Moon River: EARTH

world is a complex storm of mathematics

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 07:54:21 GMT

'...with the world political situation as it is at the moment the political radical is put in a difficult position because, how do you rebel against chaos? You know, much as political conspiracy theorists would like to think otherwise, the brutal truth of the thing is nobody's in control, this is a runaway train. Nobody's in control, there's not some big conspiracy in control, whether it's Jewish bankers or nazis or CIA spooks, the simple truth is that the world is a complex storm of mathematics, basically... Very complicated mathematics that is beyond human comprehension.' -- Alan Moore.

via timemachinego

ideal city

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 15:07:52 GMT

The Work of Von Gerkan, Marg and Partners in China.

"Over six years, gmp has been involved with two-hundred design projects in China, thirteen of which have been implemented, reflecting the rapid transformation and growth that many Chinese cities are currently undergoing. The main focus of this exhibition is Lingang New City, an entirely new port city for 800,000 inhabitants near Shanghai. The plan of this city around a circular lake relates to ideas of the 'ideal city' and the history of this concept, as a subject of architectural debate, is also traced here: the city as metaphysical expression, of materialised spirituality and calculated rationality. Curated by Bernd Pastuschka." via the incredible cityofsound. highly recommanded reading is also The Ideal City - Vancouver Working Group Discussion Paper

most beautiful experiment of all time

Sun, 06 Aug 2006 19:44:57 GMT

Robert P. Crease, a member of the philosophy department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the historian at Brookhaven National Laboratory, recently asked physicists to nominate the most beautiful experiment of all time. Based on the paper of George Johnson in The New York Times -

The list is of the 10 winners of this polling and accompany the short explanations of the physical experiments with computer animations. via realitycarnival

Art of Science

Sat, 08 Jul 2006 08:34:23 GMT

The practices of science and art both involve the single-minded pursuit of those moments of discovery when what one perceives suddenly becomes more than the sum of its parts. Each piece in this exhibition is, in its own way, a record of such a moment. They range from the image that validates years of research, to the epiphany of beauty in the trash after a long day at the lab, to a painter's meditation on the meaning of biological life. This Gallery represent around 60 works made by Princeton University community memberes that submited images, videos and sounds—produced in the course of research or incorporating tools and concepts from science.

Princeton’s ‘Art of Science‘ project via Curiosity Collective

Desert Jewels. David Potere GS, Office of Population Research

Microwave Magic. Arianna Gianola - Department of Computer Science
"Microwaving a CD for 10 seconds reveals the concentric circle pattern of the CD surface, which is otherwise undetected by the naked eye."

Fairies Margaret E. Bisher and Soyeon Im. Department of Molecular Biology

The link added here below might be of interest as well:

Seeing Is Believing: 700 Years of Scientific and Medical Illustration. via Plep

Mineral Art

Sat, 01 Jul 2006 15:46:38 GMT

I might have seen them at Prune, and if i haven't he certainly an inspiration!

Altered iron-titanium oxides in alkali olivine basalt

Desert Archeologies

Sat, 01 Jul 2006 11:24:06 GMT

Thierry Urbain's photographs are part of a work process which, since 1985, is focused on architecture, archeology and landscape, Situated in the Middle-East or in ancient Mesopotamia.

Art For the Sky

Thu, 22 Jun 2006 11:48:29 GMT

Oregon conceptual artist, Daniel Dancer, became fascinated with sky art while traveling in South America in the 80's and encountering the famous Nazca Lines of Peru. When he returned home, he began working with Kansas field artist, Stan Herd, who creates giant images on the Earth by using a tractor as a paint brush and crops for color. One day, Daniel decided to bring an entire elementary school out to perform as beads on the headband of a 20 acre Indian head. A decade later, while visiting in Kansas, the parents of one of the "bead kids" told him that the experience was the most memorable thing their son did in school, that it taught him that things aren't always as they seem . . . a big picture view of the world is really important.

