{"id":16217,"date":"2013-03-22T23:36:01","date_gmt":"2013-03-23T03:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/?p=16217"},"modified":"2013-03-31T11:39:36","modified_gmt":"2013-03-31T15:39:36","slug":"return-of-the-prodigal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/2013\/03\/22\/return-of-the-prodigal\/","title":{"rendered":"Return of the Prodigal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A.I’m Baaaaaaaaaaack!<\/strong><\/p>\n

A gradual, month-long computer meltdown that began in mid-January forced me to put this blog on hold in order to concentrate on matters technological and close to home. Making a very long story short, I ended up buying a low-end desktop Mac Mini to serve as my main computer, relegating my beloved MacBook Pro to the role of backup computer and road companion on my increasingly infrequent travels.<\/p>\n

Because I back up my hard drive regularly, and have also cloned my hard drive, I lost no data. But it seemed advisable to do clean installs of my applications, while also transferring my data carefully and reviewing it to salvage anything damaged during the month of crashes. A tedious process, though it has resulted in a stripped-down instrument free of bloat.<\/p>\n

\"Mac

Mac Mini<\/p><\/div>\n

Just shy of of 8 inches square and slightly over an inch high, the Mini sits unobtrusively on my desk, its exterior giving no hint of its power. (My wife Anna says it looks more like a purse than a computer.) I’ve added two external monitors \u2015 one 22″ and the other 19″ — to the Mini. This has transformed my visual environment; after 13 years of squinting at a laptop screen, it feels like moving from a studio apartment into a loft. All this space!<\/p>\n

Augmenting the novelty, the Mac Mini came loaded with Apple’s current OS, Mountain Lion. I hadn’t upgraded the MacBook Pro from Snow Leopard, leaving me two iterations behind. Hence I’m accommodating to a number of revisions, some of them drastic, to the location and operation of assorted features and components.<\/p>\n

In short, I’ve found myself rudely and unwillingly thrust into a radically revamped workspace, and forced to use a considerably revised toolkit to boot. Periodically, as readers of this blog will recall, I grouse about the computer industry’s relentless reconfiguration of hardware and software, with the consequent imposition of top-down changes, often substantial and not infrequently unwelcome.<\/p>\n

\"ADC

ADC with ViewSonic Monitor. Photo \u00a9 copyright 2013 by Anna Lung.<\/p><\/div>\n

I think of myself as a creature of habit, from time to time muttering grumpily what my late colleague Richard Kirstel used to announce: “All change is for the worse.” Yet, in grappling with this situation, I’ve watched myself adapt with relative ease to these new ways of thinking and acting. (Certain physiological habits, such as keystroke combinations for shortcuts, took a month to fade away as their replacements became customary.) Fortunately, Mountain Lion deletes no features on which I relied heavily or found essential to my workflow. And it certainly adds some intriguing possibilities, among them Dictation, a built-in system-wide speech-to-text function that looks extremely promising.<\/p>\n

This leads me to consider the possibility that, pace<\/i> Kirstel, my brain does manage to wrap itself around these evolutionary shifts in digital technology without extreme difficulty. Which in turn suggests that perhaps this recurrent process\u00a0helps to keep my brain active and young (or, more precisely, youth-like) by pushing me to learn new skills, to replace old habits with new or revised ones, and in one way or another to get some exercise for the mind. In short, I’ve begun to weigh the mental-health benefits of living la vida digital<\/i>, with its steady reconfiguring of my\u00a0neural pathways.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, I’m in the saddle once again, ready now to ride this blog through 2013 and beyond.<\/p>\n

Liu Xia in Richmond, VA<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Guy<\/a>

Guy Sorman, Liu Xia opening, Richmond, VA, 2-28-13. Photo \u00a9 copyright 2013 by A. D. Coleman.<\/p><\/div>\n

This computer crisis came (don’t they always?) at an extremely inconvenient time \u2015 in the midst of preparing a lecture and Keynote presentation for the opening of the exhibition “The Silent Strength of Liu Xia”<\/a> at the University of Richmond Museums in Virginia on February 28. I bought the Mac Mini primarily because I couldn’t wait 3-5 days for repair of my MacBook Pro, with that deadline breathing down my neck. It all worked out, though I left for Richmond on February 27 with nothing more than a thumb drive in my pocket on which I’d saved the text of my lecture and the Keynote slideshow \u2015 first time I’ve traveled to a professional event without my laptop in well over a decade. (I put off repair of the\u00a0MacBook Pro until after I returned.) Felt naked.<\/p>\n

The director of the University of Richmond Museums, Richard Waller, did a fine installation of the images in the Lora Robins Gallery, using new digital prints made there especially for the occasion. They also published a small, handsome catalogue to go with it. The lecture and a subsequent panel drew an overflow crowd, and went well. (Click here for a PDF of my lecture<\/a>.) The museum recorded these events, and they’ve posted at YouTube the video of my lecture, “Freedom Reflex: The Photographs of Liu Xia,” plus the panel discussion that followed with myself, political economist Guy Sorman, retired U.S. Ambassador Randolph Marshall Bell (president of the First Freedom Center<\/a>), and Prof. Vincent Wang, Associate Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Political Science, University of Richmond.\u00a0(If the video doesn’t show below, refresh this page in your browser or\u00a0click here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n