by Kris Douglas   March 24, 2005 To perceive and subsequently reveal an inherent beauty in what may be characterized as “commonplace” requires the observer (i.e. the photographer) to consider specifically the act of seeing what is “there” or simply what “is.” Images that suggest recognition and acceptance of the banal differ from those, perhaps more pervasive images, that confer emotion and meaning with…

by Erik Ullanderson   March 24, 2005 Taken from the found notes of Horace M. Edwards in reference to his text: It’s the not knowing that’s the frustrating part. I realize now that it’s vitally important to use improper priors as a zero-point for constructing maximum entropy priors, and that common-sense reasoning or simple physical constraints would have permitted the construction of a defensible…

by Kris Douglas   March 24, 2005 In his writing on the processes and associations of systems, Gregory Bateson suggests, “when interactions among component processes take the form of causal chains�the representation of time structure is essential. When sequences of cause and effect become circular, then the mapping of those sequences onto timeless logic becomes self-contradictory or paradoxical.” The…

by Jean Sramek   March 20, 2005 �When someone comes to me for self-publishing services, the first thing I try to do is to talk that person out of self-publishing.� This is Tony Dierckins� wry bit of advice for would-be self-published authors. Dierckins has spent more than a decade offering self-publishing services. He�s also written short stories and plays, been a published author (and the alternative…

by Chris Godsey   March 20, 2005 Pop culture worlds collided last Wednesday when the Duluth band Low taped a performance on the NBC late-late-night show . A band playing on a television talk show is not weird. Low playing Carson Daly�s show is weird as hell, like if the Replacements had played Johnny Carson, The Talking Heads had been on Mike Douglas, or godspeed you! black emperor were booked on Oprah…

In the popular imagination, the idea of an archive may well inspire a vision of an enormous room in a government building, filled with rows of file cabinets, presided over by a bad-tempered Dickensian clerk, and occupied by a few pale-skinned scholars poring over yellowed, crumbling documents. This caricature does no justice to the archives of today, with their climate-controlled environments…

by Chris Godsey   March 7, 2005 -Sigurd Olson I�ve felt and thought like a writer, even been perceived as one by other people, since elementary school. It�s not that I�m a genius or even a little bit gifted�I wasn�t precocious and productive in my early youth, like Cameron Crowe, Harmony Korine, or Dave Eggers. It�s just that I�ve always spent a lot of time thinking in sentences and phrases; constantly…

by Jaime Kleiman   February 17, 2005 Steve Schroer is doing everything right. Artistic director of Hardcover Theater, the Chicago University transplant founded the company three years ago after realizing there were no literary adaptation companies in the Twin Cities. Hardcover�s style, which borrows conceptually from Trevor Nunn�s Royal Shakespeare Company production of emphasizes character and…

by Julia Durst   February 11, 2005 Lest you think the healthcare crisis in this country affects only temp workers and blue-vested laborers at Wal-Mart, another population has emerged as tragically uninsured: artists. Often self-employed and scraping by, they face the same dilemmas as low-wage hourly workers�when sick, they accumulate mounting debt, and are stuck navigating the bureaucratic maze of…