This stunning painting depicts a natural philosopher, a forerunner of the modern scientist, recreating one of Robert Boyle's air pump experiments, in which a bird is deprived of air, before a varied group of onlookers. The group exhibits a variety of reactions, but for most of the audience scientific curiosity overcomes concern for the bird. The central figure looks out of the picture as if inviting the viewer's participation in the outcome.
The piece rewards closer study. The experiment itself and the setting in which it takes place are the main attractor but the people surrounding it provide an enormous amount of context. Their faces are positively dripping with emotion. Wright has each of them tell a story, each highlighting a different facet of man's evolving relationship with early science. The scared look on the little girl's face, the lovers who have no interest in anything but each other, the somewhat mysterious boy in the background (is he lowering or raising the cage or is he perhaps lowering the curtains, afraid of the outside world's reaction to man trying to unravel the mysteries of nature?) Subtext everywhere.
The politician and philosopher Edmund Burke, in his famous Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), tied natural philosophers to the French Revolution; he later wrote in his Letter to a Noble Lord (1796) that radicals who supported science in Britain "considered man in their experiments no more than they do mice in an air pump". In light of this comment, Wright's painting of the bird in the air pump, completed over twenty years earlier, seems particularly prescient.
Wright's phenomenal paintings caused a great stir at their time of creation for they replaced the traditional classical subject with one of a scientific nature . Wright's depiction of the awe produced by scientific "miracles" marked a break with traditions in which the artistic depiction of such wonder was reserved for religious events. To Wright the marvels of the technological age were as awe-inspiring as the subjects of the great religious paintings.
Joseph Wright (1734 - 1797) has been acclaimed as "the first professional painter to express the spirit of the Industrial Revolution". He is notable for his use of Chiaroscuro effect, which emphasizes the contrast of light and dark, and for his paintings of candle-lit subjects. His paintings of the birth of science out of alchemy, often based on the meetings of the Lunar Society, a group of very influential scientists and industrialists living in the English Midlands, are a significant record of the struggle of science against religious values in the period known as the Age of Enlightenment.
Wow. No words to describe it. They should've sent a poet. In this "documentary", Robin Wright, who you might know as The Princess Bride or Jenny from Forrest Gump, plays herself. She is now over 40, her career is running to an end and she accepts or gets pressured into accepting one last contract from MiraMount. In exchange for a large payout, the studio gets to use a virtual copy of her in any manner they see fit.
I am going to cut it there cause really, the less you know, the better. Suffice to say that this is just the tip of the iceberg and that events set in motion by the description above will have consequences far beyond any one person. The film is very loosely based on a story from Stanislaw Lem and has been criticized for not sticking to the source material but personally I am glad that they decided to add and spin so much that you end up with something almost completely new.
The Congress couldn't be any more different from Ari Folman's previous theatrical release, "Waltz With Bashir", the both thematically and visually dark documentary on the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Instead, The Congress is a vibrant explosion of colorful imagination. About the only thing that stayed the same is the mix of live action and powerful animation. Harvey Keitel and Paul Giamatti add a bunch of class to the live action and the animation, probably some of the best I've ever seen, really doesn't need any help.
I don't want to create impossible expectations but for me this is the most fun I've had in the cinema since The Tree of Life. No, this is not 2001: A Space Odyssey but it is the sort of film that takes many liberties with story and pacing, more concerned with making you think about a variety of interpretations than telling a sharply defined completely coherent story, although there are some of those too. Some aspects don't make sense and would look like plot holes in any other film but I am willing to forgive here simply because it feels right here. Dreams, different realities and the truth are things you can play with. I'll save the spoilers for when the rest of the world gets to see it.
This is not something everyone will enjoy but I am pretty sure that anyone who sees it is unlikely to forget it any time soon.
SPOILERS START HERE!
I love films that introduce a ton of dots and then leave it up to you which ones you want to connect and what their relationship should be. The Congress contains a stunning amount of layers and can be interpreted in many different ways. The open and at times almost lucid dream like approach to everything from narrative to visuals and sound sure makes it hard to put into words what you think you saw. There are single scenes that contain so much meaningful background porn that I could fill a page on them. Although the animation might not be for everyone, I think it looks great. There's also Max Richter's hauntingly beautiful score which adds another few gigatons of emotion and all this truly adds up to an enormous explosion out of leftfield. Amazingly it didn't make much noise upon arrival but I am pretty sure that, as we go forward, it will be cherished by its ever growing audience.
Now for some more meaty thoughts; This review will be as disjointed as the film so I am just going to throw out a bunch of random thoughts, make of them what you will.
One of my favorite characters was Jeff, the head of MiraMount. Originally, during the live action part, most of the stuff that comes out of his mind is prophetic, as we move into the animated zone he becomes more of a prophet of doom and ultimately an instigator of said doom. The way he says "this is not science fiction, it's a documentary" about Triple R (Robyn's SF film) which also pointed back to the live action (today) really drives home that the first half hour of the Congress is reality today. The next half hour we move into the near future with Ms. Wright's scan becoming the focal point through which we ultimately get to see the birth of a new world.
