Planetary Folklore

London Grammar

2013-05-21T02:35:00.002-07:00

Music video for London Grammar's new song Wasting My Young Years - shot on 35mm film, using a 'homemade' camera rig consisting of 625 individual pinhole cameras that are exposed at the same time:

A little look at how director Bison made the video:

Saturn Hurricane

2013-05-03T04:09:00.001-07:00

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft this amazing false-color image of a massive hurricane on the surface of Saturn on November 27th, 2012. The hurricane’s epic eye measures 2,000 km across (that's about the same distance from London to Reykjavik... give-or-take a few hundred km!), with clouds at the outer edge traveling at over 500 km per hour.

Image via NASA

Via Astronomy Picture of the Day

We Emerged to find an Alien Landscape

2013-04-29T08:20:00.001-07:00

Spotted these paintings by Sophie Cauvin on but does it float... reminded me of NASA photos of geological features on alien worlds:

The Best Mind Wins

2013-04-29T04:47:00.000-07:00

Chess got a new look!

What's not to like about this 3D chess board!?... designed by Pentagram as part of ‘an identity, campaign and experience that could restore its reputation as a contest between the world’s greatest minds and capture the interest of a new generation’.

Reef Dwellers

2013-04-29T02:44:00.001-07:00

Mesmerizing macro photos of underwater corals by Los Angeles-based photographer Felix Salazar - to brighten up Monday morning...

Via my modern met

Space Program

2013-04-16T04:19:00.001-07:00

Awesome covers from the US Space Program, from a recent auction of manuals, guidebooks, press kits, reports, brochures, etc.

Via Space

Elysium

2013-04-10T10:01:00.001-07:00

Directed by Neil Blomkamp (of District 9 fame)

Limited Minds Can Only See the Limits of Others

2013-03-28T09:26:00.000-07:00

Inside Iceland’s Downed DC-3 by Cole Rise

I think it could be this one... lot's of blogs believe it was sometime in the seventies, but there's no records of a an air accident in Iceland involving a DC-3 in the seventies.

Aurora Borealis

2013-03-27T03:18:00.002-07:00

Three-minute time-lapse of a coronal mass ejection (CME) hitting the Earth’s magnetic field by photographer Göran Strand has created an amazing on March 17th, 2013. Two days earlier, sunspot AR1692 produced an M1 class solar flare, which resulted in the CME that hit Earth and created such a beautiful aurora.

Via Laughing Squid

ALONE by Mmoths

2013-03-25T04:54:00.000-07:00

Listening to:

ALONE by Mmoths by Oki-Ni on Mixcloud

The Story of the Heavens

2013-03-25T04:48:00.001-07:00

Early astronomy illustrations from The Story of the Heavens by Sir Robert Stawell Ball, 1900 - on Project Gutenberg

Titan

2013-03-06T02:37:00.001-08:00

Spotted this on tumblr...

"Titan Under Varying Filters
RGB color, RGB false color, Infrared, Blue & Ultraviolet Light highlighting geological & atmospheric properties like Titan’s vast dune desert, in Belet (also known as the ‘sand sea’). Or its methane band visible in blue. These filters are mostly used to highlight information about an astronomical body’s chemical properties not visible to the naked eye."

Via Val Klavan's Photostream

Darkened Cities

2013-02-14T10:26:00.002-08:00

“To show him stars is to help him dream again.”

Darkened Cities by French photographer Thierry Cohen – a blend of city scenes with the sky from one place, from less light polluted locations that fall on the same latitudes, superimposed upon a darkened cityscape from another.

Via Uponpaper

Hexagon Series

2013-02-14T08:59:00.000-08:00

With the success, in sales, of Hexagon No. 1 on Society6 (mostly iPhone Cases)... I've added a couple of colourways:

Hexagon No. 2

Hexagon No. 3

Power, Corruption and Lies

2013-02-14T02:59:00.002-08:00

I actually prefer this to the finished piece...

