Blue Tea

Four Years in New York

2010-10-17T17:30:00.005-04:00

I don't often share my music, but on a whim I decided to put together a mixtape to commemorate the past four years spent living in New York.

It's an "enhanced podcast" in m4a format, and should play in Quicktime or any of your more versatile media players. I spent far too long mucking around figuring out how to make it, but at least I got an excuse to take Garageband out for a spin.

I couldn't begin to describe the musical tastes this particular compilation might appeal to. All I can say is I hope you'll enjoy.

Four Years in New York

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2010-04-28T10:17:00.001-04:00

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Interesting Choice Episode 2: Remember the Fish

2010-03-01T09:40:00.001-05:00

Episode 2 of Interesting Choice is now up.

Polls are open until noon EST tomorrow, so go to www.interestingchoice.com to vote!

Blog discoveries for February

2010-02-28T09:00:00.001-05:00

Game Criticism

Press Pause to Reflect
» "If This Is an Open World, Why Are All the Doors Closed?"

Links

Laughing Squid

Interesting Choice Episode 1: "F" is for Fish

2010-02-22T21:17:00.002-05:00

Episode 1 of Interesting Choice is now up.

Polls are open until noon EST tomorrow, so go to www.interestingchoice.com to vote!

Interesting Choice Episode 0: The Pitch Line

2010-02-15T18:06:00.004-05:00

The first episode of Interesting Choice is now up.

Polls are open until noon EST tomorrow, so go to www.interestingchoice.com to vote!

Interesting Choice

2010-02-14T11:29:00.005-05:00

I've got a new project in the works. Announcing Interesting Choice: A Webseries As You Like It, a crowdsourced narrative where the viewers decide what happens. In this five(-plus?)-week class project, collaborators Brian Bernhard, Christy Sager and I will be producing a weekly webseries, with each new episode followed by a poll where you are invited to vote on what happens next.

Follow along and join in at http://www.interestingchoice.com.

Our first video will be going up first thing tomorrow morning. Stay tuned!

The Last Book

2010-02-06T17:56:00.007-05:00

Last weekend, I attended the second annual Global Game Jam at NYU. The Game Jam is a sort of worldwide endurance/speed game-development event in which teams come together and in the course of 48 hours conceive, design, and produce an entire game. The results tend to be quick, dirty, and a little rough around the edges, but often innovative and off-the-wall.

This year, the theme was "Deception," and in the GMT -5:00 time zone, the design constraints were "Rain, a Plain, or Spain." You can check out all the games created for the event at the GGJ website.

I'd like to present our team's game: an action/strategy game for the iPhone called The Last Book.

In The Last Book, civilization has been destroyed by a neverending rainfall. Everything, it seems, has been washed away. Generations after the onset of the deluge, you are the Librarian, tasked with protecting the last book in existence, the only remaining example of the written word. Keep the book dry by collecting and diverting the falling rain, and do your best to hold back the flood.

The rain falls relentlessly, wearing down whatever it touches. Play by arranging pots to collect the water and protect your structure from damage. As the pots get full, you can dump them safely out in the wells. Over time, your pots will wear down, too, so use your kilns to fire up new ones. Protect your kilns, also, because the rain will quickly put them out if they get wet.

Just hold out until the clouds break (two minutes) to collect your reward.

And at all costs, don't let any rain fall on the Book!

Controls: Tap the pots to move them. Select the brick you want to place the pot on, or tap a well to empty the pot. Up to three emptied pots will be stored in each well; tap the well again to retrieve a pot. Tap a kiln that's fired up to start a new pot, then tap it again to remove the pot when it's done.

Currently, in order to play The Last Book, you must have a Mac with the iPhone SDK installed. Download the package and compile the game file in Xcode to play.

For those who are unable to try it out personally, here's a video showing the gameplay:

The Last Book was made with a five-person team, which we christened Brainfall Studios. It was a wonderful group to work with, and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to get to know them. Here are the credits:

Design, Story: Jess Haskins
Level Design: Ray Reilly
Programming: Ulf Schwekendiek
Art: R.M. Sean Jaffe
Music & Sound: Justin Mathews

(The team from left to right: Sean, Ray, Ulf, Jess, and Justin).

We had a great time, and we're all interested in continuing to work on the game to flesh it out and eventually release it on the app store. I'll be sure to let you know about it when we do!

For now, here's the link to the game's page on the GGJ site: The Last Book.

Blog discoveries for January

2010-01-31T09:00:00.002-05:00

Game Developers

In the Games of Madness
» "How Gameplay and Narrative kill Meaning in 'Games'"

Game Industry

New York Gamedev
» "A new year, a new decade, and a new blog!"

Drink

Art and Tea
» "Saturday Morning Tea"

Grinding for glory

2010-01-12T09:00:00.000-05:00

In Upgrade Complete!, you play a Galaga-style shooter to blast enemies and collect money for upgrades in order to max out your game — not just your ship, but everything from the music and graphics to menu buttons to the copyright notice. You even have to buy the shop screen and preloader before you can load up the game. Not only a cheeky parody of mindless grinding games, it's actually well-balanced and surprisingly fun to play.

Seeing green

2010-01-10T13:29:00.004-05:00

Nice video showing the ubiquitous use of greenscreen effects in television, often in unexpected places like ordinary-looking exterior shots for shows like Ugly Betty.

Via Mental Floss.

So real it almost looks real

2009-12-24T16:46:00.004-05:00

The Golden Age, a series of photographs by Kevin Best recreating the effects of Dutch Master still life paintings.

The series is featured in the Role Models, the first issue of Second Nature, an International Journal of Creative Media. Thanks to editor Shiralee Saul for pointing me her way — I've found a lot of interesting things there!

Under the tree, on the shelf

2009-12-14T22:43:00.003-05:00

The good folks at Atlas Obscura have put together a lovely list of book gift ideas, including offbeat guidebooks, strange history, and curious collections — compendia of wonder for the curious wanderer and adventurous wonderer.

Blog discoveries for November

2009-11-30T09:00:00.004-05:00

Game Criticism

Critical Distance

Game Developers

Click Nothing
   » "On Auteurship in Games"

Ludus Novus
   » "Six Months of Games"

New York

Loungerati
   » "Barfly's Beat: TNT - Hendrick's Gin"

Charming comics

2009-11-16T09:00:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Maktaaq for turning me onto the witty, whimsical comics of cartoonist and illustrator Tom Gauld.

The Republic of Zombies

2009-11-11T09:00:00.000-05:00

"Into the Zombie Underworld", a September 2009 article from Men's Journal about the search for a young Haitian woman reportedly turned into a zombie, and the legal and political battles that were fought to recover her.

New Neil

2009-11-09T09:00:00.001-05:00

I've belatedly discovered that the entire second season of the hilarious Zelda parody webseries The Legend of Neil is out, and even better, it's still funny.

Effeminate sheep

2009-11-05T10:32:00.003-05:00

The Gay Animal Kingdom, the 2006 SEED article about animal homosexuality that Illinois high school biology teacher Dan Delong was almost fired for assigning to his students.

Bits and blocks

2009-11-04T10:15:00.000-05:00

In this New York Times feature from last winter, illustrator Christoph Niemann spots bits of New York in Legos.

Roots to robots

2009-11-03T14:11:00.001-05:00

It has been fascinating to follow the evolution of Amanita Design's work from the original Samorost 1 through to their latest offering, Machinarium. The first, while it introduced an innovative visual style and type of gameplay that inspired a slew of imitators, was formally little more than a loosely associated collection of hallucinatory set pieces. Machinarium, by contrast, is a much more mature and focused game. Samorost 2 was an important intermediate step, utilizing motifs from the original game and just beginning to rationalize that surreal, oneiric world by introducing elements like characters, plot, spatial continuity, and logical causal relationships. Machinarium takes the final step and brings us to a world that is solid and grounded, with rules and interlocking parts that fit together like — well, like a machine.

In Samorost 1, nothing was grounded — not even the ground.

It's like the druggy haze of Samorost 1 was already starting to clear in Samorost 2, and now with Machinarium Amanita has clambered out of the beanbag, combed its hair, put on a suit and tie, and gone out into the real world. Interestingly, the references to hallucinogenic substances that peppered the Samorost series (the name "Amanita" refers to a type of toxic mushroom, which is also the studio's logo) are largely absent from Machinarium, and the earthy roots, furry forest creatures, gnomes, and cosmic little green men of Samorost have been replaced by an industrialized metal cityscape of dive bars, jails, factories, and bombs, populated by rusty robots and hunks of junk, cops and crooks and gamblers and beggars. Is this what the world looks like when you come down?

The brave new world.

Paralleling this aesthetic evolution is a complementary formal one. Samorost 1's "click anywhere and things happen" mechanic has been gradually whittled down to a more traditional system of agency, and in Machinarium the player directly controls the main character, a charming tin-can robot, who walks, stretches, collects and manipulates items within his immediate sphere of influence. (Except for during the first two minutes, that is, where the player acts on the environment at large in order to bring the pieces together to assemble the robot in the first place — a final transition from the old ways to the new.) Gone is the out-of-body dissociative experience of Samorost 1, where the player's and main character's motivations were aligned, but their actions disjointed: the player operated directly on the environment while the sprite sat down and watched, with the player in the role of an unseen godlike manipulator, or maybe the world itself. It was the perfect gameplay model for what represented essentially a really groovy trip.

Sitting back and taking it all in.

It would have been interesting to see that mechanic developed further, but Amanita chose the opposite route and made the game world and mechanics more concrete, not less — and Machinarium is definitely the stronger for it. It's a rich, tightly-constructed game, made with purpose and clear direction. I would love to see Amanita — or someone else — go down the other path someday, though. It's perhaps a greater challenge to make a sustained, meaningful experience out of the whimsical illogic and disembodied agency that characterized Samorost 1. Can the player's sense of identity be even further shaken? Can the bounds of cause and effect be further strained? Can the resulting journey cohere and add up to something more than a succession of novel and entertaining images?

The first denizen of Samorost you encounter: a toked-out dude with his hookah.

