Category Archives: art

Arms and Armor

Posted on by

A couple bits of linky goodness…

Via comments on the always great BibliOdyssey, George Goodall’s Facetation blog. Per peacay, Mr. Goodall is “writing up his PhD thesis on technology and machine manuals of the Renaissance”. Recent post title: The Lure of Antiquity, the Cult of the Machine, and the Kunstkammer. Yes, please.

Via the Danger Room, helmet designs of WWI.

When the U.S. jumped into World War I, they brought Bashford Dean on to work on new helmet designs. Dean was the curator of the arms and armament department at New York’s Metropolitan Museum. So it’s probably no surprise that many of his 16 experimental models looks like they’re straight out of the Middle Ages, or the Renaissance. *

*

Estaba la Madre

Posted on by

I heard this story on the radio while driving to work today. Estaba la Madre, an opera set in Argentina during the Dirty War, certainly has all the ingredients of a riveting, gut wrenching piece – the mothers of los desaperecidos, the military and the Catholic Church (yet another of it’s not-finest-hours). There are no new stories under the sun – women suffering while their children are tortured and killed by the state? Archetypal – yet every single occurrence is a separate tragedy that scars those that survive.

*

Estela Carlotto, whose own daughter disappeared and was later executed, says clergymen demanded money when she sought their help. Carlotto was instrumental in bringing Estaba La Madre to Argentina, an opera that captures experiences like hers. Carlotto recalls the night police summoned her to retrieve her daughter’s disfigured body.

“My husband identified her. He didn’t want me [to] see her. Her face had been totally destroyed,” Carlotto says. “I wanted an autopsy, but no doctor would perform one out of fear. That injustice and that pain transformed me into a fighting woman.”

And we in the US have an Attorney General who can’t bring himself to say that waterboarding is torture. I hope there’s a young genius out there who will make art to help us confront what we’ve done (and at this point, are doing).

Mixed Media

Posted on by
  • Book – peacay at Bibliodyssey recently announced The BibliOdyssey Book. I think I’m going to request one through my local bookstore – they’ll often order an extra for the shelves.
  • Radio – I heard a song for the first time the other day – The Smith’s Girlfriend in a Coma. Bwaaa-haa-haa-haa! I was never much of a Smith’s fan – it always seemed to me a bit unseemly to be that whiny self-pitying introspective without at least a half gallon of brown liquor in your belly. Girlfriend in a coma?!? Case closed.
  • DVD – 29 years worth of National Lampoon? I’m in. I’ll spare everyone the fogeyniscences – suffice it to say, I remember very clearly the moment I first clapped eyes on a NatLamp.
  • Paper – papercraft Japanese trout. Remember, “If the trout are lost, smash the state!” (Tom McGuane?) Aside – coming up on smash the state time anyhoo, methinks. Your tax dollars at work (the Higazy case).
  • Later – Newspaper illo – Dan Zettwock – amazingly good:

Pictures

Posted on by

In response to my Ranchero post below, Steve sends along this picture of a ’61 taken 300 feet away from his house:

*

Cue Homer Simpson slobbering noises from yrs truly.

Let me also put in a shameless plug for A Certain Design Student’s MoMA Flickr set. Well worth a peek. The shot below is not from his museum set, but I post it because I love panoramas (as usual, click to embiggen).

Karma Repair Kit: Items 1-4

Posted on by

1. Get enough food to eat,
and eat it.

2. Find a place to sleep where it is quiet,
and sleep there.

3. Reduce intellectual activity and emotional noise
until you arrive at the silence of yourself,
and listen to it.

4.

– Richard Brautigan *


I yam what I yam

Posted on by

So, I sees a commoiskill on teevee last night for a reissue of Fleischer Studios’ Popeye cartoons – “Blow me down!” I says. Vol. 1 will be on it’s way to me when my next paycheck hits! Then BoingBoing features this suitably bizarre clip, “Popeye vs. the Anime”. ‘Uck, ‘uck, ‘uck, ‘uck, ‘uck.

*

Achewood note

Posted on by

I love Achewood. I fell over it quite some time ago – the Google returned a link to the Great Outdoor Fight main page (I have no idea what the search string I used was – NSA folks – could you look it up for me please?); I followed the trail to the world of Ray, Roast Beef, Phillipe and company and never looked back. I’d move to Achewood if I could, but something tells me that’s not gonna happen.

I realized this morning that Chris Onstad is running a big sale on signed strips and that the sale was almost over. There’s been a strip I’ve wanted on my wall since I read it – no time like the present to order same. I think it’ll hang in my office at home, but I may put it up near the server racks at work.

Saturday AM cleanup

Posted on by

A very neat artist/caddis collaboration (via ectoplasmosis). I guess at nugget and wire scale the density of gold isn’t an issue. Any fisherpeople visiting New Hampshire in late June should make a point of getting up to Errol to catch the Alderfly hatch – Alderflies are medium-large caddis that emerge in huge numbers. Also – I’ve got to get a subscription to Cabinet!

*

Goldfarming was a popular topic last week. I heard a reasonably good explanation on NPR in the context of South Korean gaming and some law-making around same. Then a BoingBoing post (great title – “Gold-farmers beat ad-ban by spelling URL in dead gnomes”) pointed me at this crazy video.

*

Charlie Stross weighed in with a great little essay about explaining the video above to someone from the distant past – say, 1977. I can’t end a goldfarming item without a hat tip to Cory Doctorow’s great story on the topic – Anda’s Game.

Finally, on a personal note, things are going well (knock wood) with Luz, preparations are being made for the shorthair pup, and the summer is flying by. My energy has been very critter directed over the past few weeks – expect posts to be either linky (like this one) or snapshots of falcons, dogs, etc.

Miscellanea

Posted on by

Steampunk.

Ink.

The only thing I’ve seen that might redirect my desire for a Pazyryk bird head-antlered elk:

Needs more Trieste!

Privacy.

  • If you think the advice in an earlier post on maintaining anonymity online was tinfoil hat stuff, take a look at the EFF’s suit against AT&T. (more info here and here – 2nd link is a PDF)

In 2003 AT&T built secret rooms hidden deep in the bowels of its central offices in various cities, housing computer gear for a government spy operation which taps into the company’s popular WorldNet service and the entire Internet. These installations enable the government to look at every individual message on the Internet and analyze exactly what people are doing. Documents showing the hardwire installation in San Francisco suggest that there are similar locations being installed in numerous other cities.

ATT + NSA makes a pack of shoggoths look benign. A palate cleanser:

Sterling to Milles to Hedin

Posted on by

Yes, six degrees of separation and all, but this stuff continues to be scary. I was checking Bruce Sterling’s blog this morning; there’s an entry where he mentions that ‘I’m staying at Cranbrook — in this guy’s house‘. ‘This guy’ is Carl Milles, a sculptor I was unfamiliar with but whose work (in 2D and on a computer screen, unfortunately) I like. So, I’m reading the wikipedia entry on Mr. Milles when another name jumps out at me – one of Milles’ sculptures is ‘Sven Hedin on a Camel’. Hedin traveled though Asia and the Mideast; I was reading The Silk Road, Trade, Travel, War And Faith over coffee this morning. Here’s a bit of an image dump inspired by all this.

One of Milles’ sculptures, with work by an artist I was already familiar with (I’m not completely ignorant!) – Dale Chihuly:

*

Europa and the Bull (aurochs!):

*

Hedin on a camel (sorta courtesy of the RGS – thus the watermark):

*

Hedin w/ camel in front of yurt (I’m going somewhere with this, I promise):

*

Interior of a present day yurt – one way I’m thinking about doing up the interior of the Airstream (when I get it):