Wednesday, June 30, 2021

Pic Of The Day

Bob Dylan Exhibition Marks His 80th Birthday



Bob Dylan, Abandoned Drive-In, Yucca Valley, 2017

Bob Dylan: 60 Years of Creating at London's Halcyon Galleries is a celebration of the artistic career of a creative icon. The exhibition includes a first time look at figurative works painted by Dylan in lockdown in 2020-21.

The show continues until the end of July 2021.



BBC unveils its trailer for the Tokyo Olympics 2020

Finally the 2020 Olympics are about to kick off and the BBC has unveiled its trailer which is jam-packed with Japanese cultural references.

Spot's On It!

Seven of Boston Dynamics' agile quadruped Spot robots synchronize their steps and appear to play off of one another’s dance moves. Hours of choreography and engineering effort come together for a 77-second performance. 



Portable Solar Distiller

Architecture graduate Henry Glogau has won the Lexus Design Award for his design of a distiller that purifies water using solar energy and can be assembled from cheap, readily available materials.



Read more

On This Day

In the early morning of June 30, 1908, a massive explosion 1000 times larger than the one at Hiroshima flattened entire forests in a remote region of Eastern Siberia along the Tunguska River. Scientists say that Earth barely escaped a far greater catastrophe. 

Tuesday, June 29, 2021

Ready When You Are

This 1975 short documentary shows us how difficult it was to make a film in the pre-digital era. A National Film Board crew tries to film 1000 Halifax school children playing I Believe in Music on their ukuleles but two destroyers, one helicopter, several tugboats, bullhorns, walkie-talkies, and a critical lack of bathroom facilities present a bit of a challenge.

Her Dark Materials

This virtual group show of 27 women-identifying artists is curated by Philippa Adams, former director and curator of London’s Saatchi Gallery. This is a satisfying alternative to seeing the works in person. 


 "The virtual display inaugurates WWAM, founded by Philippa Adams, a digital render of a former industrial warehouse which formed part of Wolverton Railway Works, that connected London to Birmingham."
 

“We’re in the United States, they can’t tell you to get rid of a dinosaur”

Some consider this home’s landscaping whimsical, others think it's an eyesore. The property in Hillsborough, CA includes 15-foot-high dinosaur sculptures and a Hollywood-style sign on a hill that reads “Yabba Dabba Doo.” I'm definitely in the eyesore camp. The town sued the owner and a settlement was reached that stipulates that the town will review and approve a survey of landscaping improvements. In turn, the owner will apply for building permits.


Read More

Feeling Crafty?

Monday, June 28, 2021

The Nannies

When filmmaker Signe Barvild Stæhr was five years old, her mother died and several nannies helped out in their household during the following years. She contacted and interviewed the women then reconstructed their memories of that time for this film.


Inflatable Clothing

Feyfey Yufei Liu's inflatable garments “slowly but surely take up space”.  They can be worn in deflated mode for everyday errands and can be inflated when the need for more space is felt. My first thought was that they'd be great for social distancing during the pandemic. My second was that you'd have to buy three seats if you were were wearing them for air travel.




Image: Hanna Moon

Check out Feyfey's insta account

See More: It's Nice That

A Century of TV

The evolution of television from 1920-2020 by Captain Gizmo.

   

Sheep Tweet

 

Via @madamjujujive


 

Lovebird Builds A Nest

 

Via Everlasting Blort 

Transition Contact Lenses

My glasses have transition lenses but maybe transition contacts would be better for working in the garden. What do you think?


Via Memo Of The Air

Sunday, June 27, 2021

Pic Of The Day

Such joy!

Sisters Cassidy Lennie-Ipana and Taylor Ipana of Inuvik, N.W.T. Cassidy finished high school, Taylor is all done kindergarten! (Submitted by Leah Ipana)


See more photographs of graduates in the Canadian North: CBC News

Sunday Links

Pininfarina 1960 

Photo above from Car Design History a data visualization celebrating the work of the great Italian design studios  (via Memo of the Air)

I would be very content to watch the sunset from the private terrace of this 144-foot X-Space superyacht 

150-Hour Chocolate Cake for those who like to take their time.

