Leonardo da Vinci Saw the World Differently… Thanks to an Eye Disorder, Says a New Scientific Study

in Art | October 24th, 2018

Leonar­do da Vin­ci was a man of many abil­i­ties, so many that he has defined the very image of the man of many abil­i­ties for more than 500 years now. His­to­ry remem­bers him for his impres­sive intel­lec­tu­al feats of sci­ence and engi­neer­ing (as well as the ambi­tion of his to-do lists), but even more so for his works of visu­al art. Most of us get our intro­duc­tion to Leonar­do through images like the Mona Lisa, The Last Sup­per, and Vit­ru­vian Man, not least because they’ve long since become too cul­tur­al­ly promi­nent to avoid. The ques­tion of how on earth he did it nat­u­ral­ly springs from con­tem­pla­tion of Leonar­do’s whole body of work, but also from con­tem­pla­tion of many of the indi­vid­ual pieces that con­sti­tute it. A part of the answer, recent research sug­gests, may well have to do with a dis­abil­i­ty.

“There is now evi­dence that da Vin­ci’s renowned capac­i­ty to repro­duce the three-dimen­sion­al world in paint­ings may have been aid­ed by an eye dis­or­der that allowed him to see in both 2‑D and 3‑D, accord­ing to a study pub­lished Thurs­day in JAMA Opthal­mol­o­gy, a peer-reviewed jour­nal,” writes The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Allyson Chiu.

“Da Vin­ci is believed to have had a con­di­tion called inter­mit­tent exotropia, a form of stra­bis­mus, com­mon­ly referred to as being ‘walleyed’,” a form of an eye mis­align­ment. If he did, it would have ham­pered his depth per­cep­tion enough for him to see a flat­ter world than the one most every­one else does, and thus a world more suit­ed to faith­ful repli­ca­tion on the page or the can­vas.

But the fact Leonar­do that could some­times con­trol his eyes enough to get them into prop­er align­ment, says the study’s author Christo­pher Tyler, would make him “very aware of the 3‑D and 2‑D depth cues and the dif­fer­ence between them.” He came to sus­pect that Leonar­do suf­fered from exotropia — if “suf­fered” is quite the right word here — after notic­ing the align­ment of the eyes in both images con­sid­ered por­traits of the man him­self as well as the por­traits Leonar­do made of oth­ers (on the the­o­ry that the work of an artist will, to an extent, reflect his own char­ac­ter­is­tics). The oph­thal­mo­log­i­cal­ly inclined can judge for them­selves by read­ing Tyler’s paper online. And if oth­er, sim­i­lar stud­ies done in the past also hold up, Leonar­do isn’t alone in art his­to­ry: such fig­ures as Rem­brandt, Picas­so, and Degas have also left behind evi­dence of their pos­si­bly stra­bis­mic vision. We some­times say that artists see the world dif­fer­ent­ly; the great­est artists may take that say­ing to a new lev­el of lit­er­al­ness.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Build Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inge­nious Self-Sup­port­ing Bridge: Renais­sance Inno­va­tions You Can Still Enjoy Today

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Vision­ary Note­books Now Online: Browse 570 Dig­i­tized Pages

The Anatom­i­cal Draw­ings of Renais­sance Man, Leonar­do da Vin­ci

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Bizarre Car­i­ca­tures & Mon­ster Draw­ings

What Leonar­do da Vin­ci Real­ly Looked Like

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Laurie Anderson Creates a Virtual Reality Installation That Takes Viewers on an Unconventional Tour of the Moon

in Art, Science, Technology | October 24th, 2018

Next year, NASA will cel­e­brate the 50th anniver­sary of the moon land­ing, and as part of the cel­e­bra­tion will restore the orig­i­nal beige and green con­trol pan­els from the late 60’s Mis­sion Con­trol. “We want to take you back to July 20, 1969,” says direc­tor of the non-prof­it Space Cen­ter Hous­ton, the offi­cial vis­i­tors cen­ter for the John­son Space Cen­ter. “You’re going to expe­ri­ence the final few moments before Neil Arm­strong and Buzz Aldrin land­ed on the moon for the first time.”