Each time she meets Jeff, the Miramax head, he shakes up the world. The embodiment of blind, profit driven disruption, the kind that places dollar signs above life and creativity? The first time they meet he tells her that actors of flesh and blood are a thing of the past, the second time they meet, he's moved a level up, now it's no longer just the actors that get scanned but also the environments which means most people are let go because they no longer need a set crew, make up artists, lighting experts, designers, prop makers, ... Their next meeting takes place in the animated zone. The consequences of his disruptive actions are becoming far more severe. MiraMount has spread its tentacles to other industries and thanks to the development of a new drug the magic of cinema has left the big screen and entered the real world. This new drug seems to take over the interface between sensory input and experience and allows the traversing signals to be modulated. It conjures up vivid and realistic hallucinations which allow consistent and even shared alternate realities. First the drug was rigidly defined and its effects limited in time but as research progressed the drug became more potent, ultimately allowing users to take control over their hallucinations which sets them free but disastrously also closes the feedback loop between want and get with enormous consequences. The last time Wright meets Jeff, he has basically fired everyone that had anything to do with movies. He's still in entertainment but now only sells drugs or "experiences". Things take a turn for the worse when MiraMount starts losing control over its product and global unrest sparks violence.
Ultimately we end up in what I would describe as something similar to a post singularity environment. When the world goes almost completely animated and everyone can be whoever they want to be and do whatever they want to do. What you think is what you get. That in The Congress this is achieved through controllable hallucinogenics doesn't matter much as the result is pretty much indistinguishable from digital reality substitution, programmable matter or a virtual life. The parallels you can draw between these approaches can be quite surprising. In all these worlds the lag time between imagination and instantiation is basically zero.
Some more thoughts;
The Wright family, thanks to Aaron's disease was the first one that really learned to fly? I have the feeling that there is more to the wright/flyers/Wright brothers connection but I'll probably have to see it again to unravel that further.
The animated zone as a liberal offshore island.
Can you be yourself as someone else? If you relive someone else's entire life, how much of the original you would be left?
Do you take the red pill or the blue pill? Here the pill is chemical instead of digital in nature but here too you could very much hold the opinion that life inside beats the Zion outside.
Does her animator know more about herself than she does?
Should the human race die happy or should we toil in misery? It almost looks like mankind has collectively decided to euthanize itself in the most painless way possible.
Alternatively, are we simply machines that got tricked and manipulated by chemicals to willingly and happily engineer our own demise?
I also really liked how they introduced Aaron and his "illness". Giamatti doesn't yet know how right he is when he says of him that he was born before his time. His condition could be seen as an evolutionary step up because in many ways his mind functions similarly to those who later on end up taking the drug. Before the "singularity" he heard what he wanted to hear and was wrong, after the "singularity" he really hears what he wants to hear and becomes "wright"?
It's not explicitly stated but I can imagine that Aaron would be much better adapted to living a life in a world you shape yourself compared to living a life in the world forced upon him in which he grew up. After taking the drug his condition is likely to work in symbiosis with the drug, boosting his ability to perceive creatively, to play with what is real, to new heights.
It's especially interesting to connect his "illness" with a statement from Jeff who at one point says we make movies so we don't have to read books. The less information you get, the more blanks you fill in yourself which is what makes a story more personal. In this sense a movie is a pre-chewed book, largely the same for everyone who lays eyes upon it. Aaron has the ability to always spin his surroundings and experience into something uniquely personal so for him every movie and life itself will likely be about airplanes or something he cares about. In many ways it's a biological analogue for the digital filter bubble. It comes with both pros and cons.
I could talk about this flick for hours and hours. There are many other dots I haven't pointed at yet, like the meaning of identity in a world where it can be copied and replicated to someone else, but likely you've connected your dots a bit or completely differently so first I want to hear your side.
“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.” -Albert Einstein
It might be hard to believe but computers are painting and sculpting, they are writing stories, jokes, poetry, even music. The best part? Some are real works of art. For now the magic still happens in collaboration with artists made of flesh and blood but many admit they could never have achieved such heights without the aid of their creative machines. I say this tongue in cheek but things are moving fast.
The process by which technology enhances creativity and births new forms of art has been going on for quite a while now. As a matter of fact, it has been going on for at least 50,000 years. From the charcoal used in cave paintings to a computer running photoshop, the tools that helped humans materialize their vision which in turn allowed them to enrich themselves creatively have changed immensely. Tools and imagination exist in symbiosis, feeding off each other. Imagination brings the tools into existence, the tools allow new forms of art to be developed which can enrich imagination even further.
Now although those tools have changed immensely, in some ways they haven't really changed much at all. Sure, when an artist makes a mistake, accidentally coloring outside the lines, this could serve as inspiration for him to develop a new style but, except for some poetic art critics, not many would interpret that as his work actually speaking back to him as if it were making a suggestion. However, in this day and age, that is beginning to change. The tools really are beginning to talk back and "art making suggestions" can now be taken quite literally...
For the first time in human history, our tools are in some sense waking up. They are increasingly becoming a contributing factor, not only assisting in the construction process, but also in the process of design. It's in this way that our newest tools, software, are different from pencils. Software, by for example making use of genetic algorithms, can not only evolve manmade design through iteration but can now in fact develop from scratch. Any system that displays dynamic and adaptive behavior, for example systems whose behavior is driven by a neural network, can, by either playing with parameters in a predetermined design space or/and by making use of inputs received from the environment, its own outputs or the chaotic process of randomization suggest novel ideas that would not have come easily to any human mind.
You can see this trend everywhere, computers have been designing for optimum efficiency for almost 2 decades now, everything from modern day airplanes to cars and skyscrapers would be impossible to make without them. Here's just one other example that recently made the news which details how scientists built a superconductor that was designed by a computer; http://discovere.binghamton.edu/news/superconductor-3-5435.html
Although efficient design can be art, art is rarely efficient. Mostly it is concerned with the exploration of beauty which is why I am pleased to see that there too machines are making progress and are well under way to become artists in their own right. Check out http://www.thepaintingfool.com/ who lets us know that he is a computer program but also an aspiring painter who one day hopes to be taken seriously.
