Friday 15 March 2024

6x6 (11. 422)

merica: singular, normalised behaviour of US residents that they’ve become inured to 

sfx: more mind-blowing short videos from OpenAI’s Sora—see previously 

outstanding in the field: highlights from the annual British Wildlife Photo  

negative pressure ventilator: an obituary for author, lawyer and polio survivor who used an iron lung for seven decades  

getty images: foundation and museum has made over eighty thousand artworks and artefacts from its collect available to the public  

free drawing: lessons in illustration from 1925 by Franz ฤŒiลพek and Hermann Kastner bytedance: users react to app’s uncertain future in the US

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit

two years ago: another MST3K classic, a Roman holiday plus the Doomsday Clock

three years ago: the Ides of March, the Feast of the Holy Lance, more links to enjoy plus a lost and found project

four years ago: the Osaka World’s Fair Expo (1970), a Roman Star Trek episode, disease vectors, antique bills of sale, some blasphemous graffiti plus Scotland’s new bank notes

five years ago: a non-gendered digital assistant, xenophobic dogma, unblurring photos, college admission and privilege plus more links worth the revisit

Saturday 9 March 2024

8x8 (11. 411)

๐Ÿšซ: the origins of the circle-and-slash prohibition symbol, its adoption as an ISO standard coinciding with 1984’s Ghost Busters  

return to sender: as part of the Prize Papers Project, a pristine Faroese hand-knitted sweater was discovered in an impounded parcel from 1807 

electronic labyrinth: the 1967 student film from George Lucas that would be later reworked into the feature  

snowdrops: Robert Marsham’s Indications of Spring (1789)  

clairaudient: more on Rosemary Brown with other classical compositions from beyond the grave  

if it doesn’t exist on the internet, it doesn’t exist: as of the beginning of the year, the venerable repository, the Ubuweb whose founder Kenneth Goldsmith is famous for the axiom, of the avant-garde has gone into archive-mode—via Web Curios 

sella rotalis: Paul de Livron crafts beautiful wooden wheelchairs, including one for the Pope

belinda new: exploring the typography of Oscar nominated films

Wednesday 6 March 2024

over the psychic radio (11. 403)

Via Messy Nessy Chic, we are introduced to journalist by trade Grant Wallace, feature writer and then war correspondent in the 1890s to the end of World War I for the San Francisco Chronicler and Examiner whom also dabbled extensively as a screenwriter, author, Esperantist and erstwhile occultist—the extent of this preoccupation discovered after his death in 1954 in a cabin he had built in the woods outside of Camel-by-the-Sea. Archive, repository and laboratory for telepathy, or mental radio as Wallace characterised it, he produced hundred of detailed charts and diagrams reminiscent of sixteenth century alchemical illustrations but with a distinctly Art Nouveau flair (see also)—influenced by contemporary Egyptomania—as heuristic models for study on reincarnation and mediumship, with the dead as well as extraterrestrials, transcribing some messages over the course of his mostly secret and solitary research. Much more at the links above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: America’s Frozen Food Day plus assorted links  to revisit

two years ago: more links to enjoy plus a LIFE parody in poor taste (1970)

three years ago: your daily demon: Seere, the Zapruder film, a Banksy mural plus more links worth the revisit

four years ago: the Pillar of the Boatmen, the winnowing oar plus negative reviews of the great outdoors

five years ago: hauntology, the Period Table (1869), even more links, the fashions of Edward Gorey plus Soviet home computers

Tuesday 27 February 2024

generally meant to be discarded (11. 385)

Via Colossal, we are introduced to the work of ceramicist Yoonmi Nam in her exhibit featuring pottery and architectural elements made on a substrate of single-use, disposable containers. Displayed on traditional soban (์†Œ๋ฐ˜, used as dining trays and general purpose tables) as pediments—Nam employs the green-grey hued glaze, which reminds us of Frankoma ware and also of the craft of kintsugi, both dating from the era of the Goryeo kingdom that once covered most of the peninsula. It is an interesting meditation on the nature of trash and consumption, encased forever as something beautiful and permanent.  Much more at the links above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Campbell’s cocktails plus the Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den

two years ago: assorted links to revisit plus the Peace of Stolbovo (1617)

three years ago: The Lady’s Mercury (1619), artist Carel Fabritius, most quoted and remixed works in the Anglophone literary canon, Walter Cronkite’s Report from Vietnam (1968), reanimating old photos plus the Conservative Political Action Conference

four years ago: more links to enjoy plus birthright citizenship in the US in jeopardy

five years ago: the Reichstag Fire (1933), the art of Alex Moy plus synthetic DNA

