Teukgyeong, ca. 1981

The teukgyeong (single stone chime) is a Confucian religious court instrument related to the p'yon-gyong(stone chimes), a set of 16 L-shaped slabs of jade stone. The counterpart of the bell chimes, it has played an essential role in court ceremonies since the 12th century. The stone slabs are the same size and shape but vary in thickness so that each has a different pitch. The thickest produces the highest pitch while the thinnest one, the lowest.

more here and here and here and here, and, in addition, here

Ray Troll's EvolvoVision

{Harper's Weekly Review says, "Sixty-eight percent of Americans believe in the devil, but only 48 percent believe that God created the universe; 28 percent believe in evolution." What those numbers mean is most Americans are nuts. What they taught us, what most of us still believe deep down, is that simply showing someone they're nuts should do it, should incapacitate them. But what I'm trying real hard to get across to those innocents is, no. Craziness has just as much survival value as sanity, in the appropriate conditions. Are these the appropriate conditions?
How about forging a kind of meta-sanity that transcends unimaginative horseshit? Can we do that? Please? Can we hurry? ta-da! Enter Mr. Troll.}

recent addition to the
TREE OF LIFE
web project:

Paris 1607

Marilyn Manson in a hat that *belongs* to someone else.
M. Manson has some trenchant comments on things.

Paolo Mietto of Padua University and his colleagues examined three tracks of footprints on the Roccamonfina volcano in southern Italy, known to locals as 'devils' trails'.
"Because they occur in volcanic rock, they have always been considered supernatural," says Mietto.

our Homo ancestors

Meton's approximation is off by just 2 hours 4.4 minutes! And it's bettered only by comparing 4,131 months to 334 years. Now consider the successive fractions (number of months divided by the corresponding number of years): 12/1, 25/2, 37/3, 99/8, 136/11, 235/19, 4,131/334. Those fractions, in turn, can be written in the following manner:



Such expressions are known as continued fractions. They can be used in designing gear trains, including those that might be found in a planetarium to simulate the relative motion of the sun and moon around Earth.

The so-called Antikythera mechanism, apparently constructed in the first century B.C., recovered in 1900 from a Mediterranean shipwreck, and analyzed just a few decades ago, is one of the most striking examples of such engineering in the ancient world. It contained a system of gears whose gear ratios corresponded to well-known astronomical cycles involving the moon, including the Metonic cycle. The mechanism was clearly a type of analog computer, using fixed gear ratios to make calculations displayed as pointer readings on a dial.

The Antikythera mechanism -- the sole survivor of what was undoubtedly a long tradition of astronomical automata -- served primarily as an elegant simulation of the heavens. It was a tabletop monument to Greek and Alexandrian astronomy. Such ingenious devices also illuminated the intimate link between mathematics and astronomy, especially the role of number in astronomical prediction.

link to Ivars Peterson's Math Trek at Science News Online furnished by the astonishing mimi smartypants who also shares with the world the 'anal' game, wherein cars on the road have their given names prefixed with 'anal'. Anal Cruiser, Anal Explorer, Anal Excursion, Anal Fiesta...

Sinus Persi

Babylon Yards

Modern Cities

The Marsh Arabs

{what is, possibly, the worst crime of Saddam, is, aside from its propaganda value, meaningless to most of the thugs involved in the current attack-program, because it's something they themselves would have done.}


The Marsh Arabs by Wilfred Thesiger

A Reed Shaken By The Wind by Gavin Maxwell

Guardian UK news story,May 19, 2001

The Koninklijke Bibliotheek online

One Hundred Highlights of
including
The Book of Hours of Philip The Good

Penthesileia

Zeeatlas (Frankrijk, 1538)

Matisse spent the summer of 1905 in a French fishing village at the foot of the eastern Pyrenees (Collioure).
There he was introduced to Gauguin's friend Daniel de Monfreid. Gauguin had died in 1903 and his Tahitian
canvases, still unknown, were stored in Monfreid's house. Matisse was able to spend much time viewing
them. That summer, working closely with Andre Derain, he "broke the link between the painter's colors and
nature..."

