Banksy's 'Valentine's day mascara' mural freezer removed
Feb 2023, CNN Style
The mural shows a 1950s housewife with a swollen eye apparently pushing a man into an abandoned chest freezer, but the chest freezer was real, while the rest was painted on the wall. Then the freezer was stolen. So now the refrigerator is a work of art, in part, and art history is being re-written by the day. This was done for Valentine's Day, 2023.
Banksy: Artist confirms new London tree mural is his own work
Mar 2024, BBC News
Islington Council said its graffiti removal team is aware of the artwork and won't remove it.I'm not even sure how to say this without it coming out wrong, but like you know your society is fucked up when the people are so wholeheartedly supporting illegal activity:Crowds have gathered to see the mural, with one local saying they were "proud" their street had been chosen."It feels like a personal message to us residents, we just feel so proud," said Wanja Sellers, who lives along the street from the mural.
I am left wondering if there is no such thing as public art anymore? Public anything? What happens when there's no more public assets (public art, public music, public space, public parks, public restrooms, public water fountains, public benches, public transit, public public)? People start making their own, illegally, and the rest of the people start supporting it. Please rewind to the movie Death Wish, when hoodlums used a spraycan to terrorize, vandalize, rape and murder a middle class architect and his family living on the Upper West Side of New York City in 1974. Graffiti, and the spraycan specifically, was the ultimate symbol of societal dysfunction, collapse even. It was the mark of the beast, the trumpet of the apocalypse. Today, well things are much different. (Then again, Angela Davis's afro was scary as hell to a lot of Americans and now it's a Halloween costume.)
Post Script:
The council believes the cherry tree in the foreground of the artwork is around 40-50 years old and is in declining health, with decay and fungi damage. It says it has been maintaining and pruning the tree for some time - both for safety, and to help prolong its lifespan - and will continue working to keep the tree alive. A resident says "It's spring now, and this tree should be bursting forth with leaves, but Banksy must have cycled past and thought how miserable it looks."
Examining why egg yolk was used in Old Masters' oil paints
Mar 2023, phys.org
The work involved creating two types of oil-based paints, both with yolk added. One mixture consisted of nothing but yolk and oil. The other had yolk, oil and pigments to add coloring. The team also created similar paints without using egg yolk. The group then used the paints to create paintings that could be used for testing purposes. Such tests included taking measurements of moisture amounts and movement, oxidation, time to dry and heat capacity.
- stronger bonding between pigment particles for stiffer paint
- reduced wrinkling of the paint to protect the paint against high humidity
- antioxidants in the yolk prevent yellowing
- more pigment to the oil to create more vivid images
via Institute for Mechanical Process Engineering and Mechanics at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry and at University of Pisa, Institute of Chemistry of Organo Metallic Compoundsin Pisa, and Doerner Institut in Munich: Ophélie Ranquet et al, A holistic view on the role of egg yolk in Old Masters' oil paints, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-36859-5
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| Louise dancing on her 60th birthday - art by Jillian Edelstein for Breast Cancer Now in Gallery of Hope at London's Saatchi Gallery - Apr 2024 |
AI photos show people with secondary breast cancer their lost future
Apr 2024, BBC News
I'm sure there's a history for this, but I'm not familiar with it. People have been aware of their own impending death for a long time, not just because of advances in cancer diagnoses (the guy with the "black spot" in Treasure Island anyone?). And artists have been making shit up forever, it's kind of what they do. All that being said, wow this is bonkers -
Using AI and photos taken by renowned photographer Jillian Edelstein, the images make up the Gallery of Hope at London's Saatchi Gallery.Louise Hudson, from Caldicot, Monmouthshire, is one of those who took part.Now 58, she was first diagnosed with breast cancer in July 2022 which then spread to her liver. In February an MRI scan showed lesions on her brain and she was told she had a life expectancy of about six months.Louise's image at the exhibition shows her celebrating her 60th birthday by performing with her amateur dance company Chelsea Ballet, while her husband of 30 years Barry looks on with pride.
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| Michel-Marie Carquillat - Joseph-Marie Jacquard woven in silk on a Jacquard loom, 55 x 34 cm - 1839 |
The Most Famous Image in the Early History of Computing : History of Information
Just in case this gets lost in the oncominig artificial info wars and subsequent death of the internet, I copy here:
In 1839 weaver Michel-Marie Carquillat, working for the firm of Didier, Petit et Cie, in Lyon, France wove in fine silk a Portrait of Joseph-Marie Jacquard. The image, including caption and Carquillat’s name, taking credit for the weaving, measures 55 x 34 cm.; the full piece of silk including blank margins measures 85 x 66 cm.This image, of which perhaps only about 20 examples survived, was woven on a Jacquard loom using 24,000 Jacquard cards, each of which had over 1000 hole positions. The process of mis en carte, or converting the image details to punched cards for the Jacquard mechanism, for this exceptionally large and detailed image, would have taken several workers many months, as the woven image convincingly portrays superfine elements such as a translucent curtain over glass window panes.The Jacquard loom did no computation, and for that reason it was not a digital device in the way we think of digital today. However the method by which Jacquard stored information in punched cards by either punching a hole in s standardized space in a card or not punching a whole in that space is analogous to a zero or one or an on and off switch.
- The Jacquard method was used by Charles Babbage
- It confirmed the potential of using punched cards for the input, programming, output and storage of information in the design and conception of the first general-purpose programmable computer the Analytical Engine.
- It also challenged existing notions that machines were incapable of subtlety, and blurred the clear lines between industrial production and the arts.
- See Swade, The Cogwheel Brain. Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer. 2000. 107-8.
- More than once this woven image was mistaken for an engraved image.
- In 2012 the only publically recorded examples were those in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Science Museum in London, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Computer History Museum, Mountain View, California.
- The image was the subject of the book by James Essinger entitled, Jacquard's Web. How a Hand Loom led to the Birth of the Information Age (2004).
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