life electric

First isolated in a riverbed in 1987 and quickly recognised for the potential as an agent of bioremediation for their affinity for heavy metals that are otherwise toxic to microbes (see also), geobacter excrete electrons as by-products of their metabolism. In collaboration with the University of Ghent, Dutch designer Teresa van Dongen has created—as a demonstration project—lamps (though the frame of the piece is more reminiscent of the body of a virus rather multiplying proteobacteria) powered by this singular bacterial discharge, quartering a colony in a battery where it can thrive—recharged on a weekly basis with a drink of tap water cut with vinegar.

vilshult

Having a couple IKEA masterpieces at home and at work ourselves—though not this particular one—but being somehow informed or inspired to frame and shoot a similar scene, we were also intrigued about the story behind this ubiquitous (but joyfully so) poster of a canal in Amsterdam, courtesy friend of the blog Nag on the Lake. Do watch the short investigative documentary by Tom Roes, one of the nearly half a million owners of this picture, and learn what he discovered. You’ll be happy you took the time and won’t be able to glance over or dismiss it as something derivative or commercial again.

inflorescence

Via Fast Company, we learn that in response to the shocking, precipitous drop in flying insect populations and the consequence that has moving up the food-chain, designer Matilde Boelhouwer—with the consultation of entomologists—has created and installed oases for urban dwelling pollinators who might otherwise find themselves in a food desert.
Rather than copying Nature with her artificial flowers, Boelhouwer has instead studied the ways that butterflies, moths, honey bees and bumblebees feed and created a composite morphology that maximises attractiveness and access. The stations are even self-sustaining, replenishing the food supply with a catchment for rain water and operating through capillary action. It’s hard to say what the long term outcomes of such interventions might be but surely this act of kindness for the small and similar efforts are a step in the right direction to rehabilitate our stewardship of the planet.

omkoopschandaal

Contributing writer for Muckrock Emma Best reports on a recently declassified State Department cable from the US ambassador to the Netherlands to Henry Kissinger warning off the Church Committee’s widespread 1975 investigation into intelligence abuses and strongly admonishing to keep findings out of public purview.
Documents obtained talk around the potential scandal but research indicates that the conclusions might present corroborating evidence for the kick-back scheme that royal consort Prince Bernhard was implicated in. Although his highness stated to reporters’ questions when the story broke two years later, “I am above such things,” he nonetheless stepped down as head of the country’s armed forces over the allegations. According to the communique issued at the time, whatever the controversy, the interlocutors believed it would have repercussions serious enough to destabilise NATO and possibly transform the government of the Netherlands, intimating the royal couple might abdicate in disgrace. Though I really hope that the annual, mysterious gathering is about something more esoteric than grift and pay-offs, that Prince Bernhard is the same figure who in 1954 held the first conference at the Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, establishing an annual trans-Atlantic meeting meant to foster cooperation on political, economic and academic issues between Europe and the US. Learn more at the link up top.

old dutch master

Plain Magazine directs our attention to the impressive portfolio of Dutch artist Suzanne Jongmans whose project Mind over Matter materialised over a fortunate shortage in costuming and a bit of improvisation.

Crafting elaborate cauls, collars and headwear out of packing supplies and protective sheaves, Jongmanns poses her subjects in the style of seventeenth century Dutch and Flemish portraiture, perfectly framing the tradition of taking tronies (Dutch for face)—as articulated by painters like Frans Hals, Johannes Vermeer and Pieter Brueghel the Elder who strove to capture human visage at its most expressive. The pictured model with a recycled wimple is a faithful homage to Rogier van der Weyden’s 1460 Portret van enn dame.

compositie 10.

The Wiesbaden Museum (previously) is hosting a special retrospective exhibit of the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian (*1872 - †1944) and I had the chance to inspect the galleries and got to monitor the pioneering modern artist’s progression to an increasingly abstract style, reaching a point where his visual vocabulary was resolved to a grid and geometric colours.
Click on the thumbnails for larger versions.  Like the roughly contemporary Suprematism movement, De Stijl that Mondrian co-founded with Theo van Doesburg became something that transcended representation and was incredibly influential—synonymous with modernism itself—affecting the ideal in architecture and fashion as well as in the art world. It was pretty captivating to see his earliest, formative studies of trees and windmills.

nightwatching

Thanks to this comprehensive primer via Nag on the Lake, we can better appreciate news of this planned restoration of the monumental masterpiece by Rembrandt van Rijn that will take place on display to the world.
One of the most prominent piece in the collection (previously) of the Rijksmuseum, the 1642 commission by company commander Captain Frans Banninck Cocq, dashingly dressed in black with the red sash and depicted at nearly life-sized scales, is a group portrait of his shooting militia guards. According to the museum’s general director, Taco Dibbits, the project—the embodiment of slow television, will take place over several years and involve hundreds of experts from the art world—already captivating the public before it even begins next July. Learn much about the painting’s symbolism, cultural legacy and conservation at the resources above.

