lullaby

Via Weird Universe comes a preview of the longest single piece of classical music yet composed, entitled Sleep by Max Richter.
The British-German artist will debut his eight-hour long performance in September at an opera house in Berlin, which will be outfitted with beds rather than conventional theatre seats so the audience, as Richter intends for his lullaby to be experienced while drifting off to sleep and even dreaming. Though some of us might be more prone than others to doze off at a concert and it is nice to be invited for a sleep-over, I don’t know that all artists would appreciate having their works subject to our different states of consciousness.

5x5

joey: kangaroos favour left-handedness and all of Nature exhibits this sort of chirality

neo-noir: brilliant, retro animations by Argentine artist Kidmograph

beat the heat: researchers determine how silver ants of the Sahara survive the withering temperatures and imagine human applications

side by side-show: a look at the lives and career of conjoined twins, Daisy and Violet Hilton

conspicuous consumption: philosophical quandary on what the take-away might be for alien-observers on the very mundane subject of chewing-gum—being contraband Singapore seems very antithetical to our ritual

staatsbesuch oder order of precedence

When the Queen and her consort come on a state-visit to Germany next week, they’ll be thronged by some adoring fans and followers. I wonder what sort of gifts will be exchanged. These two powerful women have everything but surely it will be something a little more dear and thoughtful than a bundle of DVDs her Majesty got that one time.
In the history of diplomacy, a lot of treasure, tribute and artefacts have been presented on state receptions, pandas, china, but probably the most priceless present was given by a scholar and magistrate of Constantinople called Gemistus Plethon during a council (summit) in the city state of Florence in 1430 to Cosimo d’Medici in the form of the complete works of Plato. These dialogues had been lost to Western academics for over a thousand years, since the fall of the Roman Empire in Europe and theological, scientific and philosophic thought had been governed by the teachings of Aristotle, Plato’s student. Medici, patron of the arts and scholarship, however, recognised the value of this trove of forgotten knowledge and commissioned priest Marsilio Ficino to translate the whole parnassus and provide commentary. The undertaking took decades (during which time it is also rumoured that Ficino may have tweaked the notion of a Platonic-relationship in order to excuse his own proclivities, and by the way, probably invented tarot card divination out of an interest for numerology he discovered in these new dialogues) but was probably the singular gift-exchange that sparked and sustained the Renaissance by shifting one’s perception of classical thought first in Italy and then beyond. This might be a tough one to top but I bet the Chancellor will present something meaningful.

5x5

archidirectors: cinematic visionaries imagined as architecture

needful things: revisiting the online emporium of haunted, cursed antiques

flying toasters: Dangerous Minds’ Dangerous Finds discovers that androids really do dream of dream of electronic sheep

de domús communis cura: condensed version and highlights of papal encyclical on environmental stewardship

b-moll: Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier performed by a twisting gallery of neon lights