We often find the naked form sexy, and sometimes humorous; and yet, most life-drawing classes expect us to act unnaturally serious and professional.  Luckily, Dr Sketchy was founded in 2005 by Molly Crabapple as an “anti-art school”, to cure us of our coyness. 

We find the most beautiful burlesque dancers, the most bizarre circus freaks, and the most rippling hunks of man.  Then, every other Saturday, we let you draw them for three hours.  Interspersed with posing are comedy skits and ridiculous drawing contests (best left handed drawing?  Best incorporation of a woodland animal?)  where you can win booze or prizes. 

The thesis of the article Handwriting is History by Anne Trubek seems so obvious, but yet it’s something that I’d never considered before, despite that 99.9% of the writing I do is on my computer.  Growing up and moving through the education system, a huge emphasis was always placed

on the ability to write by hand – not just spelling, grammar and general proficiency in language, but actually the ability to draw those characters out by hand as a way of making meaning. 

On a recent airport layover, I set out to write a bunch of letters and postcards for people back home.  It was painful: my hand, fingers and wrist ached and my penmanship was atrocious.  Worst of all, I found myself frustratingly incapable of making the words appear on the paper quickly enough to avoid many of them getting lost somewhere between my brain and the ink as it settled on the paper.  I found writing by hand to be wildly inefficient. 

Despite this experience, as I read Handwriting is History, I still found it difficult to accept the idea that we may live in a world where writing things out by hand is no longer necessary.  What about lovely handwritten notes?  What about handwriting as an art form?  What about the personality of our handwriting?  Surely all those concepts cannot be supplanted by choosing a font in our word processing software?  Trubek has alarmingly good answers for most if not all of these questions, mainly rooted in the reality that handwriting is not and has never been about individuality: “when we worry about losing our individuality, we are likely misremembering our schooling, which included rote, rigid lessons in handwriting.  We have long been taught the “right” way to form letters.” 

Trubek also has solid grounds to conclude that even today we still politicize handwriting and attribute characteristics like intelligence to someone who has a ‘good hand’.  She cites a study done at Vanderbilt University called The Handwriting Effect, which found that “teachers form judgments, positive or negative, about the literacy merit of text based on its overall legibility … when teachers rate multiple versions of the same paper differing only in terms of legibility, they assign higher grades to neatly written versions of the paper than the same versions with poorer penmanship.” 

The conclusion of the article is that at its core, writing is about communicating ideas.  Doing whatever we can to create a wide space through which our thoughts can flow unencumbered, or as unencumbered as possible, should be our primary concern when choosing a tool.  Why then, do we continue to put so much focus on teaching proper handwriting techniques to children in schools when it is quite likely that lovely penmanship is something they will never need? 

In addition to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and the heartbreaking story of Henrietta Lacks, the US has recently admitted to and apologized for experimentation they did on prisoners, mental patients and soliders in Guatemala in the 1940s.  In addition to using tax dollars to pay infected prostitutes to sleep with prisoners, officials also did things such as pour “the bacteria onto scrapes made on their penises, faces or arms, and in some cases it was injected by spinal puncture.” ( source) This activity happened

at the same time the US was involved in prosecuting Nazis for committing similar crimes in concentration camps across Europe. 

The ‘purpose’ of the study was to look at the effects of penicillin on the disease but although the infected were treated with the drug “whether everyone was cured is not clear”.  Perhaps it is no surprise that Doctor John Cutler was behind this study and was also the driving force between the reprehensible Tuskegee Study, which he defended throughout his life. 

This continues the seemingly endless dark history of the practice of medical experimentation on human beings, without their consent. 

