links and things.....

Val Britton

2010-05-10T06:30:00.000-07:00

http://www.valbritton.com/statement.php

Has sacred code of Savile Row tailors been broken?

2010-05-09T08:15:00.000-07:00

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/news/has-sacred-code-of-savile-row-tailors-been-broken-1955138.html

The case of the stolen inside-leg measurements has stunned the genteel  world of men's outfitting. Tom Peck reports 

A tailor is as important to a man as his doctor or  dentist," says Simon Cundey, director of Henry Poole & Co,  acknowledged founders of London's Savile Row. "He lives and breathes  with you the whole span of your life. From your university gown, to your  suit for your first job interview, your wedding, and all the way  through your life and career. And, like a doctor or dentist, trust and  discretion is at the heart of this relationship."    

The news then, that a former  tailor at Ede &  Ravenscroft, the country's oldest outfitter with clients including the  Queen, Prince Charles, and David Cameron, is  alleged to have stolen  confidential information about a number of its clients, including their  most  intimate measurements, has  caused quite a stir around the  luxurious fitting rooms of the 250-year-old street.

The company, whose Burlington Gardens store looks down  Savile Row, alleges that former member of staff, Matthew Farnes,  secretly set up a rival business while still working for Ede &  Ravenscroft.

The company claims in a High Court writ that Mr  Farnes took with him private details of its customers and lured a number  of them to his new business.

Mr Farnes, who  spent four years in the bespoke department at Ede & Ravenscroft's  Burlington Gardens store, is being sued for damages of up to £150,000.

The writ claims that Mr Farnes emailed himself the  company's  bespoke measurement form, which was confidential, as well as  contact details of customers.

For around 200  years, the great, the good, and the fabulously wealthy have surrendered  their vital statistics to one of the outfitters on the famous street. In  the mahogany drawers of Henry Poole & Co's luxurious  premises  still sit the "paper patterns" – the set of 30 measurements that go into  the production of their bespoke suit – of everyone from Winston  Churchill to Edward VII. When  Buffalo Bill brought his "Wild West Show"  to Britain in 1887 he too called in for a fitting. "He had a 46-inch  chest," says Mr Cundey.

Excepting Buffalo Bill,  these measurements are evidently not for public consumption. "We have  some very high-profile customers. Some of them are happy for people to  know who their tailor is. Others prefer it to be kept quiet."

But the case only highlights the fact that, for all  the deference and discretion of the fitting room, in many cases the  tailors of Savile Row are cut from the same cloth as the businessmen and  bankers they kit out. This is not the first time a tailor has set up on  his own and sought to take his clientele with him.

"It happened to us in the 1970s," says Mr Cundey, the  seventh generation of his family to run the business. "A cutter went off  to form his own company. Back then it wasn't so difficult. The law was  much less strict.

"But these things do go on.  Many a pint gets drunk over talk of who's doing what and going where.  It's like any industry.

"Certainly there's an  element of loyalty between customers and their specific tailors," admits  Mr Cundey. "But people are loyal to their outfitters too. Poole has a  certain look, a unified cut, that our customers like.

"Often people will go off on their own, and it all  either goes very right or very wrong. Sometimes they'll realise they  can't deliver the final product. They don't have all the works they  need, or the accountancy. They'll make promises on price that they can't  keep. They'll last for a couple of years before customers start coming  back to us. The grass is always greener on the other side.

"These patterns, these measures, they belong to the  house, not to the tailor. Imagine you had spent many months developing  say, a recipe for a cookie, and once you've got it just right, someone  comes along and gives it to say Starbucks?"

He  adds: "I'd say 80 per cent of cutters out there are pretty loyal. But if  this business with Ede gets drawn out into a long legal battle it might  lead other cutters to think twice about going their own way.

Opposite Henry Poole & Co is Mark Marengo, who,  having been in business for three years remains the newest name on the  street. "It might be seen as if people are poaching someone else's  clients," says Neil Marengo, Mark's brother and front of house man. "But  often customers are very loyal to their particular tailor, like many  people are to their hairdresser. If that tailor moves, the client will  probably follow, he has allegiance to his personal tailor.

"Customers often talk to us about their lives, their  careers. They are getting new suits for their weddings, or to start new  jobs. There is an understanding that that information is treated with  discretion, especially as we might also be making suits for colleagues  of theirs."

Mr Farnes, who opened his own  tailors in nearby Sackville Street last year, vehemently denies all the   allegations. He said in a statement: "I robustly deny this allegation  and will be fully defending this in court."

Standing  outside his new shop, Savile Row Artisan, he said he feared that the  legal action could taint his reputation. He would not comment on whether  he had worked with  royalty during his four years with his former  employer.

Ede & Ravenscroft, which makes  ceremonial robes as well as suits, jealously guards its close ties with  royalty, members of the House of Lords and the legal profession. 

The case is a blow to the house,  established in 1689  for the coronation of William of Orange and believed to be the oldest  tailor in the world. 

If the case does proceed,  the attire of those present in court may well command as many column  inches as the evidence itself.

Dead Man's Patterns, Hormazd Narielwalla

2010-05-09T07:39:00.000-07:00

http://www.deadmanspaterns.co.uk

Lee Bontecou

2010-05-09T07:17:00.000-07:00

Lee Bontecou, Composition, 1965

Lee Bontecou, Untitled, 1966

 Lee Bontecou, Untitled, 1962

hanna hoch

2010-03-06T07:11:00.000-08:00

The Tailor's Flower, 1920

eugenio recuenco

2010-03-06T06:23:00.000-08:00

'the tailor' taken from series of photographs for german band Rammstein circa 2009 by spanish photographer eugenio recuenco.

http://www.eugeniorecuenco.com/

man ray

2010-03-05T13:37:00.000-08:00

The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows

I Don't Need No Doctor

2010-02-26T07:47:00.000-08:00

Eric Carl Design & Illustration Blog

2010-02-17T11:17:00.000-08:00

http://blog.sans-concept.com/

interesting collection of graphics, comics etc.

The Tailor

2010-02-14T14:37:00.000-08:00

Giovanni Battista Moroni, The Tailor, 1570

I Dig a Pony

2010-02-07T11:14:00.000-08:00

The Beatles - I Dig a Pony (1969) performed live at no 3 Savile Row

Dan Estabrook

2010-02-02T06:06:00.000-08:00

http://www.pathetica.net/artwork/InteriorViews

Interior (floating cloth), 1996, albumen print

Untitled Skin, 1993. liquid emulsion on plastic, thread.