I am a huge fan of the godess Zaha Hadid who relentlessly reshapes the world we mortals dwell. She does this without compromise and with vision so astounding that I secretly suspect her to be a timetraveller from an era so far into the future that its culture must be unrecognizable from our own. There is simply no other explanation for the architectural wonders that she has made real. We really can't do much more but stare, mouth agape and occasionally pinch ourselves to make sure that, yes, this is the real world.
Hadid once had a reputation as unbuildable, a 'paper architect' whose projects began as vivid paintings of gravity-defying shapes exploding into the void. How did this extraordinary woman come to build the impossible? Her secret is that she embraced computers to help her design, the computers come up with suggestions of shapes so complex, so beautiful that no human being could have dreamt them up. Even standing in front of the real deal, the complexity makes it hard to really take it all in at once. They look different from every angle and there is so much going on that its practically impossible to even get the basic shape right if someone asks you to recreate it from memory. Now that materials and construction technologies have finally caught up with the future as conceived of by the combined forces of Hadid and her computers, the fun is about to begin.
Not just in architecture, but in pretty much every field you can think of. Check out Watson's novel recipes, many of which are drawing praise from experts; http://www.technologyreview.com/view/521596/the-secret-ingredient-in-computational-creativity/ - Its researchers define creativity as the ability to "generate a product that is judged to be novel and also to be appropriate, useful, or valuable by a suitably knowledgeable social group." A key factor in their work is that creativity is entirely subjective and so requires detailed feedback from human experts. “A computational creativity system has no meaning in a closed universe devoid of people,” they say.
So what does that mean for this machine which brute forces its way to developing new cancer cures? http://live.wsj.com/video/this-robot-is-changing-how-we-cure-diseases/C44DAE3D-C7FD-4C87-9E3F-685498A0C2CB.html - It might sound strange to attribute creativity to this mindless automaton but... Think about the universe, there is no mind or purpose behind the staggering amount of things it contains yet even though there is no-one behind the wheel, new things are created all the time. Is this not creativity?
“Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.” -Mark Twain
Steve Horvath, a geneticist and biostatistician at UCLA, has developed a cellular biological clock that has impressed researchers with its accuracy, how easy it is to read and the fact that it ticks at the same rate in many parts of the body — with some intriguing exceptions that might provide clues to the nature of ageing and its maladies.
Horvath's clock emerges from epigenetics, the study of chemical and structural modifications made to the genome that do not alter the DNA sequence but that are passed along as cells divide and can influence how genes are expressed. As cells age, the pattern of epigenetic alterations shifts, and some of the changes seem to mark time. To determine a person's age, Horvath explores data for hundreds of far-flung positions on DNA from a sample of cells and notes how often those positions are methylated.
“I wanted to develop a method that would work in many or most tissues. It was a very risky project,” Horvath says. But now the gamble seems to be paying off. By the time his findings were finally published last year1, the clock's median error was 3.6 years, meaning that it could guess the age of half the donors to within 43 months for a broad selection of tissues. That accuracy improves to 2.7 years for saliva alone, 1.9 years for certain types of white blood cell and 1.5 years for the brain cortex. The clock shows stem cells removed from embryos to be extremely young and the brains of centenarians to be about 100.
The reviews came back in the spring: more disbelief, and another rejection. Horvath didn't blame the reviewers for being sceptical. “Everyone who develops biomarkers knows what to expect: a very strong biomarker gives you a correlation of, say, 0.6 or 0.7.” For example, the correlation between age and the length of telomeres is less than 0.5. For Horvath's clock algorithm, that figure is 0.96. He confesses that he had trouble believing it himself until other researchers independently confirmed the tight association.
“Such tight correlations suggest there is something seemingly immutable going on in cells,” says Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco, who won a Nobel prize for her research on telomeres — caps on the ends of chromosomes that shorten with age. It could be a clue to undiscovered biology, she suggests. And there may be medical implications in cases in which epigenetic estimates do not match a person's birth certificate.
Picture; Compact Object (1962) by Natsuyuki Nakanishi
A plastic egg with bones, watch and clock parts, hair, eggshells, lens bits, ...
Times as artificial constructs born form synthetics. A plastic egg giving birth to both flesh and time, to the real, the material, and the ephemeral and elusive. Can one exist without the other? Is time internalized mechanically by the flesh, or is it the other way around? Time made flesh... by the machine? Our time isn't really all that similar to physical or even biological time. Ours ticks at different rates from day to day, from cradle to the grave. From atomic vibrations measuring millions of intervals in a single second, to the number of pressure waves transmitted by your local church bell, not all times are made equal. Then again, pulsars are very good clocks but they do not tell time the way Chicxulub did when it reshaped Mexico's Yucatan peninsula.
Taking a look at someone's bookcase can tell you a lot about that person but so too does their taste in film and music. It's almost like reading someone's life lines from the palm of their hand... Only, you know, this actually sort of works. :p As stated before, I feel defined by what I love so in keeping with the previous posts in which I shared people and places, for day 4 I am sharing some of the stuff that gets my blood pumping every time I so much as catch a hint of it.
Feel free to share the creative works you have fallen in love with! In fact, that's kind of the main purpose of this post. You don't have to list your favorites as exhaustively as I did but I very much would like to know what you guys and girls are into. I've been obsessed with lists pretty much from the day I was born so if you could make it at least top 10s, that would be greatly appreciated! :p
"I went to the Serengeti last summer, and while I enjoyed seeing all the living animals, it was the corpses that really inspired me."
Morgan's controversial taxidermy masterpieces are sure to make you think about life, death and everything in between. Her works make the dead speak in voices not their own. A master of her craft, she imbues what were once energetic living creatures with a bit of their former selves but also adds more than a few hints of the macabre and the surreal. There is something quite unnerving about seeing the horrific mixed with the playful in such a casual manner.
