Via friend of the blog Nag on the Lake, we are introduced to eponymous phenomenon named after the one of the greatest films ever made in Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 masterpiece, based on Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s short story “In a Grove.” The framing narrative has various relatable, archetypal characters whose contradicting testimony speak to the inherent unreliability of eyewitness accounts (see also) and the malleability of memory, clouded by motive, mechanism, interpretation and the act of remembering itself changes a memory. Much more to explore at the link up top.
Tuesday 15 June 2021
Friday 11 June 2021
6x6
lp: an over-sized mural of well-used record sleeves adorns a corner of a Reno brewery
it’s impolite to point: helpfully finding one’s cursor with an array of candid photos—via Things Magazine
kokedama: an installation of a floating forest (ๆ นๆดใ, root wash—no pot) by Nomad Studio
zeckenalarm: Ze Frank (previously) delivers true facts on the dangerous little tick
the amusement park: a long-lost 1973 public service announcement from Dawn of the Dead creator George Romero about the nightmare of ageing in America
bierdeckel: various graphic designers create coasters capturing historic moments from the UEFA European Football Championship
Friday 4 June 2021
high fidelity
Via the always serendipitous Present /&/ Correct, we found ourselves quite taken with these extensive archives of vintage catalogues of Japanese gadgets and accessories—Walkmans (which were manufactured up to 2010, with over two-hundred million cassette-playing units produced, ubiquitous and causing a minor safety furore with some municipalities banning them over distracted, inattentive pedestrians—the eponymous effect sometimes interpreted as isolating, early models had a “hotline” switch to facilitate conversation without removing headphones but was not well received but allowed individuals to define their surrounds through their personal soundscape and is applied to successor technologies), boom-boxes and other portable media players—see also. Much more to explore at the links above.
Wednesday 2 June 2021
shadow-casting
Though previous acquainted with the ukiyo-e master Utagawa Hiroshige (ๅฎ่ค ๅบ้, 1797 – 1858), we were unfamiliar with this form of expression in his repertoire in the form of these “play prints” (omocha-e, ็ฉๅ ท็ตต—see also) in this series of diagrams on making shadows puppets—quite superior to these, which prefigured the magic lantern and all the development and exchange (many of the incremental steps superseded and quite forgotten despite the intermediate value of the artefacts, fashions and temporary obsessions) of technologies that led to film, animation and animรฉ and whatever is to come. Much more to explore at the links above.
Thursday 27 May 2021
gom jabbar
What’s in the box? Pain. Boing Boing directs us to a years’ long collecting campaign that’s recently netted a complete set of the Duniverse in graphic novel editions from Hayawaka Publishing, following the literary saga of Frank Herbert rather than the cinematic adaptations of the series.
Click through for a lengthy thread on Matt Caron’s progress through the franchise and explore how pivotal scenes are reinterpreted and characters represented—see also. The mantra, the Litany—Fear is the mind-killer; fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration...—recited before the test and by many others is inspired from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar “A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once.”
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Specials or replacement characters are shunted to the very end of Unicode allocations to act as a substitute for an otherwise unrepresentable glyph (see previously here and here). The garbled text that can result from bad decoding and false rendering is referred to mojibake (ๆๅญๅใ). Though the effects are most catastrophic across different writing systems, languages that use the extended Latin alphabet assigned the character set “Western” or ISO-8859-1 encounter problems as well with the Icelandic praise for outstanding hospitality รพjรณรฐlรถรฐ transmitted as the unintelligible mess ร¾jร³ร°lร¶ร° or some other character string likely to break one’s computer.
catagories: ๐ฏ๐ต, ๐ฌ, ๐ฃ, networking and blogging
Tuesday 18 May 2021
7x7
triangulate your influences: maps of the USA and UK with cities and towns represented by their most prominent or notorious natives—via Things Magazine
don’t go jason waterfalls: a medley of misquotations, a lot of which are new to us too—see alsounbranded: gorgeous images of Tokyo digitally denuded of cables and signage by Rumi Ando—via Present /&/ Correct
map app: create custom vintage style maps of anywhere at any historical period—via Web Curios
*: a historical style symbol (previously)—via Stan Carey
princeself: an affirming survey and guide to neo-pronouns—via ibฤซdem
muchmusic: a fun, nationally sourced soundtrack for the Canadian census
Wednesday 12 May 2021
6x6
sounds to me like someone’s got a cases of the s’posedas: an interesting look at wanna, gunna, gotta
gable top: Japanese milk carton graphic artjim jordan is a scary twit whose scandals are quite crass: Bette Midler performs an homage to Mary Poppins with her “GOPs a Cult for Scammer, Liars, Thugs and Traitors”
yacht boy problems: Jeff Bezos’ super yacht requires its own support ship
the green knight: the cinematic adaptation of Sir Gawain’s tale to be released this summer
recto-verso: a look at early printing and pagination standards and practises
Thursday 6 May 2021
rotating snakes
Always worth checking out, Things Magazine, refers us to an absolute treasury of optical illusions (previously) from Professor Akiyoshi Kitaoka, ๅๅฒก ๆไฝณ of the psychology department of the College of Letters, Ritsumeikan University, best known for his modern interpretations of Gestalt theory and peripheral drift observations and intervention. The pictured is an example of a colour swamp whose apparent inset seems to move upon scrolling. The anomalous motions can cause disorientation, especially when presented serially, and viewer discretion is advised.