Poor Elijah

2010-02-01T15:00:00.000-08:00

Poor Elijah, Delaney & Bonnie (1969)

Dai Rees- Carapace

2010-02-01T04:53:00.000-08:00

Excess Surface by Judith Clark from http://www.judithclarkcostume.com/

Dai Rees draws our attention to definitions by defying one. Gone is the political mantle of craftsman in support of all those working behind the scenes; behind the scenes of fashion, a world that he inhabited between 1996 and 2002. It seems now more like he was avoiding the definition designer, he was clearly reluctant to be pinned down to one medium. His skillful apprenticeship within different media, so closely associated with a perfection acquired through repetition of techniques did not guarantee this is where he would remain. He has been a ceramicist, a welder, a milliner. He was in 2003 awarded a fellowship by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of Great Britain where he took the extraordinary step of teaching himself a new art, that of Marquetry - a process so at odds with the speed and slickness associated with recent fashion, one that both cleverly acknowledges the idea of a new patronage of the arts, and one that apparently goes back to its roots in 16th century Florence.

Marquetry is the craft of forming a decorative panel of veneers composed of shaped sections of wood veneer (sometimes including bone or ivory, tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl or pewter, brass and fine metals) and applying it to a structural carcass. Marquetry elaborated upon Florentine techniques of inlaying solid marble slabs with designs formed of fitted marbles, jaspers and semi-precious stones. Rees has revisited this technique transferring its process to leather. The exhibition, Carapace, is the first time that the work that has been produced under the research title of 'Patronage, Artisan, Media and Audience: A Model for Twenty-First Century Craftsmanship' has been shown.

This project reveals him to be inescapably a conceptual artist with the added luxury of being able to incorporate his more personal technical skills. Avoiding the applied of applied art has freed him to make connections that would otherwise be impossible, or inconceivable. Despite the clarity of their historical references so eloquently spelled out by Jennifer Higgie in this catalogue, the 8 pieces exhibited in Carapace are neither nostalgic nor are they about nostalgia. Dai Rees as an artist is at the forefront of the British avant-garde and yet the label of craftsman he defends so adamantly is often at odds with our assumptions about his extraordinary sense of design, and his unique intuitions about fashion.

In these dramatic pieces he has entitled 'Carapace', Rees questions what happens when we have an excess of surface. A Carapace protects, it also resists outside influence. We are seduced by the delicate leather floral decoration, and fascinated by its difficulty. What kind of deformations occur when the surface becomes armature and it is abstracted from the body, this is always Rees's starting point. The viewer is simultaneously reassured that the new shapes look rather like the carcass of a cow or a horse, preferring this to more human resemblances and distortions. They are for example reminiscent of Francis Bacon's blurring away from the recognisable figure.

The pieces in fact form a very deliberate sequence; the first carries with it more recognisable sections of tailoring, subsequently a 1950's gown is made up in leather and pieces that are increasingly abstract: neck pieces are derived from a bodice pattern, a yolk has broguing which hung high against the light becomes almost a halo. Their individual titles are importantly suggestive: Casings 1-8, 5 is divided into 'Mother and Child' and 6-8 are a 'Triptich'. The progression is not from sketch to finished object - but almost the other way round - a more recognisable shape becomes less so - more finished within its own terms but also therefore more literally conceptual. Seams become more like scars, sometimes perfectly laced, otherwise stitched with surgical linen. Scars on the outside protect the finest hand painted marquetry inlay on the inside. The paraphernelia of the meat market, the hooks that measure the weight and worth of the meat refer to a wholly different set of practices.

Dress patterns shrink and expand through successive applications of darting, unneeded material gets folded away. Rees's shapes become non-maleable as the leather veneer is built up through lamination. As the surface is constructed he moves further away from the predictable silhouette inherent in the paper 'fashion' pattern- his point of departure - and by doing this he creates an apparent disfigurement. (We are reminded of prosthetics). If we forget that the 2D paper dress pattern would eventually be worn on an ideal body, the shapes are free to be reconfigured. So when the finished shape emerges what we are faced with is a deformed body, more akin to the Bellmer dolls that appear so alien to the marquetry handbooks in Rees's studio, the atelier on the roof of London College of Fashion's Golden Lane site.

There was a sense in which the installation created itself - the hooks and chains, that are supplied to any butchers shop in London have long been Rees's preferred method of hanging his work, creating the centre of gravity, or axis of symmetry, the chain hanging down like an imagined spine, a reminder of the weave of fabric marked so clearly on dress patterns. What I saw in the work from a curatorial point of view was the necessity of not distorting Rees's distortions, or trusting the impulses in the work but at the same time linking the work with a possible critique of fashion and the display of dress.

George L. Legendre's work made me think of the essential unwearability of Rees's pieces. Confronted with the unwearable, objects which draw attention to fashion theory, precisely because they dispense with the desire to own or wear them, and depend on our ability to read or understand them, we have to reconsider the meaning of 'Carapace' and 'Casings'. Rees's work is a proof of what Legendre has called superficial space.

Graham Harwood

2010-01-26T10:02:00.000-08:00

Graham Harwood. Hogarth, my Dad. 2002

Graham Harwood. Hogarth, My Mum. 2002

Zane Berzina

2010-01-26T05:00:00.000-08:00

http://www.zaneberzina.com/

Archeology of Skin (2006)

The work series 'Archaeology of Skin' draws on laboratory environment settings and is created using biomedical references. It reflects indirectly on developments in biological science due to the employment of dermatological research methods and equipment during my research period in order to create these works while remaining a personal artistic archaeology of the epidermis.

Membranes I

This mixed-media textile installation refers to skin as a complex genetic and social display and on the scientific notion of the biological skin as a multi-layered organ consisting of epidermis, dermis and subcutis. Scientific representations of skin such as micrographs were first produced using powerful microscopes and then utilised as the main source of inquiry and references. Various mixed-media techniques were employed to mimic and replicate the intriguing structures and patterns revealed by the microscope. This work also makes references to the dermis as an embodiment of identity and memory, as a mirror of the physical and mental state, and an indicator of individual social status. It is also a personal artistic interpretation of the skin and the underlying interiors of the body.

The science of biology has prominently entered our everyday lives. It is forcing us to re-think all those terms, which are essential for our lives and self-confidence: Personality, Identity, Health, Body, Nature, Destiny, Guilt as in the age of artificial cells and optimal organisms, the entire idea of life starts to change. Traditional boundaries are disappearing. Genes and organs are transferred and exchanged. Organic tissues are grown in labs. Cybernetic research is becoming evermore complex; technological and human systems are moving nearer and nearer towards each other in such a way that it gets increasingly difficult to distinguish between them.

With regard to this cultural context I was interested in investigating the physicality and functions of the epidermis using contemporary bio-medical mapping methods of the skin. I have examined the anatomical structures and textures of human skin tissue using high-tech microscopic imaging technologies.
Interrogation of the human body's physical data, using modern biological imaging systems, allows us to enter a new world: the microcosm of the human body. In this work various skin surfaces are investigated using volunteers of different race, age and gender. For this purpose skin impressions, so called negative replicas of the horny layer of epidermis, were taken and photographed using a light microscope or optical lens. The use of scientific methods for charting and mapping the skin��s physical data, its structures and functions, originated the photo series ��Skin Maps��.

