ArtDaily: The lost art of carving: Rare mineral and lapidary works of art up for auction.
“The property, from a private East Coast Collector, will feature examples of exotic animals, domestic pets, large cameos featuring Biblical and Grecian-inspired scenes and objet d’art. Many of these rare and unique pieces were created in the world-renowned carving center of Idar-Oberstein, Germany.”
The New Criterion: The bitter fool.
Lamenting the state of poetry. “The very deep did rot: O Christ! That ever this should be!” Coleridge.
Macworld: Adobe granting sneak peek at pro video apps to broadcasters conference.
Adobe’s not going to give Apple any leeway to win back editors, if they can help it. I hear rumors of a Cinema 4D “lite” product to be bundled with AE. Will that be part of Creative Cloud? Please?
Cynthia Poon / Industrial Design: musical mower.
Change the pegs, make different notes. This is the kind of thing grandparents buy for their grandkids, just to drive young parents even crazier.
Poemas del río Wang: Hands.
Finding cut photographs and matching them again.
ARTnews: How Many Light Bulbs Does It Take to Discolor a van Gogh?
LED is pretty intense … at least the ones I’ve seen so far. May not be LED per se, but the intensity of that band. They still don’t have the color balances quite right.
Later: As I’ve mentioned before … and this is important to creatives … test your ‘new’ lights. I only put CFLs in lights that didn’t affect reading or color matching. I took pillows with strong primary colors in them, and compared how they looked under incandscent, halogen and CFL light. CFLs desaturated the reds, turning them dark magenta. You’d never, ever want to do critical color work under your average CFL. Better yet - make and print a simple color chart, and see. I hear some CFL brands have gotten better, but I have great hopes for well-balanced LEDs.
SF New Mexican: Hopis seek return of katsinas up for auction.
“Culturally, we made it clear that there’s no price tag on our ceremonial and religious objects. [snip] That’s pretty much out of the question.” So much was taken, destroyed … oral traditions diluted. Native Americans need to get as much of their original cultural material as possible.
NPR: Versailles Gets Spiffed-Up On Its Day Off.
“Our work has to look good but it must be reversible. It must come off easily some day in the future when better methods are available.” Nice to hear. Silly suggestion … ColorForms?
Guardian.UK: Amazon purchase of Goodreads stuns book industry.
Scott Turow, excerpted in the article: “The key is to eliminate or absorb competitors before they pose a serious threat. [snip] With its 16 million subscribers, Goodreads could easily have become a competing online bookseller, or played a role in directing buyers to a site other than Amazon. Instead, Amazon has scuttled that potential and also squelched what was fast becoming the go-to venue for online reviews, attracting far more attention than Amazon for those seeking independent assessment and discussion of books. As those in advertising have long known, the key to driving sales is controlling information.” And Amazon has well-known problems with their review/commenting system.
Washington Times: Jane Nebel Henson, wife of late Muppets creator Jim Henson, dies at 79.
Rest in peace, Good lady. I hope the Muppets do an Irish wake. If you dig on Google Images, you can see Jane with many of the early Muppets.
NY Times: Glories Restored, Rijksmuseum Is Reopening After 10 Years.
Five years late and millions over budget. Don’t miss the image gallery; some luminous artworks (beautifully lit, lessons for photographers there).
I always cast a jaundiced eye upon attempts to mix contemporary architecture with historical building designs. My home town of Princeton suffered a few of these. Rarely does it succeed. #2 in that image gallery, all I see are slabs of plasterboard and plates of glass. I can already hear the unabated echos of shoe heels. It has some graphic design appeal to those who admire such stark interiors, but that can’t compare to the older ornate sections of the museum. IMHO.
Salon: Sneaky author tricks.
“There was, in my view [snip] an unwritten contract with the reader that the writer must honor. No single element of an imagined world or any of its characters should be allowed to dissolve on authorial whim.” Reminds me of the Nicolas Cage snoozer Next. Audiences felt the final plot device was a colossal cheat. Authors beware; you need faithful readers across multiple works.
Oh My! Handmade: Don’t Be A Fool-Protect Your IP April 1st!
Register some copyrights. Kinda like cleaning out your sinuses with a turkey baster. Painful but necessary.
Shorpy: Steampunk iPad, 1922.
Lovely. Makes my eyes squint just looking at it.
Vimeo: La mano de Nefertiti (Nefertiti’s hand).
ArtDaily: Magnificent prints from 16th-century France on view.
“Refining the mannerist idiom they brought from Italy, these artists evolved the ”School of Fontainebleau” style in which elegance, eroticism, classical erudition and the grotesque are fused in a richly ornamental amalgam.” Good grief, the artist threw everything in this one.
The Atlantic: Evidence Lost—We’re Not Likely to See Editing Like Proust’s in the Future.
Gets lost in the technological aether now. One can use Git to track writing changes, but I doubt any writers will ever be so geeked-out.
Of interest, WP and Tumblr folks.
Writers, in specific. Draftin.com.
ArtDaily: Mars, Venus lose body parts as ex-PM Silvio Berlusconi ‘surgery’ reversed.
I assume done by hand, with a ball-peen hammer.
Many Angles: 12 Google Web Font Alternatives to Helvetica.
If you say so. Check ‘em on the Windows side of the aisle. Some Windows browsers really strip web fonts of any aesthetic appeal.
Cerise Doucede Photographe.
These would be even more fun if they were animated GIFs and the subjects (not the items around them) did some little, tiny repetitive movement. Almost imperceptible. Just to make one look harder, longer. IMHO.
ArtDaily: British Museum presents a major exhibition on Pompeii and Herculaneum.
“After half an hour examining the lives of ordinary Romans at the museum, this graphic evidence of one family’s demise is shocking. The mother is holding her toddler child on her lap as she falls back against the wave of heat, her husband next to her, his body contorted. Another child lies lifeless on the floor nearby.” Striving to show everyday life of Romans, bridging the centuries.
The Luminous Landscape: HDR Into Light.
Subtlety is key. A photographer should look at it and not be sure HDR was used. That’s my gold standard, something I aspire to.
FreeYork: Edouard Martinet’s Metal Sculptures.
Really nice.
iainclaridge.net: Moonbase Alpha.
Ah, yes. I remember it well.
