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• • • Being a journal by artist and designer John Coulthart, cataloguing interests, obsessions and passing enthusiasms.

Archive for the {science} category

 

Kirlian photography

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quarter3 (2006) by nebamix. Thinking recently about the resurgence of interest in the various forms of parapsychological and occult phenomena that were so popular in the 1970s, I’m surprised not to see more mention of Kirlian photography, or the capturing of high-voltage coronal discharges on photographic plates. In the 70s the idea was that Kirlian [...]

Posted in {photography}, {science} | 2 comments »

 


The Cephalopoda of the Hawaiian Islands

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A little something for Darwin Day, and a collection of illustrations I hadn’t seen before. The Cephalopoda of the Hawaiian Islands (1914) is another title in the splendid (and huge) collection of the Biodiversity Heritage Library whose Flickr sets have been linked here before. Some of those prior examples have ended up being collaged into [...]

Posted in {books}, {science} | 1 comment »

 


Weekend links 143

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Ai No Corrida poster design by Egil Haraldsen (2001). • “Back then, publishing an interview with Félix Guattari alongside little chats with rough trade and street walkers was unheard of — it still is for the most part.” BUTT on Kraximo, a queer Greek magazine of the 1980s. • 13 books for 2013: A selection [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {art}, {books}, {borges}, {design}, {electronica}, {film}, {gay}, {magazines}, {music}, {science}, {television}, {typography} | Comments Off

 


Weekend links 140

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Thanks to Callum for pointing the way to a beautiful set of playing cards designed by Picart le Doux. • Of cigars and pedants by Houman Barekat, in which Vladimir Nabokov has a problem with Henry James. Tangentially related: Post-Punk’s Nabokov: Howard Devoto and Magazine, live from Berlin, 1980. (Given A Song From Under The [...]

Posted in {art}, {books}, {design}, {drugs}, {electronica}, {gay}, {horror}, {music}, {photography}, {religion}, {science}, {surrealism}, {television} | Comments Off

 


Astronomy in China: The Pekin Observatory, 1888

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Observatoire de Peking (c. 1790). Work this week has necessitated going through more 19th-century journals. For a while now I’ve had some downloaded copies of Scientific News, a kind of London equivalent of Scientific American, but I hadn’t noticed this particular article until I had to look through it again. The uncredited piece describes the [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {magazines}, {science} | 2 comments »

 


Weekend links 131

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Japanese poster (1982). At The Quietus Steve Earles looks back at John Carpenter’s visceral and uncompromising The Thing which exploded messily onto cinema screens thirty years ago. It’s always worth being reminded that this film (and Blade Runner in the same year) was considered a flop at the time following bad reviews and a poor [...]

Posted in {art}, {books}, {drugs}, {electronica}, {film}, {gay}, {horror}, {illustrators}, {kubrick}, {lovecraft}, {music}, {photography}, {psychedelia}, {science fiction}, {science} | Comments Off

 


Vampyroteuthis Infernalis by Vilém Flusser

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Cover design by Michel Vrana. This, then, is the book that arrived a fortnight ago when I just happened to be in the midst of a week of tentacle posts. Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste was originally published in Germany in 1987. This new edition is [...]

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Weekend links 127

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M15, The Whirlpool Galaxy photographed by Martin Pugh. The overall and deep space winner of Astronomy Photographer of the Year, 2012. • The Final Academy, the series of William Burroughs-themed events that took place in London and Manchester in 1982, will be celebrated at the Horse Hospital, London, on 27th October. Academy 23, a publication [...]

Posted in {animation}, {architecture}, {art}, {black and white}, {books}, {burroughs}, {electronica}, {film}, {music}, {photography}, {science}, {theatre} | 2 comments »

 


Weekend links 125

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Coronal Mass Ejection from the surface of the Sun, August 31st, 2012. • “Most of the main parts were recorded in a single day using Vangelis’s famous technique: try to play as many synths as possible at once.” Simon Drax on the prolific musical output of Zali Krishna. The new Krishna opus is Bremsstrahlung Sommerwind, [...]

Posted in {art}, {books}, {comics}, {electronica}, {gay}, {illustrators}, {music}, {painting}, {photography}, {science fiction}, {science} | 11 comments »

 


Weekend links 123

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La Perspective Curieuse (1663) by Jean François Nicéron. From Curious Perspectives at BibliOdyssey. • 1612 Underture is a forthcoming album by The Eccentronic Research Council and Maxine Peake which extends the electronics + occult concept to encompass Kraftwerk and the Pendle Witches. The Quietus has a review of their album, and an interview and report [...]

