8x8

into the bantaverse: a bot ghost-writes a Star Wars story—see also  

green guerrillas: the role that radical gardeners play in fostering community out of urban blight  

earth, wind and fire: combine basic elements and create new substancesas an alchemist—via Waxy  

fourth world: celebrating the life and career of trumpeter and electronic music pioneer Jon Hassell (*1937)

in frame: see the untrimmed, original version of Rembrandt’s Night Watch (previously) thanks to the help of a curating algorithm   

homo longi: recently discovered ‘dragon man’ skull may be a transitional species from Neanderthal to modern humans  

ine bay: hidden, historic boathouses (伊根の舟屋, funaya) in Kyoto—via Nag on the Lake’s always excellent Sunday Links 

the skeleton crew: our friendly artificial intelligencer (previously) trains a neural network to write a horror story

journal de bord

Our fellow peripatetic internet caretaker Messy Nessy Chic turns us on to a mysterious notebook of outsider art (Art Brût, see previously here and here) that is the only artefact of the creator and contains all that is known (see also) about Jean Fick (*1876) with a decontexualised autobiography and unclear vocation whether he is the Ambassador of or to God. There’s no indication of what the brilliant colours and patterns might symbolise. Though with no more provenance attached to where or how it was found, the notebook rose to prominence after being featured in a special exhibition by the American Folk Art Museum in 2018. 

« FICK JEAN NEE 23.11.1876 — HOPITAL — SOLDAT. 13.10.1898 — 13.9.1900 — RM 57 — WESE GUERRE 9.14 — 4.8.1.4.1917.7. SANTE BLESSE – INVALIDE FICK J MARIAGE DELESSE MARI. MODES 29.4.1902 HOPITAL NEE 8.9.1874. FICK ALISE 24.2.1903. MARIE. A. 1.2.1904. JEAN. K. 22.05. MAGU. 11.6.10 ». Sur la couverture : « Jean Fick ambassadeur mondieu N.23 ». 

“FICK JEAN BORN 23.11.1876 – HOSPITAL – SOLDIER. 13.10.1898 – 13.9.1900 – RM 57 – WESE WAR 9.14 – 4.8.1.4.1917.7. HEALTH INJURED – INVALID FICK J MARRIAGE ABANDONED HUSBAND  . MODES 29.4.1902 HOSPITAL BORN 8.9.1874. FICK ALISE 24.2.1903. MARRIED. A. 1.2.1904. JEAN. K. 22.05. MAGU. 11.6.10”. On the cover: “Jean Fick my God/world [mondieu] ambassador  N. 23.”

london international surrealist exhibition

Held at the New Burlington Galleries off Savile Row in Mayfair from this day through 4 July 1936, the organising committee hosted works from several popular and influential artists of the movement, including Alexander Calder, S. H. Tauber-arp, Victor Brauner, Gala and Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Len Lye, René Magritte and Paul Klee and attracted a thousand visitors per day with Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, the US, the UK, New Zealand, Italy, Roumania and Czecho-Slovakia represented and distinguished presenters delivering a series of lectures to large assembled audiences. Salvador Dalí wore a diving helmet whilst giving his seminar on fantômes paranoïaques authentiques and nearly suffocated at the dais and had to be rescued by poet David Gascoyne with a spanner.

plastikbesteck

Informed by the announcement of the EU parliament that from next month on, single-use plastic eating utensils, swizzle sticks, drinking straws, etc. will be banned, a design duo from Germany has exhibited as part of the London Design Biennale an installation called “Spoon Archaeology” of two decades of collected, curated strata—all part of a theme for a pavilion on ecological awareness and sustainability by putting problematic disposables on display as artefacts of the past that they should be consigned to. More from Dezeen at the link above.

tbilisoba

We enjoyed exploring the gallery of the visual essay about the endangered Brutalist monuments and buildings of the Georgian capital of Tbilisi (previously here and here) including a quite arresting 1976 of the city’s vocational college bas-relief (nicknamed the Soviet Batman) that fronted one of the main thoroughfares that was slowly and unceremoniously scavenged for scrap metal and now is no more and

the better looked after and protected Chronicle of Georgia (საქართველოს ქრონიკები, not to be confused with this other set of pillars), the post-and-lentil colossal structure depicting the culture, history and heroes of Georgia above and Gospel stories and various hagiographies below. Created by Zurab Tsereteli in 1985, a few panels have yet to be completed, the complex commemorates Georgia’s embarking on its fourth millennia and should inspire preservation of all architectural treasures.

up and atom

Via Present/&/Correct, we are referred to a curated cache Nuclear Engineering Wall Charts and vintage reactor diagrams from the collection of the University of New Mexico. The pictured diagram features the Biblis B Kernkraftwerke (AKW) near Worms, both A and B blocks were closed in March 2011 following the Fukushima and since permanently shut-down and slated for decommissioning. More to explore at the links above.

uncaptioned

The archivists at the US Library of Congress regularly put out campaigns to identify mysterious photographs, with happily an ever-dwindling cache to solve, but there are a few that still defy an engaged public and persons yet at-large. Among the malingerers is this assumptively familiar, famous and iconic image that has accrued a sizeable largess of misidentification and wrong guesses from Joan Jett to The Slits and all manner of duos in between. More puzzles to untangle at the link above and all guesses are welcome.

the long and the short of it

We enjoyed this grand tour of the continent through superlative toponymy—with of course the crowning achievement for the longest placename being a village in Wales (pro pronunciation help here), but we also get to visit Italy’s contender on the shores of Lake Maggiore and the pictured postcard from the Dutch village of Gasselternijveenschemond plus a few one-letter wonders through a variety of art and artefacts from the collections of a Europe-wide consortium of museums.

