Cat in a Box

Surprise Content (1909)
Sal Meijer


'Just Fit' by Natsuo Ikegmai



"White Cat" (1919) by M.C. Escher


Allison Cole (via we say meow)


'Cat in a Box' by Carol Justin


'Sharing a bos' by Nicole Wong

Visualizing Hairballs & Beauty in Excess

I'm sorry to have neglected this blog of late. I've been busy with a number of things, so I thought I'd bring you a metaphorical miscellany of things which have been occupying my mind. One of the things that has been taking my time has been working on visualization of scientific data. The intersection of art and scienc being close to my heart, I attended a workshop with scientists, graphic designers, journalists and other communicators, and as such have been thinking about new ways of visualizing both for understanding and for explaing results. Complex networks of data are known as 'hairballs' (for, I think, obvious reasons). There are a number of oper-source packages for dealing with plotting and representing such monsters. Many of these programs are Python-based. As a result, I've been trying to teach myself some Python. I found this data visualization of the history of the code I'm trying to learn so I can make more exciting and effective visualizations an ironic thing to stumble upon. It's also quite pretty with all the overlapping, translucent layers:

code_swarm - Python from Michael Ogawa on Vimeo.

(via bioephemera)

Check out similar visualizations at code swarm "an experiment in organic software visualization."

Speaking of layers of overlapping, translucent layers, I found this "Photo Opportunities" project by Swiss artist Corinne Vionnet quite beautiful. She found and combined hundreds of perhaps cliché tourist photos of famous locations and layered them to create something impressionistic and beautiful:







Swiss-based architect and programmer Michael Hansmey employs algrithms as design tools. In 'Subdivision: Ornamented Columns' he used iterative subdivision as a means of creating elaborately ornamented columns with millions of facets, beginning with an ideal Doric column. The layers are laser-cut from 1mm sheet to create these 2.7 m glorious columns. Read about his process here. I just imagine what Gaudí would do with such technology at his disposal.




(I saw this in a couple of places - most recently via Thersic.)

Background as Foreground

The unicorn in captivity, Coral Silverman, gouache on paper,
14" x 20", 2007

Here are a couple of artists who have taken recognizable, historic textiles (or whole textile forms), reinterpreted them, while playing with what is the background and what is the message.

Coral Silverman produced a whole series based on the well-known medieval Unicorn Tapestries - her 'Unicorn Travesties' to look at our disreguard for nature, comsumption, litering and disposable culture. To the left is her The Unicorn in Captivity,
gouache on paper (14" x 20") 2007 which you can compare with The Unicorn in Captivity, ca. 1495–1505, South Netherlandish, wool warp, wool, silk, silver, and gilt wefts; 12 ft. 1 in. x 8 ft. 3 in. (368 x 252 cm), property of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr., 1937 (37.80.5).

"In my Unicorn Travesties series I seek to explore the disregard we currently hold for the environment in the context of historical European iconography. Taking the medieval Unicorn Tapestries as my source, I have re-imagined their scenes as set within the modern world. Visually, I am very interested in the flat floral patterning that makes up the backgrounds of some of the tapestries. In many of my pieces I extract floral elements from their “mille fleur” backgrounds, subtly inserting within the works various pieces of urban refuse, such as cigarette butts, soda cans, smashed televisions, etc. I am using it as an ironic metaphor for the American way of life— a comment on our consumption, our disposable way of living, and ultimately our implication in the destruction of the environment."

American Spirit Blue
gouache on paper (9" x 9"), 2008

Flora Pink I
gouache on paper (14" x 20") 2007

Flora Black I
gouache on paper (14" x 20") 2007

The Met site includes other tapestries in the series, a discussion of the symbolism in the flora (the medieval viewer would be able to read these signs as easily as we can see that carving on a tree, a chain link fence, litter and the cultural appropriation inherent in American Spirit are all critiques of our culture), and the making of the tapestries. Both it, and Coral Silverman's site are worth a visit.

{via Cabinet of Curiosities, including the Silverman quotation}

Beth Katleman has taken that ubiquitous, 18th century, monochromatic French textile, Toile de Jouy, both fabric and wallpaper, and reimagined it in full, three-dimensional, kitchy yet creepy present day ceramics.

Folly, (detail), 2010
Porcelain, wire, steel rods and heat-shrink tubing
69 x 96 x 11 inches

"Three-dimensional porcelain 'wallpaper' hovers just off the turquoise wall, as part of a site specific installation at the Jane Hartsook Gallery. The overall installation is 192 x 108 x 11 inches."

Folly, (detail, elf, snail, Sacre Couer), 2010
Porcelain, wire, heat-shrink tubing
15 x 10 x 9 inches

Folly, (detail, flower girl on rock), 2010
Porcelain, wire, heat-shrink tubing
17 x 11 x 7 inches

"Babies scale a rocky precipice with varying degrees of success. A flower girl communes with a nimble lamb."

