The Story of a Man Who Faked Insanity

By Jon Ronson from Huffington Post:



read the entire article here.

via our friend Richard Metzger over at DangerousMinds

TED2011 prize winner

TED2011 posted a video of TED Prize winner JR, an anonymous artist who drapes large scale photographic portraits across buildings in poor urban areas.

JR creates pervasive art that spreads uninvited on buildings of Parisian slums, on walls in the Middle East, on broken bridges in Africa or in favelas in Brazil. People in the exhibit communities, those who often live with the bare minimum, discover something absolutely unnecessary but utterly wonderful. And they don't just see it, they make it. Elderly women become models for a day; kids turn into artists for a week. In this art scene, there is no stage to separate the actors from the spectators.

After these local exhibitions, two important things happen: The images are transported to London, New York, Berlin or Amsterdam where new people interpret them in the light of their own personal experience. And ongoing art and craft workshops in the originating community continue the work of celebrating everyone who lives there.

As he is anonymous and doesn't explain his huge full-frame portraits of people making faces, JR leaves the space empty for an encounter between the subject/protagonist and the passerby/ interpreter.

via BoingBoing

(monday) Inspiration.

This just chokes me up it's so great.

Why you should listen to them:
The Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra (Sinfónica Juvenil Teresa Carreño) is the national high school age youth orchestra of El Sistema, Venezuela's groundbreaking, life-changing musical education program. To put this ensemble's musicianship in context, the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela is the next step for many of these young musicians. That orchestra, containing musicians from 18 to 28 years old, has toured the world with conductor Gustavo Dudamel and has made a number of recordings on Deutsche Grammophon. The Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra is the next level below, and will succeed the Simón Bolívar.

Their conductor in this TEDTalk is Gustavo Dudamel, himself a product of the El Sistema. Dudamel conducted the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela for several years, and recently was named the Los Angeles Philharmonic's music director. He also continues to conduct other orchestras around the world.

The orchestra's namesake, Teresa Carreño, was a legendary Venezuelan pianist after whom the main theater/concert hall complex in Caracas is also named.

"El Sistema" • Trailer for the documentary film

The film shows the gripping way "El Sistema" functions on a daily basis in a typical nucléo in one of the most dangerous and poorest areas in Caracas.

Visit www.el-sistema-film.com for further information!