Olivier Goulet

2010-01-26T03:40:00.000-08:00

........One can view the skinbags as bodily extensions, external organs that serve as holdalls for the items we have around us. Covers for computers, cameras, pods and other digital components are multimedia second skins that convey the miniaturization and fragmentation of computers distributed on the surface of and inside our bodies, and which will end up being connected up to our brains. As it becomes neutral our skin becomes porous.......

In Olivier Goulet’s work the idea of human mutation and moulting stimulated by technological innovation relates to continuous political changes that affect the definition of borders and national identities.

http://www.skinbag.net/code/presse-dossier.php

Entoptic Phenomena

2010-01-25T10:29:00.000-08:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/williamhundley/

The Incredulity of St.Thomas

2010-01-25T10:03:00.000-08:00

The Incredulity of St. Thomas by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1601-1602)

Oil on canvas. Sanssouci of Potsdam, Germany

Rene Magritte, The Lovers

2010-01-25T04:54:00.000-08:00

René Magritte. The Lovers. 1928. Oil on canvas.

compare

The Mars Volta, Frances the Mute, 2003. Cover by Storm Thorgenson

Sølve Sundsbø, Photographs

2010-01-25T03:48:00.000-08:00

Picture series 'Invitation à la danse'

William Blake, Urizen: The Web of Religion

2010-01-25T02:50:00.000-08:00

William Blake, Urizen: The Web of Religion, Water Colour and Ink on Paper, 1794

Apollo Flaying Marsyas, Juseppe de Ribera

2010-01-21T04:34:00.000-08:00

Jusepe de Ribera, Apollo Flaying Marsyas, 1637

The Last Judgement, Michelangelo

2010-01-21T04:17:00.000-08:00

Michelangelo, Piero Aretino holding the flayed skin of St Bartholomew, with the artist's own face; a detail from The Last Judgement, 1537-41, Sistine Chapel, Vatican City

Black Crowes - Feelin' Alright

2010-01-20T05:57:00.000-08:00

Julie Mehretu

2010-01-20T02:33:00.000-08:00

Julie Mehretu, Untitled, 1999

Julie Mehretu, Untitled, 2000

John Baizley

2010-01-20T02:26:00.000-08:00

Caravan- Cunning Stunts

2010-01-14T03:05:00.000-08:00

Caravan- Cunning Stunts (1975) cover by hipgnosis/storm thorgenson

Susan Soares

2009-12-11T08:00:00.000-08:00

Susan Soares projects all explore the idea of new organs of perception. During the project she discovered some research into the use of bees to detect explosives. They can be trained in minutes and can also detect hormones and other chemical traces produced by the human body when ill or at different stages of the fertility cycle.

One of the more striking proposals to come from her project was for an alternative means of diagnosis, less technical and invasive, but also less precise. Bees trained to detect a particular hormone would be placed in a specially designed glass container, the person breathes into a smaller open chamber within the larger one, if the bees detect the hormone they move into the smaller space indicating its presence.

http://www.susanasoares.com/

Eva Hesse

2009-12-11T07:33:00.000-08:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Hesse

Eva Hesse, Aught, 1968

Eva Hesse, Untitled (rope piece), 1970

Eva Hesse, Untitled, 1968

Eva Hesse, Saletnik, 1970

Ansen Seale 'slit scan photography'

2009-12-11T06:54:00.000-08:00

http://www.ansenseale.com/

Victoria Reynolds - 'Carne- Landscapes'

2009-12-10T16:53:00.000-08:00

Pity the meat! Meat is undoubtedly the chief object of Bacon’s pity, his only object of pity, his Anglo-Irish pity. On this point he is like Soutine, with his immense pity for the Jew. Meat is not dead flesh; it retains all the sufferings and assumes all the colors of living flesh. It manifests such convulsive pain and vulnerability, but also such delightful invention, color, and acrobatics. Bacon does not say, “Pity the beasts,” but rather that every man who suffers is a piece of meat. Meat is the common zone of man and the beast, their zone of indiscernibility; it is a “fact”, a state where the painter identifies with the objects of his horror and his compassion. The painter is certainly a butcher, but he goes to the butcher’s shop as if it were a church, with the meat as the crucified victim. Bacon is a religious painter only in butcher’s shops.

Gilles Deleuze. The logic of sensation. Continuum 2003

Peter Gabriel 3 (melt) 1980

2009-12-10T01:14:00.000-08:00

Artwork by Storm Thorgenson

SymbioticA - The Art and Science Research Laboratory

2009-12-08T10:26:00.000-08:00

http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/

'an artistic laboratory dedicated to the research, learning, critique and hands-on engagement with the life sciences.'

lots of interesting lines of scientific inquiry that encompass a multitude of biotechnological, transgenic and mechanised methodologies to pursue compelling design and creative avenues. have a look at the residencies, past and present, here
http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/residencies/residents2

home to Oron Catts and Ionat Zur

Implantable Silicon-Silk Electronics at technologyreveiw.com

2009-12-08T07:44:00.000-08:00

Duane pointed me in this direction......

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/23847/page1/

By building thin, flexible silicon electronics on silk substrates, researchers have made electronics that almost completely dissolve inside the body. So far the research group has demonstrated arrays of transistors made on thin films of silk. While electronics must usually be encased to protect them from the body, these electronics don't need protection, and the silk means the electronics conform to biological tissue. The silk melts away over time and the thin silicon circuits left behind don't cause irritation because they are just nanometers thick.

lots more interesting stuff to be found at http://www.technologyreview.com/
like biodegrable transistors http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/23940/
or 'rapid prototyping in biology'
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/23567/

Silicon on silk: This clear silk film, about one centimeter squared, has six silicon transistors on its surface. These flexible devices can be implanted in mice like the one in this image without causing any harm, and the silk degrades over time. The orange liquid on the hair is a disinfectant used during the surgery

Nobel Textiles.......research platform

2009-12-08T07:01:00.000-08:00

http://textilefutures.co.uk/exchange/bin/view/TextileFutures/NobelTextiles#Metabolic_Media

Nobel Textiles is the result of a two year-long collaboration between Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design and the Medical Research Council which paired 5 Nobel Prize winning scientists with 5 designers.
Part of Textile Futures http://textilefutures.co.uk/

_self assembly
_the fat map collection
_now you see it now you don't
_metabolic media
_suicidal textiles

BioCouture, Suzanne Lee

2009-12-08T05:02:00.000-08:00

http://www.biocouture.co.uk/

http://www.fashion-body-materialcultures.org/research.php?sh=1&m=18

BioCouture - growing clothing using bacterial cellulose

'BioCouture aims to address ecological and sustainability issues around fashion. The BioCouture research project is harnessing nature to propose a radical future fashion vision.
We are investigating the use of bacterial-cellulose, grown in a laboratory, to produce clothing.
Our ultimate goal is to literally grow a dress in a vat of liquid........'

http://www.biocouture.co.uk/beaker.html

Mike Webb, Suitaloon & Cushicle........(vicarious prosthesis?)