450 children perform as beads on headband of "The Native American," a 20 acre field image by Stan Herd photograph © Daniel Dancer 1989

Daniel Dancer is the founder and director of the ZeroCircles: an ongoing national environmental art project designed to help end commercial extraction on public lands. "From the megalithic stone rings of Britain to the medicine wheels of Native America, humans have built circles to celebrate their connection to Earth. The purpose of this project is to artfully engage Americans with the crisis in their National Forests by building and documenting 'zerocircles' that dramatize the need to end commercial extraction--mining, logging and grazing for private gain--on OUR

That brings me to Lenny an earth-Artist, a photographer based on the island of Guernsey i've discovered at bldgblog:

Sand raked into earthworks, then photographed from above with a kite :

Rake art Created by Lenny & Meriel.

Grow Your Own Treehouse

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 19:39:24 GMT

Imagine a society based on slow farming trees for housing structure instead of the industrial manufacture of felled timber.

The Fab Tree Hab -- a home literally made from trees, using an ancient technique called pleaching (the art of weaving (and sometimes grafting) trees together to form structures)

The Fab Tree Hab site

There are houses built in trees and then there are treehouses. The Fab Tree Hab was one of the design entries for the Index: awards, from the crew including MIT architect Mitchell Joachim and Javier Arbona of Archinect. The project description emphasized consideration of whole systems (and ecosystems) in creating a truly sustainable built environment, rather than a piecemeal approach that could yield uncertain longterm outcomes.

via worldchanging

The universe in motion

Sat, 03 Jun 2006 23:49:10 GMT

From Time-Lapse Photo Animations of the Real Cosmos Site

Orion Monument Colorado National Monument

via 22 over 7

erosion

Sat, 03 Jun 2006 10:54:08 GMT

This exhibition uses, as a point of departure, soil maps of Los Angeles County, which provide evidence of a great variety of human interventions in the landscape, such as landfills, new construction, mining, and agriculture.

erosion

Asphalt

biologika

Tue, 16 May 2006 15:19:53 GMT

The images in biologika-An Exhibition by Peter Miller, represent some of his explorations of the deep links between mathematics and nature, and the way biological forms may use simple rules to evolve complex shape and behaviour.

These works are not painted or modelled in any traditional or digital sense, but are constructed directly from sets of relatively simple mathematical descriptions of flat space.

via greatmap

wood anatomy

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 08:39:14 GMT

I was looking for images relating to Pnin, a very moving, beautiful short roman of Vladimir Nabokov, that i'm reading right now. (i find it is a rare Perl of beauty and a work of a genius. I must say reading this rare book - i'm experiencing some sort of an alternative reality - while diving to the world Nabokov create -almost entirely,,,isn't it what we call virtual reality?)

Any how, I didn't find the Pnin images i was dreaming to find (usually i do), but as i work well with Serendipity rules - i found this beauties (and remembered i've seen them before at Pruned)

Quercus robur L.: branch

photos taken from woodanatomy beautiful site

So is there a relation between Pnin - Nabokov's weired, sweet, hopeless, clumsy Hero to Trees, i ask?

i found this explanation:

The Russian pen’, peniok, from which the name Pnin is. derived, signifies a tree stump, but also any remnant of a limb of human body ...

Fragrance of pine forests and climate change

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 21:43:44 GMT

From guardian: The fresh fragrance released by trees in northern pine forests is a significant component in slowing climate change, according to research.

The particles that carry the forests' olfactory assault also help to cool the planet by bouncing energy from the sun back into space. Now researchers have worked out that the forests produce enough microscopic particles to load the atmosphere around them with 1,000-2,000 particles per cubic centimetre of air. via earthwire

I'm not sure This amazing facts were at the hands of Artist Agnes Denes, while she designed and planted her Tree-Mountains, but I'm quit sure that intuitively she did feel earth and trees power...

Agnes Denes: Projects for Public Spaces

Between 1992 and 1996, Denes created Tree Mountain—A Living Time Capsule. The project consisted of a series of architectural renderings on vellum featuring designs for a new forest to be planted in Pinziö, near Ylöjärvi, Finland. These works on paper became planning documents after the Finnish government decided to make Denes’ project its official Earth Day contribution at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, 1992. This major earthwork and reclamation project was designed by the artist as a community building project. To accomplish the massive undertaking, Denes invited 11,000 people to plant a tree. Each person become the custodian of a tree and received a certificate recognizing their role in the project. The forest, which is to remain a living legacy for 20 generations, has spawned additional projects.