But the agency isn’t only look­ing back to half a cen­tu­ry ago. It’s also look­ing for­ward to launch­ing more moon expe­di­tions—in part­ner­ship with com­mer­cial and inter­na­tion­al agencies—next year. And while those of us who aren’t astro­nauts or bil­lion­aires are unlike­ly to ever see the moon up close, Lau­rie Ander­son, NASA’s first artist-in-res­i­dence, can trans­port view­ers there for the cost of a tick­et to Den­mark.

Start­ing last month and run­ning until Jan­u­ary 2019, the country’s Louisiana Muse­um of Mod­ern Art fea­tures Anderson’s new moon-themed vir­tu­al real­i­ty project as part of its exhi­bi­tion The Moon: From Inner Worlds to Out­er Space.

Cre­at­ed with mul­ti­me­dia artist Hsin-Chien Huang—with whom Ander­son col­lab­o­rat­ed on anoth­er beau­ti­ful VR expe­ri­ence last year—this project trans­ports vis­i­tors to a vir­tu­al moon, where they can view con­stel­la­tions invent­ed by Ander­son, sym­bols of things that have, or that seem poised to, dis­ap­pear: a dinosaur, a polar bear, democ­ra­cy. “All of those things that you think are so sta­ble are so frag­ile, and can be lost,” she says in the video intro­duc­tion to her project above.

So, okay, it’s not the moon Arm­strong and Aldrin plant­ed their country’s flag on in 1969. It’s also pop­u­lat­ed by dinosaurs, birds, and oth­er crea­tures cre­at­ed from a lat­tice­work of DNA mol­e­cules.

Not only did Ander­son and Huang depict a thrilling fan­ta­sy VR moon, but they also cre­at­ed a “’hideous’ ver­sion,” reports CNN, “in which peo­ple had dumped all the radioac­tive mate­r­i­al from Earth. “We did dif­fer­ent phas­es of the moon,” says Ander­son, “dif­fer­ent aspects, looked not just at the roman­ti­cism of the moon but dystopias.” This isn’t her first for­ay into moon-themed art. As artist-in-res­i­dence at NASA since 2003, she has had some time to reflect on the agency’s mis­sion.

After her first year with NASA, she debuted a 90-minute per­for­mance piece called “The End of the Moon,” the sec­ond in a tril­o­gy she described as an “epic poem” about con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can cul­ture. She is not the obvi­ous choice to work for a gov­ern­ment agency. Her work has been fierce­ly crit­i­cal of the country’s wars and its repres­sion on the domes­tic front. “Frankly, I find liv­ing in Amer­i­can cul­ture at the moment real­ly prob­lem­at­ic,” she said back in 2004. “But when I think of NASA, it’s the one thing that feels future-ori­ent­ed in a way that’s inspir­ing.”

Look­ing both back­ward and for­ward, next year’s anniver­sary of the moon land­ing will give us all rea­sons to think about humanity’s past and future in out­er space. Will it include “unbe­liev­able aspi­ra­tions,” as Ander­son mused, like “the green­ing of Mars,” or the dystopi­an dump­ing of radioac­tive waste on the Moon? Giv­en the trash and trea­sure of our cur­rent rela­tion­ship with the cosmos—not to men­tion our own planet—probably both. See more 2‑D excerpts from Ander­son and Huang’s piece in the scene test above, and, if you can score a tick­et, enter the full VR expe­ri­ence at the Louisiana Muse­um of Mod­ern Art.

via @dark_shark

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lau­rie Ander­son Intro­duces Her Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Instal­la­tion That Lets You Fly Mag­i­cal­ly Through Sto­ries

21 Artists Give “Advice to the Young:” Vital Lessons from Lau­rie Ander­son, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco, Pat­ti Smith & More

Lau­rie Anderson’s Top 10 Books to Take to a Desert Island

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Rembrandt’s Masterpiece, The Night Watch, Will Get Restored and You Can Watch It Happen Live, Online

in Art | October 19th, 2018

Many of the world’s most admired paint­ings don’t look the same now as when the artists com­plet­ed them. Time, espe­cial­ly when it adds up to cen­turies and cen­turies, takes its toll on paints and the can­vas­es to which they’re applied, or at least it changes them in ways human­i­ty has­n’t pre­dict­ed or ful­ly under­stood. Take Rem­brandt’s 1642 Mili­tia Com­pa­ny of Dis­trict II under the Com­mand of Cap­tain Frans Ban­ninck Cocq, much bet­ter known as The Night Watch — but only because a lay­er of var­nish on top of the paint dark­ened over time, giv­ing the scene an unin­tend­ed noc­tur­nal qual­i­ty. The var­nish came off in the 1940s, but much more work remains to return Rem­brandt’s mas­ter­piece to the state in which Rem­brandt him­self beheld it.

