✪ On grazing hermits.

On one of my explorations through hagiographic literature in the Central Library of Amsterdam, I came across a text which just mentioned a piece of very very odd behavior.

When Christianity was legalized by Roman Emperor Constantine, the Christian Saints were no longer prosecuted. To prove their dedication to faith they found a new way to suffer, Asceticism.

Soon this practice got really out off hand and people would come up with ever less comfortable ways of existence. Starving and suffering, they could go for hours, or even days without the normal signs of life.

Dead to the world they lived in God. Saints became like athletes of Christ and in this passage I read the most stunning account yet, that there were even hermits who grazed like sheep. The golden age of grazers was the 6th century, when people ate grass all their lives at the coasts of the Red Sea.


Further research has shown these Bosci or Boskoi to be either animal-like in behaviour or to be nomadic people living of grass they foraged using sickles. The most fantastic account comes from a chapter called 'The Mental Condition of Hermits', in 'A History of the Intellectual Development of Europe', by John William Draper.

'If they were not recorded by many truthful authors, the extravagancies of some of these enthusiasts would pass belief. Men and women ran naked upon all fours, associating themselves with the beasts of the field. In the spring season, when the grass is tender, the grazing hermits of Mesopotamia went forth to the plains, sharing with the cattle their filth and their food.'

More on: Libarynth

✪ Science for artists and designers.

The scientific view of the world and its inner workings and principles is very precise and imaginative. For such ingenious descriptions and for things that are counter-intuitive, science could really enrich the vocabulary of artists and designers.

✪ Science for artists:


Symmetry:
In physics symmetry is a beautiful and highly advanced concept. In art we only know things like mirror-symmetry, but in physics any change to the universe that does not affect its workings, is known as a symmetry.

But there are some shocking results that came from studying symmetries.
It turns out that if you photo-shopped the universe, and tried to flip it horizontally, this mirror version doesn't work. There is some obscure particle that has no mirror-image of itself, just like a vampire.


It turns out that the world probably keeps on functioning normally if you; mirror it, and then make it run backwards, and finally, swap all particles for their associated anti-particles. But were not quite sure, its called CPT symmetry.

This brings us to:


Noethers Theorem:
Emmy Noether probably came up with the most beautiful idea ever about nature. There are some things in nature that are constant, the total amount of energy in the universe for instance. Emmy Noether saw a way to connect these conserved properties of the universe with symmetries:

• the symmetry that the laws of nature are the same at any moment in time is linked with the fact that the total amount of energy in the universe does not change.

So the perpetuum mobile does not exist if the laws of nature don't change in time.

• the symmetry that the laws of nature are the same anywhere, is linked to the fact that the total amount of momentum in the universe does not change.

So when you crash your car into a pedestrian, the pedestrian brakes his legs and flies through the air, because the laws of nature are the same everywhere. And this is true of anything that ever bumped into something else.

• the symmetry that the laws of nature are the same in any direction from where you are, is linked to the fact that the total amount of angular momentum does not change.

So when your dangling from a rope, you can only stop spinning around by putting your feet on the ground, because the laws of nature are the same in any direction you look. And this applies to all things that ever spinned around.

Such an advanced view of symmetry could really enrich the analysis and development of artworks, especially in media and time-based arts.



✪ Here are a few concepts useful to designers:


Allotropy:
The phenomenon of an element existing in two or more physical forms, which can be very interesting from a design perspective, think for instance of the element Carbon, which can take the form of graphite or diamond.



Dysteleology:
The study of uselessness in nature, which is probably especially interesting to poets, but also to designers because it seems to deal with design-flaws in nature, which go against the widespread belief that in nature, form follows function.



Kinetogenesis:
The notion that animal stature originates from the way they move. This is a design-principle where form does follow function. It is the exact opposite of a choreography, because choreographies are studies of the types of movements the shape of our bodies can make.



Phytonomy:
The laws that govern the coming into existence and growth of plants, which seems an interesting study for architects.



Stereognosis:
Perceiving an object only by the sense of touch. This must have countless applications in the fields of the arts and design, and it is nice to have such a precise word for it.



Tropotaxis:
The adaptation of an organism to a substance that can serve as food. Processes like this no doubt pop-up in design assignments of high complexity and interdependence. In such projects tropotaxis can be a useful metaphor from biology.

✪ Art for Scientists.

As a frequent visitor of lectures by scientists, occasionally you will come across the most uninspired and dull visuals in power point presentations. Worst of all are the wobbly stick figures that look like the work of someones half witted nephew.
Clearly there is room for improvement and where better to look, than with the experts of visual representation, the artists.

Take for instance this brilliant artwork by mister Maurizio Cattelan.


La Nona Ora (the Ninth Hour)


Or this; could there be a more poetic illustration of the Holographic principle than this work by Noble and Webster?


Dirty White Trash.


This work by Yael Davids can be seen as a work about topology.


Aquarium.


The dirty sick world of Paul McCarthy can be used to discuss anything from entropy to social oppression or waste management.


Bossy Burger.


For waste you can also take a look at this machine by Wim Devoye that produces the closest thing to shit currently possible.


Cloaca.


Marcel Duchamp used great mathematical and scientific stuff in his work, like this thing that he called 'Occulist Witness'. Apparently it was used to restore three-dimensional vision to people with only one working eye. There is lodes more of good stuff like this that he used.


Occulist Witness.

✪ Judgement stones.

