J.M.W. Turner - Sun Rising Through Vapour, Before 1807

 

“It’s the dawning of a new day and the sun is just breaking through a veil of sea mist. You can look at it without hurting your eyes – of course you can, it’s a painting, but in some of Turner’s works that searing dot really does seem to burn your retina. Here, the world is gentle, the sea so still it holds reflections of boats and light. But this is most of all a painting of people. They gather and go about their morning business in one of his most down to earth scenes, a joyous memory of the seaside as a working world.“

National Gallery

November 2007: J. M. W. Turner, 2009 April: Turner & Italy, 2011 June: J. M. W. Turner - 1, 2014 June: In Which We Find His Theory Of Color Implausible, 2014 September: The EY Exhibition: Late Turner – Painting Set Free, 2015 May: Mr. Turner (2014), 2018 November: The Slave Ship (1840), 2018 December: Turner and Constable: The Inhabited Landscape, 2020 September: The Fighting Temeraire  (1838)

Oranges - Jordan Kisner

 

“When I undertook this column, I had the notion that I would be writing about, I don’t know, heredity. Like: I went to a healing circle in south Brooklyn. After a few days of being asked to think about the particular ways we might need to be healed, as well as the particular ways we might offer healing to other people, we were taken into a small, dark room in groups of four or five and told to sit on stools and close our eyes. The two women leading the healing circle told us they would be drawing initiatory symbols in the air over our heads and invoking various energies on our behalf. They instructed us to keep our eyes closed and to anticipate that we might receive a vision of a spirit that would guide us in this healing journey. ...”

The Paris Review, The Paris Review: Category Archives

Jordan Kisner - Thin Places

Jordan Kisner on Obsession Versus Possession in Thin Places

NY Times - Blurred Lines: An Essayist’s Dispatches on Slippery States of Being

amazon

Jordan Kisner’s “Thin Places: Essays From in Between” touches on religion and atheism, race, class, assimilation and cultural appropriation.

​10 Tracks and Alliances

 

“When Sounds of Sisso was released in June 2017, the global electronic music scene briefly stopped in its tracks. The compilation shed light on a previously little-known music genre from Tanzania, singeli, which is characterized by wild rhythmic salvoes, hysteric melodies, the grotesque use of sound effects, and raw lyric fragments in Swahili – and all this happens at breakneck tempos. The compilation can be found in the release catalogue of the Ugandan collective Nyege Nyege, founded by the expatriates Arlen Dilsizian and Derek Debru, and the same is true for Sounds of Pamoja, its unofficial sequel recently announced to be released in the fall. ...”

Various Artists (Video/Audio)

The Foghorn’s Lament: The Disappearing Music of the Coast - Jennifer Lucy Allan

 

“It seems appropriate that the daughter of the man who is said to have invented the foghorn was christened Euphemia, and that her mother died shortly after giving birth. The name means ‘well-spoken’ (or ‘well-spoken of’) in a dead language, and the story is tinged with grief right from the start. That combination pretty much sums up the foghorn: a device both famed for its emotionally resonant seaside dirges and synonymous with a certain breed of foreboding moodiness. Jennifer Lucy Allan shines light into the mist, and the mist of history alike, in a new book that traces the roughly 170 year arc of the foghorn’s existence: from innovative safety measure to ambivalently received coastal sentinel to what it is today, a fading cultural heirloom. ...”

disquiet

Guardian: The Foghorn’s Lament by Jennifer Lucy Allan review – a whole world in a sound

“The Foghorn’s Lament: The Disappearing Music of the Coast” (Video)

W - Foghorn

amazon

YouTube: Sounding the Sumburgh Foghorn

Cape Wrath lighthouse foghorn, Sutherland, Scotland

​Jupiter Dazzles at Opposition on August 20th

 

A single moon shadow transit Jupiter is exciting enough, but on August 15, 2021, there was a rare triple transit of Europa (II), Ganymede (III), and Callisto (IV) paired with a double shadow transit of Ganymede and Europa. In addition, Ganymede occulted Europa while Io appeared in partial eclipse (center frame) off the planet's limb. The prominent, pale pink vortex dubbed Oval BA is also shown. North is up and "s" indicates shadow. For more images click the link. 

“Jupiter comes to opposition on August 20th, when it will shine brighter and closer than at any other time this year. With nights starting earlier and cooler temperatures arriving, there’s no better time to make the most of the planet. Roughly every 13 months Earth comes from behind and passes Jupiter in a planetary horse race that's been going on for billions of years. And the prize? Spectacular views of the solar system's largest planet from dusk till dawn. ...”