Start­ing next sum­mer, the Rijksmu­se­um will launch a mul­ti-year, mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar project to give The Night Watch its long-await­ed thor­ough­go­ing restora­tion. (The three restora­tions the paint­ing received in the 20th cen­tu­ry repaired dam­ages inflict­ed by the occa­sion­al vis­i­tor bent, for rea­sons known only to them­selves, on destroy­ing it.)

The insti­tu­tion “plans to first study the paint­ing for about eight months, using new scan­ning tech­nolo­gies that were not avail­able dur­ing pre­vi­ous restora­tions, such as macro X‑ray flu­o­res­cence scan­ning, which can explore dif­fer­ent lay­ers of the paint sur­face to deter­mine what needs to be done.” Through­out the whole process, “a trans­par­ent show­case will be built around the paint­ing, the sci­en­tists and the restor­ers, so that vis­i­tors can view the progress.”

Art con­ser­va­tors have tra­di­tion­al­ly done their metic­u­lous work away from pub­lic eyes, but in the 21st cen­tu­ry pub­lic restora­tion has become, as we now say, a thing. Ear­li­er this month, Art­net’s Janelle Zara wrote about var­i­ous oth­er muse­um projects that have put “a pub­lic face on this nor­mal­ly closed-door pro­fes­sion,” even involv­ing social media plat­forms like Insta­gram in the process. The Rijksmu­se­um, as its direc­tor Taco Dib­bits announces in the video above, will take it a step fur­ther by stream­ing all the restora­tion work online, pro­vid­ing view­ers around the world a clos­er look at the paint­ing than they’ve ever had before, no mat­ter how many times they’ve vis­it­ed the Rijksmu­se­um’s Night Watch Hall in per­son. The first stages of the process will deter­mine how, exact­ly, The Night Watch has changed over the past 376 years. Dur­ing it we’ll no doubt find that Rem­brandt, whose finest work seems to grow rich­er with each exam­i­na­tion, still has a few sur­pris­es in store for us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

300+ Etch­ings by Rem­brandt Now Free Online, Thanks to the Mor­gan Library & Muse­um

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 361,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces by Rem­brandt Includ­ed!

What Makes The Night Watch Rembrandt’s Mas­ter­piece

Flash­mob Recre­ates Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” in a Dutch Shop­ping Mall

The Art of Restor­ing a 400-Year-Old Paint­ing: A Five-Minute Primer

How an Art Con­ser­va­tor Com­plete­ly Restores a Dam­aged Paint­ing: A Short, Med­i­ta­tive Doc­u­men­tary

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 361,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces by Rem­brandt Includ­ed!

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Behold Kurt Vonnegut’s Drawings: Writing is Hard. Art is Pure Pleasure.

in Art, Creativity, Literature | October 19th, 2018

I see hints of blue­prints, tile work, lead­ed-glass win­dows, William Blake, Paul Klee, Saul Stein­berg, Al Hirschfeld, Edward Gorey, my mother’s wasp waist, cats and dogs. I see my father, at age four, forty, and eighty-four, doo­dling his heart out.

—Nanette Von­negut

Car­toon­ist, edu­ca­tor, and neu­rol­o­gy buff Lyn­da Bar­ry believes that doo­dling is good for the cre­ative brain.

In sup­port of that the­o­ry, we sub­mit author Kurt Von­negut, a very con­vinc­ing case.

His daugh­ter, Nanette, notes that he was drawn by the human face—his own and those of oth­ers.

