The Tower of Babel

Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Tower of Babel. 1563
Wikipedia - "The Tower of Babel ... according to the Book of Genesis, was an enormous tower built at the city of Babylon ..., a cosmopolitan city typified by a confusion of languages, also called the 'beginning' of Nimrod's kingdom. According to the biblical account, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, participated in the building."
Wikipedia, Lambert Dolphin, Google

Passim

Wikipedia - "Club Passim is a folk music club in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was opened by Joyce Kalina (now Chopra) and Paula Kelley in 1958, when it was known as Club 47 (based on its then address, 47 Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge; it moved to its present location on Palmer Street in 1963), and changed its name to simply Passim in 1969."
Wikipedia, Club Passim

The Lord of the Rings

Wikipedia - "The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel written by philologist and Oxford University professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit (1937), but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in stages between 1937 and 1949, much of it during World War II."
Wikipedia - The Lord of the Rings, W - The Hobbit, W - J. R. R. Tolkien, video

Recommended Records

Wikipedia - "Recommended Records (RēR) is a British independent record label and distribution network founded by Chris Cutler in March 1978. RēR features largely 'Rock in Opposition' and related music, but it also distributes selected music released on other independent labels."
Wikipedia, ReR

In Sugar Hill, a Street Nurtured Black Talent When the World Wouldn’t

"New York is a city of blocks, each with its own history, customs and characters. Yet from these small stages spring large talents. Anyone who doubts that need look no further than a stretch of Edgecombe Avenue perched on a bluff near 155th Street."
NYT

Spiraling Out of Control: The Greatest Spiral Stairs in the World

"Recently the Loretto Chapel was entered into the Atlas. The chapel is known for a very cool looking set of spiral stairs built in 1877 by a mysterious stranger. With no central support the stairs are said by the sisters of Loretto Chapel to be miraculous in construction."
Atlas Obscura

4′33″

Wikipedia - "4′33″ (pronounced Four minutes, thirty-three seconds or, as the composer himself referred to it, Four, thirty-three) is a three-movement composition by American avant-garde composer John Cage (1912–1992). It was composed in 1952 for any instrument (or combination of instruments), and the score instructs the performer not to play the instrument during the entire duration of the piece throughout the three movements (the first being thirty seconds, the second being two minutes and twenty-three seconds, and the third being one minute and forty seconds). Although commonly perceived as 'four minutes thirty-three seconds of silence', the piece actually consists of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed. Over the years, 4′33″ became Cage's most famous and most controversial composition."
Wikipedia, Solomons Music, Classical Notes, John Cage, «4'33''», 1952, YouTube, (1) - David Tudor, (2)

Nick Gentry

"This represents a big shift away from physical, real world objects, driving towards a human existence that is ultimately governed by billions of invisible data files. This release of information from the physical form allows personal data and identities to now be revealed and infinitely shared online. At the same time many of us consider individuality and privacy to be more precious than ever. Will humans be forever compatible with our own technology?"
Nick Gentry

Art of Noise

Wikipedia - "Art of Noise (also The Art of Noise) were an avant-garde synthpop group formed in 1983 by producer Trevor Horn, music journalist Paul Morley, and session musicians/studio hands Anne Dudley, J.J. Jeczalik, and Gary Langan. The group's mostly instrumental compositions were novel melodic sound collages based on digital sampler technology, which was new at the time."
Wikipedia, last.fm, HipOnline, YouTube, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5)

Zeppelin mail

Wikipedia - "Zeppelin mail was mail carried on zeppelins, the German airships that saw civilian use from 1908 to 1939. Almost every zeppelin flight carried mail, sometimes in large quantities; the covers usually received special postmarks, and a number of nations issued postage stamps specifically intended for use on mail carried by the zeppelins."
Wikipedia, Airships, YouTube

The Trans-Siberian Railway

Wikipedia - "The Trans-Siberian Railway or Trans-Siberian Railroad ... is a network of railways connecting Moscow and European Russia with the Russian Far East provinces, Mongolia, China and the Sea of Japan. Today, the railway is part of the Eurasian Land Bridge."
Wikipedia, YouTube

