Ever or Not.

Few days ago I was visited by a fascinating creature. One beautiful, quite large dragonfly flew in through my window, for a while flew around my room in all directions and then it found its way out.

During this close encounter, I realized how powerful dragonflies look because of the way they fly. Unlike other insects, they can fly backwards, straight up or down, suddenly change direction and  hover around just like a helicopter.

As I dag into reading about the order Odonata, I came upon this striking data: in the process of flying, dragonflies flap their wings mere 30 times a minute while mosquitoes or houseflies, need to flap their wings 600 to 1000 times a minute respectively.

Lucien Bull, "Films stereoscopiques"

I especially like the symbolism behind them which is very different in each culture. For instance, in most of Europe they are associated with evil and the Devil , while in Japan they are a symbol of self realization, courage, change and strength. I prefer the Japanese symbolism as I think it suits them better.

While exploring the subject, I came across a movie which is now on my "want to watch" list:  "Trollsländor Med Fåglar Och Orm / Dragonflies with birds and snake" by Wolfgang Lehmann.

Stills from the movie "Dragonflies with Birds and Snake"

© Wolfgang Lehmann

The film is a meditation about life and death with high visual stimulants. Wolfgang Lehmann used images from science films and combined them with his own footage to form a collage-like surrealistic nature film. In the film, three different images are combined in strict rhythm with occasional shifts to the combination of six different images. This creates a hypnotic, pulsating rhythm of visual data and as the movie is silent, this gives each viewer a chance to "see" the music inside itself based on the received visual inputs.

I would love to see this 60-minutes silent mosaic in a movie theater.

The song which I played in my head with the 2 minutes trailer:

Faraway does not exist.

I love when I'm attracted to somebody's art and I've already seen this person's work somewhere before and had been equally fascinated by it, but without knowing that it's the work of the same person. This usually means that this somebody possesses wild curiosity and keeps exploring different ways to express itself. The person is Dan Goods. Last year I wrote about his "eCloud" installation .

Aerogel from Dan Goods on Vimeo.

Note: It kinda feels nice to watch the video with the following song in the background:

This  installation that I came across now is actually something which he had done much before the eCloud. Besides being impressed by its name - " For those who dream, faraway does not exist", I was mostly impressed by the material that was used for it.

via aerogel.org

Aerogels are the world's lightest solid materials with 95 to 99 % air in volume. They are derived from gels but with gas in their pores instead of liquid. There are different kinds of aerogels. The one that Dan Goods used, which instantly overwhelms you with its blueish transparent appearance, is called silica aerogel. One of its extreme properties is superinsulation:

via aerogel.org

And even though they can protect a delicate flower from a blow torch, silica aerogels are very fragile because of its low density and can be crushed with the kind of strength you use to crush a potato chip. At least that's how I imagine it from what I've read about them.

At the moment, aerogels are being used in Mars Exploration Mission which includes two rovers: Spirit and Opportunity. The electronics of these two little robotic guys are protected from the heat on Mars with the help of impressive insulating abilities of silica gel. Also, silica aerogel is being used in Stardust Mission for collecting samples of comet dust.

Wow, right?

I would love having this material in my possession so I could take some photos and experiment with it.

Thank you Dan Goods, for introducing me to it.

Nudes per second.

In 1882. it was possible to record 12 consecutive images of the moving object per second and those frames would be stored on the same photo . The great mind behind this invention which I guess we can call a camera, even though it was gun-shaped, was Étienne-Jules Marey. He is considered to be one of the pioneers of photography and cinema. Marey was actually a physiologist who developed an interest in photography as he realized it could be the useful tool in studying the movement of animals and humans. 

via MoMA

In 2012. Shinichi Maruyama captured human motion with the camera which allowed him to take about 2.000 images per second. Advancement of technology in numbers: from 12 images in 1882. to 2.000 images per second in 2012. Impressive. As are the photographs from Maruyama's NUDE series:

NUDE #5

NUDE #8

NUDE #6
© Shinichi Maruyama

The NUDE series consists of naked human bodies performing choreographed dance. Maruyama collaborated with the choreographer Jessica Lang who helped in creating the perfect dance moves. Each shot was created by layering 10.000 individual photographs of the dancers into one piece which gives the photos the incredible creamy substance effect. 

From the waggle to kaleidoscopic dance.

