Today, photographs are taken from devices in our pockets, then beamed to a worldwide audience in a matter of moments. At the dawn of photography, the equipment was large and cumbersome, developing glass plates to reveal images was an intense process, and color, of course, didn’t exist. To take photos required an expedition of many to haul all this equipment, often at great expense. Simple black and white photos involved lots of labor to produce.

So add to this a great invention – shooting in color, before the invention of color film. This was accomplished by shooting three images, one quickly after the other, each with a red, blue and green filter over the lens. After the film was developed, they could be projected using three magic lanterns, also with red, green and blue filters, overlapping to recreate the color image. This is the screen plate color process. Prokudin-Gorskii had studied the technology in Germany, but invented his own camera and projectors for his photographs.

From 1909 to 1915, before the invention of color film, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii won the support of Tsar Nicholas II to set out on an expedition to photograph the Russian Empire. By 1918, the Empire had fallen, and Prokudin-Gorskii was living in Paris. In 1948, after his death, the Library of Congress bought the entire collection from Prokudin-Gorskii’s heirs.

Here are some examples of the collection. To view the entire collection, visit The Library of Congress – The Empire that was Russia, The Prokudin-Gorskii Photographic Record Recreated.

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From the moment we began pumping electricity out to homes and businesses, we chose a completely utilitarian path. The designs for cables and towers were great invention and engineering. But what they looked like was solely based on use, not the people who had to live with them. How would a mass of cables look against the sky? How would electrical poles line the streets? How would electrical pylons break across the landscape?

A design competition was held by Landsnet, the national power company of Iceland, in cooperation with the Association of Icelandic Architects. Choi and Shine Architects proposed a new design for Icelandic electrical pylons so beautiful, yet so natural, you wonder why we didn’t build them this way to start with. And they cost no more than what we’ve built before.

These electrical pylons are in human form, the human arms and hands holding the electrical lines they carry. The human figures can be posed in different ways depending on the landscape they live on. Figures on the sides of mountains can appear to be climbing. Scaling down, they may appear to carefully side step, keeping balance. When two figures pass each other, they can look back to each other, even sharing glances. These human forms and poses are created using duplicated components and scaffolds similar to those used in traditional pylons.

“Like the statues of Easter Island, it is envisioned that these one hundred and fifty foot tall, modern caryatids will take on a quiet authority, belonging to their landscape yet serving the people, silently transporting electricity across all terrain, day and night, sunshine or snow.”

All images and designs © 2010 Choi+Shine Architects, LLC. All rights reserved.

Read more

• Telegraph UK – Chain of human pylons planned for Iceland
• bustler – Choi+Shine wins BSA Unbuilt Architecture Award for Land of Giants
• Wired – Iceland Considers Humanoid Pylon Design to Carry Electricity

Kurt Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse Five as his own science fiction take on his experiences as a prisoner of war in World War II. Letters of Note prints his letters home after being released from his German camp, Schlachthof Fünf – Slaughterhouse Five.

In December of 1944, whilst behind enemy lines during the Rhineland Campaign, Private Kurt Vonnegut was captured by Wehrmacht troops and subsequently became a prisoner of war. A month later, Vonnegut and his fellow POWs reached a Dresden work camp where they were imprisoned in an underground slaughterhouse known by German soldiers as Schlachthof Fünf (Slaughterhouse Five). The next month – February – the subterranean nature of the prison saved their lives during the highly controversial and devastating bombing of Dresden, the aftermath of which Vonnegut and the remaining survivors helped to clear up.

Now interviews Kurt Vonnegut about his experience in World War II. “People always fail to recognize when they are happy.”

HowardFair goes to Germany and visits the site of Slaughterhouse Five.

I had no idea what Vonnegut had gone through. The letters are amazing and touching.

Read scans of Kurt Vonnegut’s original letters at Letters of Note.

Get the books of Kurt Vonnegut.

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1. Medici Bank Minister Pleads “No More Art, Please” in Newly Discovered Letters

In live sand animation, sand is lit from underneath using a lightbox and manipulated by an artist in real time to create images. This performance can be projected for a live audience or filmed.

