EMS VCS3 in the 1970s
"Necessity is the mother of invention. In the case of Peter Zinovieff, the necessity was quite conventional. His cutting-edge studio that functioned as a research facility for electronic music experimentation, was in dire need of money. ... Together with his two collaborators at EMS, David Cockerell and Tristram Cary, Zinovieff drew upon their vast collective knowledge of sound processing and came up with the company’s first commercial product, originally geared towards educational institutes. ... This is the story of the VCS3, one of the most unique synthesizers in the history of electronic music. ...”
I Went to Ukraine, and I Saw a Resolve That We Should Learn From
"IZIUM, Ukraine — Inna Osipova pointed to the 30-foot pile of rubble that is all that’s left of her apartment building. She and her 5-year-old son narrowly escaped when Russian shelling destroyed the structure, but her grandmother did not and is interred somewhere in the wreckage. Osipova hopes her body will be found so she can be given a proper burial. Her voice cracked with emotion, but she held together until I asked what she thought of Americans who say it’s time to move on from supporting Ukraine. ... These areas in northeastern Ukraine, recently liberated after months of Russian occupation, show what’s at stake as some Americans and Europeans seek to trim assistance for Ukraine. There are bombed-out buildings, survivors cooking over open fires outside, children injured by land mines, freshly vacated Russian torture chambers — 23 discovered so far here in the Kharkiv region alone — along with mass graves of corpses with hands tied and shattered limbs. ...”
Timothy Morales, 56, an American teacher, managed to send his 10-year-old daughter to safety, but was trapped in occupied Kherson, Ukraine, during Russia’s occupation.
Babel - Alejandro González Iñárritu (2006)
"Babel focuses on four families in four countries on three continents in a multidimensional story that engages the senses, startles the mind, and engenders within our consciousness an appreciation for small acts of kindness and compassion in a world filled with hatred, violence, confusion, dread, suffering and loss. This extraordinary film is the third in a trilogy by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu that includes with Amores Perros and 21 Grams. People today are cut off from each other by race, language, culture, and tradition. ...”
Stop and admire the Chelsea Hotel’s beautiful iron balconies
"There’s a lot to love about the Chelsea Hotel: the Queen Anne (or Victorian Gothic?) style, its backstory as a failed early cooperative apartment house, the enchanting main staircase and lobby fireplace, and its cultural relevance as a home for artists, writers, and free thinkers throughout the 20th century. But there’s one feature I can’t get past: the magnificent floral-ornamented iron balconies gracing the circa-1883 building—seven rows of delicate leaves and flowers spread across the hotel’s red brick facade.The floral motifs bring the beauty and softness of the natural world to the harsh brick and mortar cityscape of West 23rd Street. ...”
2010 October: Hotel Chelsea, 2014 January: Arena Hotel Chelsea, 2019 August: The Chelsea Affect - Arthur Miller, 2022 July: ‘Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel’ Review: Bohemia’s Holdouts
For Western Weapons, the Ukraine War Is a Beta Test
"Three months ago, as Ukrainian troops were struggling to advance against Russian forces in the south, the military’s headquarters in Kyiv quietly deployed a valuable new weapon to the battlefield. It was not a rocket launcher, cannon or another kind of heavy arms from Western allies. Instead, it was a real-time information system known as Delta — an online network that military troops, civilian officials and even vetted bystanders could use to track and share desperately needed details about Russian forces. The software, developed in coordination with NATO, had barely been tested in battle. But as they moved across the Kherson region in a major counteroffensive, Ukraine’s forces employed Delta, as well as powerful weaponry supplied by the West, to push the Russians out of towns and villages they had occupied for months. ...”
Soldiers with Ukraine’s Carpathian Sich Battalion reviewing drone footage below the front line in May.
Modern Mythologies - a talk with Raffaele Pezzella
"Raffaele Pezzella organises streaming radio sessions (more than 200 as I write this) for promoting the artists he finds and/or curates across the world under the umbrella of the Unexplained Sounds Group label, or the Eighth Tower Records sublabel. He started the Unexplained Sounds Group back in 2015, an currently the imprint has reached more than 50 releases in its catalogue, published mostly on CD and as digital download. The label was recently described by Bandcamp as a ‘global network of aural disorientation’. Raffaele focuses on experimental music, whether it is ambient, abstract or drone. ...”
Guido Van Helten Soars in Salina, Kansas
"Following our previous story on the public/private art initiative ‘Boom!’ festival in Salina, Kansas, we follow today with the one previous project on silos that ushered in many approvals for the festival by Australian mural artist (and photographer) Guido Van Helten. Completed in the summer of 2021, the images of children playing a circular game like ‘Ring-Around-the-Rosie’ fairly surround the HD Flour Mill. With a mix of sepia tones and faded pastels, the scene includes a diverse mix of kids rendered with tender respect, a composition that evokes the moment and captures a timeless truth that children and play go together like peanut butter and jelly. Van Helten got to know the community before he began the project, making this work a mirror of life in the area. ...”
The Liberation of Kherson
"While the war in Ukraine was not a major issue in the midterms, Ukrainians—and others who support their cause—watched Tuesday’s elections with some apprehension due to a streak of GOP skepticism toward U.S. aid to Ukraine. Last month, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy suggested that Ukraine would no longer get a ‘blank check’ once the Republicans got control of Congress. He and his allies promptly moved to reassure the party’s defense hawks that they weren’t advocating a cutoff of military aid, just better oversight, but the anti-Ukraine rhetoric from the right continued to make people nervous, especially with such prominent pundits as Fox News’s Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham turning their shows into platforms for Kremlin talking points. The GOP’s lackluster election performance, which may leave control of the Senate in Democratic hands, likely spells the end of any serious effort to curb aid to Ukraine. This comes amid other big developments certain to affect the war’s course: the Russians’ decision to withdraw from Kherson, abandoning their biggest prize since the February 24 invasion, and renewed but still uncertain talk of negotiations. ...”
KHERSON, UKRAINE: A Ukrainian flag seen in the military assembly center of artillery batteries in Kherson, Ukraine on July 15, 2022. Ukrainian artillerymen in the military assembly center check the weapons and special equipment to make them ready before they go to their duties at the frontline in Kherson.
When the Finely Tuned Spotlight Falls on the Lighting Designer
"Lighting designers live in the dark, shining light on others. Jennifer Tipton, who works in dance and theater, has received more attention than most in her profession. At the top of it for the last 50 years or so, she has earned Tony Awards, Bessie awards, an Obie for lifetime achievement and a MacArthur fellowship, among other accolades and prizes. Still, she’s spent her career being mostly invisible, intentionally without an identifiable style, always in service to the vision of choreographers, playwrights and directors — often famous ones, like Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp, Paul Taylor and Robert Wilson. ...”
Claire Denis - Beau travail (1999)
"With her ravishingly sensual take on Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor, Claire Denis firmly established herself as one of the great visual tone poets of our time. Amid the azure waters and sunbaked desert landscapes of Djibouti, a French Foreign Legion sergeant (Denis Lavant) sows the seeds of his own ruin as his obsession with a striking young recruit (Grégoire Colin) plays out to the thunderous, operatic strains of Benjamin Britten. Denis and cinematographer Agnès Godard fold military and masculine codes of honor, colonialism’s legacy, destructive jealousy, and repressed desire into shimmering, hypnotic images that ultimately explode in one of the most startling and unforgettable endings in all of modern cinema. ...”
2009 September: Claire Denis, 2013 October: Claire Denis Dialogue with Eric Hynes, 2017 June: White Material (2009), 2022 February: Claire Denis’s Closet Picks
Mines, looting, no power: Kherson assesses damage after Russian retreat
"After two nights of jubilation following the liberation of their city, the people of Kherson on Sunday began to assess the extent of the damage wreaked by eight long months of Russian occupation, with residents still without electricity and water.On Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russian forces had destroyed key infrastructure before retreating, while the mayor of Kherson said the humanitarian situation was ‘severe’ because of a lack of medicine and bread.The departing Russian troops also left behind thousands of mines, tripwires and unexploded shells. ...”
An aid delivery in Pravdyne, near Kherson
World Cup 2022 Group A guide: De Jong keeps Netherlands ticking and watch out for Ecuador’s set pieces
"What tactics do the Netherlands use? What is Senegal’s weakness? Which quirk should we look out for from Ecuador? The 2022 World Cup is nearly upon us and The Athletic will be running in-depth tactical group guides so you will know what to expect from every nation competing in Qatar. Liam Tharme will look at each team’s playing style, strengths, weaknesses, key players and highlight things to keep an eye on during the tournament. …”
World Cup 2022 Group A guide: De Jong keeps Netherlands ticking and watch out for Ecuador’s set pieces The Athletic - (Video)
Feuer Zungen - Glocken Saiten (2022)
"Composing electroacoustic music is a breathtaking, exciting adventure, exploring unknown and unforeseeable sonic worlds. This album contains electroacoustic pieces I composed between 2000 and 2021. I wrote two of the pieces for performer and live electronics, and the remaining three are acousmatic pieces (i.e. without performer). For the pieces including live performers, I have been developing a live electronics program for over 20 years which allows for the complex and layered processing of the sounds produced by the performer....”
Ukraine Signals It Will Stay on the Offensive, Despite Talk of a Lull
"As jubilant Ukrainian troops hoist their national flag over Kherson after a comprehensive Russian retreat, they give no sign of stopping their offensives for the winter, or allowing the war to settle into a stalemate. In the east, Ukrainian forces continue to grind forward and have repelled repeated Russian efforts to seize towns like Bakhmut and Pavlivka, reportedly killing hundreds of Russian soldiers. In the south, they are striking deep behind Russian lines, hitting Moscow’s troops before they can settle and build defenses on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, across from Kherson. And there are growing hints from troops on the ground, and volunteers close to them, that the Ukrainians are preparing for a new land offensive between those two fronts, south through the Zaporizhzhia region toward Melitopol, challenging Russia’s hold on the entire southern area that it seized in the invasion that began in February. ...”
A work thought to be by Banksy in Borodianka.
"In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" - The Allman Brothers Band (1970)
"’In Memory of Elizabeth Reed‘ is an instrumental composition by the American group The Allman Brothers Band. It first appeared on their second studio album, Idlewild South (1970), released on Capricorn Records. The jazz-influenced piece was written by guitarist Dickey Betts, among his first writing credits for the group. Betts named it after a headstone he saw for Elizabeth Jones Reed Napier in Rose Hill Cemetery in the band's hometown of Macon, Georgia. Multiple versions of the composition have been recorded, with the version performed on the group's 1971 live album At Fillmore East generally considered the definitive rendition. ...”
Headstone for Elizabeth Reed at Rose Hill Cemetery.
GhostRider
"GhostRider is a wooden roller coaster at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California. It is located in the Ghost Town section of the park, south of the main entrance. Manufactured by Custom Coasters International, GhostRider is the tallest and longest wooden coaster on the West Coast of the United States, measuring 4,533 feet (1,382 m) long and 118 feet (36 m) tall. The ride follows an L-shaped double out and back pattern, with a station themed to a mining building. There are three trains, each themed to a different precious metal, though only two are in use at any given time. GhostRider was announced in August 1997 as part of an expansion of Knott's Berry Farm. ...”
What Russia’s withdrawal from a key Ukrainian city means for the war
"Ukrainian troops entered the southern city of Kherson, days after Russia announced its retreat from the regional capital it has occupied since close to the start of the war. The Ukrainian military said Friday that Kherson was now back under Ukrainian government control. Earlier this week, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had said all Russian troops would withdraw from the city of Kherson to the eastern side of the Dnieper River, territory that Russia still controls. Ukrainian officials initially expressed some skepticism about a Russian retreat; they had recently worried that, though Russia had shown signs of a possible withdrawal, it might instead be a feint to lure Ukrainian forces into a costly urban battle. So the sentiment among Ukrainian leaders was basically: Ukraine will confirm a full-on Russian withdrawal when it sees it happen. ...”
Footage verified by The New York Times shows civilians in Kherson’s main square greeting and cheering on some of the first Ukrainian troops to enter the city.
Two Weeks of Chaos: Inside Elon Musk’s Takeover of Twitter
"SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk had a demand. On Oct. 28, hours after completing his $44 billion buyout of Twitter the night before, Mr. Musk gathered several human-resource executives in a ‘war room’ in the company’s offices in San Francisco. Prepare for widespread layoffs, he told them, six people with knowledge of the discussion said. Twitter’s work force needed to be slashed immediately, he said, and those who were cut would not receive bonuses that were set to be paid on Nov. 1. ... Twitter, which is under financial pressure from debt and a slumping economy, is now unrecognizable compared with what it was a month ago. Last week, Mr. Musk slashed 50 percent of the company’s 7,500 employees. Executive resignations have continued. Misinformation proliferated on the platform during Tuesday’s midterm elections. A key project to expand revenue from subscriptions hit snags. Some advertisers have been aghast. ...”
The Sea at L’Estaque - Paul Cézanne (1876)
"’It’s like a playing card,’ wrote Cézanne of the Mediterranean fishing village L’Estaque, where he stayed in 1876: ‘red roofs against the blue sea.’ Those words illuminate this painting. A playing card is a flat surface with no pretensions to be anything else: hearts or clubs, the images are simply shapes on a plane. The way he paints the houses and sea here creates a similar effect. The sea doesn’t recede in waves like an ocean painted by Turner but stands up in a solid wall of blue. This unyielding hard water is juxtaposed with the yellow walls, red roofs and oval leaves of the ‘foreground’ in a way that makes them all seem equal, just like symbols on a playing card. Cézanne exhibited this painting with the impressionist group yet he is pushing further than they did, into a sun-blasted future where space no longer exists.”
2011 August: Paul Cézanne, 2014 November: Cézanne: Landscape into Art, 2015 March: Madame Cézanne, 2017 June: Portraits by Cézanne, 2017 November: Inside Paul Cézanne’s Studio, 2018 April: The Lurchingly Uneven Portraits of Paul Cézanne, 2021 July: Cézanne Drawing
Kherson: As Russia retreats, Ukrainians still fear a trap
"Not long after the Russians announced they would be pulling out of Kherson, a text popped up on my phone. It was from a resident of the city, who wanted to remain anonymous, giving me her impressions of what was happening. ‘I've seen the announcement and I'm really surprised,’ she wrote. ‘Of course, I hope things are going to get better, but during these eight months of occupation I learnt not to believe a word the Russians say. They lie so much about everything.’ She could see Chechen fighters, loyal to Moscow, moving around the city, many wearing civilian clothes. Her concern, like so many of her fellow citizens, was that Russia's announcement could be a trap - designed to draw Ukrainian troops into a killing ground. ...”
Ukrainian soldiers near Kherson believe Moscow is trying to lure them into a trap
The Passion of Questlove
"... Right at 1 a.m., he was greeted by a magical locomotive — chugging along so rhythmically that it almost seemed to dance, flipping gray buildings it passed into psychedelic colors — for his regular dose of peace, love and ‘Soul Train.’ Because ‘Soul Train’ was the only show, besides ‘Sesame Street,’ that he was allowed to watch as a child, and because Thompson, who you might better know as Questlove, grew up into the sort of adult who relies on an extensive knowledge of music to make sense of the world, his childhood memories are impossible to separate from which episode of ‘Soul Train’ was playing at the time. The two are knotted together so intricately that the archive of the show and the archive of his brain are the same. ...”
Stax Records
"Stax Records is an American record company, originally based in Memphis, Tennessee. Founded in 1957 as Satellite Records, the label changed its name to Stax Records in 1961. It also shared its operations with sister label Volt Records. Stax was influential in the creation of Southern soul and Memphis soul music. Stax also released gospel, funk, and blues recordings. ... It featured several popular ethnically integrated bands (including the label's house band, Booker T. & the M.G.'s) and a racially integrated team of staff and artists unprecedented in that time of racial strife and tension in Memphis and the South. ...”
Former schoolteacher Estelle Axton, shown here outside Stax in 1968, co-founded the studio with her brother, Jim Stewart in a former movie theater on McLemore Avenue.
‘Russia kaput!’: Ukraine brigade eyes victory as enemy retreats from Kherson
"On the edge of a copse, Danilo and two fellow soldiers stared intently at a screen. On it was a live video feed from a drone. ‘It’s quite simple to use. We put the drone up, call in an artillery strike and see where it lands. Then we adjust the position,’ said Danilo, a member of Ukraine’s 63rd Mechanised Brigade.The drone offered a panoramic view of the city of Snihurivka, occupied since the spring by Russian troops. There was an industrial estate, buildings and a grain silo, used by the enemy as a lookout point. The latest attack missed its target. ‘We were 300 metres off,’ said Danilo, pointing to the feed that showed a puff of grey smoke. The trio were standing next to a white satellite dish connected to Elon Musk’s Starlink system. Immediately behind them was a well-developed network of first world war-style trenches, dug beneath a line of bare autumn trees. For months the Russians were a mere kilometre away, hidden in civilian houses and dugouts. ...”
A woman stands in front of the 'memory wall of fallen defenders' in downtown Kyiv
November 2022 lunar eclipse
"A total lunar eclipse occurred on Tuesday, November 8, 2022. The southern limb of the Moon passed through the center of the Earth's shadow. Occurring only 5.8 days before apogee (on November 14, 2022). The next total lunar eclipse will take place on March 14, 2025. A lunar occultation of Uranus happened during the eclipse. It was the first total lunar eclipse on Election Day in US history. This event was referred in media coverage as a ‘beaver blood moon’. The eclipse was completely visible over the Pacific and most of North America. It was seen on the rising moon in Australia, Asia and in the far north-east of Europe, and on the setting moon in South America and eastern North America. ...”
BSA Images Of The Week: 11-06-22
"It’s New York City Marathon Day! 50,000 people running through the street, which is not much different from the Macy’s One Day Sale – except it’s outside. ... The city pays tributes to its heroes in different ways, and NYC street art loves Biggie Smalls more than anyone, along with folks like Spike Lee and Jean Michel Basquiat. This week we spotted a few new ones among the bevy of new street art beauties we discovered below. Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Jason Naylor, Homesick, Savior El Mundo, King Baby, Mutz, Glare, Banksy Hates Me, Ashley Hodder, Raisa Nosova, Qzar, Spin, INU, Cheatz, Ultraboyz, Humble, Carlos RMK, and Yuzly Mathurin.”
Ukraine war: Kyiv Mayor Klitschko warns of evacuations if power lost
"Kyiv residents should be prepared to leave the city if there is a total loss of power, mayor Vitaliy Klitschko has said. In recent weeks, millions of Ukrainians have intermittently been left without electricity and water as Russian air strikes target vital infrastructure. Rolling power cuts are also in place to avoid overloads and allow for repairs. Some 40% of Ukraine's energy system has been damaged or destroyed by Russian attacks on power plants and lines. President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that Russia could be ‘concentrating forces and means for a possible repetition of mass attacks on our infrastructure, energy in the first instance’. The Geneva Conventions, which outline humanitarian standards for treatment in war, state that attacks should not be carried out against ‘civilian objects’. Speaking on Ukrainian television, Mayor Klitschko branded Russia's targeting of infrastructure as ‘terrorism’ and ‘genocide’. ...”
Kyiv residents fill up water bottles after their homes were left without water due to Russian missile strikes.
Hollow City: Edward Hopper’s portraits of urban alienation
"Urban hellscapes, New York ones in particular, look more heavenly in the soft glow of hindsight. Seventies Manhattan, formerly Exhibit A for how the country was going straight to shit, is widely remembered as a wonderland, quattrocento Florence for punks. ... Edward Hopper’s drawings and paintings of New York are all but synonymous with quiet desperation: the distinctly big-city feeling of being gray and alone in a loud, colorful place. But look at Nighthawks—based, Hopper said, on a restaurant on Greenwich Avenue, not far from where he lived—and tell me you don’t long for this prehistoric land where you never have to wait for a seat and distraction has yet to conquer the world. At first, Edward Hopper’s New York, an exhibition at the Whitney Museum, a few blocks from where that restaurant once stood, seems like a straightforward case of grass-is-always-greener thinking. ...”
2008 July: Edward Hopper, 2010 October: Finding Nighthawks, 2010 December: Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time, 2012 Wednesday: Through Edward Hopper's eyes: in search of an artist's seaside inspiration, 2013 July: Hopper Drawing, 2014 May: INTERVIEW: “An Interview with Edward Hopper, June 17, 1959″., 2014 September: How Edward Hopper “Storyboarded” His Iconic Painting Nighthawks, 2015 February: Edward Hopper's New York: A Walking Tour, 2015 September: Edward Hopper life and works, 2016 May: "Night Windows," 1928, 2016 July: Sunday (1926), 2016 September: Drug Store (1927), 2018 January: Seven A.M. (1948), 2018 February: Jo Hopper, Woman in the Sun, 2019 August: Pennsylvania Coal Town (1947), 2020 January: Queensborough Bridge, 1913, 2021 July: The Mournfulness of Cities, 2022 October: The Waning Years of Edward Hopper
Room in New York, 1932
Tyler Mitchell featuring Marshall Allen - Dancing Shadows (2021)
"Dancing Shadows is the latest release from bassist Tyler Mitchell. On it he is joined by several fellow Arkestra members — percussionist Elson Nascimento, drummer Wayne Smith, and the incomparable Marshall Allen on sax and EVI. These four are joined by two saxists, Chris Hemingway on tenor and Nicoletta Manzini on alto, who come from more traditional modern jazz backgrounds and offer balance to the others, who have spent so many years plumbing the Afro-futurist cosmos. They also foreground the fact Sun Ra's music is not just strange and avant-garde. It was originally intended to appeal to the sensibilities — 50s jazz, swing, and R&B — of audiences who needed cajoling and pop toe-tapping to before reaching the more outre dimensions of the music. ...”
Kyiv prepares for a winter with no heat, water or power
"KYIV, Ukraine — The mayor of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, is warning residents that they must prepare for the worst this winter if Russia keeps striking the country’s energy infrastructure — and that means having no electricity, water or heat in the freezing cold cannot be ruled out. ‘We are doing everything to avoid this. But let’s be frank, our enemies are doing everything for the city to be without heat, without electricity, without water supply, in general, so we all die. And the future of the country and the future of each of us depends on how prepared we are for different situations,’ Mayor Vitali Klitschko told state media. Russia has focused on striking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure over the last month, causing power shortages and rolling outages across the country. Kyiv was scheduled to have hourly rotating blackouts Sunday in parts of the city and the surrounding region. ...”
A man sits in a cafe during a blackout in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Nov. 4, 2022
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