sound garden: Dutch Institute of Sound and Vision lets you explore boutique radio stations from around the world
to catch a thief: artist Anthony van der Meer allows his phone to be stolen and tracks what ensues
dichronic: the incredible craftsmanship that went into the ancient Roman Lycurgus Cup harnesses nano-technology
sproglaboratoriet: beating out hygge, ‘Danskhed,’ Danishness, won word of the year
hearth and home: guide to appeasing household spirits around the world
figgy pudding: an overview of the folklore behind Christmas cuisine, via Strange Company
ward & centre: the utopian civil engineering of Ebenezer Howard influenced urban layouts for generations
fuselage, empennage: modular airplane interior could reconfigure itself for long-haul flights for more efficient, comfortable use of space, like a sky caboose
Saturday 17 December 2016
8x8
catagories: ๐ณ๐ฑ, ✈️, ๐ถ, ๐ก, ๐, ๐บ️, ๐ฅธ, food and drink, myth and monsters
bir varmฤฑล, bir yokmuล
Following in the tradition of the Brothers Grimm of the previous generation (but whose legacy was still being unfolded), Hungarian linguist and ethnographer Ignรกcz Kรบnos travelled around Ottoman Turkey collecting folklore, and in 1913 published a brilliantly illustrated by Willy Pogany edition of forty-four Turkish fairy tales.
Though in presentation, the collection may strike Western readers as something more in the tradition of 1001 Arabian Nights, the stories are cognates of the archetypal ones that the occident monomyth is heir to. The title above is the beginning of the Turkish preamble to all fairy stories, the equivalent to Once Upon a Time (Es war einmal…) and like Kรบnos’ own Hungarian Egyszer volt, hol nem volt, volt egyszer egy... means once there was where there wasn’t, there was a, a form of introduction that was playfully duplicitous. Visit Public Domain Review to read the book in its entirety and to discover more forgotten literary gems.
catagories: ๐น๐ท, ๐ฌ, ๐, Middle East, myth and monsters
Friday 16 December 2016
high-fidelity
Learning about the careful and creative forensics that go into reanimating the ancient soundscapes of the deep past—the foley artistry that gives us dinosaurs that honk, quack or tweet rather than roar ferociously, though I’d bet a booming, nerve-scattering chirp could be just as curdling, reminded me that I had once speculated (once is misleading, I think, since it’s not as if it’s something that I know now to be untrue or a patent violation of the laws of physics) that all sounds were somehow preserved, imprinted into the environment and that we detectives weren’t clever enough to puzzle out. I was never sure what this infinite analog media might be of course, but did suspect that on some level that every crash, cry and concerto was caught up in the surrounding molecules, awaiting play back. I suppose knowing the acoustics of noise-maker well enough is an acceptable alternative path for chasing down lost sounds. This sort of scoring sound-effects do as much to reinforce or ruin an image as much as a fluffy Tyrannosaurus rex.
catagories: ๐, ๐ง , environment
magic lantern
As the bloc has expanded from twelve member states to twenty-eight, office space at the European Union headquarters buildings is naturally going at quite a premium—not counting the attendant actors accompany the “travelling-circus.”
The councillors that represent the executive officers of the member states, the other chamber that acts as a counter-weight to parliament (it’s all terribly complicated and byzantine and enough to make people shutdown rather than engage), and support staff are moving—or rather, are expanding into, after some delays and misgivings, from their purpose-built structure, the Justus Lipsius hall that the Council occupied since 1995, to this new building, occupying a space donated by the city Brussels and just separated by a span of footbridge (next to rest of the ensemble that makes up the rest of the supranational government). The glass faรงade encloses an orb that comprises eleven storeys of conference rooms, cafeterias, galleries and offices. The whole edifice is a marvel of passive engineering and highly energy-efficient, and much of the construction material was recycled and salvaged from demolition sites across Europe. No word yet what this new headquarters might be called but the Samyn and Partners commission will be ready to host its first sessions in 2017.
catagories: ๐ง๐ช, architecture
the bear retreats to his den
Via Spoon & Tamago with reinforcements courtesy of Hyperallergic, we’re treated to the traditional Japanese concept of the microseason, that divides the cross-quarter year into smaller, poetic subdivisions (seventy-two ko) that marches on in segments of four or five days like a natural calendar.
With wonderful smoothing descriptive names like “first peach blossoms,” “rainbows begin to appear after a shower” or “eastern wind melts the ice,” these gentle transitions (this is when the bear starts its long winter’s nap and next week is when the salmon swim upstream) are a much nicer and more accessible yearly planner, at least for those who get to enjoy at minimum the basic four seasons and can find nuance in between. Both links above feature a beautifully crafted application for one’s mobile device that helps one keep up with the sekki and ko and includes explanation of the symbolism drawing from other traditions and where one might journey to see the phenomenon that marks the season—or imagine one’s native equivalent and rhythm.