Amanita seems to have shelved the hookah for now, and I'm glad to follow them out of the wild and into this exciting new urban junkscape. But I wouldn't mind going back occasionally into that wild forest, just for a little while. Just one more hit...

Blog discoveries for October

2009-10-31T09:00:00.003-04:00

Game Developers

Critical Smack
» "Stochastic Thoughts: The Trials of Hardcore PC Gaming"

Design, Tech, Advertising

Notebook

Nude & Erotic Art

Yimmys Yayo

New York

Cultural Capitol
» "On the Salon at the Players Club (and Brian Newman @ Duane Park)"

Pixel pushing

2009-10-28T09:00:00.001-04:00

Small Worlds by David Shute. Technically a platformer. Less about running and jumping than the thrill of discovery, or uncovering.

An aesthetic defined

2009-10-26T09:00:00.002-04:00

I just came across this New York Times article from July, which pins down and gives a name to a style that's been gradually gaining a lot of momentum: the "New Vintage". So that's what you call it.

Fishbowl

2009-10-23T09:00:00.001-04:00

A four-minute recording of the tank at Japan's Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium, the second largest in the world. PZ Myers of Pharyngula recommends that you "let it load in HD, put it on full screen, and set back and mellow out for a few minutes." (The embedded video is HD quality, so you can pop it into full screen right here.) It's definitely better than any screensaver you've got.

When game design philosophies collide

2009-10-21T15:37:00.000-04:00

Tale of Tales makes non-linear, narrative, exploratory "art games" that largely cast off the trappings of traditional games (rules, goals, challenges). Frank Lantz of area/code is a vocal proponent of the idea that video games need to be more "gamelike," and that designers should focus on games as formal systems of challenges. Tale of Tales interviews Frank Lantz.

Machinarium is here!

2009-10-19T09:00:00.002-04:00

Machinarium was just released on Friday, and it's bigger, longer, and better than anything Amanita Design has done before. It's got gorgeous visuals, an intriguing world, well-constructed gameplay, and a truly stunning soundtrack.

I'll elaborate on my impressions of the game in another post, but for now, I just want to remind everyone that it's time to go and play it. Go buy it now, or try the demo first if you really need convincing.

New releases from Tale of Tales

2009-10-16T09:00:00.000-04:00

Continuing in its line of artful, boundary-pushing not-quite-games, Tale of Tales this month released Fatale, an "interactive vignette" inspired by Oscar Wilde's 1894 play Salomé.

Explore a living tableau filled with references to the legendary tale and enjoy the moonlit serenity of a fatal night in the orient. Fatale offers an experimental play experience that stimulates the imagination and encourages multiple interpretations and personal associations.

There's also The Path, released earlier this year, a meandering, introspective horror game based on Little Red Riding Hood in which six sisters wander in a foreboding forest and one by one lose their innocence. Completely open-ended, the game eschews goals and challenges and invites the player to simply explore and experience.

Six sisters live in an apartment in the city. One by one their mother sends them on an errand to their grandmother, who is sick and bedridden. The teenagers are instructed to go to grandmother's house deep in the forest and, by all means, to stay on the path! Wolves are hiding in the woods, just waiting for little girls to stray.

But young women are not exactly known for their obedience, are they? Will they be able to resist the temptations of the forest? Will they stay clear of danger? Can they prevent the ancient tale from being retold?

New Gargoyles trade paperbacks are out!

2009-10-12T09:00:00.003-04:00

After months of waiting, two new Gargoyles trade paperbacks were released last month. There are new books from both the main Gargoyles series, Clan Building Volume 2, which collects the last of the published single issues plus four more issues that were never released individually, and the spin-off, Bad Guys Volume 1, which collects all the single issues of Bad Guys plus one new one.

Disney raised the cost of the Gargoyles license in the middle of the production run and Slave Labor Graphics wasn't able to renew, so the previously unpublished issues were allowed to be released in the trades only through a fortunate loophole where they are included as "bonus material." No more issues are currently in production, and the future of the Gargoyles comics looks uncertain — but at last we have a complete set of the Clan Building and Bad Guys arcs, and we get to see the conclusion of Redemption, the Stone of Destiny arc, and the very first Timedancer story with Brooklyn's journey through time. This isn't a cheap knock-off or filler material, but the true, canon continuation of the story as penned by creator Greg Weisman. It's a great set of wonderful new material, required reading for any Gargoyles fan.

Get the full collection:

Gargoyles: Clan Building Volume 1
Gargoyles: Clan Building Volume 2
Bad Guys Volume 1

A great place for reconnecting with the Gargoyles universe is Station Eight, a hub which links an active comment room, info about the comics, a Q&A with Greg Weisman at Ask Greg, and the comprehensive GargWiki, which might be useful for keeping track of the comics' sprawling cast of characters if you can't remember your Canmores from your Constantines or need to brush up on the Battle of Bannockburn.

The natives are very friendly

2009-10-09T09:00:00.000-04:00

Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine encountering a rare flightless parrot in New Zealand in Last Chance to See. It has been suggested that the behavior displayed in this video may explain why it is so endangered.

Via Bioephemera.

Blog discoveries for September

2009-09-30T09:00:00.002-04:00

Arts, Ephemera, Curiosities

Hunting Lodge
» "Anatomical Diagrams of Mythical Japanese Monsters"

sinfonia de aleatoriedades
» "Automatas, autômatos, etc (não sei escrever o nome correto, ajudem.)."

Art Collections

tiny dreams

Factious fonts

2009-09-16T09:00:00.002-04:00

An article from Fast Company about Six Fonts that Piss People Off, from Ikea's abandonment of Futura for Verdana in its 2010 catalog, to the Nazis' banning of Fraktur for not being "German" enough, to the continuing vitriol against that most deplorable of typefaces, Comic Sans.

Playing Pure Hidden

2009-09-14T09:00:00.001-04:00

For my assignment to play a new kind of game I'd never played before, I played the 60-minute demo version of Pure Hidden, a hidden object game with interludes of other casual puzzle games and interactive toys. (The website also contains a light browser-based version to try.) It was my first time with a hidden object game, and I was pleasantly surprised. I really rather enjoyed playing it.

The basic goal of the game is to locate and click on objects hidden within a scene. Unlike some hidden object games which present a cluttered room or other physical space, the images in Pure Hidden are more like 2-d collages, so the items can be silhouettes, outlines, or transparent overlays, irrespective of solidity and scale.

The game has two modes, “score” and “zen,” and in the latter mode can be played meditatively, for relaxation and pleasure. Hidden picture games live and die by their imagery, and Pure Hidden has beautiful images and very high production values. The smooth visuals and well-designed soundscapes create a very pleasing sensual experience, which is what makes the zen mode appealing even without the challenge of formal limits. I chose to play in the score mode, which introduces pressure to perform in two main areas, speed and accuracy.

In each themed stage there are about 20 items total to find, but your list only contains about half a dozen items at a time. You must click on the listed objects in the scene to clear them and make space for a new item to appear on your list. Clicking anywhere on the screen that does not contain one of the listed objects will incur an accuracy penalty to your score. Objects are for the most part easily recognizable with few ambiguities, although there were occasional pitfalls – for example, a level that contained both a watch and a stopwatch (clicking on the stopwatch when only the watch was on the list incurred a penalty), or the inclusion of cultural items that might not be universally recognizable, like maki in a Japanese-themed scene (which I probably would not have been familiar with if not for all those hours logged rolling them up in Katamari Damacy).

In case of any uncertainty, you must balance the risk of a false click against the time you spend deliberating and searching. Indiscriminate clicking in the hopes of “hitting something” is not a successful strategy and will only tank your score. It is helpful to try to keep several objects in mind as you scan the screen rather than hunting for one at a time. It is also important to note the location of any distinctive objects that you spot – if they are not yet on the list, it will be easier to find them when they do appear.

In between the hidden object levels are several other types of minigames and non-game activities. Generally, these lack the artistic polish of the hidden object levels and are less engaging – they come across as generic and familiar without any innovative twist or even the basic sense-pleasure that might make the experience novel or worthwhile. In one, you must click on a bunch of fast-moving sheep to make them jump over a fence without hitting it; in another, you must rotate a series of pipes to make them connect in a continuous line; in another, you play with a very simple musical toy, popping a series of bubbles to produce sound samples.

These are all good, basic mechanisms that have been used to produce highly successful and engaging casual games, but Pure Hidden doesn’t do much with them to justify the effort. It would have been preferable if Pure Hidden lived up to its name and was just purely hidden images, because the mixed-bag minigames dilute the game’s core strength: attractive, visually interesting hidden object collages with objects that are appealing, recognizable, and just difficult enough to find to create a challenge (with or without formal scoring).

(Reposted from Bluespace, my academic design blog)

More September happenings

2009-09-11T11:12:00.003-04:00

Friday, September 18; Thursday, September 24; Tuesday, September 29

"On Clouds" Exhibition at Observatory

with prints and photographs by James Walsh in the gallery, and an evening program of projections, performances, poetry, and other events by various artists throughout the run of the show.

Friday, September 18 through Sunday, November 15, 2009
Opening: Friday, September 18, 7-10

Th 9/26 Joshua Beckman on clouds. Two seatings, 8 and 9pm
Tu 9/29 Klara Hobza on cloud making and Catriona Shaw and Pauline Curnier Jardin on their cloud opera. 8pm
$5 admission to all events

Beginning Sunday, September 27 we will have regular gallery hours -
3-6 Thursday and Friday
12-6 Saturday and Sunday

Clouds have long been the object of scientific study and artistic depiction. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, the emerging science of meteorology allowed the fleeting and apparently formless clouds to be closely observed, categorized, and recorded. At this same time, in England and Germany, painters and poets also began to look more intently at clouds. While insisting on artifice and inspiration over mere recording, they increasingly sought to give their work a sense of greater realism and emotional power by focusing on the careful observation and accurate depiction of the natural world. The worlds of science and art were much closer then, with artists and scientists meeting in society and following each others’ work, and this allowed a shared culture to develop. At its best, detached observation was allied with emotional projection, and imagination was grounded and enriched by careful, systematic recording, all in the service of what they called natural philosophy and we would call natural history.

