26/1/10

Antártica/ Terra Australis


Antarctica, on average, is the coldest, driest, and windiest continent, and has the highest average elevation of all the continents.[2] Antarctica is considered a desert, with annual precipitation of only 200 mm (8 inches) along the coast and far less inland.[3] There are no permanent human residents but anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 people reside throughout the year at the research stations scattered across the continent. Only cold-adapted plants and animals survive there, including penguins, seals, nematodes, Tardigrades, mites, many types of algae and other microorganisms, and tundra vegetation.

Although myths and speculation about a Terra Australis ("Southern Land") date back to antiquity, the first confirmed sighting of the continent is commonly accepted to have occurred in 1820 by the Russian expedition of Mikhail Lazarev and Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen. The continent, however, remained largely neglected for the rest of the 19th century because of its hostile environment, lack of resources, and isolation. The first formal use of the name "Antarctica" as a continental name in the 1890s is attributed to the Scottish cartographer John George Bartholomew. The name Antarctica is the romanized version of the Greek compound word ανταρκτική (antarktiké), feminine of ανταρκτικός (antarktikos),[4] meaning "opposite to the north".[5]

(...)

An expedition led by Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen from the ship Fram became the first to reach the geographic South Pole on 14 December 1911, using a route from the Bay of Whales and up the Axel Heiberg Glacier.[16] One month later, the ill-fated Scott Expedition reached the pole.


************************

The notion of Terra Australis was introduced by Aristotle. His ideas were later expanded by Ptolemy (1st century AD), who believed that the Indian Ocean was enclosed on the south by land, and that the lands of the Northern Hemisphere should be balanced by land in the south.[1] Ptolemy's maps, which became well-known in Europe during the Renaissance, did not actually depict such a continent, but they did show an Africa which had no southern oceanic boundary (and which therefore might extend all the way to the South Pole), and also raised the possibility that the Indian Ocean was entirely enclosed by land. Christian thinkers did not totally discount the idea that there might be land beyond the southern seas, but from St Augustine's time onwards they denied that they could be inhabited. The impossibility of crossing the ever more torrid space meant that descendants of Adam could not have travelled there, and in addition, since the Gospel was supposed to be made available to all of mankind, and could not have been brought there, no humans could dwell in those parts (although there were counter-myths going back to ancient time about the 'Antipodes', meaning people who lived opposite to us)


Más en la wiki sobre la Antártica y Terra Australis.

También interesante el Fram Muset.

Jeff Keen



Flik Flak (extract); Jeff Keen, 1963.



Instant Cinema; Jeff Keen, 1962/2007



GAZWRX; Jeff Keen, 1967

Gazwrx: The films of Jeff Keen

The BFI have just done us proud with a box set of Jeff Keen films entitled Gazwrx, not to mention various screenings of his works – and all from brand spanking new prints! Keen was one of the earliest and best British underground film-makers. He was largely self-taught and is blessed with a beatnik sensibility that converges with the hippie scene of the later sixties but remains a distinctive strand within it. As a starting point for all this, imagine a surrealist remake of Robert Frank’s Pull My Daisy (1959) set in Brighton and you’re not a million miles away from Like The Time Is Now (1961); except, of course, the comparison glosses over Jeff Keen’s singularity. Wail (1960) is probably more typical of Keen’s cinematic sensibility; a crazy mix of animation and live action footage featuring Hollywood werewolves, high art and gang violence. Using 8mm film, Keen created scratch video 20 years before anyone else had thought of it. The resultant mix and match of high art and lowbrow popular culture runs through forty years of his film work.

From the early sixties right through to the late seventies Keen worked with an ensemble of players who might be compared to the troupe John Waters deployed in his midnight movie hits before making the transition to Hollywood director. Although both men clearly set out to entertain their audiences, the similarities pretty much stop there because Keen created shorts not features, had no time for narrative and made extensive use of animation and double exposure. So the results are closer to Ira Cohen’s Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda (1968) than Pink Flamingos (1972). But as in John Waters’ far more conventional flicks, Keen’s ensemble of actors liked to dress up and act out as exaggerated comic book versions of themselves: and some of them were rather fond of taking their clothes off too, particularly Jeff’s wife Jackie Keen. One can sense from the films that there were sexual shenanigans going on off-screen that fuelled the bad craziness caught on celluloid. But if sex and nudity don’t do it for you, there are also cardboard ray guns, monsters, endless explosions of paint and other pyrotechnics. The titles of the films in the Gaswrx box provide a good indication of their content: Cineblatz, Marvo Movie, Meatdaze, The Cartoon Theatre of Dr Gaz, Return of Silver Head, Victory Thru Film Power, Kino Pulveriso, The Dreams and Past Crimes of the Archduke, Omozap, Artwar Fallout, Plasticator etc.