Friday 30 April 2021
sffd
Thursday 15 April 2021
tragically hip
Though without the spectacle and international audiences and whether it can even be safely executed even with the most stringent health and hygiene precautions, some fashionistas are citing the planned apparel that the Canadian national team will don for the Closing Ceremony in Tokyo as an overpowering reason to cancel the Olympics. I endorse these bespoke, graffiti clad jean jackets and think it’s going to be a statement that we’ll later pretend to have always been behind—like a twist on the so called Canadian Tuxedo—if not not at least remember. One can peruse the rest of the uniform and kit-up from Hudson’s Bay here.
catagories: ⚕️, ๐จ๐ฆ, ๐ฏ๐ต, ๐งถ, sport and games
Tuesday 13 April 2021
capsule house k
Though familiar with his iconic Nakagin capsule hotel in Tokyo, which was also happily conserved and revitalised, until learning about efforts to save Kisho Kurokawa’s (้ปๅท ็ด็ซ ) retreat in the woods of Karuizawa completed in 1974 we had not appreciated the philosophy behind the movement called Metabolism (ๆฐ้ณไปฃ่ฌ, shinchintaisha—a literal translation of the biological process of a more poetic concept of the exchange of energy between the interior and exterior world) that attempts to harmonize skyscrapers and other monumental architecture and civil engineering with organic growth, embracing the principles of sustainability, human-clustering, modularity, mobility and transience. Learn more at the links above.
Friday 9 April 2021
7x7
tsugite: software that generates traditional Japanese joinery (previously) that can be 3D printed or precision cut
prince albert in a can: a collection of fish tin labels from a digital museum dedicated to the Portuguese canning industry
cosmic nature: artist Yayoi Kusama exhibits at New York’s Botanical Garden
tune-dex: the real-fake book of jazz standards, essential to musicians in the 1970s
dingbat: thirty select works of Mid-Century Modern print for inspiration
beer is proof god loves us and wants us to be happy: brew theorems post US National New Beers’ Eve ahead of the anniversary of rescinding parts of the Volstead Act that allowed for consumption of higher proof beer
ukiyo-e: the unintentional ASMR of a master printmaker at work
Thursday 8 April 2021
under the sea
catagories: ๐ฏ๐ต, ๐ง, 1971, architecture
Sunday 21 March 2021
puramo
Monday 15 March 2021
snapshot
Saturday 13 March 2021
8x8
zaouli: a traditional dance of the of the Guro people of central Cรดte d’Ivoire
line-dry only: experimental living apparel sequesters carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and produces oxygen
everydays—the first five-thousand days: the digital artist better known as Beeple sold an artwork as a non-fungible token (previously) for nearly seventy million dollars at auction, more here⏯: Lou Ottens, the inventor of the cassette, passes away, aged ninety-four
upward mobility: theory that Flintstones and Jetsons take place simultaneously with an elite technocracy and a post-apocalyptic underclass—see also
ikebana: a vintage guide to the art of Japanese flower arranging, previously
life finds a way: using parallel processing and stochastic algorithms, one programmer generates Mona Lisa from John Horton Conway’s game
personรฆ: short documentary Beyond Noh filters through thousands of colourful and evocative ceremonial masks from cultures around the world
Friday 5 March 2021
i feel like singing a plot shanty
Friday 26 February 2021
bitmap bull finch
Via Present /&/ Correct, we really enjoyed these graphics of pixelated renderings of common birds of Japan (ๆฅๆฌใฎ้้ณฅไธ่ฆง) and especially, vis-ร -vis a pair of our recent posts, could firstly relate to the slander and naming conventions of obvious avian defamers and secondly to more personalised labels for new electronic file folders and its source catalogue. Much more to explore at the links above.
catagories: ๐ฏ๐ต, ๐พ, ๐, ๐ชถ, networking and blogging
Saturday 20 February 2021
๐ป
Via Spoon & Tamago, we learn that graphic designer Kenya Hara and Nippon Design Centre studios have released over two-hundred-fifty pictograms reflecting Japanese culture and lifestyle in support of the eventual return of tourism free for all to use. We especially liked the icons for sumo wrestling (็ธๆฒ) and udon (wheat flour noodles, ใใฉใ) Some are even animated to convey the ritual relaxation of bathing at an onsen (see previously). Much more to explore at the links above and at the Experience Japan project website.