In this exhibition, James Walsh will present three bodies of work that trace this blending of science and art in the depiction of clouds from the early 1800s to the early 1900s.

Saturday, September 26

Monthly Jazz-Age dance club Wit's End this month features music by the Brian Newman Trio and a Charleston dance lesson by Neal Groothius and Jeri Lynn Astra.

Antik/Marion's at 356 Bowery
The last Saturday of every month at 8:30
$10 at the door

You gotta do what you gotta do

2009-09-11T09:00:00.001-04:00

You Have to Burn the Rope, a very short game with very well-defined goals. Do what you have to do, then sit back to enjoy end credits that are longer than the game itself. You've earned it, hero!

Wednesday wallpapers: Windows and doors

2009-09-09T09:00:00.002-04:00

"Coloured wall"

"Old Door"

"Charleston Wall"

"Entrance"

"DJG - blue window"

"wall and window"

"Pueblo Bonito Doors"

"Sarajevo Graffiti"

"Cat in Barn"

"Box on a wall"

"On the Wall III"

"Door"

"Planks"

"Guateflora: Falsa Uva (False Grape)"

"Window and Yellow"

"Wallpaper 1920x1200"

"Wall"

"Augusta Common Wall"

"Boarded out window, Croatia"

If you've got a MacBook, but you really wanted an iPhone...

2009-09-07T09:00:00.000-04:00

I found this slightly freaky Processing game that uses your MacBook's built-in Sudden Motion Sensor (intended to detect jarring movements that could potentially damage your hard drive) as an accelerometer to play the kind of tilting ball puzzle game you'd typically find for your iPhone. If you want to risk your precious, fragile hardware by waving it around manically in the air, this is the game you've been waiting for.

Space Patrol

(Reposted from Bluespace, my academic design blog)

Wonderland

2009-09-02T09:00:00.001-04:00

Made almost exclusively from spliced and recombined audio samples from Disney's 1951 film Alice in Wonderland, Wonderland, by Australian electronic artist Pogo, is an oddly pleasing album of eerie, rhythmic chillout tunes. All four songs are available for download from Last.fm. (My favorite is Lost.) The first track, Alice, is also available as a music video on YouTube.

Be sure to check out Pogo's other remix work. Classic movie mélange Go Out and Love Someone is well worth a listen.

Around town in September

2009-09-01T09:00:00.002-04:00

Saturday, September 19

EVENT: "The Cursed Circus" - DOV Vintage Circus Spectacular
TIME & DATE: Sat, September 19, 2009 - Doors at 9PM
LOCATION: 303 Bond Street Theater - 303 Bond St, Brooklyn
ADMISSION: $20 (TBC)

Behold! Behold! A circus of wonder and depravity awaits you at
Dances of Vice: The Cursed Circus, in a magnificent display of freaks, fools, fire, and frippery that will astonish and delight!

Abandon all virtue as ring-mistress GIOIA MARCHESE and her deadly cohorts at COMPANY XIV lead you through a world of sensuous marvels! Featuring ISENGART, the captivating libertine of the cabaret underworld - An arousing spectacle of flames by Priestess of Fire SKY CLAUDETTE and Vlad of Eros Fire - The salacious rapping of the tap-dancing MINSKY SISTERS - Magician and performance bizarrist MICHAEL CARBONARO - Raucous carnival melodies provided by BEN ICKIES' Ja Ja Jas Band, circus songbird SHIEN LEE and the GRANDPA MUSSELMAN TRIO - plus many more thrills to be announced!

Fiendish beasts of the natural world to astound the most stoic of hearts, winking beauties to set your blood aflame, devillish clowns and countless temptations await you this one sinful night at Dances of Vice. So come one, come all, to the most bewitching show on earth!

Sunday, September 27

FALL JAZZ AGE LAWN PARTY ON GOVERNORS ISLAND
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2009
11:00 AM to 6:00 PM

Michael Arenella and His Dreamland Orchestra invites you to join us on this hidden gem just off the southeastern tip of Manhattan, nestled in the heart of majestic New York Harbor.

Under a shady grove of centuries-old trees, caressed by fresh sea air, a sprawling green surrounded by historic officers' quarters and 18th century naval ramparts becomes the setting for a true Gatsby affair.

Widely anticipated by flappers, sporting gents and tiny tots alike, this event has been featured annually by The New York Times and the Sartorialist.

Blog discoveries for August

2009-08-31T09:00:00.004-04:00

Art and Science, Anatomy

Photo Synthesis
   » "The Beauty of Night Rockets"

Science, Humanities, Culture

The Frontal Cortex
   » "Ketchup"

Maps, Graphs, Data Aesthetics

Flowing Data
   » "Choose Your Own Adventure — Most Likely You'll Die"

Art Collections

Daily Art Muse
   » "jennifer trask: flourish"

Artists

Drawing Life by Fred Hatt
   » "Meanings of the Nude"

Win free science books

2009-08-30T09:00:00.000-04:00

Seed Magazine has a daily book giveway where you can enter a drawing to win a free science book (today, it's The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager). There's a new book and a new chance to win every day, so you can just keep entering as many times as you like. There's no spam or automatic mailings (the newsletters are strictly opt-in) — it's a nice no-strings offer.

Inner light

2009-08-17T10:53:00.002-04:00

I love today's Picture of the Day from National Geographic.

Around town in August

2009-08-15T11:29:00.009-04:00

Saturday, August 15

EVENT: Dances of Vice Third Year Anniversary Party
TIME & DATE: Sat, August 15, 2009 - 9PM, show at 10PM
LOCATION: 303 Bond Street Theater - 303 Bond St, Brooklyn

Complimentary lashings of specialty HENDRICK'S GIN punch for the first 100 guests! Hendrick's cocktails offered throughout the evening at most unusually discounted prices.

Come, celebrate with us another year of jubilance, decadence and depravity amongst the finest of femmes and fellows at Dances of Vice. Entering our third year, a new saga of forgotten eras unfolds, as Dances of Vice joins forces with the sensual sophisticates of COMPANY XIV to continue our nocturnal phenomena at the "Dance Eden" that is their theater in Carroll Gardens.

Our Third Year Anniversary Party will feature a musical performance by Miss SHIEN LEE with the scintillating syncopations of GRANDPA MUSSELMAN and His Syncopators, and the exhilarating dramatics of COMPANY XIV.

"Ice Music" by Emily Lacy (Cabinet, 300 Nevins Street, Brooklyn; Saturday, August 15, 2009; 4-8 pm, and Sunday, August 16, 2-6 pm; reservations for 20-minute appointments are recommended). Working with time, music, color, and, temperature, "Ice Music" allows for fantasies of intimate visceral mischief with folk and electronic sound patterns. Performances made for 1-2 people will be available by Emily Lacy inside a small, freshly cooled homemade music environment, similar to an igloo or personal camping tent.

Thursday, August 20

Victor Houteff: "At the Eleventh Hour" (Cabinet, 300 Nevins Street, Brooklyn; August 21—September 16, 2009; opening on August 20, 7-9 pm). Cabinet is pleased to present “Victor Houteff: At the Eleventh Hour,” an exhibition of paintings by the founder of the Seventh-Day Adventist group that was later taken over by David Koresh in Waco, Texas. The exhibition is drawn from the collection of Los Angeles-based artist Jim Shaw.

Friday, August 21

An Iconography of the Flesh: The Bizarre Afterlife of Eva Perón
at Observatory

Date: Friday, August 21
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5

When Argentine First Lady Eva Perón died in 1952, the intent was to embalm her body for display in a monument to the Argentine worker: a fitting tribute for the martyred patron saint of the working classes. This ambitious project—it was to be three times the height of the Statue of Liberty—was never realized, and when Perón was overthrown in 1955, the embalmed corpse became the new regime’s most stubborn problem and potent secret. In its thirty years in search of a permanent resting place, the embalmed body left a trail of death, insanity, and corpse-napping in its wake as Evita sympathizers sought to find the body of their saint and Evita’s enemies tried to keep the body’s whereabouts a secret. Professor Margaret Schwartz tells the story of the corpse’s afterlife and shows how Evita has stubbornly refused to die a proper death, thus rendering her corpse one of the world’s most unique and potent objects.

Saturday, August 22

You are cordially invited to attend the Dreamland Gala - a fundraiser for the 2009 Jazz Age Lawn Party on Governors Island in September.

The State of New York has cut funding for programming on Governors Island. While the island will thankfully remain open, there will be no funding provided for entertainment on the island. In order to raise funds for the Jazz Age Lawn Party, we are hosting the Dreamland Gala.

Featuring Michael Arenella and His 12-piece Dreamland Orchestra, this promises to be an enthralling night of music, dancing cocktails, and treats, as well as other attractions. A silent auction will be held showcasing an array of items donated by local high-end boutiques and restaurants, including Ellen Christine Millinery, House of MacGregor, Flatiron Lounge, Rock Love Jewelry, Magar Hatworks, Artikal Studios, and many more. Handmade chocolates will be sold from local chocolatier Chocolate Meurens.

Guests are encouraged to attend in their finest Roaring Twenties evening wear.

Monday, August 24

Poetry Lab: "Sappho in Fragments" (Cabinet, 300 Nevins Street, Brooklyn; August 24, 2009; 7-9 pm). This month, Cabinet’s Poetry Lab plays host to the ancient Greek poet Sappho and her gifted modern-day translator Anne Carson. Readings, performance, special guests, and the chance to put a scattered oeuvre back together for yourself. Roll up your sleeves and join us: free, as always, and as always, wine will be served.

Friday, August 28

The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and their Circle 1926-1972
at Observatory

Date: Friday August 28th
Time: 8:00 PM - Sharp
Admission: $5.00

A discussion with Zoe Beloff, artist and archivist and Aaron Beebe, Director of The Coney Island Museum

The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society was a unique organization which flourished from 1926 through the early 1970s. Members, most of them working people from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds, were filled with the desire to participate in one of the great intellectual movements of the 20th century. The exhibition currently on view at the Coney Island Museum presents a range of their activities which reveal an incredibly brave, unapologetic exploration of their inner lives. Beloff and Beebe will present an overview of the work of the Society including the long lost “Dream Films”, the Sunday lectures, plans for Dreamland and the controversy over the lost “Sigmund Freud” figure at the World in Wax Musée.

