Month: March 2016

Nicolas

Photographer Unknown, “Nicolas”

“Think of how exposure to a foreign culture can be both a bracing and a reassuring experience. What starts as a heightened sensitivity to differences in attire, smells, appearances, customs, rules, norms, and laws yields to the recognition that we are similar to our fellow human beings in numerous fundamental ways. All people find meaning in the world, love their families, enjoy the company of friends, teach one another things of value, and work together in groups. In my view, recognizing this common humanity makes it possible for all of us to lead grander and more virtuous lives.”
― Nicholas A. Christakis, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society 

John William Waterhouse

John William Waterhouse, “Ulysses and the Sirens”, 1891, National Gallery of Victoria

Ulysses and the Sirens, 1891, by John William Waterhouse was purchased for the National Gallery of Victoria by Sir Hubert Herkomer, for £1200, in June 1891. The picture had recently been exhibited at the Royal Academy in London and had been reviewed at length in the British press. The critical interest centred on the artist’s interpretation of Homer’s Odyssey. At the forefront, seemingly, of most critics’ minds was one question: how far had Waterhouse stretched his artistic licence?

Once the Ulysses reached Australian shores, Melbourne critics were quick to pounce on Waterhouse’s wayward interpretation of the Greek legend, holding the picture as evidence of the Gallery Trustees’ misuse of public funds. The critics were passionate in questioning the literal accuracy of the picture, and were insistent that there had been foul play with respect to its acquisition.

Man Himself is Music

Photograper Unknown, (Man Himself is Music)

“Is the beauty of the Whole really enhanced by our agony? And is the Whole really beautiful? And what is beauty? Throughout all his existence man has been striving to hear the music of the spheres, and has seemed to himself once and again to catch some phrase of it, or even a hint of the whole form of it. Yet he can never be sure that he has truly heard it, nor even that there is any such perfect music at all to be heard. Inevitably so, for if it exists, it is not for him in his littleness. But one thing is certain. Man himself, at the very least, is music, a brave theme that makes music also of its vast accompaniment, its matrix of storms and stars. Man himself in his degree is eternally a beauty in the eternal form of things. It is very good to have been man. And so we may go forward together with laughter in our hearts, and peace, thankful for the past, and for our own courage. For we shall make after all a fair conclusion to this brief music that is man.”
― Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men

 

Breaking Waves

Hypersonic and Plebeian Design, “Breaking Wave”, Biogen Idec Headquarters

To create its monumental, generative sculptures and installations, New York City-based design studio Hypersonic has collaborated with robotics firms including Amorphic Robotic Works, theoretical physicists like Janna Levin, and tech-art studio Sosolimited. Its work with the latter studio and Plebian Design, for example, led to the creation of Patterned By Nature a giant, ribbon-like hanging sculpture of LCD glass tiles that snakes its way down five stories of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences’ Nature Research Center.

For their most recent project, Breaking Wave, Hypersonic once again teamed up with Plebian Design to create a standalone system of 804 orange spheres which rise and fall in a concerted visual representation of how, within the perceived chaos of data sets, natural patterns eventually reveal themselves.

Like Patterned By Nature before it, Breaking Wave adheres to a set of qualities common throughout Hypersonic’s history of tech-monuments: it’s a sculpture whose activity is autonomous and follows patterns programmed from sets of data derived from nature. Housed in the lobby of world-class biotechnology company Biogen-Idec’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it stands as the all-engrossing centerpiece of the biotechnology-leading institution.

If you’d like to visit in person, Breaking Wave runs Monday through Friday, 8am to 8pm at 255 Binney St. in Cambridge, MA. The sculpture is viewable from the street, or from inside the lobby.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)