2009-12-08T02:07:00.000-08:00

Suitaloon & Cushicle, Mike Webb, 1967

'Clothing for living in-or if it wasn't for my Suitaloon I would have to buy a house.'

Suitaloon is an inflatable, nomadic house conceived to be worn as a suit providing a living envelope whenever and wherever desired. It extends Archigram's interest in mobile architecture, expressed in earlier projects such as Walking City. Fitting the body like clothes, the Suitaloon is a reductive dwelling that reduces the components and support systems needed to sustain an entire community down to the necessities for supporting a single individual. The Suitaloon was designed to be a complementary component of the Cushicle.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelspiderwebb/

Mike Webb's prophetic 1960's project confronts a number of issues that designers and architects still contend with. On an immediate level it speaks or ergonomics, i.e the relationship/coordination of devices and the human form, and the bodies interaction with the 'built' or 'constructed' environment. It also contests ideas of the human forms interaction of space, and the 'anthropologies of space' connoted by Edward T Hall coincidently around the same time. More pertinently perhaps, and indeed prophetically, it alludes to man's relationship-come-reliance on technology exemplifying McLuhan's 'extensions of Man' ideas. A Vicarious Prosthesis.......

'The space suit could be identified as a minimal house. In the previous Cushicle, the environment for the rider was provided by the Cushicle-a mechanism like car. In this project the suit itself provides all the necessary services, the [optional] Cushicle being the source of (a) movement, (b) a larger envelope than the suit can provide, (c) power. Each suit has a plug serving a similar function to the key to your front door. You can plug into your friend and you will both be in one envelope, or you can plug into any envelope, stepping out of your suit which is left clipped on to the outside ready to step into when you leave. The plug also serves as a means of connecting envelopes together to form larger spaces. Various models of Cushicle envelope and suit would of course be available ranging from super sports to family models.'

Mike Webb Photostream

Mike Webb, Suitaloon, 1968

Mike Webb, Cushicle Chassis with Undeployed Suitaloon, 1968

Mike Webb, Cushicle, 1968

Mike Webb, Cushicle, 1967

Lucy and Bart

2009-12-08T01:38:00.000-08:00

http://www.lucyandbart.com/

'LucyandBart is a collaboration between Lucy McRae and Bart Hess described as an instinctual stalking of fashion, architecture, performance and the body. They share a fascination with genetic manipulation and beauty expression. Unconsciously their work touches upon these themes, however it is not their intention to communicate this. They work in a primitive and limitless way creating future human shapes, blindly discovering low – tech prosthetic ways for human enhancement.'

Levi Van Veluw

2009-12-07T09:55:00.000-08:00

http://www.levivanveluw.nl/

Levi Van Veluw, Veneer II, 2009

Levi Van Veluw, Natural Transfer III, 2009

Levi Van Veluw, Light III, 2009

Paul Stamets......'earth's natural internet'

2009-12-07T03:20:00.001-08:00

Juan Enriquez......shares mindboggling science

2009-12-07T02:53:00.000-08:00

He concludes with the notion that we are approaching 'Homo Evolutis', as a progression from Homo Sapien
(hominids that take direct control over their evolution...and that of others').

see also
Stephen Hawking: "Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution"
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/07/stephen-hawking-the-planet-has-entered-a-new-phase-of-evolution.html

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1906-1961)........ideas

2009-12-07T02:40:00.000-08:00

The Visible and the Invisible

For Merleau-Ponty, consciousness is not just something that goes on in our heads. Rather, our intentional consciousness is experienced in and through our bodies. With his concept of the lived body, Merleau-Ponty overcomes Descartes' mind-body dualism without resorting to physiological reductionism. Recall that for Descartes the body is a machine and the mind is what runs the machine. For Merleau-Ponty the body is not a machine, but a living organism by which we body-forth our possibilities in the world. The current of a person's intentional existence is lived through the body. We are our bodies, and consciousness is not just locked up inside the head. In his later thought, Merleau-Ponty talked of the body as "flesh," made of the same flesh of the world, and it is because the flesh of the body is of the flesh of the world that we can know and understand the world.

To demonstrate this concept of the lived body, Merleau-Ponty uses the example of the phantom limb. A phantom limb would not be possible if our bodies were just machines. If a part of the machine was severed from the rest of the machine, it would simply go without using the limb. Yet, people who have a limb amputated still feel the limb, and they are still called to use the limb in situations that call for its use, even though it is no longer there. In this same sense, the whole lived body is an intentional body, which is lived through in relation to possibilities in the world. Even when the limb is gone, the possibilities for its use remain, but are unable to be taken up as a project in the world. This is why the phantom limb phenomenon is so awe-ful; the arm is gone, and yet the person still feels the call to use it.

Taking the study of perception as his point of departure, Merleau-Ponty was led to recognize that one's own body (le corps propre) is not only a thing, a potential object of study for science, but is also a permanent condition of experience, a constituent of the perceptual openness to the world. He therefore underlines the fact that there is an inherence of consciousness and of the body of which the analysis of perception should take account. The primacy of perception signifies a primacy of experience, so to speak, insofar as perception becomes an active and constitutive dimension.

Corporeity from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Merleau-Ponty

Merleau-Ponty demonstrates a corporeity of consciousness as much as an intentionality of the body, and so stands in contrast with the dualist ontology of mind and body in René Descartes, a philosopher to whom Merleau-Ponty continually returned, despite the important differences that separate them. In the Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty wrote: “Insofar as I have hands, feet; a body, I sustain around me intentions which are not dependent on my decisions and which affect my surroundings in a way that I do not choose.

Thoughts on the living......

2009-12-07T02:33:00.000-08:00

'And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, and then from hour to hour we rot and rot, and thereby hangs a tale.' William Shakespeare from As You Like It

Organ_etymology

2009-12-07T02:03:00.000-08:00

In biology and anatomy, an organ (Latin: organum, "instrument, tool", from Greek ὄργανον - organon, "organ, instrument, tool") is a collection of tissues joined in structural unit to serve a common function.......

'Body Without Organs'

2009-12-06T08:32:00.001-08:00

When you will have made him a body without organs,then you will have delivered him from all his automatic reactions and restored him to his true freedom
Antonin Artuad

The notion of Bodies Without Organs (or BwO) was coined by Giles Deleuze, and later developed as a central concept in his collaborative work with Felix Guattari.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_without_organs
In Deleuze's work, the term initially refers to the "virtual" dimension of the body. For Deleuze and Guattari, every "actual" body has (or expresses) a set of traits, habits, movements, affects, etc. But every "actual" body also has a "virtual" dimension, a vast reservoir of potential traits, connections, affects, movements, etc. (a phase space). This collection of potentials is what Deleuze calls the BwO. To "make oneself a body without organs," then, is to actively experiment with oneself to draw out and activate these virtual potentials. These potentials are mostly activated (or "actualized") through conjunctions with other bodies (or BwOs) that Deleuze calls "becomings."