Paste-up mechanical artwork for New Order 'Power, Corruption and Lies' album front/back cover (detail)

Deciphered: Peter Saville | Uponpaper

Acoustic Levitation

2013-02-13T09:53:00.000-08:00

"Using sound waves to levitate individual droplets of solutions containing pharmaceutical drugs and drying them in mid-air. Why do this? This is useful because most of the drugs on the market are either amorphous or crystalline and the crystalline form doesn’t get absorbed by the body. So levitating the solution allows the drug to be made into an amorphous state (by evaporation) because if it were to touch any surface it would simply crystallize. They call this “containerless processing”.
The frequencies used are just above the audible range at about 22 kilohertz and when the two speakers are aligned they create two sets of sound waves, perfectly interfering with each other creating a phenomenon known as a standing wave. This allows the objects to levitate in areas within the waves known as nodes as the acoustic pressure is enough to cancel the force of gravity."

No magic show: Real-world levitation to inspire better pharmaceuticals | Argonne National Laboratory

Ápsis

2013-02-13T09:34:00.000-08:00

Ápsis photographs by Henrik Isaksson Garnell

Via but does it float

New York Moon

2013-01-31T06:10:00.000-08:00

Beautiful pinprick drawings by Miso:

Mayan Apocalypse

2012-12-21T05:44:00.001-08:00

First Photos of Lightning

2012-12-17T02:48:00.000-08:00

The first ever photographs of lightning shot by amateur photographer William N. Jennings between 1885 and 1890:

Carving the Moon

2012-12-12T09:19:00.001-08:00

This looks freakin' amazing!...

A new 36" x 32" woodcut called "THE MOON" by the Tugboat Printshop... I want!
Will be printed in greyscale, with a starry backdrop.

Available for pre-order holiday deal:
www.tugboatprintshop.com/woodcut_themoon.htm

Dimitris Baboulis

2012-12-11T03:47:00.000-08:00

Dimitris Baboulis, Untitled, 60x80cm, india ink on paper, 2012

Dimitris Baboulis, Untitled, 60x62 cm, india ink on paper, 2012

Dimitris Baboulis, Geometric Tree, 60x62cm, india ink on paper, 2012

Dimitris Baboulis, Untitled, 60x62cm, india ink on paper, 2012

Dimitris Baboulis, Untitled, 46x47cm, india ink on paper, 2012

dimitris baboulis

The Overview Effect

2012-12-07T06:22:00.001-08:00

Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available...
a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.
– FRED HOYLE, 1948

Momentum

2012-11-16T07:24:00.000-08:00

Lovin' it...

Momentum is an ongoing project by Alejandro Guijarro

“The artist travelled to the great quantum mechanics institutions of the world and, using a large-format camera, photographed blackboards as he found them. Momentum displayed the photographs in life-size.
Before he walked into a lecture hall Guijarro had no idea what he might find. He began by recording the blackboard with the minimum of interference. No detail of the lecture hall was included, the blackboard frame was removed and we are left with a surface charged with abstract equations. Effectively these are documents. Yet once removed from their institutional beginnings the meaning evolves. The viewer begins to appreciate the equations for their line and form. Color comes into play and the waves created by the blackboard eraser suggest a vast landscape or galactic setting. The formulas appear to illustrate the worlds of Quantum Mechanics. What began as a precise lecture, a description of the physicist’s thought process, is transformed into a canvas open to any number of possibilities.”

The Legitimization of Curiosity

2012-11-15T02:31:00.000-08:00

The fantastic work of Jes Fomsgaard:

About his artwork:

--- the drawing is the grammatical foundation of art.
The drawing is where the first ideas are disengaged.
It reveals the formal problem and the observation is taken over by the registration.
Devoid of "color" the sketch remains sober and forms its own order.
- Drawing is like dissecting - a legalization of curiosity.
Perspective cuts and markings the transparent body of the drawing visible.
In this very expressive language, full of information, the relation between the lines - or the lack of it - takes form.
A dialectical language.
The drawing is my analytical tool.
--- the grammatical foundation of art.

http://www.kunstdk.dk/kunstner/jes_fomsgaard
http://gmw.dk/9/

Via PYTR 75