"There's something vulnerable about a bird lying down. You see mammals lying down, sleeping. But birds tuck in while perched when they sleep; if they're lying down they are dead. When you see a bird unable to fly it's powerless and motionless. It's like a tiger without teeth."
Paris played a huge role in both the renaissance and the following age of enlightenment and acted as a magnet for French but also international scientists and artists. Many squares house huge monuments that commemorate legendary heroes while other inspiring works of art burst onto the street from almost every bridge and public building. All the parks and even many private houses are decorated with impressive classical statues and a bustling modern street art scene consistently manages to surprise.
Curie, Lavoisier, Descartes, Ampère, Pasteur, Voltaire, Diderot, Lamarck, Carnot, Lagrange, Laplace, Cuvier, Fourier, Foucault, Fermat, Mandelbrot, Coulomb, Coriolis, Pascal, Poincaré, Diesel, Renault, Langevin, Fresnel, Broca, Galois, Grothendieck, Navier, ... are only some of the great minds that have lived and worked in Paris and traces of them can be found all over the place. The photo album below will take you on a scientific and artistic pilgrimage through all of Paris.
If all this talk about Paris has awakened within you the desire to go there, check out this map I made. It will guide you to all the points mentioned in both my previous post and this one;
Thanks once again +Denise Case for inviting me to the #fivedayquest . I'd be interested in hearing more from +Jonas Neergaard-Nielsen. He's an expert photographer who shares stunning shots pretty much non-stop but he makes a living working the sexiest job of all time. After earning a PhD at the legendary Niels Bohr Institute he graduated from quantum wizard to a jedi knight active in quantum optics research. He states that his G+ may be as messy as his brain... so follow his stream at your own risk but I'd say it's well worth it. :)
People have lived in what is now Paris for at least 10,000 years but the region had to wait for its name until a Celtic tribe that called itself the Parisii built a settlement there in 250 BC. When the Romans conquered the area in 52 BC and started expanding the town they called it Lutetia Parisorum. Around 305 AD the city began to be called Civitas Parisiorum, ("The City of the Parisii") but by the end of the Roman Empire, it was known simply as Parisius in Latin and Paris in French. What started as a small settlement on the banks of the Seine is now a metropolis with more than 12 million inhabitants, one of Europe's largest population centers. With a GDP of €607 billion (US$845 billion) it's a true economic juggernaut, a force to be reckoned with. Thanks to its rich history, world renowned cuisine and fashion houses, as well as its leading role in the development of film, it has managed to retain its place as one of the cultural heavy weights of the world.
Its political history is long and complex. It has been the seat of power in France from the 4th century onwards but the power it held over surrounding lands has waxed and waned considerably throughout time. Many of the most famous kings that held their court in Paris have wielded enormous religious and economic power and managed to project military might around the world. From the rule of kings such as Clovis I of the distinguished Merovingian dynasty or the "father of Europe", Charlemagne of the Carolingian dynasty who went on to become Holy Roman Emperor... From royals like Hugh Capet of the Capetian line who in many ways founded modern France to Louis XIV, the Sun king, who helped put an end to feudalism and emperors like Napoléon Bonaparte who birthed much of the modern world... All of them have shaped history in ways seemingly beyond what a mere mortal should be capable of.
In cities as old as Paris, every square inch has been stage to the joys of life as well as the terrors that precede death. When people weren't being taken by natural disasters that were at the time outside of human control; Paris for example got ravaged by the Black Death in 1348 and by the plague in 1466, they had no problem slaughtering each other for religious differences such as was the case during the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre or the many larger wars between Catholics and Protestants in general. Perhaps one of the biggest wars France ever fought was the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) in which the House of Plantagenet, rulers of the Kingdom of England, fought the House of Valois for control of the Kingdom of France. Both sides drew in allies from all over Europe and the result was pretty much hell on earth.
It would have been nice if things had quietened down after the age of enlightenment but we all know it didn't turn out that way. Paris' reputation grew on the writings of its intellectuals such as the philosophers Descartes, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau. These bold thinkers fueled not only the enlightened thinking that spawned the modern world, they also lit the fuse under the establishment, sparking the French Revolution (1789) which saw France get rid of its kings and declare itself a Republic. What started as something beautiful turned dark real quick with a period known as "the reign of terror" (1793). Standing on the beautiful Place de la Concorde it's hard to believe that it was once the site of France's most active guillotine. You can now only guess where exactly the heads of people like Lavoisier or Marie Antoinette were severed from their bodies but the thought alone is enough to send chills up your spine.
France stopped being a republic when this little guy called Napoleon decided he wanted to be Emperor and not just of France but of most of modern Europe. He turned out to be a tactical genius with considerably organisational skills which allowed him to realize his rather crazy dream. He steamrolled pretty much all forces that opposed him and is widely regarded as one of the greatest commanders in history. To this day his campaigns are studied at military academies worldwide. His Napoleonic Code influenced civil law worldwide and he pushed for the adoption of international measurement standards by demanding that the metric system be taught at all levels of education. After Napoleon's loss at the hands of the Russians and their scorched earth tactics and ultimately his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, Paris was briefly occupied by the allied forces who had brought him to his knees. Although the restoration period saw the return of the monarchs with Louis XVIII and Charles X, it didn't take long for another revolution to uproot them. Considering that France is currently on its fifth republic, this cycle played out quite a few times.
The Second Empire (Napoleon III) ended in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) but not long after peace had returned, Paris became home to a small scale but extremely brutal civil war in which anarchists and radical socialists murdered their way to power but ultimately lost to the french army in "the bloody week". The start of the 20th century brought with it the first world war and the rest, as they say, is history.
