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KONOS Satellite of Burning Man 2006, copyright GeoEye and Yahoo!. (via )

My mummy found a “Tree Mummy.”

A Cornell University student, via BoingBoing, reports:

A Cornell University student’s research project titled “Schizophrenia, Aging and Art” profiles Louis Wain, an early 20th century artist who began to suffer from schizophrenia late in life. While a commercial artist, he drew lots of comics of cats that appeared in newspapers and children’s books. From the project’s Web site:
During the onset of his disease at 57, Wain continued to paint, draw and sketch cats, but the focus changed from fanciful situations, to focus on the cats themselves.

Characteristic changes in the art began to occur, changes common to schizophrenic artists. Jagged lines of bright color began emanating from his feline subjects. The outlines of the cats became sever and spiky, and their outlines persisted well throughout the sketches, as if they were throwing off energy.

Soon the cats became abstracted, seeming now to be made up of hundreds of small repetitive shapes, coming together in a clashing jangles of color that transform the cat into something resembling an Eastern diety.

The abstraction continued, the cats now being seen as made up by small repeating patterns, almost fractal in nature. Until finally they ceased to resemble cats at all, and became the ultimate abstraction, an indistinct form made up by near symmetrical repeating patterns.

Flight Patterns, via BoingBoing:

The… flight pattern visualizations are the result of experiments leading to the project Celestial Mechanics by Scott Hessels and Gabriel Dunne. FAA data was parsed and plotted using the Processing programming environment. The frames were composited with Adobe After Effects and/or Maya and the final piece was highlighted at SIGGRAPH 2005 in the NVIDIA Immersive Dome Experience.

On the left is Georgia O’Keeffe’s Goat’s Horn with Red, from 1945. On the right is the Firefox logo.

MODERN ART NOTES, Tyler Green’s modern and contemporary art blog, via BoingBoing, reports:

As I read the blog trail on the creation of the Firefox logo, it sounds possible that O’Keeffe was a source. (Seems a little unlikely though — the Hirshhorn hasn’t had that painting out in forever and it’s hardly a well-known O’Keeffe.) Jon Hicks, a designer on the Firefox team that created the logo, has used art as a source before: Hokusai Katsushika’s The Great Wave, for example. (Here’s his blog post on the Firefox logo.)

David Segal, The Washington Post, writes:

You know about the great Live Concert Moment, right? I’m not talking about the kind of show where you leave thinking, “Those guys rule!” and then buy a T-shirt. I’m talking about total-body bliss, a rush so strong it turns brain cells into Jell-O and, for a moment or two, you sort of leave your skin. Art lovers would probably argue that they get the same feeling by looking at a great painting, but they’re fools, and you should ignore them. A good part of what I’m talking about here is sheer volume. A painting can be many things, but it will never make your ears ring.

(more…)

The Associated Press reports:

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Ending a century-old tradition, Eastman Kodak Co. (EK) will soon stop making black-and-white photographic paper, a niche product for fine-art photographers and hobbyists that is rapidly being supplanted by digital-imaging systems.

Kodak said Wednesday it will discontinue production of the paper, specially designed for black-and-white film, at the end of this year. But the world’s biggest film manufacturer will continue to make black-and-white film and chemicals for processing.
(more…)

On BoingBoing, David Pescovitz, writes:

The artwork Untitled (Art History Notes) by John Jordan consists of three pages of notes taken in a University of Kansas class. The piece is being auctioned on eBay right now with a starting bid of $25,000. Who is this John Jordan? Just an inspired college student pulling a Duchampian prank. From a column he wrote for the university’s newspaper:

One can’t easily define art and the dictionary definition leaves much to be desired. But they gave us a definition in modern art history class: Art is what the artist decides it is, and, to a lesser degree, what the art community accepts.

This definition can lead to art that only focuses on art itself — art for art’s sake — and ignores the good things art can do: inspire, cause change, amaze, etc. Nevertheless, it does help define these peculiar pieces as art.

More importantly, this definition lets me, now as an artist, decide what art is. It’s an empowering definition. The numerous classes I have taken, the art I have studied and seen, and the history that I know put me in a position to produce art. So, now I would like to introduce my first work as an artist.

A model presents a creation from Italian fashion academy students for their Spring/Summer 2005 Haute Couture collection, during Rome’s Fashion Week, February 1, 2005. (REUTERS/Max Rossi)

Ed (Gonzo) Stross, shown at his studio on Gratiot in Roseville, is headed to jail for his take on Michelangelo’s “Creation of Man.” (JOHN F. MARTIN/Special to the Free Press)

CHRISTY ARBOSCELLO, (DETRIOT) FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER reports:

He painted Eve as God created her: nude.

And when he finished including the bare-bosomed Biblical first woman, he inscribed the word “love” on the mural that covers the outside wall of his Roseville art studio.

In Ed (Gonzo) Stross’ eyes, his variation on Michelangelo’s “Creation of Man” mural is art.

In 39A District Judge Marco Santia’s eyes, it’s a crime.

Santia ordered jail time, a fine and probation — a sentence that sounds a little harsh to a state senator, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and fellow artists.

Santia ordered Stross, 43, to serve 30 days in jail, do two years’ probation and pay a $500 fine for violating a city sign ordinance. Roseville officials said letters were prohibited on the mural and Eve’s exposed chest is indecent.

Besides jail time and the fee, Stross is to tastefully cover Eve’s breasts before reporting to the Macomb County Jail on Monday morning, and to paint over “love” by May 1.