Sky & Telescope

Blue Moon, Perseids Shower, Jupiter-Saturn Opposition, & Other Exciting Events To See This Month.

W - Perseids, W - Perseus

YouTube: What's Up: August 2021 Skywatching Tips from NASA

Perseus Freeing Andromeda by Piero di Cosimo (c. 1515)

​How Will the Taliban Rule? Here’s the Early Evidence.

 

“For all the recriminations and finger-pointing about how the Taliban gained control of Afghanistan so rapidly, there is a hard truth that needs to be reckoned with: The Taliban have spent years preparing for the eventual U.S. withdrawal. Despite numerous military surges, relentless airstrikes and thousands killed on all sides, no one was able to stop them. Year by year, Taliban soldiers methodically gained ground as they coerced and co-opted large swaths of the population now living under their rule and set up a shadow state. The Taliban exploited anger at the abuses of foreign forces and Afghan government corruption to gain support in village after village. The question now is what kind of government the Taliban will impose and what that will mean for Afghans. ...”

NY Times: Opinion

NY Times: Opinion - The Tragedy of Afghanistan

NY Times: Opinion - Thomas L. Friedman - Biden Could Still Be Proved Right in Afghanistan

The Collapse of Afghanistan Is Biden's Fall of Saigon

Washington Square - Henry James (1880)

 

“Washington Square is a short novel by Henry James. Originally published in 1880 as a serial in Cornhill Magazine and Harper's New Monthly Magazine, it is a structurally simple tragicomedy that recounts the conflict between a dull but sweet daughter and her brilliant, unemotional father. The plot of the novel is based upon a true story told to James by his close friend, British actress Fanny Kemble. The book is often compared with Jane Austen's work for the clarity and grace of its prose and its intense focus on family relationships. ... The novel begins at a distance from the characters, describing the background of the Sloper family. It then recounts in detail the story of Catherine's romance with Morris Townsend. When Morris jilts her, the focus shifts back to a long view. As the narrator puts it: ‘Our story has hitherto moved with very short steps, but as it approaches its termination it must take a long stride.’ The final few chapters are taken once more in short steps, ending with the striking vignette of Catherine's rejection of Morris. ...”

Wikipedia, YouTube: Washington Square by Henry James (FULL Audiobook) 7:24:48

W - Washington Square (film)

NY Times - 'Washington Square': Clash of the Dazzling and the Meek, Again

Chicago Tribune - `WASHINGTON SQUARE' A SUPERB ADAPTATION

YouTube: Washington Square (1997) Trailer

​JazzDee • Vinyl Set • Le Mellotron

 

“Brussels based JazzDee comes without boundries. Bringing his recent digs that go from World to brokenbeat, from disco to electro, from funk to breaks. All things fresh to make you skip sleep. Next to that, he also curates his own events where he brings art and his passion for music together. With ‘JazzDee INVITES’ he already brought names like Carista, Habibi Funk, Mr. Thing, Gonesthedj, AliA and Mixmonster Menno to the dancefloor. You might’ve seen JazzDee spin at Couleur Café, DOUR festival, Pukkelpop, CACTUS festival, RedLight Radio (Amsterdam), Bar Tausend (Berlin), Radio Raheem (Milan), Studio Brussel or on his monthly show at Kiosk Radio & Le Mellotron in Paris. ...”

YouTube: ​JazzDee • Vinyl Set • Le Mellotron

The Heteronymous Identities of Fernando Pessoa By Richard Zenith

 

“When the ever elusive Fernando Pessoa died in Lisbon, in the fall of 1935, few people in Portugal realized what a great writer they had lost. None of them had any idea what the world was going to gain: one of the richest and strangest bodies of literature produced in the twentieth century. Although Pessoa lived to write and aspired, like poets from Ovid to Walt Whitman, to literary immortality, he kept his ambitions in the closet, along with the larger part of his literary universe. He had published only one book of his Portuguese poetry, Mensagem (Message), with forty-four poems, in 1934. It won a dubious prize from António Salazar’s autocratic regime, for poetic works denoting ‘a lofty sense of nationalist exaltation,’ and dominated his literary résumé at the time of his death. Some of Pessoa’s admirers—other poets, mostly—were baffled by the publication of Message, whose mystical vision of Portugal’s history and destiny seemed to rise up out of nowhere. ...”