Por­traits include one of his best-known fic­tion­al char­ac­ters, the unsuc­cess­ful sci­ence fic­tion author Kil­go­re Trout. It’s a rev­e­la­tion, espe­cial­ly to those of us who imag­ined Trout as some­thing  clos­er to vet­er­an char­ac­ter actor Sey­mour Cas­sel.

In addi­tion to his humor­ous doo­dles, Von­negut was known to chis­el out a sculp­ture or two on the kitchen counter.

As a Cape Cod year-rounder, he paint­ed seascapes.

He had a one-man show of his felt tip draw­ings in Green­wich Vil­lage in 1980 (“not because my pic­tures were any good but because peo­ple had heard of me”).

But the doo­dles are what cap­tured the pub­lic’s imag­i­na­tion, from the illus­tra­tions of Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons to his numer­ous self por­traits.

The son and grand­son of archi­tects, Von­negut pre­ferred to think of him­self less as an artist than as a “pic­ture design­er.” Work­ing on a nov­el was a “night­mare,” but draw­ing was pure plea­sure.

Per­fec­tion was not the goal. Von­negut real­ized a sym­pa­thet­ic com­mu­ni­ty would spring up around an artist strug­gling with­in his lim­i­ta­tions, and act­ed accord­ing­ly.

To that end, he rec­om­mend­ed that peo­ple prac­tice art “no mat­ter how bad­ly because it’s known to make a soul grow.”

 

See a book of 145 Von­negut draw­ings curat­ed by his daugh­ter, Nanette Von­negut here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Maps Out the Uni­ver­sal Shapes of Our Favorite Sto­ries

22-Year-Old P.O.W. Kurt Von­negut Writes Home from World War II: “I’ll Be Damned If It Was Worth It”

Kurt Von­negut Offers 8 Tips on How to Write Good Short Sto­ries (and Amus­ing­ly Graphs the Shapes Those Sto­ries Can Take)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 15 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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130,000 Photographs by Andy Warhol Are Now Available Online, Courtesy of Stanford University

in Art, Photography | October 15th, 2018

(Image cred­it: © The Andy Warhol Foun­da­tion for the Visu­al Arts, Inc.)

It’s tak­en for grant­ed that every brand or ris­ing star must estab­lish and main­tain a con­stant pres­ence on var­i­ous social net­works. Indeed, the social media star—an enti­ty famous sole­ly for col­lect­ing fol­low­ers and post­ing glam­orous pho­tos with themed commentary—may seem like a phe­nom­e­non that could only exist in the inter­net age, though writ­ers like J.G. Bal­lard saw such things com­ing decades ago.

But before obses­sive pho­tog­ra­phy sat­u­rat­ed the dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment, Andy Warhol grasped the medium’s cen­tral impor­tance in the doc­u­men­ta­tion of every­day life. It just so hap­pened that his every­day life was filled with celebri­ty actors, mod­els, artists, and musi­cians.

Warhol, writes James D. Ellis at Light Stalk­ing, “was the pro­to-hip­ster,” a rest­less moth always on the hunt for a flame. “Much like our con­tem­po­rary cul­ture, Warhol found it dif­fi­cult to sit and do noth­ing. He had to leave his house or Fac­to­ry and expe­ri­ence his imme­di­ate sur­round­ings.”

(Image cred­it: © The Andy Warhol Foun­da­tion for the Visu­al Arts, Inc.)

And he had to pho­to­graph every one of those expe­ri­ences. Warhol used his Polaroids and 35mm the way we use iPhones. A court case in the ear­ly nineties once took up the ques­tion of whether Warhol’s pho­tographs could be con­sid­ered fine art, but the artist him­self, writes Pati­na Lee at Wide­walls, “was obvi­ous­ly unde­cid­ed about their val­ue and mean­ing,” say­ing “A pic­ture means I know where I was every minute. That’s why I take pic­tures. It’s a visu­al diary.”

Warhol, Lee writes, “took his cam­era with him wher­ev­er he went, doc­u­ment­ing prac­ti­cal­ly every­thing, the high­est high class and the low­est trash (lit­er­al­ly, he took pho­tos of trash cans and of what they con­tained)…. This inclu­sive­ness is what made his pho­to­graph­ic under­tak­ings bor­der between art and mere obses­sive col­lect­ing, or as peo­ple like to cyn­i­cal­ly notice, con­sum­ing the life around him.” His con­sump­tion, and pho­tographs of trash, comes to us as trea­sure, an exten­sive record of Warhol’s New York in the sev­en­ties and eight­ies.