Many commercials have been popping up lately which use sand animation. Who are these artists? There are four well-known sand animators that create much of this work.

Ferenc Cakó claims to have created the artform, and has created promos for Animal Planet.

Ilana Yahav has performed in many commercials, including for Qwest.

Joe Castillo’s best known work is for The Passion of the Christ.

Kseniya Simonova is a YouTube sensation. Her winning performance from Ukraine’s Got Talent has been viewed over 3 million times.

Visit the official sites of Ferenc Cakó, Ilana Yahav, Joe Castillo and Kseniya Simonova.

Related posts:

1. Performance – Live Animation

This great animation, by the artist Blu, is drawn and erased frame by frame on real walls and buildings in Baden and Buenos Aires.

Visit the artist Blu’s web site.

Related posts:

1. Performance – Live Animation
2. Reverse Graffiti
3. Graffiti Artists at the Bethlehem Wall

In these recently uncovered fake letters, imagined to have come from the archives of the fake University of Italy School of the Arts at Florence (UISAF), the Minister of Medici Bank, Francesco Sassetti, pleads with the head of the Medici Family and defacto ruler of the Florentine Republic, Lorenzo de’ Medici, to stop spending the bank’s and family’s holdings on the arts.
Available exclusively on Art Here and Now.

Dear Lorenzo,
Though your family has a long history of supporting artists, because of the recent financial and political difficulties, I must request that you consider abandoning this legacy of extravagance.
As I have been balancing this year’s expenditures, I can’t help but notice the exorbitant amounts it requires to not only pay for artworks, but to also house and feed these artists. Michelangelo Buonarroti has been living in your household for five years, in excess of $90,000 per year [currency adjusted to equivelant U.S. Dollars -ed.]. Surely he could rent his own apartment, and you could simply purchase any artwork from him you liked once completed? Must we be responsible for an artist’s entire livelihood and every material need?

We must protect the assets of The Bank and the Medici trust, for the bank’s members and the family, both current and future. These creative works and artist supports are a drain on these financial resources, deprive these members from larger profits, and serve no purpose except the pursuit of notoriety.

I plead with you. We must stop this reckless spending. The livelihoods of bank stakeholders and future Medicis depend on it.

Sincerely,
Francesco Sassetti, Minister – Medici Bank

Dear Francesco,
Your bold pleading is certainly brave. Perhaps you have a death wish.
Ah, ha, just a joke!
You have a long history with me, and my father before me. Only from someone so dedicated to our cause would these words be tolerated. Yet I am sure you are not the first to think them.

Even if I accepted your argument that art was wasteful, you act as though we aren’t losing money in more ridiculous, costly ways. May I ask, how many horses do you own? How many rooms are in your house? How many banquets have you held this year? How many guests have you fed? I’m sure you like to be questioned about your expenses as much as anyone. I mention this purely for example, not from any plan to deprive you of your lifestyle.

In contrast to The Bank’s and Family’s complete holdings, housing a few artists and funding their work is a handful of pebbles freed from a mountain. We could indeed just buy completed works, but if so, then where would the artist live and work to make them? Michelangelo’s last work took a year to complete. The Dome took almost a lifetime. By what means should they live to make this work we would later buy? If they took to the trades to sustain themselves, then when would they have time to make this work?

I find your logic faulty.
-Lorenzo

From: Francesco Sassetti, Minister – Medici Bank
To: Lorenzo de’ Medici, The Magnificent

Dear Lorenzo,
It is my wish to eliminate all waste, regardless of size, so that we may all realize our maximum profits and potential. You must agree that over time, these types of expenditures throughout your history add up to far more than pebbles from a mountain.
You righteously question my horses, even though we have never once questioned The Giraffe? How much did the buildings, heating, feeding and men cost for that one? And to what end?

It is not my concern, and should not be yours, where, when and how these artists produce the work. Men must choose their paths. If they cannot succeed to secure a living from one trade, they must pursue another. If the quality of their work cannot attract enough buyers to support more in the future, then perhaps their work is not of a quality worth making.

Please invest this money in important endeavors, instead of supporting those who cannot support themselves.