Now that we've dealt with the past, we'll get the obvious attractions out of the way. if you visit Paris you have to get up close and personal with; the Eiffel tower, Sacré-Cœur, Arc de Triomphe, Les Invalides, Panthéon, La Grande Arche de La Defense, Centre Pompidou, Gare du Nord, Conciergerie, the Louvre, Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Musée des Arts et Métiers, La Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie, Musée d'Orsay, Hôtel de Ville, Sorbonne, Palais Garnier, Palais de Chaillot, Le Grand & Petit Palais, Pont Alexandre, Pont Neuf, Pont Mirabeau, Notre-Dame, Sainte Chapelle, Saint-Sulpice, L'église de la Madeleine, Sainte-Clotilde, Sainte-Trinité, Saint-Augustin, Les Arènes de Lutèce,Tour Montparnasse, Hôtel de Sens, Place de la Concorde, Place Vendôme, Place de la Bastille, Jardin des Tuileries, Jardin du Luxembourg & Les Catacombes de Paris. If you find the time you should probably also visit Versailles, Château Vincennes, Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace & La basilique de Saint-Denis just outside of the Paris Center. Pictures and links to more information about all these places can be found in the album below.
All of the above you will find in pretty much every guide to Paris but for #ScienceSunday , my final 5 day quest post and my weekly art share I'd like to present you a picture of Paris focused on science and art. However, I am saving that for Part 2 which I hope to finish today so check back later! :)
Born more than 200 years ago, in 1789 somewhere near Hexham in England, John Martin's epic visions of doom still resonate today. His works continue to inspire modern creators and his far reaching influence can be recognized in popular media from around the world. For example, George Lucas based Coruscant's galactic senate on one of Martin's engravings; "Satan Presiding at the Infernal Council". Others whose imaginations were fired by him included Ralph Waldo Emerson, the pre-Raphaelites, and several generations of movie-makers, from D. W. Griffith, who borrowed his Babylon from Martin, to Cecil B. DeMille. One of his earliest followers was Thomas Cole, founder of American landscape painting. The French Romantic movement, in both art and literature, was inspired by him. He even influenced early SF writers like Jules Verne and H. G. Wells with his concept of the sublime.
In private Martin was passionate, a devotee of chess—and, in common with his brothers, swordsmanship and javelin-throwing—and a devout Christian, believing in "natural religion". Around 1820 he became the official historical painter to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, later the first King of Belgium. As his reputation grew Martin became a public defender of deism and natural religion, evolution (before Darwin) and rationality. Georges Cuvier became an admirer of Martin's, and he increasingly enjoyed the company of scientists, artists and writers—Dickens, Faraday and Turner among them.
Later in life Martin became involved with many plans and inventions. He developed a fascination with solving London's water and sewage problems, involving the creation of the Thames embankment, containing a central drainage system. His plans were visionary, and formed the basis for later engineers' designs – Joseph Bazalgette's included. The plans, along with railway schemes, an idea for "laminating timber", lighthouses, and draining islands, all survive.
As a result of his experimenting with mezzotint technology Martin was commissioned to produce 24 engravings for a new edition of Paradise Lost—perhaps the definitive illustrations of Milton’s masterpiece, of which copies now fetch many hundreds of pounds.
He exhibited many works during the 1840s, culminating in his triumphal The Last Judgment trilogy of paintings which were completed in 1853, just before the stroke which paralysed his right side. He was never to recover and died on 17 February 1854, on the Isle of Man.
Frank Owen Gehry, born Frank Owen Goldberg in 1929 in Canada's Toronto, is a Pritzker Prize winning architect whose buildings have become world renowned tourist attractions. His works are cited as being among the most important works of contemporary architecture in the 2010 World Architecture Survey, which led Vanity Fair to label him as "the most important architect of our age".
He moved to California in 1947 where he got a job driving a delivery truck while studying at Los Angeles City College. In 1954 Gehry graduated at the top of his class with a Bachelor of Architecture degree. Afterwards, he spent time away from the field of architecture in numerous other jobs, including service in the United States Army.
The renovation of his own private residence in Santa Monica, California, jump-started his career but it can be argued that it was the opening of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain that truly put his name on the map. Gehry's best-known works include the MIT Ray and Maria Stata Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts; The Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles; The Vontz Center for Molecular Studies on the University of Cincinnati campus; Experience Music Project in Seattle; New World Center in Miami Beach; Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis; Dancing House in Prague; the Vitra Design Museum and the museum MARTa Herford in Germany; the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto; the Cinémathèque française in Paris; and 8 Spruce Street in New York City.
Much of Gehry's work falls within the style of deconstructivism. Deconstructivist structures are not required to reflect specific social or universal ideas nor do they reflect the belief that form follows function. The style is characterized by fragmentation, an interest in manipulating a structure's surface and skin and non-rectilinear shapes which appear to distort and dislocate elements of architecture. The finished visual appearance of buildings that exhibit deconstructivist "styles" is characterized by unpredictability and controlled chaos.
I think of his buildings as similar but different to those of another legendary architect, Zaha Hadid. Both their styles seem to spring from that same futuristic well but where Hadid often opts for aggressive flowing curves, Gehry tends to love brutal straight cut lines. It's hard to really describe his style as it has manifested itself in many different forms. Sometimes he does incorporate curves into his structures but when he does they don't look purposeful like Hadid's. His curves give the impression that they started out as straight lines that ended up warped, almost as if erased by heat or pulled down by weight. Both Gehry and Hadid's buildings look natural but from different perspectives. Where Hadid's give me the impression that they sprang into existence, perhaps similar to how a seashell emerges from the void bottom up, Gehry's on the other hand remind me of a top down approach, appearing as if they were cut out of their surroundings the way wind shapes a mountain or water erodes a rocky coast line. Together with others like Daniel Liebeskind and Rem Koolhaas, they belong to a specific class of architects who all seem dead-set on materializing the future one building at a time.
