qr-trees (13. 747)

Admittedly perhaps a bit pointless and we are still, perhaps unqualifiedly, a bit wary of scanning some random, inscrutable code on the street that we don’t know where it goes just like for anything else that we don’t know where its been, we did however, courtesy of Web Curios, appreciate the aesthetic of these customisable quick-response codes represented as trees in the season of one’s choosing. A tap on the sharable image reveals the grid. The QR just links to PfRC, we promise. The matrix barcodes have been around since 1994 and were invented by a Japanese company specialising in machine readable labels called Denso Wave for stock control of automotive parts. The website also sells products in the form of other images to decode in different genres and styles—some of which are marked nonsensically as sold-out.

5-7-5 (12. 761)

Albeit the scansion can be a bit off at times for human consumption—via Web Curios—this algorithm that pulls headlines, with by-line often, from the Guardian is a fun little experiment (see previously here and here—see also here) which could possibly run through ever permutation well past the heat-death of the Universe and keep on presenting as haikus.
The traditional Japanese short-form poetry, consisting of seventeen morae (μ, a syllable or sub-unit) presented in a five-seven-five pattern, classically with a kireji (切れ字, a caesura or cutting word) at the end of the verse and reference to a season:

the first cold shower
even the monkey seems to want
a little coat of straw

English inspired forms are typically a departure, retaining some of the qualities but more focused on the rhythm and structure of the language, having no precise equivalents and usually composed in an exercise of metric-counting rather than juxtaposition and surprise. Still finding like patterns is nonetheless intriguing.

synchronoptica

one year ago: new Nazca lines revealed (with synchronopticæ), the study of street art plus assorted links to revisit

thirteen years ago: Icelandic landscapes, the US Food and Drug Administration audits Swiss dairies plus excommunication and indulgence

fourteen years ago: a visit to Darmstadt and Erfurt to see the Pope plus the euro vies with the the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency

fifteen years ago: flea market finds and a visit to Werneck 

8x8 (12. 749)

ephemeral 80s: a side project from Curios British Telly  

informal collaborator: methods of surveillance and monitoring by the Iron Curtain  

consumer expenditures: Bureau Labour Statistics, under pressure from the Trump administration’s push for a rosy economic outlook postponed releasing a key annual report—see previously 

the vela incident: a mysterious double flash in the India ocean was detected on this day in 1979, thought to be an undeclared nuclear test 

just look where you’re walking or you’ll get ko’d by the gauntlet of misshapened zucchini-descendant bastards swinging from above: it’s that time again—see previously   

estᴰ: an archive of derelict shopfronts from the 1970s and 1980s of East London  

disgruntled nomenclature: a list of American college presidents—drawn from a 1973 yearbook of higher education—are particularly interchangeable and revealing of patriarchical power structures 

upstairs, downstairs: seven decades of ITV on the anniversary of its founding, breaking the BBC broadcast monopoly

synchronoptica

one year ago: Bilbo Baggins’ birthday (with synchronopticæ), St Mauritius, first contact plus a presidential assassination attempt (1975)

twelve years ago: Singapore’s Super Trees, bad real estate photographs plus untamed houseplants

thirteen years ago: promoting women executives 

fourteen years ago: safe overtaking plus the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

fifteen years ago: a classic iPad sleeve 

sixteen years ago: our little travel blog 

seventeen years ago: de-logistics 

botober (11. 886)

Back by popular demand, our trusty AI Wrangler, Janelle Shane (previously), produces a list of art prompts for the month of Drawtober, traditionally a daily sketching challenge (see below), generated by AI. This time however the list is an homage to the early days of very tiny language models and neural networks—not gluttonously siphoned from the public internet but rather hand-feed from carefully curated data, including past exercises like heirloom apples and Halloween costumes. Predictably no fun, here is the illustration that ChatGPT came up with for today’s cue, Collide Loopstorm. Maybe it would be more perplexed by some of the others like Deathmop, Hallowy Maples or Hobbats but these must be worked in chronological order, lest one awakens the curse. Much more at the links above.

per scientiam tempestates prædicere (11. 842)

Coinciding with Cloud Appreciation Day (see also), the Met Office, the national weather and climate service, introduces a new unofficial mascot called Christopher Cumulonimbus as a series of stickers and sharable animations to express not only the forecast but also the moods it might leave you in.  These certainly might countenance a reaction to weather.

star hustler (11. 839)

Via the always engrossing Web Curios, we discover this lovely calendar, almanac called Nights on Earth by Phil Mosby that gives one a preview of what astronomical wonders one might behold in the upcoming evenings, assuming clear skies and minimal light pollution, triangulated for one’s location. It strikes just the right balance of coming-attractions without being overwhelming in terms of information and telemetry, and we especially liked the timetables of the various twilights and offer to suggest an event.