Aesthetic Norms of the Twentieth Century in Words and Pictures

from a search for Jan Toorop

{I went looking for a Rimbaud translation for a new friend, and found this, translated and posted by Holly Tannen, who may well get auto da fe'd because of this link, which statement either measures my megalomaniacal puffed-uppedness, or the insane swamp-creatures my life is surrounded by now. I remember her from years ago and the dulcimers, the three string viol, the Golden Toad, Bob Thomas, Wil Scarlet, Lance Sterling, and a whole bunch of really cool people who were older than me a little and at least a little smarter not to mention a whole lot more educated about Important Things. it's nice to see her irreverent self presented here.}

Holly Tannen Mistress of Folklore

http://www.artmagick.com/images/p99999/redon/redon21.jpg

Andy Foulds Design
Abstract Expressionism. Maze. Magic. Talent. Craft. Genius.

I'm a guy in a basement in Vancouver, pecking away at the same coffee-stained keyboard I wrote PATTERN RECOGNITION on, and am here, in fact, as part of some vague personal process of deliberate dePynchonization.

If there's a mystery here, it's that some aspect of the rather ordinary person I know myself to be (and whom you would certainly know me to be as well, were we both to stay here long enough) is somehow able to write novels. I am not the Man Behind The Curtain. The mystery is that I do, apparently, somehow contain one.

Gibson 03.09.03

As a money saving device, the seal on the flag is frequently represented solely in red outline.

Citizen Band Potawatomie, from a thorough listing of native American Tribal Flags

early English playing cards with a good links list

playing card somewhat incomplete and didactic FAQ

US Playing Card Company well done Brief History of

Langley Inspiration

The fragments of antiquity which now exist in our museums are by and large Roman copies of the lost Greek originals. In 1500 even they were still buried waiting to be excavated. The existing Roman frescoes survived because the disastrous eruption of the volcano in Pompeii sealed them under a ton of lava.
So Venus had not been honored with a portrait for a thousand years. Botticelli painted several works dedicated of the goddess. Most important after La Primavera is the Birth or Rebirth of Venus. The nude female body - forbidden territory for a painter - is shown by Botticelli with his trademark elongation. Venus is reborn in Italy bringing new hopes to mankind. The stunning results send shockwaves throughout aristocratic Europe.
Mythology soon became a justification for Renaissance and Post-Renaissance artists to paint with a new freedom and boldness denied them by Christianity. The explicit moral commandments of Christianity, above all, humility meant that important human emotions and attitudes could hardly be glorified in properly Christian terms. Since Europe had by no means renounced the values of pagan nobility - honor, pride, vengeance, self-assertion, magnanimity - these values found a haven in the representation of classical antiquity.
But before Botticelli could develop these themes, the fanatical Christian monk Savanarola rose to power in Florence with his fire and brimstone sermons. In his legendary bonfires of the vanities he urged the citizens to burn all pagan works. His deadly campaign to stamp out luxury and vice almost destroyed the greatest city of art the Europe has known. Luckily for art, the monk proved too fanatical even for his own followers, and much too much for the Pope, who ordered him excommunicated and then burnt in the town square.
Poor Botticelli never recovered his nerve. He spent his last years painting rather unpleasant allegories like The Calumny of Apples, or Christian apocalyptic pictures, i.e. the Mystical Nativity and the Mystical Crucifixion.

James Phelan, Forbidden Visions: Mythology in Art, in the industrious, the so-deeply-embedded-as-to-be-synonymous-with-art-online, the standard by which all others are to be judged, artcyclopedia May, 2000

bergerfoundation has an impressive wealth of images and organization but the images themselves are poorly reproduced. abc gallery has a wealth of images, yet also...
National Gallery, London, has good reproduction values but the image is small
this Italian site, mezzo mondo, is like that too, and the pioneering Web Gallery of Art still has 90's lo-fi, but they have this Maynard Keenanish portrait of Mr. Bonfire
here's a photo of a statue of Savonarola in his hoodie. and the same statue. and to cleanse the palate after all that blackened book, a different statue.

{where am I at with all that? none of your business.}