Tuesday 20 February 2024

10x10 (11. 365)

royal mews: King Charles’ one of a kind electric Jaguar up for auction—via Miss Cellania  

ppe: the portable nuclear bomb shield, patented by Harold Tiff  

got clearance clarence: after embarrassing blunder over bad travel advice, Air Canada advocates personhood (and limited liability) for its chatbot customer representative 

1776 days: Julian Assange’s long detention and fight against rendition to the US for Wikileaks

that which you call hardee’s, we call carl’s junior: food deserts, prevalence and distribution of casual dining chains in the US 

tigers blood: new singles from Waxahatchee 

daddy daughter day: breakdancing, bitcoin father revealed as a veteran of member of the Christian Coalition and conservative speech writer 

the second in line: Swedish illustrator Mattias Adolfsson—via Messy Nessy Chic  

body armour: Casimir Zeglen, the priest who invented the bulletproof vest  

motorcade: Joe Biden’s Cadillac sedan for sale—via tmn

synchronoptica

one year ago: artist creates a prosthetic extra digit plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: more links to enjoy, the subterrene (1972) plus The Shape of Things to Come (1936)

three years ago: introducing the Jeep (1941), a Nyan Cat NFT plus a suite of Japanese pictograms

four years ago: more mass-transit upholstery, RIP Larry Gordon Tesler who invested copy-and-paste, superannuated map styles, the possible extradition of Julian Assange plus the new US ambassador to Germany

five years ago: all the presidents’ meals, a secret meeting between industrialists and the Nazi government (1933), more links worth the revisit, the US emergency broadcast system (1971), vintages mazes plus the bokeh technique

Tuesday 13 February 2024

comet and cupid (11. 347)

Via fellow internet peripatetic Messy Nessy (much more to dsicover there), we are introduced to the eighteenth century artist Michelangelo Maestri and his school through his series of water-colours of putti, cherubs driving chariots pulled by various creatures as an allegory to depict different types and stages of love—agape, eros, xenia, philia. Inspired by the frescos of Ancient Rome, especially the then recent excavation of well-preserved examples in Herculaneum and Pompeii, his studio’s works were extremely popular and produced en masse and were often purchased as souvenirs by those on their Grand Tour.

synchronoptica

one year ago: spec scripts for Star Trek: TNG plus a webring to check out

two years ago: more Excel art, West African musical artists plus separated by a common language

three years ago: assorted links to revisit, a dinosaur park plus animation techniques

four years ago: more links to enjoy

five years ago: out-of-place archaeology, Sony World Photography winners, Mandombe script plus more links worth revisiting

Sunday 11 February 2024

8x8 (11. 343)

๐Ÿ˜ถ: a Good Internet cross-posting of Good Music, featuring a mix of tracks from Wilco, Kim Gordon, the Beths and many more  

nato backstab: in a Drudge Report style headline, the Huffington Post reports Trump at a campaign event that he might encourage Russia to attack ‘deadbeat’ allies 

internal monologue: philosophers explore new field of the inner voice at the intersection of psychiatry  

compliance moats: anti-anti-monopolists and data-brokers wrangle over regulation 

story-walk: using olfaction with narrative to simulate reflection and retention  

certificate of honourable discharge: explore the best-preserved Roman military diploma (constitutio) in a new 3D exhibit  

grand bargain: US Supreme Court seems poised to keep Trump on state ballots but deny him blanket immunity 

i’m only sleeping: a Grammy winning painted music video of the Revolver track from Em Cooper