It all started with the bees. I was fascinated with how bees communicate through a waggle dance. 

An Austrian biologist Karl von Frisch, who studied the behavior of the honeybees back in the 60's, defined it as "Tanzsprache" or the dance language. I adore the idea of a dance being the only language used for communication between the living beings. The waggle dance is used by the bees to share the information about the food source with the other members of the hive. By performing the waggle dance, the dancing bee gives the other honeybees information about the direction and the distance of the location of food source. As I was exploring this subject, I accidentally came across a video by Emily Knight, which was inspired by Busby Berkley.

Waggle Dance from Emily Knight on Vimeo.

Busby Berkley was a Hollywood movie director and choreographer, best known for turning dancing bodies into human kaleidoscopes. In his choreographies, he used dancing showgirls for creating complex geometric patterns. I am completely astonished by the symmetry and the rhythmic precision in Busby's movies. And now I finally understand where Michel Gondry found inspiration for some of my favorite music videos:

via Retronaut

"Let forever be" by The Chemical Brothers 

via Retronaut

"Around the world" by Daft Pank

And in the end, the most memorable and surreal scene from Berkley's movie "The Gang's All Here"  where legendary Carmen Miranda sings "The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat" . I would love to put some bees in there. ;)

Ferrofluidicious.

You've probably heard about ferrofluid. I've been obsessing about it ever since I've discovered it. It's a liquid which looks like some sort of motor oil but under the influence of a magnetic field tends to act like it's alive because of its nanoscale ferromagnetic particles.

Singaporean artist Afiq Omar got into ferrofluid explorations and so far produced three videos of aesthetic perfection. The music he picked for each of his videos utterly matches the visuals.

The first one has a dark, futuristic atmosphere:

Ferreum from Afiq Omar on Vimeo.

In the second one, which is definitely my favorite, the artist experimented with smaller amount of ferrofluid which he mixed with other liquids such as milk, soap, alcohol etc.

Ferroux from Afiq Omar on Vimeo.

In the third video he again played around with mixtures of ferrofluid and other liquids. What's really admirable is that no computer software was used for the creation of the patterns but only manipulations with fluid dynamics and magnetism.

Ferienne from Afiq Omar on Vimeo.

Analogue animation.

It all started with this:

Andrew Salomone's Pizzoetrope.

Then I started digging and discovered so many interesting people who like to play around with phenakistoscope and zoetrope techniques nowadays.

The phenakistoscope and zoetrope (funny and weird names?) are both early animation devices which produce an illusion of motion.
The phenakistoscope consisted of a spinning disc which was vertically mounted on a handle. Around the disc's center were series of drawings and series of slots right next to the edge. The user would spin the disc and look through the slot into the disc's mirror reflection where rapid succession of images would appear to him as a moving picture.

Eadweard Muybridge's phenakistoscope, 1893

The zoetrope was practically the improved version of  the phenakistoscope, only cylindrical shaped, which did not require the use of mirror and more than one person could view the moving picture at the same time.

Using phenakistoscope technique but adding turntables to the equation and a bunch of records with printed-on animations based on album covers (!), Clemens Kogler created something delicious to watch:

Stuck in a Groove / Phonovideo from Clemens Kogler on Vimeo.

Then there's Jim Le Fevre's magical experiment :

ICA heavy pencil with Malcolm Goldie from jim le fevre on Vimeo.

And in the end, Retchy who stunningly incorporated projection mapping into his 3D zoetrope:

Battles - IPT2 - 3D Zoetrope Mapping from Retchy on Vimeo.

Bauhaus,part two

Another charismatic and progressive thinking person who taught at Bauhaus was Oskar Schlemmer. The subject which he loved to explore was the proportional perfection of a human body and the things humans are capable of doing with it. His theater workshop at Bauhaus was one of the places where abstraction in dance had been explored for the first time.

Oskar Schlemmer's Stick Dance, 1927. via Retronaut

Reconstruction of Stick Dance at the Centro Universitario SENAC,
São Paulo, Brazil., 2010. via Flickriver

Oskar Schlemmer's love for geometry, mathematics, abstraction and purity of form can be seen so clearly in his Stäbetanz  (Stick Dance). In a motionless position, lines-sticks, as the extensions of a human body, resemble the abstract painting. And as the dance starts and lines start moving, the painting itself starts to dance.

