All posts tagged: pioneering

Sonny Rollins, pioneering jazz saxophonist, dies at 95

Sonny Rollins, pioneering jazz saxophonist, dies at 95

Published by Sam Flores

Sonny Rollins, a sublime tenor saxophonist and one of the last iconic figures of the golden age of post-World War II jazz, died Monday at his home in Woodstock, N.Y. Diagnosed years ago with pulmonary fibrosis, he was 95. His death was announced on his website. Rollins survived virtually all of his contemporaries from the 1950s and ’60s, the period in which the fundamental elements of the contemporary jazz that followed for the next half-century were established. Among his peers were musicians such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley and J.J. Johnson. His long, productive career encompassed more than six decades, in each of which his live performances and recordings continually attested to his preeminence as one of jazz history’s most vital, innovative and influential artists. “Rollins has an original jazz voice,” critic Zan Stewart wrote in The Times in 1990, “rooted in the bebop mode, but a voice that has evolved over time, incorporating other styles and other forms as they fit that voice.” His …

World Cup comes to Kansas City thanks to its ‘Midwestern pioneering spirit,’ organizers say

World Cup comes to Kansas City thanks to its ‘Midwestern pioneering spirit,’ organizers say

Published by Sam Flores

It might be the smallest U.S. city to host the FIFA World Cup this summer, but Kansas City organizers are hoping to be considered the mightiest by fans who will be arriving in the Midwest to celebrate the biggest single-sport tournament in the world. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content. The opportunity to be home to the World Cup arose after Kansas City’s steady work to create the infrastructure that makes it the “soccer capital of America,” host committee CEO Pam Kramer told NBC News. Hosting the tournament could help define Kansas City, a population of just over 500,000, in people’s minds as a global leader in the sports industry. “I think there is this Midwestern pioneering spirit — we don’t wait for other people to do things. We just kind of lock arms and get it done together,” Kramer said. “But it’s all about coming together around a big idea. So when you think about great sports moments, we want them to know that we …

Gen Z Is Pioneering a New Understanding of Truth

Gen Z Is Pioneering a New Understanding of Truth

Published by skeptic

The polar bear video has millions of views. Set to a haunting piano score that’s become ubiquitous on TikTok, it shows a lone bear swimming between increasingly distant ice floes. The comments section overflows with teenage grief, rage, and helplessness. Beside my laptop screen lies the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Same subject, different universe. The measured language of climate science stands in stark contrast to the raw emotions evoked by that TikTok. Both contain some truth, but also fundamentally different frequencies of human understanding. Gen Z, the first generation to spend their earliest years in the smartphone era, has developed a fundamentally different relationship with truth. Starting in 2010, researchers across multiple countries began documenting a sharp rise in adolescent anxiety, depression, loneliness, self-harm, and social withdrawal. Large-scale survey data from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Europe showed similar trend lines emerging between 2012 and 2014. The timing aligned almost exactly with the moment smartphones, front-facing cameras, and algorithmically driven content platforms became the dominant hubs of …

Pioneering applied remotely piloted aircraft systems for research, innovation, and learning

Pioneering applied remotely piloted aircraft systems for research, innovation, and learning

Published by skeptic

The Centre for Innovation and Research in Unmanned Systems (CIRUS) is on a mission to expand the role of drones to meet a wide range of needs across many industries AT THE Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, the Centre for Innovation and Research in Unmanned Systems (CIRUS) is a leading applied research centre focused on remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) and is the first remotely piloted aviation training centre in Canada. As part of SAIT’s Applied Research and Innovation Services (ARIS) Hub, CIRUS’ work explores how RPAS, known as unmanned systems or drones, can be used to support a wide range of needs across industries — combining technology, data, and real world applications. CIRUS’ mission is to expand the role drones play in data acquisition, management, analytics and dissemination, while helping organisations operate more effectively within diverse regulatory and operational environments. Through applied research, the centre addresses industry challenges with the innovative use of RPAS and sensors, as well as the customisation, validation, integration and analysis of the data gathered. …

CNN’s pioneering founder Ted Turner dies at 87

CNN’s pioneering founder Ted Turner dies at 87

Published by Sam Flores

Ted Turner, who transformed television news with the creation of CNN in 1980, has died at the age of 87, the network said Wednesday. Cable News Network upended established broadcasting with its dedication to around-the-clock breaking news and shot to global recognition with its coverage of the Gulf War in 1990-91. Ted Turner created CNN in 1980, revolutionizing the way America, and the world, got their news, and then went on to become one of the most prominent business leaders and philanthropists of his era. A brash risk taker, Turner—whose death aged 87 was announced on Wednesday—helped reshape the television industry in the late 20th century. Read more‘Hall of Shame’? White House launches website to attack ‘media offenders’ He also made a name for himself with spectacular business deals, his ownership of professional sports clubs, a marriage to actress Jane Fonda, his leadership of a competitive yachting team and then a devotion to charitable and environmental causes. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio in November 1938, Robert Edward “Ted” Turner III went to a military boarding school …