(...)



Continúa leyendo en StewartHomeSociety.

25/1/10

You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination; Katherine Harmon, 2004



The map is a subtle and beautiful art form that is often held for its merest and most mundane of functions: to get its reader from point A to point B. But a map, deconstructed, is so much more. As graphical representations of our geographic world, maps figuratively contain within them the living and changing lives of us all. Someday, perhaps, maps will be as dynamic as the worlds they detail. As with the charmed maps of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, the symbols of the map will move and change with the movements of the objects they represent. For now, however, we must rely upon our imaginations to invoke the richness only hinted at on paper.

In You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination, Katharine Harmon has shared her own love of maps by collecting a broad-ranging variety of art form. Not content to praise the intrinsic art of the geographic map, Harmon calls our attention to the labors of imaginative mapmakers who have charted regions emotional, biological, historical, culinary, and…well, you name it, it's in there.
She begins with a petroglyphic map from 2500 B.C., and launches from there into a chapter on personal geographies, all of which explore the body and mind of the human animal. These include such maps as "Main Route of Expedition Through the Alimentary Canal," acupuncture diagrams, and group dream maps. Outstanding in this collection is Adolf Wolfli's maps of the "Island Neveranger." Wolfli was a schizophrenic committed to a mental asylum in Germany at the age of 31, who, while confined, produced a startlingly rich output of imaginative work that included maps from his richly imagined world. These are highly detailed and wonderfully colored works from Wolfli's rich imaginary iconography.
The next chapter, titled, "At Home in the World," is equally diverse. A poem from Howard Horowitz typeset into the shape of Manhattan Island took the author one-and-a-half years to write. This poem-map is quite stunning, but pales next to a the intricately detailed map of Srinigar, a village in Kashmir, India, that was hand-embroidered on a wool and cloth shawl in the 19th century. Works from celebrated artists appear here also such as a map from illustrator, John Held Jr., known for his early 20th century caricatures, and William Wegman's "Vacationland," a postcard collage in oils celebrating tourist attractions.
The final chapter, "Realms of Fantasy," focuses in on geographic maps of fantastic or fictional realms. These vary from Julia Ricketts' colorfully abstract "Notations on a River," which explores the interplay of natural and man-made landforms, to Mark Bennett's highly detailed map of the Town of Mayberry. My personal favorite in this section is a map entitled "The Great Bear," in which artist, Simon Patterson, transposes the names of historical figures onto a universally recognizable map of the London Underground. Tube riders can jump on the Blue Line at Michelangelo, change to the Yellow Line and take that East to Plato. Transferring to the Red Line can take the rider to Rupert Murdoch, Louis Pasteur, or even Dick Cheney.

Years before the publication of You Are Here, I met an artist whose painted upon GIS maps of various world regions. I was thoroughly captivated then, and I still am. Perhaps, as Katharine Harmon suggests, we humans have an innate urge to map.

Today, inspired by You Are Here, I built a "map" of plastic pails, shovels, and other sandbox toys with my children. I laid the foundation, a starting point and an ending point with roads drawn into the sand to connect the two, and then invited my kids to join in. Before it was over, they had built quite a sandbox menagerie that included roads, lakes, bridges, and even an amusement park, all symbolically arranged in sand and plastic toys. I don't know if it was innately motivated, but it sure was cool.

Info desde aquí.

24/1/10

Mapa de la cara cercana de la luna; Don E. Wilhelms y Jonh F. McCauley, 1971

The library of the Congress


[St. Moritz, Grisons, Switzerland, in winter (reversed)]

[before 1890].

1 photomechanical print : photochrom, color.

Notes:
Photo shows the leaning tower of St. Maurice church before 1890 when the nave was torn down. (Source: Flickr Commons project, 2009)
"1011" stamped on the back of the print.
Title from identifying information provided by the Flickr Commons project, 2009. (Print not listed in the Detroit Publishing Company, Catalogue J, 1905.)
Forms part of: Nineteenth century travel views of Europe in the Photochrom print collection.

Format: Photochrom prints--Color--1890-1900.

Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication.

Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

Part Of: Nineteenth century travel views of Europe (DLC) 2002707970

More information about the Photochrom Print Collection is available at hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.pgz

Persistent URL: hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsc.09997

Call Number: LOT 13512, no. 25 [item]


Bain News Service,, publisher.