I have a huge travel file on Scandinavia and still hope to get there some day The Most Beautiful Places in Scandinavia

Sutton House , the oldest house in London's East End.

"Bart Simpson bouncing" or "lactating piracy"?

For the first time in 300 years Rembrandt's The Night Watch is complete again.

There were some truly abominable men's hairstyles in the 70s.

People who collect modernist houses  (Via Things Magazine)

Overly morbid or not - what do you think? Cat Whiskers Case 

Boathouses of Ine there are over 200 boathouses called funaya, some of them surviving from the mid-Edo period.

Summer reading from The Guardian: 50 new fiction and nonfiction books to enjoy.

I have only recently discovered the work of American artist Saul Leiter. His main subjects were street scenes and his small circle of friends. Leiter made an enormous and unique contribution to photography with a highly prolific period in New York City in the 1950s.  This video explores his artistic photography.

Kamenstein World of Motion Carousel Kettle

Photos of colourful 'Old World Lizards'

As he lay bleeding to death, he screamed for help but his agonized cries were mistaken for those of peacocks from a nearby peacock farm. Yikes!

It's harder to get lost these days. Our pinch-and-zoom maps know where we are, and they tell us how to get where we are going. The Story of GPS  (thanks Bruce!)

Blood test that finds 50 types of cancer before symptoms appear is accurate enough to be rolled out 

Funazushi: For the past 18 generations, one family has preserved a 400-year-old recipe showing how sushi once tasted, and it doesn't use raw seafood, but fish aged for three years. (Thanks Bruce!)

Joanna Lemanska's beautiful photographs. (via Everlasting Blort)

Great news! You can now order your very own personalized shrunken head replica!

This week's house envy is a farmhouse nestled in the Buckinghamshire countryside 

Does Catholic dogma still have moral authority? Don't ask these guys.

Fold House, an undulating structure in Southern Ontario.

The Winter Garden Theatre Cats (via Strange Company)

A whole lot of Monet paintings

Everything you need to know about the business of Ikea hacking. It's bigger than I thought.

Wayfinder

Wayfinder is a web-based generative art game that takes the player on a contemplative cause-and-effect journey through nature.


Music For Sunday Morning

 

 

Video by Amanda Kowalski 
Submitted by fiveighthirteen

Saturday, June 26, 2021

Tweet Of The Day

Made With Care For A Much-Loved Child

Somehow I can't imagine myself doing this, although it does look like fun.



Thanks Bruce!

June In My Garden





 

One Minute In New York

This video by Thomas Blanchard shows black and white footage of New York City with brightly coloured shapes superimposed on it. (Flashing light warning)

Confessions

It is often a relief to get something you've been hiding off your chest. The Waiting Wall  is an interactive piece by Alan Donohoe and Steven Parkerand (aka Free The Trees) who describe the project as a digital version of Jerusalem's Wailing Wall. The installation allows you to post your darkest secrets on a giant screen at Brighton station in the south of England.


It is part of the Brighton Digital Festival, running from September 21 to September 27.

Link

View the wall and/or post your own confession here.

Thanks Bruce!


 This video about storks went in a direction I wasn't expecting. 


STUFF. - Cicogne (2021) from VISUALS INTERNATIONALS on Vimeo.

Friday, June 25, 2021

Waiting For Myself To Appear

Commissioned by Museum of the Home, Waiting For Myself To Appear weaves together the lives of two women in Hackney, 200 years apart, in a new film commission by Michael McMillan. (21 mins)

 

Buried On Orkney

Erland Cooper's new album is scheduled for release in 2024. If you want to hear it sooner you'll have to dig it up on the Orkney Islands where he's buried it. He'll be releasing a map with clues to its whereabouts.

Making a Luban Stool

The Luban stool was invented in China more than 2500 years ago. It is a folding hinged stool made from a single piece of wood without nails, screws, or glue. It is an amazing piece of carpentry.