Sincerely,
Francesco Sassetti, Minister – Medici Bank

Francesco,

Enough. Go no further.

I am the highest power of this family, the Republic of Florence and places beyond.
In this area, we will continue in our family’s tradition.
I owe you no explanation or justification. As our Minister, you will do as I command you.

For future clarity, to end this discussion, and out of some respect of your long service, I will conclude with these thoughts.

You have gall to demand we not support those who in their trade cannot support themselves,
when for all of your life we have done the same for you.
Do you think counting our money is more important work than creating The Basilica?

When we are all dead and buried, very few people will remember you and I.

They will remember Michelangelo and Leonardo. They will remember Sandro and Brunelleschi.
They will remember Florence as the place those artists lived. And they will remember us, if at all, as the people who helped them.

From vague, unsure memory they may believe we were kings. In some ways we are kings, because we are wealthy and powerful.
And like kings, we have some duty to our country and its people. Through learning, engineering and art, this duty is fulfilled, bettering the people, and making Florence a destination for others who seek an enlightened life.

Without this impulse, our money and power amount to nothing.
The Bank is not important and will not be remembered. The money’s only real worth is the lasting affect it has on our country and our world.

Midas follows all the others:
Turns to gold the things he touches.
Where’s the joy in owning treasure,
If it doesn’t give you pleasure?
And where’s the sweet taste for a man
Who only feels his thirst forever?
Who’d be happy, let him be so:
Nothing’s sure about tomorrow.

The Medicis will one day be gone, but the art will remain forever.

- Lorenzo de’ Medici

Read more on The Medici Family, Lorenzo de’ Medici, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence, Filippo Brunelleschi, Sandro Botticelli, Francesco Sassetti and Leonardo Da Vinci.

Heidelberg University in Germany has solved the long asked question “who is the Mona Lisa?”

In margin notes of a book by Cicero, Florentine city official Agostino Vespucci, a friend of Leonardo Da Vinci, Mona Lisa was identifiend as Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, the wife of a wealthy silk merchant.

More from The New York Times and ABC News.

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Very beautiful, from Dark Roasted Blend.

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When you watch cats, birds and flying squirrels jump, land and glide from place to place without a second thought, rarely injured, with great grace and efficiency, most people think this is simply encoded into their species. This ability comes from their animal form, nothing more.

Some people though see this movement as something to learn. David Belle, a French martial artist and gymnast, along with childhood friends, developed a series of tactics and movements known as Parkour, “the art of displacement.” In a similar way to martial arts, which defines movement to harm or defend against an attacker, Parkour practices techniques to flee, as quickly and efficiently as possible. The best way to get the idea is to watch a video:

Yamakasi and Free Running have their roots in Parkour, but in addition to fleeing with speed and efficiency, they add aesthetics and self improvement to their purpose. In practice, this means Yamakasi and Free Running may add flips, turns and other technically inefficient movements if they are beautiful to see or perform. Another difference is Parkour’s stance against martial arts-like competitions, feeling Parkour is not a competitive practice but one of cooperation and self improvement. Some other forms do not hold this stance. All three forms are amazing to watch, both visually and athletically, like dance and many types of martial arts.

Practitioners of Parkour are known as traceur (men) or traceuse (women). Movements can be dangerous, but the practice has the philosophy être et durer (to be and to last), intending to avoid short and long term injuries (which are inefficient, and efficiency is the goal of movement.)

The artform has spread worldwide and has been featured in films and documentaries.

Here is a documentary on Yamakasi:
Learn more: Parkour, David Belle, Yamakasi, and Free Running

Sites: Parkour.net, Yamakasi Korea, Mad3run Parkour team, and American Parkour

Films featuring Parkour, Yamakasi or Free Running:
District B13, co-starring David Belle; Casino Royale; The Bourne Ultimatum; and the region 2-only (won’t work in US/Canada DVD players) documentary Jump London. (The films Yamakasi and Les Fils Du Vent are also out there but many are disappointed with the amount of Yamakasi featured, in addition to simply being bad films.)

Travel to France (Travelocity) or learn French (Rosetta Stone).

