Academics From The United Kingdom

"Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond's Orbit is a daring, imaginative and exhilarating work of art. It does not deserve to be pilloried – on the contrary, if all British public art were like this, it would be an age of glory."

"It is almost as if the 49-year-old global Indian was an alien in his place of birth."

"It looks stunning and it does exactly what we hoped.”"

"In the UK, while the arts are the second biggest sector after banking, they probably form less than one tenth of 1% of government spending. It's completely scuzzy."

"The UK has two things, the arts and education, and both of them it pushes into the corner. It's the hugest, hugest mistake. Why do British ministers meet anyone from the arts other than to cut them? Compared to Germany, Britain has got quite a long way to go there, frankly."

"It's a building with a curious, difficult history that is inexorably linked to the history of Berlin, [he said] That's very potent. You can't make a show here without some reference to all of that. And it certainly makes a show here so much more interesting."

"In Germany, it seems that the intellectual and aesthetic life are to be celebrated and are seen as part of a real and good education, whereas in Britain, traditionally – certainly since the Enlightenment – we've been afraid of anything intellectual, aesthetic, visual."

"It is a conjunction of images I have always loved in his Sonnets to Orpheus and this work is, in a way, a kind of eye which is reflecting images endlessly"

"One of the influences in his design for the tower was the Tower of Babel the sense of building the impossible” that “has something mythic about it. The spaces inside the structure, in between the twisting steel, are “cathedral like”, according to Balmond, while according to Kapoor, the intention is that visitors will engage with the piece as they wind “up and up and in on oneself” on the spiral walkway."

"I've never met Ai Weiwei but he's a colleague, an artist. In a very simple way he is heroically recording human existence. All he's done is to record death by administration, death by corruption, inefficiency. I don't even think he's pointing that sharp a finger, frankly."

"Germans have a rather healthy respect for the arts and artists, [could] not be more different from the British perspective."

"Artists don’t make objects. Artists make mythologies."

"I think I understand something about space. I think the job of a sculptor is spatial as much as it is to do with form."

"Do you know there’s a wonderful Christian idea in which Thomas stretches his hands out to try to touch Christ’s wound and Christ says ‘Noli me tangere’ (do not touch me). What your eyes see your hands will always try to affirm. Much of dealing with the non-material is about this confusion between the hand and the eye, the ear and the eye, when the thing that you look at is uncertain, your body demands a kind of readjustment, it demands certainty. Something happens to where you are, to space; time changes. Time, I think, becomes slower. The mystical truth of art is time."

"I’m thinking about the mythical wonders of the world, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Tower of Babel. It’s as if the collective will comes up with something that has resonance on an individual level and so becomes mythic. I can claim to take that as a model for a way of thinking. Art can do it, and I’m going to have a damn good go. I want to occupy the territory, but the territory is an idea and a way of thinking as much as a context that generates objects."

"The idea is that the object has a language unto itself."

"There’s something imminent in the work, but the circle is only completed by the viewer."

"It is more than a month that he's been completely disappeared. It is a true tragedy. Accuse him of something. Give him a lawyer. Let him defend himself …"

"Jerusalem is all about a very special relationship between the ground and the sky. This work attempts to bring the two together."

"I am interested in sculpture that manipulates the viewer into a specific relation with both space and time. Time, on two levels; one narratively and cinematically as a matter of the passage through the work, and the other as a literal elongation of the moment. This has to do with form and colour and the propensity of colour to induce reverie. Consequently, I hope, an elongation of time. Space is as complex, the space contained in an objectmust be bigger than the object which contains it. My aim is to separate the object from its object-hood."

"Red is a colour I’ve felt very strongly about. Maybe red is a very Indian colour, maybe it’s one of those things that I grew up with and recognise at some other level. Of course, it is the colour of the interior of our bodies. Red is the centre."

"This is a terror of a space, probably much more difficult than the Turbine Hall. It's three times the size, huge horizontally and vertically and above all the light is a killer. It's almost brighter than it is outside."

"It is precisely in those moments when I don’t know what to do, boredom drives one to try …a host of possibilities… [to] either get somewhere or not get anywhere."

"The exhibition also includes highlights such as the monumental work Svayambh, which in Sanskrit, means 'self-generated'."

"Is it my role as an artist to say something, to express, to be expressive? I think it’s my role as an artist to bring to expression;it’s not my role to be expressive. I’ve got nothing particular to say, I don’t have any message to give anyone. But it is my role to bring to expression, let’s say, to define means that allow phenomenological and other perceptions, which one might use, one might work with, and then move towards a poetic existence."

"Architects have always hoped to find a way to skip that stage between design and finished building."