Thursday, June 24, 2021

Old School Diving Technology

This gypsum bas-relief panel from ancient Mesopotamia, now in the British Museum, shows ancient Assyrians using inflated goatskin bladders as floats 3000 years ago.





Former NRA President Tricked Into Giving Graduation Speech To 3044 Empty Chairs

Former NRA president and current “gun rights” activist David Keene was told he was doing a rehearsal for a graduation speech to the 2021 class from the James Madison Academy but there is no James Madison Academy and it was not a rehearsal. The 3,044 empty chairs that Keene gave his speech to represented the 3,044 school children who were killed by gun violence in the 2020-2021 school year.


See Parts 2 and 3 of the video. 

Manuel and Patricia Oliver made this film. Their son Joaquin was set to graduate in the year when he was killed by the Parkland shooter.

Link (via FB friend Hal Prentice)

Horse Quiltimation

Animator Nina Paley's wonderful  quiltimation is based on horse photographs by Eadweard Muybridge, 1878.


Tweet Of The Day

 

Via Everlasting Blort 

Organism

This 1975 film by US filmmaker Hilary Harris uses time-lapse footage of New York to present the city as a life form.  "Roads, bridges, tunnels and trains form a grand circulatory system; shipping, distribution and waste management networks mirror the digestive process."



Via Aeon Videos

An examination and explanation of the Ames window illusion



Via 3 Quarks Daily

SHOK

Shok is a short film about two young boys, written and directed by Jamie Donahue, based on true events during the Kosovo conflict. The atrocities of this war still have the power to horrify decades later.
 


Rooms On an Airbus 350 That You Have Probably Never Seen

YouTuber bjornpilot shows us hidden spaces inside a modern airliner, including an apartment for pilots and a server room located beneath the cockpit that contains computers and electronics.




Via BoingBoing

Wednesday, June 23, 2021

Trailer: chekhovOS

Boston's Arlekin Players Theatre has transformed Chekhov's classic play The Cherry Orchard into an interactive online theater experience.


Read more about this performance experiment here.

Via Boing Boing

Carved By Beavers

Japanese artist Aki Inomata has enlisted beavers from several zoos around Japan to work as production assistants on his exhibition titled “How to Carve a Sculpture.” 


Wood sculpture bitten by beavers. Production Assistance: Izu Shaboten Zoo, Nasu Animal Kingdom, Sendai Umino-Mori Aquarium, Hamura Zoo and Iida City Zoo

The project offers a unique perspective into our interactions with living creatures and the relationship between humans and animals.

Read more:  Spoon & Tamago

Art History Alphabet Song



Via everlasting blort 

Tuesday, June 22, 2021

When the Days are Long and the Sun Shines into the Night

Jessie Oonark, When the Days are Long and the Sun Shines into the Night 1966–69. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. © Public Trustee for Nunavut, Estate of Jessie Oonark Photo: NGC

"Born in 1906 in the Back River area, Nunavut (formerly Northwest Territories), Jessie (Una) Oonark spent the first fifty years of her life on the land in Utkusiksalingmiut hunting camps throughout the region with her family, before being relocated to  Qamani'tuaq (Baker Lake), NU, by the Canadian government in the late 1950s. Towards the end of that decade, and during a time of enormous change and transition, Oonark began her career as an artist, innovatively and strategically translating customary life through new vivid forms."
Jessie Oonark’s drawing When the Days are Long and the Sun Shines into the Night is currently on view in the Indigenous and Canadian Galleries at the National Gallery of Canada

BOOM: Welsh 'Rock Cannons'

Welsh miners used to celebrate special occasions by making their own fireworks called 'rock cannons'. Tom Scott has recreated them for us.


BOOM: Full Ship Shock Trials.

Last week the U.S. Navy conducted 'full ship shock trials' on the new USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier to see how well this class of ship could take a hit. One explosion was so powerful it registered as a 3.9 earthquake, according to U.S. Navy Institute News.