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When you paint images not with spray cans or pigment, but instead by cleaning dirt and pollution from public places in artistic patterns – painting the image by removing dirt – this is reverse graffiti. This defaces no surface, and in fact starts to clean what a city should have cleaned to begin with. In order to remove the image, you don’t sandblast or get out the toxic cleaners. Instead you just finish cleaning the surface. The whole surface returns to its original bright clean color. Just like someone writing “Wash Me!” into the grime on a dirty car windshield might shame someone into actually washing their car just to get rid of the message – so reverse graffiti artists cause cities to clean where they should have already.

In São Paulo Brazil, artist Alexandre Orion:

In Paris, corporate reverse graffiti (for the Electronic Arts game Burnout, but through a beautifully designed guerrilla campaign at Kah Ra Shin):

Related books: Graffiti Brasil and Street World: Urban Culture and Art from Five Continents.

Travel to Brazil or France (Travelocity).

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2. Graffiti Animation Runs Across Walls
3. Brazilian and Russian Street Art

There are only certain places that blossom in that certain way that creates Bohemia. Crumbling and eroding but more glistening and alive than filmed dreams. Some generations there isn’t one, they grow slowly until them bloom, only one exists in the world every 30-50 years. New York in 1974 was the last one. Though I am far away, I know today it is Berlin. I have written about my own Berlin desires before.

But fame and notoriety are knocking which is the Nero of Bohemia. When I read things like

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2185464,00.html
and
http://imomus.livejournal.com/320945.html
and
even back in 2002 http://nymag.com/nymetro/travel/features/winter2002/n_7902/

you know it will only be so much longer before transmuting into Aspen.

Culture is quicker now. Perhaps the blogosphere is like Miracle Grow to those special creative epicenters, growing new ones quick and large, but add too much and the roots are burned. Maybe as soon as Brad Pitt starts a new global film festival there and the pedals begin to soften and sag, the next Bohemia will have started to bud.

I hope it is in my lifetime. Or maybe the Warhol moment has passed.

There seems to be more related at http://cultures.gadling.com/2007/08/14/bohemian-berlin-nearly-dead/ and http://www.gadling.com/2007/08/14/across-northern-europe-why-bother-going-to-berlin/

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I was born after the 1960s. What I know is only from stories and grainy video, comprised of many heroic and striking moments, modern stories not unlike King Arthur’s Court or Hamlet. The difference is, these are modern stories from not that long ago, and you can see their effects clearly all around us.

When I think of the ’60s, I see beaded curtains opening onto a California beach. William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan play to smoky, turtle-necked fans creaking in wooden chairs. I hear Janis Joplin and Odetta. And I see violence, bombs off our shores, great leaders slain one after another, causing uprising until the Golden Gate summer, where before it ends, the environmental movement, the peace movement, the civil rights movement and much more are finally planted to take slow root.

The problem is, that’s not how it happened. It’s no more what happened than Shakespeare’s Richard II. There is some element of truth to it, but the characters and plots were refined to tell a story and teach great lessons. Joseph Campbell said that we don’t have modern myths to hold onto. The myth of 1967 tells otherwise.

The biggest cultural reflection of this budding myth bloomed as The Beatles. They obviously influenced lots of people, and helped carry the message right into now.

Across the Universe attempts to bring the totality of this starry eyed story into one place and tell it in the language of the myth itself — as a multicolored, trippy, musical journey about love and war from Liverpool to the East Village. It attempts to bring all these different people and places into one archetypal legend.

Julie Taymor has a long and respected history of creating experimental, very original works of art in many disciplines. She gained greater notoriety directing The Lion King on Broadway, and later the films Titus and Frida. You can see hints of some daring and beautiful ideas in Across the Universe, and I can only imagine what would have happened if the film took an even more experimental direction (not that it looks at all like a typical Hollywood film). But this ever pressing need to compromise between experimental daring and loosely knit clichéd myth ends up making a pretty bad movie. I can also only imagine the endless boardroom, film executive and Beatles meetings that destined it to compromise from the beginning.

Despite that, I’m very glad she made it.

