MARIA DUARTE, JAMES WALSH and ANDY HEDGECOCK review The Invite, My Father’s Island, Nirvanna: the Band, the Show, the Movie, and Oh My Goodness!
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The genius concealed in the non-human realm
GAVIN O’TOOLE recommends a strangely reassuring book, grounded in exploring our alienation and the creative possibilities inherent in embracing cognitive diversity
Recognising alternative intelligences in the expansive taxonomy of life
[John/CC]
PAUL DONOVAN is chilled by the contemporary resonance of Harper Lee’s coming of age tale amidst racism and white supremacy in this excellent production
GEOFF BOTTOMS recommends the unashamedly light-hearted escapism on offer in this stage version of the 1963 film
Full of mysterious religious references and radical sound design, the Scottish duo’s new offering is candidate for album of the year, suggests SIMON DUFF
MARY CONWAY revels in a powerful reminder that human lives are not defined by physical perfection
PAUL DONOVAN recommends the fine performances in this account of the pre-war meeting between the US president and the British king
TECLYN AROD relishes an intimate celebration of jazz improvisation that mixes local and national musicians
Ways of Being: Beyond Human Intelligence
James Bridle
Allen Lane, £20
IT IS impossible not to be enthused by James Bridle’s epic vision of a future in which digital technology is repurposed to reconcile a blinkered, supremacist human intelligence with the “more-than-human” aptitudes of animals and plants.
Every page written by this original thinker bubbles like primordial soup with optimism about the possibilities were our benighted species to look beyond its navel for solutions to the many problems it has visited upon the natural world.
Ways of Being is Bridle’s manifesto for an “ecology of technology” that recognises alternative intelligences in the expansive taxonomy of life with which humans can collaborate in a bold experiment in mutual benefit to create a truly just world.
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