Strange Islands.

Conscious Computing: The Slow Web

Fri, 10 May 2013 21:58:28 +0100

If there’s a single moment that symbolises the beginning of conscious computing, it probably...

pdvmorris: “There’s freedom in knowing that you don’t have to...

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 22:42:58 +0000

“There’s freedom in knowing that you don’t have to know it all,” I said, ” but there can be supreme danger in playing dumb to it too!”

arsvitaest: Tenor trombone (buccin) Origin: probably...

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 22:39:53 +0000

arsvitaest:

Tenor trombone (buccin)

Origin: probably France
Date: ca. 1830
Location: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

4 types of attention

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 21:33:00 +0000

There are several types of attention that people use during everyday activities, such as when...

The Fine Art Of Paying Attention.

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 21:20:00 +0000

It’s a cycle as old as time. (Or, at least, as old as the game.) Content comes out....

Come Out is a 1966 piece by American composer Steve Reich. He...

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 22:12:00 +0000

Come Out is a 1966 piece by American composer Steve Reich. He was asked to write this piece to be performed at a benefit for the retrial of the Harlem Six, six black youths arrested for committing a murder during the Harlem Riot of 1964 for which only one of the six was responsible. Truman Nelson, a civil rights activist and the person who had asked Reich to compose the piece, gave him a collection of tapes with recorded voices to use as source material. Nelson, who chose Reich on the basis of his earlier work It’s Gonna Rain, agreed to give him creative freedom for the project.

Reich eventually used the voice of Daniel Hamm, one of the boys involved in the riots but not responsible for the murder; he was nineteen at the time of the recording. At the beginning of the piece, he says, “I had to, like, open the bruise up, and let some of the bruise blood come out to show them” (alluding to how Hamm had punctured a bruise on his own body to convince police that he had been beaten).

via @Mafujalate329

Serenace® ~haloperidol~ 1970, Psychiatria et Neurologia...

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:18:00 +0000

Serenace®

~haloperidol~

1970, Psychiatria et Neurologia Japonica

via the Japanese Gallery of Psychiatric Art

continuo-docs: Hans Henny Jahnn - diagram of a church organ’s...

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 19:45:02 +0000

continuo-docs:

Hans Henny Jahnn - diagram of a church organ’s harmonics.

German writer Hans Henny Jahnn was an organ builder – his restoration of the Schnitger organ in Hamburg’s St. Jacobi church between 1919 and 1923 is a cornerstone of the German Organ Reform Movement.

[via]

Illustration by Inuit artist Kenojuak Ashevak via 50 watts

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 19:30:52 +0000

Illustration by Inuit artist Kenojuak Ashevak

via 50 watts

Pasquale Taraffo and his Harp Guitar. Pasquale Taraffo, came to...

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 18:44:00 +0000

Pasquale Taraffo and his Harp Guitar.

Pasquale Taraffo, came to the United States three times—once for a concert tour of New York City and California in 1928–29, once as a crew member of a ship that docked in New York in 1933, and once for a concert stop in New York in 1935.

Born in Genoa, Italy, in 1887, the musician began giving guitar concerts at age nine. He eventually switched from the traditional guitar to the harp guitar, a 14-string instrument mounted on a pedestal. Taraffo started touring abroad in 1910, performing on his own and with other musicians. Known as “the Paganini of the guitar”—a reference to the legendary Italian violinist—he was wildly popular around the world and especially in South America.

via The National Archives

In this video, you can hear the virtuoso play one of his most popular pieces, “Stefania,” named after his daughter and recorded in the 1930s.

What’s invisible? More than you think. - John...

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 20:27:52 +0000

What’s invisible? More than you think.

- John Lloyd

Gravity. The stars in day. Thoughts. The human genome. Time. Atoms. So much of what really matters in the world is impossible to see. A stunning animation of John Lloyd’s classic TEDTalk from 2009, which will make you question what you actually know.

Lesson by John Lloyd, animation by Cognitive Media. via Ted-Ed

HT @ Kost Moskalets and Wildcat2030

MOSS ON A CONE - Bernhard Edmaier Over the centuries, the...

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 23:08:31 +0000

MOSS ON A CONE - Bernhard Edmaier

Over the centuries, the extinct volcanic cone of Mælifell, near the glacier Myrdalsjökull, south Iceland, has been released from the grip of the ice. Approximately 100 metres high, its slopes now proliferate with green spring moss, and glacial water flows around its base.

via butdoesitfloat

Shadow Magic. Martin Lewis, 1939. via Blue Lantern.

Sat, 10 Nov 2012 10:17:51 +0000

Shadow Magic.

