psalterium moguntinum

The second major book printed with movable type in the West and the first by printers and former colleagues Johann Fust and Petrus Schöffer after the unamicable split from the workshop of Johannes Gutenberg, the Mainz Psalter, an anthology of poems, prayers and other devotional material like a liturgical calendar, a guide to the saints and a good primer to impart literacy commissioned by the archbishop, contained many innovations that are still resonant and relevant in the publication industry.
It bears a printer’s mark and colophon that gives the date of publication as the Eve of the Feast of the Assumption [14 August] 1457—the date, dateline and dedication of the Bible being handwritten for each copy. The work employs three colours of ink and contains images and mixed sized text on the same pages, a technical feat—as well as parallel music score for selected psalms.

arnold van soissons

Born near Brabant and serving as a soldier of fortune before settling at a great abbey outside of the ancient city of Soissons as a hermit hoping to fade into retirement, Saint Arnold (*1040 – †1087)was elevated by the monastic community to abbot—an honour he only reluctantly accepted, persuaded to the return to take up office by an encounter with a wolf.   Later, after assuring that his parish was in capable hands, Arnold returned to West Flanders and established an abbey of his own in the town of Oudenburg, there perfecting his skills in brewing beer—which, despite ignorance of the germ theory of pathology, he happily evangelised for and rightly touted as safer than water. Arnold, who is venerated on this day, composed a blessing thusly:

Benedic, Domine, creaturam istam cerevisiae, quam ex adipe frumenti producere dignatus es: ut sit remedium salutare humano generi: et praesta per invocationem nominis tui sancti, ut, quicumque ex ea biberint, sanitatem corporis, et animae tutelam percipiant. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

Bless, O Lord, this creation beer, that you hvet been pleased to bring forth from the sweetness of the grain—that it might be a salutary remedy for the human race: and grant by the invocation of your holy name, that, whosoever drinks of it may obtain health of body and a sure safeguard for the soul. &c. Amen.

During one outbreak of the plague, an untold number of residents were able to avoid infection through sticking to hygienic beer—untold and unbeknownst as is the case with most effective public health interventions because there’s not the visible means of tracking success to compare with that of failure and efforts are hampered by the backfire effect. Arnold is the patron of hops-harvesters and brewers and his iconographic depictions include him holding a bishop’s mitre and a mash rake.

8x8

really simple syndication: Tedium explores early electronic news and digital services (see previously here, here and here)

let’s go out to the lobby: a 1979 drive-in cinema sci-fi concession advertisement

heracleum sosnovsky: creative interventions to control the toxic, invasive import known as “Stalin’s Revenge”

a shiver of sharks: research is showing the marine predator to be social creatures despite their lone, marauding reputation

iss: a digital coffee table book documenting life aboard the International Space Station

dead pilots society: a treasury of unproduced television shows—via Miss Cellania’s Links (see also)   

efterträda: IKEA reveals its branded line of apparel with a new collection

the audience is listening: the origins of Netflix’s ta-dum sound—via Things Magazine with a special edition on start-up noises

the forty-ninth parallel

Via Miss Cellania’s Links, we are transported to the geographical exclave of Port Roberts, Washington on the southern tip of the Tsawwassen peninsula to see how its residents, isolated from the USA by a forty kilometre drive through Canada, are faring during the pandemic and the border closures and restrictions on movements put in place.
Though some accounts attribute the creation of the American enclave to an oversight in the Oregon Treaty of 1846 between the US and Britain that delineated the border, others frame it as a deliberative strategic decision with questions of ceding the territory never resolved. Gratefully, the remoteness has kept the community relatively free of infection and contagion despite the rank ineptitude of American in general.  Rather than conferring an advantage militarily (so far), the outpost played an outsized role during each nation’s respective periods of prohibition. We wonder how other liminal places—Gibraltar, Büsingen am Hochrhein, Germany only accessible through Switzerland, Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Ceuta and others—might be affected by this health crisis and how borders might be redrawn afterward.

star child or letterbox edition

Via Kottke, we are directed to this little lockdown masterpiece by graphic artist Lydia Cambron who recreates beat-for-beat the concluding apartment scene (see previously here, here, here and here) from 2001: A Space Odyssey synced to her own 2020: An Isolation Odyssey filmed over the course of two months in her Brooklyn flat with props and creature-comforts that speak across time and space referencing both the disorientation of discovery and of the pandemic. Strongly recommend viewing all the way through the closing credits to fully appreciate the effort put into this work.

roaring twenties

In order to promote the national chain of cinemas reopening later this month, the US-based entertainment group hopes to attract throngs with the throw-back pricing of a century ago with tickets set at 15¢ a piece for the day.
About one-sixth of venues are set to welcome in the public and perhaps theatres can once again accommodate audiences safely and we sympathise with other operations that one has to scale for reduced capacity that was not built into their business scheme, though this does not seem to be the way to do it responsibly. Apparently rather than being driven by the assessment of public health experts, it was pushed by the topic of the previous post. What with the failed efforts to reopen earlier and all the grubby nickels and dimes changing hands, I think that this script for this marketing ploy was written by the virus and apparently is playing favourably to test audiences.

barrister, broker, billiard-maker

The classic of ostensibly children’s literature that contained the imaginative, nonsensical poetic interlude The Hunting of the Snark was original penned by Lewis Carroll in 1876 but was not in print in Russia until 1991—authorities having perhaps detected a subversive undertone to the rich allegory—
and is presently receiving a new treatment by Berlin-based illustrator Igor Oleinikov to project the “Agony in Eight Fits” through the lens of despotism and disaster with uniformed and besuited men leading the expedition. The illustrator that Carroll commissioned himself, Henry Holiday (*1839 – †1927, back cover shown, the Boojum, being highly dangerous and another made-up word, is the Snark’s true nature and will make the hunter “softly and suddenly vanish away, and never be met again”), for his initial publication also considered the poem a tragedy and full of existential angst and has been the topic of much academic analysis, deconstruction and debate, inspiring a great deal of other homages despite the author’s warning not read too much into it.

deception

Our gratitude to Fancy Notions for sharing and recalling us to these surreal Nancy comic panels,
which in turn enlightened us to the possible existence (or not) of a crypto-sequel to the 2010 science fiction action film co-produced by the couple Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan (see previously here and here), though the cinematic successor to the original seems to be only the second instalment the way The Odyssey was for The Iliad. Watch the preview of the movie called Tenet (which is out in theatres or not) below and learn more at the link above but save the experience for the home box-office for the time being.