little matron

Via Nag on the Lake, we are treated to a playful stop-motion short from award-winning Dutch-Canadian filmmaker Jacobus Willem “Co” Hoedeman. “Matrioska” (1970) was one of his first commissions for the National Film Board of Canada—having immigrated there in 1965 on the hope that the esteemed institution might hire him on. After producing several films including a treasury of Inuit folktales, Hoedeman went to Czechoslovakia to study puppetry and currently serves as an advisory member of the board and animation consultant. Explore more of his works at the link above.

Matrioska, Co Hoedeman, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

6x6

misirlou: celebrating the life and genre-forming stylings of Dick Dale (RIP *1938 – †2019) and the Del Tones

the people have spoken: voters of a Massachusetts town remove and re-elect their mayor on the same ballot

scarlet letter: Monica Lewinsky on public shaming and cyber-bullying

caturday: a 1986 feline calendar on the Internet Archive—previously

the professor and the madman: preview for a cinematic adaption of the story of one of the Oxford English Dictionary’s foundational contributors

マンホールの蓋: a photographic safari for the most colourful manhole covers (previously) in Japan  

merrie melodies

As a coda to this day’s events, our faithful chronicler, Doctor Caligari, directs our attention to the story behind the animation studio United Productions of America (UPA), which originated over striking animators under contract with Walt Disney (who infamously denied the guild the right to organise) and a sense that animated works weren’t meant as a medium for anthropomorphising nor a reflection of the constraints—however well executed—of real models and ought to forward and promote an air of abstraction and cartoon physics. Outside of the studio system, UPA could undercut the competition and garnered contracts to relay the education and training syllabi (within budget) and established itself as a foil to the cinematic realism and didacticism of Disney fairy-tales.

6x6

black mirror: a local Chinese business woman is publicly pilloried when an AI misinterprets an ad on the side of a bus as the jaywalking CEO—via Slashdot

cover art: vintage, non-fiction paperback jackets animated by Henning M Lederer

drainspotting: a memory-match game played with decorative Japanese manhole covers (previously here and here)

wallflower: Cecilia Paredes camouflages her subjects against bold floral patterns

l’anis del mono: artist Omar Aqil models Pablo Picasso’s abstract paintings in three dimensions with everyday objects

christmas evil: White House continues the decorating tradition of transforming the residence into a nightmarish hellscape

i am elmer j. fudd, millionaire, i own a mansion and a yacht

During what could be characterised as the height of the Red Scare in post-war America, fearful over the brittle state of the capitalist model—executives with General Motors commissioned a trio of propaganda cartoons from the creative cast behind Looney Tunes, which marked quite a departure from the usual antics and took a decidedly classroom tone to inculcate impressionable minds.
It’s hard to say how seriously they took their assignment and perhaps only did so as to not draw undue attention to their studios. “By Word of Mouse” (1954) told the tale of a German country mouse, Hans, visiting an American city mouse cousin who lived in a fashionable department store called “Stacy’s” and mostly features Hans being dazzled by the abundance and selection of inventory available to the common worker, with a professor mouse explaining that free market competition of “Rival Department Store” drives prices down to the benefit of both producers and consumers. “Heir Conditioning” (1955) features Elmer Fudd acting as a financial advisor to Sylvester the Cat after inheriting a large sum of money, encouraging him to invest it rather than sharing it with his fellow alley cats. Learn more and watch all the cartoons on Dangerous Minds at the link above.

7x7

secret garden: Google Earth leads a team of researchers to an untouched mountaintop rainforest in Mozambique

ultima thule: on its encore mission, Pluto probe beams back its first image of its next target

comnenian period: an exploration of Byzantine architecture from draughtsman Antoine Helbert, via Kottke

amos rex: a subterranean museum opens in Helsinki  

seven points of articulation: a visual history of the past four decades of LEGO Minifigs (previously)

drainspotting: a tour of the manhole covers (elsewhere) of Massachusetts  

hyperpolyglot: what the people who’ve mastered dozens of languages can teach us, via Digg

drainspotting

Unlike in most other places where the æsthetic of manhole covers tends towards purely utility and economy, in Japan it’s a matter of community engagement with some nineteen thousand designs reflective of local industry, culture and history. Visit the link up top for a tour of the Nagashima Imono casting factory where many of the manhole covers for Japanese municipalities are made.

animatic

The Calvert Journal has an interesting profile of the lesser scrutinised art form, relegated to children’s entertainment, of animation and the role that allegory communicated through this medium played in protest movements in Eastern Europe and Soviet satellite states, particularly in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The study with a gallery of examples (not the ersatz Itchy and Scratchy pictured) from the 1950s onward demonstrates the parabolic reach of the message (the animatic being the synchronised storyboard) considering that in most cases the state was the lone patron of cartoons, looking into the past when puppet theatre and other antecedents could be as covertly subversive, plus how contemporary artists are rediscovering animation as powerful form of commentary.

