Tuesday 17 August 2021

the life of ฯ€

Whereas astrophysics suggest that extending out the significant digits to thirty-nine decimal places would be at the level of precision to measure the circumference of the known Universe to within the breadth of a hydrogen atom, we quite enjoyed the overkill and ambition, as reported by the Guardian, of a team of Swiss mathematicians that have calculated out the transcendental, irrational number, also known as Archimedes’ Constant and whose use of the Greek letter to symbolise it first attributed to Welsh professor William Jones in 1706, to sixty-two trillion places for the accomplishment in itself plus the bonus facts and anecdotes. Not only is it fiendishly useful to understand and is embedded in all sort of applications, there’s quite a bit of lore attached to pi. There’s its elegance in comprehending a bit of the Cosmos, cameo appearances and an infamously misguided attempt in 1897 by the Indiana state legislature to round it up to 3.2 and be done with it.

Tuesday 6 July 2021

a bird, a young lark—lifting the sky as it took flight

Via It’s Nice That, we discover a retrospective exhibit at the Tate aims to correct a curatorial and conversational miscarriage in art history that left the contributions and influence of Swiss artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp (previously) to the Dada and Modernism movements by showing her due recognition. Much more on the artist’s media, works and career at the links above.

Wednesday 16 June 2021

villa la grange


 

Tuesday 1 June 2021

stultifera navis

A Latin, international edition translated by his pupil Jakob Locher in Strasbourg and published by printer Hans Grรผninger of Sebastian Brant’s 1494 German-language Das Narrenschiff (The Ship of Fools) on this day in 1497 made the late medieval moral allegory a success all over the continent, prompting several more translations, sanctioned and otherwise. The humanist and theologian compiled an anthology of one hundred and twelve brief satires, illustrated with woodcuts (originally issued in Basel), as commentary and condemnation of the human condition, developing the character of Saint Grobian, a patron for the crude, clumsy and gluttonous and is singled out as the best treatment of the trope taken from Plato’s Republic about a dysfunctional crew unable to pilot the ship of state. Locher (*1471 – †1528), the student who translated the work, went by the Latin name Philomusus and became a professor of Humanism and a dramatist himself and published a multivolume study on comparative religion. Though an artefact of medieval sensibilities sharpened with the focus of scholasticism, the conceit, tempered with allegory, gave the authors’ license to, writing in the voice of the fool, to legitimately criticise church and court.

Tuesday 11 May 2021

7x7

caption this: a celebration of strange, out-of-context vintage photography—via Boing Boing scroll + click: an elegant paintbrush diversion via Kottke’s Quick Links  

mudlarking: more trash and treasures dredged from Amsterdam’s canals—see previously here and here—via Messy Nessy Chic  

stille orte: a travelogue of scenic rest stops in the Swiss Alps   

laundry day: a clever stop-motion dirty clothes brawl 

this is a stub: a list of lists on Wikipedia—via Swiss Miss  

down in bedrock: antique snapshots of people posing with dinosaurs

Sunday 25 April 2021

mappi mundi

On this day in 1507, humanist and cartographer Martin Waldseemรผller—whom also went by the Latinised form of his name Hylacomylus (forest-lake miller)—together with his collaborator Matthias Ringmann, published their map featuring the new world, significantly portraying South America as a continent separate from Asia and naming portions of the New World America after explorer Amerigo Vespucci. The academy that Waldseemรผller and Ringmann founded in Saint-Diรฉ with the patronage of the Duke of Lorraine came in possession of a booklet that gave a rather heroic and sensational account of the voyages of Vespucci in the western Atlantic and the two scholars carried forward that credit in a short treatise with atlases and a world map as a primer on cosmography (Cosmographiรฆ Introductio) that spanned from the familiar to the antipodes that were predicted in Antiquity. Ringmann actually, persuasively championed the toponym America, arguing: “I see no reason why anyone could disaaprove of a name derived of that Amerigo, the discoverer and a man of sagacity—with suitable forms being Amerige, meaning land of Amerigo, or America, especially since both Europe and Asia have women’s names.” Europa was raped by Zeus in the form of a bull and gave birth to the Minotaur. Hesione was a Trojan princess and distressed damsel for Hercules to save from a sea monster and blamed indirectly for the Trojan War—Hercules helping himself to the fine horses that Zeus sent in compensation for the abduction of Ganymede and causing strife among the gods. Classically referred to as Libya, Africa was considered to have a feminine ethnonym as well. The original world map was believed lost until a copy was found in Schloss Wolfegg in Austria in 1901 and purchased by the US Library of Congress (pictured)—though other uncut gores to be assembled into globes survive.

Friday 26 March 2021

kirรกlypuccsnak

Taking advantage of the quiet ahead of Easter with the Diet not in session and the regent installed by the Allies Miklรณs Horthy settled in for a long weekend at the palace, former king and last Hapsburg Austro-Hungarian emperor Karl I. (IV. Kรกroly) attempted on this day in 1921 to retake the throne, encouraged by royalists and his close entourage.