The book/DVD “The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and their Circle 1926-1972″ published by Christine Burgin (June 2009) will be available for purchase.

Saturday, August 29

Cynthia Sayer & Sparks Fly at Wit's End
Saturday, August 29
7-11 pm

Blog discoveries for July

2009-07-31T09:00:00.005-04:00

Art History, Old Books, Vintage Style:

My pet arts

Science, Humanities, Culture:

MadSilence
The Popular Uncanny

Design, Tech, Advertising:

2experts Design

Nude & Erotic Art:

Au carrefour étrange

Characters:

Romantoes

A little says a lot

2009-07-27T09:00:00.001-04:00

A stunning collection of minimalist wallpapers at 2experts Design.

Via intenta via Portafolio.

At the Hotel Paradise

2009-07-25T15:36:00.002-04:00

Squirrel Nut Zippers - Ghost of Stephen Foster.

From the album "Perennial Favorites" (Mammoth Records). Winner of "Best Animated Music Video" at the 1999 Vancouver Animation Festival. Directed by Raymond Persi and Matthew Nastuk.

Getting hyped up for the SNZ show tomorrow. I can't wait!

Flickr raid: Wondrous things

2009-07-24T09:00:00.000-04:00

Strange Vintage Fictions photopool.

Wunderkammer photopool.

think over something photoset.

Imaginary Encyclopedia photopool.

Ink and glass

2009-07-23T09:00:00.000-04:00

Quill Skill, traditional and experimental calligraphy by Denis Brown.

The Blue Beanie

2009-07-22T09:00:00.001-04:00

The Blue Beanie is a new game by digital artist Daphne Lim, a student at RMIT in Melbourne, Australia, with music by Mark Holdaway. Inspired by Samorost, it's lovely new addition to the genre, a brief but beautifully executed piece with a gentle atmosphere of whimsy and woodland fantasy.

Thanks to Monalena for the tip.

Gin and jazz on the Bowery

2009-07-21T22:45:00.005-04:00

Wit's End is a monthly 1920's jazz club held the last Saturday of every month from 7-11 at Antik, a cozy little spot on the Bowery perfect for sipping classic cocktails and dancing to hot jazz.

This month's event, this Saturday, features live music by Brooklyn band The Red Hook Ramblers, and a free Charleston lesson with Akemi Kinukawa of the Sandra Cameron Dance Center. As an extra treat, there will also be a special drawing to give away five pairs of tickets to the Squirrel Nut Zippers show on Sunday.

Wit's End is a great chance to don your vintage finery and be transported to the elegance and glamor of the Jazz Age nightlife. It's always a blast, so come on out, or check out Wit's End on Facebook and watch for upcoming events.

Simple sketches

2009-07-21T09:00:00.000-04:00

Oh My Cavalier!, art by Julianna Swaney.

Via eluvium.

Roads to nowhere

2009-07-16T09:00:00.000-04:00

The Map Realm is a collection of maps of fictional countries created by professed "avid map collector and roadgeek" Adrian Leskiw. There are even multiple iterations of the same territories mapped through time, from the seventies into the mid-21st century. Meticulous and absorbing.

The birds and the trees

2009-07-15T09:00:00.002-04:00

The earth moves in this message from Greenpeace exhorting passion for the environment.

Via Next Nature.

More sizzle than steak

2009-07-14T09:00:00.008-04:00

More art project than genuine cookery, Fancy Fast Food is a collection of recipes for turning fast food items into attractive facsimiles of gourmet meals, like this "Spicy Chicken Sushi" made out of Popeye's chicken.

Via Consumerist.

Walls of text

2009-07-13T09:00:00.001-04:00

A nice roundup of typography wallpapers at Speckyboy Design Magazine. (This one's from design company Parachute.)

Via Portafolio.

Sexy curves

2009-07-10T09:00:00.001-04:00

Eros ex Mathematica is a series of fractal images by digital artist and composer Peter Miller. He hastens to assure us that they "are created entirely from mathematical algorithms."

July Observatory events

2009-07-09T20:54:00.005-04:00

This week:

Antique Science

Date: Friday, July 10
Time: 7:30
Admission: $3.00

An evening of unexpected and obscure nature films. Each short film will be introduced by Jessica Oreck, director of Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, a beautiful documentary on insect collecting in Japan.

The evening will feature the trailer for Oreck’s fascinating film, as well as short films by Jean Painleve, the great french nature documentarian of early avant-garde documentaries on everything from crystals to seahorses to vampire bats.

Then we’ll have a look at The Cameraman’s Revenge, a silent stop-motion film from 1912 by the Polish animator, Wladyslaw Starewicz (1882-1965). The leading players of this short animation are real insects.

Antique Science will also introduce you to a behind-the-scenes film documenting the techniques of Disney’s vintage nature films. The films of insect-life and plant time lapses are beautiful, the early filming techniques awe-inspiring, and the 1950s naturalist couples who made them adorable.

We’ll round the evening off with a outtake reel from one of our favorite nature hosts, plus a few other surprises, time warranting.

Next week:

Layered Orders: Crowley's Thoth Deck and the Tarot

Jesse Bransford

Date: Friday, July 17
Time: 7:30
Admission: Free

UPDATE: The lecture will also be repeated at 9:00 to accommodate demand.

A deck given to his brother by his mother in 1986 sat in Jesse Bransford’s childhood bedroom from the early 90’s until recently, delivering itself into Bransford’s possession at an opportune moment…

The Tarot in general and Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot in particular represent a miasmic confluence of image and thought into a single structure that is both liberating and overwhelming in its scope. In creating the deck, Crowley (in collaboration with painter Lady Frieda Harris) sought to integrate the mythological structures of the major mystical systems of both Western and Eastern occult traditions and to bring them into line with contemporary scientific thinking. The symbolism of the cards blends Kabbalah, Alchemy, Astrology, Egyptian mythology, quantum physics and even the I-Ching in ways that are at the same time clear and utterly confounding.

In an image-soaked personal narration Bransford, whose research-based artwork has delved into many of the territories Crowley sought to unify, will discuss some of the basic concepts of Tarot symbolism, returning to Crowley’s deck as among the most total example of the cards’ syncretism and as the most controversial.

Jesse Bransford is a Brooklyn/Queens-based artist whose work has been exhibited internationally. He received a B.A. from the New School for Social Research, a B.F.A. from Parsons School of Design, both in 1996, and an M.F.A. from Columbia University in 2000. He is currently a Master Teacher with the post of Undergraduate Director at New York University where he has been teaching since 2001, as well as a member of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism. His work is represented by Feature Inc. in New York, Kevin Bruk Gallery in Miami, Galerie Schmidt Maczollek in Köln, and Shaheen Modern and Contemporary Art in Cleveland. Images of his work, a complete bio and related articles can be seen at www.sevenseven.com/, a website he has continuously maintained since 1997.

Both events are at the Observatory event space between the Proteus Gowanus Gallery and Reading Room, the Cabinet Magazine headquarters, and the Morbid Anatomy Library at 543 Union St. in Brooklyn.

Wisps of color

2009-07-09T09:00:00.001-04:00

Delicate, ethereal macro photography by Sophie Thouvenin.

Games on stage

2009-07-08T13:11:00.006-04:00

The Brick Theater in Brooklyn is hosting an event all this month called Game Play, a series of performances and game nights that meld video games and theater. There will be machinima mash-ups, Rock Band karaoke, interactive plays, group MMORPG sessions, and a chiptune dance party.

What I'm really excited for is Adventure Quest, a play by Sneaky Snake Productions based on the classic Sierra and Lucasarts adventure games of the 80's, like King's Quest and Monkey Island.

The town of Perilton has been invaded by an evil wizard, and only our hero can save it! Cheer as he fights for the hand of the mayor's daughter! Gasp as he infiltrates the bloodthirsty Octopus Cult! Watch as he meticulously collects inventory items! Shift uncomfortably in your seat as the narrative gradually implodes! Glance around nervously as characters are brutally murdered for no particular reason! Despair as your faith in a meaningful, ordered universe is shaken! Evoking the Golden Age of home computer gaming, Adventure Quest is both a nostalgic treat and a glimpse into the yawning Void.

For a taste of that classic gaming flavor, the creators designed a brief "walkthrough" for Time Out New York to introduce the world of the play. It makes me wish they'd done a real game, even if only a short one.

You are standing before of the Castle of Perpetual Delight. Blocking your path is a gloomy-looking centaur.

You are currently holding: a portable cauldron, a pair of diamond cufflinks, a unicorn femur, an Octopus Cult pamphlet, a waterskin and a magnifying glass.

There's also Thank You But Our Princess Is in Another Castle: Four Live-Action Machinima Theater Pieces.

Utilizing World of Warcraft, Halo 3 and Grand Theft Auto 4, Machinima Theater Auteur Eddie Kim presents four classical theater texts, as performed by online video game characters manipulated by gamers live on stage. Video games as digital puppetry! Technicians will use several X-Box 360 consoles and laptops linked to each other and to gamers over the internet to control digital characters in real-time in front of an audience. See the stories of Niobe and the Japanese poet, Ono no Komachi as never before. A digital movement piece, chiptunes interludes and a version of Alvin Lucier's legendary "I am Sitting in a Room" also will be presented.

You had me at the title.

I'll be attending Adventure Quest this Saturday, and I'm tempted to check out some of the other events, too. It looks like a great line-up.

The grass all aglow

2009-07-08T09:00:00.002-04:00

Field of Light is a series of outdoor lighting installations by UK artist Bruce Munro. (It reminds me of certain parts of Flower.)

Get your Machinarium now

2009-07-06T09:00:00.002-04:00

Machinarium, the highly anticipated new game by Amanita Design (creators of Samorost), is due out in October 2009, and is available for pre-order now. Pre-ordering will get you $3 off the regular price of $20, as well as a "pre-order pack" containing a selection of hi-res images and mp3s from the game.