Tree Mountain, Aerial View, 1992-96, Architectural rendering on vellum, 34 x 42 in.
© Agnes Denes

Agnes Denes, Tree Mountain-A Living Time Capsule-
11,000 People, 11,000 Trees, 400 Years, 2002, Yl–j”rvi, Finland

These images document two views of Denesí six-year-old Tree Mountain peaking out through the snow. Most spectacular is the way her design has been preserved. The intricate mathematical pattern derived from a combination of the golden section and the pineapple/sunflower patterns proves as optical in real life as it does on paper. The Finnish Pines are surviving despite long winters and high winds.

waste sculptures

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 15:12:46 GMT

This Saturday is Earth Day. And while we could be plenty cynical about the need for more than one of these every 365 days, it's a good time to raise some eco-consciousness and churn out a vast array of "simple tips" for living more sustainably. But before that here is a creative perspective of waste re-use

Guinness 4-pack, 2005 February 27

IBM Cartridge, 1999 December 06

Xbox.com, 2003 March 26

BOXBOTS

photos via makezine

The SK detector

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 20:08:40 GMT

Super-Kamiokande, located near the town of Kamioka in north-central Japan, is the world's most powerful neutrino detector. Shown here drained of the 32,000 tons of water it usually holds, the detector is a cylindrical tub 128 feet across and 138 feet high, buried two-thirds of a mile underground. More than 10,000 light- sensitive tubes line the walls of the detector, constantly watching for faint flashes of light created by the rare collisions of neutrinos with water molecules.

Photos from the Kamioka Underground Observatory, Institute for Cosmic Ray Research(ICRR), University of Tokyo

detector wall about 9000 PMTs

The original purpose of this observatory was to verify the Grand Unified Theories, one of the most impenetrable matters of elementary particle physics, through a Nucleon Decay Experiment. Thus, the water Cerenkov detector which was used for this experiment was named Kamiokande (KAMIOKA Nucleon Decay Experiment).

detector wall and top with about 9000 PMTs

In 1998, researchers at "Super-K" found evidence for a small mass for neutrinos coming to earth from particle interactions in cosmic rays. If neutrinos, until recently thought to be massless, actually do have a mass, the implications will be profound, not only for particle physics but for astronomy and cosmology.

inner detector with half of water(Feb. 96)
via huge-entity

A World Made of Cities

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 19:36:22 GMT

Seems to me after reading this interesting article, that 1. we women take an even greater part in the creation of the new Urban World, 2. The positive impact of Big Cities, is greater then any negative catastrophic prediction that all environmentalists organisations are telling us.

via Radar Oreilly

..."Cities are humanity's longest-lived organizations (Jericho dates back 10,500 years), but also the most constantly changing..."

"Every week in the world a million new people move to cities. In 2007 50% of our 6.5 billion population will live in cities. In 1800 it was 3% of the total population then. In 1900 it was 14%. In 2030 it's expected to be 61%. This is a tipping point. We're becoming a city planet."

"..One of the effects of globalization is to empower cities more and more. Communications and economic activities bypass national boundaries. With many national governments in the developing world discredited, corporations and NGOs go direct to where the markets, the workers, and the needs are, in the cities. Every city is becoming a "world city." Many elites don't live in one city now, they live "in cities."

"Speed of urban development is not necessarily bad...The villages and countrysides of the entire world are emptying out. Why? I was told by Kavita Ramdas, head of the Global Fund for Women, "In the village, all there is for a woman is to obey her husband and family elder, pound grain, and sing. If she moves to town, she can get a job, start a business, and get education for her children. Her independence goes up, and her religious fundamentalism goes down."