"I think I’ve had three or four moments in my work over the last twenty-five years that have been real discoveries. The pigment pieces felt to me as if they were a discovery about an object and what an object can be; how an object can be and not be. Then, of course, the void pieces. The idea that if I empty out all the content and just make something that is an empty form, I don’t empty out the content at all. The content is there in a way that’s more surprising than if I tried to make a content. So, therefore, the idea that subject matter is somehow not the same as content. Then, in a different sort of way, moving from matte surfaces to shiny surfaces. In terms of the fact that the traditional sublime is the matte surface, deep and absorbing, and that the shiny might be a modern sublime, which is fully reflective, absolutely present, and returns the gaze. This feels like a new way to think about the non-objective object."

"Mr Kapoor's work dates from his breakthrough using this medium of hyper-reflective polished and was created in a decade that witnessed Mr Kapoor winning the Premio Duemilla Prize for his British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1990, winning the Turner Prize in 1991 and staging a major retrospective at the Hayward Gallery in 1998."

"It will remain (shiny) most definitely.It will need periodic polishing – (but) it’s there (permanently)"

"Sotheby's was proud to offer the monumental work by Anish Kapoor, which manifests all the pioneering ingenuity in material and spatial possibilities that characterise the very best output of the world-renowned sculptor."

"These include a select group of Mr. Kapoor's early pigment sculptures, beguiling mirror-polished stainless steel sculptures and cement sculptures on display for the first time,""

"Corporate governance is concerned with holding the balance between economic and social goals and between individual and communal goals. The governance framework is there to encourage the efficient use of resources and equally to require accountability for the stewardship of those resources. The aim is to align as nearly as possible the interests of individuals, corporations and society."

"Most merciful and gracious God, who hast preserved me unto this hour, I most humbly acknowledge Thee as the guide and companion of my youth. Thou hast protected me through the dangers of infancy and childhood, and in my youth Thou didst bless me with the full enjoyment, the happy intimacy, of the best of fathers. Be as gracious and merciful then as Thou hast hitherto been, now that I am about to enter a new stage of existence. Teach me, I beseech Thee, to strengthen in my soul the cultivation of Thy truth, the recollection of the uncertainty of life, the greatness of the objects for which I was created. Revive those delightful religious impressions which in early days I felt more strongly than now ; and as Thou hast been pleased lately to permit me to look to a way of life to which formerly I dared not to do, let the leisure I shall enjoy enlarge my warmth of heart towards Thee. Make every branch of study which I may pursue strengthen my confidence in Thy ever-ruling providence, that, undeceived by views of false philosophy, I may ever in singleness of heart elevate my mind from Thy works unto Thy divine essence. Keep from me a vain and overbearing spirit ; let me- ever have a thorough sense of my own ignorance and weakness ; and keep me through all the trials and troubles of a transitory state in body and soul unto everlasting life, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.'"

"I thank God humbly and sincerely. God, who has visited us with many trials, and led us like the Israelites of old from place to place without any certain abode, bless, we beseech Thee, our return home, and mercifully grant that the afflictions and anxieties of that long probation may bear fruit in a more self-denying and godly life ; and that we may have our hearts fixed on a yet more abiding resting-place, eternal in the heavens, for Jesus Christ's sake.'"

"Of all the characters I have read of in history, no nature seems to me so like that of my friend, as that of Blaise Pascal, — with many important modifications be it said. There was the same sensitive organization ; the same intense love of truth for its own sake ; the same fearlessness in facing facts, however they might militate against preconceived notions, or established theories ; the same bright intelligence which to the end triumphed over the exhaustion of the bodily frame ; the same unquestioning submission of will and intellect to the Supreme Being; the same lowly acceptance of the super-natural truths of religion, how incomprehensible soever to man's weakness. . . his was a religion rather of hope than of fear. I never saw in any man such fearlessness in the path of duty. The one question with him was. Is it right ? No dread of consequences, and consequences often bitterly felt by him, and wounding his sensitive nature, ever prevented him from doing that to which conscience prompted."

"I have no scruple in expressing my convictions that you are destined to do something important in science, and under this conviction I am confident that there is no object of ambition worthy of your pursuit, but that of original discovery."

"A society in whose culture the Ancient Greeks played such an important part was bound to have a view about the Modern Greeks. The inhabitants of that famous land, whose language was still recognizably the same as that of Demosthenes, could not be regarded as just another remote tribe of natives or savages. Western Europe could not escape being concerned with the nature of the relationship between the Ancient and the Modem Greeks. The question has teased, perplexed, and confused generations of Greeks and Europeans and it still stirs passions to an extent difficult for the rational to condone."