“Removing the work is the ultimate punishment. The jail time is nothing compared to removing what I painted,” Stross said Thursday.
(more…)

A tag is placed on around a deceased person’s wrist so the body can be identified among hundreds outside a temple in Thaplamu, nearly 100 km (62 miles) north of the Thai resort island of Phuket on December 29, 2004. Stricken countries on the Indian Ocean worked swiftly on Wednesday to bury thousands of bodies as experts warned disease could kill as many people as the 68,000 already dead from the violent crush of Sunday’s tsunami. REUTERS/Adrees Latif

Simone Clarke (L), who plays the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker, adjusts her ballet shoe ribbons as she stands beside a guard before a party held by Britain’s Duke of York for the ballet’s cast at Buckingham Palace in London, December 14, 2004. REUTERS/Ben Gurr/The Times/Pool

The Millau Viaduct, designed by the English architect Lord Norman Foster, crosses the cloud-covered valley of the river Tarn in Millau, December 9, 2004. The Millau Viaduct is composed of seven slender soaring pillars and becomes the highest bridge in the world at 343 meters, creating a direct route between Paris and the Mediterranean coast. The bridge will be inaugurated by French President Chirac at a ceremony December 14. REUTERS/Jean-Philippe Arles

Octopus alert : Spanish Civil Guards stand near a Greenpeace activist dressed as an octopus during a protest in front of the Foreign Ministry in Madrid against bottom trawl fishing.
(AFP/Christophe Simon via )

Marine iguana (Amblyrhynchus cristatus). Rábida Island
It seems to me, though I have no scientific knowledge in this matter, that these animals are the true representative of the saurians that have remained on earth until this day. The marine iguanas are very gentle and delicate in their behaviour, incapable of any aggression toward other animals. On the contrary, they even let others, like birds or lava lizards, climb on their back. They mingle easily with the cormorants, the sea lions, the fur seals, the pelicans, the boobies and others. When the birds are nervous they pick on the iguanas, who do not fight back. The young sea lions mock them and play at pulling the iguanas’ tails, especially while they are swimming. But the marine iguanas just let it go.(via Guardian Unlimited)

In this history-making transatlantic poetic happening, celebrating Allen Ginsberg and his epic poem HOWL, poets will perform at venues in London, Paris, and across the United States. These live poetry readings and poetic theatre pieces will be simultaneously streamed across JANET, Renater, and Internet2 advanced networks. (more…)

Xeni Jardin, BoingBoing, reports:

Check out the cover of this week’s TIME [magazine]. (Insert Beavisoid laugh) If you’re unfamiliar with the term “goatse” — it is the very definition of NSFW. A particularly abhorrent image which has become a sort of sick internet in-joke over the years. Search Google and ye shall find. But only if you’re prepared for irreversible eyeball scarification. Or, for an eyeball- and work-safe answer, try wikipedia’s entry. (Thanks, Brad, and Boogah)

Jon Henley in Paris reports for The [UK] Guardian, via BoingBoing:

There are, at most, 15 of them. Their ages range from 19 to 42, their professions from nurse to window dresser, mason to film director. And in a cave beneath the streets of Paris, they built a subterranean cinema whose discovery this week sent the city’s police into a frenzy.

“They freaked out completely,” Lazar, their spokesman, said happily. “They called in the bomb squad, the sniffer dogs, army security, the anti-terrorist squad, the serious crimes unit. They said it was skinheads or subversives. They got it on to national TV news. They hadn’t a clue.”

To be fair, until recently very few people did have a clue about La Mexicaine de la Perforation, a clandestine cell of “urban explorers” which claims its mission is to “reclaim and transform disused city spaces for the creation of zones of expression for free and independent art”.
(more…)

Jon Henley in Paris reports for the UK Guardian, via BoingBoing:

Police in Paris have discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum-restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital’s chic 16th arrondissement.
(more…)

A work of origami, or paper folding, is shown on display during the origami convention in Tokyo, Friday, Aug. 20, 2004. Showcasing a renaissance in the ancient Japanese art of origami, some of the best paper-folders in the world descended on Tokyo on Friday for a three-day competition and convention to celebrate the artistic possibilities of origami, which is believed to have been used to create sacred ornaments at the Grand Shrines of Ise, the center of Japan’s native shinto religion. (AP Photo/Junji Kurokawa via )

Iggy at it : US pop icon Iggy Pop performs at the three-day music ‘New Milenium festival’ in Santiago de Compostela, northwestern Spain.
(AFP/Miguel Riopa ))

The Internet Archive reports:

The Live music archive just received its 10,000th concert recording! Congratulations and thanks to the etree community and the artists and bands that have a made this a fantastic repository of creative works.
http://www.archive.org/audio
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Name: World Time clock
Designer: Charlotte Van Der Waals, 2001
Manufacturer: Charlotte Van Der Waals, The Netherlands
Materials: Plastic, steel, glass
Dimensions: 2″ long 2″ dia
Price: $70.00
Store: Moss

Simplicity + Functionality - All you need to do is turn this twelve sided clock to change the time zones for each of the cities labeled. The label denotes the 12 o’clock marker.

Wrist Fashion via BoingBoing

Paulo Amorim, The Associated Press (via MSNBC) reports:

Former Beatle says he used cocaine during ‘Pepper’ sessions

Paul McCartney said the Beatles’ song “Got to Get You Into My Life” was directly about marijuana.

LONDON - Paul McCartney says he got no thrill from heroin, but found cocaine more to his liking for a time.
(more…)

A tornado is too close for comfort as Jo Anne Grady of North Platte takes its picture May 29 near Gothenburg.

The North Platte (Nebraska) Telegraph reports:

On a bright, shiny afternoon May 29, Jo Anne and Wes Grady came upon one of nature’s most deadly phenomena: a tornado.
(more…)