Saturday 10 February 2024

7x7 (11. 338)

caught between the moon and new york city: taking a harrowing subway ride in 1981  

homing: Nikola Tesla’s love for pigeons and telepathy—via Strange Company 

 : more on the interrobang—see previously  

stringe-watching: the opposite of binging a series to indulge in the experience  

hash mark: the works of artist Ding Yi coinage: TikTok has seen an (irritating) explosion in linguistic novelties to promote niche microtrends—via Miss Cellania  

in the aeroplane over the seas: Neutral Milk Hotel covers for the album’s anniversary 

castro street: Bruce Baillie films Riverside, California in 1966

synchronoptica 

one year ago: assorted links to revisit, Tapestry (1971) plus a pioneering hypertext novel

two years ago: the Dread Pirate Roberts plus a geographical challenge

three years ago: the Simpsons’ intro, the feast of St Scholastica, vernacular ceramics, no fly free zones plus profiting from conspiracy

four years ago: more Orange Menace

five years ago: more links to enjoy

Monday 22 January 2024

biface (11. 288)

The left panel of the original diptych executed by French court painter Jean Fouquet in the mid-fourteen hundred for the collegiate church of Notre-Dame in Melun on the Parisian outskirts depicts patron of the arts and royal secretary ร‰tienne Chevalier with St Stephen, regarded as the first Christian protomartyr, robed and holding a book and a jagged rock as part of his iconography, having been stoned to death for blasphemy. On closer examination of this feature, however, archeologists believe that the rock might represent a prehistoric artefact—a handaxe (properly the above term) several hundreds of thousands of years in age from the Acheulean industry of manufactured tools used by Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis throughout Africa, the Middle East and Western Europe. Abundant finds as a source of mystery and fascination for centuries, and something not unfamiliar to the artist with the tool-making epoch named for a suburb of Amiens in Picardy, their folk-origin before the Enlightenment and acceptance of time-out-of-mind was sourced to “thunderstones” ejected from clouds, believing the well-wrought rocks appeared where lighting had struck and passed down as family heirlooms in the belief that they protected against subsequent strikes.

Thursday 18 January 2024

ascendant masters (11. 277)

The always excellent Linkfest from Clive Thompson directs us to revisit a 1905 theosophical volume co-authored by Annie Besant, orator, activist for Indian independence and atheist and later adherent of founder Madame Blavatsy, and CW Leadbeater, writer occultist and co-founder of the Liberal Catholic Church, called Thought-Forms, a study of how the human mind “extrudes” these visualisations of experiences, emotions and music into the external world, formed as subtle bodies observed by clairvoyants. Tinted by colour, sympathetic vibrations and the aether as expressions of quality, nature (like the pictured happy thoughts) and directedness, these manifestations are created either by feelings, experience, mediations or in their highest form, music, as in this vision formed from the operas of Charles-Franรงois Gounod. Whilst written for a specific, receptive audience, the astral diagrams have broader appeal and were influential to the world of modern, abstract art, particularly Wassily Kandinski, Piet Mondrian, and Hilma af Klint, and inform to an extent the concept of synaesthesia.

synchronoptica 

one year ago:the High Committee of the French Language plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: the musical stylings of Manuel Gรถttsching plus time flies

three years ago: Stevie Wonder’s Happy Birthday and Martin Luther King Jr 

four years ago: railbanked railroads, separating entertainment and news plus more links to enjoy

five years ago: more links worth the revisit plus performance of the Diva Dance from Fifth Element

Tuesday 16 January 2024

artist sjรถรถ (11. 270)

Courtesy of a retrospective exhibition at Oxford entitled the Great Cosmic Mother, we were pleased to be acquainted with the paintings of radical anarcho-, eco-feminist and founding proponent of the Goddess Movement whose work coincided with the woman’s liberation push of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Monica Sjรถรถ was born in the Vรคsternorrland region on New Year’s Eve 1938 and left home aged sixteen to travel Europe working as an agricultural labourer and find work in modelling, eventually taking up residence in Bristol, where she remained for the rest of her life—very well known beyond all borders, she taught and corresponded with several influential authors, neopagans and artists, including Judy Chicago, Alice Walker, Starhawk and Shekhinah Mountainwater. The show’s name comes from a pamphlet later expanded into a book co-authored with Barbara Mor covering ancient history and the origin of religion and spirituality, positing that women were the first practitioners—a text still part of the syllabus for many courses on women’s studies, mythology and theology. Much more from Hyperallergic at the link up top.