Read more: Gizmodo

Ten-storey Apartment Block Built In A Day

Chinese company Broad Group has erected a 10-storey stainless steel apartment building in Changsha, China in just 28 hours.



Read more: Dezeen

Shadow Art


Via Das Kraftfuttermischwerk

Cairo

Cairo, the city of a thousand wonders. A time lapse video by Enrique Pacheco.



Via LangweileDich.net

Monday, June 21, 2021

Happy First Day Of Summer

 

Huldremose Woman

I saw a Facebook post on the Huldremose Woman by my friend Simon and decided to find out more. She was an Iron Age woman from year 55 AC whose remains were naturally preserved in a Danish peat bog. "She was accompanied by two skin capes, a woolen skirt, a scarf and a hair band. Her dress is one of the finest preserved female dresses from the Danish prehistory."


Thumbprints

 Singularity, Brazil, identity -  @halwildson

On This Day

 

Buddhist Monk Sings Rock N Roll High School

Japanese Buddhist monk Kossan’s covers of Ramones songs last more than twice as long as the originals because meditation is an integral part of his music video practice. He accompanies himself on instruments that are more commonly heard in a temple than in a rock n roll studio.



See more of Kossan's rock covers at Open Culture and on his YouTube channel.

A Video Trip To Italy

 A time-lapse video of the landscapes of beautiful Italy.

Wall Of Boxes

I always find myself amazed, confused and transfixed by Japanese game shows.

Sunday, June 20, 2021

Noctiluca scintillans

On a few nights each year this unicellular marine organism lights up the bay.

Sunday Links

Image: Dipankar Sengupta

The Rohat Chaikhana (photo above) is one of Tajikistan’s oldest surviving teahouses but in 2015 it faced demolition. Read more.

Find the gecko

 Why Some Civil War Soldiers Glowed in the Dark 

Stupidity is saying two plus two equals five. Elevated Stupidity is doing the same thing, except you invoke Pythagoras, decry cancel culture when someone corrects you, then get a seven-figure book deal and a speaking tour out of it. 

Momcut

Gorgeous! A Charming Dutch Village in the Fog 

Brian Eno Launches His Own Radio Station with Hundreds of Unreleased Tracks

What Happened to Paula: On the Death of an American Girl A complicated collaboration, resurrecting a cold case, and creating a narrative when there is no closure.

The fascinating story of John Simpkins' Flood Triptych (via Things Magazine)

The Soiled Underpants Map

Crying for cash: The Peculiar Profession of Professional Mourners

Bridge made of string:  Peruvians from the Huinchiri community in Cusco region are rebuilding a 500-year-old Incan hanging bridge, using traditional weaving techniques to string a crossing together spanning the Apurimac river.

The World's Shortest Border

Pointy toed shoes were the cause of a bunion epidemic in medieval England (via MeFi)

Audacity,Elegance and the Vulgarity of Garlic: On My Dinner with Giorgio Armani

Daisyland Beautiful photographs.

Cancel Culture: A Glossary  (via Perfect For Roquefort Cheese)

Diverse Perspectives: The Great Wall of China from various perspectives, some stretches of the wall you may not be familiar with and without tourists. 

Orchid thought to be extinct in UK found on roof of London bank 

This Website Will Self Destruct will disappear in 24 hours if it doesn't receive a message from at least one person every day. (via BoingBoing)

No dogs allowed, pub kittens in training England's Accidental Cat Pub 

You don't know your friend's exact street address? Apparently this was not a problem back in the day. 

British Columbia is home to 204 First Nations communities; approximately 50% of the First Peoples’ languages of Canada are spoken in B.C. First Peoples' Map of B.C. (more at Maps Mania)

Music For Sunday Morning

Saturday, June 19, 2021

Fun Blocks

Japanese company Triad is the creator of Omoshiro Blocks ("fun blocks"), memo pads that slowly reveal an architectural treasure with the removal of each page.




via bookofjoe

Happy Pride


via everlasting blort

Pic Of The Day

"A multiple-exposure photograph taken every hour from 1:30 pm on December 8, 1965, to 10:10 am on December 9, 1965, showing the sun in its orbit above the South Pole, Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station © Georg Gerster/Panos Pictures."



via TYWKIWDBI 

Alternate Realities CG Challenge

3D artists were provided with an animation to work from. Here is a compilation of the top 100 renders.