Hear the colors

2009-07-03T09:00:00.000-04:00

Synesthesia, a short film by filmmaking duo Terry Timely.

Via shape+colour.

Real Photoshop

2009-07-02T09:00:00.001-04:00

"As real as it gets," a clever mockup of the Photoshop desktop space by Art Snob Solutions.

Via Drawn!.

Rooms of the mind

2009-07-01T09:00:00.000-04:00

Paintings by Anette Harboe Flensburg.

Via Tomorrow Museum.

Blog discoveries for June

2009-06-30T12:00:00.004-04:00

Arts, Humanities, Culture:

PAUVRE PLUME

Art History, Old Books, Vintage Style:

ephemera assemblyman
The Flapper Girl

Fashion:

Easy Fashion
FABULON
Nothing Elegant
The Sartorialist
Urban Style

Design, Tech, Advertising:

Words and Eggs

Art Collections:

the art of memory

Nude & Erotic Art:

THE NAKED IN THE ART

Food:

The Museum of Food Anomalies

Fg is for Franklin Gothic

2009-06-30T09:00:00.000-04:00

The Periodic Table of Typefaces by Squidspot.

Via feuilleton.

Existential funny pages

2009-06-29T09:00:00.002-04:00

Surprisingly brilliant: Garfield Minus Garfield.

Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.

Via The Office of Eternal Distractions at Hanttula.

Two upcoming Observatory events

2009-06-26T11:54:00.005-04:00

mt9257cqn3

TONIGHT:

Cuerpo Presente: Mourning and Cultural Representations of Death in Mexico, Featuring a Collection of Postmortem Photographs from Rural Mexico

Salvador Olguin

Date: Friday June 26th
Time: 7:30 PM
Admission:Free

The main purpose of this event is to present a series of postmortem photographs taken between the 1930’s and the 1950’s, when the tradition of celebrating a person’s departure with a last picture was very alive in small towns and villages in Mexico. A brief journey through some of Mexico’s cultural and artistic ways of celebrating death will provide the frame and background for a better understanding of these images.

Bio: Salvador Olguin holds a MA in Humanistic Studies, and is currently performing research on the subject of the body and its representations at New York University. He is primarily interested in studying cultural artifacts that depict the body in non-normative, unusual ways. He was born in Monterrey, Mexico and currently resides in Brooklyn.

Thursday:

Bodies Embalmed by Us NEVER TURN BLACK!: A Brief History of the Hyperstimulated Human Corpse.

John Troyer, Ph.D., Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath

Date: Thursday July 2nd
Time: 7:30 PM
Admission: Free

In October 1902, Dr. Carl Lewis Barnes and his brother Thornton H. Barnes, both instructors at the Chicago College of Embalming, created a large exhibition of embalmed corpses and body parts for the National Funeral Directors Association in Milwaukee, WI. The Barnes brothers’ exhibit featured human specimens preserved with Bisga Embalming Fluid—a product invented and produced by Dr. Barnes for consumer use by other embalmers. The centerpiece of the exhibit was the Bisga Man, an embalmed male corpse sitting upright in a chair with one leg crossed over the other, wearing a fashionable suit.

In early twentieth century America, the Bisga Man represented the perfect nexus of mid to late nineteenth century preservation technologies that were to radically redefine the organic existence of the human corpse. Such preservation technologies represent a series of overlapping choices, embalming chemicals, apparatus, and funeral practices all intent on keeping the dead body looking ‘‘properly’’ human. Yet these external forces acting on the human corpse do much more than alter the chemical physiology of the dead body to suspend decomposition: through these forces, the concept of human death itself is simultaneously being altered.

Troyer’s talk analyses and critiques how the modern human corpse became an invented and manufactured consumer product through the industrialization of the dead body in mid nineteenth century America. More specifically, this talk illustrates how the modern human corpse is an invention of specific mid nineteenth century embalming and photographic technologies that seemingly stopped the visible effects of death as they were seen by the general public.

Bio: John Troyer is the Death and Dying Practices Associate at the Centre for Death and Society in the University of Bath, England. He received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society in May 2006. His Ph.D. dissertation, entitled “Technologies of the Human Corpse, ” was awarded the University of Minnesota’s 2006 Best Dissertation Award in the Arts and Humanities. From 2007-2008 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University teaching the cultural studies of science and technology. Within the field of Death Studies, John focuses on delineating and defining the concept of the dead human subject. His research on death and dying, coupled with a cultural studies approach to understanding the global history of science and technology, brings new life to the Centre for Death and Society. His first book, shockingly titled Technologies of the Human Corpse, will appear in 2010. His father is a funeral director.

Both events are at the Observatory event space between the Proteus Gowanus Gallery and Reading Room, the Cabinet Magazine headquarters, and the Morbid Anatomy Library at 543 Union St. in Brooklyn.

Small worlds

2009-06-26T09:00:00.003-04:00

Eerie little snow globes and other disturbing miniature scenes of isolation and unrest by Thomas Doyle.

Via Bioephemera.

Enchanted snow globes and island dioramas by Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz.

From alien landscapes to wonder cabinets

2009-06-25T09:00:00.003-04:00

Josh Foer of the Athanasius Kircher Society and Dylan Thuras of Curious Expeditions have teamed up to launch the Atlas Obscura, an ambitious, user-driven catalog of curiosities, wonders, and oddities around the world.

The Garden of Noisy Roses and other attractions

2009-06-24T09:00:00.004-04:00

Radiant Copenhagen. An expansive alternate reality of future Copenhagen, as created through Google mapping and Wiki fiction.

Via io9.

Random collections

2009-06-23T09:00:00.004-04:00

Memory Palace. Assemblage art by Shiralee Saul.

Home sweet home

2009-06-22T19:18:00.003-04:00

Welcome to the new digs! Blue Tea is now hosted on my own space at http://deeplyblue.com/bluetea. Kindly update any links you may have — and thanks for sticking around while I aestivated.

I thought with the move I would be switching to WordPress or another platform, but as I tried them out I noticed I was harboring resentment for them not working like Blogger, and finally realized that it was because I actually wanted to keep using Blogger. Rather, I wanted to keep using the old style Blogger, before they updated it so you could hardly customize anything any more. I like the look I have, so I'm sticking with it.

So the platform's not changing, but a few other things are. For one, the formatting and timing of the posts: they'll be shorter and much more frequent. The links are also getting a bit of a shakeup, mostly some new additions in new categories (check out the new "Museums & Collections" section after "Blogs"). Also, you may have noticed I am now blogging under my real name. No one could pronounce "bluewyvern" anyway.

Again, thanks for your support and interest during my recent dry spell. I wasn't dead, just resting my eyes. Time to get moving now.

Wednesday wallpapers: Walls II

2009-04-08T09:00:00.000-04:00

"Panes"

"Textured Wall"

"Anasazie pictograms"

"wallpaper"

"Writing on the Wall"

"Old Wall"

"Golden Reflections of Light"

"Brick Wall"

"Wall Light"

"Colored stone wall, Tibet"

"Real Old Wall with Alto Sign"

"garage wall"

"Wallpaper"

"Keep Left"

"Nicolas' Restaurant Wall"

"Wall of mud bricks eroded by the weather, Tibet"

"Wallpaper"

"The brick wall"

"Wall in Burkina"

"Doña Gavi Store Wallpaper 2"

"Wall Texture"

"Stone Wall"

Tonight at Observatory

2009-03-24T11:29:00.005-04:00

I'm skipping work for this. Tonight at 7:00, Observatory is hosting its first lecture event: a talk by University of Hawaii at Manoa professor Kathryn Hoffmann entitled "Reveries of Sleeping Beauty: Slumber and Death in Anatomical Museums, Fairground Shows, and Art".

This illustrated talk will follow the paths of sleeping beauties: lovely young women who lie on silk sheeted beds in glass cases in anatomical museums and fairground shows, who recline on sofas in Belgian train stations, and sometimes in the middle of streets. Often the women were nude. Sometimes they were adorned with a piece of jewelry or a bow, and sometimes they wore white dresses. One breathed gently in a glass case on a fairground verandah for nearly a century. Others lay quietly in caskets under flowers. Some were wax, some were real, some were dead, and some merely pretended to be dead. Sometimes, in the imagination of artists like the surrealist Paul Delvaux, they got up and walked about; pretty somnambulists wandering through natural history museums, arcades and streets, through modern cities and ancient Alexandria, Ephesus, and Rhodes.

Using photographs, posters, advertisements, and paintings, the talk will follow models known as “Anatomical Venuses” through one of the great wax anatomical museums of the world (La Specola in Florence) and an extraordinarily long-lived popular museum that traveled the fairground routes of Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Pierre Spitzner’s Great Anatomical and Ethnological Museum). It will take side trips into some of the visual worlds the Venuses drew from or helped inspire, including fairground sleeping beauty acts, morgue shows, mortuary photography, reliquary displays, and art. In the paths of the sleeping beauties, it is clear that death and slumber, pedagogy and entertainment, science and reverie long shared strange borders.

Kathryn A. Hoffmann is the author of books and numerous articles on the body, including “Sleeping Beauties in the Fairground.” She is Professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where she teaches courses on anomalous bodies and the histories of medicine and the fairground. She has received awards for her writing, and lectures frequently for associations, libraries, and museums in the fields of the history of medicine, literature, and art.

Observatory is the new Brooklyn exhibition/event space run by a bunch of my favorite bloggers: Joanna Ebenstein of Morbid Anatomy, Michelle Enemark and Dylan Thuras of Curious Expeditions, Pam Grossman of Phantasmaphile, Herbert Pfostl of Paper Graveyard, and artists G.F. Newland and James Walsh. It's the newest addition to the little neighborhood of galleries that's quickly becoming one of my favorite spots in the city: adjoining Observatory are the Proteus Gowanus gallery, Cabinet Magazine space, and Morbid Anatomy Library, where I stopped in for tea a couple of weeks ago and had the pleasure of browsing the shelves and meeting Joanna, Michelle, and Dylan.

