7/12/2013: WLASze: Weekend Links on Arts, Sciences & zero economics

This is WLASze: Weekend Links on Arts, Sciences and zero economics


Let's start with some art… Brilliant students work from the Bartlett School of Architecture of UCL who won the RIBA President's Medals Student Awards with a range of projects:
http://www.dezeen.com/2013/12/04/riba-presidents-medals-student-awards-2013-winners/
More here: http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/architecture/news/bartlett-sweep-2013-riba-presidents-medals
I love the Kizhi Island piece:

The timeline itself is a work of art:

While on deezen, a fantastic feature on 'liquid light'
http://www.dezeen.com/2013/06/28/the-liquid-light-of-diego-garcia-by-viktor-westerdahl/
also via Bartlett School of Architecture graduate - Viktor Westerdahl

Innovative, imagination-driven and utterly detached from utilitarian constraints…


Edward Burtynsky's 'Water' reviewed in GuernicaMag is worth reading - fantastic photographer with a deep obsession for human impact on landscape: http://www.guernicamag.com/art/edward-burtynskys-water/
Some images of his work:

 
And his iconic...

From his Water series:

And his webpage: http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/

A quote from GuernicaMag: "Landscape, here, meaning not just the genre of art, but—more importantly—the medium of exchange through which we conceive and represent the physical environment and our relationship to it. A landscape is that which we see and the way in which we see it—a natural scene mediated by culture."

A bit too much of 'academism' there. I prefer to describe this work as forcing the landscape into the frame: powerfully transformative and, thus, powerfully narrative. The visual literally screams at us, and there is not a moment of reprieve from its potent brutality. Which makes it all amazingly beautiful... a sort of hot-cold ice...


And in the same vein of human transformation of landscape, here's AtlasObscura story on Goats of Cingino Dam: http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/goats-of-the-cingino-dam

Having mentioned ice above, here is another landscape photographer: Michael Quinn, profiled in MyModernMet blog: http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/michael-j-quinn-greenland-reflection

Now onto science: given the beauty of surreal Earth-scapes, time to move to astronomy and get us some Saturn-scapes…
http://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2013/dec/05/saturn-north-pole-hexagon-jet-stream-nasa-video?CMP=twt_gu

Full story via NASA, absent annoying commercials: http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/cassini/saturn-north-pole-hexagon-20131204i.html#.UqOKMGRdVBw


What beats what: books vs films… I had a nice discussion with a friend recently about two films based on one same book… the merits of Stanisław Lem's original Solaris (the book) are indisputable. The merits of Tarkovsky's interpretation of Solaris (the movie) are of their own accord… and since no one remembers the first Solaris (the movie) by Boris Nirenburg, the debate was really about Steven Soderbergh's third version (the movie)… I am not a fan… my friend is… we had great breakfast chat about it…

Alas, in real life, merits of movies over books (unlike in the case of Tarkovsky's sheer genius) are dubious. And there is 'scientific' proof to this conjecture: http://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/books-vs-films-the-infographic


So WLASze advice for the weekend - switch off that TV and grab a book…

And don't forget to smile, while reading… or reading for the sake of smiling… here's a candidate:
"‘Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder’: People who think they are drunk also think they are attractive" http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8295.2012.02114.x/abstract
That's right: we fancy ourselves as being hot, when we are drunk… which begs a question: what do we think about our beauty quotient when we are so drunk, we no longer believe we are drunk?..

Enjoy WLASze sensibly...