 

24 Hours In a Brandon Mississippi Waffle House

Happy Caturday

 

Friday, June 18, 2021

I Believe I Can Fly


via Kraftfuttermischwerk

This man recreates airline meals at home

I miss so many things about travel. Inflight meals not so much. Nik Sennhauser obviously does not fly on the airlines I do where meals are likely to come in a wrapper and taste like cardboard. Nik, who lives in Glasgow, misses international flights so much that he now spends Sundays recreating inflight meals at home. He even has a trolley filled with airline glasses, plates and cutlery to serve the meals on. 

The ANA meal recreated in Nik and Graham's kitchen in Glasgow
Image: Nik Sennhauser



See More:  BBC News

Rock Opera

This advertisement for a Vermont granite company is worth a listen.


via kottke

Lucky Possum

This treecutting could have gone very badly for this Tasmanian possum.

 

via Boing Boing

Thursday, June 17, 2021

Pinwheel Galaxy

 

The World's Largest Pinhole Camera Photograph

In 1999 six photographers converted an F-18 hangar in a decommissioned Marine Corps Air Station in California into the world’s largest pinhole camera. 


Image: Wikimedia Commons


Eighty volunteers developed the print in a tray the size of an Olympic swimming pool and washed it with firehoses. The finished print fills 325 square meters.

Read More: Futility Closet 

Thai Country Living

This captivating film tells the story of Suman, a farmer and craftsman dedicated to the traditional Thai ways of country living. He makes bamboo instruments that are played when his friends and neighbours gather for celebrations. 



via Aeon

A Cat Named Cathode

Cathode wanted to go outside so her owner made her a tiny helmet so she could ride on his motorcycle with him.

Don't order the Big Breakfast. You'll regret it.

 

Via Everlasting Blort

Wednesday, June 16, 2021

First Major Bloomsday (1954)

 I posted this five years ago but, since it's Bloomsday, I'll post it again.

Bloomsday, a commemoration of the life of Irish writer James Joyce during which the events of his novel Ulysses are relived, is observed annually on 16 June. It has been celebrated by some as far back as the 1920s, but in 1954, when Dublin’s literati of the day took to the cobblestones, the event came into its own.

On the 50th anniversary of the fictional events of June 16, 1904,  Irish comedic writer Brian O’Nolan, aka Flann O’Brien; Co. Monaghan poet Patrick Kavanagh; a young critic named Anthony Cronin; A.J. Leventhal, the Registrar of Trinity College; and artist, publisher and publican John Ryan were joined by a dentist cousin of Joyce’s, Tom Joyce, to embark on a pilgrimage of all the Dublin sites named in the epic novel. 
Much alcohol was consumed.



Read more about their revelry here 

The Saddest Sculptures in London

 

Tweet Of The Day

 

In The Garden

 It's been awhile since I posted pictures of my garden. 




Pic Of The Day

 

Bees in slow motion


via Bits and Pieces

Tuesday, June 15, 2021

Power Tool Dinner Party

Hosting a dinner party can be stressful. Make it a snap with these tips from Joseph's Machines.



Even An A***h*** Can Save A Life

Watch this. It's better than you think.

Fallen

"In memory of the millions of hemlocks that fell in the 19th century to the local leather-tanning industry, Jean Shin used antique bark-peeling tools to remove the tree’s outer layer before giving it a protective new coat …”


"While reckoning with the devastating consequences of deforestation in local history, the project invites viewers to observe the natural surroundings more closely, witness nature’s struggles, and mourn what we have lost."