(Image cred­it: © The Andy Warhol Foun­da­tion for the Visu­al Arts, Inc.)

Stan­ford University’s Can­tor Arts Cen­ter and Stan­ford Libraries have col­lab­o­rat­ed to make their Warhol pho­to archives avail­able to the pub­lic—pho­tos snapped “at dis­cos, din­ner par­ties, flea mar­kets, and wrestling match­es. Friends, boyfriends, busi­ness asso­ciates, socialites, celebri­ties, and passers­by.” This “trove of 3,600 con­tact sheets fea­tur­ing 130,000 pho­to­graph­ic expo­sures” doc­u­ments Warhol’s dai­ly life from 1976 until his death in 1987 and includes can­did pho­tos of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Tru­man Capote, Bian­ca Jag­ger, Jim­my Carter, Martha Gra­ham, Kei­th Har­ing, Deb­bie Har­ry, Grace Jones, Jack­ie Kennedy, Liza Minel­li, Dol­ly Par­ton, Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor, and more.

The archive, writes San­dra Fed­er for Stan­ford News, “is the most com­plete col­lec­tion of the artist’s black-and-white pho­tog­ra­phy ever made avail­able to the pub­lic.” It was acquired by the Can­tor in 2014 from the Andy Warhol Foun­da­tion for the Visu­al Arts. Giv­en that these are all con­tact sheets, nav­i­gat­ing the col­lect­ing can be a lit­tle bewil­der­ing. The Can­tor has pro­vid­ed a num­ber of tools to help. Click on Con­tact Sheets here to explore all 3,600+ con­tact sheets. Click Neg­a­tives to see indi­vid­ual frames, like those of Kei­th Har­ing, Warhol, and Jean-Michel Basquiat at the top, Lou Reed fur­ther up, and Annie Lei­bovitz above. Or start brows­ing through pic­tures orga­nized by theme here.

(Image cred­it: © The Andy Warhol Foun­da­tion for the Visu­al Arts, Inc.)

Dig deep, and you’ll find the odd­est things, like Andy Warhol run­ning in Cen­tral Park for char­i­ty with Grace Jones and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Gor­don Parks. What­ev­er Andy did, who­ev­er he hap­pened to do it with—and a stranger cast of char­ac­ters you will not find—it’s all in this huge pho­to archive some­where.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Case for Andy Warhol in Three Min­utes

Short Film Takes You Inside the Recov­ery of Andy Warhol’s Lost Com­put­er Art

Roy Licht­en­stein and Andy Warhol Demys­ti­fy Their Pop Art in Vin­tage 1966 Film

Watch Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests of Three Female Mus­es: Nico, Edie Sedg­wick & Mary Woronov

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Learn Anatomy Through a Pictorial History of James Bond 007

in Art, Biology, Comics/Cartoons, Film, Science | October 15th, 2018

Remem­ber the scene in Tomor­row Nev­er Dies when sexy dou­ble agent Wai Lin hand­cuffs James Bond to the show­er and leaves him there?

Alter­nate­ly, remem­ber “Table 9” from anatomist Bernard Siegfried Albi­nus’ 1749 Tab­u­lae sceleti et mus­cu­lo­rum cor­poris humani?

Kri­o­ta Will­berg, an edu­ca­tor, mas­sage ther­a­pist at Memo­r­i­al Sloan Ket­ter­ing Can­cer Cen­ter, and author of Draw Stronger: Self-Care For Car­toon­ists and Oth­er Visu­al Artists, is suf­fi­cient­ly steeped in both Bond and Albi­nus to iden­ti­fy strik­ing visu­al sim­i­lar­i­ties.

That show­er scene is just one icon­ic moment that Will­berg includ­ed in her mini-com­ic, Pic­to­r­i­al Anato­my of 007.

