Saturday, 13 March 2021

dewdrop

Last year it was a little too warm for snowdrops (Galanthus, Schneeglรถckchen) but this spring we had quite a profusion including a few fine examples of the related but rarer leucojum (below center, from the Greek for white violet, Knotenblumen for the green or yellow knotted tips to their outer petals).
Both snowflakes as all related genera are known are part of the Amaryllis family of bulbous perennials and are also sometimes called Saint Agnes’ flower, as they usually begin to appear around the feast day of Agnes of Bohemia on 2 March, springing up in shadier, wetter spots and tend to be pretty hardy and resilient garden plants despite their seemingly delicate and ephemeral nature.  Summer snowflakes also grow in late spring.

8x8

zaouli: a traditional dance of the of the Guro people of central Cรดte d’Ivoire 

line-dry only: experimental living apparel sequesters carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and produces oxygen  

everydays—the first five-thousand days: the digital artist better known as Beeple sold an artwork as a non-fungible token (previously) for nearly seventy million dollars at auction, more here  

: Lou Ottens, the inventor of the cassette, passes away, aged ninety-four 

 upward mobility: theory that Flintstones and Jetsons take place simultaneously with an elite technocracy and a post-apocalyptic underclass—see also  

ikebana: a vintage guide to the art of Japanese flower arranging, previously  

life finds a way: using parallel processing and stochastic algorithms, one programmer generates Mona Lisa from John Horton Conway’s game  

personรฆ: short documentary Beyond Noh filters through thousands of colourful and evocative ceremonial masks from cultures around the world

Friday, 12 March 2021

yes, this is dog

Via Mel Magazine, we are directed towards a curator of so-called ancient memes, circa 2007 to 2013, who showcases archetypal artefacts of a bygone era that can seem as escaping remote and unrecognisable because of its relative proximity (and directly proportional cringeworthiness in conflict with the toxicity of nostalgia) as any reference to fossilised culture. What is your werewolf name?

isogloss

Via Language Hat, we are referred to a cartographic website called mapologies that specialise in linguistic, dialectical demarcation (see also here and here), like the Apfel-Appel line. It was not only engrossing to see the shifting sentiment, etymologies and root languages (like this toasting map of Europe) but also the distribution of use for a certain item or animal, like the multiple Spanish words for popcorn across the language’s Sprachraum, as attested by the saying “No two popcorns are called the same,” unsurprising as maize is native to the Americas but nonetheless the variety is striking.

ordinance survey

Similar to the application that allows one to listen to Wikipedia being edited, amended and improved in real time, the always excellent Maps Mania introduces us to the chimes and tintinnabulation of OpenStreetMap. As with the former whose collaborative success inspired the latter, because of all the contributors globally, the update process plays a continual and emergent tune. Learn more at the links above. 


 

the anathema of zos

Among the youngest artists to exhibit at the Royal Academy and securing an art scholarship and associated with occult figures like Aleister Crowley, Austin Osman Spare (*1886 – †1956) is virtually unknown despite his contemporary presence—possibly for his departure from other esoterics by turning inward to uncover hidden knowledge by engaging his atavistic subconscious psyche. Accessing his portfolio full of Art Nouveau grotesques and echoing the style of artwork of Aubrey Beardsley through his self-published grimoire Earth Inferno, inspired by Dante’s epic trilogy. Eventually accusing other magicians as only concerned with self-aggrandisement and harshly critical of Nazism’s flirtation with the occult, Spare’s subsequent works articulated the process of automatic writing and mediumistic sketching, a method to produce the sigils that summon spirits, and analysing the output. Modified by later adherents and evangelisers, Spare’s techiques and theories were transferred to a movement broadly called chaos magick. More to explore at the link up top with the content warning that some of the imagery verges on the sexually domineering and violent.

selective-service or solider of christ

Venerated on this day on the occasion of his martyrdom under order of African Proconsul Cassius Dio in 295 (*274), Saint Maximilian of Tebessa (Numidia, Roman Algeria) was obliged to enlist in the Roman army as the son of a solider, Fabius Victor, on his twenty-first birthday. Refusing on religious grounds, Maximilian was beheaded immediately and posthumously made patron of conscientious objectors—giving rise over the millennia to several pacifist organisations, including the Order of Maximilian, a group of aligned clergy members opposed to the continuing war in Vietnam (see also) that fought against conscription and the draft.

portrait of the artist as a young woman

BBC Culture showcases the Flemish Renaissance painter Caterina van Hemessen (*1528 – †1565) through the lens of her 1548 self-portrait which is the first known depiction of an artist—of any gender—at work at the easel. Certainly knowing her art history, van Hemessen’s reflection, projection has a definite correspondence to Albrecht Dรผrer’s 1500 work. As in many professions at the time, the certification and apprenticeship process was biased against women joining the ranks of artists with curricula consisting of studying cadavers and vivisections and the nude male form—places where women had no access to—it was difficult to find a sponsor and teacher, making female painters exceedingly rare, though in Hemessen’s case it was her father that taught her, Jan Sanders van Hemessen—renowned as well for introducing Italian, romantic influences to the Northern Renaissance.