Roberto Clemente

Wikipedia - "Roberto Clemente Walker (August 18, 1934 – December 31, 1972) was a professional baseball player and a Major League Baseball right fielder. He was born in Carolina, Puerto Rico, the youngest of seven children."
Wikipedia, Smithsonian Institution, American Experience

Passport Photos - Famous Artists

Ezra Pound 1922 - Passport Photo
"Passport photos gleaned from passport applications files of writers actors, poets, artists, photographers, etc. The quality is pretty gritty, but I find them interesting, not the least because they are glimpses of these people without their artistic personas showing. Just another traveller submitting to the demands of the state."
flickr

Kate McGarrigle 1946 – 2010

Wikipedia - "Kate McGarrigle, CM (February 6, 1946 – January 18, 2010) was a Canadian folk music singer-songwriter, who wrote and performed as a duo with her sister Anna McGarrigle."
Wikipedia, W - (1), Kate and Anna McGarrigle, NPR, YouTube, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6)

kunst-by-rob

Clessé, France
"Saturday. January 9, 2010. Bergün, Switzerland (lower 3 images) I have been away from my scanner the last couple of weeks as we have been on vacation. The top image shows the location I mentioned earlier where we stayed with two other families for a few days. The second sketch was from a village near the chateau, and the final three sketches were done in Bergün, where we spent a week with several other families from Kandern."
kunst-by-rob

Arcadia

Thomas Cole, The Arcadian or Pastoral State, 1834
Wikipedia - "Arcadia (Greek: Ἀρκαδία) refers to a Utopian vision of pastoralism and harmony with nature. The term is derived from the Greek province of the same name which dates to antiquity; the province's mountainous topography and sparse population of pastoralists later caused the word Arcadia to develop into a poetic byword for an idyllic vision of unspoiled wilderness. The Utopian vision, Arcadia, is associated with bountiful natural splendor, harmony, and is often inhabited by shepherds."
Wikipedia

Sound Sculptures

"Published by Wergo in 1985, Sound Sculptures is a gorgeous, state-of-the-art overview of Austria and West Germany's instrument builders and sculptors curated by composer and music critic Klaus Hinrich Stahmer."
UbuWeb

Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders

Wikipedia - "Wayne Fontana (born Glyn Ellis on 28 October 1945, Manchester, Lancashire), is a singer. In 1962, he formed his group Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders and got a recording contract."
Wikipedia, YouTube, (1)

Robert Watts

SafePost/Jockpost/K.U.K. Feldpost, c. 1962.
Wikipedia - "Robert Watts was an American artist best known for his work as a member of the international Avant-garde art movement Fluxus. Born in Burlington, Iowa June 14th 1923, he became Professor of Art at Douglass College, Rutgers University, New Jersey in 1953, a post he kept until 1984."
Wikipedia

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Wikipedia - "Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, activist and prominent leader in the American civil rights movement. His main legacy was to secure progress on civil rights in the United States, and he has become a human rights icon: King is recognized as a martyr by two Christian churches."
Wikipedia, Seattle Times, Stanford U., YouTube

Berthe Morisot

Summer Days
Wikipedia - "Berthe Morisot (January 14, 1841 – March 2, 1895) was a painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. Undervalued for over a century, possibly because she was a woman, she is now considered among the first league of Impressionist painters."
Wikipedia, WebMuseum

Marina Abramović

Wikipedia - "Marina Abramović (... born 30 November 1946, in Belgrade, SR Serbia, FPR Yugoslavia, present day Serbia) is a New York-based Serbian and Yugoslavian performance artist who began her career in the early 1970s. Active for over three decades, she has recently begun to describe herself as the 'grandmother of performance art'."
Wikipedia, Sean Kelly Gallery, Seven Easy Pieces, artnet, Guardian, YouTube

13th Floor Elevators

Wikipedia - "The 13th Floor Elevators were an American rock band from Austin which existed 1965-1969. During their career, the band released four LPs and seven 45s for the International Artists record label."
Wikipedia, 13th Floor Elevators, last.fm, Texas Psych Ranch, YouTube, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6)