the kessler syndrome

The night skies of the Dutch town of Almere, as Dezeen reports, are host to a project from designer Daan Roosegaarde, known for his massive installations that combine technology and art in urban environments, that track and visualise in real time the nearly thirty-thousand registered pieces of orbiting space debris that envelops the Earth with neon green laser lights, evoking the juxtaposing nostalgia for monochrome monitors and radar traces with the other-worldly and alien.
Perhaps it strikes some that fretting over space junk is an indulgent luxury but as the artist reflects, these sizable objects are a threat to keeping the channels of communication open as well as advances in exploration itself—the title referring to the nightmare situation of collisional cascading where the low Earth orbit becomes so over-crowded with waste that safe space travel becomes untenable for generations and we lose our motivation to explore. The abstract threat, a feeling shared among stargazers surely, becomes immediate and encourages the audience to think about solutions and ways to upcycle the detritus of past missions. Learn more at the links up top.

city hopper

Though there’s not yet a projected date for the inaugural journey yet, plans are well underway for the first Hyperloop route (previously) in Europe, linking Amsterdam’s Schipol with Frankfurt am Main airport with commissions already being tendered for the design of hub city stations for the movement of people as well as goods.
Moving at nearly the speed of sound, the carriages will be able to cross the four hundred-fifty kilometre distance in under one hour with intervening stops in Bonn, Köln, Düsseldorf, Eindhoven, den Bosch and Utrecht not only offsetting a significant amount of pollution but also revolutionising business and leisure travel and our approach to commuting as the network expands across the continent.

8x8

aurora: a primer for the Parker Solar Probe’s mission to touch the Sun, seeking answers regarding the solar winds and corona posed decades ago

banana for scale: an exponential (previously) romp through the Cosmos that will help one to appreciate perspective

of podcasts and puppets: an interview with the handler for MST3K’s Crow T Robot speaks on how novelty acts inform culture

wiigwaasabak: wanting to boost confidence and interest in preserving and using native languages, a First Nations young man took the initiative to dub his favourite cartoons in Anishiaabemowin and Cree

dugout: via Slashdot, a visit to the remote Australian opal mining town where people live underground

maccoin bubble: enthusiasts in China are trading commemorative tokens (whose face-value is a hamburger) issued for the fast food franchise’s fiftieth birthday at greatly inflated prices

bride of frankenstein: actually she’s Trump’s monster

strandbeest evolution: Dutch artist Theo Jansen engineers giant kinetic Jabberwockies that travel the beach powered only by the winds

6x6

epa epa eeeeepaaaaaahhhhhh: Scott Pruitt falls on his sword finally but the US Environmental Protection Agency Chief in-waiting is an even bigger corporate shill

there are nicer ways to do it but the nice always fail: the power of protest music

a broken chain lies at her feet as she walks forward: Therese Patricia Okoumou scales the Statue of Liberty in the name of her fellow immigrants

angry baby: London’s mayor approves the display of a blimp over the Houses of Parliament during Trump’s visit to the capital

phantom islands: an atlas of maritime artefacts, via Things Magazine

mud larking: a massive curation of seven hundred thousand articles recovered from a single canal in Amsterdam, via Waxy 

8x8

radiant babies and deified dogs: hidden behind protective cladding for thirty years, a large Keith Haring, mural to be revealed in Amsterdam, via Nag on the Lake

socios hostes facimus: Latin mottoes for Trump era government agencies and entities

leading by example: municipalities across the US picking up the slack on innovative, responsible energy production where the federal government is failing

illuminated manuscripts: James Joyce’s crayon-coloured drafts of Finnegans Wake

by jove: lightning storms on Jupiter

magnificent modifiers: the history and legacy of the Speak & Spell

star-struck: a vintage scrapbook of the Golden Age of Hollywood, compiled by an anonymous fan

side-scrolling: a short video game vignette that seamlessly combines the best elements of the Mario universe into one

tear down this wall

Our faithful chronicler, Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet, that on this day—among many other momentous occasions—the US president Ronald Reagan, speaking at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin in 1987, publicly challenged General Secretary of the Communist Party Mikhail Gorbachev to open up the barrier that had physically divided the city since 1961.
Though not the first time the Wall itself was the subject of an address—having previously made similar overtures to the “evil empire” from 1982 onwards and not accorded with its legacy and influence until the Wall actually came down a year and a half later and was criticized at the time respectively by US and Soviet advisors as extreme and unpresidential and provocative and war-mongering, the speech looms large in the popular imagination, perhaps at the expense of appreciating the complexities of geopolitical undercurrents in East and West Germany and the Soviet Union.