Suffragettes posting bills

[between 1910 and 1915]

1 negative : glass ; 5 x 7 in. or smaller.

Notes:
Title from unverified data provided by the Bain News Service on the negatives or caption cards.
Forms part of: George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress).

Format: Glass negatives.

Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication.

Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

General information about the Bain Collection is available at hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.ggbain

Persistent URL: hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ggbain.10578

Call Number: LC-B2- 2417-13

O'Sullivan, Timothy H., 1840-1882, photographer.

Humboldt Mts., Nevada

[1868]

1 photographic print : albumen.

Notes:
Title from item. Date from curatorial research in 2009.

Plate 130 from: Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel / United States Army Corps of Engineers; Clarence King, geologist in charge. [Washington, D.C.; 187-?].
Photograph showing a man standing on snow on the mountain.

Published in: Framing the West: The Survey Photographs of Timothy H. O'Sullivan / Toby Jurovics, Carol M. Johnson, Glenn Willumson, and William F. Stapp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010, plate 22.

Subjects:
United States Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel--(1867-1881)
Mountains--Nevada--1860-1870.

Format: Expedition photographs--1860-1870.
Landscape photographs--1860-1870.
Albumen prints--1860-1870.

Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication.

Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

Persistent URL: hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.11916

Call Number: LOT 7096, no. 130

Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910-1990, photographer.

Jitterbugging in Negro juke joint, Saturday evening, outside Clarksdale, Mississippi

1939 Nov.

1 negative : safety ; 3 1/4 x 3 1/4 inches or smaller.

Notes:
Title and other information from caption card.
Transfer; United States. Office of War Information. Overseas Picture Division. Washington Division; 1944.

Subjects:
Clarksdale--Mississippi
United States--Mississippi--Coahoma County--Clarksdale.

Format: Safety film negatives.

Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication.

Repository: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Washington, DC 20540, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

Part Of: Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

More information about the FSA/OWI Collection is available at hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.fsaowi

Persistent URL: hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8c36090

Call Number: LC-USF34- 052594-D


New-York tribune. (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924

July 11, 1909, Image 15

Notes: Cover, illustrated supplement.

Format: Newspaper page, from microfilm

Rights Info: No known restrictions on reproduction.

Repository: Library of Congress, Serial and Government Publications Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.

Part Of: Chronicling America (Library of Congress) (DLC) - lccn.loc.gov/2007618519

Persistent URL: chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1909-07-11/ed-...


New-York tribune. (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924

December 19, 1909, Image 17

Notes: Cover, illustrated supplement.

Format: Newspaper page, from microfilm

Rights Info: No known restrictions on reproduction.

Repository: Library of Congress, Serial and Government Publications Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.

Part Of: Chronicling America (Library of Congress) (DLC) - lccn.loc.gov/2007618519

Persistent URL: chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1909-12-19/ed-...

What are photographs doing in a library? We've been acquiring photos since the mid-1800s when photography was the hot new technology. Because images represent life and the world so vividly, people have long enjoyed exploring our visual collections. Looking at pictures opens new windows to understanding both the past and the present. Favorite photos are often incorporated in books, TV shows, homework assignments, scholarly articles, family histories, and much more. The Prints & Photographs Division takes care of 14 million of the Library's pictures and features more than 1 million through online catalogs. Offering historical photo collections through Flickr is a welcome opportunity to share some of our most popular images more widely. REMINDER: The mission of the Library of Congress is to make its resources available and useful. The Library offers broad public access to a wide range of information, including historical materials that may contain offensive language or negative stereotypes. Such materials must be viewed in the context of the relevant time period. The Library of Congress does not endorse the views expressed in such materials.



Estas imágenes vienen de la fantástica colección The Library of the Congress.

18/1/10

Magicians & Demons - vintage magic posters



Desde Fantomatik

Dogs of War. Satirical Maps of the First World War



Het Gekkenhuis (Oud Liedje, Nieuwe Wijs)
{approx: The Insane Asylum (Old Song, Newly Wise (or 'new tune'?)}
(by Louis Raemaekers; Amsterdam, Senefelder [pub.] 1915)


Louis Raemaekers (1869-1956) was one of the most famous cartoonist/caricaturists of WWI. He crossed the border from Holland into Belgium to witness first-hand the atrocities of the advancing German army. He subsequently chronicled the brutality of theses forces in his cartoons which drew the wrath of the Germans. They forced the Dutch authorities to put the illustrator on trial for jeopardising the neutrality of the Netherlands (acquitted). A reward was offered by the Germans for Raemaekers' arrest and he escaped to Britain where he continued to skewer the German army in his drawings. He produced a thousand cartoons during the war and gained world wide acclaim from their syndication. {see: bio; books}

Como siempre, Bibliodissey, interminable. Para ver más información sobre mapas satíticos de Europa, usted puede ir por acá o por aquí.