The Rashomon Effect:

Can you trust your memory? The Rashomon Effect, named after the film by Akira Kurosawa, describes how a single event can be interpreted and described differently by the individuals who saw it.



Read more: Open Culture

Every NYT Front Page Since 1852

The evolution of the New York Times shown through the design of its front page.



Giving The Parrots A Bit Of Exercise


Via TwistedSifter

Space Shuttle Endeavour's Final Trek

A timelapse video of space shuttle Endeavour's final journey from LAX to the California Science Center in Exposition Park. 


 

  Via

Monday, June 14, 2021

Cranes Over Venice

 

Radical Gardening in NYC

Hattie Carthan and Liz Christy set out to transform their neighborhoods by making them greener. Seed bombs, the "tree lady of Brooklyn," and the roots of urban gardening. 


via Kraftfuttermischwerk

Pic Of The Day



via Miss Cellania

Poor Sailor

This beautiful short film by Victor Carrey is based on a comic book by Sammy Harkham. It tells the story of a poor woodcutter who leaves his home in the mountains to join his brother at sea.


Watch a Reconstruction of the World's Oldest Computer

The Antikythera mechanism, considered to be the world’s oldest computer,  dates to 100 to 150 BC and has puzzled scientists since it was discovered in 2001. This video uses the best scientific model of the mechanism to date to show how the device might have fit together and makes educated guesses about the right placement of its dozens of small parts.



Read More: Open Culture

What Is This?

 

Image: Karsten Moran for The New York Times
 

This is Wasabi the Pekingese who won Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show yesterday.

Tweet Of The Day

 

Via everlasting blort

Sunday, June 13, 2021

Visual Poetry

Strolling Cities is a project by Italian artist, designer and researcher, Mauro Martino,  that uses AI to generate visual poetry. The AI model trained with millions of photos of nine Italian cities (Milan, Como, Bergamo, Venice, Genoa, Rome, Catania, Palermo) to create perpetually moving video-paintings.The urban landscape is manipulated with the voice, using Voice-to-City technology.
It's very trippy.



via everlasting blort

Sunday Links

Image: Sotheby’s International Realty


Take a virtual tour through the Darth Vader House in Houston Texas (above). It's amazing.

The best pictures of the annular eclipse on 10 June 2021 from around the world. (Thanks Bruce!)

15,000 people are on the waitlist for Eleven Madison Park's New $335 Vegan Menu It looks delicious.

Comrade Crackers: Play this while you're out. Return to a communist parrot.(Via  Boing Boing)

How low can you go? I bet you can't go as low as Thurl Ravenscroft ( via Memo of The Air)

The Library of Congress has released the Roadside America story map featuring the images of John Margolies. (Via Maps Mania)

"It's delightfully nutty, a normal bloke who's done something extraordinary." Secret garden of mini Italian buildings to be conserved


This year's Cuprinol Shed of theYear entrants include a Catholic oratory, a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang-inspired inventor’s workshop, a haven for bats and more.

In 1959, nine hikers—mostly college students, all of whom had prior experience exploring rugged terrain—set out into the Ural Mountains. They never returned.
Now there is a film about this unsolved Russian mystery .

Beautiful refurbished hardware for the home: waterandwood. The swan neck faucets in the profile photo are exquisite. 

I love this interactive feature. It looks like a gentle scene of a seaside vacation. But this painting by Berthe Morisot, perhaps the most underrated Impressionist, depicts the dawning modern age. (NYT subscription)

Some people have always been more comfortable with the status quo. 15 Modern Conveniences That Were Met With Resistance  (via Miss Cellania)

Yabba Dabba Doo! I saw this video about making a mini wooden Flintstones Car and thought it was pretty cool. It got me thinking that a DIY full size Flintstone mobile would be even cooler and I found one at Instructables

This real life Jonah was swallowed by a whale.


A crow caught in the act of anting (via Perfect For Roquefort Cheese)

In praise of small menus. The best way to experience a restaurant is by eating exactly what it wants to feed you. (Thanks Bruce!)