synchronoptica

one year ago: another MST3K classic,  AI designs novelty socks, an Ayn Rand play plus assorted links to revisit

two years ago: more links to enjoy, professional salutations plus haunted postcards

three years ago: your daily demon: Vapula, an anatomy lesson, contemporary irregular verb forms, special stamps for the Lunar New Year plus large Cyrillic numbers

four years ago: birb-watching, the League of Nations, the Wollemi pines plus the US congress transmits articles of impeachment for Trump

five years ago: the first orbital docking, a gilded picket fence for Mar-a-Lago, more on Prohibition in the US plus the White House serves fast-food

Friday 29 December 2023

7x7 (11. 221)

pivot point: this year and the next will be judged as humanity’s failure to tackle the climate crisis  

fact check: a selection of debunked fake news from the past year  

sears & roebuck: through to 1971, a US department commissioned Vincent Price to assemble a collection of fine art to be sold in stores  

chronophoto: a challenge similar to GeoGuessr except one has to date an image on the map 

 ๐Ÿพ: the natural wonder material returning to the Moon and beyond 

jealousy list: articles that Bloomberg contributors wish they had scooped—see previously  

1%: the world population will stand at eight billion on the new year

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit

two years ago: 2021 in review

three years ago: 2020 in review, Brexit on tech plus cleaning up space junk

four years ago: the legacy of Thomas Beckett, nanotechology, a visit to a bunker museum plus flat-earther and other science denialism

five years ago: the Fifth Day of Christmaslong-lived trees, dinosaurs of the year plus the competition to host Amazon’s second headquarters

Sunday 24 December 2023

the shot (11. 212)

With echoes of this other accidental Renaissance painting of New Year’s revelry captured by Joel Goodman on the streets of Manchester in 2015, this scene captured by Dimitris Legakis in Swansea on the Friday before Christmas recalls to some students of art history the lifeboat ensemble from The Raft of the Medusa, the visceral depiction of the writhing survivors of the tragic and scandalous wrecking of a frigate off the coast of Mauritania in 1816—which by foreshortening the tumult of figures on this massive canvas by Thรฉodore Gรฉricault appear more than life-sized.

Sunday 10 December 2023

13-1023 tcx (11. 176)

As a counterweight to the aesthetic of maximalism embodied by the popularity of Millennial Pink, Pantone announces Peach Fuzz for the Colour of 2024, with their global team of trend-watchers and chromatists reflecting back on the past quarter of a century of the nomination process, beginning with Cerulean Blue to welcome the dawn of the new millennium and finding a nostalgic nexus for their choice, which represents a calm, tactile and nostalgic hue in the pink and orange combination in very stressful and unstable times.

 
 synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit 

two years ago: the Nobel Banquet, a duet from McCartney and Jackson, 1984 from Julia’s perspective, more Chinese fuzzwords of the year plus the Pantone Colour for the coming year

three years ago: more on the Year in Search, Ubu Roi plus a 2020 recap

four years ago: Alphabets Heaven, the Apostrophe Protection Society, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Latin scripts for Cyrillic languages, RIP Marie Fredriksson plus Cincinnati’s music underground

five years ago: more links to explore, more piรฑata creations from Roberto Benevidez plus a collection of Industry Musicals

Tuesday 5 December 2023

luna luna (11. 167)

Virtually lost and obscure since its 1987 exhibition of modern art presented as a fun-fair featuring the works of Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein, Dalรญ, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Sonia Delaunay and David Hockney among others, the amusement park originally installed in Hamburg under the direction of curator Andrรฉ Heller has been restored and will be a travelling-circus with its first stop in Los Angeles. Among the some thirty original attractions will return albeit as non-functioning rides include a carousel by Haring and a Ferris wheel by Basquiat and a fun-house maze designed by Lichtenstein. The planned revival is sponsored by performer and entrepreneur Drake and his DreamCrew team.  More from designboom at the link up top.

