Is it real or is it Memex

Going on a tangent about that piece of art which gave rise to some sentences you don't often see, I wound up on the Dimensions blog, reading:

The internet age has elevated the non-event, the fantastic, to the status of the real. Not surprisingly, performance art has thrived in this environment. Shvarts' formal ingenuity speaks for itself.

And then just the next day on the (unrelated) Wordie Errata blog:

Slice is told through two fake intertwined blogs. I'm so up to my eyeballs in what I think are real blogs that this just seemed like more of the same; I couldn't really tell the difference between it and the tripe you come across on LiveJournal et. al. every day.

What I think are real blogs.

Given this, what can I do other than declare this blog decidedly not real? This is not my beautiful blog! I am not keeping it real in any shape or form! I have been faking it from the very first post! Turn off your computer now!

But concept art was not dead

Aliza Shvarts, an art major at Yale, issued a press release that she's due to present a project consisting of the blood and potential 1-2 weeks gestated embryos expelled when taking abortifacients after artificially inseminating herself.

Brilliantly, she now says she didn't do any tests to confirm whether or not there were actual embryos present. Judging from the reactions, this is one of the most successful instances of denying catharsis for artistic effect in a long time.

To really drive the nail in further, consider that embryos this early in gestation are likely to be too small to be reliably detected, so even if there is an exhibit of blood and someone buys it (for a hefty sum, I can only hope) to have it examined, there will be no definitive last word in the matter. She has not only succeeded in getting attention, she has succeeded in making pretty much everyone afraid, desperately screaming things like "GAME OVER" to make the bad thoughts go away.

Via Bitch PhD. There's a blog of the 'Dimensions' journal.

Drugs are behind some of our greatest art

The army of pharamaceutical-fundamentalists marching under the banner of just say no to drugs must be stopped. After all, hasn't the taking — or abuse, as these fundamentalists would have it — of mind-altering substances been an essential help to all truly great artists, even if it sometimes made them seem desperately unhappy and drove them to the brink of destruction?

Will this unreasonable denying the glory of being totally zonked out of your head not end until the art that defines our culture has become bland, boring and completely alienated from the truth that becomes evident when you drop acid?

It's a great tribute to our age that a scientist can still be greeted with more adulation than a pop princess.

Observe the context: They're Dr. Who fans.