The Anachronism

The Anachronism (Full Film) from Anachronism Pictures on Vimeo.

The entire, award-winning, steampunk short film The Anachronism by Matthew Gordon Long has been released on vimeo. It has intrepid Victorian, amateur-biologist children, printmaking specimens and discovering a ship-wrecked robotic squid submarine, which are pretty much a list of my favorite things, in a setting I recognized instantly as Canada's west coast, my former home. What little I caught of the Japanese was disconcerting. The story telling is perfect, right down to the things left untold.

From the film's website

On a sun dappled summer day a science expedition propels two children toward an enigmatic encounter at the edge of their known world. Arriving on an isolated beach, they stumble upon the shipwreck of a robotic squid submarine. The secret it holds within changes their lives forever.

The Anachronism is a Steampunk science-fiction short set in the late nineteenth century. Unfolding with the simplicity of a children's storybook, this lush journey through the landscapes of Canada's West Coast draws inspiration from a whimsical juxtaposition of Pacific Rim cultural references to elaborate an elegant meditation on the courage of curiosity and the haunting effect of childhood trauma. In 2009 the film won six Leo Awards including Best Short Drama.

(via bioephemera)

Nature & Un-nature

Photographer Jason DeMarte has combined natural history museum dioramas with polkadots and pills, unapetizing food with objects and animals, fabric patterns with nature. Sometimes the elements are combined in one image or in forms common in art history: diptych and triptychs. The contrasts hint at commentary about commodities and nature and how we take nature and make the unnatural. Follow the link to peruse his large portfolio. {via The Jealous Curator}


Sheepish Intimation
2007, 60 x 23


Suspended Splendor
2008, 34x23


Fresh Frozen
2009, 23 x 34


Glazed
2008, 50 x 23

Beauty and Mathematics

Mathematician and photographer Nikki Gaziano is a sort of natural historian or archivist of mathematical functions found in the wild. Check out her Found Functions. Mathematicians know that any shape can be expressed as the sum of sinusoids, accourding to Fourier analysis but some functions are just below the surface, requiring no more than the eye to see them. Such simplicity and beauty!



Ah! It's our old friend, the Gaussian distribution in the sky. This function is in a family with the Normal distribution (commonly known as the bell curve) and useful for thinking about standard deviation.



Now, this, to a physicist accustomed to time series analysis is a Bartlett window. See, if you need to break something into a summed series of sinusoids, it is important to break it into equal bits (windows of data) and taper the ends. So, you multiply the bits by something which is low at either end and high in the middle. This is one of those tools in my signal processing toolbox.



This is a hyperbolic paraboloid, or a saddle surface, something like z=x²−y². It has negative Gaussian curvature, which is a fancy way of saying that if you draw a triangle on a saddle the sum of the angles will be less than 180^o (the sum of the angles if the triangle is drawn on a flat sheet of paper). Physicists know that gravitation is geometry and have to think about this sort of mathematical creature when considering general relativity because mass deforms the curvature of spacetime itself.




This function isn't in my mathematical zoo. I don't know its purpose, though I can see how it works. Pretty, isn't it? The fact that I think of functions in terms of "purpose" as opposed to "beauty" distinguishes me as a physicist, rather than a mathematician. But, I really appreciate seeing these Found Functions.

{via today and tomorrow}

Robot Animals

Andrew Chase, Cheetah, (electrical conduit, auto transmission parts, 20-gauge steel and random parts found in an industrial salvage yard, weighs 50 lbs. The cheetah measures 24" high (61cm) and 50" nose to tail (127cm))

I am tempted to make no comment, and leave the robot cheetah running - it is a statement in and of itself. I don't believe the cheetah sculpture really runs, but it is fully articulated and this is a clever use of stop-motion. It is made by Andrew Chase, a "self-employed commercial photographer, furniture maker, welder as well as a highly talented assemblage artist" who likes to make robot animals with bits of cars and plumbing. I think this quixotic activity is genius.

The elephant weighs about 110 lb and took about 100 hours to build. It is made out of auto transmission parts, electrical conduit, plumbing pipe and 20 gauge cold rolled steel. All the joints move and lock in place. Turning a gear on the elephant's side winds a cable around a shaft which raises and lowers the fully articulated trunk. The ears also move back and forth and and fan out.

Giraffe (transmission parts, electrical conduit, plumbing pipe, and sheet steel. A removable crank raises and lowers its neck. 6 ft high)



Apparently, these will be part of a book called the Trionic Morphatractable Engineer.

{via bioephemera and io9}

Two Great Things...

which go great together.

I'm loving Kate McCagg's The Shallow End dress & a gig poster series! Dresses and printmaking - yes. {via PRINTERESTING}


dress & gig poster


dress & gig poster


dress & gig poster


dress & gig poster


dress & gig poster

There's more where these came from.

Meanwhile, Apartment Therapy has paired Lady Gaga outfits with interior design of rooms and Oh Joy! has an entire series called 'this & that', often pairing fashion with decor or other covetable items.

Ceramic Stream-of-Conciousness

This post is about contemporary ceramic art. We have flowered heads, experimental, rococo and occasionally lit anatomy, and gas masks as recurring themes. Honestly.

Peruvian-born sculptor Emil Alzamora works in NY state. On his site you'll find sculptures in other media as well. I love the play between the traditional motifs or methods and the contemporary subjects. Embonpoint in particular reminds me of Julie Moon (who we'll get to). See more in his portfolio.


Mother & Child 5 ceramic 18" x 20" x 12", 2009


Embonpoint ceramic 9" x 7.5" x 7.5" 2007


Toxiconomist ceramic 11"x8"x5", 2008

The gas-mask leads us to American artist Kate MacDowell, whose rococo sculptures with elements from anatomy and natural (or unnatural?) history, combined in unexpected and surreal ways, like this mama bunny in a gas mask:


First and Last Breadth


Solastalgia

According to wikipedia, Solastalgia is a neologism coined by the Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht in 2003 with the first article published on this concept in 2005. It describes a form of psychic or existential distress caused by environmental change, such as mining or climate change.


Venus

I also enjoy the multi-media, light coming from the (ceramic) heart (with exra venus flytraps) in Venus. Follow the link to her portfolio.

Local Toronto artist Julie Moon (now also re-located to NY) is one of my favorites. I have not one, but two brooches she created and met her once at one of the MADE shows at the Gladstone. One of the brooches is an antomically correct white ceramic heart with a floral pattern, like the one illustrated; I love the contrast of the internal organ with the feminine flowers, like those you might expect on fine china. A colleague once said he thought it was pretty but actually it's gross. I think he's wrong, and it's beautiful, but that tension between dainty and blattant is part of the appeal.

She also has the mixed-media, including ceramics with lights, the surreal anatomy and flowered heads like those we see above. Check out her extensive portfolio.

wunderkammer hat

Over a year ago magpie & whiskeyjack commented on the animal-as-headgear trend. Where do you go from there? What's next after wearing animals as hats? Well, you need contemporary-psychedelic fungi-jellyfish-sea anemone ladybugs-cabinets of curiousity on your head. I'm telling you, expect it on the catwalks next.

Check out the portfolio of Chinese artists Zhou Fan.










{via but it does float}