non-fungible intangibles

As Futility Closet relates, artist Salvatore Garau has auctioned off his invisible sculpture (entitled I Am—Io Sono) for a rather princely sum, recalling the works of Yves Klein and other more contemporary phenomena. According to the sculptor’s instructions, the piece is to be be displayed free from any obstruction in a one and half square metre space. Because the object is immaterial and does not exist, however, there are no special lighting or climate-control requirements.

8x8

such good: a dating app based on shared meme-affinity  

boulevard du crime: a lost Parisien theatre district that specialised in putting on felonious melodramas 

lion city rising: photographer Keith Loutit captures eight years of change in Sinagpore  

lunachicks: a flamboyant punk rock group who are a product of unvarnished New York  

broodclipjes: more fun with twist-ties and related species (see previously)—from Pasa Bon!  

horological constraints: the typography of watches—see also  

 profiles in pride: World of Wonder showcases some of the gay rights movement’s pioneers (see also), starting with Frank Kamey of the DC Mattachine Society  

masterpieces of streaming: a collection of the subtle genius of dumb viral videos—via Waxy

/kənˈtrəʊlə(r)/

Often times blogging makes me a little ambivalent about reposting something lest I steal someone else’s thunder for research and study. I think I flatter myself here with that worry. I share especially with urgency and eagerness that which has particularly waylaid me recently and though I think a lot of what we post falls into that category, this latest Merriam-Webster panel discussion was recently emblematic of what we are about, not discounting pedantic hyper-correction. Of course—coming from someone who thought quinoa, spelt and spoken, were two different grains—there’s no shame in mispronunciation unless you can’t be bothered to try with someone’s name, it was really disabusing, unsettling to learn that victuals is meant to be said vittles—plus the preponderance of a “victualler license” for restaurants and inns. Listen to the whole podcast below for more surprises and gentle corrections.

shadow-casting

Though previous acquainted with the ukiyo-e master Utagawa Hiroshige (安藤 広重, 1797 – 1858), we were unfamiliar with this form of expression in his repertoire in the form of these “play prints” (omocha-e, 玩具絵—see also) in this series of diagrams on making shadows puppets—quite superior to these, which prefigured the magic lantern and all the development and exchange (many of the incremental steps superseded and quite forgotten despite the intermediate value of the artefacts, fashions and temporary obsessions) of technologies that led to film, animation and animé and whatever is to come. Much more to explore at the links above.

man in motion

Venerated on this day on the occasion of martyrdom (†303) after a series of horrendous torture sessions for keeping the faith and recruiting many converts, Erasmus of Formia—also known as Saint Elmo, is presented as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers (previously), whom are to be called upon for intercession and deliverance. Going underground during the persecutions of both Diocletian and Western successor Maximian Hercules, an angel persuaded to return his diocese in Campania. En route, Erasmus was captured by soldiers, and professing his Christianity was imprisoned in Illyricum but the angel helped him escape and establish a church there near modern day Zadar. Having attracted the ire of local magistrates due to the success of his congregation, Erasmus was made to bow before the pagan gods, whose statues crumbled by dint of his faith, which prompted his captors in response to stick him in a barrel with a spiked interior and roll him down a hill. The angel healed him as with his subsequent ordeal of being painted in pitch and set alight and another jail-break. Erasmus finally succumbed, recaptured with his belly slit open and his intestines wound around a winch, a windlass that’s now part of his iconography, the crane for loading and unloading cargo signifying his affiliation with mariners as well as patronage for stomach ailments and cramps. A further connection with sailors was the saint’s steadfast homily aboard a ship despite the plasma phenomena of ball lighting or Saint Elmo’s Fire haloing the mast as precursor to a thunder strike, afterwards taken as an omen of protection though it didn’t always pan out that this aural warning was a good sign.

we’d like to help you learn to help yourself

Among many other events of great pith and moment that share this anniversary, our faithful chronicler informs that on this day in 1968, the Simon and Garfunkel song Mrs. Robinson lands on the top spot of the Billboard 100, adding that originally the draft version of the number was addressed Here’s to you, Mrs. Roosevelt. Approached by the production staff of The Graduate, the duo was willing to adapt the idea to the movie script, with the dee de dee dee de dee dee dee that stuck as stand-in for lyrics not yet written and the coo-coo-ca-choo in deference to the Beatles with the version as we know it established shortly thereafter. The director, Mike Nichols, liked the scat—non-lexical vocables, so they stayed in.

fulfilment-by-amazon

Examining the anti-trust lawsuit filed against the e-commerce giant and the inextricably integrated logistics that makes marketplace and membership one in the same, it’s noteworthy how anti-competitive incentives are introduced by shoehorning French regulations into the conversation—the country has not only been the first one to boldly reform its tax regime to make digital overlords pay more of their fair share (see previously here and here) and very early on a prohibition against social media privelging and the invitation to follow on Facebook but rather “search the internet” for French businesses—with the ban on free-shipping to protect physical retail stores as well as other online boutiques. Amazon—with its captive patrons—has built the most robust and inescapable walled-garden, though it is arguable that anyone sets out with such intentions.

stultifera navis

A Latin, international edition translated by his pupil Jakob Locher in Strasbourg and published by printer Hans Grüninger of Sebastian Brant’s 1494 German-language Das Narrenschiff (The Ship of Fools) on this day in 1497 made the late medieval moral allegory a success all over the continent, prompting several more translations, sanctioned and otherwise. The humanist and theologian compiled an anthology of one hundred and twelve brief satires, illustrated with woodcuts (originally issued in Basel), as commentary and condemnation of the human condition, developing the character of Saint Grobian, a patron for the crude, clumsy and gluttonous and is singled out as the best treatment of the trope taken from Plato’s Republic about a dysfunctional crew unable to pilot the ship of state. Locher (*1471 – †1528), the student who translated the work, went by the Latin name Philomusus and became a professor of Humanism and a dramatist himself and published a multivolume study on comparative religion. Though an artefact of medieval sensibilities sharpened with the focus of scholasticism, the conceit, tempered with allegory, gave the authors’ license to, writing in the voice of the fool, to legitimately criticise church and court.