Destinations
bioephemera | May 27, 2008After the long weekend, I'm catching up on links friends and readers have sent me. Artist Erik Nordenankar shipped a GPS device by DHL to create this giant tracking self-portrait (according to the project website, appropriately titled "biggestdrawingintheworld.com"):
This video shows how he did it:
My first question was prosaic: how could anyone afford to do this? I figured it was some wealthy Silicon Valley hobbyist's idea - how could an art student afford the shipping fees? Not unexpectedly, it turns out the project was conceived as both art and ad - Nordenankar describes it as "…
bioephemera | May 14, 2008Holiday of the Reindeer
Senya Koyakin
Watercolor on paper
The watercolor painting above is by Senya Koyakin, a middle school student in Zhigansk, Siberia. Senya's art, and that of other Siberian schoolchildren, is visiting AAAS in Washington, DC, as part of The Student Partners Project: Engaging Students and the Public in the Science of Climate Change.
AAAS hosts an opening reception tonight (May 14) at 6pm, featuring a lecture by Dr. Robert Max Holmes, Associate Scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center, and a videoconference with the children. The artwork will remain on display until…
bioephemera | May 7, 2008
Tomorrow and Friday I'll be attending the 33rd Annual AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy in Washington, DC. According to AAAS, the Forum
is the conference for people interested in public policy issues facing the science, engineering, and higher education communities.
Gotta love those bold italics. Personally, I want to know what's going to happen to the penny that disembodied hand is dropping into the mysterious flask. Is the yellow liquid an acid? A base? A bodily fluid? Why do multicolored liquids in glassware scream "SCIENCE IS COOL!" like nothing else?
One of the highlights…
bioephemera | May 2, 2008This entry originally appeared November 24, 2007 on the old bioephemera. I was inspired to repost & update it after seeing this post over at Morbid Anatomy earlier this month.
Wounds (2007)
Nicole Natri
I ran across this collage by the talented Nicole Natri shortly after attending an interesting lecture, "When Sleeping Beauty Walked Out of the Anatomy Museum," by Kathryn Hoffmann, who is a professor of French at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. The connection here is pretty cool, but it's roundabout, so bear with me.
Dr. Hoffmann's talk was my introduction to Pierre Spitzner's…
bioephemera | April 27, 2008
. . . wherein whatsoever the hand of man by exquisite art or engine has made rare in stuff, form or motion; whatsoever singularity, chance, and the shuffle of things hath produced; whatsoever Nature has wrought in things that want life and may be kept; shall be sorted and included. . . [Bacon]
Welcome to the sixth edition of the Cabinet of Curiosities carnival. Whether your taste runs to Wunderkammern or Curiosities, blogs are treasure rooms for modern collectors of the strange and marvelous. Let's start with this perfect miniature cabinet of crochet motifs by JPolka at the oh-so-aptly named…
bioephemera | March 23, 2008Landing, 2005
Ralph Helmic and Stuart Schechter
Me + iPhone + 3 hour layover = tour of the random art of SeaTac!
I was stranded in the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport for three hours Friday with nothing to do, so I went on a little treasure hunt and catalogued as many of SeaTac's random art pieces as I could find. It was pure, childish fun. When you stop dead in the center of an atrium, stare straight up or down, and start snapping photos, a number of people follow suit - and notice the art for the first time. It's like leaving a wake of art appreciation behind you. You should try it the…
bioephemera | March 16, 2008The following is another post from the "old" bioephemera (originally published June 18, 2007).
Last weekend I discovered Seattle's Gas Works Park. By accident. And ended up on a tour through the derelict gasworks - led by the park's designer, Richard Haag. The structures are fenced off, so I got the impression this was an unusual privilege. Fortunately my camera's battery wasn't completely exhausted, though I was torn between taking photos and listening to Haag recount his efforts several decades ago to convince the city that this industrial site could be bioremediated. Among his persuasive…
bioephemera | March 12, 2008
Glove map of London, 1851, by George Shove. Printed map on leather.
(via Mapping the Marvellous)
Long before Googlemaps on an iPhone or handheld GPS devices, there was this very analog Victorian Glove Map! (I already posted this wonderful glove on the old bioephemera, but was inspired by a recent conversation with my boss to revisit it.)
During the AAAS meeting last month, Stanford's Barbara Tversky showed an illustration of a technique used by Native Americans to remember maps, in which the outline of the hand symbolized the local coastline. I tried to dig up the original reference, but…
bioephemera | March 11, 2008World Map (detail)
Martin Waldseemuller, 1507
Last week I had to visit the Library of Congress, so I dropped in on the 1507 map by Martin Waldseemuller. The map, which was acquired by the Library in 2003, is tucked in behind an exhibit of mesoamerican artifacts, which seemed arranged specifically to baffle visitors. Both 1507 and 1516 maps by Waldseemuller are kept in large vertical cases at the back of the exhibit hall, invisible from the entrance; during my visit, only tourists shepherded by docents found their way around the other exhibit's margins and into the quiet, dim map room. This…
bioephemera | February 10, 2008
Artist unknown (National Zoo)
Today I visited the Invertebrate House at the National Zoo, where I saw this remarkable churning, twisting portrait of an octopus. Unfortunately, I was unable to find the name of the artist. The painting looks like acrylic or oil, and is about six feet tall - very impressive, but not as impressive as the real giant octopus across the room!