parc des ateliers

Opening to the public, Frank Gehry’s twisting tower for the Luma Arles campus is informed by the city’s Roman architecture and the craggy promontory that inspired Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night—painted near there. Clad with eleven-thousand stainless steel panels, the structure houses an exhibition space as well as seminar rooms and workshops for various projects.  Much more at the link up top.

beige

Commissioned originally by a paint company for voice-over artist Ken Nordine to write and perform radio spots in the style of signature his “word jazz” albums (also long-time WBEZ Chicago public radio host of the programme of the same name), the work expanded by 1967 into a full recording of some thirty tracks, personifying a different colour each, kind of like Eighty-Eight Lines about Forty-Four Women. Covered hues include Puce, Chartreuse, Ecru and Mauve. The reverse of the sleeve and liner-notes included byzantine instructions for a board game and make a finger-painting based on the order prescribed and scoring was self-apparent.

bravo nuvo

Appreciative of the chance to revisit some advertising psychedelia we’ve encountered in the past, like for drive-in cinema concessions, and strange, culturally-informed McDonald’s commercial pitches being in a category of their own, we quite enjoyed sampling this roundup of seemingly drug-addled ad-campaigns. Particularly we enjoyed this mellow trip through McDonaldland and try-hard nature of a decaffeinated coffee substitute that really had to overcompensate to be convincing. It’s strange to witness this unironic appropriation of counter-culture by marketing executives appealing to conservative middle America.

local flavour

Though again not a fan of ubiquitous coffee giant and what impact it has had on independent ventures, we can support this other jimoto-oriented initiative planned to mark a quarter of a century’s presence in Japan by the company later this summer in August by making every surprising, palette-pleasing local lait frappé drink available in every outlet across the forty-seven prefectures. The province of Aichi has red bean paste coffee, Yamaguchi has green tea with sesame and matcha, and Hokkaido has creamed corn flavour.

djet et décoratifs

Though we tend to mostly imagine the chassis of classic automobiles as neatly unadorned, artist Sonia Delaunay, co-founder of the movement known as Orphism, a branch of Cubism emerging as distinct from 1912 onwards, bestowed a quite remarkable and unexpected amount of detailing to the bodies of older autos, especially in the 1920s when a

custom job was very much in order. First living woman artist to enjoy a retrospective exhibition in the Louvre and officer of the Legion of Honour, Delaunay’s introduction of geometric abstraction as a regular and customary feature helped establish brilliancy and the Gestalt across her chosen canvas. More to explore at the links above.

8x8

autobus park № 7: explore Kyiv’s derelict modernist transportation hippodrome—via Things Magazine  

blue: listen to rediscovered demos and outtakes from Joni Mitchell’s album on its fiftieth anniversary 

i’m chasing martian: excellent auditory illusion illustrated—see previously—from chanting fans  

dark matter, dark fish: the overwhelming biomass of Earth’s ecosystem is essentially undetectable for us (see also) yet we claim the right to rubbish it  

warriors of the zenith, warriors of the nadir: a 1904 ethnograph of Zuni ritual masks  

work-life balance: Japanese government proposes four-day work-week  

shareware: a look at the App Store’s predecessor, Software Labs  

private viewing: the collectors who saved modernist Soviet masterpieces

lullusglocke

Though we didn’t know what the belltower of the ruins of the monastery contained last time we visited Bad Hersfeld, we now know to check out next time the oldest, dated cast church bell in Germany, named after a sainted abbot of the town and later first archbishop of Mainz, Wessex-born Lullus. According to a highly abbreviated, Latin inscription the thousand kilogramme bell was moulded on this Feast of Saint John the Baptist in 1038. Hanging in the Katharinenturm amidst the church’s foundations and partial walls, it is rung to herald the town’s Lullusfest, held in the second week of October to commemorate the passing its namesake and other special occasions.

fors fortūna

Here depicted in the Carmina Burana manuscript, the Roman personification of fortune and luck often includes in her iconography a gubernaculum—that is a ship’s rudder for steering rather blindly for boon or for bane, the name of the goddess and what she represents seems to derive from vortumna—she who revolves throughout the year and whose temple was dedicated on this day, marked by celebrants floated downstream on the Tiber to the Forum Boarium for the event only after secret rituals were expected to row back to the city, bedecked with garland. The goddess has numerous aspects that were celebrated throughout the year and during life-events, including Fortuna Annonaria, luck in harvest, Fortuna Virilis, a lucky match, Fortuna Redux, to return home safely, Fortuna Huiuse Diei, luck of the moment and Fortuna Barbata, good luck in adolescents becoming adults.