geotagging or if you see something, spray something

Der Spiegel (auf englisch) has a enlivening dispatch on a project to encourage dexterity, physical activity and creative expression in a class of senior citizens through street art. Though this particular initiative has run its course, graffiti, both therapeutic and for its own sake, has proven engaging and enduring and sparked similar art projects in other retirement communities.

märchenhaft or funk to funky

The splendid directory of keen stuff Super Punch brings us the latest project by artist and illustrator Andrew Kolb. Inspired by the mental images that each line evokes, Kolb created a children’s story from the lyrics of David Bowie’s Space Oddity. He shares the whole thing on his website, along with other pretty imaginative works. Modern ballads, it seems, after Bowie, the Beatles and the Stones, do not consistently tell a story, but there are exceptions. Maybe it's too difficult to separate the music video from the music, sometimes.  What songs fill your head with images and a happy end?

bibliomancy

Bibliomancy is divination from books, opening a book to a random page, like the Sibylline leaves but usually the book was the Bible, and trying to interpret the chance passage as advice for the present or the future. I rediscovered recently the veteran blog BibliOdyssey, which has been finding and sharing antique and vintage prints and illustrations for years. The site covers all disciplines and all ages and one can find amazing artwork just browsing through the archive of entries or find random inspiration, and I am really enjoying the collection of unusual and striking Oriental graphic art, like from this recent post and an earlier one on Japanese toy designs. Not only is it visually stunning and surprising, I also appreciate the ease of navigation and sorting of ideas and styles, as well as the scholarly treatment of each source and the information about the history and setting of each book and canvas.

link round-up: sonnenblume and phases of the moon

Here's a smattering of some of the more interesting items I stumbled upon or was clued on to over the past week:

Although the sunflower was probably domesticated in the New World before maize, it took a Lenten loophole of the prohibition of cooking oil in the Russian Orthodox church to really make the plant commercially recognized. The invention of cholesterol too played a big role in giving farmers a valuable alternative crop for off-seasons, when practicing crop-rotation. The circuitous history of the flower is fascinating.  It is a sight to see driving through the countryside and seeing vast fields of big sunflowers angling their blooms away from the roving sun throughout the day. It made me think about another inspired discovery of a young inventor, who designed a more efficient photovoltaic array after hiking through the wintry woods and noticed how the trees might try to maximize their sun-exposure.

After the Feast of the Assumption (Maria Himmelfahrt) last week, earlier this week was the celebration of the coronation of the Queen of Heaven, which Wikipedia explained brilliantly, and though true to form in scholarship, sweetly, I thought. I am really enamoured with that website and its dedicated band of contributors, and not just for all the new things that one can learn every day, but also how individual entries are galloping towards completion and perfection, and how challenging certain topics and aspects can be to define, like the meticulous and continuous revisions that go into the gloss of Lolita.
And here was a very cool and inventive gallery of photographs of people posing with the Moon. I want to do this next time we're camping.

squirrel, nut, zipper or out of sight, out of mind

Apparently, I am very prone to hide things in drawers-and in a very nomadic and peripatetic sort of way. I know that's not their home and not really where they belong, in the logical scheme of things. So instead of occupying more and more temporary yet concealing real-estate, acquisition growing of junk-drawers with more and more finds, there are probably more creative solutions for the stuff that one collects--or rather, saves.

I saw a quite a few white-washed, Mediterranean-style restaurants and shops in the harbor towns in southern France that were decorated with these larger wine jugs (DE) filled with corks.

That, I thought, was a good way to free up one junk-drawer--for the bottle caps and beer coasters.  Tacked, uncorked, or otherwise assembled, I sure there an adequately presentable way to display most anything.  How would you curate and show off your collection and stockpile?

visitenkarte

A talented graphic-artist had a vision for a very minimalistic, classy business card (discovered and re-imagined at Boing Boing), which highlights one’s essential modes of contact and communication, like parsing parts of speech or a particularly long German word, with one’s email address.

This is a very basic and clever way to convey a lot. Mine is sort of a fantasy card, since I don’t have my own domain-name—yet, though I am happy with my little niche in the web and those exclusive addresses are probably just like vanity plates, nor am I particularly social or electronically gregarious, I suppose. How would you design a simple and effective calling-card?