LitHub

NY Times - Fernando Pessoa: Office Worker, Occultist, Galaxy of Writers

W - Heteronym (literature)

amazon: Pessoa: A Biography by Richard Zenith

2008 March: Fernando Pessoa, 2012 October: The Book of Disquiet, 2012 November: Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems, 2014 May: Aspects by Fernando Pessoa, 2016 March: Passoa's Trunk - 13+ ways of looking at a poem, 2017 September: Fernando Pessoa’s Disappearing Act, 2020 February: Strange Music Of Silence: Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet

​Leni Sinclair

 

"Leni Sinclair, born Magdalene Arndt, is an American photographer and radical political activist who lives in Detroit. She has photographed rock and jazz musicians since the early 1960s. She was the co-founder of the White Panther Party along with John Sinclair and Pun Plamondon. Magdalene Arndt was born on March 8, 1940, in Königsberg, Germany, later renamed Kaliningrad when it became territory of the Soviet Union. She grew up in the village of Vahldorf near Magdeburg in East Germany where she listened to American jazz artists such as Harry Belafonte, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald on Radio Luxemburg. ...”

Wikipedia

Jacobin: When Detroit Was Revolutionary

Kresge Arts in Detroit: Leni Sinclair (Video)

Leni Sinclair Shares on Life, Detroit, and More Ahead of Her Motor City Underground Exhibition

 

 Public display of poem by Medgar Evers B&W photograph, undated image, by Leni Sinclair

Afghanistan Live Updates: Afghan President Said to Have Fled as Taliban Enter Kabul

 

“President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan has fled the country, a top political figure said on Sunday, as the Taliban’s relentless, rapid advance brought them into the capital, Kabul, and the last major city controlled by the government fell into chaos. Abdullah Abdullah, chairman of the council appointed to lead peace talks, said in a Facebook video that Mr. Ghani, who had resisted calls for him to step down, had left Afghanistan. Afghan media also reported his departure, which many analysts said was needed to prevent a bloody battle for control of Kabul. On Sunday evening, former President Hamid Karzai announced on Twitter that he was forming a Coordinating Council together with Mr. Abdullah and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of the Hesb-i-Islami party, to manage a peaceful transfer of power. He called on both government and Taliban forces to act with restraint but resolutely to curb any individuals causing chaos or acting irresponsibly. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: A Week Into Taliban Rule, One City’s Glimpse of What the Future May Hold

NY Times: Taliban Sweep in Afghanistan Follows Years of U.S. Miscalculations

Guardian: Taliban orders fighters into Kabul as US evacuates embassy (Video)

The Atlantic: What We Got Wrong in Afghanistan

The Atlantic: Biden’s Betrayal of Afghans Will Live in Infamy

New Yorker: The Return of the Taliban

The Taliban have completed their sweep of the country’s south on Friday, as they took four more provincial capitals

​A fresh angle: The revolutionary gaze of Margaret Watkins – in pictures

 

Still Life – Bathtub, New York, 1919

“Canadian photographer Margaret Watkins rejected traditional gender roles to become a pioneering modernist photographer with Renaissance flair. ... Still Life – Bathtub, New York, 1919. Watkins’ world, like many women at the time, was that of the interior, the home. Watkins had the ability to see it as a pretext for inventing new forms. ... Untitled, Glasgow, 1928-1938. Watkins moved to Glasgow, the city her parents had left to emigrate to Canada, in 1928. The last series of photographs she took was of the city’s building sites. ...”

Guardian

W - Margaret Watkins

Untitled, Glasgow, 1928-1938.

​George-Thérèse Dickenson, 1951-2021

 

“Poet, editor and activist George-Thérèse Dickenson died on June 15, 2021, in New York. The cause was a brain hemorrhage, according to her brother, John Dickenson. With Will Bennett, Dickenson edited the magazine Assassin in the late 1970s. ...  After a brief stint at UC-Berkeley, she moved to Vermont and then Boston in the early 1970s, where she became involved with the anarchist circle around Murray Bookchin. She also connected with a group of poets. In the late 1970s, she moved to lower Manhattan, where, over the next decade, Dickenson was closely involved with Larry Estridge and Peter Seaton. During that time, she taught poetry in the prisons through Janine Pommy Vega’s Incisions Arts Project. ...”