Design and the Elastic Mind

2009-12-06T07:33:00.000-08:00

Some interesting stuff, (and some not so) to be found at this rather infuriating flash site accompanying the 2008 MoMA exhibion 'Design and the Elastic Mind'

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/206/

Once while travelling across the sky.....

2009-12-06T05:58:00.000-08:00

Joe Cocker, Space Captain from Mad Dogs & Englishmen 1970

Stephan Balleux

2009-12-05T08:58:00.000-08:00

http://www.stephan-balleux.com/

painting/painting, 2009

thank god, 2007

mother, 2009

A Midsummer Marriage, 2009

Macropinna microstoma

2009-12-05T08:12:00.001-08:00

Carl Sagan & The 4th Dimension

2009-12-05T07:26:00.001-08:00

Vestigial organs: Remnants of evolution

2009-12-04T07:44:00.000-08:00

from http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826562.100-vestigial-organs-remnants-of-evolution.html?page=1

VESTIGIAL organs have long been a source of perplexity and irritation for doctors and of fascination for the rest of us. In 1893, a German anatomist named Robert Wiedersheim drew up a list of 86 human "vestiges", organs "formerly of greater physiological significance than at present". Over the years, the list grew, then shrank again. Today, no one can remember the score. It has even been suggested that the term is obsolete, useful only as a reflection of the anatomical knowledge of the day. In fact, these days many biologists are extremely wary of talking about vestigial organs at all.

This may be because the subject has become a battlefield for creationists and the intelligent design lobby, who argue that none of the items on Wiedersheim's original list are now considered vestigial, so there is no need to invoke evolution to explain how they lost their original functions. While they are right to question the status of some organs that were formerly considered vestiges, denying the concept altogether flies in the face of the biological facts. While most biologists prefer to steer clear of what they see as a political debate, Gerd Müller a theoretical biologist from the University of Vienna, Austria, is fighting a rearguard action to bring the concept back into the scientific arena. "Vestigiality is an important biological phenomenon," he says.

Vestigial Organs Seem Ripe for Transhumanist Tweaks, Wired Article

2009-12-04T06:28:00.000-08:00

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/commentary/alttext/2007/11/alttext_1107

by Lore Sjöberg

I spent some time at BodyWorlds 2, an exhibition of plasticized human cadavers designed to educate people who are not yet dead. I learned many things, but the main thing I learned is that the body is jam-packed with organs, much like a throbbing, oozing Swiss Army knife.

Actually, you may be surprised to learn that the human body is even more complex than a Swiss Army knife. Even more than those really thick knives that have an added, non-advertised function such as a cudgel. Bulbous biological material is wrapped all around in your body, tucked into alcoves, threaded through bone holes -- it's as efficient as it is disgusting.

But like a Swiss Army knife, not every part is equally useful. For instance, every Swiss Army knife I have owned incorporated a fish scraper, but I have never scraped a fish in my life. I assure you, if an unscraped fish is brought to me, it leaves my presence still unscraped.

Similarly, there are a number of body parts that may have served some important purpose in the distant past, but are now more likely to host disease and infection, much like pay phones. A lot of transhumanist types focus on replacing perfectly good body parts with even better ones, giving us more durable hearts or prettier eyelashes, but it seems to me we ought to start by dropping some of our vestigial organs in favor of something more useful, or at least more classy.

into the void....

2009-12-04T05:58:00.000-08:00

Nine Inch Nails - Into The Void

Eric The Red | MySpace Video

Nine Inch Nails Into the Void from the Fragile (1999)

notes on vestigial structures.........

2009-12-04T05:41:00.000-08:00

Vestigial structures are anatomical structures of organisms in a species which are considered to have lost much or all of their original function through evolution. These structures are typically in a degenerate, atrophied, or rudimentary form. Vestigial structures are often referred to as vestigial organs, though not all of them are actually organs....

Although the structures most commonly referred to as 'vestigial' tend to be largely or entirely functionless, a vestigial structure need not necessarily be without use or function for the organism. Vestigial structures have lost their original main purpose, but they may retain lesser functionalities, or develop entirely new ones.

For example, the coccyx, or tailbone, is the remnant of a lost tail. All mammals have a tail at one point in their development; in humans, it is present for a short time during embryonic development. The tailbone, located at the end of the spine, has lost its original function in assisting balance and mobility, though it still serves some secondary functions, such as being an attachment point for muscles, which explains why it has not degraded further though in rare cases it can persist after birth and must be surgically removed.

Humans also bear some vestigial behaviors and reflexes. For example, the formation of goose bumps in humans under stress is a vestigial reflex; its purpose in human evolutionary ancestors was to raise the body’s hair, making the ancestor appear larger and scaring off predators. Raising the hair is also used to trap an extra layer of air, keeping an animal warm. This reflex formation of goosebumps when cold is not vestigial in humans, but the reflex to form them under stress is.

There are also vestigial molecular structures in humans, which are no longer in use but may indicate common ancestry with other species. One example of this is L-gulono-gamma-lactone oxidase, a gene, found functional in most other mammals, which produces a Vitamin C-catalyzing enzyme. In humans, an earlier mutation may have caused it to become disabled (unable to produce the enzyme), and it now remains in the human genome only as a vestigial genetic sequence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestigiality

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_vestigiality

Henry Moore, Drawings

2009-12-03T05:12:00.000-08:00

Henry Moore, Study for Row of Sleepers, 1941

Henry Moore, Grey Tube Shelter, 1940

The Field: The quest for the secret force of the universe

2009-12-03T04:25:00.000-08:00

from
http://twm.co.nz/McTag_field.htm#About

A bit like finding there is such a thing as The Force in Star Wars. The Field tells the story of respected frontier scientists all over the globe who have produced extraordinary evidence to show that an energy field -The Zero Point Field - connects everything in the universe, and we ourselves are part of this vast dynamic cobweb of energy exchange.
The Field also reveals a radical new biological paradigm-that on our most fundamental level, the human mind and body are not distinct and separate from their environment, but a packet of pulsating energy constantly interacting with this vast energy sea.

Here in so-called 'dead' space may lay the key to many of life's processes, from how cells communicate to how organisms actually take shape. The field is responsible for our mind's highest functions - our memory, intuition, creativity. It is the force that finally determines whether we are healthy or ill, the force which must be tapped in order to heal. Original, and well documented with distinguished sources, The Field lifts many areas out of the realm of mystery and into the realm of hard science
The Field creates a picture of an interconnected universe and a new scientific theory which makes sense of supernatural phenomena. It offers a scientific explanation for many of the most profound human mysteries, from alternative medicine and spiritual healing to extra sensory perception and the collective unconscious. It could even answer some of the big questions: what is human consciousness and what happens when we die.
The Field follows the life and work of physicists who seem to be on the verge of bringing about the same type of revolution that occurred exactly a century ago when quantum theory changed the face of physics forever.