Travelling from exile in Switzerland on a forged Spanish passport, Charles and his party arrived in the border town of Szombathely undetected. The coup attempt ultimately failed due in large part to Horthy’s insistence that his return was premature and was in danger of being arrested by Allied authorities for breach of terms of the surrender. Charles returned to his Swiss villa with greater constraints placed on his political activity though further restrictions did not stop him and his supporters from staging a further abortive coup a few months later, resulting in Charles’ exile to Madeira.

Wednesday 24 February 2021

6x6

street legal: these stunning automobile illustration are from a 1930 Soviet children’s book by Vladimir Tabi—via Present /&/ Correct 

conferment ceremony: Finnish PhD students receive a Doctoral Sword and Hat on graduation 

a coney island of the mind: Beat Poet and activist Lawrence Ferlinghetti passes away, aged 101 

train ร  grande vitesse: Roman roads of Gaul presented in the style TGV routes across France, Belgium and Switzerland—see previously  

epilogue: French electronic music duo Daft Punk disband after twenty-eight years  

usps: design proposals for the next generation US mail truck

Saturday 30 January 2021

ferienhaus

Some property-scouting from Things Magazine directs our attention to the estate agents who have recently placed a MidCentury Modern vacation village on the market. This ensemble of chalets with amenities are part of a campground on the Italo-Swiss border outside of the community of Cremenaga with seventeen of the twenty-seven units (plus communal buildings and facilities) designed by renowned Zรผrich lecturer and architect Justus Dahinden (*1925 - †2020), whose other works include some iconic, Brutalist concrete sacred buildings, a ziggurat-inspired clinic and numerous community centres, multi-purpose halls and holiday resorts. Much more to explore at the links above. 

Tuesday 26 January 2021

7x7

paradiplomacy: an intricate Tajik teahouse in Boulder, Colorado  

nivotone: brilliant restoration of a 1930s Soviet optical-analogue, electronic music synthesis—via Things  

❄️: a snowflake generator—see previously 

soon may the wellerman come: more sea shanties—see previously  

twitchable: discovering a drive for birding under lockdown  

topographic prominence: an interactive version of Switzerland’s 1845 Dufour Survey Map from Maps Mania, see also 

putin’s palace: a gallery of photographs and digital renderings from blueprints of luxury property that is allegedly the Russian president’s personal retreat

Saturday 2 January 2021

berchtoldstag

The Alemannic holiday celebrated generally on this day in Liechtenstein and certain Swiss cantons and strongly associated with Rauhnรคchte traditions has contending etymologies and pedigrees including a late twelfth century abbot, a storied hunting expedition undertaken around the same time by a like-named duke or to the alpine pagan protectoress of wild things called Perchta (*Brehtaz, Bertha) and leader of the entourage of the hunting party. This final candidate is the most interesting and compelling, the figure a cultural continuity from pre-Christian influences and was given the role of upholding totem and taboo, reinforcing ritual fasting and the prohibition of working on the holidays, Sabbaths and monitoring the progress of servants and craftspeople to make sure that they were keeping up with the productivity quotas—later transferred to winnowing the naughty from the nice (see also) like her male counterpart Krampus—with the good and upstanding rewarded with a silver coin the next day in a shoe or pail and the recalcitrant would be eviscerated and have their innards and the contents of their bellies replaced with straw, flax and pebbles.

7x7

3 a.m. eternal: the musical stylings of the KLF are finally available for streaming services—via Things Magazine  

paleofutures: the lunar Western Moon Zero Two takes place in 2021  

no show: Trump fails to appear at his Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve bash—guests entertained by Rudy Giuliani and Vanilla Ice 

not disappoint: a recommendation for a good polyglotinous language lover to follow, whose byline does rather suggest a crash blossom  

star wars—give me those star wars, nothing but star wars: the saga continues  

alla breve or cut for time: big, brute data analysis may finally resolve the controversy over Beethoven’s metronome and how the composer intended his works to be heard—via Strange Company

klanglandschaft: Swiss artist Zimoun engineers ambient soundscapes with everyday materials

Tuesday 8 December 2020

third protocol emblem

The global humanitarian movement comprising nearly a million volunteers and staff worldwide, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, adopted on this day in 2005 the red crystal, officially referred to as the above, as an auxiliary symbol available to use when religious connotations of the previous emblems might be objectionable as an amendment to the Geneva Conventions, known as Protocol III. Neutral and without religious, political or geographic associations, it was meant to make the organisation more inclusive and not a vehicle of hegemony and privileging, allowing more groups to join and deploy this protective banner during times of conflict to render assistance to the wounded.

Tuesday 6 October 2020

51 pegasi b

On this day in 1995 the discovery of the exoplanet by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the University of Geneva was announced in the journal Nature.

