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Seamless City is a continuous visual
image of San Francisco made up of sequential photos of a walk through
the city shot from a pedestrian point of view. -
‘We felt, and still feel, that one of the best ways in which British MCs can really and fashion their own identity was and is to draw on the unique relationship that the UK has with the Caribbean.’ A UK MC mix; via Mudd Up.
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The mystery over the purpose of a sophisticated geared “calculator” built in the 2nd century BC has finally been solved.
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via Coudal
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‘a made-for-You-Tube Clara Bow clip reel’
Month: November 2006
about 2023406814
Hmm…
I could have told them that.
“A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Treasury Department is violating the law by failing to design and issue currency that is readily distinguishable to blind and visually impaired people.”
Speaking as a fully-sighted person, when I was in Ecuador (where they use US dollars) I found the near-identical designs of different denominations really annoying; it must be a nightmare for the blind.
Links
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‘Short Version: Link to this post in the name of science. Ask others to do the same. Results to be announced during the “Meet the Bloggers” panel at MLA 2006.’ Because I’m a sheep. Baa. Via Pharyngula.
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Gianluigi Toccafondo’s La Coda is made of “about 1200 drawings about the movings of Buster Keaton, which I photographed and xeroxed on small sheets, then painted and filmed with a 35mm camera.”
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“Design Online is electronic library containing a digitised record of Design journal for the years 1965 to 1974.” via Coudal
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‘The visual correspondence of Christopher Butler and Able Parris.’ via Design Observer
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Business Card for a personal trainer – via Coudal
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save on plastic bags…
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“The trap-jaw ant uses its mandibles not just for catching prey, but also for escaping from predators.” via Circus of the Spineless
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“The amazing contrast between the two regions of this butterfly’s wings is actually teaching us some things about optics that we didn’t realise.” via Circus of the Spineless
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“Much like the natural evolution of bulky televisions to flat screens, toast now takes a similar journey down the path of refinement. “
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The official London 2012 blog. via Londonist.
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via Coudal
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via Coudal
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“I came across this terrific map on Wikipedia. It shows South Asia, with the names of the various countries and the states and union territories of India in the local language and writing system.”
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A diverse and curious mixture of stuff. Via things magazine.
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via Coudal
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super-good pictures. via wmmna
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‘on recent research into Cotard delusion – a firm unshakeable belief that you’re dead’
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“I hope this is a list with a difference. What I asked blogging friends for was what they have read this year that’s made an impact on them, regardless of when the book was originally published.”
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“Whether it’s to get away from a personal crisis or from universal threats, from time to time all we want to do is curl up and hide.
Now, for these moments we have the perfect soultion: the HideAway.” via wmmna
‘Holbein in England’ at Tate Britain
I went to see the Holbein at the Tate today. It’s a large exhibition with a lot of Holbein’s work from collections all over the world. I can certainly recommend it, because Holbein was a remarkable and enjoyable portraitist. The finished paintings are outnumbered by drawings in a combination of coloured chalk and ink. As far as I can gather, most of these were studies for paintings rather than stand-alone works, but they work beautifully as portraits. If anything, the highly-finished and perfect oils paintings can seem a little inhuman next to the softer drawings.
My copy of the complete Thomas Wyatt has the drawn Holbein portrait on the front cover, and I remember thinking when I got it that if you’re going to be a famous poet, it’s a good idea to get a portrait you’d like to be remembered by. My edition of Keats has a distinctly ham-fisted portrait by a mate of his which makes him look very inconsequential. The drawing above isn’t Wyatt; it’s the other early sonneteer, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey.
Holbein seems to have produced very fine likenesses, although there’s a logical problem somewhere with looking at a portrait of someone you’ve never seen and concluding it’s a good likeness. Certainly his pictures all look different from each other, apart from that slight sense of period similarity that comes from all of them having the same hairstyles and frocks. And indeed facial expressions; although we’re not aware of it, I’m sure that our culture shapes the way we arrange our faces more than we think. Certainly Americans of European descent have different faces to people from whichever Old Country.
Anyway, he’s a fine portraitist and one of the pleasures of the show is a sense of being introduced to Tudor society; you ‘meet’ dozens of people from Tudor London. It’s not exactly a cross section — they’re all wealthy — but they are courtiers, bishops, merchants, poets, royalty, young, old, and each seems like an individual.
It’s quite a big exhibition and if there is a problem with it, it can get a bit same-y. It’s almost all bust-length portraits, and he doesn’t seem to have made much technical progress during his career. He was excellent when he reached London (aged 31) and was consistently excellent for the 17 or so years he lived here until he died, but if his worked changed stylistically in that period it’s not obvious to me. I don’t think I could tell whether a painting was early or late. Some of the finest portraits in the exhibition are among the earliest: studies for a group portrait of Thomas More’s family, painted soon after reaching London for the first time (the finished work doesn’t survive).
More was his first contact in London, thanks to a letter of introduction from Erasmus, and there’s some suggestion he may have stayed for a period with More in Chelsea. So he knew the family well, which may be why his portraits of them seem so good. Also, despite my comments about lack of change during his career, it’s worth noting that at this stage he’s working just in chalk without any ink touches, so that makes the pictures softer; that may be part of the appeal. Still, its hard to see that any of his later work improves on the famous portrait of Thomas More, or this study of Anne Cresacre, a ward of More’s.
If you’re interested and can’t easily get to Pimlico, do check out the exhibition website (linked to above), because the Tate always makes an admirable effort to include as many photos of the work as copyright allows. What proportion of the works are available online depends on who they are mainly borrowed from, but at least they make the effort.