Monday, 31 August 2009

observations, weather changes or other events of daily importance

skywave
Medium-wave and short-wave radio signals act differently during daytime and nighttime. During the day, AM signals travel by groundwave, diffracting around the curve of the earth over a distance up to a few hundred miles (or kilometers) from the signal transmitter. However, after sunset, changes in the ionosphere cause AM signals to travel by skywave, enabling AM radio stations to be heard much farther from their point of origin than is normal during the day.





















ionosphere

The ionosphere is a region of the upper atmosphere, where neutral air is ionized by solar photons and cosmic rays. When radio waves reach the ionosphere at a shallow angle, they are partly reflected by the surface. The ionosphere can also be similar to a prism refracting light; different frequencies are "bent" by different amounts.

Much as the surface of the ocean interacts with the wind, the condition of the ionosphere is constantly changing due to interaction with incoming radiation. When signals have "bounced" off this irregular surface, they may fade in and out and have the "phasing", "flanging" or "fluttery" character familiar to listeners of shortwave music broadcasts.

collage

Saturday, 29 August 2009

mortal coil



amplitude modification


outer diameter 740mm, strip width 10mm, strip spacing 2mm

the first station it picked up successfully was Spectrum Radio on 558AM [at the point the inner diameter is 500mm] way off my calculations! but spectral anyway.

with the contacts attached to fingers can find different stations by touch

caduceus



Thursday, 27 August 2009

"a capacitor is like a bottle for a genie" !!!


leyden jar

spectral electrics

"I haven't worked out the inductance for the spiral yet, there are a few methods
it is an unusual calculation as nobody uses large diameter painted planar spirals much
may have to model it as an antenna or use finite element analysis."

Friday, 21 August 2009

Laws Against Images

It was a severe disappointment, Beyle writes, when some years ago, looking through old papers, he came across an engraving entitled Prospetto d'Ivrea and was obliged to concede that his recollected picture of the town in the evening sun was nothing but a copy of that very engraving. This being so, Beyle's advice is not to purchase engravings of fine views and prospects seen on one's travels, since before very long they will displace our memories completely, indeed one might say they destroy them. For instance he could no longer recall the wonderful Sistine Madonna he had seen in Dresden, try as he might, because Muller's engraving of it had become superimposed in his mind; the wretched pastels by Mengs in the same gallery, on the other hand, of which he had never seen a copy, remained before him as clear as when he first saw them.

Sebald, Vertigo























The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.


Benjamin

ernst herbeck

Golden ABCs

SIGN LANGUAGE OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN

























BROTHER. Touch first and second fingers of right
hand to lips. Then make sign for MAN.
Hannah Weiner

The Alphabet of Revelations

Amorous Perspective
I rushed through the door.
You had bitten a way for me. (1)


Hannah Weiner

Tuesday, 18 August 2009

vermillion two

big toe

Du bist, /wo dein Aug ist

Falling images

9. As a silver mirror, made from a thin plate, reflects the image confusedly and weakly, whilst from a thick solid plate it takes a high polish, and reflects the image brilliantly and strongly; so plastering, when thin in substance, not only cracks, but soon decays. On the contrary, that which is well covered with plaster and stucco, and closely laid on, when well polished, not only shines, but reflects to the spectators the images falling on it.

Vitruvius


The coat of Carthaginian wax thus put on is so strong that it neither suffers the moon by night, nor the sun-beams by day, to destroy the colour

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Vol. 51 Dec 1759

Sunday, 16 August 2009

deposition

First Lesson

phantasikon pneuma

...the phantasy is conceived as a kind of subtle body of the soul that, situated at the extreme point of the sensitive soul, receives the images of objects, forms the phantasm of dreams, and, in determinate circumstances, can separate itself from the body and establish supernatural contacts and visions.… The same theory also permitted an explanation of the genesis of love…

Agamben, Stanzas: word and phantasm in western culture, 1993

panopticon



Bentham's panopticon was on the site of Tate Britain

Tuesday, 11 August 2009

Script

On the screen is the ocean.
On the screen are clouds.
On the screen is the ocean.

Monday, 10 August 2009

laws against images: iconoclasm

Where is set down what we did.

william dowsing

Hic locus est domus Dei, nil aliud, & porta coeli

John Weever in 1631:

‘the images of the defunct were broken, erased, cut, or dismembered, Inscriptions or Epitaphs, especially if they began with ‘Orate pro anima,’[Pray for the soul] or concluded with ‘Cuius animae propitietur Deus.’ [ may God atone your soul.....] For greedinesse of the brasse, or for that they were thought to bee Antichristian, pulled out from the sepulchres and purloined, and dead carcases for gaine of stone and leaden coffins cast out of their graves.’

for all minkind

Conchology


































I have got my face over a shell drawer and find myself in imminent danger of becoming a connoisseur. You can scarcely conceive the progress I have made in a month or two in the deep & very elaborate science of shell-fancying

wedgwood museum

quasi objects


the plate stabilises the social relation of eating
LONG DIVIDED BY GOD

Descartes' rainbow

Friday, 7 August 2009

Sunday, 2 August 2009

Napoli 19th February 1857

Long narrow lanes. Arches, crowds. Tumblers in narrow street. Blocked way. Balconies with women. Cloth on ground.