Folly, (detail, lost duck), 2010
Porcelain, wire, heat-shrink tubing
16 x 16 x 11 inches

"A toothless boy struggles to keep his pants up, a bridesmaid enjoys the view of the Arc de Triomphe from a bridge, reindeer graze and a hapless duckling tumbles off a waterfall."

While you visit Katleman's site, be sure to look at her other work, called "doll-sized rococo theaters of murder and domestic mayhem," by the New York Times. I mean, who could resist?

{via Apartment Therapy}

Animated Science of the Deep

Earlier this week was the 50th anniversary of the first manned dive to the deepest point on Earth: the Marianas Trench, south of Japan, near Guam, along the edge of the Philipine Basin. Wired magazine posted this wonderful, animated documentary. They credit the interview to Victor Ozols, and video to Roman Wolter. Featuring the audio recording of an interview with Jacques Piccard, who made the dive, the stylish animation never sacrifices science substance for aesthetics. Information is clearly and elegantly portrayed in illustrations, sufficiently schematic to be easily absorbed, yet really lovely and engaging. If all science museum exhibits were this good, I'd never escape the museum.

Also, I am reminded once again how much I want to go to the seafloor. I was once on a research cruise aboard the R/V Atlantis and got to see ALVIN, but sadly, no dives were included during that trip.

(cross-posted to my other blog)

straight lines

I recently returned from Vancouver Island, where I previously lived for three years. January was the toughest month for me, when I lived there. Not only was it possible to get rain for 40 days straight, the frequent, thick fog made me claustrophobic. In fact, I often feared I would get lost, walking home in the dark and the fog, for about 500 m along a road. Once I did 'get lost'. I mean, I knew I had left work walking in a straight line, and I knew I was not yet home, but I had no clue where I was. I knew sooner or later I would fall in the ditch.

This delightful animation recounts how my fears were justified. We people have no clue how to go in a straight line in the absence of reference points!

A Mystery: Why Can't We Walk Straight? from NPR on Vimeo.

(via swissmiss)

The rest of the year was generally extraordinarily lovely, with perfect weather from February, when the crocuses bloomed, through September, when the rain started.

less terrifying than Krampus

A hilarious tale of Christmas horror by Ryan Iverson, inspired by Warner Herzog. {via bioephemera, via iO9}.

The Snow Queen

illustration by Miss Clara for La Reine des glaces Hans Christian Andersen, ed. Gautier-Languereau


Andersen, Hans Christian. Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales. Milo Winter, illustrator. Valdemar Paulsen, translator. Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, [c1916].


The Snow Queen by Debra McFarlane
The Pink Fairy Book
etching with aquatint
190mmx140mm


Art direction by Marcel Wanders and photography by Nicole Marnati. (via)


Illustration by Edmund Dulac for The Snow Queen By Hans Christian Andersen

You can read an annotated version of the Snow Queen Fairytale on Sur La Lune Fairytales. I watched Black Swan recently, which made me wonder about why the Snow Queen is depicted with geese (not swans?). Perhaps it was the deceptive mirrors which reminded me of the Snow Queen. I was thinking about her connection to the White Queen in C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The White Queen, who has a wintry realm (as the Snow Queen), also drives a sleigh and kidnaps a boy. In the Narnia books, she is later revealed as a descendant of Adam's first wife Lilith, made from earth like him, rather than a rib. Lilith claimed to be his equal and refused to submit to him. She appears in Jewish mythology. Her history is messy (from ancient Sumeria, through the Pre-Rafealites, wiccans, to modern feminist theory), debated and beyond my ken. Some claim her to be a daimon, succubus, a night spirit, screech owl or a conversely subverted mother goddess. C.S. Lewis' Lilith is half-djinn half-giantess. Like Lilith, the White Queen is the first to rebel, which makes for a particularly interesting, if loaded villain.

A young girl must travel to Svalbard (like The Snow Queen's Spitsbergen) to rescue a kidnapped boy, as in The Snow Queen, in The Golden Compass (or Northern Lights) by Philip Pullman. Incidentally, Pullman was no fan of the Narnia books. He lambastes him for sexism, racism, manipulative use of Christian imagery and rejection of sexuality (particularly in women like Susan, the adolescent who wants to grow up, but this ties clearly to Lilith as well). I read the entire Chronicles of Narnia seven times before the age of 12, and while I did think Lewis a good story teller - in fact, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was what first inspired me to read in English - as I grew older I did think that some of Lewis' ideas and theology insidiously seeped into my subconscious while I was unaware. The idea of not allowing a young woman to mature, or to embrace her sexuality, brings us full circle back to Black Swan. I wonder if I would have been a different sort of young person had I read His Dark Materials, rather than The Chronicles of Narnia.

One of the things that does attract me to The Snow Queen, is that for once, a little girl rescues a little boy.