Agent Bond’s sar­to­r­i­al sense is a cru­cial aspect of his appeal, but Will­berg, a Bond fan who’s seen every film in the canon at least five times, digs below that cel­e­brat­ed sur­face, peel­ing back skin to expose the struc­tures that lie beneath.

Sean Connery’s Bond exhibits a vet­er­an artist’s mod­el’s still­ness wait­ing for the right time to make his move against Dr. No’s “eight-legged assas­sin.” Even before Will­berg got involved, it was an excel­lent show­case for his pecs, delta, and ster­n­ocleit­o­mas­toid mus­cles.

Leav­ing her flayed Bonds in their cin­e­mat­ic set­tings are a way of pay­ing trib­ute to the antique anatom­i­cal illus­tra­tions Will­berg admires for their dynamism:

…sit­ting in a chair, tak­ing a stroll, hold­ing its skin or organs out of the way so that the read­er can get a bet­ter look at deep­er struc­tures. Some of the cadav­ers are very flir­ty. The pic­tures remind us that we are the organs we see on the page. They do stuff! 

The New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine select­ed Will­berg as its first Artist in Res­i­dence, because of the way she explores the inter­sec­tions between body sci­ences and artis­tic prac­tices. (Oth­er projects include an intri­cate needle­point X‑Ray of her own root canal and Stitchin’ Time!, a fic­tion­al encounter in which Aulus Cor­nelius Cel­sus (c. 25 BCE – c. 50 CE), author of  De Med­i­c­i­na, and sur­geon Aelius Galenus (129  – c. 200 CE) team up to repair a dis­em­bow­eled glad­i­a­tor.

Is there a squea­mish bone in this artist’s body?

All signs point to no.

Asked to pick a favorite Bond movie, she names Goldfin­ger for the mythol­o­gy con­cern­ing the infa­mous scene where­in a beau­ti­ful woman is paint­ed gold, but also 2006’s Casi­no Royale for keep­ing the tor­ture scene from the book:

I didn’t think they’d have the balls! Sor­ry! Poor taste but I couldn’t resist. Although Tim­o­thy Dal­ton phys­i­cal­ly resem­bled Bond as described in the books, most of the movies make Bond out to be smarter than Flem­ing wrote him. I think Judy Dench called Daniel Craig, Casi­no Royale’s Bond, a “blunt instru­ment” which is pret­ty much how he’s writ­ten. He’s tough and lucky and that’s why he’s sur­vived. Plus the machete fight is great. 

Some­times peo­ple get too pris­sy about the body. I am meat and liv­er and sausage and so are you. Your body is inescapable while you live. You should get to know it. Think about it in dif­fer­ent con­texts. It’s fun!

When From Rus­sia With Love’s Rosa Klebb punch­es mas­ter assas­sin, Red Grant, in the stom­ach, she is squish­ing a liv­ing liv­er through liv­ing abdom­i­nal mus­cles.

Hard copies of Kri­o­ta Willberg’s anato­my-based comics, includ­ing Pic­to­r­i­al Anato­my of 007, are avail­able from Bird­cage Bot­tom Books.

Lis­ten to an hour-long inter­view with Comics Alter­na­tive in which Will­berg dis­cuss­es her New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine res­i­den­cy, anatom­i­cal research, and the ways in which humor informs her approach here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Spell­bind­ing Art of Human Anato­my: From the Renais­sance to Our Mod­ern Times

Down­load the Sub­lime Anato­my Draw­ings of Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Avail­able Online, or in a Great iPad App

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est script, Fawn­book, is avail­able in a dig­i­tal edi­tion from Indie The­ater Now.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Buckminster Fuller Creates Striking Posters of His Own Inventions

in Architecture, Art, Design | October 12th, 2018


In addi­tion to his for­mi­da­ble body of work in archi­tec­ture, design, and the­o­ry of the kind the world had nev­er known before, Buck­min­ster Fuller also knew how to pro­mote him­self. Some­times this meant appear­ing on late-night new-age talk shows, but at its core it meant com­ing up with ideas that would imme­di­ate­ly “read” as rev­o­lu­tion­ary to any­one who saw them in action. But how to put them before the eyes of some­one who has­n’t had the chance to see a geo­des­ic dome, a Dymax­ion House and Car, or even a Geodome 4 tent in real life?