Seven Days

Jacket2: Charles Bernstein - George-Thérèse Dickenson (1951–2021)

​The Hidden Melodies of Subways Around the World

 

“Ted Green has been collecting the sounds and sights of transit systems for more than a decade. He travels frequently for work, as a civil engineer, and in every city he visits, he rides the mass transit system and films video of the closing doors, replete with the announcements and the telltale chimes — beeps, ding-dongs, jingles and arpeggios that warn riders around the world to stand clear. ... Like many aspects of mass transit systems, door chimes may seem banal, the dull background track to daily commutes. If you listen more closely, though, you’ll notice regional patterns and distinctions. ...”

NY Times (Audio)

The Ashcan School Painted the American Working Class

 

New York (1911) by George Bellows. 

“At the turn of the twentieth century, many Western painters sought to enhance the visual world through glorification. Portraits of politicians and socialites instilled pride in their moneyed subjects, while landscapes and narrative works told epic tales across massive canvases. In the United States, the industrial revolution altered the landscape of every major city, with skyscrapers rising rapidly and workers pressing their noses further to the grindstone. Bourgeois painters were ill-equipped to portray urban development and its effects on everyday people, but one tight-knit group of working-class artists captured the spirit of this time by going against the mainstream. These artists, commonly known as the Ashcan school, had cut their teeth as political cartoonists during the rise of investigative journalism. Working in newspapers brought them closer to this rapidly industrializing social environment, instilling a sense of journalistic presence. They served the press in ways the camera would just a few decades later, leading their art from postimpressionism to documentary realism. ...’

Jacobin

Ashcan Artists - Bill Davis

The City from Greenwich Village (1922) by John Sloan.

​A History Of Hip-Hop In 20 Essential Songs

 

“A history of hip-hop in 20 songs? It’s difficult enough to condense one artist’s career into 20 songs, but any attempt to do the same for an entire genre is a fool’s errand. It’s an interesting exercise, nonetheless. If you were speaking to someone that wasn’t familiar with the genre, what songs would you pick to tell the history of hip-hop? You’d of course need to start at the beginning. And, hip-hop, perhaps uniquely among all musical forms, has a generally accepted start date. That came on August 11, 1973, when the teenage DJ Kool Herc played his sister’s birthday party in the basement of their apartment complex in the Bronx, New York. Herc was behind the style’s early innovations, particularly the isolating and repeating of percussion sections of funk records, using a second copy of the same record, and extending the breakdowns so the athletically inclined dancers could let loose. ...”

udiscover (Video)

The Best Kind of Vanishing

 

ShaiHuludKitty, NYC Subway Car at Sunset, 2019

“As of today, March 26, 2021, I no longer know how to write a poem. I have no idea how I wrote the poems in this book.In some ways, this state of unknowing is exciting. A poetry teacher of mine once said, quoting the poet Muriel Rukeyser, ‘You need only be a scarecrow for poems to land on.’ Perhaps, then, my amnesia as to how I made these poems indicates that I’ve been, at times, a scarecrow: a landing place, a vessel, a channel for poems. I like that. To me, it seems preferable to be a channel than what I usually am: a self-will-er, a scrambler, a filler of holes, a looker in ‘glittery shitdoors’ for love (as I note in the poem ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’). ...”

The Paris Review

W - Muriel Rukeyser

 

Muriel Rukeyser

​Guillevic: Selected Poems - Eugene Guillevic, Denise Levertov (1969)

 

“... In her book of translations of selected Guillevic poems, the poet Denise Levertov observed that:  'The great ritual places of the Celts . . . the places where the great and small stones or menhirs, are gathered in powerful and enigmatic testimony to forgotten certainties, are landscapes of a profound austerity.' ... The relationships that bind forms together in nature cannot be pure chance, and what we call ‘natural life’ is in effect a relationship between forms, so inexorable that without it this natural life could not exist.  So it is with art as well.  The formal relationships within a work of art and among different works of art constitute an order for, and a metaphor of, the entire universe.' For many years while travelling I always carried a set of ink pens and a field sketchbook and close by a copy of a book of poems by Eugene Guillevec that had been translated by Denise Levertov. ...”

The Surrealistic Druids: Part 2, Part 1

Poetry Foundation: Eugene Guillevic

W - Denise Levertov

W - Menhir

amazon

 

Large menhir located between Millstreet and Ballinagree, County Cork, Ireland

Two Space Probes to Pass by Venus Next Week

“Venus is a brilliant beacon in the western sky after sunset right now. Look toward it and you will be looking at three spacecraft as well: Japan’s Akatsuki orbiter and two others, both European, that are fast approaching for their second gravity-assist flybys. Solar Orbiter passes by on August 9th and BepiColombo on August 10th. Both plan lots of science throughout their close encounters — and they are looking for amateurs’ photography to bolster their coordinated science campaigns. The two spacecraft are using Venus to steer them toward their eventual science targets. Both are approaching Venus from its night side, with the planet appearing as only the thinnest of crescents. ...”