Maps of the imagination: the writer as a cartographer, Peter Turchi


Maps of the Imagination is a magic carpet ride over terrain both familiar and exotic. Using the map as metaphor, Peter Turchi considers writing as a combination of exploration and presentation, all the while serving as an erudite and charming guide. He compares the way a writer leads a reader through the imaginary world of a story, novel, or poem to the way a mapmaker charts the physical world. “To ask for a map,” says Turchi, “is to say, ‘Tell me a story.’”

With intelligence and wit, the author looks at how mapmakers and writers deal with blank space and the blank page; the conventions they use (both the ones readers recognize and those that often go unnoticed) or consciously disregard; the role of geometry in maps and the parallel role of form in writing; how both maps and writing serve to recreate an individual’s view of the world; and the artist’s delicate balance of intuition with intention.

The ancient Greeks, German globe makers, and British cartographers join forces with the Marx Brothers, NASA, and Roadrunner cartoons to shed light on the strategies of writers as diverse as Sappho, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, Italo Calvino, Don DeLillo, and Heather McHugh.

A unique combination of history, critical cartography, personal essay, and practical guide to writing, Maps of the Imagination is a book for writers, for readers, and for anyone interested in creativity.


Más en la página de Peter Turchi.

Ornithopter and creator George R. White at St. Augustine


Desde el archivo de the State Library and Archives of Florida.

Male / Female (Europe); Cristina Lucas, 2008.



Cristina Lucas
Male / Female (Europe), 2008
acryl on paint
2x (92 × 92 cm) - framed 2x (97,5 × 97,5 cm)

Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae . Athanasius Kircher







"The truth is, this Jesuit, as generally the most of his order, have a great ambition to be thoughte the greate and learned men of the world; and to that end writes greate volumes, on all subjects, with gay pictures and diagrams to set them forth, for ostentation And to fill up those volumes, they draw in all things, by head and shoulders; and these too for the most part, stolen from other authors. So that if that little, which is their owne, were separated from what is borrowed from others, or impertinent to their present arguments, their swollen volumes would shrink up to the size of our Almanacks. But enough of these Mountebankes*."
[Robert Payne in a letter to Gilbert Sheldon, 1650]
{*mountbanke = charlatan}


"Whatsoever Mr. Huygens & others say of Kircher, I assure you I am one of those that think the Commonwealth of learning is much beholding to him, though there wants not chaff in his heap of stuff composted in his severall peaces, yet there is wheat to be found almost every where in them. And though he doth not handle most things fully, nor accurately, yet yt furnishes matter to others to do it. I reckon him as usefull Quarries in philosophy and good literature. Curious workmen may finish what hee but blocks and rough hewes. Hee meddles with too many things to do any exquisitely, yet in some that I can name I know none goes beyond him, at least as to grasping of variety: and even that is not onely often pleasure but usefull."
[Sir Robert Moray in a letter to Henry Oldenburg, 1665]

(...)
Whether you consider Father Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680) to be the embodiment of polymathic inquisitiveness or an overrated plagiarist who contributed nothing but 'chaff' to the intellectual life of the 17th century, the abundance of illustrations throughout his works remain enigmatic curiosities nevertheless.

Kircher's massive treatise from 1646, 'Ars Magnus et Umbrae', contains observations on the nature of light, lenses, mirrors, sundials, astrology and (Ptolemaic) astronomy and related topics. It also includes some of the earliest descriptions of the camera obscura and the magic lantern.

It is no coincidence that this site periodically revisits the many and varied works of Fr. Kircher, for BibliOdyssey would not exist had it not been for my chance discovery of his eccentric legacy about three years ago. It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Leer completo en Bibliodissey.

Strange maps. An Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities; Frank Jacobs, 2009