The ascent of graph­ic design in the 20th cen­tu­ry, a cen­tu­ry Fuller saw begin and lived through most of, pro­vid­ed one promis­ing answer: posters. The ones you see here show off “Fuller’s most famous inven­tions, with line draw­ings from his patents super­im­posed over a pho­to­graph of the thing itself,” writes Fast Com­pa­ny’s Katharine Schwab.

“While they look like some­thing Fuller afi­ciona­dos might have cre­at­ed after the man’s death to cel­e­brate his work, Fuller actu­al­ly cre­at­ed them in part­ner­ship with the gal­lerist Carl Sol­way near the end of his career.”

These posters, “strik­ing with their two-lay­er design, are Fuller’s visu­al homage to his own genius — and an attempt to bring what he believed were world-chang­ing utopi­an con­cepts to the mass­es.” They’re also now on dis­play at the Edward Cel­la Art + Archi­tec­ture in Los Ange­les, whose exhi­bi­tion “R. Buck­min­ster Fuller: Inven­tions and Mod­els” runs until Novem­ber 2nd. “Fuller’s objects and prints func­tion not only as mod­els of the math­e­mat­i­cal and geo­met­ric prop­er­ties under­ly­ing their con­struc­tion but also as ele­gant works of art,” says the gallery’s site. “As such, the works rep­re­sent the hybrid­i­ty of Fuller’s prac­tice, and his lega­cy across the fields of art, design, sci­ence, and engi­neer­ing.”

You can see more of Fuller’s posters, which depict and visu­al­ly explain the struc­tures of such inven­tions as the geo­des­ic dome and Dymax­ion Car, of course, but also less­er-known cre­ations like a “Fly­’s Eye” dome cov­ered in bub­ble win­dows (indi­vid­u­al­ly swap­pable for solar pan­els), a sub­mersible for off­shore drilling, and a row­boat with a body reduced to two thin “nee­dles,” at Design­boom. Edward Cel­la Art + Archi­tec­ture has also made the posters avail­able for pur­chase at $7,000 apiece. That price might seem in con­tra­dic­tion with Fuller’s utopi­an ideals about uni­ver­sal acces­si­bil­i­ty through sheer low cost, but then, who could look at these and call them any­thing but works of art?

via Curbed

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Three-Minute Intro­duc­tion to Buck­min­ster Fuller, One of the 20th Century’s Most Pro­duc­tive Design Vision­ar­ies

Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Map of the World: The Inno­va­tion that Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Map Design (1943)

The Life & Times of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Geo­des­ic Dome: A Doc­u­men­tary

Buck­min­ster Fuller Cre­ates an Ani­mat­ed Visu­al­iza­tion of Human Pop­u­la­tion Growth from 1000 B.C.E. to 1965

Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Col­lab­o­ra­tion with The North Face Cul­mi­nates with a New Geo­des­ic Dome Tent, the Geodome 4

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The 10 Commandments of Chindōgu, the Japanese Art of Creating Unusually Useless Inventions

in Art, Comedy, Technology | October 11th, 2018

Back in the 1990s I’d often run across vol­umes of the Unuse­less Japan­ese Inven­tions series at book­stores. Each one fea­tures about a hun­dred osten­si­bly real Japan­ese devices, pho­tographed and described with a dis­arm­ing straight­for­ward­ness, that mash up oth­er con­sumer prod­ucts in out­ward­ly bizarre ways: chop­sticks whose attached minia­ture elec­tric fan cools ramen noo­dles en route to the mouth; a plas­tic zebra cross­ing to unroll and lay across a street at the walk­er’s con­ve­nience; an invert­ed umbrel­la attached to a portable tank for rain­wa­ter col­lec­tion on the go. Such things, at once plau­si­ble and implau­si­ble, turn out to have their own word in the Japan­ese lan­guage: chindōgu (珍道具), or “curi­ous tool.”

“There’s an essence to chindōgu that can’t be ignored,” writes Michael Richey at Tofugu, where you can view an exten­sive gallery of exam­ples. “They need to be use­ful, but only just so. Some­thing peo­ple could use, but prob­a­bly won’t because of shame,” a famous­ly pow­er­ful force in Japan­ese soci­ety.