Georg Baselitz, Pioneering German Postwar Painter, Has Died at 88

Georg Baselitz, Pioneering German Postwar Painter, Has Died at 88

Published by José Betancourt

Georg Baselitz, a preeminent painter of postwar Germany and an engine of the 1980s Neo-Expressionist movement that rebuked Minimalism, and who would later come under fire for his comments about women artists, has died at 88. His death was first announced in a press release by Thaddaeus Ropac, one of the galleries that represented the artist.  Baselitz exploded into the German art consciousness in the 1960s with a formal grit matched by tormented subject matter: his breakout “Heroes” series (1965–66) features bloated, blocky figures balancing on ruined buildings and toppled flags. Through his eyes, postwar German society appeared raw and taut as an exposed muscle. Next came his “Fracture” series, which sees axemen and prey alike torn into strips and stitched back into mythic Germanic forests—“wounded landscapes,” as he described them.  Related Articles Baselitz pushed figuration beyond recognizable form into abstraction—ultimately, and famously, flipping the medium itself: his experiments culminated in his signature upside-down portraits and landscapes, both genres apt for his unique dissection of masculinity. This visual vocabulary emerged in The Man at the …

Timm Ulrichs, Pioneering Conceptual Artist, is Dead at 86

Timm Ulrichs, Pioneering Conceptual Artist, is Dead at 86

Published by José Betancourt

German conceptual artist Timm Ulrichs has died at the age of 86. His death on April 29 in Berlin was announced by the art association Kunstverein Hannover, of which he was the oldest member. Born in Berlin in 1940, Ulrichs studied architecture at the Technical University of Hanover from 1959–1966. In 1961, inspired by the “Merzkunst” (Merz art) of Hanoverian artist Kurt Schwitters, he declared himself a “total artist,” renaming his living space and studio the Werbezentrale für Totalkunst & Banalismus (Advertising agency for total art, banalism, and extemporism). Related Articles “Total Art,” he once stated, “knows no boundaries as regards to genre and encompasses diverse disciplines that serve to get to the bottom of human existence.” In keeping with this philosophy, Ulrichs’s activities included putting himself on display inside a glass case as “the first living work of art” (1961), running naked through thunderstorms holding a lightning rod (1963, 1972, 1977), spending 10 hours inside a hollowed-out boulder (1981), collecting tattoos, writing concrete poetry, and making pioneering computer and copy art. Though his reputation …

Craig Venter, pioneering human genome decoder, dies at 79 : NPR

Craig Venter, pioneering human genome decoder, dies at 79 : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

Pioneering geneticist J. Craig Venter has died at the age of 79, according to his namesake research institute. K.C. Alfred/The San Diego Union-Tribune/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption K.C. Alfred/The San Diego Union-Tribune/Getty Images J. Craig Venter, a scientist who played a critical role in the sequencing of the human genome, has died at the age of 79, according to his namesake research institute. Venter’s company, Celera Genomics, famously began a scientific race, trying to completely sequence the human genetic code before the government-funded Human Genome Project achieved the same feat. He pioneered new, cheaper, faster approaches such as the “whole genome shotgun method” that critics initially said wouldn’t work. In a 2003 interview with NPR, when Venter was asked about how he felt about being often called a scientific “maverick,” he said that it “depends on how it’s meant by most people, but in the context of stodgy science, I consider it a tremendous badge of honor.” Maverick or no, Venter’s successes and provocations made him a scientific superstar. In 2000, when scientists gathered …

A pioneering publication celebrates a century of ‘scientifiction’ : NPR

A pioneering publication celebrates a century of ‘scientifiction’ : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

The April 1926 issue of Amazing Stories hit newsstands in March of that year. The cover art by Frank R. Paul illustrated the Jules Verne tale “Off On a Comet.” Amazing Stories hide caption toggle caption Amazing Stories Amazing Stories was like nothing else when its April 1926 issue appeared on newsstands. Between its lurid painted covers was the first magazine devoted exclusively to the publication of what came to be called science fiction — though its 41-year-old publisher, Hugo Gernsback, called its mindbending contents by a different name: scientifiction. “By ‘scientifiction,’ I mean the Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe type of story,” Gernsback wrote in a mission statement in the first issue, under the all-caps headline A NEW SORT OF MAGAZINE. “A charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision.” His portmanteau never quite made it into port. But Gernsback’s innovation of collecting previously-diffuse bits of literature ruminating on scientific discovery or technological advancement in one place proved to be an idea with staying power. The evidence is all around …

‘We did a seance for Beethoven, to see what he thought’: the playful, pioneering life of field-recording maestro Annea Lockwood | Experimental music

‘We did a seance for Beethoven, to see what he thought’: the playful, pioneering life of field-recording maestro Annea Lockwood | Experimental music

Published by Sam Flores

A broken upright piano, tilted like the sinking Titanic, stands part-buried in a garden at Glasgow’s Counterflows festival. Experimental composer Annea Lockwood swipes a hand across its exposed strings and beams at the metallic clang. “Great piano!” she says, inviting other musicians and the audience to make their own strange noises by scratching and tapping it with garden debris. It’s one of many pianos Lockwood, 86, has buried, burned or drowned since the 1960s, exploring their changing sounds as they are destroyed – though she says “transformed”. A pioneer of field recordings, her work has ranged from “sound maps” of entire rivers to music made with the peace walls demarcating areas of mid-Troubles Belfast. As she revisits two significant works at Counterflows and prepares a new release of 1975’s World Rhythms, she takes me through her radical career from the very start. Annea Lockwood in October 1968. In the background, a burning piano from which Lockwood is making a live recording. Photograph: C Maher/Getty Images In her hotel, she laughs as we watch a 1966 …