The story of their thrilling discovery is a thriller in its own right, involving the CIA, secret Russian testing sites, NASA space programmes and time travel, as a small band of men and women come to grips with the physics of the impossible. Fast-paced and readable like a scientific detective story, The Field is the mind-body book the New Age has been waiting for, the book that will change your entire perception of the way the world works.
Award winning author and indefatigable investigative journalist Lynne McTaggart spent four years researching this area, where science meets the New Age, to create this story of scientific explorers, their groundbreaking work and its controversial implications for mankind. Until now, conservative scientists have done their best to rule 'god' out of their equations. This book shows why the Zero Point Field makes all things possible: all things connected in space and time.

The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down- The Band

2009-12-02T02:22:00.001-08:00

from The Last Waltz 1978

Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting

2009-11-30T03:14:00.000-08:00

by Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini

extracts.....full manifesto here http://www.unknown.nu/futurism/techpaint.html

Our growing need of truth is no longer satisfied with Form and Color as they have been understood hitherto.

The gesture which we would reproduce on canvas shall no longer be a fixed moment in universal dynamism. It shall simply be the dynamic sensation itself.

Indeed, all things move, all things run, all things are rapidly changing. A profile is never motionless before our eyes, but it constantly appears and disappears. On account of the persistency of an image upon the retina, moving objects constantly multiply themselves; their form changes like rapid vibrations, in their mad career. Thus a running horse has not four legs, but twenty, and their movements are triangular.

All is conventional in art. Nothing is absolute in painting. What was truth for the painters of yesterday is but a falsehood today. We declare, for instance, that a portrait must not be like the sitter, and that the painter carries in himself the landscapes which he would fix upon his canvas.

To paint a human figure you must not paint it; you must render the whole of its surrounding atmosphere.

Movement and light destroy the materiality of bodies

Space no longer exists: the street pavement, soaked by rain beneath the glare of electric lamps, becomes immensely deep and gapes to the very center of the earth. Thousands of miles divide us from the sun; yet the house in front of us fits into the solar disk.

Who can still believe in the opacity of bodies, since our sharpened and multiplied sensitiveness has already penetrated the obscure manifestations of the medium? Why should we forget in our creations the doubled power of our sight, capable of giving results analogous to those of the X-rays?

Our bodies penetrate the sofas upon which we sit, and the sofas penetrate our bodies. The motor bus rushes into the houses which it passes, and in their turn the houses throw themselves upon the motor bus and are blended with it.

Movement and light destroy the materiality of bodies

Rene Almanza

2009-11-29T11:21:00.000-08:00

Rene Almanza, mexican artist http://www.renealmanza.net/

Will Barras

2009-11-29T11:07:00.000-08:00

English artist and illustrator

http://willbarras.com/

Kofie One

2009-11-29T10:58:00.000-08:00

'urban' artist Kofie One. check it

http://www.keepdrafting.com/

Alice in Chains- Would?

2009-11-29T08:01:00.000-08:00

Umberto Boccioni

2009-11-28T05:33:00.000-08:00

“All things move, all things run, all things are rapidly changing. A profile is never motionless before our eyes, but it constantly appears and disappears. On account of the persistency of an image upon the retina, moving objects constantly multiply themselves; their form changes like rapid vibrations, in their mad career. Thus a running horse has not four legs, but twenty, and their movements are triangular.”
– Umberto Boccioni, ‘Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto’ (1910)

Umberto Boccioni, Charge of the lancers, 1915.

Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913

Sculpture should give life to objects by rendering their extension into space palpable, systematic, and plastic, because no one can deny any longer that one object continues at the point another begins, and that everything surrounding our body (bottle, automobile, house, tree, street) intersects it and divides it into sections by forming an arabesque of curves and straight lines.......

Sculpture cannot make its goal the episodic reconstruction of reality. It should use absolutely all realities in order to reconquer the essential elements of plastic feeling. Consequently, the Futurist sculptor perceives the body and its parts as plastic zones, and will introduce into the sculptural composition planes of wood or metal, immobile or made to move, to embody an object; spherical and hairy forms for heads of hair; half-circles of glass, if it is a question of a vase; iron wires or trellises, to indicate an atmospheric plane, etc., etc.

Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture, Umberto Boccioni

We're in this together......

2009-11-27T05:46:00.000-08:00

Nine Inch Nails - We're In This Together. (The Fragile, 1999) Directed by Mark Pellington

Issey Miyake

2009-11-25T17:54:00.000-08:00

http://www.isseymiyake.co.jp/

Claude Heath

2009-11-22T13:37:00.000-08:00

very cool digital drawings, stereoscopic drawings and paintings

http://www.claudeheath.com/

Gundam

2009-11-22T08:10:00.000-08:00

Shin Musha Gundam.

Musha Gundam (武者頑駄無) are Gundam units modelled after samurai, ninja, or other forms of feudal Japanese warriors. Inheriting the base SD Gundam design, typical design element include changing beam sabre into katana, sheath that act as a gun, removable armour suits etc.

The Garden of Earthly Delights, Heironymus Bosch

2009-11-21T03:10:00.000-08:00

The Garden of Earthly Delights (or The Millennium) is a triptych painted by the early Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450–1516), housed in the Museo del Prado in Madrid since 1939. Dating between 1503 and 1504, when Bosch was about 50 years old, it is his best-known and most ambitious work. The masterpiece reveals the artist at the height of his powers; in no other painting does he achieve such complexity of meaning or such vivid imagery. The triptych depicts several Biblical scenes on a grand scale and as a "true triptych", as defined by Hans Belting, was probably intended to illustrate the history of mankind according to medieval Christian doctrine.

The triptych is painted in oil and comprises a square middle panel flanked by two rectangular wings that can close over the center as shutters. These outer wings, when folded shut, display a grisaille painting of the earth during the Creation. The three scenes of the inner triptych are probably intended to be read chronologically from left to right. The left panel depicts God presenting to Adam the newly created Eve, while the central panel is a broad panorama of sexually engaged nude figures, fantastical animals, oversized fruit and hybrid stone formations. The right panel is a hellscape and portrays the torments of damnation.

Art historians and critics frequently interpret the painting as a didactic warning on the perils of life's temptations. However the intricacy of its symbolism, particularly that of the central panel, has led to a wide range of scholarly interpretations over the centuries. 20th-century art historians are divided as to whether the triptych's central panel is a moral warning or a panorama of paradise lost. American writer Peter S. Beagle describes it as an "erotic derangement that turns us all into voyeurs, a place filled with the intoxicating air of perfect liberty".