From 1963 to 1966, researchers at the Willowbrook State School on Staten Island infected … children [with disabilities] with hepatitis to test gamma globulin against it.  And in 1963, elderly patients at the Brooklyn Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital were injected with live cancer cells to see if they caused tumors. ( source)

In addition to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and the heartbreaking story of Henrietta Lacks, the US has recently admitted to and apologized for experimentation they did on prisoners, mental patients and soliders in Guatemala in the 1940s.  In addition to using tax dollars to pay infected prostitutes to sleep with prisoners, officials also did things such as pour “the bacteria onto scrapes made on their penises, faces or arms, and in some cases it was injected by spinal puncture.” ( source) This activity happened at the same time the US was involved in prosecuting Nazis for committing similar crimes in concentration camps across Europe. 
The ‘purpose’ of the study was to look at the effects of penicillin on the disease but although the infected were treated with the drug “whether everyone was cured is not clear”.  Perhaps it is no surprise that Doctor John Cutler was behind this study and was also the driving force between the reprehensible Tuskegee Study, which he defended throughout his life. 
This continues the seemingly endless dark history of the practice of medical experimentation on human beings, without their consent. 
From 1963 to 1966, researchers at the Willowbrook State School on Staten Island infected … children [with disabilities] with hepatitis to test gamma globulin against it.  And in 1963, elderly patients at the Brooklyn Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital were injected with live cancer cells to see if they caused tumors. ( source)
Further Reading:
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study: Another Look at Unethical Medicine
Henrietta Lacks and the Tragic Story of Medical Ethics, Racial Politics and Health Care Reform in America
Image Credit: Syphilitic Diseases by Taberandrew
Path:

The last week of September is banned books week in Canada and the US.  As in, not a week to ban books or celebrate their banning, but rather one to spend time discovering some of the great titles that have found themselves outlawed and to wonder at a culture that justifies the sometimes active attempt to oppress its own artifacts.  In honor of this week, the American Library Association has put together a nifty list of the top ten reasons books have been historically banned (source):

The Top Ten Ludicrous Reasons To Ban A Book

“Encourages children to break dishes so they won’t have to dry them.” ( A Light in the Attic, by Shel Silverstien)

“It caused a wave of rapes.” ( Arabian Nights, or One Thousand and One Nights)

“If there is a possibility that something might be controversial, then why not eliminate it?” ( Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown)

“Tarzan was ‘living in sin’ with Jane.” ( Tarzan, by Edgar Rice Burroughs)

“It is a real ‘downer.’” ( Diary of Anne Frank, by Anne Frank)

“The basket carried by Little Red Riding Hood contained a bottle of wine, which condones the use of alcohol.” ( Little Red Riding Hood, by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm K. Grimm)

“One bunny is white and the other is black and this ‘brainwashes’ readers into accepting miscegenation.” ( The Rabbit’s Wedding, by Garth Williams)

“It is a religious book and public funds should not be used to purchase religious books.” ( Evangelical Commentary on the Bible, by Walter A. Elwell, ed.) 

“A female dog is called a bitch.” ( My Friend Flicka, by Mary O’Hara)

“An unofficial version of the story of Noah’s Ark will confuse children.” ( Many Waters, by Madeleine C. L’Engle)

The American Library Association (ALA) also has a great compendium of statistics on the banning of books.  Some notable facts include that by far the most common reason for banning a book is because it is considered sexually explicit, and parents are overwhelmingly the initiators of book challenges and bans. 

1.  The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2.  The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
3.  The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
4.  To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
5.  The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
6.  Ulysses, by James Joyce
7.  Beloved, by Toni Morrison
8.  The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
9.  1984, by George Orwell 10.  The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner

The crazy thing is, people still attempt to ban books – regularly.  If you live in the US and you know of a book that is being challenged or banned, you can report it on the ALA website.  In the meantime, hug a librarian or independent bookseller because without them many of these classic books would no longer be in circulation. 

So far so typical – apart from the fact that there is no CD here or any recording media.  The music is generated live from a microchip inside the case and output from a headphone socket also housed on the case. 

So 1-Bit Symphony is not a recording as such, best place to check credit score but it is a physical artefact which allows you to experience the production of the music live, just for you.  I use the word “orchestra” loosely but hey, this is art. 

A microchip mini-orchestra is never going to become the dominant way of distributing music.  But, just as quality photography prompted Picasso and other nonrepresentational artists to search for new and exciting areas in visual art, we could see this a creative reaction in physically-distributed music to the dominance of digital files.  Fortunately many would concur that the actual music here is very good too.