Sky & Telescope (Video)

​so you wanna get into... zeena parkins

 

“welcome to issue #33 of ‘tusk is better than rumours,’ a newsletter featuring primers and album rankings of experimental and ‘outsider’ musicians. artist primers are published every other monday, and on off-weeks i (occasionally) publish a variety of articles ranging from label and genre primers to interviews to guest writers.this week we dive into the rich and varied career of harpist zeena parkins. parkins did for the harp what john cage did for the piano—expanded its possibilities by testing its limits. she experiments with techniques on both acoustic and electric harp (did you know electric harps existed?), summoning sounds out of the instrument that prove it’s much more than simply soothing and somnolent. on top of this, she’s a composer and improviser who has collaborated with musicians from Björk to John Zorn. ...”

tusk is better (Video)

amazon: Zeena Parkins

2011 January: Zeena Parkins, 2012 December: Fred Frith, Ikue Mori, Zeena Parkins / sound. at REDCAT, 2014 October: Janene Higgins & Zeena Parkins (2000), 2012 October: Ikue Mori, 2015 March: Phantom Orchard: Zeena Parkins and Ikue Mori, 2016 April: News from Babel (1983-1986), 2016 May: Something Out There (1987), 2017 February:  Mouth=Maul=Betrayer (1996)

​Bob and Doug McKenzie

 

“Bob and Doug McKenzie are a pair of fictional Canadian brothers who hosted ‘Great White North’, a sketch which was introduced on SCTV for the show's third season when it moved to CBC Television in 1980.  Bob is played by Rick Moranis and Doug is played by Dave Thomas. Although created originally as filler to both satisfy and mock network Canadian content demands, the duo became a pop culture phenomenon in both Canada and the United States. ... ‘Great White North’ (originally known as ‘Kanadian Korner’) is a panel show that played upon Canadian stereotypes.  Bob and Doug, two dim-witted beer-swilling brothers wearing heavy winter clothing and tuques, would comment on various elements of Canadian life and culture, frequently employing the interjection ‘Eh?’ and derisively calling each other ‘hoser.’  ...”

Wikipedia

Jacobin: A People’s History of the Hoser, Canada’s Blue-Collar Icon

YouTube: Great White North: Back-Bacon and Long Underwear, French Canadian Problem, Beer Nog, Mouse in a Bottle

​Official Map: Stockholm Archipelago Ferry Network Diagram, 2021

 

“Waxholmsbolaget is a big ferry operator in Stockholm, connecting most of the small islands in the Stockholm archipelago. They have recently updated their line map to a very diagrammatic style. The idea is good, to make it easier to find the lines and where you are going, but it massively distorts the network and the omission of geographic features makes it very difficult to orient yourself. What do you think? I commented briefly on this diagram on Twitter last week, but I’ll record my thoughts here in a little more detail as well.First off, it looks to me like the design of this diagram has been heavily influenced by the current Stockholm rail network diagram (PDF link), as it uses similar typography, design elements and symbology. ...”

Transit Map

W - Stockholm Archipelago

Paying the Price for Premier League Riches

 

Andreas Pereira is known as the Preseason Pirlo. But he has nowhere to go.

“The headed clearance did not quite get the requisite power, or direction. It floated, rather than fizzed, out of Brentford’s penalty area, the danger not quite clear. Two Manchester United players converged on it, sensing opportunity. The ball bounced off the turf, not too high, not too quick, and hung in the air for just a second. And that is where Andreas Pereira met it.There is a reason some Manchester United fans have come to know Pereira — with equal parts affection and admonishment — as the Preseason Pirlo. ...”

NY Times

​Nighttime in Nairobi

President Records Ltd present Matata, London, 1971, photo: unknown, (c) President Records Ltd.

“As a child, one of my favorite Soukous songs was ‘Nairobi Night’ by the Soukous Stars. I loved the rolling bassline, percussive guitars, and the language-neutral singalong chorus. I knew little about nightlife, only from parties my parents threw in their basement on occasions like New Years Eve, but seeing the title, perhaps I imagined what a Nairobi night might feel like thousands of miles away. So it is in the spirit of that imagining that I present the next episode of Africa Is a Country Radio, where we continue our look at club culture across the African continent, and take a visit to Nairobi. ...”