Singing with Whales

Mon, 27 Mar 2006 20:10:59 GMT

Using computer visualization software, Mark Fischer transforms mysterious underwater calls of cetaceans (whales and dolphins) into "wavelets": visual readings of the sounds' volume, harmonics, frequencies and rhythms. The result are stunning ripples of printed color or animated soundscapes

Listen, Watch, Listen to REAL Whales ( i fall in love with the Fin Whale), and also AguaSonic Humpback (visual and sounds )

Wavelet Images. Mark Fischer, programmer and whale researcher, has adapted a mathematical algorithm known as wavelets to graph cetacean calls. He is mapping whale calls seeking underlying patterns, with the ultimate goal of exploring the potential for cetacean language.

Cloud Chambers

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 00:19:06 GMT

Cloud Chambers, as temporary installations and permanent site specific works. These circular chambers made outside work on the principle of a camera obscura. The interiors are dark, the entrance being from a door or curved passageway, the floor or viewing surface is white, and there is a small aperture or lens in the ceiling or wall. Images of clouds, branches, waves, landscape, are thus projected inside.
These cloud chambers are still, silent, meditative and mysterious spaces. They are often built underground, so that in these dark spaces what is outside is brought in and reversed. Clouds drift silently across the floor.

'EDEN CLOUD CHAMBER’, Eden Project, Cornwall, UK

TRASHLOG

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 11:30:55 GMT

NICO VAN HOORN
TRASHLOG

Check as well his
CRIME SCENE
ILLEGAL TRASH DUMPING IS A CRIME

Rivers of India

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 05:46:08 GMT

{ this image, has evoked a very intimate memory of my staying in India}

Rivers of India
Photography and Text by Henk Braam

Democratic Books by DesignWork (great online photo books)

via wood s lot

River Books

Sat, 04 Mar 2006 15:54:05 GMT

Basia Irland. this artist has some amazing deep works- i love it, it makes me think, it moves my heart.

Old library books found dumped on the shore of river, beeswax, wire, cord

Moon Trees

Thu, 02 Mar 2006 21:27:41 GMT

Here and there around our planet are trees that are so special they're "out of this world" or to be more precise, they've been out of this world. As seeds, these trees have been to the Moon and back. And there's a mystery attached to many of the trees because we don't know where some of them are!

What makes these trees so special is how they got to the Moon in the first place. Read More

Beautifil Earth

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 23:02:30 GMT

A vast alluvial fan blossoms across the desolate landscape between the Kunlun and Altun mountain ranges that form the southern border of the Taklimakan Desert in China's XinJiang Province.

At the Landsat Web Site AMAZING-BEAUTIFUL PHOTOS taken by satellites that have been collecting images of the Earth's surface for more than thirty years.

The Brandberg Massif in Northen Namibia, the dominant geographic feature of the central Namib desert. This dome-shaped granite intrusion covers an area of 650 square kilmeters (250 square miles) and rises 2,573 meters (1.6 miles) above the surrounding desert. It is an important habitat for high-altitude savannah species, and is of great archeological interest for the many prehistoric cave paintings found among its granite cliffs.

Via Pruned

Poster Torn

Thu, 09 Feb 2006 21:55:41 GMT

Seems to me lately, that where ever i turn my eyes to, there are maps, Every Where...My ever growing Fetish seems to be there...

New York's greatest abstract art show is at the 190th street subway station. These are some samples.
Poster Torn

Earthquake Rose

Sun, 11 Dec 2005 22:41:06 GMT

On February 28, 2001, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake, located some thirty miles below the surface of the earth and a few miles away from Olympia Washington, moved the ground for a bit more than half a minute. Damage was surprisingly light, due, in part, to structural retrofitting throughout the region, and also to the epicenter's depth.

A sand tracing pendulum, located at a shop in Port Townsend called Mind Over Matter

We originally sent these photos in a bare-bones web page to a few seismologists, geophysicists, and geomorphologists we we thought might be interested in this phenomenon. Somewhere along the line, someone thought that this was interesting enough to forward along to friends, neighbors, co-workers, relatives, and the occasional nodding acquaintance. We're glad they did, because the Earthquake Rose is traveling widely and rapidly...we've made new friends all over the world!

A photo taken shortly after the ground stopped moving:

The smooth curves you see to the outside of the Earthquake Rose are what you normally see when someone sets the pendulum in motion to make a tracing...and without seismic assistance.

http://www.earthquakerose.com/