A mysterious seductress preys upon the population of Scotland.
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Stars: Scarlett Johansson
Films like this don't come around often and deserve to be experienced on a massive screen with a sound system capable of generating 200 mph vortex winds. From the first minute alone you just know that you are in store for a treat. They say there are two sorts of schools for films to follow. Almost all the films made today are focused on telling a well defined story through dialogue and narration but there is another school which tries to get away from that and instead uses the language of the visual to hint at underlying meaning. This film is most definitely a follower of this second school. It automatically brings with it echoes of films like 2001 or the Tree of Life simply because there isn't much else to compare it to. Without a doubt this is one of the most original movies of the past decade. In fact, I don't think we've ever seen something quite like this before.
It took Glazer a decade to get this out and it shows. It's a deeply personal film that doesn't care if you'll like it. Where most commercial films try to please their audience by checking the usual boxes and some artsy directors will try to meet their audience halfway, It's obvious that Glazer didn't compromise on anything but instead chose to fanatically execute his singular vision.
This is not market researched mass production which scores an "it's okay" with 90% of its audience. If a film is made for everyone, it's made for no one in particular. Art on the other hand isn't made for everyone or even anyone in particular but if you are lucky enough to be on the same wavelength as its creator, his work can connect with you in such a way that it goes well beyond simple entertainment. Sometimes a good piece can alter the way you think, making it life changing.
It's with this in mind that I can't guarantee you'll like Under the Skin but I most definitely recommend you see it. In the worst case you'll hate it, but if you are like me, you'll get to see a mindblowing masterpiece. One thing's for sure, even if you hate it, this film will get under your skin and haunt your thoughts for weeks to come.
The film itself is a truly unique and utterly alienating experience. Hidden cameras film unsuspecting people as they interact with a predatory Johansson as she stalks the streets of Glasgow. We see people go about their daily lives but from a disconnected point of view which infuses the mundane with an eerie dose of strangeness. The camera lingers on actions each and every one of us has performed many times over but seeing Johansson go through them seemingly for the first time makes you question yourself which can at times be quite unsettling.
A haunting and brooding tension simmers just below the surface throughout the entire film, only punctuated by a couple of chilling key moments where the slow pace gives way to pure shock and terror when the speed unexpectedly ramps up. It's not just the pacing that contributes to the feeling of dread. Certain scenes will quite simply nail you to the floor. Either by their macabre beauty or because you feel like a rabbit trapped in headlights. Glazer brings to the table a visionary style, effects that transcend "special", and layers of metaphor so deep you'll have a hard time keeping your head above the water...
There's also a hypnotic quality to the horror that makes it impossible for you to look away for which the score is largely responsible. It's hard to put into words just how perfect the score matches the movie. It is at times as perfectly cold and calculated as Johansson's mastery of murder, next it's completely unpredictable, jumping around as if it were a deer caught in bear trap. The only constants are its threatening and otherworldly qualities. Under the Skin - Death
The location, Scotland, perfectly suits the themes of the film. There is beauty in the bewildering chaos of its natural landscapes but also despair in its grim and desolate character. I am not going to give anything away about the film's story or what I think it means. It's much more fun to go in without having a preconceived notion of what it's all about. I wouldn't even bother with the trailer and instead go in completely fresh but if I haven't convinced you yet; Under the Skin Trailer Official - Scarlett Johansson
Do yourself a favor, go find out what it does for you.
I've decided to start a series on my favorite artists so from now on you can expect from me about a post a week featuring the works of one particularly creative genius. Painters, sculptors, musicians, writers, directors, engineers, architects, coders, ... artists of all stripes and colors will get a turn in the spotlight.
I am kicking things off with someone who many consider to be a god as he wields the power to pull never before seen fully living and breathing worlds into being. Perhaps the foremost SF artist of our times, he doesn't create pictures, he creates scenes so real they radiate history.
Alex Ries is a Melbourne based illustrator and concept artist with several years’ experience across the industry. His artworks have been featured by publishers including Cosmos Magazine, Pearson Education Canada, and the Discovery Channel.
Receiving his education at the University of Melbourne, Alex graduated with a Bachelor of Creative Arts. Studies in diverse visual media including painting, 3D visualisation and film provided a broad creative skills base from which to operate.
This education and experience, coupled with a strong interest in biology, zoology and real-world technology, has fostered an artistic style able to not only accurately illustrate life from the real world, but fictional life as well.
Rumor has it that he's been hard at work on a book that will detail the complete history of life on another world. From the planet's formation to the evolutionary origins of many of its species to ultimately the development of a culture that like us has managed to soar into space. Can't wait! :)
Jean-Léon Gérôme, born 1824 in France, was a master of the style now known as Academicism. His many paintings depicting historical scenes, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits and other subjects guarantee his name will live on for centuries to come. That being said, he's also responsible for more than a few stunning sculptural works.
Gérôme’s artistic career began in 1840 in Paris where he practiced his craft under Paul Delaroche's watchful eye. He accompanied Delaroche to Italy to continue his studies. Two years later he returned to Paris and attended the École des Beaux-Arts, entering the Prix de Rome competition in hopes of returning to Italy, but he failed to qualify for the final stage in 1846 because of his inadequate figure drawing. Consequently, Gérôme became obsessed with painting the perfect nude—an ambition he would harbor throughout his life.