Great monoliths that were used to sentence ancient criminals, who were crushed when the stones toppled due to the wind.

These objects can be found on the British Isles, throughout Scandinavia and even in the Balkan. Many of them have names, and Logan stones seem to be a certain type of rocking-stone, which look like they could not be used for judgments because of the way they are situated.

The total number of these stones is unknown since many of them collect earth round their bases during the ages and lose their balance.








✪Logan Stones.

✪ Hydrated Man

To show the influence of our size on science physicist William Crookes described what it would be like to be a tiny homunculus, exploring a leaf of cabbage:
This little person would be standing on a great green plane, full of glistening transparent domes of water, as high as the pyramids. The surface tension of these bubbles would be very tricky to deal with. Thus he showed how subjective our everyday experiences are.



Here is a guy who is even smaller, so tiny in fact that he is beaten-up by a gang of water-molecules. When I see a bottle of hydrating creme in the shower, I always imagine those aggressive bipolar molecules, as a gang of mafiosi.

✪ The face of God.

In 1989 this picture caused a sensation because it was the first picture that shows the structure of the universe. It was presented by the first satellite devoted to cosmology, the Cosmic Background Explorer. This picture became controversially known as 'the Face of God':





It was later upgraded by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe to this:





But if God has a face I think it will resemble this ladies features, and if you zoom in on her forehead long enough you end-up with a picture approximating those produced by the satellites.

✪ On the Aesthetics of Windtunnels.

Saint Joseph of Cupertino, the flying friar, during an aerodynamics test.





Hieronymus Bosch 'Ascent of the Blessed.' And part of a supersonic windtunnel.
If there is any place on Earth that resonates with Platonic beauty it is the wind-tunnel. A chilly, highly specialized place far removed from daily life, reminiscent even of Bosch's tunnel of light that leads the way to heaven.





Lit beautifully by cold fluorescent light, this is a room that feels like its moving at high speed, yet isolated from the flow of duration. Wind inside a building is strange anyway, but a room constructed especially for it is an enigma, which I think is at its best when seen empty.

✪ 17th century Dutch views on Comets.

Reading notes on a text by Eric Jorink: Van omineuze tot glorieuze hemeltekens; Veranderende opvattingen over kometen in de Republiek in de zeventiende eeuw.

Which is in: Kometen, monsters en muilezels. Uitgeverij Arcadia, Haarlem 1999, ISBN: 90-6613-008-3

Constantijn Huygens:

Ick vraegh, waer hoort sij thuis die vreeslicke Comeet,
Daer elck soo veel af snapt en elck soo weinig weet
Sij wandelt om en om: wie dreight sij meer of minder
Een Coningh sterft in't Oost: daer over treurt men ginder.
From Huygens' poem: 'Cometen-Werck', on the comet of 15 Nov. 1680-6 Feb. 1681.

Jacob Cats:
't Is genouch voor ons te weten
Dat de steerten der Cometen
Voor gewis ons beelden aff
Teykens van des Heeren straff.
From Cats': 'Aenmerckinge op de tegenwoordighe Steertsterre.'

The 1680 comet above Rotterdam, by Lieven Verschuur.

Johannes Graevius:
Want wat sietmen schoonder, wat is'er vermaeckelijker, wat vintmen aengenaemer, dan dese Hemelsche vyerige klooten, met dewelcke door den onsterffelijcken Schepper ende Werckmeester van dit Geheel-al, de openen ende als onbepaelde velden des Hemels, gelijck een tuyn met aengename bloemen, door een verwonderendwaerdige veranderinge ende schoonheyd, besaeyt ende onderscheyden zijn.

From Graevius': 'Redenvoeringh ofte Oratie van de cometen vernietigende het gemeene gevoelen dat deselve yets quaets aenkondigen. - Utrecht 1682.

Nicolaus Mulerius:

Wy worden daghelijcx gheleert ende vermaent, dat Godt niet alleenlijck Rechtvaerdich is, maer oock Barmhertich. Sijn rechtvaerdicheyt siet op onse verdiensten, die niet clein zijn. Want door het stadich toenemen van onsen sonden, als van suypen, brassen, proncken ende hovaerdich pralen, mitsgaders lieghen ende bedriegen, ende t'ghene wy nu verswyghen, verwecken wy Gods toorn om sijn straffe te laten gaen over landen ende luyden: Maer sijn bermherticheyt is so groot dat hy ons laet waerschouwen door sijn extraordinaris boden, als nu door dese Hemelse Trompet ende Morgenwecker.

From Mulerus': 'Hemelsche Trompet ende Morgenwecker Ofte Comeet Met een Langebaert' (1618)

My notes:

To me as a reader, the poems by Cats and Huygens in which comets are presented as ominous signs of Gods wrath, remind me of the cold dark and forbidding view of the cosmos that resided in western society until the early nineties, when the Hubble space telescope suddenly filled the endless black void with pictures rich in textures and colors. Just think back to the menacing abyss through which the concrete and tarmacked spaceships of Battlestar Galactica drifted. Space seemed like an empty car-park, filled only with dead lumps of grey rock and hard white light from distant stars.

And after the Hubble-telescope, you get the new series of Startrek, where space is filled with coloured clouds, planets teeming with life. The space these organic spacecrafts traverse is like an underwater garden, biology now extends out from Earth to all corners or the universe as a united world, like Graevius sees in his text where comets are 'Heavenly Fiery Bollocks'.