latch and locker

Hyperallergic features a nice appreciation of the overlooked Pop Art artist Dorothy Grebenak, active from 1950 to 1970.
Though she never quite owed up to being attached to that particular genre, Grebenak’s creations were as iconic as those of Roy Lichtenstein or Andy Warhol. Possibly relegated to a secondary status due to her medium of choice—almost exclusively working in hooked rugs meant to be displayed on the wall like a tapestry—Grebenak’s work made it into some prestigious museums but got no further than the gift shops, until being championed by one collector and gallery owner. Find out more about this forgotten artist at the link up top.

5x5

i’ve been asked to say a couple words about my husband, fang: the Smithsonian is appealing to the public to transcribe the tens of thousands of jokes and one liners in Phyllis Diller’s card catalogue 

robothespian: a stage play in London pairs human actress with a cyborg protagonist, via Marginal Revolution 

the horsey-set: luxurious, marbled-floored equestrian club outside of Shanghai

nixie tubes: understand how a microprocessor works through this oversized model

moonwalking with einstein: tried and true memorisation technique may cause enduring changes to the one’s neural architecture 

7x7

what sorcery is this: seemingly magical, Möbius-burrito method of putting the cover on a duvet (Plumeau, Bettdecke)

journeyman: large format, industrial three-dimensional printer installed in its own shipping container for ease of transportation

ретрофутуризм: 1960 Soviet vision of the year 2017

gluggaveður: a winter’s trek to Iceland’s Arctic Henge

furkids: funny and effective animal shelter promotional presentation produced on a shoe-string budget

f-bomb: despite older brother’s protests baby prodigy gets rather sweary

vinification statt gentrification: tiny urban vineyard in Berlin that was also home to the first programmable computer from the laboratory of Konrad Zuse

7x7

a sweep is as lucky as lucky can be: a look at the brilliant decorative chimneys of Hampton Court

elvis, elvis let me be: a meeting of the minds (and spirits) with Presley and Ann-Margaret, via the fantastic Nag on the Lake

abecedarium: the alphabet for spoiled children, via Kottke’s quick links

point of origin: artists’ palettes transformed into canvases

stowaways: an investigation into how even orderly, ornamental nature can propagate invasive species, raising an interesting counterpoint to extinctions that humans have caused through the speciation and advantage it has imparted for some so called weeds and pests

portable hole: the laws of cartoon physics

atomteller: a line of commemorative porcelain plates of German nuclear reactors either already taken off-line or scheduled to be mothballed soon

dog & butterfly

While I like to pretend that I usually find these cross-species animal friendship stories a little dopey, sometimes they just resonate with me. Like with the story of this duck that appeared out of nowhere for counseling and companionship for this depressed and anxious dog—there was just something to the narrative and storyboard that struck me as genuine and heart-warming.

raubdruckerei

Being something of a manhole-fancier myself (that sounds like an awful indictment so perhaps the German term Kanaldeckel is better), I really appreciated being introduced to the urban artist called Raubdruckerin by the fabulous Nag on the Lake. This exhibitionist has made a circuit of dozens of cities to pirate the impressions of the signatures of the plumbing that lies underneath the asphalt but can really be iconic symbols of a place on to tee-shirts and tote-bags and just as representative as a skyline.

oubliette or down in the underground

An artist by the name of Biancoshock is converting disused manholes in Milan into tiny luxury apartments. In an installation called Borderlife, meant to draw attention to the plight of immigrants and the vanishing ordinary residents priced out of affordable housing in urban centres over gentrification, a functionally decorated suite of rooms is sunk down a series of rabbit holes. Be sure to visit the artist’s gallery found at the source-link up top.

c.h.u.d. oder down in the underground

Though I think my preoccupation with manhole covers contains a mostly untried yearn for urban exploration that I’ve rarely managed to summon up the courage (probably sensibly) to carry out, I would risk being caught trespassing to see what lies beneath Wiesbaden.
When I was a little kid, I can recall wading through flood canals in Oklahoma teeming with crayfish (crawdads—sort of giant sewer shrimps that one would readily barbecue) and once following a tunnel underneath the old officers’ club in Würzburg (formerly the local Nazi party headquarters) big enough to drive a tank through to it cemented up conclusion. H doubts the veracity of this latter Goonies’ adventure.
 A clever Redditor posted this portal—which I came across by accident—and to the turn of the century infrastructure that lies below. The city’s manhole covers (Kulideckeln) seem rather plain and haven’t really interested me like those that celebrate coats-of-arms and this entrance to the underworld, which I had crossed over without notice many, many times before, even less so. The protagonist, Harry Lime, of The Third Man descended a similarly constituted stairwell.
 Instantly, I knew right where it was—the vaunted brick arches reflecting other utilities of the age, like the landmark Gründerzeit water-tower in Biebrich, on the square adjacent to the Hauptbahnhof but I didn’t go to examine it right away—though it might be a time when others might be checking, as I discovered it’s secret while frantically searching for news on the evacuation of the train station, due to a terror warning that has not yet materialised. Out of an abundance of caution, the Christmas market was also cleared out. Presently, maybe it’s best to leave such spelunking to the professionals, the CHUDs and Morlocks.