In 1853, Gérôme moved to the Boîte à Thé, a group of studios in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, Paris. This would become a meeting place for other artists, writers and actors. George Sand entertained in the small theater of the studio the great artists of her time such as the composers Berlioz, Brahms and Rossini and the novelists Gautier and Turgenev. No doubt this was an environment conductive to the cross pollination of artistic ideas. Gérôme both inspired and was influenced by these greats.
He made his name rendering allegorical scenes from ancient Greece and Rome in exquisite detail, often incorporating neoclassical concepts. His breakthrough in France allowed him to travel the world and his many journeys proved to be a great inspiration, birthing a great deal of historical paintings. His visits to Northern Africa, Egypt in particular, made a lasting impression and he would return to it in his paintings ever after.
Although Gérôme is famous for his idealized depictions of reality, he achieved detail so vivid that his work, even though the scenes and people in them were larger than life, appeared to ring true. He perfected many of the techniques that realists would later employ and in many ways is responsible for the realist movement's birth as it took off in response to the exaggerated reality he had helped popularize. In 1902 he said; "Thanks to photography, Truth has at last left her well.". I for one am glad that Gérôme was born ahead of what might have been his time. He blurred the lines between the real and the fantastic most beautifully.
Jean-Léon Gérôme died in his atelier on 10 January 1904. He was found in front of a portrait of Rembrandt and close to his own painting "The Truth".
Giordano Nanni and Hugo Farrant have been broadcasting their satirical news show from a suburban backyard home-studio in Melbourne, Australia for quite a while now. Given how awesome their productions are it amazes me that they still aren't household names! I've shared some of their shows before but their latest creation just might be one of their best yet. ;)
"Today we travel into the pure world of sci-fi to investigate the much vaunted, mysterious potential future event known as 'The Singularity'. What will a machine consciousness mean for humanity? What are the ethical, political, military and philosophical implications of strong A.I.? And what would an AI sound like when spitting rhymes over a dope beat? All this and more shall be revealed in Rap News 28."
Around 1450 Hieronymus Bosch, born Jheronimus van Aken, was squeezed into being in the Duchy of Brabant, a state of the Holy Roman Empire, at the time part of the Burgundian Netherlands and near the end of his life part of the Habsburg Netherlands. Little is known of Bosch’s life or training. He left behind no letters or diaries. Neither is anything known of his personality or his thoughts on the meaning of his art.
What we do know is that in 1463, 4000 houses in his town of 's-Hertogenbosch were destroyed by a catastrophic fire, which the then approximately 13-year-old Bosch presumably witnessed. Perhaps this event provided the foundation for some of the hellish scenes he came up with? We can only guess.
Fewer than 25 paintings remain today that can be attributed to him. In the late sixteenth-century, Philip II of Spain acquired many of Bosch's paintings, including some probably commissioned and collected by Spaniards active in Bosch's hometown; as a result, the Prado Museum in Madrid now owns most of his best work including; The Adoration of the Magi, The Garden of Earthly Delights, the tabletop painting of The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things, the The Haywain Triptych and The Stone Operation.
His Garden of Earthly Delights is probably one of the most famous paintings ever created and it's easy to see why. 500 years after Bosch introduced it to the world, the explosively colored fantastical scene it depicts is no less remarkable. It grabs attention instantly and effortlessly holds it for within its frame there is so much going on that the harder you look, the more details you uncover.
Art historians and critics frequently interpret his 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. Twentieth-century art historians are divided as to whether the triptych's central panel is a moral warning or a panorama of paradise lost.
René François Ghislain Magritte, born 1898, was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images that fall under the umbrella of surrealism. His work is known for challenging observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality.
Little is known about Magritte's early life. In 1912, when he was just 13 years old, his mother committed suicide by drowning herself in the River Sambre. This was not her first attempt at taking her own life; she had made many over a number of years, driving her husband Léopold to lock her into her bedroom. One day she escaped, and was missing for days. Her body was later discovered a mile or so down the nearby river.
Supposedly, when his mother was found, her dress was covering her face, an image that has been suggested as the source of several of Magritte's paintings.
The paintings he produced during his early years were influenced by Futurism and by the figurative Cubism of Metzinger. It wasn't until 1926 that he made his first surreal painting, The Lost Jockey. He grew to be a close friend of André Breton, and became involved in the surrealist group of which he ended up being a leading member.
During the German occupation of Belgium in World War II he remained in Brussels, which led to a break with Breton. He briefly adopted a colorful, painterly style in 1943–44, an interlude known as his "Renoir Period", as a reaction to his feelings of alienation and abandonment that came with living in German-occupied Belgium.
In 1946, renouncing the violence and pessimism of his earlier work, he joined several other Belgian artists in signing the manifesto Surrealism in Full Sunlight. During 1947–48, Magritte's "Vache Period", he painted in a provocative and crude Fauve style. During this time, Magritte supported himself through the production of fake Picassos, Braques and Chiricos—a fraudulent repertoire he was later to expand into the printing of forged banknotes during the lean postwar period.
Popular interest in Magritte's work rose considerably in the 1960s, and his imagery has influenced pop, minimalist and conceptual art.
Magritte died of pancreatic cancer on 15 August 1967 in his own bed, aged 68, and was interred in Schaerbeek Cemetery, Evere, Brussels.
"If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream." -René Magritte
Sir Antony Mark David Gormley, born in 1950, is a world-renowned British sculptor. Almost all his work takes the human body as its subject, with his own body, "the only part of the material world that he inhabits", used in many of them as the basis for the metal casts. His work attempts to treat the body not as an object but a place.
"The body is a language before language. When made still in sculpture it can be a witness to life and and it can talk about this time now."