Anyway, tonight's talk looks to be excellent, and if you're in New York, have the evening free, and actually read this in time to do something about it, I strongly recommend you come by! Plus, it's free and there will be wine. Full event info here.

For some related reading, check out Invading Hands, Sleeping Beauties at bioephemera, which discusses a previous lecture given by Dr. Hoffmann.

Wednesday wallpapers: Walls

2009-03-18T09:00:00.001-04:00

"Wall & Pipes"

"Spring Wall and Foliage"

"Wall of painted straw, Tibet"

"wall control"

"Rock Wall"

"dutch pink wall"

"wallpaper"

"untiled"

"Uña de Gato Plant on Wall"

"El Coliseo"

"old wall"

"Side Wall Enhanced"

"wall"

"tank and wall"

"wallpaper detail"

"Wall"

"wallpaper with reflection"

"Wall Power"

"Doña Gavi Store Wallpaper"

"Wall-H"

"wall heart"

"Stop There"

Four short films

2009-03-05T18:18:00.002-05:00

World Builder is a blended live action/CGI film by director Bruce Branit. It took one day of filming and two years of post-production work to create this breathtaking work, which details an epic act of creation: in a futuristic holographic environment, a single man builds a fully-realized digital world from the ground up, using a suite of gestural Minority-Report-esqe development tools that should make any designer weep. A labor of love, in more ways than one.

Via shape+colour.

9 is a short computer-animated film by Shane Acker in which a race of diminutive sack-creatures scavenge in the ruins of a post-apocalyptic world and try to evade their greatest enemy, a ruthless mechanical predator. It's an intriguing, well-realized world, and there are plans to expand the concept into a full-length feature.
Via io9.

Please Say Something is a mind-blowing short film by animator David O'Reilly. Disjointed and dreamlike, it tells the story of the stormy relationship between a cat and mouse couple. In the future. Amazing.

Via A near life experience.

Maestro is a charming CGI entry in the Portable Film Festival by Hungarian director Géza M. Tóth.

Five minutes before his big performance, the Maestro and his persistent mechanical assistant are in preparation mode. As the clock ticks, life at the top is not all it seems.

Via SleepTight.tv.

My God, it's full of sh--

2009-02-13T22:22:00.004-05:00

This is the City of Work.

Here you can test yourself at the Human Potential Institute, check out the ideas for sale from the Think Tank on Idea Island, or keep on top of your world with some informative and educational Charts.

The City of Work is the vision of artist and MIT administrative worker Michael Lewy, who uses Powerpoint and architectural modeling software to map out bureaucratic dystopias using the absurd, dehumanizing language of productivity and corporate-speak. The self-absorbed excesses of office-drone culture are often parodied, but Lewy's work eschews the lighthearted comedy of dorky bosses and cubicle antics to instead evoke the more nightmarish prospect of a frightening collective descent into utter senselessness.

The book Chart Sensation gathers all of Lewy's strange graphs and Powerpoint artwork into one delightfully baffling collection, so you can take your time pondering the secrets revealed by illustrative charts like the one below.

Less tongue-in-cheek, unfortunately, is this apparently earnest 27-page design document for PepsiCo's pricey new logo, which was redesigned by branding agency Arnell Group last year at an estimated total cost of hundreds of millions of dollars (over a million for the actual design, plus the cost of replacing all of Pepsi's branded material with the updated logo). When I saw it, I was immediately reminded of Lewy's work.

While most people responded with a collective yawn at the result of that protracted and expensive five-month process, shrugging it off as an Obama logo clone or forming their own mental associations that Pepsi probably didn't intend, Arnell's design document, entitled "Breathtaking", reveals where all that time and money was spent — drawing arcane diagrams to demonstrate the new logo's deep cosmic connections to life, the universe, and everything.

The document was "leaked" from PepsiCo this week, almost certainly intentionally, since it's quickly become the fascination of the blogosphere and provided loads of free publicity for the newly transcendent brand. Bravo. (I refer you to the title of this post, which ought to make sense by now.) The document is indeed hilarious, a true masterwork.

You can read the full thing here.

Via the Consumerist; more from Gawker and Advertising Age.

I am unmoved by Pepsi's breathtaking show of mystical connectedness to divine perfection. When a beverage company takes pains to demonstrate how its brand identity is inextricably linked to Satanic soul trafficking, that is when I become a loyal drinker for life.

Years later this ARG, the first I ever encountered and the only one I ever paid attention to, still inhabits my consciousness, even though the game itself was judged something of a flop. A few of the game's sites still exist, though most seem to have gone — including the travel agency website where you could book trips to destinations like Devil's Island, Valhalla, and Babel, which can only be visited now courtesy of the wayback machine. There was also one that alluded to the demonic significance of the stars, horn, and other elements of the Stella logo, but I can't for the life of me find it. Oh, well...perfection has its price.

Weird initiatives

2009-02-02T08:12:00.003-05:00

Last night I dreamed that in the chaos following a BSG-esque national emergency, Bush was forced to resume the presidency of the United States. In a conference he was reading out a speech that included the line "I fully support wired initiatives," but he hesitated and stumbled over the unfamiliar word, pronouncing it "weird." An aide had to look over his shoulder and correct him as he mumbled about being tripped up. Rahm Emanuel spoke up then and apologized, explaining that the speech had been written for Obama — they never would have put those funny words in Bush's mouth.

Dramedy at the end of the world

2009-01-21T02:59:00.004-05:00

More fruits of last year's writers' strike have ripened and fallen to the ground: screenwriter John August has just released the pilot to proposed webseries The Remnants, an apocalyptic sitcom about a tribe of survivors who raid abandoned houses in the suburbs of LA for Pringles and Wiis in the aftermath of a civilization-ending disaster of an indeterminate nature. The tone is hip and ironic, what August describes as "a cross between The Stand and The Office." The well-formed cast includes Justine Bateman, Michael Cassidy, Ben Falcone, Ernie Hudson, Amanda Walsh, and experimental web artist Ze Frank (whose burgeoning collection of flash oddities, artsy webcamery, and multimedia playthings is well worth the detour).

Following the model of Dr. Horrible, The Remnants was conceived and produced during the dark, idle days of the WGA strike and shopped around to advertisers and sponsors for possible development as a new webseries. Though it was at one time under consideration by NBC, its chances aren't looking so good. The upside is that the pilot is now being released to the public, so we at least get to see what we're missing. And maybe it'll somehow generate lots and lots of interest and develop into something in the future.

You can watch the embedded video below, or see it in HD on Vimeo.

Via io9.

Catch up on your sci-fi

2009-01-16T01:51:00.004-05:00

Battlestar Galactica returns to tv tonight with the first episode of the long-awaited Season 4.5. If you haven't yet, you definitely need to refresh yourself first with Sci-Fi's highly entertaining recap, Catch the Frak Up!, with rapid-fire narration by Starbuck. Covers pretty much everything, from the twisty plot turns to the universe basics ("'Frak' is a swear word, papers don't have corners, and there's more than one god").

Part I

Part II

And while we're on recaps, if you've never gotten your head around that whole Star Wars thing, get the broad outlines with Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it).

My friend Amanda had never seen a whole Star Wars film. When I asked her if she wanted to watch the original trilogy she said that she would, but that she already knew what happens. So I took out my voice recorder and asked her to start from the top.

Via io9.

Choose your own vignette

2009-01-12T09:00:00.001-05:00

Game designer Daniel Benmergui of Ludomancy has been experimenting with some very interesting stuff. In some brief posts on the subjects of Experimental Gameplay and Defying Genres, he sounds the call for a radical departure from run of the mill games and tried and true mechanics, and his growing collection of innovative, unclassifiable game prototypes in no way belies these intentions.

I wish I were the moon looks to be the inauguration of a new genre. (Perhaps an inevitable side effect of successfully defying genres is creating them.) The game consists of a small scene of movable characters and objects, and how you manipulate them determines the outcome of the story. This is done with a camera which can take snapshots of the elements in the scene and place them in a new position, a kind of copy-paste mechanic. If there is a goal at all, it is to replay the game different ways in order to discover all of the possible endings — but Daniel freely admits that even this is a "gimmick", and the real point is simply to explore the emotional experience of the game.

While the underlying mechanic is unusual, the style is equally singular, with its simple pixellated graphics, dreamy, poetic atmosphere, and quiet, understated storyline, which is inspired by Italo Calvino's story The Distance of the Moon.

Storyteller is the next game to build on this mechanic. The gamespace is a triptych of three moments in time that tell a miniature fairy tale, and the characters can be moved around in any of the three timeframes to instantly change the outcome of events.

Third is The Trials, which allows for the elements to be duplicated instead of simply moved. This game, like its predecessors, explores themes of conflict, longing, and contentment.

Finally, there is Night Raveler and the Heartbroken Uruguayans, which also showcases similar themes (love, loneliness, loss), but with a new mechanic: you play an alien (?), floating around the city strategically cutting the lines that join people and letting new ones form. Some may find true love, and some may be left in the cold. As with the other games, this one is about exploring the consequences of your choices.

And this is why I suggest that Daniel has created a new genre: Gregory Weir of Ludus Novus has created (I Fell in Love With) The Majesty of Colors, an intriguing game modeled on the style of I wish I were the moon, with a storyline inspired by Lovecraft. You play a tentacled sea creature who is revealed for the first time to the humans of the world above, its attention attracted by the enchanting colors of balloons, and the choices you make determine the outcome of this tricky first contact scenario.

Gregory has been kind enough to share an illuminating postmortem of the game in place of his usual column on GameSetWatch.

Last night I dreamed I was an immense beast, floating in darkness. I knew nothing of the surface world until I fell in love with the majesty of colors.

Yogic physics

2009-01-03T10:28:00.004-05:00

I am a great lover of serenity and silence, but there are times when I long to talk back to my yoga instructor.

Now, I hate all the New Agey trappings that the trendy modern brand of hipster yoga is cloaked in, so there are plenty of times during a typical practice where I must simply shut my eyes and tune the chatter out. For me yoga is no more than an effective and agreeable physical exercise, and I would gladly excise the vague mystical overtones and pseudotherapeutic insights that are usually served along with my sixty minutes of physical conditioning. Sometimes it gets to me.