"Whether the present inhabitants of Greece are descended from the Ancient Greeks is a profoundly unsatisfactory question. No method of subdividing the question makes much sense. On the one hand, one can attempt to trace the numerous incursions of immigrants to Greece and try to assess the extent to which the ‘blood’ of the Ancients has been diluted by outside races, Romans, barbarians, Franks, Turks, Venetians, Albanians, etc. On the other hand, one can point to the remarkable survival of ideas and customs and, in particular, to the astonishing strength of the linguistic tradition."

"But neither approach seems to lead to the kind of answer which those who ask the question are seeking. What they seem to want to know is—Are the Modern Greeks the same as the Ancient Greeks? Are their racial and national characteristics the same? Do the Modern Greeks behave in the same kind of way as the Ancient Athenians, Spartans, and Corinthians behaved? If one looks among the Modem Greeks will one find the equivalents of Pericles and Sophocles and Plato? By their nature such questions are vague and contain within them a host of assumptions—about human nature, genetics and race, the influence of environment on behaviour, and the reliability of our knowledge of ancient history—all of which are questionable and some of which are simply unfounded."

"During the hundreds of years since the glorious age of Greece, various views have been held about the Modern Greeks. Europeans of the Middle Ages and Renaissance times may have assumed that the Modern Greeks were the descendants of the Ancients hut they were far from regarding this as implying any continuity of character, let alone imposing any obligation. To be Greek was to be a drunkard, a lecher, and, especially, a cheat, It never seems to have occurred to the men who issued the calls to join in the defence of Byzantium, for example, to suggest that they were aiding the descendants of Pericles. Nor as Christians did the Western Europeans (of whatever sect) feel any instinctive sympathy for the schismatic Christians of the Orthodox Church."

"Emergence is not really mysterious, although it may be complex. Emergence is brought about by the interactions between the parts of a system. The galloping horse illusion depends upon the persistence of the human retina/brain combination, for instance. Elemental gases bond in combination by sharing outer electrons, thereby altering the appearance and behavior of the combination. In every case of emergence, the source is interaction between the parts — sometimes, as with the brain, very many parts — so that the phenomenon defies simple explanation."

"Derek Hitchins has had several careers. He served as an engineer officer in the RAF for 22 years, retiring as a wing commander. He worked in industry for some 17 years, variously as systems design manager, future projects manager, technical director, marketing director and business development director for systems companies. For five years, he taught integrated science and physics (plus singing and trampoline) in a grammar school. And he was a university professor for seven years, before being obliged to retire from full time academia on health grounds. Presently: author, consultant and occasional lecturer on systems, systems thinking, chaos and systems engineering – contemporary and ancient."

"The motives for conceiving modern systems engineering are to be found, at least in part, in past disasters. Arthur D. Hall III [1989] cites: the chemical plant leakage in Bhopal (1986); the explosion of the NASA Challenger space shuttle (1986) and the Apollo fire (1967); the sinking of the Titanic (1912); the nuclear explosion in Chernobyl (1986) and the disaster at Three Mile Island power plant (1979). He cites, too, the capture of markets by Japan from the U.S., the decline in US productivity and the failure of the US secondary school system. He identifies the millions of people dying of starvation every year while other nations stockpile surplus food, medical disasters such as heart disease, while governments subsidize grains used to produce high cholesterol meat, milk and eggs; and many more. One implication is clear: systems engineering faces challenges well beyond the sphere of engineering."

"“The term (system-of-systems) is being applied to the creation of new systems by bringing together existing operational systems under a single umbrella and, presumably, creating or adapting links and interactions between the operational systems, which become subsystems of the higher level umbrella system.”"

"Architecture is defined as the art and science of creating buildings. Systems engineering may be similarly defined as the art and science of creating systems."

"The Holy Grail of systems engineering, a generic systems methodology has been the subject of the author’s ongoing research for over 20 years."

"The real world is made from open, interacting systems, behaving chaotically."

"The world about us can be looked at in a variety of ways. One way is to see the world as made up from many interacting systems: weather, societal, economic, ecological, floral, faunal, tectonic plate, oceanic, and so on. This is very much a connected view of the world: nothing is isolated and totally independent; everything is part of something bigger, and everything comprises many interacting parts — subsystems."

"A system is an open set of complementary, interacting parts, with properties, capabilities and behaviours of the set emerging both from the parts and from their interactions to synthesize a unified whole."

"In a way, Stapledon took SF to its supreme heights, and there are times when I absolutely wish I could kill him because he has made so much SF instantly obsolete. He's unconcerned with, or plain bigoted about, a great deal; but what he does, he does very, very well...Stapledon is the master of supplying his readers with this raw, astronomical feeling."