A collection of 138 unusual maps are complemented by quirky statistics and social commentary, in a volume that includes a map of Thomas More's Utopia, a lavish misconception of California as an island, and imaginings of what the globe might look like if its lands and oceans were inverted. An intriguing collection of more than one hundred out-of-the-ordinary maps, blending art, history, and pop culture for a unique atlas of humanity
Spanning many centuries, all continents, and the realms of outer space and the imagination, this collection of 138 unique graphics combines beautiful full-color illustrations with quirky statistics and smart social commentary. The result is a distinctive illustrated guide to the world. Categories of cartographic curiosities include: a Literary Creations, featuring a map of Thomas Moreas "Utopia" and the world of George Orwellas "1984"
a Cartographic Misconceptions, such as a lavish seventeenthcentury map depicting California as an island
a Political Parody, containing the aJesusland mapa and other humorous takes on voter profiles
a Whatchamacallit, including a map of the area codes for regions where the rapper Ludacris sings about having ahoesa
a Obscure Proposals, capturing Thomas Jeffersonas vision for dividing the Northwest Territory into ten states with names such as Polypotamia and Assenisipia
a Fantastic Maps, with a depiction of what the globe might look like if the sea and land were inverted
The Strange Maps blog has been named by GeekDad Blog on Wired.com aone of the more unusual and unique sites seen on the Web that doesnat sell anything or promote an agendaa and itas currently ranked #423 on Technoratias Top 500 Blogs.
Brimming with trivia, deadpan humor, and idiosyncratic lore, "Strange Maps" is a fascinating tour of all things weird and wonderful in the world of cartography.

Encontrado en el fantástico Bibliodissey.

The World is Bound With Secret Knots The Life and Works of Athanasius Kircher


Idol of 'Fombum'
from
China Monumentis... Illustrata (Amsterdam 1667)

Kircher, situated at the center of Western culture, found himself in a unique position to gather information from the widespread network of Jesuit missionaries, and to synthesize it in a unifying conceptual framework. One of the most successful of such cullings is China Monumentis… Illustrata, a work compiled largely from the notes and correspondence of Jesuit missionaries to India, China, and Japan, including such noted Society scholars as Johann Adam Schall von Bell and Matteo Ricci. This large and exhaustive work was one of Kircher's most popular, expounding on Chinese geography, history, culture, and language, including the first published Western vocabularies of Sanskrit and Chinese, becoming a standard text in translation until the nineteenth century. Kircher had applied and been vigorously rejected twice for missionary positions in the far east, and was convinced that the roots of these other civilizations lay in the culture of his beloved ancient Egypt. In Part III of China, Kircher describes the idolatrous religions of the East and traces them back to Egypt and Greece. Kircher describes the 'Fombum', apparently a garbled translation of Buddha (also more familiarly referred to as the 'Amida') as explaining 'the hidden virtues and perfections, which is symbolized by the clothing covering him'. Kircher identifies the Xodoxii (Zen) sect as having superior spiritual insight and quotes from the 1565 Portuguese letters of Jesuit missionary Ludwig Froes, "They say that Fombum has always existed and that he will have no end. He was created for himself alone. His being fills the earth and sky and he occupies everything physical to show his immensity in the infinity of his essence. They assure us that he doesn't work hard to govern his creatures. Without difficulty he contains them in his own being. They say that he had no quality or color which can be seen by people. Finally, this Fombum has a thousand rare perfections and is the source of every good thing."

A Magnetic Oracle
from
Magnes, sive de Arte Magnetica (Rome 1641)


Magnes, Kircher's second and most significant book on magnetic phenomena, consists of three sections- the first describing the nature and properties of magnets, the second on practical applications including navigation and mechanical curiosities, and finally a philosophical discussion on how magnetism and analogous forces conspire to define all of nature. It is the second section, containing charts and tables compiled by Kircher from reports solicited from Jesuit scholars throughout the world that generated intense interest in the book. Detailing a wealth of data on variations in magnetic readings across longitude, latitude, and time, its success resulted in its being reprinted twice within the next few years. At the same time, Magnes generated considerable controversy in the nascent international scientific community for its dismissal of key concepts from predecessors such as Johann Kepler and William Gilbert. In one instance, Kepler, expanding on Gilbert's speculation, described the sun as a huge magnet, whose rotation on its axis caused the earth and planets (themselves smaller magnets) to move around it in orbits. Kircher disproved this by experimenting with actual magnets, and observing that rotation of a large central magnet actually caused a sympathetic axial rotation in its otherwise stationary satellites. On the basis of this phenomenon, Kircher devised a device for 'magnetic hydromancy' in which small wax figures, embedded with magnets and suspended in water-filled globes, could be made to spell out specific messages or forecasts from symbols and letters printed on the surface of their vessels. Controlled by a hand-cranked rotating central magnet, this mechanically simulated divination device, bearing the Hermetic motto 'Nature Rejoices in Nature', epitomizes Kircher's unique blend of skepticism towards paranormal activities and delight in the underlying mysteries of seemingly mundane reality.


