2.13.2009

x. o.



Wishing you a weekend filled with love and beauty. Happy Valentine's Day, my sweets.





:we heart it

2.11.2009

tea for one



Ceramic artist Jette Arendal Winther creates these sweet pretties. She lives in a cottage on the north coast of Zealand, the main island of Denmark, with her composer husband Niels.

Such lovely living.














:arendal keramik

2.09.2009

elizabethan goth

















:vogue china
photographer: pierluigi maco; model: vlada roslyakova - via foto decadent

2.07.2009

the way they live: jay walker


Jay Walker's house was constructed specifically to accommodate his massive library. To create the space, which was constructed in 2002, Walker (the 52-year-old Internet entrepreneur and founder of Walker Digital) and architect Mark Finlay first built a 7-foot-long model. Then they used miniature cameras to help visualize what it would be like to move around inside.


In a conscious nod to M. C. Escher (whose graphics are echoed in the wood tiling), the labyrinthine platforms seem to float in space, an illusion amplified by the glass-paneled bridges connecting the platforms. Walker commissioned decorative etched glass, dynamic lighting, and even a custom soundtrack that sets the tone for the cerebral adventures hidden in this cabinet of curiosities. "I said to the architect, 'Think of it as a theater, from a lighting and engineering standpoint,'" Walker says. "But it's not a performance space. It's an engagement space."


"What's so wonderful about our knowledge of the human body is how remarkably constrained it has been over time," Walker says. In the center of the table sits the Anatomia universa, an early-19th-century medical masterwork by the Italian illustrator Paolo Mascagni. At front right is a field tool kit for Civil War surgeons. Grasping the box of prosthetic eyeballs at left is the original "Thing" hand from the TV show The Addams Family, signed by the cast. In front of the 19th-century phrenological bust is a book, from about 1500, containing the first published illustrations of surgery on humans. "Pre-anesthesia, of course" Walker says. At the rear are a 300 million-year-old trilobite fossil, a raptor skeleton and a clutch of fossilized dinosaur eggs.


A brand-new One Laptop per Child XO, far left, sits next to a relatively ancient RadioShack TRS-80 Model 100. In back, a 1911 typewriting machine and a 1909 Kent radio. The large contraption at center is the Nazis' supposedly unbreakable Enigma code machine. The book to its left is a copy of Johannes Trithemius' 1518 Polygraphiae, a cryptographic landmark. On the right is an Apple II motherboard signed by Woz. An Edison kinetoscope sits beside an 1890 Edison phonograph (along with three of the wax cylinders it uses for recording). Nearby is a faithful copy of Edison's lightbulb. The gadget with the tubes is an IBM processor circa 1960. In front of it stands a truly ancient storage device, a Sumerian clay cone used to record surplus grain.




:read the wired article and see more photos here; wired

2.06.2009

sit down, john



Three things, my friend:

1. Remember that tax breaks do not a stimulus package make. (You know this. I know you do.)
2. Click your heels together three times and recite the following: "That One won. I lost."
3. Watch this.

Sit down, John. For God's sake, John, sit down.



:youtube; 1776; john mccain


Good weekend, everyone. Wherever you may be.




:fabian geyrhalter at the beholder

2.03.2009

i lego ny



In case you missed Christoph Niemann's Lego homage to NYC, here's a sample of the brilliance. More on Niemann's NYTimes blog. I'm partial to the taxi lineup. It's downright educational.










:christoph niemann

2.02.2009

crossings



"At some point, the [Abbey Road] album was going to be titled Everest after the brand of cigarettes I used to smoke," recalls audio engineer Geoff Emerick. The idea included a photo shoot in the Himalayas. But the Beatles decided to name the album Abbey Road and to shoot the cover photo outside the recording studio during an impromptu half-hour break between recording sessions in August 1969. Paul McCartney remembers the session:

"The crossing was right outside, and we said, 'Let's just go out, get a photographer and walk out on the crossing. It'll be done in half an hour.' It was getting quite late and you always have to get the cover in ahead of the sound. So we got hold of the photographer Iain Macmillan, gave him a half hour and walked across the crossing."

John Lennon recalled, "We were just wishing the photographer would hurry up. Too many people were hanging around ... We're meant to be recording, not posing for Beatle pictures - that's what we were thinking. And, I was muttering, 'Come on, hurry up now, keep in step.'"



The zebra crossing remains a popular destination for Beatles fans, one of them being the photographer of this clever shot, Christiaan Triebert.


:christiaan triebert flickr; abbey road; excerpts from the beatles anthology

2.01.2009

come out, come out, wherever you are



Chicago-based artist Nick Cave crafts wearable sculptures from woven hair, found objects, ceramics, metal and beads. His Soundsuits, named after the noises they emit while worn, evoke both indigenous ceremonial performance and theatrical costuming. The allusion to the stage is no coincidence: Cave previously studied and danced with Alvin Ailey, whose embodiment of spiritual and geographical memory clearly resonates in Cave's work. Soundsuits reimagines these cultural influences as a carefully crafted skin, which reveals aspects of the artist while concealing the wearer.










:nick cave at jack shainman gallery thru february 7; nick cave personal statement

hello, february





:rufiina flickr