They also adhere to a set of prin­ci­ples laid down by Ken­ji Kawaka­mi, for­mer edi­tor of the coun­try house­wife-tar­get­ed mag­a­zine Mail Order Life, who first revealed chindōgu to Japan by show­ing off his pro­to­types in the back pages. These ten com­mand­ments of chindōgu are as fol­lows:

  1. A Chindōgu Can­not be for Real Use — They must be, from a prac­ti­cal point of view, use­less.
  2. A Chindōgu Must Exist — A Chindōgu must be some­thing that you can actu­al­ly hold, even if you aren’t going to use it.
  3. There must be the Spir­it of Anar­chy in Every Chindōgu — Chindōgu inven­tions rep­re­sent the free­dom to be (almost) use­less and chal­lenge the his­tor­i­cal need for use­ful­ness.
  4. Chindōgu Tools are for Every­day Life — Chindōgu must be use­ful (or use­less) to every­one around the world for every­day life.
  5. Chindōgu are Not for Sale — Chindōgu can­not be sold, as this would go against the spir­it of the art form.
  6. Humor is Not the Sole Rea­son for Cre­at­ing a Chindōgu — Even if Chindōgu are inher­ent­ly quirky and hilar­i­ous, the main rea­son they are cre­at­ed is for prob­lem solv­ing.
  7. Chindōgu are Not Pro­pa­gan­da — Chindōgu are, how­ev­er, inno­cent and made with good inten­tions. They should only be cre­at­ed to be used (or not used).
  8. Chindōgu are Nev­er Taboo — Chindōgu must adhere to society’s basic stan­dards.
  9.  Chindōgu Can­not be Patent­ed — Chindōgu can­not be copy­right­ed or patent­ed, and are made to be shared with the rest of the world.
  10. Chindōgu Are With­out Prej­u­dice — Every­one should have an equal chance to enjoy every Chindōgu.

These prin­ci­ples result­ed in the kind of inven­tions that drew great fas­ci­na­tion and amuse­ment in their home coun­try — you can watch a short Japan­ese tele­vi­sion broad­cast show­ing Kawaka­mi demon­strate a few chindōgu above — but not only there. The Unuse­less Japan­ese Inven­tions books came out in the West at just the right time, a his­tor­i­cal moment that saw Japan’s image shift from that of a fear­some inno­va­tor and eco­nom­ic pow­er­house to that of an inward-look­ing but often charm­ing nation of obses­sives and eccentrics. Of course such peo­ple, so West­ern think­ing went, would come up with fash­ion­able ear­rings that dou­ble as earplugs, a cup hold­er that slots into a jack­et pock­et, and shoes with toe-mount­ed brooms and dust­pans.

Kawaka­mi has con­tin­ued to invent and exhib­it chindōgu in recent years, and even now his work remains as ana­log as ever. “There’s always some process in ana­log prod­ucts, and these process­es them­selves can be their pur­pose,” he told the Japan Times in a 2001 inter­view. “If you look at dig­i­tal prod­ucts, they all iso­late peo­ple and leave them in their own small world, depriv­ing them of the joy of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with oth­ers… I can’t deny that they make life more excit­ing and con­ve­nient, but they also make human rela­tion­ships more shal­low and super­fi­cial.” Those wise words look wis­er all the time — but then, you’d expect that degree of insight into 21st-cen­tu­ry life from the man who may well have invent­ed the self­ie stick.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Tsun­doku,” the Japan­ese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the Eng­lish Lan­guage

“Inemuri,” the Japan­ese Art of Tak­ing Pow­er Naps at Work, on the Sub­way, and Oth­er Pub­lic Places

An 82-Year-Old Japan­ese Audio­phile Search­es for the Best Sound by Installing His Own Elec­tric Util­i­ty Pole in His Yard

Dis­cov­er the Japan­ese Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Col­lect­ing Rocks That Look Like Human Faces

The Muse­um of Fail­ure: A Liv­ing Shrine to New Coke, the Ford Edsel, Google Glass & Oth­er Epic Cor­po­rate Fails

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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