note.

She also covers all the instant messaging software options and the social networking services, free phone calls, and picture-sharing. In fact there’s a whole section on how to edit and enhance your pictures – plus the same thing for MP3 and other sound files.

There’s also plenty on security, maintenance, upgrading, troubleshooting, and a really handy selection of online resources. So if your’re planning to buy or use a netbook, or if you want a user-manual to keep handy – this one will do the trick very nicely.

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J.D.Biersdorfer, Netbooks: the missing manual. Sebastopol (CA) O’Reilly, 2009, pp.320, ISBN 0596802234

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New Hart’s Rules

July 29, 2009 by Roy Johnson

style and text-presentation rules for writers and editors

New Hart’s Rules started its life as the house style rule book for editorial principles at Oxford University Press. It was written by Horace Henry Hart who was Printer to the Press, and first published in 1893 as quite a slim volume. But it has become so popular ever since that it grew in size and eventually reached a thirty-ninth edition. Now it has been enlarged even further and completely re-cast in a new format, adapted from The Oxford Guide to Style, but retaining much of the content and the spirit of the old Hart’s Rules.

The guide deals with the typographic details of assembling writing ready for its appearance in printed form. This includes punctuation, capitalization, italicization, abbreviations, and the presentation of numbers. The latest edition also has completely new chapters covering law and legal references, tables, illustrations, indexing, plus copyright and other publishing responsibilities. Each chapter has been given far more illustrative examples.

For instance, my edition of the old 39th edition has less than 200 pages: this new version has more than 400. The beauty of this book – in common with other style guides which have become classics – is that it quickly establishes the general rule, then all further examples are the difficult, awkward, and obscure cases. For those people endlessly puzzled by spelling-checkers, there is an explanation of the rules governing -ise and -ize. OUP have always favoured -ize, so surprisingly it’s criticize yet compromise, and agonize yet televise.

The principles underlying the need for consistent conventions remain as important as ever. The presentation of money, time, dates, and even the points of the compass are included, as well as temperature, Latin plant and animal names, capitalization of titles, word breaks (hyphenation) and such wonderfully arcane details as the need for a possessive ‘s’ in Roman following an italicized title – as in the Dreadnought‘s crew.

There’s an explanation of proof correction (with examples) and a guide to punctuation, symbols, and the presentation of scientific equations and formulae. Then in the centre of the book there is a section dealing with the alternate spellings of ‘difficult’ words (colander, haemorrhoids, skiing) then a very useful explanation of the rules on the tricky issue of doubling consonants at word endings (billeted, compelled, travelling) and plurals formed in non-English words (bacilli, errata, matrices).

Hart then takes on the topic of language change in listing those words which have progressed from compounds to single words (a process which is usually faster in the US than the UK) – antifreeze, lifetime, tonight – though it is hard for a book of this type to keep up with contemporary developments in this respect. Do we write word processor, word-processor, or wordprocessor, for instance? However, Hart has no hesitation in recommending birth-rate, copy-book, and test-tube.

Guidance on how to deal with foreign languages include sections on French, German, Italian, and Russian – plus Welsh, Dutch and Afrikaans which have been added in the latest edition.

The latter part of the book includes a complete checklist of topics to be covered in preparing a book for publication: text, footnotes, illustrations, bibliographies, tables, and even how to deal with plays and poetry. And finally, since it’s quite hard to locate items in such a tightly-compacted work of reference, there’s an excellent index.

This is a source for anyone interested in the preparation of text for print. If you have a research paper, an article, or a book which you hope will see light of day as a publication, then do yourself a favour and buy this marvelous guide to the small details which make all the difference between an amateurish and a properly edited piece of writing.

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New Hart’s Rules, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp.417, ISBN: 0198610416

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New Media in Late 20th-century Art

July 17, 2009 by Roy Johnson

new forms of multimedia, performance, and digital art

There’s nothing like discussing ‘contemporary’ art forms for making you realise we’re now in the twenty-first century. When you look at developments which seem quite recent (particularly related to the Internet) you suddenly realise that these were in the LAST CENTURY!! – (to sound for a moment a little like Tom Wolfe). The latter half of the nineteen hundreds saw artists breaking up the boundaries of aesthetic genres and introducing all sorts of new technology into their work – as well as mixing disparate activities into one experience. New Media in Late 20th-century Art is a survey of the new media which evolved roughly in the period 1950—2000.

It covers the mixing of media and performance, video art, video installations, and the new forms of digital art. Starting from the notion that traditional Art has been a painting in two dimensions, Michael Rush looks at the extensions made by the twentieth century. It’s a beautifully illustrated book, with picture captions which explain the significance of each medium.

After an introductory consideration of the inclusion of Time, which is made possible by film, he passes into the early stages of media and performance. This covers the multimedia happenings which started with events organised by the painter Robert Rauschenberg, the composer John Cage, and the choreographer Merce Cunningham organised in the 1960s. These mixed together various combinations of film, acting, music, and dance, and there began the widespread use of video film around the same time.

Performances range from video films of ultra-minimalist events such as hand gestures or people asleep, to live broadcasts of people commenting whilst under local anaesthetic on their own cosmetic surgery operations. Yes, it’s true.

There’s a lot of combining performance art with video recordings of it. Artists put themselves into embarrassing and even dangerous situations and record the consequences as a work of ‘art’. The problem for a lot of the art works created between the 1960s an 1980s is that there is little easily recoverable record of them. On the plus side, there are lots and lots of artists represented here – and their work is illustrated in colour with stills from exhibitions and ‘installations’.

The general problem with the survey is that most of its emphasis is on the content of the so-called art works, rather than the art itself. There is nothing new in an artist putting her adolescent traumas of sexual identity into a work of art just because it’s in the form of a video film.

The older artist to whom most repeated reference is made in the context of cross-boundary works is Marcel Duchamp, and the contemporary names which come up most frequently are Naim June Paik and Bill Viola, both installation artists. Most of these works seem to add up to multiple projections, using TV monitors or giant split screens

Bill Viola – ‘Acceptance’ 2008

A section on digital art attempts to bring things up to date with digitally altered photography and virtual reality programs. But in fact it’s very difficult to keep up with the developments of digital multimedia. I think the publishers will do Michael Rush a favour by publishing a second edition which allows him to add material on the Flash and Shockwave movies which are now sweeping the Web.

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Michael Rush, New Media in Late 20th-Century Art, London: Thames and Hudson, revised edition 2005, pp.248, ISBN: 0500203784

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