Gotta Love the Google Guys

Move over Brad and Angelina! The Google guys are here! As if providing free downloads of the classics weren't enough, Google has launched entity to invest in projects promoting entrepreneurship in Africa and funding research for clean water. Google has set aside seed money -- the equivalent of 3 million shares of stock worth more than $900 million -- to fund an entity called Google.org. Also in the horizon are Google Grants, a program which provides non-profit organizations in 10 countries with free advertising on the search engine.

More from the Washington Post

What is Art?

I didn't write this, but I wish I did:

"Imagine calling two pets, one a dog, the other a cat. Asking a dog to do something is an amazing experience. You say, "Come here, Fido," and Fido looks up, pads over, puts his head in your lap, and wags his tail. You've had a direct communication with another species; you and Fido are sharing a common, fairly literal language. Now imagine saying, "Come here, Snowflake" to the cat. Snowflake might glance over, walk to a nearby table, rub it, lie down, and look at you. There's nothing direct about this. Yet something gigantic and very much like art has happened. The cat has placed a third object between you and itself. In order to understand the cat you have to be able to grasp this nonlinear, indirect, holistic, circuitous communication. In short, art is a cat."

From A Whole Ball of Wax, by Jerry Saltz, The Village Voice

Today is 9/11

Today is 9/11. When I looked at the 9/11 photos on the Time Magazine site -- images of workers sifting through the tons of debris and personal items -- it reminded me of photos from the Holocaust.

144 rings, 437 watches, 119 earrings, 80 bracelets, and boxes full of identification cards. The rest, vaporized into dust, air, memory.

The Music Genome Project

What if you can have a radio station that plays music that is especially tuned to your taste? It won't just play a list of songs that you already know. It'll also play a whole lot that you haven't. Welcome to the Music Genome Project, where music analysts have catalogued miniscule characteristics and data points of over 500,000 thousand songs. All are connected to an application called, Pandora. When you sign up at Pandora.com, the application will feed you tunes based on the "DNA" or attributes of the songs you like -- whether it is the singer's voice, a certain beat, or the epic sound of the electric guitar. Now you don't need a DJ or a music executive to tell you what you should be listening to. Go ahead, just open up your own Pandora's box.

All Things Italian

Remember when you made art with dried pasta in grade school? Who could forget necklaces made of elbow macaroni or Christmas wreaths made of fusilli, ziti, and bowtie pasta. Little did you know, you were making a statement about womanhood in Italian-American families. Artist Lisa Venditelli took ingredients that epitomized Italian cooking and make them the medium for her art. Woven fettucini became an aging tapestry of the Virgin Mary; sausage casings and lace became a dress form; and layers of lasagne became a shoe. It is as if by using all things Italians, she was deconstructing stereotypes and icons. I never knew pasta could be so profound! Now, if the pasta was cooked, it would be performance art.

Currently showing at Museum of Contemporary Art through October 7.