Though we now know the Cosmos is awash with worlds beyond our Solar System, this planet—provisionally named Bellerophon for the monster-slayer of Greek myth who captured and tamed Pegasus, namesake of its host constellation—officially designated Dimidium (Latin for half) can be described in current parlance as a hot Jupiter, a common class of planets but as this was the first one found orbiting another sun-like star (the first were discovered in 1992 though orbiting a pulsar and wholly ghostly and alien) it was given the name for its mass being half that of our largest world. The co-discoverers were awarded the Nobel prize in physics last year—nearly a quarter of a century afterwards.

Tuesday 29 September 2020

9x9

patim, patam, patum: font specimens of Patufet, a typeface inspired by the Catalonian Tom Thumb 

ace of cups: Summer of Love all-female band that played the Avalon Ballroom and appeared with Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead release a new double-album 

leaf-peeping: Swiss fall foliage map 

franking privileges: Finnish studio mints climate change stamps with heat-reactive ink 

backyard safari: highly detailed journal documenting encounters with wildlife—via Nag on the Lake 

space 1999: scenes from the sets of the iconic British scifi series that ran from 1975 to 1977—via Messy Nessy Chic 

pacomobile: a modified VW snail camper—via Things magazine  

sฤƒlaj county: a brilliant assortment of flag redesigns for Romania’s forty-two regions to celebrate the country’s diversity 

 cannonball aderley: jazz record sleeves from Reagan Ray (see previously) feature the typography of the artists’ names—via Kottke

Thursday 10 September 2020

marianne von werefkin

Born this day (Old Style 29 August) 1860 (†1938) in the then Govenorate of Tula, Mariรกnna Vladรญmirovna Verรซvkina would go on to become an important and influential painter (claimed by every place she lived and worked) in the Expressionist style. Protรฉgรฉ and eventual peer of artists in the movement like Alexj von Jawlensky, Paul Gauguin, Edvard Munch, Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc.
The latter two (whom are a prominent part of the permanent collection of artists of the Wiesbaden Museum) distanced themselves from the collective in Mรผnchen that they all as emigres had joined but with the outbreak of World War I formed Der Blaue Reiter group, prompting the seasoned Werekin and Jawlensky to repair to Geneva—forming their own splinter school Ursa Major—der GroรŸer Bรคr.

Saturday 5 September 2020

galleria stradale del san gottardo

Holding the title of world’s longest road tunnel for two decades before being overtaken by the Lรฆrdalstunnelen in Vestland, the Gotthard Road Tunnel between the cantons of Ticino and Uri, linking the highlands to southern Switzerland beneath the namesake massif opened to traffic on this day in 1980.
After taking more than a decade to construct and given the high monetary cost and the nineteen fatalities of workers, the public balked at the fact there was no supplemental toll for it (the tunnel being covered by the mandatory vignettes for use of Swiss motorways), sighing that “The Italians built it, the Germans use it and the Swiss pay for it.” The inaugural vehicle was a school bus.

Monday 11 May 2020

7x7

great railway journeys: POV footage of Swiss trains racing through the countryside accompanied by techno music

day-o: a family in lockdown recreates dinner party scene from Beetlejuice

starfish and coffee: Prince is the opening act for the latest Link Pack from Swiss Miss

down to gorky park: an in depth investigation into whether the 1990 Scorpions’ power ballad was a US was soft power ploy by the intelligence services

oslo maps the world: visit dozens of global festival venues virtually, via Maps Mania

novas: a mirror universe mixtape of 1982—one of the 1982s, via Kicks Condor

sun dance: a mesmerising percussion set paired with high resolution footage from the Solar Dynamics Observatory

Thursday 5 March 2020

7x7

goetheanum: a visit to the seat of the General Anthroposophical Society in Dornach in the canton of Solothurn

0107 – b moll: a brilliant short by filmmaker Hiroshi Kondo on cityscapes, commutes and light—via Waxy

musical instrument digital interface: every possible melody has been played in MIDI format, copyrighted and promptly released into public domain

pivot point: we are entering the era of Peak Car—see also

gratuitous diacritics: a peek inside the world of extreme heavy metal logos—via Things Magazine

autoritatto: an artist commissions a neural network to generate her a self-portrait out of thousands of selfies

it’s big, it’s heavy, it’s wood: documenting the wildlife traffic over this log bridge in Pennsylvania enters its second year

Sunday 1 March 2020

intaglio

In the a tradition parallel to trap streets (see previously here and here) but with more delightful consequences, we discover that Swiss map-markers faced with the potentially tedious task of reproducing the country’s varied topology are not above, like the marginalia of a medieval scribe, of seeking a bit of relief by the occasional hidden doodle in a mountain face—those isometric lines indicating relief, the angle and the orientation of the slope (and in no way snuck into a guide for climbers mind you), being called hachures (Schraffen oder Bergstriche). See more examples at the link above from Amusing Planet.