Last week, as we were being goaded to assume a crazy pose where you tip your head back and lose your balance, the instructor embarked on a miniature sermon about fear and letting go: "It's okay if you lose your balance, it's okay if you fall. As children, we weren't afraid to fall. We did it all the time, we loved it. As we got older, something changed, and we became afraid of looking foolish, afraid of losing control. Falling became a shame, an embarrassment. Remember how it used to be when you were a child. Let yourself feel again what it's like not to have that fear."

I had a very strong urge to open my mouth and respond.

"WE HAD MUCH LOWER CENTERS OF GRAVITY THEN!"

Wednesday wallpapers: Animals II

2008-12-31T09:00:00.000-05:00

"Fur"

"Bird's scale"

"Tiger Fur Wallpaper"

"Urchins Revisited"

"Pachyderm"

"Islands"

"frog silhouette"

"Eye of the World"

"snakeskin"

"Son of the Earth"

"Untitled Wallpaper"

"Untitled Wallpaper"

"Kiki"

"Lion"

"WP: blue frog"

Bold illustration

2008-12-29T10:00:00.001-05:00

Illustrator Dan McCarthy does a few things very well: trees, power lines, ships, houses, skeletons. At least, these are the things he does repeatedly. More generally, he's a master at bold compositions relying on the interplay between line and negative space, from rigging to cables to twigs to ribs. Not only is there some stellar work on display here, but also a limited selection of very affordable and very beautiful prints for sale.

Creative director Gregori Saavedra is a prolific commercial illustrator whose stark line work replicates the look of photographs run through a trace filter, to beautiful effect. His portfolio also includes a variety of stylish video and other work.

Tales in pen and ink

2008-12-22T09:00:00.001-05:00

Kunio Kato, a member of the ROBOT Character and Animation team, is a Japanese animator whose quietly surreal films portray a curious world of fantasy and whimsy. This year, his short Tsumiki no Ie ("La maison en petit cubes" or "House of Blocks") won the Annecy Cristal prize at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival and Market.

In the highly surreal short The Apple Incident (2001), giant apples begin falling from the sky onto a bemused city. Winner of the Best Prize in the 2001 Laputa International Animation Festival.

Dreamy and dreamlike, Aru Tabibito no Nikki ("The Diary of Tortov Roddle" or "A Traveler's Diary") (2003) is a series of unconnected episodes of strange and whimsical happenings in the life of the eponymous hero, a tall traveler in a top hat who wanders the world astride his curiously long-legged pig companion. The film comprises Episodes 1-6. Selected for the 2004 Annecy festival, it was the winner of the Best Prize in the Laputa Animation Festival in 2003 and the Grand Prix in the Hida International Animation Festival of Folktales and Fables.

An excellent review of the film can be found at the Nishikata Film Review.

The adventures of Tortov Roddle continue in the bonus Episode 7, The Red Berry, in which the traveler encounters a garden of hallucinogenic red fruits.

Fantasy Story (2003) is another collection of vignettes illustrating various flights of fancy. It was a selection in the the 8th Seoul International Cartoon & Animation Festival (SICAF) and the Ottawa 04 International Animation Festival.

Michaël Dudok de Wit is a Holland-born animator living in London whose charming, spare, Japanese-influenced cartoon animations have won numerous awards, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA, and the Annecy Grand Prix for his 2000 film Father and Daughter.

The Aroma of Tea (2006) is Dudok de Wit's latest film. It is drawn entirely in washes of tea.

Father and Daughter (2000) is a quiet, moving tale about a young girl awating the return of her lost father.

In the ancient tradition of cat-and-mouse cartoons comes Le Moine et Le Poisson ("The Monk and the Fish") (1994), a delightful, minimalist short about a monk's obsessive attempts to catch the fish he spies in the monastery pond.

Tom Sweep (1992) is a humorous little cartoon about the travails of a beleaguered street janitor.

No calendars, please

2008-12-15T10:00:00.005-05:00

Earlier this year I wrote about how hard it was to find interesting, stylish, high-quality calendars year after year. Well, I wanted to warn you against showering me in calendar gifts this Christmas, because I found enough to tide me over for a few more years, at least.

Most exiting is the discovery that illustrator Steve Thomas, whose retrofuturistic space travel posters I showed off a while ago, offers a calendar of his shiny space art. I will have one for my wall.

For graphic inspiration, I adore the bold, bright prints in this Paper Source Art Calendar.

Etsy of course has loads of beautiful and unique art calendars, particularly of the postcard desktop variety. I like this charming Jardin Desk Calendar by MagnoliaMoonlight.

And this Objectification II Postcard Desk Calendar by SureAsBlue.

And this Screen Printed Botanical Calendar by annacote.

And this Animals of the Land, Sky, and Sea Desk Calendar by InkDropDesign.

And this Helvetica Typography Calendar by ovendoorowl.

And this Letterpressed and Silkscreened Calendar by ilee.

And this TTV Desk Calendar by ebonypaws.

And this Polaroid Calendar by AliciaBlock.

I'm in love with the stationary company Cavallini & Co., particularly their calendar offerings. They have great vintage art themes like travel, maps, plants, and animals.

I also made a few finds in photography calendars of abandoned places. In the slightly surreal category, there's the beautiful Retrospect Calendar by farhmboy, who explores out-of-the-way locales in his native Michigan.

In more moody ruins, there's the uplifting Abandoned Places Calendar by Richard Rizzo.

Then there's the beautifully photographed tribute to that ever-photogenic ruin, the Eastern State Penitentiary Calendar by 13 Black Cats Designs.

So please...no calendars! Unless you've found some great ones, too.

Wednesday wallpapers: Animals

2008-12-10T09:00:00.001-05:00

"Spotted Spiny Lobster"

"Nr 2 - Scratch, scratch..."

"colors"

"Grainy Elephant"

"Crocodile Skin"

"Giraffe Hide"

"Starfish"

"Texture 1"

"Snooze"

"Shellfishes"

"Cat's Eyes"

"Feather Water"

"Peacock"

"wanna touch it"

"Snow Fox"

Here there be trolls

2008-12-08T11:00:00.005-05:00

Information Architects is the creator of the Web Trend Map series, the latest and greatest of which is Web Trend Map 3. (For the best view, try the adaptive Startpage.) Modeled on the Tokyo subway map, it envisions the web as a network of stations and exchanges linked by common lines like Technology, Video, eCommerce, and Politics.

Because they're still beautiful, here's the Web Trend Map 2007 Version 2.0 (below), and the Web Trend Map 2007 Version 1.
Via Strange Maps.

Xkcd presents a Tolkien-style Map of Online Communities, which handily situates social groups along the axes of "pratical—intellectual" and "focus on real life—focus on web".

There's also xkcd's nifty Blogofractal, which helpfully distills all the output of the Internet and crystallizes it in visual format:

In more practical maps, this one at Strange Maps is a world map showing all of the country code top-level domains (ccTLDs), weighted by population.

Here's another xkcd Map of the Internet showing the distribution of IP addresses.

Musical interlude

2008-12-01T09:00:00.001-05:00

John Coltrane - Giant Steps.
Via { feuilleton ].

Gershon Kingsley - Popcorn.

José Feliciano - California Dreamin'.
Via A near life experience.

Flickr raid: Magic and mystery

2008-11-24T09:00:00.002-05:00

Imaginary books and other things photoset.

COSAS MAGICAS photoset.

Star diary photoset.

Parting The Veil of Faery, The Colmore Fatagravures photoset.

Trade of the tools

2008-11-21T04:36:00.021-05:00

Last week, a vampire-killing kit dated to the turn of the 19th century was sold at an estate sale for the sum of $14,850. I expect this price represents an excellent deal, as the savvy vampire hunter always waits until after the Halloween rush to snap up occult supplies at steep discounts. It's like 75%-off chocolate hearts on February 15th, or the free Christmas trees you can pick up on street corners all January long.

The well-appointed kit contains "stakes, mirrors, a gun with silver bullets, crosses, a Bible, holy water, candles and even garlic, all housed in a American walnut case with a carved cross on top."

This is not the first such antique vampire-hunting kit to turn up on the market in recent years. Boing Boing has recorded for posterity another vampire-slaying kit, purportedly from 19th century Romania, that was sold on eBay in 2006. From the auction description:

The knife is 13.1 inches long with a metal handle. It's made of heavy metal and can be easily thrown - it will always hit the target with the sharp tip. Has a gothic theme and detailing of fangs.

The metal box contains one syringe and it can be used to inject liquid garlic or secret serums into vampires. It has a small cross on it made of silver . The syringe can sustain temperatures up to 200 Celsius degrees. The cross is very old, with one beautiful black stone and is on a very old metal chain .

The metal teeth plier ( 7.5 inches ) was used in the past to remove the vampire's teeth. There is also a special tool called Dentol ( 5.5 inches ) used in the past to remove the vampire's teeth.

Then there's Professor Ernst Blomberg. This is the dedicated footsoldier in the War on the Undead whose name appears on many of the antique vampire-hunting kits that occupy prized spots in private collections and museum exhibits, and have lately been turning up at various auction houses and on eBay. Here is one of his creations that was reportedly originally sold at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, and more recently at Sotheby's, where it fetched $12,000 in an auction conducted on October 30th (that is, the day before Halloween) in 2003.

From the original description:

This box contains the items considered necessary for the protection of persons who travel into certain little known countries in Easter Europe where the populace are plagued with a peculiar manifestation of evil, known as Vampires... Professor Ernst Blomberg respectfully requests that the purchaser of this kit carefully studies his book. Should evil manifestations become apparent, he is then equiped to deal with them efficiently... Professor Blomberg wishes to announce his grateful thanks to that well known gunmaker of Liege, Nicholas Plombeur, whose help in compiling of the special items, the silver bullets,etc., has been most efficient. The items enclosed are as follows...

