bell, book and candle

From Valentine’s Day through mid-May, Washington DC’s Hirshhorn Gallery is reviving the political-charged projection of Polish-Canadian monumental artist Krzystof Wodiczko [UPDATED], first put on display on the museum’s façade in October of 1988.
The massive image of a clutched candle and a clutched pistol between a row of microphones was interpreted as a backlash to Regan-era foreign policies and gunboat diplomacy at the waning end of the Cold War—which I don’t think anyone saw on the horizon back then—is being presented as part of a wider exhibit on the 1980s when art became a commodity and the artist an influencer, a pivot that still defines and informs our notions of contemporary art.

perturbation

Exploiting some of the same technical achievements that enabled the precision measurements sensitive enough to detect passing gravitational waves as they ripple through the Cosmos, as Slashdot reports, researchers at the Goddard Space Flight Centre have demonstrated that they can radically tune up the resolution in their search for the signature distortions that exoplanets would have on its host star. This level of refinement means that the hunt for Earth-sized and smaller rocky worlds would be much easier to carry out. To make this experiment a practical exercise would require an observatory that’s built to stability standards that have not been trialled in the field of optical astronomy, shuddering or settling with less tolerance than an atom, but it is nonetheless an attainable goal.

tanpopo

Spoon & Tamago features the delicate and wispy structural art of Yusuke Aonuma who has selected a very ethereal, ephemeral media to work in the parachute-like seeds of dandelions (タンポポ, tanpopo). His last exhibition in Tokyo which invited guests to gently blow on his creations to watch their reaction and imagine what it would be like to drift away on a breath but more showings are scheduled for later in the Spring.

an unlikely weapon

Fifty years ago today, combat photographer and journalist for the Associated Press Eddie Adams whilst on an extended assignment to cover the Vietnam War was in Saigon at the exact moment to capture the summary execution of Vietcong prisoner Nguyễn Văn Lém by South Vietnam’s national police chief Nguyễn Ngọc Loan.
The widely circulated and iconic image coincided with the start of the Tết Offensive and caused many Americans to question whom their allies were in this battle and their motivations for being in it in the first place and was the impetus for burgeoning protests. Though winning a Pulitzer prize for the picture the following year, Adams did have misgivings and wondered if the brutal act was not done to play to the press and reflected on the impact the photograph had had on its subjects’ lives and was far prouder of his later work with refugees that persuaded President Jimmy Carter to grant asylum to two hundred thousand boat people. Adams’ corpus of work is archived by the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin.

e.o. 9835

In 1974, Richard Nixon ordered the abolishment of the running compilation of groups considered as subversive and threats to the American way of life referred to as the Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organisations (AGLOSO) that was created in 1947 at the behest of the Harry S Truman administration to deflect increasingly vocal criticism by Republicans that the Democrats were tolerant of communists. One prong of the programme and image-campaign, it was drawn up after Truman issued an executive order that established a national litmus test for the leanings and loyalties of federal employees. Another tine provided for the establishment of a Loyalty Review Board to counter the reflex for a witch-hunt or purge by those deputised with the power of confirming and conferring allegiance. Screening could be conducted in the background and netted three hundred certifiable security risks out of three million workers. Though the decree was repealed by Eisenhower six years later—in deed but perhaps not in spirit—it’s immediate successor was the House Un-American Activities Committee and the impugning investigations that the original intent sought to avoid, recognising the danger of staffing a government from top to bottom with those with undeviating political views.

solve for x

With the exception of noted jerks like Edison and Ford, we’d like to think that our forward-looking titans of physics are above reproach and honest-brokers that give credit where credit is due, but I was rather deflated and despondent to learn how Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen rather brazenly took all the praise and recognition away from a fellow physicist for the discovery of x-rays.  Ivan Puluj (who did not win the Nobel prize and does not have a chemical element and a mountain in Antarctica named after him) taught with Röntgen at the University of Vienna, and Puluj’s focus was on research into the nature of beams of electrons (cathode rays) and how those might be harnessed and designed what was dubbed a Puluj lamp (tube) to produce and direct them. Recognising the potential for medical imaging, Puluj even produced photographs of skeletal structures—at a higher qualities than those that Röntgen exhibited—not with electrons but rather with a collateral, hitherto unknown ray and apparently his inability to couch his discovery in the latest terminology cost him the honours.