During his life, Bosch painted three large triptychs in which each panel was essential to the meaning of the whole. Each of these three works presents distinct yet linked themes addressing history and faith. Triptychs from this period were generally intended to be read sequentially, the left and right panels often portraying Eden and the Last Judgment respectively, while the subtext was contained in the center piece. It is not known whether "The Garden" was intended as an altarpiece, but the general view is that the extreme subject matter of the inner center and right panels make it unlikely that it was intended to function in a church or monastery, but was instead commissioned by a lay patron.

Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, Francis Bacon

2009-11-21T03:02:00.000-08:00

from wikipedia:

Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion is a 1944 triptych painted by the Irish-born artist Francis Bacon. The work is based on the Eumenides—or Furies—of Aeschylus' The Oresteia, and depicts three writhing anthropomorphic creatures set against a flat burnt orange background. The triptych summarises themes explored in Bacon's previous paintings, including his examination of Picasso's biomorphs and his interpretations of the Crucifixion and the Greek Furies. Bacon did not realise his original intention to paint a large crucifixion scene and place the figures at the foot of the cross.

The Three Studies triptych is generally considered Bacon's first mature piece; he regarded his works before the triptych as irrelevant, and throughout his life tried to suppress their appearance on the art market. When the painting was first exhibited in 1945, it caused a sensation, and helped to establish him as one of the foremost post-war painters. Commenting on the cultural significance of Three Studies, the critic John Russell observed in 1971 that "there was painting in England before the Three Studies, and painting after them, and no one ... can confuse the two."

Krzysztof Pruszkowski

2009-11-17T05:18:00.000-08:00

from http://www.gallerywm.com/prusz_index.html

The Plural Vision.

Krzysztof Pruszkowski tells us about the saturation of pictures in the modern world and the short-sightedness they create. A world where pictures are at the same time over-represented and fleeting, very talkative and restrained. Pictures always competing with each other, ending up stacked upon each other and finally dissapearing in the daily stream of information issued by the media.

By subjecting his photographic topics, wether they are taken from the media or not, to "multiple superimpositions", Krzysztof Pruszkowski demonstrates the limits of the new reality. A reality which disolves the notion of time picture by picture and, in a way, accounts for the speed which characterizes some videoclips, the instant circulation of information and pictures around the world. We are no more in the order of the snapshot.

His process: to subject the picture to up to sixty or seventy superimpositions. He names it "photosynthesis" - the gathering of information which could not be covered in one shot. The process is often limited to six or seven superimpositions. The picture doubles, triples, reaches the edge of fuzziness, and provokes a conflict between global and individual, between singular and plural.

Therefore, when Krzysztof Pruszkowski addresses one of todays most difficult artistic concepts, which is the portrait, he does not provide a cohesive picture of the model, but rather the search and formulation of an individuality composed by superimposing different faces. For example Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir (1984), or sometimes more generic, as if he was slowly building up a photofit (portrait-robot), like "Miss Europe" or as with "The President"(1984), with the merged portraits of six American presidents.

This is in fact the new representation of the individual within the present social code, commonly named the typical profile for job selection (profil-type des offres d'emploi). The notion of individual has gone from specific to generic, from unique to interchangeable, like the objects which have changed from original to reproduction. A plural vision of a world where "production" is a key word.........

60 passagers de 2e classe du metro. Ligne: Clignancourt-Orleans. Paris Krzysztof Pruszkowski

No Maps For These Territories

2009-11-15T15:15:00.000-08:00

a film by Mark Neale about William Gibson. For some perplexing reason, self-styled saviour and self-righteous tax dodger Bono and his beanied sidekick The Edge are in it, just skip through their bits.

premise :

On an overcast morning in 1999, William Gibson, father of cyberpunk and author of the cult-classic novel Neuromancer, stepped into a limousine and set off on a road trip around North America. The limo was rigged with digital cameras, a computer, a television, a stereo, and a cell phone. Generated entirely by this four-wheeled media machine, No Maps for These Territories is both an account of Gibson’s life and work and a commentary on the world outside the car windows. Here, the man who coined the word "cyberspace" offers a unique perspective on Western culture at the edge of the new millennium, and in the throes of convulsive, tech – driven change.

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XODk5OTkzMTI=.html

Acton Chin

2009-11-15T11:26:00.000-08:00

Forever Existence 3

Humble Pie - Black Coffee

2009-11-15T06:52:00.000-08:00

live at the OGWT 1973

James Dawe

2009-11-15T06:45:00.000-08:00

'One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich' Endpaper for Fallon Re-published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson Aug 2009 One in a series of 9 classic Novel re-printed in hardback with die cut cover

From http://www.jamesdawe.co.uk/profile.html

"James Dawe is an Illustrator & Image Maker who grew up and still operates out of East London.James specializes in contemporary photo collage, working both digitally and analog with a tendency to assemble imagery in the form of portraits.Pride is taken in composition and interpreting the everyday in a surreal and fantastical way. "

Leonardo Calvillo

2009-11-15T05:46:00.000-08:00

illustrations

http://www.leo.maliarts.net/scan.html

Isis- 20 minutes/ 40 years

2009-11-15T05:43:00.000-08:00

New video for "20 minutes/ 40 Years" from the album "Wavering Radiant" by ISIS. Video directed by Matthew Santoro.

Ben Weiner

2009-11-15T04:27:00.000-08:00

Oracle, 2007, oil on canvas, 64 x 96 inches

Darkness, 2007, oil on canvas, 64 x 96 inches

http://www.benweiner.com/work.html

Tool

2009-11-11T18:28:00.000-08:00

Tool - Stinkfist from Ænima (1996) directed by Adam Jones

whisper[s] : wearable, handheld, intimate, sensory, personal, expressive, responsive system

2009-11-11T17:53:00.000-08:00

http://whisper.surrey.sfu.ca/

Whisper[s] is an acronym for "wearable, handheld, intimate, sensory, personal, expectant response system." The whisper[s] research group out of Simon Frasar University's School of Interactive Art & Technology combines wearable computing, dance, music, and fashion to explore how we exist in an environment of pervasive technology. Thecla Schiphorst, Susan Kozel, Sang Mah, and Robb Lovell led the creative team to produce work that equally balances art and technology.

The wireless technology embedded in the garments trigger responses of light and sound with other garments as well as the surrounding environment. Therefore, wearers (re)learn how to engage with each other and their surroundings through play and exploration. The use of natural fabrics is a welcome change from the tendency to overdo the futuristic feel of many wearable technology examples. These netwroks are imagined as extensions of the body - cyberpathways as extensions of neurological systems, muscle and skin.

Meatbook - 'Tangible and Visceral Interaction'

2009-11-11T02:54:00.000-08:00

from http://meatbook.iat.sfu.ca/index.html

'The Meatbook, an interactive art installation, explores the use of a novel tangible interace to provoke a visceral response in the viewer. The Meatbook presentes the symbiosis of the mechanical and the organic as it simultaneously juxtaposes the conflicting materiality of these media. Sensors, motors and other mechanics are used to animate the meat, generating movements specifically designed to produce visceral, even cathartic responses from the user. By simultaneously generating revulsion and fascionation, the user undergoes an embodied experience in which the alien and the familiar come together in the form of a book.'