Propagation Horns
from
Phonurgia nova (Kempten 1673)


When rival polymath Sir Samuel Morland, FRS (1625-95), published a paper in the January 1672 issue of Philosophical transactions in which he laid spurious claim to the invention of the speaking-trumpet, Kircher was moved to set the record straight in Phonurgia nova, the first published book devoted entirely to acoustics. Kircher detailed his use of the 'tuba stentorophonica' to summon his congregation to St. Eustace's shrine at Mentorella for many years prior to Morland's claim, and annotated his account with testimonials from James Alban Gibbs, Gaspar Schott, and others. In addition, Kircher had written extensively on amplifying megaphones almost a quarter century earlier in Musurgia Universalis. Having routed this pretender, Kircher proceeds to reiterate and elaborate his findings from Musurgia, discussing the science of echoes and amplification, and presenting designs for many ingenious sound inventions, including talking statues, an aeolian tuba, eavesdropping devices, and a myriad of horns and megaphones. Kircher believed a helical form was most efficacious for amplification, and speaking- trumpets like the ones reproduced here would often reach immense proportions, towering over the height of a man.




A Botanical Clock
from
Magnes, sive de arte Magnetica (Rome, 1641)

To illustrate his belief in the magnetic relationship between the sun and the vegetable kingdom, Kircher designed this heliotropic sunflower clock by attaching a sunflower to a cork and floating it in a reservoir of water. As the blossom rotated to face the sun, a pointer through its center indicated the time on the inner side of a suspended ring. Kircher claimed that it didn't work well because enclosing it in a glass case would block the sun's attractive force, and that it was 'therefore susceptible to inaccuracies due to the wind'. Further, "when the sunlight was weak, and itself was as if withered and worn out, it ran slow, seeking rest." Descartes misread Magnes, interpreting Kircher's descriptions as referring to one of his earlier speculations attributing heliotropic timekeeping properties to a sunflower seed floating in a marked cup. Although Kircher was, in fact, describing experiments with other heliotropic plant matter, Descartes seized on his own misinterpretation to launch a vituperative attack on Kircher's scientific abilities, referring to the gentle Jesuit as 'possessed of an aberrant imagination' and 'more quacksalver than savant'. Descartes' authority in the developing scientific community was such that Kircher's reputation was to suffer irreparable damage as a result. Even Kircher's longtime supporter Peiresc became suspicious. Nevertheless, Kircher regularly maintained a version of his sunflower clock in his museum, modifying it occasionally and demonstrating its accurate functioning on more than one occasion. From Magnes, "Added to this is the fact that a clock of this sort can barely last one month, even though cared for with the greatest effort; thus nothing is perfect in every aspect."





The World is Bound with Secret Knots
frontispiece from Magneticum Naturae Regnum (Rome 1667)


Alongside Egyptology, Kircher's most abiding scholarly interest was the study of magnetism. Impressed by William Gilbert's De Magnete (1600), Kircher began his researches while enjoying the patronage of the Elector- Archbishop of Mainz at his court in Aschaffenburg. Kircher's first book, Ars Magnesia (Wurzburg 1631) compiled the results from his experiments with historical anecdotes and an argument for for magnetism as a ratification of the authority of God, kings, and the priesthood. This latter philosophical premise indicates the breadth of influence Kircher would eventually attribute to magnetic forces. In his third and final book on the subject, Magneticum Naturae Regnum, Kircher summarized and reasserted his findings, attributing phenomena as mundane as tastes and preferences, or as cosmic as gravitation, to the forces of magnetism. Ultimately, Kircher saw magnetic attraction and repulsion as the lingua franca of all creation, governing friendship, love, sympathy, hatred, chemical reactions, planetary action, heliotropic and selenitropic plants, medicinal plants and stones, the wind, hydraulics, the tides, musical harmony; even the nature of God himself, whom Kircher deemed 'the Central Magnet of the Universe'. As Science verges on a workable unified field theory, Kircher's intuitive philosophical understanding of the interdependency of all things seems less and less naive. In the words of Valentine Worth: 'All of nature in its awful vastness and incomprehensible complexity is in the end interrelated - worlds within worlds within worlds: the seen and the unseen - the physical and the immaterial are all connected - each exerting influence on the next - bound, as it were, by chains of analogy - magnetic chains. Every decision, every action mirrors, ripples, reflects and echoes throughout the whole of creation. The world is indeed bound with secret knots.'

Esta información sobre uno de los más influyentes en el desarrollo de la fotografía, entre otras muchas cosas, viene desde the Museum of Jurassic Technology.

11/1/10

Manipulating reality, how image redefine the world



The exhibition focuses on the meaning of the term "reality" in contemporary artistic research, as it explores different ways of visually representing the world in the ambiguity that lies between the real and the verisimilar, the concrete and the apparent, the present and the past.


