we always find something, eh didi, to let us think we exist

Two household robots called Vladimir and Estragon (which refer to themselves at times Mia and Also Mia) are on display, chatting away to one another, ostensibly believing themselves to be human—though I don’t suppose that distinction is necessarily important or necessarily a case of mistaken identity.
So far, they seem to be playing better with their own kind. The names are those of the two main interlocutors of Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot (also the name of the language protocols), whom of course only have a finite number of lines and limited patience. Their endless and verging sometimes on recursive (until one of them shifts the subject slightly) and interrogative dialogue is also eagerly followed by a live-stream of human and other chat-bot voyeurs that may or may not be influence the flow of conversation. There seems to be something absurdly profound going on here but I can’t quite identify it. What do you think? Would you invite these devices into your home?

ex voto suscepto

Hyperallergic brings us an excellent primer in the tradition of the folk-art ex-voto devotions (short for the Latin “from the vow made”)—wherein unhappy little accidents are depicted (often graphically) and the sufferers’ recover through divine intervention.
These personal petitions and statements of gratitude that adorn shrines and other places of pilgrimage have their roots in sympathetic magic but developed into a highly stylised and ritualised practise that’s not only limited to iconography but also inscriptions and other offerings. Mexican artist Frida Kahlo amassed a sizable collection of these votive works that would also go on to influence her art and the how she persevered working whilst ill. Be sure to peruse the entire extensive gallery at the link up top and learn more about the different traditions.

now it's turkish delight on a moonlit night

A new collaboration by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s civil engineering faculty creates a privileged platform for witnessing the development of Istanbul and several junctures of its modern and urbane history as one of the world’s mega-cities. Through the lens of history and with geopolitical superposition, one can trace the evolution of the metropolis from 1850 onwards. Surely all communities are just as much representative as the heirs and drivers or change and deserve a show-case of their sprawl and re-zoning for their own re-inventing, only hopefully without too much directed or ordained.

endangered specie

Via TYWKIDBI (and indeed, we’d have no inkling otherwise), we learn that during copper and other metal shortages during World War II, the US mint experimented with various substitute materials, including pennies made of glass.
A possibly unique prototype sold at auction to one anonymous numismatist for a considerable sum—the batch made of this particular specie rejected and destroyed since it was a difficult medium to work with and there was no consistency in the quality. The following year, the mint issued steel pennies electroplated with zinc, and I’m pretty sure we have at least one of those around somewhere.

archæoacoustics or sonic the hengehog

Knowing that acoustics and architecture go hand in hand, researchers are using gaming and virtual reality technologies to reconstruct and recreate the soundscape that Stonehenge must have presented to congregations three millennia prior.
The stone circle would have amplified bass sounds and focused them on the centre—like the signal boosting properties of a parabolic dish, and many have remarked in more recent times, like author Thomas Hardy, on the place’s strange musical hum. As fragmentary as the tonal structure is now—polluted with the din of a nearby traffic artery, scholars are only just now able to have an idea what being in the presence of this orchestrally arranged rock ensemble might have been like. Have a listen at the link up top; it was certainly easy to imagine an acoustic presence when we visited.  There is of course always a risk—though I suppose one diminishing on one level as measurements and models get more accurate—of not getting the whole picture and allowing, expecting technology to fill in those gaps in ways that may carry forward too much license and are not faithful to the original. Telescoped out, those minor fictions could cause real major problems not only for our conception of the past but also for contemporary predictions.