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Julian House artwork for Other Voices, a new singles series on the Ghost Box label. Other Voices 01 is a collaboration between Sean O’Hagan of the High Llamas and Jon Brooks of The Advisory Circle. Last week I linked to a copy Zadie Smith’s new introduction for Crash by JG Ballard. That piece could only […]

A few more extensions of the idea, not all of which have much to do with Hinton’s concepts beyond the name. Salvador Dalí with hypercube (1952). Photo by Francesc Català-Roca. Hypercubic Metropolis (2002) by Peter Gric. HyperCube (2012) is an installation by artist Jaap van den Elzen and sound composer Augusto Meijer which combines the mirror […]

Illustration from The Fourth Dimension (1906) by Charles Howard Hinton. A slight return to the worlds of Borges. I happened to be re-reading some of the stories in The Book of Sand (1975), one of the later collections which includes the story Borges dedicated to HP Lovecraft, There are more things. Borges’ writings are nothing […]

Pages from the Official Souvenir Program for the Seattle World’s Fair, 1962. Very typical corporate design by RT Matthiesen and Associates but not bad for all that. The pages give an overview of the exposition, punctuated by ads from its sponsors, while the text sets forth the purpose of the event to give a taste […]

Planète was a French magazine of “Fantastic realism” which ran throughout the 1960s. I’ve never seen a copy but sight of the immediately recognisable covers has always fascinated because this was the magazine established in the wake of the huge success of The Morning of the Magicians (1960), a unique “Introduction to Fantastic Realism” by […]

Untitled painting (c. 1920–1933) by Ethel le Rossignol depicting “the Sphere of the Spirit”. An exhibition of  Ethel le Rossignol’s channelled paintings takes place at the Horse Hospital, London, next month. • “It’s always disconcerting to discover a favourite writer was kind of a jerk. How does this realization effect our understanding of Walter Benjamin’s […]

Untitled glass sculpture by Richard Roberts. • Lord Horror: Reverbstorm, my collaboration with David Britton, makes The Quietus list of Literary Highlights of 2013. At the same site there’s Russell Cuzner talking to English Heretic. “His methodology takes in magick, psychogeography and horror film geekdom, along with firm roots in Britain’s industrial music culture of […]

Wound Man from Feldbuch der Wundarzney (Field Book of Surgery, 1517). For years I wondered about the precise appearance of Wound Man after reading the following in Red Dragon (1981) by Thomas Harris: “It was a coincidence,” Graham said. “The sixth victim was killed in his workshop. He had woodworking equipment and he kept his […]

A Problem Glyph by Eliza Gauger. Problem Glyphs are “symbolic illustrations … drawn in response to problems sent in by tumblr users”. • Kosmische Night takes place at the Museum of Bath at Work, Bath, Somerset, on January 25th (Rescheduled to February 22nd).  “…a celebration of all things Teutonic for anyone who enjoys Neu!, Can, […]

“Chloromgonfus detectis, a dragonfly that can detect volatile pollutants.” A speculative insect by artist Vincent Fournier. • “…a modern taxonomist straddling a Wellsian time machine with the purpose of exploring the Cenozoic era…” Butterflies tied together Vladimir Nabokov’s home, science, and writing, says Mary Ellen Hannibal. • More ghosts: Kira Cochrane on the Victorian tradition of […]

Two cover designs from Eliash Strongowski’s 30 Days—30 Covers project. My thanks once again to Dennis Cooper for placing this blog on his end-of-year lists. Meanwhile. one of the albums I designed earlier this year, Cold Mission by Logos, made the 30 Best Album Covers of 2013 list at FACT. • “Many of their more […]

Delia Derbyshire (2007) by Iker Spozio. Whatever you think of Doctor Who, Delia Derbyshire’s recording of Ron Grainer’s theme tune is a landmark piece of electronic music. Those glassy electronic tones still sound unique today, not least for their having been created using rudimentary oscillators and much laborious tape editing. In Radiophonic Workshop: the shadowy […]

Gevatter Tod (Godfather Death, 1905) by Heinrich Lefler. Via Beautiful Century. An inevitable hangover from Halloween this week. At 50 Watts: A Modern Dance of Death (c. 1894) by Joseph Sattler, Harry Clarke Revisited, and more Ex Libris Mr Reaper | At Design Observer: Keith Eggener on When Buildings Kill: Sentient Houses in Fiction and […]

La table qui tourne (1943) by Robert Doisneau. In [Gödel, Escher, Bach], Hofstadter was calling for an approach to AI concerned less with solving human problems intelligently than with understanding human intelligence—at precisely the moment that such an approach, having borne so little fruit, was being abandoned. His star faded quickly. He would increasingly find […]

Cover of Eye no. 86 vol. 22, 2013, a type special. Detail from 1970s Letratone brochure, overprinted by character from the Marsh stencil alphabet. The new edition of Eye magazine includes my essay on the evolution and aesthetics of steampunk. In the same issue Rick Poynor’s feature on the prints of Eduardo Paolozzi mentions a […]

Summer Swell (2007) by Fred Tomaselli. The artist is interviewed at AnOther. • Mixes of the week for the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness: Forever Autumn Mixtape by The Outer Church, and celebrating what would have been Trish Keenan’s 45th birthday: Trish’s Toys & Techniques Birthday Tape (with cover art by Julian House). • […]

This week PingMag was looking at Czech film posters. This one by Bedrich Dlouhy is for the belated 1970 release of Kurosawa’s Rashomon. • In October Alison Goldfrapp curates an exhibition for The Lowry, Salford, featuring her favourite art. Examples will include work by Leonora Carrington, Lotte Reiniger and Henry Darger so I’ll definitely be […]

Work-related searches this week has led me to the gallery pages of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. The SDO is an observational satellite in a geostationary orbit that monitors the Sun with a variety of cameras and other imaging equipment. Some of the recent spectacular photos of solar prominences have been captured by the SDO, examples […]

Frederic Thompson’s amusement ride attempted to give exposition visitors in 1901 the experience of a journey to the Moon; Camille Flammarion’s Les Terres du Ciel (1884) is a pictorial voyage around the solar system which includes the Moon among its ports of call. Subtitled Voyage Astronomique sur les Autres Mondes et Description des Conditions Actuelles […]

Let there be no complaints about lack of variety: fetish photography one day, 17th-century astronomical instruments the next. Tycho Brahe’s Astronomiae Instauratae Mechanica (1602) is a description of the astronomical devices used at Brahe’s Stjerneborg (Star Castle) on the island of Ven in Oresund, Denmark. One of the plates below shows the layout of the Star […]