Martin Lewis, 1939.

via Blue Lantern.

Bullwinkle Oil Platform being towed into the Corpus Christi...

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 21:25:26 +0000

Bullwinkle Oil Platform being towed into the Corpus Christi Channel, Texas, 1988.

via DRB

Poster by Andrzej Bertrandt for Polish cinema release of Solaris...

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 20:01:27 +0000

Poster by Andrzej Bertrandt for Polish cinema release of Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky (1972).

Baade’s Window: A Hole In The Cosmic Dust That Obscures Our...

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 20:51:26 +0100

Baade’s Window: A Hole In The Cosmic Dust That Obscures Our Galactic Centre.

Billions of stars light up the direction toward the center of our Galaxy. The vast majority of these stars are themselves billions of years old, rivaling their home Milky Way Galaxy in raw age. These stars are much more faint and red than the occasional young blue stars that light up most galaxies. Together with interstellar dust, these old stars make a yellowish starscape, as pictured above. Although the opaque dust obscures the true Galactic center in visible light, a relative hole in the dust occurs on the right of the image. This region, named Baade’s Window for an astronomer who studied it, is used to inspect distant stars and to determine the internal geometry of the Milky Way. Baade’s Window occurs toward the constellation of Sagittarius.—From Astronet. (Photo: David Malin)

via slow muse: cosmic harmonics

♫ Small Island Pride - Taxi Driver (1956) Small Island Pride is...

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 20:09:00 +0100

♫ Small Island Pride - Taxi Driver (1956)

Small Island Pride is a seminal figure in the story of calypso.

Theophilus Woods was the very first Grenadian-born Calypsonian of note.

Born in the early nineteen-twenties, young Theo Woods joined the crush of Grenadians and other “small islanders” who headed to Trinidad in search of employment in the late thirties and early forties.

Within a short while of his arrival in “South” ( Grenadian for Trinidad ) young Theo Woods found work on the U.S. military base at Chaguaramas in north -east Trinidad.and at the same time embarked on the road that led to the making of ”Small Island Pride” (SIP), a Calypsonian who commanded both the attention and the respect of the leading critics and exponents of the day.

Small Island Pride was flashy on stage as well as off stage. He was well known for his sartorial elegance- “He wore his fancy suits to the rum shops”, one informant told this writer. “And” , continued the same informant, “he always had a hat.. man he did like ‘e hat”.

He died young, in 1961, on a tour of Surinam.

info via

♫ Malvina Reynolds - From Way Up Here (1971) From way up here...

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 22:13:00 +0100

♫ Malvina Reynolds - From Way Up Here (1971)

From way up here the earth looks very small,
They shouldn’t fight at all
Down there, upon that little sphere.

MALVINA REYNOLDS 1900 -1978.

Born Malvina Milder of Jewish socialist immigrant parents in San Francisco, Malvina was refused her diploma by Lowell High School because her parents were opposed to the U.S. participation in World War I. She entered UC Berkeley anyway, and received her B.A. and M.A. in English. She married William Reynolds, a carpenter and organizer, in 1934 and had one child, Nancy, in 1935. She completed her dissertation and was awarded her Doctorate in 1939. It was the middle of the Depression, she was Jewish, socialist, and a woman. She could not find a job teaching at the college level. She became a social worker and a columnist for the People’s World and, when World War II started, an assembly line worker at a bomb factory. When her father died, she and her husband took over her parents’ naval tailor shop in Long Beach, California. There in the late forties she met Earl Robinson, Pete Seeger and other folk singers and songwriters and began writing songs.

She returned to Berkeley, and to the University, where she took music theory classes in the early fifties. She gained recognition as a songwriter when Harry Belafonte sang her “Turn Around.” Her songs were recorded by Joan Baez, Judy Collins, The Seekers, Pete Seeger, and the Limeliters, among others. She wrote songs for Women for Peace, the Nestle Boycott, the sit-ins in San Francisco on auto row and at the Sheraton-Palace, the fight against putting a freeway through Golden Gate Park and other causes. She toured Scandinavia, England and Japan. A film biography, “Love It Like a Fool,” was made a few years before she died in 1978.

”L’Air” by George Barbier, 1926. via: micaceous

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 21:52:00 +0100

”L’Air” by George Barbier, 1926.

via:

micaceous

theantidote: Mitsuhiro Unno （海野光弘 Japanese,1939-1979） Rain at...

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 21:49:47 +0100

theantidote:

Mitsuhiro Unno
（海野光弘 Japanese,1939-1979）

Rain at Yonakuni 1975

woodblock print

(via iamjapanese:)