Diane Gromala

Aaron Levisohn

Jinsil Seo

Jayme Cochrane

Anton and Giulio Bragaglia- 'A glacial reproduction of reality'

2009-11-09T02:00:00.000-08:00

Anton & Giulio Bragaglia, The Slap, (1912)

"We are not interested in the precise reconstruction of movement, which has already been broken up and analysed. We are involved only in the area of movement which produces sensation, the memory of which still palpitates in our awareness” Giulio Bragaglia (1913)

Idris Khan

2009-11-09T01:18:00.001-08:00

“every…Bernd and Hilla Becher Prison type Gasholders” Idris Khan 2004.

A series of images he made by superimposing Bernd and Hilla Becher’s photographs of industrial buildings, while digitally manipulating them to emphasise certain details or to enhance areas of light and shade. In his own words- 'it’s obviously not about re-photographing the photographs to make exact copies, but to intervene and bring a spectrum of feelings - warmth, humour, anxiety - to what might otherwise be considered cool aloof image. You can see the illusion of my hand in the layering. It looks like a drawing. It’s not systematic or uniform. The opacity of every layer is a different fallible, human decision'

After Eadweard Muybridge ‘Human and Animal Locomotion’ Idris Khan (2005).

The above image is a combination of Muybridge's motion studies into a single image.

In Khan's own words his images are 'a playful emblem of our own departure from the corpse of photography, burdened with what the Futurist Anton Guilio Bragaglia once referred to as its ‘glacial reproduction of reality'.

Tool - Vicarious

2009-11-08T14:14:00.000-08:00

music video for the american band Tool for the song 'vicarious' from their most recent 10,000 days album.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUXBCdt5IPg

Rob Sheridan

2009-11-08T13:46:00.000-08:00

With Teeth

Bleedthrough

The Slip

American graphic designer noted for his long running visual collaborations with Trent Reznor/Nine Inch Nails.

http://www.rob-sheridan.com/

Theo Jansen

2009-11-07T04:36:00.000-08:00

Animaris Percipiere

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcR7U2tuNoY&feature=related

Open Country: Bryan May's 3D village, BBC Radio 4

2009-11-03T13:38:00.000-08:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nhn1n

Queen guitarist Brian May uncovers the story of an Oxfordshire village captured in time by Victorian photographic pioneer T.R. Williams.

Edward T Hall- Theory of Proxemics and The Anthropology of Space

2009-11-03T05:02:00.000-08:00

Edward T Hall's Proxemic Diagram, 1966

Arne Quinze

2009-11-02T09:58:00.000-08:00

'Rebirth', Installation at Hotel Le Royal Monceau, Paris, 2008

http://www.arnequinze.tv

Baroness- The Blue Record

2009-11-02T09:07:00.000-08:00

http://www.myspace.com/yourbaroness

Rene Magritte, Hegel's Holiday

2009-11-02T07:14:00.000-08:00

René Magritte's Hegel's Holiday (1958).

Magritte to the critic Suzi Gablik: "My latest painting began with the question: how to show a glass of water in a painting in such a way that it would not be indifferent? Or whimsical, or arbitrary, or weak – but, allow us to use the word, with genius? (Without false modesty.) I began by drawing many glasses of water, always with a linear mark on the glass. This line, after the 100th or 150th drawing, widened out and finally took the form of an umbrella. The umbrella was then put into the glass, and to conclude, underneath the glass. Which is the exact solution to the initial question: how to paint a glass of water with genius. I then thought that Hegel (another genius) would have been very sensitive to this object which has two opposing functions: at the same time not to admit any water (repelling it) and to admit it (containing it). He would have been delighted, I think, or amused (as on vacation), and I call the painting Hegel's Holiday. "

Lynn Fox

2009-11-02T01:13:00.000-08:00

prosthetics 01

oceania, (still)

http://www.lynnfox.co.uk/

Data Is Nature

2009-11-01T12:45:00.000-08:00

http://dataisnature.com

Dataisnature is a weblog of research containing information and links covering the following topics - Robot Art, Algorithmic and Procedural Art, Computational Aesthetics, Glitch Aesthetics, Vj’ing, Video Art, Computational Archaeology and similar subjects. Check it

Rapatronic Photographs

2009-11-01T12:11:00.000-08:00

Developed by Dr. Harold Edgerton in the 1940s, the Rapatronic photographic technique allowed very early times in a nuclear explosion's fireball growth to be recorded on film. The exposures were often as short as 10 nanoseconds, and each Rapatronic camera would take exactly one photograph. A bank of four to ten or more such cameras were arranged at tests to record different moments of early fireball growth.

Lebbeus Woods

2009-11-01T12:06:00.000-08:00

'metastructure'

http://lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/

Tadashi Kawamata

2009-11-01T01:58:00.000-07:00

Toronto, 1989

Venice Bienale, 1982

from http://www.csw.art.pl/new/2001/kawamata_e.html

Kawamata creates projects which border on installation and architecture, his artistic interventions are focused on urban sites. The artist refers to the relationship between the artistic creation /material/ existing space, by composing the work into the existing environment and building a structural connection. Kawamata's works are ingenious simulations of urban situations - roads, bridges, passages, "private" spaces - they are unreal, unrealistic and non-functional objects. The artist relates to the urban chaos of modern cities which is invisible at first glance because it is hidden behind rational, planned structures. Kawamata builds over existing urban objects, facades and interiors with complicated labyrinths of scaffolding, creating a resemblance of architectural "cancer". He defies the rules of logic and symmetry, the laws of architectural rhythm and multi-level hierarchy, questioning the systems of habits linked to utility and aesthetics. His projects provoke associations with the polymorphous and equivocal nature of fractals.

Kawamata also introduces other elements into his installations, which are derived from the specific nature of the sites where he builds his objects. In France he built works with the use of thousands of chairs. In the old synagogue in Metz (Les chaises de traverse, 1998) he installed a structure which penetrated from the outside to inside the architectural object. The installation was spread out in space, located at bus stops over a distance of 25 kilometres, with chairs which connected the installation site with the distant city centre. Kawamata's projects which are currently implemented in Japan are strictly connected with the urban situation of cities and particular regions.

Sam Messenger

2009-11-01T01:48:00.000-07:00

http://www.sammessenger.com/works-on-paper.html

Chiharu Shiota

2009-11-01T01:44:00.000-07:00

'Waiting'

http://www.chiharu-shiota.com/

Augmented Reality

2009-11-01T01:39:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTsdh9TdzgM

Cell Size and Scale

2009-10-31T12:46:00.000-07:00

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/scale/