la mort et les statues

Correspondent Messy Nessy Chic documents, in a very well researched and composed article, the sad and little regarded fate of the avante garde statuary that peopled the avenues of Paris during the Third Republic.
With preservation of the many artful bronzes being the exception and not the rule, most were dismantled and melted down for scrap, lest the style or personages represented offend—or outright threaten—the occupying regime. The caretaker Vichy government of France was accused of giving into too many demands as it was, and of course the concessions that wartime France one did not solely hinge on removing controversial public art and did manage to avoid graver insult. The fact that this demolition was recorded and can be revisited presently, the figures still serve to represent all victims of war as all monuments and memorials do. Though of a vastly different character, these scenes parallel the time we visited the Citadel of Spandau to find a heap of displaced statues.

gestalting or pinky and the brain

Via the always engaging The Browser comes a fascinating investigation into the ethics of genetic experimentation and hybridisation. Such husbandry is just about marrying up the right DNA—which does present technical hurdles though brute technology is quick to obtain and accommodate pathways that are penitentially advantageous to humans as organ farms, a repository of spare-parts, but from some fronts bodes caution, lest these chimera achieve an animal-singularity.
Personally, I couldn’t say that there was some enduring uniqueness to modes of human consciousness that make us special or so horrifyingly privileged. Some ethically-minded individuals are expressing concern that a human mind trapped in a laboratory rat’s body (reading gestating as gestalting) would elicit outrage. I’d dare to submit that an unadulterated rat probably is thinking along those very lines without some imagined vital spark. What do you think? Perhaps humans ought to be spliced with some humanity.

offworld or freemasonry

The always fascinating BLDGBlog reports that a group of researchers have discovered how to create construction materials for future colonists on Mars using native building blocks in an environment apparently devoid of water. Heating sulphur to the point of liquefaction, it is mixed with soil to produce Martian concrete. The resulting bricks are relatively easy, light but sturdy, to use and are infinitely recyclable—in addition to being far less of a logistics investment in bringing supplies from home. Earthling settlers, given the weaker gravity of the planet, might be free to create impossibly ambitious cathedrals to exploration and discovery.

6x6

octarine: there’s a robust movement to name Element 117 after fantasy author Terry Pratchett, not to the exclusion of honouring Lemmy Kilmister with a heavy metal homage

★: for the artist’s 69th birthday, a review and analysis of David Bowie’s 25th album

putting on the ritz: a fascinating exploration of the luxury hotels, secret vertical villages of 1920s New York

dialogue ballons: beluga whales communicate with bubbles

montage: gorgeous, expansive architectural collages, via the Everlasting Blort

amanuensis: New York Public Libraries release thousands of archival images and seek a resident remixer