Dennis James shows us around 2 of the more unusual musical instruments – ones that require wetted hands that make their glass parts sing. The Cristal Baschet and Glass Armonica are fascinating historical glass instruments.
The Glass Armonica was invented by Benjamin Franklin and was purported to be dangerous to both players and listeners by driving them mad or even killing them.
The Cristal Baschet was developed by the French brothers Bernard and Frncois Baschet as a sculpture that could be played to produce music. They also invented an inflatable guitar and an aluminum piano.
Yunchul Kim created this kinetic sculpture which looks like some sort of segmented alien robot. It’s on display at the 59th International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy through Nov 27 2022.
AI is increasing at ever fast rates and in all conceivable parts of our lives. We have commercially viable AI driving cars, AI that can identify pictures and elements in pictures, teach robots how to run/walk/jump and navigate, language bots that can write news and informational articles that are indistinguishable from real writers, comprehend and explain jokes, and even generate art.
It appears that Ai-Da is likely just a camera, image filters much like you’d find in Photoshop, and a computer controlled limb to generate art using her robotic arm. The creators seem to also enjoy putting words into her mouth. Lots of them – even to the point of giving a Ted talk. It can come off a bit pretentious, and I even feels like there is a touch of deliberate misleading going on. Folks that don’t understand there is ‘someone behind the curtain’ pulling the strings and putting the words in her mouth might believe it’s the AI’s opinion – which it really isn’t.
Still, it’s an interesting accomplishment – I just wish the creators would be a bit more honest about what they’re doing and no try to convince people the AI itself is coming up with the words and that her artwork is more a product of well-known image algorithms as opposed to intelligence – let alone consciousness.
Les Mystères de la Passion, de la Résurrection et de l’Ascension du Christ
For Christians, we are about to enter the mysteries of Holy Week. Christ enters Jerusalem, is crucified by the temple leaders, and then rises from the dead – an act which opens the gates of eternal life for humanity. There is so much going on in such a few short days, one can barely keep up with it all. It’s no wonder the different events of Holy Week have been the subject of countless masterpieces over time.
Click the image below to see a full-sized scan (4018×3212 px (4,9 Mb))
What is fascinating about it is that the more you look at it, you see all the events of Holy Week until the Ascension of Christ in one picture. I spent a lot of time looking at it and finding all the different parts. There is so much detail in this one giant painting! Just some of the events are:
Meeting of the women while carrying the cross
Jesus is stripped and his garments nailed to the cross
Similar to dominos, Kapla are long thin planks you can use for building things – and set up to fall over like dominos. I was really impressed – especially the sequence right around 0:12 in which there are multiple back and forth movements using the same planks. Crazy!
The history of the Oberammergau Passion play begins in 1633. In the midst of the Thirty Years’ War, after months of suffering and dying from the plague, the people of Oberammergau – a small town south of Munich, Germany – pledged to act out the passion: the suffering, death and resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ once every 10 years.
Normally it should have happened in 2020, but was delayed due to Covid. Instead, it was moved to this year: 2022. The 5 hour play will now have performances from May 14, 2022 until October 2, 2022. If you are in the area, you should catch it since it won’t return until 2030.
Jacob ‘The Carpetbagger’ has a wonderful little Youtube channel in which he adventures around the country and does very down-to-earth video blogs on everything from small roadside attractions to Disneyworld. What I particularly like is that he does it all himself on a simple camera without the sponsored pre-canned messaging, fancy instagram treatments, and other disingenuous coverage that are used by many glossy online personalities. As someone that plans travel around the quirky things along the way, I love all the little places he visits – including one from my old back yard.
Recently, he did an update that discusses the serious experiences and impacts of running his small video blog. He talks about how he started posting quick weekend video adventures while working a normal day job. As it started picking up and got to the point it could pay for itself – that’s when things started to get more complex. He tells of his encounters and learning how to deal with very negative people and feedback (everything from how he holds the camera to what he would eat). He talks about the emotional and psychological toll it took on him. He talks about how people figured out where he worked and started harassing him and his coworkers to the point that his manager told him that he need to pick the job or the blog. He also talked about his transition from a 9-5 job to blogging full time and the effects on his marriage.
I think this is critical information that anyone looking to do what he did needs to know. I believe these impacts are also a topic we need to keep discussing as an increasingly online society. With a decade of social media under our belts, we’re now into our adult years and time to evaluate and put mature limits on social media.
DARIUSTWIST uses 686 individual light photos to tell the story of a skeleton in a cowboy hat traveling around California through magical portals, collecting precious gemstones.
Lighting effects have come a long way – especially with new color LED setups. Enter Halo lights by Mandalaki. They can create a variety of really interesting lighting effects.
However, at an astronomical $1000+ for one of these lights, one has to wonder if you could do a lot better on a good projector. Still, it’s interesting to see what design houses are coming up with – once you get past the somewhat insufferable product claims.