A wonderful reconstruction of this piece was conducted by an art teacher, designer and dancer Isaura da Cunha Seppi, at the Centro Universitario SENAC in São Paulo, Brazil. This was actually a part of a much bigger project conducted from 2008. until 2010. in which not only Stick Dance has been reconstructed, but also Schlemmer's famous Das Triadisches Ballett.

This video is a mixture of two realities, Real and Second life of  the Stick Dance by Oskar Schlemmer. Isaura da Cunha Seppi mixed the video of her real-life performance with machinima which was created using the Second Life in order to explore the idea of boundaries between the real and virtual world narrowing down more and more nowadays.

Bauhaus, part one

Where to start when you wish to talk about Bauhaus?

I think I'll start with stunning food photography inspired by Bauhaus, which I stumbled upon some time ago. Masterminds behind these pieces: Nicky&Max.

© Nicky & Max

© Nicky & Max

Bauhaus was not just a movement, but an actual institution as well. Walter Gropius had gathered some of that time's brightest minds around him, such as Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Herbert Bayer, Oskar Schlemmer, Johannes Itten, and founded the Bauhaus School in 1919. All of them stood for strong individuals which was one of the fundamental things behind school's ideology: unlocking the creative potential of each student through insisting on individualism, on one hand and collaborative work, on the other. 

© Erich Consemüller, Lis Beyer or Ise Gropius sitting on the B3 club chair by Marcel Breuer and wearing a mask by Oskar Schlemmer and dress fabric by Lis Beyer, c.1927

What I find interesting is the way the school had operated in its early days.The school had always been trying to make a compromise between utopian, non-compromising, creative spirit and practical minded way of thinking. And it seems to me that in the first years the school leaned more towards the former and from. 1923. under the pressure of community and financial troubles it started leaning towards latter.

Johannes Itten was to me one of the most intriguing professors at Bauhaus. He held an innovative course which taught the students about basics of materials, composition and color. Itten was a fanatic follower of Mazdaznan, a religious health movement which included strict food diets. He incorporated some of Mazdaznan's exercises and breathing techniques into classes in order for students to use their full creative power. He also made rules about food which was to be consumed at school. No meat was allowed, only grains and vegetables, with special emphasis on garlic. The word is that at some point in time all school's facilities and students (!) had that distinctive garlic smell.

 Itten's class, via Kaufmann Mercantile

I love this photo. It gives you a glimpse of working atmosphere in Itten's class. I wonder if that food diet just might had an effect on student's work because at this time they were producing some incredible ideas and creating the most astonishing art pieces.

However, Itten's and Gropius's ideologies started to distinctively drift away from each other. Gropius was insisting on individual art being made with thoughts for the outside world or the industry and Itten rejected this and insisted on art being created without thoughts of its mass production. Finally, Gropius made Itten resign and from this point on, the School made its ideological change in favor of producing art in cooperation with the industry.

While in process of making those photos from the beginning of this post, Nicki&Max were aware of the fact they were being made for no one, they had no commercial value or as they say, they were making them just for themselves.  And they admit, they felt much more creative than when working for a client and they finally felt like they were using their full creative power.

Moog.

via Retro Synth Ads

I love this ad. Simple, smart and brave. It should be emphasized that the ad is from 1979. Shot of the company's product from behind, no logo, no contact info, no nothing, just a small Moog symbol incorporated into the ad's copy. Not many companies can pull this off, not even today. But Moog could. You really had to and have to know what this is.

via Retro Synth Ads

For anyone who hasn't seen the inspirational documentary about the inventor of Moog synthesizers, Mr. Robert Moog, quick, here it is.

One of the people who had been among first musicians to start using Moog synthesizers, was the contemporary German composer, Gershon Kingsley. Many don't know that he is the composer of the famous instrumental "Popcorn". A great tribute to the song was given by the Muppets in one of the most wonderful sketches ever (someone special with very busy nails discovered this one):

Fast forwarding to nowadays, Moog company is about to start selling their new analog synth - the Sub-Phatty, and had, for the promotional purposes, sent the prototype to Flying Lotus. Primarily using Moog's new baby, Flying Lotus made a catchy 90-second track and Adam "lilfuchs" Fuchs created the animation to accompany it:

Happy New Year!

via Moving Drawings