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

7x7

snuggling cygnets: avian photography of the year, also known as b-poty for short—via Colossal  

untitled pizza movie: documenting change in New York City slice-by-slice  

aqen the ferryman: Cairo hosts a parade for a score of royal mummies moving to a new museum—via Super Punch  

salvator metaversi: art historian turns supposed last Leonardo into an NFT to help out the family who sold it to unscrupulous art dealers 

theatre of machines: intricate gear illustrations from Agostino Ramelli (see also here and here)  

scenes from a mall: footage from the Southdale Centre’s grand opening in 1956  

knock knock: a swan terrorising a neighbourhood in Northampton—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links

cour carrée

Via the always informed Open Culture, we learn that the venerable Louvre is putting its entire collection of nearly half-a-million artworks and artefacts on-line for academics and everyone else to use and peruse through the museum’s new portal. Not only what is hanging on the walls of the gallery, the site also grants access to what is in storage and on loan to other institutions. Of course all the masterpieces are there and with such an overwhelming amount to take in, there are some curated playlists, albums of themes and artists to discover, including depictions of historic moments, portraiture and recent acquisitions.

the gallery of regrettable food

Awarded with the honour of Blört old school site of the day, we were pleased to make the acquaintance of Lileks—a self-described antechamber of the web’s most idiosyncratic curated museum (see also) through its Institute of Official Cheer and some of its recent acquisitions—or de-accessions depending on one’s perspective—exhibited in the Orphanage of Cast-Off Mascots (coming soon), Interior Desecrators and the Permanent Collection of Impermanent Art, dedicated to presenting ephemera and advertising in frames. There’s also a daily weblog to peruse with lots to discover going back to 1998.

7x7

centre of attention: country-focused map world map projections (see previously)  

foia follies: celebrating the worst in US government transparency  

double-bongcloud: top chess players making bizarrely risky openings—via Kottke  

the positively true adventures of the alleged texas cheerleader-murdering mom: fifty year old charged with harassment for producing deepfakes to defame her daughter’s competition and get them kicked off the squad 

letterlocked: using x-ray technology and artificial intelligence (see also) to read historical epistolary works without destroying them 

house of the muses: a search engine that finds visual correspondence among masterpieces in world-class art museums via Open Culture  

terra incognita: a sonic sea chart of phantom islands (previously here and here)—via Things Magazine

hodie mihi cras tibi

Via Super Punch, we quite enjoyed perusing this curated gallery of seventeenth century mourning, memorial rings from the British Museum’s collection. These funerary mementos that often contained hair or other personal artefacts of the departed and have a real, unexpected goth energy, like the titular piece of jewellery with the legend in black enamel Latin for Today me, Tomorrow You. More at the links above.

vostok-3ka no. 1

Also known by the designation Sputnik 9 (see previously), the Soviet spacecraft launched on this day in 1961 carried a complement and crew of mice, guinea pig, a dog called Chemushka (“Blackie”) and a realistic human dummy, mannequin called Ivan Ivanovich (the equivalent of Joe Doe or Max Mustermann) that was so distressing uncanny thus prompting technicians to affix a label to his visor lest someone finding Ivan after a mission might not mistake him for an incapacitated cosmonaut or extra-terrestrial. Ivan was auctioned off after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and purchased by Ross Perot, who subsequently donated him to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. The mission only consisting of a single trip around the world, it was deorbited shortly

pflanzenwissenschaft

Active at a pivotal time that marked the transition in field of nature studies from hobbyists to professionals and one of the first to adopt the classification system of Carl Linnaeus in the German-speaking community, Catharina Helena Dörrien was born this day in 1717 (†1795). A talented painter, Dörrien researched and catalogued native plants and fungi of the Principality of Orange-Nassau with over fourteen hundred watercolour botanical illustrations and many of her works are in the collections of the Wiesbaden Museum.

6x6

affiche: early Art Deco posters of René Magritte  

dogs of war: a public service announcement issuing guidance on how to disable Boston Dynamics weaponised Spot units  

whitewash: thankfully, President Biden is able to overturn “beautiful” architecture executive order that would mandate neo-classicism in federal buildings 

clothes peg: the clothesline animals of Helga Stentzel 

second life: exploring and conserving the abandoned spaces of the internet  

mask media: brilliant Soviet Kazakh health promotion campaigns from the 1970s—see also

6x6

pitch and pent: the rooftop illusion demonstrated by Kolichi Sugihara of the Meiji Institute for Advanced Mathematics  

making sense of scents: the olfactory capacities are underestimated—via Messy Nessy Chic  

have fun storming the castle: The Princess Bride re-enacted in its entirety as home movies under lock-down  

matinee at the bijou: the Internet Archive (see previously) has digitally curated a massive cinematic history library  

pyrophone: a flame organ that amplifies the tones of vibrating, burning hydrogen  

10¹⁰⁰:an individual engineers an analogue, modular calculator (see also) to count up to a googol

👁️‍🗨️

Via Waxy, we are referred to an expansive and growing and searchable collection of graphic design related items, materials and resources organised from and available at the Internet Archives (previously) by curator Valery Marier. Categories include font specimens, annuals, style guides, book jackets, infographics, data visualisations, various advertising ephemera and vintage branding devices. 

 

 

 

collezionare capolavori

Though in stasis and awaiting visitors, the storied and seldom seen Torlonia Marbles from a private collection are gathered together for public viewing for the first time, resulting from an agreement four decades in negotiation and agreed upon four years before the exhibition was scheduled to open. Not only was the loan to Rome’s Capitoline Museum controversial and fraught with compromise and conciliation, there’s some intrigue associated with its collectors as well—the family once the bankers and economic advisors to the Vatican and master and model for the attainment of prestige and status through art collecting.