Posted in {art}, {books}, {drugs}, {electronica}, {film}, {music}, {occult}, {photography}, {science} | 4 comments »

 


Weekend links 122

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Transmitter Crowbar Discharge Unit, Bates Linear Accelerator. Photo by Daniel Jackson from his Dark Machines series. The language we use for writing about art is oddly pornographic: We know it when we see it. No one would deny its distinctiveness. Yet efforts to define it inevitably produce squeamishness, as if describing the object too precisely [...]

Posted in {art}, {books}, {cities}, {electronica}, {film}, {horror}, {music}, {photography}, {politics}, {psychedelia}, {science fiction}, {science}, {technology} | 4 comments »

 


Mars panoramas

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“Greeley Haven“, Mars (2012). This is the latest panorama released by NASA July 2012. It was assembled from 817 images taken between Dec. 21, 2011, and May 8, 2012, while Opportunity was stationed on an outcrop informally named “Greeley Haven”, on a segment of the rim of ancient Endeavour Crater. Probably the only time panoramas [...]

Posted in {photography}, {science} | 4 comments »

 


A Trip to Mars

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A floating Martian city from Letters from the Planets (1890) by WS Lach-Szyrma. Illustration by Paul Handy. In honour of the remarkable landing on Mars of the Curiosity Rover, a handful of random illustrations from the vast stock of imagery generated by the Red Planet over the past century-and-a-half. When it comes to Mars I’m [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {art}, {books}, {illustrators}, {magazines}, {science fiction}, {science} | 2 comments »

 


Weekend links 119

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The BFI’s recent DVD release of Peter de Rome’s gay porn films has been mentioned here a couple of times already but I only bought a copy this week. It’s a remarkable release for a number of reasons, not least for showing how much attitudes towards pornography in Britain have changed in recent years. De [...]

Posted in {art}, {books}, {drugs}, {film}, {gay}, {horror}, {illustrators}, {music}, {politics}, {science} | Comments Off

 


The Royal Natural History by Richard Lydekker

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The second surprise of the weekend came, as in the best Lovecraftian tradition, with the chance discovery of a small sheet of paper, a reminder from the librarian when I was at sixth form college to return three overdue books. This was an odd survival from my schooldays since I kept hardly anything from that [...]

Posted in {books}, {science} | 1 comment »

 


Weekend links 115

Untitled painting by Suzanne Van Damme (1901–1986). • Eric Berkowitz, author of Sex and Punishment: 4000 Years of Judging Desire, chooses five books for The Browser. • Venus febriculosa is running another competition: Design a new cover for Brian Eno’s Music For Films. • Paul Mayersberg and Tony Richmond on making The Man Who Fell [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {art}, {books}, {design}, {film}, {music}, {noted}, {occult}, {painting}, {photography}, {science fiction}, {science}, {surrealism} | Comments Off

 


Weekend links 112

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“Venus moves across the Sun in this image captured by Japan’s satellite Hinode, on June 6, 2012.” Via. The imagery in Ah Pook covered a wide range of ideas. A train full of Mayan Gods for instance travelled through various time zones to end up alongside a carnival in a red brick town outside St [...]

Posted in {art}, {books}, {burroughs}, {comics}, {electronica}, {illustrators}, {music}, {photography}, {science fiction}, {science} | 2 comments »

 


Weekend links 110

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Til Eulenspiegel by Urban Janke. From Twenty Postcards of the Wiener Werkstätte at 50 Watts. • Rorschach Audio by Joe Banks is “essential reading for everyone interested in air-traffic control, anechoic chambers, artificial oxygen carriers, audio art, bell-ringing, cocktail parties, cognitive science, communications interference, compost, the death penalty, Electronic Voice Phenomena, evangelism, evolutionary biology, experimental music, [...]

Posted in {art}, {books}, {design}, {electronica}, {film}, {gay}, {horror}, {music}, {science fiction}, {science}, {technology} | 1 comment »

 


Weekend links 109

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Dreams before Surrealism: a sheet music cover from 1926 by René Magritte. • The week in music: Listen to compositions by Annea Lockwood. | At the Free Music Archive: Uncomfortable Music, a tribute to David Lynch’s Eraserhead (and, it should be said, to Alan Splet’s unique soundtrack). | Alan Licht plays a track from Trout [...]

Posted in {art}, {books}, {comics}, {drugs}, {electronica}, {film}, {music}, {politics}, {psychedelia}, {science fiction}, {science}, {surrealism} | Comments Off

 


Weekend links 105

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A suspended fluid photograph from Demersal, a series by Luka Klikovac. • “Soon, Mr. Lachman was writing occult music. His song “(I’m Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear,” which appeared on Blondie’s 1977 album Plastic Letters, was an example.” Gary Lachman: from Blondie to Swedenborg. • Neil Krug’s cover art for the new Scissor Sisters [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {art}, {design}, {electronica}, {film}, {gay}, {music}, {occult}, {photography}, {politics}, {religion}, {science} | 3 comments »

 


 




 

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