Africa Is a Country (Audio)

​Tim Berners-Lee

 

“Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He is a Professorial Fellow of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).Berners-Lee proposed an information management system on 12 March 1989, then implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet in mid-November. Berners-Lee is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the continued development of the Web. He co-founded (with his wife-to-be Rosemary Leith) the World Wide Web Foundation. ...”

Wikipedia

Vanity Fair - “I Was Devastated”: Tim Berners-Lee, the Man Who Created the World Wide Web, Has Some Regrets

Tim Berners-Lee (Video)

Vague, but exciting

TED: Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web (Video)

Richard Parkes Bonington

 

A Sea Piece, probably 1824

“This breezy painting of sailing boats in the Channel is alive with sea spray, grey waves, misty clouds and glimpses of blue. It is a spontaneous response to the restless play of sea and weather that looks as if it was painted on a boat – it puts you there so directly you can smell salt and hear seagulls. Richard Parkes Bonington lived and worked between two European art traditions. Born British, he moved to France at 14 and shook up French art with his robust, spontaneous eye so like those of his contemporaries Constable and Turner. By popularising that British freshness in France he helped pave the way for impressionism. But four years after making this painting he was dead, aged 25, from tuberculosis. This little seascape is part of the small deathless legacy of a doomed Romantic.”

Wallace Collection

W - Richard Parkes Bonington

Hauntings in the Imagination: New Books on Bluesman Robert Johnson - Greil Marcus

 

“... The blues singer and guitarist Robert Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, in 1911, grew up in Memphis, and was fatally poisoned by a jealous husband during a performance at a juke joint near Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1938. He recorded twenty-nine of his own songs for the Vocalion label in San Antonio in 1936 and in Dallas in 1937. In 1938, with the blues musician Johnny Shines, he traversed most of the eastern part of the country, playing from St. Louis to Chicago to Detroit to Harlem. Later that year the producer John Hammond, who had celebrated his recordings in New Masses, knew Johnson had to perform at his historic ‘Spirituals to Swing’ concert at Carnegie Hall; learning of his death, Hammond played two of his songs on a phonograph on the stage. ...”

Riot Material

​Forms

 

“Audio and Video content created by the musician Forms. Forms is a London, UK based producer that aims to explore the imprecise beauty of the natural world through the medium of sound. ...”

YouTube: Forms

YouTube: Grow | Generative Ambient | (w/ Hermod, Expert Sleepers Super Disting Ex, Magneto, Morphagene, QPAS), Burden | Ambient | (Eurorack Modular/Digitone/Digitakt), Heal | Ambient | (Eurorack Modular / Digitone / Digitakt)

Symbolism

 

Victor Vasnetsov, The Knight at the Crossroads, 1878

“Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through metaphorical images and language mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realism. In literature, the style originates with the 1857 publication of Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal. The works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire admired greatly and translated into French, were a significant influence and the source of many stock tropes and images. The aesthetic was developed by Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine during the 1860s and 1870s. In the 1880s, the aesthetic was articulated by a series of manifestos and attracted a generation of writers. The term ‘symbolist’ was first applied by the critic Jean Moréas, who invented the term to distinguish the Symbolists from the related Decadents of literature and of art. Distinct from, but related to, the style of literature, symbolism in art is related to the gothic component of Romanticism and Impressionism....”

Wikipedia

 

Henri Fantin-Latour, By the Table, 1872, depicting: Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Léon Valade, Ernest d'Hervilly and Camille Pelletan (seated); Pierre Elzéar, Emile Blémont, and Jean Aicard (standing)

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - Steven Levy (1984)

 

“Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution is a book by Steven Levy about hacker culture. ... Levy describes the people, the machines, and the events that defined the Hacker Culture and the Hacker Ethic, from the early mainframe hackers at MIT, to the self-made hardware hackers and game hackers. Immediately following is a brief overview of the issues and ideas that are brought forward by Steven Levy's book, as well as a more detailed interpretation of each chapter of the book, mentioning some of the principal characters and events. ...”

Wikipedia

NY Times: Books of The Times; Hackers as Heroes (Dec. 1984)

NY Times: When Hacking Was in Its Infancy (Oct. 2012)

amazon

YouTube: Steven Levy Talks about Hackers Heroes of the Computer Revolution - 25th Anniversary Edition 27:35

 

The Mark I and other early computers are on display at Harvard. As a student, Peter Neumann had the run of the Mark IV on weekends.