I would rather an artist strive for something spectacular and fail than simply try something mediocre and succeed with no lasting affect.

Beyond the movie itself, there is a larger current – building art that looks at this hugely influential time beyond the bounds of history, in the language of archetypes and legend. The Beatles are beginning to appear frequently in strange places they would have never appeared before, like Cirque Du Soleil’s Love. It hints at what inventive combinations and new stories will be created as modern music reaches the end of its copyright, moves out of heavily controlled, money-motivated restrictions and into the culture’s hands, into the public domain. It’s one step of a giant cultural mash up that’s only just starting.

Learn more:
The Beats, Summer of Love, Joseph Campbell, Julie Taymor, NYT – Film Has Two Versions; Only One Is Julie Taymor’s

Buy something related:
work by Julie Taymor, Joseph Campbell, The Beatles, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Odetta or This Book is Free (Beneath the Diamond Sky)

Related posts:

1. The Rare Director’s Cut – Alan Smithee, Across the Universe, Blade Runner
2. Endurance Art – Six Hours is Too Long
3. Thank you Richard Florida for giving The Bohemians so much power. Now please tell us – when will we ever benefit from it?

Since the New York Times opened its complete archive on the web (previously it was only available as a web subscription), many people have been scouring the site for interesting history.

The first mention of Picasso comes on May 19, 1912, with this:

…it is to be regretted that this unquestionably talented artist, who is practically unknown to the British public, should now make his debut with a series of childish, not to say imbecile, scribbles that are of no interest either as independent works of art or steps toward achieving complete work….they are just fumbling, incompetent scribbles of no consequence whatsoever.

Remember that next time you get a bad review.

Read the 1912 story.

Get works by or about Pablo Picasso.

Beautiful street art in Moscow and Brazil (not sure where). From Funny Picture Crazy.

Brasilian street art
and
Moscow street art

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1. Reverse Graffiti

Over the past few weeks, Elevator Repair Service has been in Portland and Seattle performing Gatz, their performance which involves the complete six hour reading of The Great Gatsby. I intended to go. But I just can’t bring myself to do it.

I’m up for any strange art thing, I mean I’m one of the odd kinds of people who would even hear “six hour performance” and seriously think about it. But you know, I have things to do. Laundry, walking in the park, making art, writing this blog, seeing other art, eating, etc. If I can’t bring myself to go to this thing, who does go to it? If I had gone, maybe I could have interviewed people in the audience and asked them.

There are other ridiculously long performances out there, like Philadelphia’s Brat Productions, which tours with a 24 hour marathon performance of Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano. The play isn’t 24 hours long, they just finish and start over again and again for 24 hours straight. I almost saw that one too (a long time ago), but I just couldn’t do it.

There are also abnormally long films. I love Peter Greenaway but have never brought myself to sit and watch The Falls because of it’s mere 3 hours 5 minutes running time, which really isn’t that long. (There’s a legend that the original cut and showing of the film was 6 hours long, but I can find no record of that online.) There are other truly long films, like The Longest Most Meaningless Movie in the World, running at 48 hours long. This seems more like ambiance and you could come and go if you wanted, drink heavily, take a nap, go clubbing with friends, then return where you left off.

And of course, opera is notoriously long. Get there at 6, leave at 11:30.

Certainly it is an amazing feat for performers, and acts to strengthen and train their focus and abilities. You could say the same for audiences, that it allows them to test their endurance, after which a three hour movie doesn’t seem so bad. For the ambient work, where you can come and go, eat, drink, talk with friends, the endurance isn’t really there. It’s incidental art that doesn’t require your full focus, and if a performer messes up or needs a break, nothing is broken.

In a time where most people find it hard enough to go see a two hour performance, busy with other things in their life, and someone like me won’t go who isn’t that busy and has devoted their life to art of various strange sorts — who and how many show up for a six hour performance? Why do they go?

Read more: Peter Greenaway’s The Falls, interview with Brat Productions about the 24 hour Bald Soprano, and a review of Elevator Repair Service’s Gatz.

Get: the work of Peter Greenaway, The Great Gatsby, long operas by Richard Wagner, great strange plays by Eugene Ionesco

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