In today's mass-media society, only what becomes image is considered real. In a process of reversal, the representation of the world comes to replace the world itself, a world in which the user operates digitally.

Several different scientific disciplines have already defined a paradigmatic change when they contend that the "real world" does not exist as an independent category, merely as a projection or a construction by the individual; and this, even though in daily life we still tend to raise concepts of reality and truth to the lofty rank of objective facts, on which we then base our actions and our beliefs.

Photography and video art have always been based on the conflict between recording reality and, at the same time, becoming themselves a falsification of that reality. Today, with the spreading popularity of easy-to-use digital technology and the massive dissemination of images through the mass media and the Internet, that ambiguity has if anything increased, pushing the conflict between appearance and reality to its outer edges and demanding that the spectator play an active role in defining what he or she is seeing as real.

Rather than set itself the impossible goal of finding the answer to the question of the nature of a reality reproducible in image form, the exhibition Manipulating Reality presents a selection of 23 artistic approaches that work through photography and video to develop possible models of reality. Its aim is not to understand whether photographs can convey reality but how this can occur. The works exhibited represent different artistic strategies addressing the construction, reflection or distortion of reality in images. In addition to investigating the value of documentary photography today, many of the artists presented reflect in part the conditions of the tool of photography and adopt known artistic techniques such as collage, presentation in model form, abstraction and the assemblage of different elements. Visitors find themselves faced with different constructions of reality, thus being prompted to reconsider their criteria for what is real and subject them to critical reappraisal in the light of the works exhibited.

Manipulating Reality is a CCCS project that availed itself of the scientific advice of Luminita Sabau (director of the DZ Bank collection of contemporary photography in Germany), Brett Rogers (director of the Photographers' Gallery, London), Martino Marangoni (director of the Fondazione Marangoni, Florence) and Franziska Nori (project director of the CCCS).


Artistas:

Olivo Barbieri, Sonja Braas, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Gregory Crewdson, Thomas Demand, Elena Dorfman, Christiane Feser, Andreas Gefeller, Andreas Gursky, Beate Gütschow, Osang Gwon, Tatjana Hallbaum, Ilkka Halso, Robin Hewlett & Ben Kinsley,
Rosemary Laing, Aernout Mik, Saskia Olde Wolbers, Sarah Pickering, Moira Ricci,
Cindy Sherman, Cody Trepte, Paolo Ventura, Melanie Wiora


Para saber más del proyecto.

Street with a view, 2008;Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley


Esta imagen desde we-make-money-not-art.


Algunas escenas del proyecto:



Narrow Escape

Torn bed sheets form a ladder and suggest a narrow escape, but who is escaping? And from what?

See it in Street View!




Ham

Artist Michelle Fried donned her ham suit as proof to Doug’s claim—Meats here!

See it in Street View!




Sword Fight

Members Askarus and Twolf of the medieval battle society Angaron (Pittsburgh’s local chapter of Dagorhir Battle Games) engaged in swordsmanship and hand-to-hand combat in a grassy “battle field” at the corner of Sampsonia Way and Federal Street.

See it in Street View!




Street With A View introduces fiction, both subtle and spectacular, into the doppelganger world of Google Street View.

On May 3rd 2008, artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley invited the Google Inc. Street View team and residents of Pittsburgh’s Northside to collaborate on a series of tableaux along Sampsonia Way. Neighbors, and other participants from around the city, staged scenes ranging from a parade and a marathon, to a garage band practice, a seventeenth century sword fight, a heroic rescue and much more...

Street View technicians captured 360-degree photographs of the street with the scenes in action and integrated the images into the Street View mapping platform. This first-ever artistic intervention in Google Street View made its debut on the web in November of 2008.

An incredible cast of real-life characters contributed their time, energy and talents to creating pseudo-street life on Sampsonia Way. Please check out the scene breakdown, the participant page and the video documentation to learn more about the artists, groups and participants that made Street With A View possible.


Más información sobre el proyecto en Street of a view.

Future everything


FutureEverything commissions new artworks and presents exhibitions on society, technology, environment and the city, with a focus on artworks that are participatory, sited in public space, and in an urban context.

Each year the festival also features a special focus on an annual theme. In 2010 the annual theme is The City Experiment - Doing It Together.

Sub-themes include
The City Experiment The ways people can experiment in remaking the city.
iPhone and the Derive Art in the age of the iPhone and Android.
Adaptive Cities Cities are not static but fluid and alive.
Data Visualisation Interpreting complexity.
Rapid Prototyping Launching the UK's first FabLab.

