Life, Death, Sex: Ovid in music

Now I am ready to to tell how bodies are changed into different bodies

So starts Ted Hughes's translation of the Metamorphoses. This great work has not been out of fashion since it was written over 2000 years ago. A perpetual reminder that we are fascinated by the stories of human passion and obsession, as well as exploring the whimsical caprice of gods and goddesses. At the heart of the poem is 250 stories of change, told with a lightness of touch and linguistic depth comparable with the parables of the bible. Stories that take difficult ideas and transform them so that anyone can understand them; human complexities distilled into perfect concentrated capsules awaiting release.

Art History: Back to basics part two

Here is the second part of the test, called Approaches. I may have cried doing part of this because it made my brain hurt. I think it was ultimately rewarding though and once again I used the internet only in an emergency - rediscovering  indexes and glossaries.

Can you explain what the following terms mean: chiaroscuro, the gaze, iconography, the canon, ekphrasis, polyptych, hegemony, contrapposto, readymade, paradigm? (You should be aware that some of these terms are not narrowly art-historical but are also used in scholarship in the humanities more generally).

Chiaroscuro: Italian technical term meaning light/shade, used especially when they are strongly contrasting. Joseph Wright of Derby in his paintings of scientific experiments makes full use of the dramatic effects of light and dark. 

Art History: Back to basics part one

As preparation for further Art History study, I thought I would attempt some questions posed by the Open University. There are two parts to the test, Information and Approaches. I've started with Information. As a further challenge, only emergency Internet was used in the answering of these.

What is meant by the hierarchy of the genres? Can you give an account of its origins and development?

The hierarchy of the genres was evidence of the rationalising methods of the European fine art academies (17th century -) who taught that types or genres of paintings were arranged in a hierarchical order. 

Flexible Working = Business as Usual

At home not eating cheese

I wanted to write a short personal piece on whether my Olympic contingency plan had worked or not. Quite simply, it had. Over those two weeks I started thinking about the implications of library and information professionals working from home, such things as flexible hours, home working technologies and wondering if it would work longer term. 

As background, I am solo professional librarian in a medium sized central London law firm. My contracted hours are 9.30-5.30, 5 days a week. My firm is average in its attitude to flexible working and was happy to look at alternative ways of working during this time.

Although the Olympics was necessarily a one off event and the government were ‘"relying on businesses to plan" to keep London functioning’, my firm felt it was a good opportunity to review various other HR policies, IT back up, disaster recovery plans as a side effect. As it happens we could not have anticipated the success of the apparently indestructible London infrastructure – from transport to telecoms. The firm also stressed that this period was not a ‘license to skive’, which was reflected in our ‘business as usual’ Olympic Plan. Indeed my productivity has improved and I’ve already taken examples of improved working practices to the Partnership Director.