bijlmemeer

Available as both a podcast and in transcript form, Miss Cellania directs our attention to two episodes of 99% Invisible (Part 1, Part 2) dedicated to the utopian architectural congress held in Athens in 1933, attended by Modernists luminaries Ernő Goldfinger, Le Corbusier and many other icons that led to the collaborative feat of in civil engineering outside of Amsterdam that would become the summit’s blue-print and model for urban-planning going forward.
Dubbed Bijlmer for short, the community was to be comprised of concrete towers arranged on a honeycomb grid—as too allow all units their share of sunshine to the exclusion of none—had big balconies and a big common area in each building’s ground floor for artistic endeavours.  Tubal walkways connected the ensemble of buildings as well as elevated, double-carriage streets for pedestrians and automobiles with large green spaces in between.  As with many social housing projects that are attended by both the air of prestige for the architects involved and the force of best-intentions, the neighbourhood underwent a period of decay and blight, which culminated dramatically with the tragic crash of an Israeli flagged aircraft crashing into two apartment blocs--giving the community the chance to reorganise as it rebuilt and recovered. 

putting your money where your mouth is

Ingeniously, designer Tomo Kihara is offering these Street Debater kits that allow a person between engagements to radically change the reaction of passers-by to pan-handling.
Once soliciting donations becomes a challenge and a conversation starter, people on the streets might become more aware of social inequities and more willing to discuss the big issues that drive them—and perhaps even tip the scales of fortune for those who might need a little extra luck and exposure at the moment. What do you think? It’s fair to question whether such opinion-polling might not invite even more polarisation and divisiveness but we think it’s insightful that voices other than social media influencers and shrillest among us deserve to be heard and benefit from honest debate.

7x7

shuffleboard: some interesting facts about the sport of curling

wait, wait—don’t tell me: a public television programme or something Liam Neeson would say to a burrito right before eating it

official portraits: artists Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald commissioned by the Smithsonian to create paintings of the Obamas

nocturlabe: an instrument to determine local time at night based on the relative position of the stars

suffragetto: a century’s old board game that pits equal-rights activists against the police

hermetically open: Amsterdam’s private Ritman Library brings over sixteen hundred occult manuscripts on-line with the help of Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown

how u hot: a neural network generates phrases for chalky candy hearts

8x8

meltdown: a good primer to the security vulnerability revealed in micro-processors

shorttermism: a look at some of the factors driving factory closures despite long-term, sustained viability

kyngreiðsluskilyrði: the Icelandic government is determined to close the gender pay gap by making it illegal to set wages for women less than men

curb side: a look into America’s valet parking Olympics

investment instrument: a few ideas on how to spend your bitcoin

the insolence of the young: memorandum circulated as a gag to the staff of the Atlantic in 1973 on repulsive topics is weirdly resonant

the blog is dead, long live the blog: a nice reflection on the practise and pursuit with a kind tribute to the Presurfer

border slash: the US expends over a million dollars annually to maintain a deforested boundary between it and Canada—to ensure that the border is more than an imaginary line, via TYWKIWDBI  

6x6

daft the halls: a fun, festive musical compilation in the style of the artists, via The Awesomer

tulip mania: companies unrelated to cryptocurrency craze are garnering attention by adding “blockchain” to their names

not to scale: Tanaka Tatsuya’s creative dioramas comprised of tiny people interacting with everyday objects, via Nag on the Lake

jólnar: the yuletide Icelandic Ogress Grýla seems far more formidable than Krampus (more on her extended family here), via Miss Cellania

bowling for elves: a look back at the viral 1999 computer game that circulated by email and the ensuing scare that made the public more wary about cyber-security

tuin der lusten: an animation studio reinterprets Hieronymous Bosch’s triptych Garden of Earthly Delights (previously) with contemporary vanities

slaolie stil

Commissioning the talents of artist Jan Toorop in 1894, the Nederlandse Olie Fabriek (the Dutch Oil Company) inadvertently launched a sub-genre to the Dutch Art Nouveau when the resulting advertising poster for Delftsche Slaolie (Delft Salad Oil) resonated with the public for its unique flowing iconography. Born in colonial Java, Toorop had repatriated himself and studied art in Amsterdam and was informed by the burgeoning Impressionist movement but one could detect Indonesian design influences in the repeating geometry of his works. See more examples of Toorop’s salad oil style posters at the link above.

booming sands

I had heard the expression before but I had always guessed it had something to do with drilling for oil, and I appreciated being disabused of that misconception in a very harmonious and smoothing way with an artist’s concept to bring the sonic experience also known as singing sands to a wider audience who may not have the means of traveling to the remote deserts to hear it for themselves. When conditions are just right, the avalanche and advance of shifting dunes produce a droning, resonate sound. The artist, Lotte Geeven based in Amsterdam, has collected sound samples from some of the estimated thirty-five sites around the world where this phenomenon occurs and is now soliciting for source samples of the sand from these locations. Working with scientists and engineers, the artist has devised a whirling circular drum with amplifiers to recreate the unique timbre and soundscape of the world’s deserts.