laterne, laterne, sonne, mond und sterne (11. 107)

In anticipation of the Feast of Saint Martin and the tradition of a lamp-lit procession, welcoming rather than ushering out the darkness and gloam of autumn formerly having roughly corresponded to the first of the month and a continuation of Halloween celebrations prior to calendar reform, we enjoyed this small sampling from a catalogue of chromolithographs of paper lantern designs from 1880 from the Tübingen booksellers Riethmüller—which still sells paperware and party favours. More at the links above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973) plus Radiation Baby

two years ago: sinking nations plus Chaka Khan (1984)

three years ago: Toot, Whistle, Pluck and Boom, the US election, the Friends theme song, expecting more from America, voting irregularities plus an early edition

four years ago: an Art Nouveau printmaker, more Inktober maps, film composer Carlo Savina, a racing bar chart of the biggest musicians plus the debut of Sesame Street

five years ago: more unbuilt architecture, AI writes news copy, The 5000 Fingers of Doctor T plus a historical film lot consumed by wildfire

9x9 (11. 097)

falling for fall: an epic attempt to capture the Christian Girl Autumn aesthetic—via the morning news  

paradox: NASA climate group issues a bleak warning on climate change—controversially suggesting that a reduction in aerosol pollution will accelerate warming 

the hunting of the earl of rone: one individual’s quest to catalogue the folkways and traditions of the United Kingdom  

they’re all good dogs: the winners of the annual world canine photography award presented—plus a bonus vocabulary term for one who is favourably disposed to dogs—via Nag on the Lake  

ja-da, ja-da, ja-da, jing jing jing: a soothing 1918 jazz standard covered for decades after  

mechanical turk: exposing autonomous cars’ vast human support network to maintain an illusion of safety, reliability 

roll on: a clever phonophore logo for a transport and logistics company in Hong Kong 

cape canaveral: a 3D animated billboard recounts the chronology of the Kennedy Space Centre 

momiji tunnel: a stunning section of the Eizan railway showcases the turning foliage—via the ever excellent Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links

 synchronoptica

one year ago: the Gun Powder Plot, a Commodore accordion, more McMansion Hell plus a Wikipedia list of common fallacies

two years ago: the Saint Felix Flood (1530) 

three years ago: a tri-lingual dictionary (1499), a flashpoint labour strike (1916), a séance on a wet afternoon plus the Rebel Rabbit GIF

four years ago: more on Guy Fawkes, Voyager 2 leaves the Solar System, ghoulish guacamole plus Facebook’s shift to the right

five years ago: representative Shirley Chisholm, an ancient boardgame, photographer Denise Scott Brown, words for the Winter Blues plus mapping the US mid-terms

disco triceratops incident (11. 032)

Continuing an annual tradition of using the latest state-of-the-art artificial intelligence available generate sketching prompts for the Month of October, this year (see previously) proved to be a bit more challenging

for our faithful AI wrangler as the dominant large language models learning off of each other were coming up with rather tame and predictable suggestions—until dialling up the chaos factor and drawing from ideas of year’s past. Although some choice prompts emerged, most were still pedestrian and not in keeping with the weirdness of previous instalments. How would you draw “pants for salad,” “a resplendent,” “a ghost of a teapot” or “televised toast” but make them more spooky? Much more from Janelle Shane at the links above. 

synchronoptica

 

one year ago:  The New People (1969), discovering a devilish beach house, presenting the public face of generative text-to-image technology plus disco Star Wars

 

two years ago: Botober sketch prompts, assorted links to revisit, irregular verbs, CAT scans (1971), synthetic dyes plus Night of the Living Dead (1968)

 

three years ago: more links to enjoy plus an in depth look at Albrecht Dürer’s self-portrait

 

four years ago: Denmark recognises same-sex marriages (1989) plus Swedish sea-fortresses recommissioned

five years ago: passive cooling, Bohemian Rhapsody in the style of Gershwin, Trump lampooned in Beirut plus documenting London’s poor

 

phytomorphology (10. 358)

Via friend of the blog par-excellence Nag on the Lake, we are referred to a stop-motion exploration of leaf shape by Brett Foxwell, who collected, pressed and imaged over twelve thousand samples for this engaging sequence of gradual transition forms. Be sure to check out the source link to The Kid Should See This where you’ll also find their impressive holiday gift guide.

tree talk (10. 192)

Via Waxy, artist Kelton Sears, employing a vertical scroll going upwards presents a GIF-driven, happy comic–reminiscent of Cordell Barker’s “The Cat Came Back”–to reflect on our aboreal friends and the way we experience the passage of time—with humour and insight. 