Saturday 2 December 2023

duck or rabbit (11. 157)

Though this gallery of visual anagrams enhanced by AI and part of a school thesis—via the always engaging Web Curios—relies on many of the familiar tropes of optical illusions, like Einstein-Monroe transformations, reversals, skewed perspective and textual ambigrams, the collection of dynamic paintings and sketches built with diffusion models that one can tweak and re-code to create works of one’s own is pretty spectacular. We agree, moreover with the editorial that one should spend a moment pouring over these examples—as considering the pace of change, the magic is only guaranteed for a limited amount of time.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit, an unsuccessful space opera, the US Taiwan-Relations Act, celebrity anagrams plus Planet Pizza

two years ago: Angela Merkel steps down 

three years ago: Wonder Woman first appears in animated form, Emil and the Detectives (1931), CBC’s Larry Logo plus Trump’s daughter ostracised 

four years ago: the University of Leipzig (1409) plus outrage and polling

five years ago: more links to enjoy,  Bohemian Hanukkah plus UPA animation studios

Wednesday 29 November 2023

remainds of the day (11. 149)

The three-storey mural by Banksy critical of UK Brexit policies from 2017 executed on an old, condemned property in Dover has been demolished along with the building. Efforts were made to salvage elements like the stars and stencils and a team using LiDAR and photogrammetry technologies was commission to make a three-dimensional scan of the art work earlier in the year—capturing a digital facsimile of the physical wall and paint, but it is unclear whether these attempts at conservation were successful or if the digital reproduction good, with the artist’s consent, be recreated elsewhere.

Saturday 25 November 2023

la fiancรฉe hรฉsitante (11. 138)

An 1866 depiction of an auto-dรฉcrit reluctant bride being prepared for her nuptial ceremony by academic, neoclassical artist Auguste Toulmouche, known for his subjects that focused on domestic life of the bourgeoisie and sumptuous interiors, has become a meme, an outlet to express the general exasperation—and coaching condolences—of what women, despite decades separation and advancements still have to suffer and endure. More from Hyperallergic at the link above. 

 synchronoptica

one year ago: a bird’s eye view of Mont Saint-Michel, the Sinking of the White Ship plus assorted links worth revisiting

two years ago: another MST3K classic, more links to check out, Saint Catherine of Alexandria plus the musical stylings of Moxy Frรผvous

three years ago: an AI snowclone, a very un-Puritanical colonial settlement, the US civil war plot to burn down New York City, the debut of The Mousetrap (1952), finding my own mystery monolith plus a Tunisian Brutalist hotel that inspired the sandcrawler of the Jawas

four years ago: more links to enjoy

five years ago: decorating for 1. Advent plus a Thanksgiving commentary

Monday 13 November 2023

folly cove collective (11. 119)

Under the tutelage of Virginia Lee Burton Demetrios, the all-women’s group in a Massachusetts community from the 1940s to the late 1960s cultivated the art of block-printed fabric patterns informed by their personal experiences and narratives (see also—too bad there was nothing truly subversive like a housewife’s vengeance represented but maybe there were subtle acts of rebellion in themselves), from home economics, local, vernacular architecture and family outings. Click through the link above for more on this community of printmakers.

Friday 3 November 2023

8x8 (11. 093)

outsider art: revisiting the narrative embroidery of Agnes Richter and other works in the Prinzhorn Collection  

market sundries: the paper bag baron of the East End—via Strange Company  

the crispy r: more on rhoticity and unusual consonant 

pentimenti: conservators reveal a hidden demonic figure in Joshua Reynold’s “The Death of Cardinal Beaufort”—see also 

the statistical breviary: an overview of the history of digital design 

uno, dos, tres, quatro, cinco, cinco, seis: DJ Cummerbund (previously) presents a mashup of the The Offspring and Boney M—with quite a few other musical cameos 

face-hugger: the parasitic crustacean Phronima sedentaria was the inspiration for Ridley Scott’s Alien  

sgraffito: the alleged safe-room where Michelangelo hid from his political enemies, decorated with his anatomical and engineering studies opens to the public