In Fläsch, the winegrowers Martha and Daniel Gantenbein took advantage of the success of their Pinot Noir to replace their steel containers with oak barrels. They commissioned the architects Bearth & Deplazes with the design and construction of a new fermentation hall for twelve new containers. A wine-tasting lounge was to be located one floor [...]
Archive | July 29, 2009
Games of Chance – D. Graham Burnett
In the earliest laboratory notebooks, the wall-mounted mechanism shown in this image was simply called “the pinball machine.” In the published output of the research program of which it was a part, it went by the more dignified appellation Random Mechanical Cascade, yielding a catchy acronym: RMC. Around the lab, however, the device was known affectionately as Murphy, since if anything could go wrong, it would.
In a way, of course, this was exactly the point: the whole system—the nine thousand polystyrene balls dropping through a pegboard of 330 precisely cantilevered nylon pins, the real-time photoelectric counters tallying (by LED readout) the segmented heaps forming below, the perennially balky bucket-conveyor for resetting an experimental run—had all been painstakingly constructed and calibrated in order first to exemplify, and then to defy, what the Victorian statistician Francis Galton dubbed the “Law of Frequency of Error."
Roll Playing – Jeff Dolven
Sixty-four pages into his 1930 manifesto of rhythmic experimentation, New Musical Resources, the composer and music theorist Henry Cowell made a passing suggestion about how his more extravagant ideas might be realized: “Some of the rhythms developed through the present acoustical investigation could not be played by any living performer; but these highly engrossing rhythmical complexes could easily be cut on a player piano roll.”1 As far as we know, only one man took him up on the proposal, an expat American card-carrying communist jazz trumpeter and polyrhythmic prodigy named Conlon Nancarrow. But this man made it his life’s work.
“Autopsy Of A Large Animal On A Unknown Planet.
Artists: Laguna and Axel_void
Location: Almagro, Spain
Size: 6,5 meters x 20 meters
Seen In Bydgoszcz City, Poland
“9 guys, 350 cans, 7 days of work. pain tone boier kome chylo proembrion sainer bezt pener with association “Stumilowy Las”
More here.
Seen On The Steets Of Genoa
From Nicola:
“Faber and the old town (Fabrizio De Andrè 1940-1999) was a day of music, dance and art in a neighborhood of the historical center of Genoa, the old Jewish ghetto, a place where nowaday immigrants, prostitutes, victims of slave trade, transsexuals, pushers and drug consumers live and work. The bet was to involve the most citizens, tourists, people of every race and colour, as possible to pull down, at least for a day, all the prejudices and for starting a process of tolerance and cohabitation. I was involved by a friend to be part of the event (organized by Comunità di San Benedetto al Porto, Comune di Genova, Fondazione De Andrè e Radio Popolare) and I realized a series of mixed technique panels for a street art installation.
Photographer:Astrid Fornetti.
“The Heaviest Stone to Carry”: Seen In Chicago’s River North
Artist: tip toe.
Seen On The Streets Of San Quintin
From Jetro
“These are some pictures from San Quintin, Baja California Mexico. Its 6 hours to the south from Tijuana. In this territory, there’s an interesting identity phenomenon because of the increasing indigen population that came from Mexico’s southern states (especially Oaxaca) to work for the agriculture industry. All of the young people and the new generations are in a high vulnerability state of identity because they re not keeping their parents traditions and they don’t relate with the non-indigen people. At the same time they feel ashamed because of their origins. These youth are waiting and looking for new symbols and elements to fulfill a new identity path or a new ideal icons to bring out a sense of pride inside their culture. With the spectatives of an interesting hybrid result, I really believe that this is an opportunity to intervene and give positive signs and provocative symbols in public spaces.’
Intensely Dutch in Sydney
I’m in Sydney for a few days as a family member was passing through town and needed a place to stay. The problem was that he may have swine flu or at least a bad case of regular flu. Either way, I wasn’t hanging around to catch any flu! So it was a great excuse to jump in the car and drive.
Today I went to the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney to see Intensely Dutch, which looks at Dutch artists after world war 2, including artists from the CoBrA movement. Artists include Karel Appel, Gerrit Benner, Bram Bogart, Constant, Corneille, Edgar Fernhout, Willem de Kooning, Theo Kuijpers, Lucebert, Jaap Nanninga, Wim Oepts, Jan Riske, Jan J Schoonhoven, Bram van Velde, and Jaap Wagemaker.
Karel Appel
Ontmoeting (Encounter) 1951
oil on canvas, 130 x 97.5 cm
Collection: Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (on loan to Centraal Museum,
Utrecht) © Karel Appel Foundation/Van Lennep Producties, Amsterdam
It was a smallish exhibition, but one that got me excited. I had just walked around the whole Art Gallery of NSW and was seriously bored (apart from a few favorite paintings that I have seen countless times). It was Intensely Dutch that got me wagging my art tail and I was probably dribbling in front of a few of the works too.
I love line, paint, texture, and childlike abandon in painting.. and this exhibition has them all. I didn’t take my camera with me and the art catalog had sold out, so I can’t show some of the works that I liked most. While Karel Appel has never been on my top ten list of painters, I would give up my car and widescreen TV to own a few of his drawings!
Lucebert
Dierentemmer (Animal tamer) 1959
oil on canvas, 88 x 128.5 cm
Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam © the estate of the artist
If you’re a lover of paint you’ll love Intensely Dutch. If I had to complain about something I would say that it needed 50 more works hanging! Oh, and running out of catalogs is no way to run a business. It’s on until the 23rd of August in Sydney at the AGNSW.