5x5

poll of inaccessibility: eschewing the big cities and iconic sites, photographer Gert Verbelen travels to the geographic-centre of eighteen euro-zone countries

case-mod: a look at what happens when one begins designing phones for people and not companies

stencil: animal cut-outs with stunning, natural backdrops

tater-tot: vintage Russian potato toy ideas

yodel-ay-ee-oooo: ladies and gentlemen, the Chicken Yodeling of Mister Takeo Ishii

badenov, godunov

Though for some the names Mel Blanc and Tex Avery are more instantly recognisible among the luminaries of animation, there was another Man of a Thousand Voices that gave life to as many memorable characters during his long and varied free-lance career.

The name Paul Frees with mention of his collaborator Natasha Fatale and their mission to capture moose and squirrel for Fearless Leader probable starts to materialise right away, but there is an endless succession of equally jarring, cameo performances: Frees was also voiced Morocco Mole in Secret Squirrel (never realising those two phrases were associated with same actor), the Pillsbury Dough-boy, the Ghost Host of Disney’s Haunted Mansion, Toucan Sam, Burgermeister Meisterburger, the Tree, Rook and the Cat of The Last Unicorn, styled John Lennon and George Harrison in the Beatles cartoon series, various villains for the Superman, Aquaman, Banana Splits Adventure Hours, the Knight Rider’s nemesis K.A.R.R, plus countless other narrations and re-dubbing to clean up the garbled lines of other actors.

panorama or bread and butter

With this news item and its repercussions overshadowed by the visit of the Queen and then understandably wide-spread panic over the financial viability of Greece and the coordinated terrorist attacks that targeted tourists, it took me some time to realise that there is truly a landmark decision—pun very much intended, on the docket for the EU parliament. Standardising the so-called Panoramafreiheit, named after the German concept that images either framed or incidentally with art installations and works of architecture that are on display to the general public can be shared openly without fear of reprisal or accusations of commercial infringement, has suddenly become a priority. And while some are championing the German model be taken up in other lands where legal entanglements can make publicising a picture, especially of modern buildings whose likeness is controlled by some individual or brain-trust, difficult, others fear that the interpretation and enforcement of commercial-use could swing the other way in favour of the lien-holders. Tacky souvenir-shops seem to have gotten away with selling kitsch for years, whether copyrighted or not—Paris owns the right to the picture (and reminiscences thereof apparently) of the Eiffel Tower illuminated at night—and while I don’t think it’s necessarily right for some fly-by-night opportunist to profit at the expense of the labour of some genius architect and the outlays of a municipality by 3D-printing charm bracelets of some newly built sports stadium named after an on-line loan company—supposing there’s a market for such trinkets, no one should need to get permission and pay royalties for making their own personal postcards and sharing them.
The fact, however, that the venues where such things are shared are mostly unabashedly commercial ventures, the legal wranglings, suits and disappeared images would be soon to follow. Given that they are the bread and butter of the industry of sharing and of the gadgets that make this level of snapshots and selfies possible such candid postcards prompted this discussion—and probably gave someone a whiff of money to be made, it strikes me as ironic and necessary that there might be a degree of cooperation between those prying giants of the internet and their usual antagonists, the libertine Wikipedia and your friendly neighbourhood Pirate Party. It is strange to think of them being potentially on the same side.  I imagine that the social media networks would wither on the vine should the environment become as restrictive about broadcasting one’s whereabouts (with pictures) as bootleg has become.  Should the lawyers get their way, what is to stop it from progressing to even natural monuments, claimed as trade-mark by states unable to glean any tax-revenue off of those same internet giants that get off scot-free (which really does mean duty-free, hors taxes) though profiting greatly with local operations? Be sure to let people know how you feel about this and photograph everything as that’s the new graffiti.

shutter-bug

Der Spiegel's international desk reports through a narrative of the scavenger- hunt (die Schnitzeljagd) and a collection of the discoveries on the City of Leipzig being the latest entry among German metropolises in a new form of tourism that aims to capture urban landscapes in new ways through sponsored Photo Marathons. I really like this idea, although when exploring someplace new I have not assigned myself a certain theme, especially such esoteric ones subject to abstract license—except maybe manholes and graffiti.