"The body is a spaceship and an instrument of extreme subtlety, that communicates whether we recognize its communications consciously or not."
Gormley won the Turner Prize in 1994 with Field for the British Isles but is perhaps best known for his public sculpture Angel of the North and his spectacular transformation of Crosby Beach near Liverpool into "Another Place".
"The place made the piece." -Gormley
Personally I think his works are at their best when they are exhibited together in groups. You know that point where a word, if you endlessly keep repeating it, starts to lose its familiarity and meaning? His sculptures generate that same alienating feeling but for your concept of the human body. What makes it even better is that, while you are repeating your word, Gormley switches out a few letters but so slowly that you don't pick up on it... Ultimately you end up wondering why a block of concrete with holes in it looks so sad. Aftereffects of his show include a free rendition of "They Live" upon exit. ;)
"There's that idea of who we are and what we look like. Your physiognomy belongs to me more than you because I'm looking." -Gormley
It's perhaps not surprising that work exploring the limits at which forms can retain human qualities should bring to mind transhumanism but much of his work purposefully edges toward the futuristic. With names like Natural Selection, Hive, Critical Mass and Quantum Cloud, one could imagine all these shapes being expressions of a singular constantly changing entity.
"Well, bio-cybernetics: we can now be creative interventionists in the construction of transgenic life forms. Morphological transmission is part of my work." - Gormley
Beksiński, born in 1929, was a Polish painter, photographer and sculptor. He studied architecture in Kraków, completing his studies in 1955, and started out working as a construction site supervisor immediately after. It didn't take him long to realize he hated that kind of work as he found himself more interested in what else he could create with site materials such as plaster, metal and wire. It's during this period that he also developed an interest in montage photography and painting.
Beksiński had no formal training as an artist. His paintings were mainly created using oil paint on hardboard panels which he personally prepared, although he also experimented with acrylic paints.
In the late 1960s, Beksiński entered what he himself called his "fantastic period", which lasted up to the mid-1980s. This is his best-known period, during which he created very disturbing images, showing a surrealistic, post-apocalyptic environment with very detailed scenes of death, decay, landscapes filled with skeletons, deformed figures and deserts. These paintings were quite detailed, painted with his trademark precision. At the time, Beksiński claimed, "I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams".
Beksiński was adamant that even he did not know the meaning of his artworks and was uninterested in possible interpretations; in keeping with this, he refused to provide titles for any of his drawings or paintings. Before moving to Warsaw in 1977, he burned a selection of his works in his own backyard, without leaving any documentation on them. He later claimed that some of those works were "too personal", while others were unsatisfactory, and he didn't want people to see them.
In the latter part of the 1990s, he discovered computers, the Internet, digital photography and photomanipulation, a medium that he focused on until his death.
The late 1990s were a very trying time for Beksiński. His wife, Zofia, died in 1998; a year later, on Christmas Eve 1999, his son Tomasz committed suicide. Beksiński discovered his son's body. Unable to come to terms with his son's death, he kept an envelope "For Tomek in case I kick the bucket" pinned to his wall.
On the 21st of February 2005, Beksiński was found murdered in his flat in Warsaw with 17 stab wounds on his body.
It's hard for me to say I like his work, it is after all nightmare fuel, but I can definitely appreciate the genius of it. If Dali and Giger ever would have made a baby together, I imagine their spawn would have produced work similar to Beksiński's. Even though most of his paintings depict tormented souls and surreal hellscapes, it's not all bad as even his darkest visions tend to make you feel for their subjects.
Internationally lauded “explosives artist” Cai Guo-Qiang has already amassed some stunning stats: He may be the only artist in human history who has had some one billion people gaze simultaneously at one of his artworks. You read that right, one billion. I’m talking about the worldwide televised “fireworks sculpture” that Cai Guo-Qiang—China-born, living in America now—created for the opening of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. If you’re one of the few earthlings who hasn’t seen it, either live or online, here’s Cai’s description: “The explosion event consisted of a series of 29 giant footprint fireworks, one for each Olympiad, over the Beijing skyline, leading to the National Olympic Stadium. The 29 footprints were fired in succession, traveling a total distance of 15 kilometers, or 9.3 miles, within a period of 63 seconds.
Cai was born in 1957 in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, China. His father, Cai Ruiqin, was a calligrapher and traditional painter who worked in a bookstore. As a result, Cai Guo-Qiang was exposed early on to Western literature as well as traditional Chinese art forms.
“My father,” Cai says, “was a collector of rare books and manuscripts,” and an adept at the delicate art of calligraphy. But when the Cultural Revolution began in the mid-’60s, Mao Zedong turned his millions of subjects against anyone and any sign of intellectual or elite practices, including any art or literature that was not propaganda.
“Intellectuals” (meaning just about anyone who read, or even possessed, books) were beaten, jailed or murdered by mobs and all their works burned in pyres. “My father knew his books, scrolls and calligraphy were a time bomb in his house,” Cai recalls. So he began burning his precious collection in the basement. “He had to do it at night so that no one would know.”
Cai grew up in a setting where explosions were common, whether they were the result of cannon blasts or celebratory fireworks. He also “saw gunpowder used in both good ways and bad, in destruction and reconstruction”. It seems that Cai has channeled his experiences and memories through his numerous gunpowder drawings and explosion events.
By the time of the political explosion of Tiananmen Square in 1989, Cai had left China and was in Japan, where “I discovered Western physics and astrophysics.” And Hiroshima.
“Spiritual mediums,” he tells me, “channel between the material world and the unseen world to a certain degree similar to what art does.” And he sees his art serving as a similar kind of channel, linking ancient and modern, Eastern and Western sensibilities. Feng shui and quantum physics.