Sub-themes include:

The City Experiment The ways people can experiment in remaking the city.

iPhone and the Derive Art in the age of the iPhone and Android.

Adaptive Cities Cities are not static but fluid and alive.

Data Visualisation Interpreting complexity.

Rapid Prototyping Launching the UK's first FabLab.

Read a statement on the festival themes here.

FutureEverything now invites submissions of artworks, social interventions or digital culture innovations for inclusion in the FutureEverything 2010 Art Programme.

Más futuro por aquí.

9/1/10

Walking maps

Walking Papers in Kibera by ricajimarie on Flickr

OpenStreetMap, the wiki-style map of the world that anyone can edit, is in need of a new way to add content. Walking Papers is a way to “round trip” map data through paper, to make it easier to perform the kinds of eyes-on-the-street edits that OSM needs now the most, as well as distributing the load by making it possible for legible, easy notes to be shared and turned into real geographical data.


Más acá.

Histoire(s) du cinéma, 1988-1998; Jean Luc Godard

___________________

HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA Chapter1A - Toutes les Histoires, 1988

Histoire(s) du cinéma is a video project begun by Jean-Luc Godard in the late 1980s and completed in 1998. It is always referred to by its French title, because of the wordplay it implies: histoire means both "history" and "story," and the s in parentheses gives the possibility of a plural. Therefore, the phrase Histoire(s) du cinéma simultaneously means The History of Cinema, The Histories of Cinema, The Story of Cinema and The Stories of Cinema. Similar double and triple meaning, as well as puns, are a recurring motif throughout Histoire(s) and much of Godard's work.

The densest of Godard's films, Histoire(s) du cinéma is an examination of the history of the concept of cinema and how it relates to the 20th century; in this sense, it can also be considered a critique of the 20th century and how it perceives itself. The project is considered the major work of the late period of Godard's career; it is alternately described as an essay and a poem.

The film was screened out of competition at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival.[1] Nine year later, it was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1997 Festival.[2]

Más en la wiki y aquí, la lista de reproducción completa del capítulo.

El toque Criollo, 2004; Raimond Chaves



EL TOQUE CRIOLLO es un relato de imágenes, música y palabras a caballo entre la lección de historia, la narración del viajero y el pase de diapositivas. Un proyecto articulado a partir de las cubiertas de viejos long-plays comprados en mercados de pulgas de América Latina y el Caribe.

El hecho casual de encontrar un disco de la discográfica de mi tío colombiano en el mercado de Tacora de Lima es el hilo que nos permite acceder al delirante universo gráfico de la Latinoamérica de los años 70 y 80

Restos de una industria cultural criolla que no dudaba en mezclar insolencia, ironía, sarcasmo y mal gusto con una absoluta falta de prejuicios para hablar de una manera directa e irreverente del contexto continental. Las portadas, que no sólo son valiosas por lo que muestran y por lo que a menudo esconden, sobrepasan la esfera del diseño, la memorabília y la referencia más estrictamente musical para llegar a ser algo más.

De esta manera "El Toque Criollo", "Atentado Tropical", "Terrorismo Rumbero", "Volvió el Negrito", "Fogoso Impacto", "Tú No Eres Hombre" y "Con Todos los Hierros" entre otras, se proponen como documentos de primera mano para leer la Historia –con mayúsculas- de otra manera. Como decía el tío: Bienvenido a los Éxitos, Llegó Discos Chaves


Y con todos ustedes, Raimond Chaves.

Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities


The Eiffel Tower under construction, 1888-1889.


Mack & Mack

(Images from the Bonnie and Semoura Clark Black Vaudeville Collection (Call Number: JWJ MSS 15); for related images see “Ruckus! American Entertainments at the Turn of the Twentieth Century”)

One covers and an interior page from The Blindman,
the Dada magazine published by Marcel Duchamp, Beatrice Wood, and Henri Pierre Roche.

Carl Purkart, Vorschriften für den Schwimmunterricht (München, 1826)

Borderline, APool Film with Paul Robeson (Program)


Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1902.

Guy Debord’s Guide psychogeographique de Paris [1957].

Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities features new acquisitions, unique documents, and visual and textual curiosities from the collections of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. This ongoing exhibition is curated by Tim Young, Associate Curator of the Modern Books and Manuscripts Collection, and Nancy Kuhl, Associate Curator of the Yale Collection of American Literature. Additional information about these and other materials in the Beinecke Library’s collections can be found at the Library’s website: http://www.library.yale.edu/beinecke/

Todo esto y mucho más en la inagotable Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities.