Tuesday, 31 March 2009
representation
a small girl, full length, in green dress slashed with white and
with red favours, white lace collar and cuffs, standing with a fan
in her left hand
with red favours, white lace collar and cuffs, standing with a fan
in her left hand
Labels:
painting,
robert peake
Monday, 30 March 2009
Spring Moonwatch at the Royal Observatory
A week of lunar observing to mark the International Year of Astronomy’s Spring Moonwatch.
The Royal Observatory’s 28-inch refracting telescope, the largest of its kind in the UK, will be open in the late afternoons (weather permitting).
Visitors can view the moon’s mountains and craters in detail, with expert guidance from one of our astronomers. Opening times vary from day to day with the rising and setting of the moon.
Contact & Booking Details
Website: Click to Visit
Wed, 1 Apr, 2009
Start Time TBA
Cost:
Free
Sunday, 29 March 2009
large egg
'Sammlung von Nestern und Eyern verschiedener Vögel..' by FC Günther and AL Wirsing, published between 1772 and 1786; hosted by the University of Heidelberg.
via BibliOdyssey
figures of speech, flowers of rhetoric, giant slayers
turns of phrase, schemes, tropes, ornaments, colors, flowers
about henry
Titus Manlius Torquatus/ Goltzius / 1586
Donatello/ David / 1440
Mise en Abyme
Mise en Abyme is, originally, a figure in heraldry in which the figure in the centre of the shield, [the abyss of the escutcheon] reproduces the whole shield, and in the centre of that is yet another smaller representation of the whole and so on. So we have an infinite repetition with infinite regress.
Telling Rhythm Amittai F. Aviram
The blazon of sweet beauty's best
In I Am a Strange Loop, Hofstadter defines strange loops as follows:
“ | And yet when I say "strange loop", I have something else in mind — a less concrete, more elusive notion. What I mean by "strange loop" is — here goes a first stab, anyway — not a physical circuit but an abstract loop in which, in the series of stages that constitute the cycling-around, there is a shift from one level of abstraction (or structure) to another, which feels like an upwards movement in a hierarchy, and yet somehow the successive "upward" shifts turn out to give rise to a closed cycle. That is, despite one's sense of departing ever further from one's origin, one winds up, to one's shock, exactly where one had started out. In short, a strange loop is a paradoxical level-crossing feedback loop. (pp. 101-102) |
observations, weather changes or other events of daily importance
March 28th, Mr. Francis Garland browght me Sir Edward Kelley and his brother’s letters.
March 31st, a great fit of the stone in my left kydney: all day I could do but three or four drops of water, but I drunk a draught of white wyne and salet oyle, and after that, crabs’ eys in powder with the bone in the carp’s head, and abowt four of the clok I did eat tosted cake buttered, and with suger and nutmeg on it, and drunk two great draughts of ale with it; and I voyded within an howr much water, 49 and a stone as big as an Alexander seed. God be thanked! Five shillings to Robert Webb, part of his wagis.
The Private Diary of John Dee
March 31st, a great fit of the stone in my left kydney: all day I could do but three or four drops of water, but I drunk a draught of white wyne and salet oyle, and after that, crabs’ eys in powder with the bone in the carp’s head, and abowt four of the clok I did eat tosted cake buttered, and with suger and nutmeg on it, and drunk two great draughts of ale with it; and I voyded within an howr much water, 49 and a stone as big as an Alexander seed. God be thanked! Five shillings to Robert Webb, part of his wagis.
The Private Diary of John Dee
Saturday, 28 March 2009
heraldic body
This very particular period of British painting [Elizabethan/Jacobean] [Peake, Larkin, Oliver, Hilliard] seems to use the body as eschutcheon. In heraldry the field is the whole surface of the shield, the ground upon which tinctures, furs, ordinaries and charges are represented: the provenance, position and aspiration of the sitter made emblematic within the field of painting. This seems especially evident in this portrait of Crompton, although his quartered arms are depicted top right, the portrait seems to function entirely as an heraldic body. If read literally, the three chains drawn from sinister to the dexter side of his body are a bend sinister -a device rarely found in coats of arms as it is reckoned an abatement, denoting illegitimacy. The arms actually depicted - three pheons in two of the quarters, a tower rising from the waves of water, a chevron with three eagles heads erased and the crest comprising a sea horse's head in a coronet - point towards the misidentification of the sitter.
- 'In colouring the Crompton is warm and bright: a black suit decked with gold chains worn sashwise, a gorgeous blue-tinted ruff and a scarlet flower in his hand. The Background is a plain buff-coloured light brown, the inscription is in yellow, and he has not hesitated to use gold leaf in the delineation of the arms, although he has not used it for the jewels.' Elizabethan Painting: An Approach Through Inscriptions - 1: Robert Peake the Elder, Author(s): Roy C. Strong Source: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 105, No. 719 (Feb., 1963), pp. 53-57
lilac
columbine/aquilegia
Perennial; pink, white, yellow or blue, as well as the wild red-and-yellow va; riety. Blooming in May and June, and about two feet in height. The aquilegia should be provided with a rich, moist soil, and will grow in either sun or partial shade. It is self-sowing to some extent, although the seedlings do not come true. It is quite hardy, and requires little care.
blue columbine has been associated with melancholy ever since the fifteenth century
Friday, 27 March 2009
Thursday, 26 March 2009
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
words
paleography tutorial
...Before there can be any interpretation of dreams, three secular fallacies need to be dismissed. The first is the philosophers' prejudice, which holds that dreams are without objective, reasonable connection and are unworthy of interpretation. As opposed to Hegel [whom, justifiably, he cites only indirectly], Freud prefers to follow the lay opinion, that assumes "a meaning, though a hidden one" in the dream. But popular dream interpretation has remained translation in two complementary ways: it makes the whole dream "symbolic" of global meanings, or it translates parts of a dream by "mechanically transferring" each part "into another sign having a known meaning, in accordance with a fixed key." Both techniques, the analogical and the digital, presuppose that the two media, the dream and language, are either similar or co-extensive. The new science rejects these two views as naive...
Friedrich A. Kittler, Discourse Networks 1800 - 1900, Stanford 1990
...Before there can be any interpretation of dreams, three secular fallacies need to be dismissed. The first is the philosophers' prejudice, which holds that dreams are without objective, reasonable connection and are unworthy of interpretation. As opposed to Hegel [whom, justifiably, he cites only indirectly], Freud prefers to follow the lay opinion, that assumes "a meaning, though a hidden one" in the dream. But popular dream interpretation has remained translation in two complementary ways: it makes the whole dream "symbolic" of global meanings, or it translates parts of a dream by "mechanically transferring" each part "into another sign having a known meaning, in accordance with a fixed key." Both techniques, the analogical and the digital, presuppose that the two media, the dream and language, are either similar or co-extensive. The new science rejects these two views as naive...
Friedrich A. Kittler, Discourse Networks 1800 - 1900, Stanford 1990
Tuesday, 24 March 2009
Monday, 23 March 2009
electricity
open circuit means the circuit is broken.
like if you connected your dmm probes to a piece of wire then cut the wire - the circuit is 'open' and
the electricity can't flow.
Opposite of open circuit is short circuit
- if the component you are testing has its terminals connected with a wire, the electricity flows down the short path i.e. path of least resistance. the energy would bypass the component so it wouldn't work and the energy flows in the short circuit instead.
like if you connected your dmm probes to a piece of wire then cut the wire - the circuit is 'open' and
the electricity can't flow.
Opposite of open circuit is short circuit
- if the component you are testing has its terminals connected with a wire, the electricity flows down the short path i.e. path of least resistance. the energy would bypass the component so it wouldn't work and the energy flows in the short circuit instead.
parallax
..the apparent displacement of an object caused by a change in observational position
electricity
...Bataille left his mark everywhere between real, infra-real and supra-real. His way was Nietzsche's - eruptive and disruptive. He accentuates divisions and widens gulfs rather than filling them, until that moment when the lightning flash of intuition/intention leaps from one side to the other, from earth to sun, from night to day... Lefevbre The Production of Space
Zizek also uses the notion of the short circuit in discussion of the 'parallax gap' - points between which no synthesis or mediation is possible.
The faulty connection, cross wiring, is like Freud's Fehleistung... misperformance, faulty action...parapraxis.
Sunday, 22 March 2009
sundial
Hyperbolas may be seen in many sundials. On any given day, the sun revolves in a circle on the celestial sphere, and its rays striking the a point on a sundial traces out a cone of light. The intersection of this cone with the horizontal plane of the ground forms a conic section, by definition. At most populated latitudes and at most times of the year, this conic section is a hyperbola. In practical terms, the shadow of the tip of a pole traces out a hyperbola on the ground over the course of a day. The shape of this hyperbola varies with the geographical latitude and with the time of the year, since those factors affect the cone of the sun's rays relative to the horizon. The collection of such hyperbolas for a whole year at a given location was called a pelekinon by the Greeks, since it resembles a double-bladed ax.
Saturday, 21 March 2009
Friday, 20 March 2009
Thursday, 19 March 2009
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