 

8x8 (10. 162)

herbst: vintage Eastern Bloc matchboxes welcoming Fall  

αρνάκι: comedian Shari Lewis delivers One Minute Mythologies—via r/Obscure Media  

wie ist dein name, mann: adapting Hamilton in German for the Hamburg stage—possibly a bit rough for those who committed the original lyrics to heart but Lin-Manuel Miranda is deeply involved 

tl;dr: an AI powered tool that provides a summary of long videos—via Web Curios  

wolf hall: RIP historical fiction author Hilary Mantel  

not in my backyard: good luck getting anything built in Sim Nimby (see also)—again from Web Curios

voting integrity: Russian soldiers in occupied regions of Ukraine undertake door-to-door balloting in the referenda to ensure citizens choose wisely  

kirie: celebrating the onset of autumn with more of the Japanese art of leave carving

nebelig

 

herbstlich

atlas des champignons: comestibles, suspects et vénéneux

Unsuccessful in our foraging this year (and usually coming up with the suspect varieties, if not outright poisonous ones), we appreciated pouring over the detail and descriptions from physician, botanist and accidental chronicler of the Haitian Revolution Michel Étienne Descourtilz’ 1827 guide, lusciously illustrated with the lithographs of Auguste Cornillon. More from Public Domain Review at the link above.

botober

For this latest instalment of the annual tradition of using machine learning to generate Halloween and autumnal themed sketching—or decorating prompts—we really enjoyed some of the curated favourites from Janelle Shane (previously) and gamely humans take to these suggestions. In order of model dataset size—Moustaches creep creepily; the unseen graveyard stretches for miles; mist-sheep chew on tombstones. A slightly less experienced, exposed artificial intelligence recommends: the question mark from a box; half a cup of milk; a flappy spider; a flappy tea; Ghost traitors and A zombl. Much more, including submissions and unrelated prompts for animals (Bearllionaire) and landscapes (Library of Lava) at AI Weirdness at the link above.

woad and madder

Courtesy of The Morning News and having only dared to ventured out to where the freshly-turned fields begin to remark on these colour-coordinated trees and their turning leaves, we quite appreciated this reflection on russet—the colour of peasants, foxes pelts and penance. 

In addition to the earthy and autumnal hues, in this thorough-going essay that explores the emergent colour—where the reds of blood, fire and ochre of the Caves of Lascaux and here in the dark ruddy-orange tinge of it—through fashion, poetry and sentiment—Biron from Love’s Labour’s Lost yearning for expression “in russet yeas and honest kersey [course woollen cloth] noes” and even Oliver Cromwell preferring a “plain, russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows over that which you call a gentleman and is nothing else.” And if the author’s column rings familiar in hue and cry—it’s the happy continuation of these previous instalments of colour stories.

pilzfund

H and I wandered a bit in the woods foraging for mushrooms, and while we didn’t really encounter anything that we were reasonably certain was edible and warranted collecting and later research, we found that the forest was ripening with all sorts of fungi, including Wood’s Ear (Auricularia auricula-judae—see previously and which we forgot again was safe for consumption and is widely used in China—I just don’t know about the texture and the prospect of picking one up) that was pretty widespread along the path and some more nice examples of fly agaric (Amanita muscaria, Fliegenpilz, see above). 

A new variety that we had not encountered beforehand, however, were these colourful ones in the same family—sometimes referred to “verdigris agaric” called blue roundhead (Stropharia caerulea, der Grünblaue Träuschling)—the specific epithet caerulea being Latin for blue while for contemporary speakers it generally indicates a shade between azure and teal. Host trees are usually beeches (Buchen) and thrive in alkaline soils.

abscission

Rather taken with the idea of capturing fall leaves in transition ourselves, we were pleased to learn that artist Josef Albers (see previously) also—circa 1940—conducted his own foliage studies and in part out of necessity, since leaves and trees were in abundance but paper less so, encouraged his students at Black Mountain College and Yale to appreciate the beauty of the changing palette and constant rhythm of the seasons.  We ought to mount some samples on construction paper and see what sort patterns emerge.

zwiebelzopf

Visiting a small harvest festival nearby held on Germany Unity Day, H and I looked for some autumn accents for the house and found several stalls selling traditional onion braids (Zwiebelzöpfe). 

Sometimes also incorporating garlic bulbs, the braids adorned craftily with dried wild flowers were not customarily only for decorative and storage, preservative purposes but moreover for the notion that the power of the talisman would stave off illness and harm from hearth and home. Right now we can all use all the help we can muster. Singly, onions were worn as amulets in medieval times to ward off the plague, and a New Year’s Eve custom (divination from onions is called cromniomancy—see also) in various regions, especially in the Erzgebirge, called for the dicing of an onion into twelve sections and sprinkling each bowl with salt to forecast the precipitation for each month of the year to come as the moisture drawn out of each section by the next morning would predict that month’s rainfall.