Martin Wilner

"Much of Martin Wilner’s work is diaristic in nature, done in a quotidian fashion, with time playing a role as variable as pen and ink, where a work evolves in a steady manner over an extended time period to unpredictable conclusions, where preset conditions collide head-on with randomness, chance and the unknown."
Martin Wilner: More Drawings About History and Evidence, Martin Wilner, Google

Jacques Derrida

Wikipedia - "Jacques Derrida ... (15 July 1930 – 8 October 2004) was a French philosopher born in Algeria, who is known as the founder of deconstruction. His voluminous work had a profound impact upon literary theory and continental philosophy. Derrida's best known work is Of Grammatology."
Wikipedia, Stanford University, IEP, Mythos and Logos

The Bioscope

"The Bioscope is dedicated to the subject of early and silent cinema. It is designed to be a news and information resource on all aspects of the motion picture before sound. It covers news, publications, events, discoveries, documents, critical theory, filmmakers, performers, audiences and technology, and aims to encompass film production, distribution and exhibition in the silent era, as well as ‘pre-cinema’, chronophotography, optical toys, and related media, across the world."
The Bioscope

Shocking Blue

Wikipedia - "Shocking Blue was a Dutch rock band from The Hague, the Netherlands, formed in 1967. Their biggest hit, 'Venus,' went to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1970, and the band had sold 13.5 million discs by 1973, but the group disbanded in 1974."
Wikipedia, Shocking Blue, YouTube, (1), (2), (3), (4)

Naomi Vanderkindren

"All memories and all photographs are works of fiction, whose meanings are intertwined with elements of truth. Interpretations of both are transient, constantly incorporating new ideas and experiences."
Naomi Vanderkindren

Dagmar Krause

Wikipedia - "Dagmar Krause (born 4 June 1950) is a German singer, best known for her work with avant-rock groups like Slapp Happy, Henry Cow and Art Bears. She is also noted for her coverage of songs by Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler. Her unusual singing style makes her voice instantly recognisable and has defined the sound of many of the bands she has worked with."
Wikipedia, MySpace, last.fm, YouTune, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8)

Philip Taaffe

Easter Choir, 1989-1990
Wikipedia - "Philip Taaffe (born 1955) is an American artist. Taaffe was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey and studied at the Cooper Union in New York, gaining a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1977. An admirer of Matisse’s cut-outs and of Synthetic Cubism, from the mid 1980s he began to borrow images and designs directly from more recent artists."
Wikipedia, Philip Taaffe, (1), artnet, Google

Zhang Enli

Tree in Winter 4, 2008
Wikipedia - "Zhang Enli ( b. 1965 Jilin Province, China ) is an artist living and working out of Shanghai. A graduate of the Arts & Design Institute of Wuxi Technical University, Wuxi, he is noted for his stark paintings of everyday objects, and his depictions of solitude."
Wikipedia, Shangh Art Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, Art Zine

Artists' books

Bushfire, Judy Barrass
Wikipedia - "Artists' books are works of art realized in the form of a book. They are often published in small editions, though sometimes they are produced as one-of-a-kind objects referred to as 'uniques'. Artists' books have employed a wide range of forms, including scrolls, fold-outs, concertinas or loose items contained in a box as well as bound printed sheet. Artists have been active in printing and book production for centuries, but the artist's book is primarily a late 20th century form."
Wikipedia, Otis Collections Online, Mission Creek Press, Artists' Book Collection, Personal Visions: Artists' Books at the Millennium, Science and the Artist's Book, The Journal of Artists' Books, The Artist Turns to the Book - Getty, National Museum of Women in the Arts

Gargoyle

Wikipdedia - "In architecture, a gargoyle is a carved stone grotesque with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building."
Wikipedia

Sly and Robbie

Wikipedia - "Sly and Robbie are one of reggae's most prolific and long lasting production teams. The rhythm section of drummer Lowell Dunbar (nicknamed Sly after Sly Stone, one of his favorite musicians) and bass guitarist Robert Shakespeare started working together in the mid 1970s, after having established themselves separately on the Jamaican music scene."
Wikipedia, Sly and Robbie, MySpace, History, YouTube, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5)

Hubertine Auclert

Wikipedia - "Hubertine Auclert (April 10, 1848 – August 4, 1914) was a leading French feminist and a campaigner for women's suffrage."
Wikipedia