1. An efficient pistol with its usual accoutrements
2. A quantity of bullets of the finest silver
3. Powdered flowers of garlic (one phial)
4. Flour of Brimstone (one phial)
5. Wooden stake (Oak)
6. Ivory crucifix
7. Holy Water (one phial)
8. Professer Blomberg's New Serum

Here's another of Blomberg's kits that also sold for $12,000 to a Seattle man in a 1997 auction.

This one was donated in 1989 to the Mercer Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, where it currently resides. The attached description is nearly identical to the other Blomberg kits:

This box contains the items considered necessary, for the protection of persons who travel into certain little known countries of Eastern Europe, where the populace are plagued with a particular manifestation of evil known as Vampires. Professor Ernst Blomberg respectfully requests that the purchaser of this kit, carefully studies his book in order, should evil manifestations become apparent, he is equipped o deal with them efficiently. Professor Blomberg wishes to announce his grateful thanks to that well known gunmaker of Liége, Nicholas Plomdeur whose help in the compiling of the special items, the silver bullets &c., has been most efficient. The times enclosed are as follows.

(1) An efficient pistol with its usual accoutrements.
(2) Silver bullets.
(3) An ivory crucifix.
(4) Powdered flowers of gaelie.
(5) A wooden stake.
(6) Professor Blomberg’s new serum.

The Surnateum Museum of Supernatural History is home to another Blomberg kit. From the museum's description:

Vampire Killing Kit, second half of the 19th century
The pistol dates from the 18th century and was brought back from the expedition.
Brought back from an expedition to Russia and Mongolia in September 2001

The Vampire Killing Kit was sold by Professor Ernst Blomberg in the second half of the 19th century. The kit was made by Nicolas Plomdeur, a well-known gunmaker from Liège.

This particular box, which has been in the Surnateum's collection since the late 19th century, has recently been reunited with the accompanying pistol (made in Spain in the late 18th century, originally a flintlock but later converted to a percussion cap in the first half of the 19th century); the gun was lost under circumstances described below. Manufactured in two separate stages, it contains all of the accessories used to maintain the pistol, as well as a large bottle of holy water, small bottles which once contained Professor Blomberg's anti-vampire serum and garlic juice to impregnate the silver bullets, a small bottle of sulphur powder, whose odour could drive off vampires. A crucifix made of wood and copper, various blessed medals, a small bottle of salts, a copy of the 1819 book entitled Histoire des Fantômes et des Démons by Gabrielle de P. (see the Library).

Here's another.

And another. This one was sold through Stevens Auction Company and said to come from New Orleans.

Lina's Lookbook features two vampire-slaying kits that were up for sale from Sotheby's last year. There is no mention of Professor Blomberg in connection with these, but the description of the larger of the two, a French kit dated to about 1900, reads:

the box in solid mahogany, the hinged lid with a copper cross to the front, opening to a compartmentalized interior comprised of an ivory inlaid crucifix-shaped gun bearing the date 1591, lead bullets, a small glass bottle, a small power keg, a metal bullet mold, and a mahogany stake, with original paper label stating an attribution to Nicolas Plomdeur.

Of course, there is no Professor Ernst Blomberg, and these are not actually antiques. Michael de Winter, the creator of the original Blomberg kit, confesses.

My story starts in or around 1970 when I was employed in the printing industry. My hobby was buying, selling and refurbishing antique guns. I sold mainly at the famous Portobello Market in London. My usual stock of guns for sale was only 10-20 at any one time and these tended to be of superior quality. I had a number of regular clients who arrived every week to see if I had any new stock. One of my regulars wanted a fine flintlock pistol and asked me to take in part exchange a Belgian percussion pocket pistol. I grudgingly agreed and allowed him £15.00 off the price of the flintlock.

So, here it is, a poor quality pocket pistol in mediocre condition! What to do with it? That was my question. Having an extremely fertile imagination and being an avid reader, I was inspired. It occurred to me that I could produce something unique that would be a great advertising gimmick and would attract people to my stall. The Vampire Killing Kit was on its way.

De Winter cobbled together and sold the first vampire-killing kit, along with its note attributing the contents to the fictitious personages of Professor Ernst Blomberg and Nicholas Plomdeur, the Gunmaker of Liège, as a novelty item for £1000. The rest, he claims, are imitators — counterfeits of a forgery!

Then again, perhaps he isn't to believed, either. The Mercer Museum figures that its fake Blomberg kit dates to the 1920's, which would neatly preclude de Winter as the originator. Lies upon lies.

If these purported antiques, hoaxes, copies and forgeries auctioning in the tens of thousands baffle and bewilder you, perhaps it's time to turn to genuine, 100% authentic works of art. Alex CF is an assemblage artist who creates detailed, absorbing "cryptozoological scientific art" in the form of handsome boxed kits and framed collections. Among his many horror, antique, and steampunk-themed pieces are a number of fascinating vampire-related items, including, yes, a fully-stocked slaying kit.

This is the Vampiric Anatomical Biological Research Reliquary. An excerpt from the description and partial list of contents:

Called upon to look into the supposed intervention of demonic possession of a small child, bled to death whilst sleeping, an unnamed cleric found evidence of an all together more natural cause of death. A bite, where the murderer had drained the body of all fluid. Baffled by this hideous mystery the cleric took it upon himself to understand this unknown species. His travel altar became his reliquary of artifacts, a place to house the evidence he found whilst on his travels. Throughout Europe he traveled, tracing the roots of a dynasty unseen by man.

• The partial skull fragment of a Homo Wampyrus, housed within a glass display dome
• Optical apparatus: Multi armed magnifying lense device, with extendable mirror and vice amateur for examination of blood and bone fragments
• Foetal Homo Wampyrus
• Blood samples taken from 7 newly infected humans
• Slide comparison of human and vampiric blood
• Test tubes, spare tube
• Tissue sample
• Silver nitrate and its properties
• Glass specimen jars with garlic, various roots/samples
• Dried plant samples, for suppressing vampiric strain
• A dissecting kit within a metal tin
• A candle holder/spair candles wrapped in paper and string
• The teeth and blood from an ancient aristrocratic vampire, housed within a glass/brass box
• Extensive notes and anatomical studies, spair examination tools, scissors/scalpels etc.
• A small moleskine notebook, containing various notes/diagrams
• An envelope holding a collection of daguerreotypes (early photographs)
• A bible, a large crucifix, and a book of psalms, mere relics of his past belief
• A map, with needles and thread plotting his first journey to find the roots of the species
• A picture of Lady Bathory

This is the mysterious Vampire Legacy Box. No notes are provided on this intriguing item.

Finally, to round out this roundup: the French 19th Century Vampyr Hunting Case.

Early 19th century french vampyr hunting kit - family line unknown.

At least with these fine pieces, you know what you're getting. Caveat occisor.

Additional sources: quixoticals, Gizmodo, Curious Expeditions, Urban Legends

A sense of place

2008-11-16T09:00:00.003-05:00

Morning travelogue is a curiously compelling record of one man's commute to work as he ditches the Tube in order to walk through some of the lovelier and more interesting parts of downtown London. If only we all had such a short, pedestrian-friendly, and pleasant itinerary. The somewhat accelerated tracking and a peppy, danceable tune help, too.
Via Weekend Stubble.

Fed by Birds has just shared a few photographs paired with ambient soundscapes from a recent trip Cornwall, in Cornish Sounds. The captured ambience of waves and seabirds and breezy forests and tolling churchbells is wonderfully tranquil.

I was reminded of Their Circular Life: An Exploration About Human Behavior, an interesting little flash presentation that allows you to cycle through twenty-four hours of sounds and images captured from stationary observation posts in a variety of urban locations. Go fast and watch the day whizz by your eyes, or slow down to listen to the nuances of the place.

At La grange numérique, the panoramic photography site of Denis Gliksman, you can find a number of beautiful 360° scenes, some with sound and animation, like this set of "Spriteoramas" of rocks and lapping waves on the coast of Brittany.

Beneath the surface of things

2008-11-10T09:00:00.003-05:00

Beyond Light is the gallery of x-ray photographer Albert Koetsier. He arranges plants, animals, seashells, and other natural objects into delicate, ethereal compositions.

Unlike many x-ray artists who photograph flowers and natural objects, the celebrated Nick Veasey turns his camera outward, revealing the insides of objects from everyday life — like plastic dolls or underwear — but plants and animals have their time under his lens, too. He has published a book of his award-winning personal and commercial work, X-Ray: See Through the World Around You.

In his series of röntgen etchings, artist Ben Kruisdijk embellishes x-ray photographs with fanciful illustrations.

Photographer Bert Myers does simple x-ray portraits of a variety of subjects, both natural and man-made objects.

Commercial artist Hugh Turvey creates brightly colorized x-ray photographs of household objects as well as plants, animals, and other items.

Leslie Wright uses x-rays to look inside plants, animals, high-tech devices, and everyday objects.

Otherworldly installation art

2008-11-03T11:00:00.001-05:00

Jason de Caires Taylor is an underwater sculptor, the creator of hauntingly beautiful and extremely eerie sculpture parks located in shallow waters where they can be visited by boaters and divers. Since everything that goes into the sea belongs to the sea, these sculptures are slowly transformed over time, anchoring the formation of new artificial reefs and becoming a kind of zymoglyphic art, a collaboration between the human artist and natural forces. Moving among the still, weathered statues must feel like entering a modern Atlantis.

If you happened to drive by a particular condemned house in Houston in the summer of 2005, you might have seen it falling into a wormhole. Sculptors Dan Havel and Dean Ruck transformed two buildings owned by Art League Houston into this striking work of art for an installation called Inversion. For a short time until the houses' scheduled demolition, visitors could crawl through the tunnel to the other side, and passing drivers could jeopardize traffic safety with some serious rubbernecking.

Some galleries of the project can be found from Art League Houston, Kevin O'Mara, and Designverb.
Via io9.

Michael de Broin is a sculptor whose works typically embody a single concept in a visually striking way. For his outdoor scuplture Superficielle, a large rock which is obscured entirely by mirrors, that concept is the theme of transparency. Io9 picked up on this item as evidence of the development of new invisibility cloaking technology. They might have a point.