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Earth TV
Here's a small favor. Please gather for me a dozen or so of those tablets PCs that have been pushed past their hilariously short half-lives by shinier models during the holidays just ended. Using your mad DIY skills, clamp them to my wall, lined up vertically. Then using your even madder hacker skills, turn the whole installation into a dedicated EarthNow! Landsat Image Viewer, a sort of earth TV from the US Geological Survey that displays, in real-time, images being gathered by the Landsat 5 and 7 satellites when they pass over the United States. So instead of simply visiting the website, I have a digital mural broadcasting the data for me live, scrolling strips of earth like a stock ticker tape. It switches on when the satellites are about to pass over, and goes dark after the last continental slice. Ideally, both times should be marked with a delightful chime.
If you've got time, how about attaching a 3D printer that will spit out an endless conveyor belt of topography?
If you've got time, how about attaching a 3D printer that will spit out an endless conveyor belt of topography?
Geological Maps of Volcanoes
For your cartographic titillation, here are some teeny-tiny geological maps of volcanoes in Japan. All those magmatic parameciums fossilized in mid-slither must be quite exhilarating to see at higher resolutions (maybe not unlike these astrogeological surveys?), but unfortunately, to get the full-blown graphic thrill, you'll have to purchase them from the Geological Survey of Japan.
The Earth Scything Its Way Across the Persian Landscape
The following images were part of an exhibition of Persian miniature paintings organized in 2005 by the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. Dating from as early as the 14th century to the 17th century, during the Timurid and Safavid eras, they illustrate scenes not only from the Qur'an and One Thousand and One Nights but also from the Persian literary masterpiece The King's Chronicles by Ferdowsi and the poems of Saadi.
All the miniatures, nearly 300 in total, were available for viewing online during and after the exhibition. Unfortunately, they're now offline, a kind of redaction that we can't help but relate to the total erasure of our entire image archive. With (almost) full restoration of our pretty decorations, we thought we'd post some of the firewalled paintings as a complementary resurrection.
Today being 10/10/10, we're posting 10+10+10.
The following images were part of an exhibition of Persian miniature paintings organized in 2005 by the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. Dating from as early as the 14th century to the 17th century, during the Timurid and Safavid eras, they illustrate scenes not only from the Qur'an and One Thousand and One Nights but also from the Persian literary masterpiece The King's Chronicles by Ferdowsi and the poems of Saadi.
All the miniatures, nearly 300 in total, were available for viewing online during and after the exhibition. Unfortunately, they're now offline, a kind of redaction that we can't help but relate to the total erasure of our entire image archive. With (almost) full restoration of our pretty decorations, we thought we'd post some of the firewalled paintings as a complementary resurrection.
Today being 10/10/10, we're posting 10+10+10.
One Thousand and One Persian Landscapes
A few months ago, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art mounted a spectacular exhibition on Persian manuscript painting. Fortunately, digital facsimiles of the miniatures and folios are still available online.
Here are some of my favorites, starting with this twice-walled Edenic garden floating amidst an orange vegetal sea.
And here are some weirdly kinetic fortification walls.
The swirling vortex of extruded geology. The stage for a battle scene or a weaponized terrestrial tsunami?
One wonders if 16th century Persian painters understood the physics of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, since they undoubtedly display a mastery of the multi-temporal and the multi-spatial in this miniature.
And one wonders, too, if they also understood the peculiarities of tectonics, as the following two miniatures obviously portray the billion-year process of mountain making.
This, of the ascension of Prophet Mohammad, is beyond compare.
This is absolutely beautiful!
And this!
And this!
One detail I quite like is the animal leaping off the landscape. Perhaps the landscape continues on in the next page, but I like to think that it is trying to escape off the miniature and off the page and even off the book altogether into the white voidscape of our digital webpage, into the safe precincts of Pruned.
In any case, all these miniatures are mind-bogglingly gorgeous!
Although this last folio depicts an ascetic man in self-exile inside an arboreal cave, it nevertheless reminds me of one of the more erotic poems by Foroogh Farrokhzaad, Iran's greatest 20th century poet. Below in full is a translation by David Martin of the poem.
The Earth Scything Its Way Across the Persian Landscape
Here are some of my favorites, starting with this twice-walled Edenic garden floating amidst an orange vegetal sea.
And here are some weirdly kinetic fortification walls.
The swirling vortex of extruded geology. The stage for a battle scene or a weaponized terrestrial tsunami?
One wonders if 16th century Persian painters understood the physics of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, since they undoubtedly display a mastery of the multi-temporal and the multi-spatial in this miniature.
And one wonders, too, if they also understood the peculiarities of tectonics, as the following two miniatures obviously portray the billion-year process of mountain making.
This, of the ascension of Prophet Mohammad, is beyond compare.
This is absolutely beautiful!
And this!
And this!
One detail I quite like is the animal leaping off the landscape. Perhaps the landscape continues on in the next page, but I like to think that it is trying to escape off the miniature and off the page and even off the book altogether into the white voidscape of our digital webpage, into the safe precincts of Pruned.
In any case, all these miniatures are mind-bogglingly gorgeous!
Although this last folio depicts an ascetic man in self-exile inside an arboreal cave, it nevertheless reminds me of one of the more erotic poems by Foroogh Farrokhzaad, Iran's greatest 20th century poet. Below in full is a translation by David Martin of the poem.
in my small night, what mounting
regret!
wind has a rendezvous with the trees'
leaves
in my small night, there is terror
of desolation
listen! do you hear
the wind of darkness howling?
I watch breathless
-ly and wondrously this alien happiness
I am addicted to my own hopelessness
listen! listen well!
can you hear the darkness
howling? -- the dark hell
-wind scything
its way towards us?
in the night now, there is something
passing
the moon is red restless and uneasy
and on this roof -- which fears
any moment
-- it may cave in --
clouds like crowds of mourners
await to break in rain
ruin
a moment
and then after that, nothing.
behind this window, night shivers
and the earth stands still
behind this window an unknown
something fears for me and you
O you who are green from head to toe!
put your hands
-- like a burning
memory into my loving hands --
lover's hands!
entrust your lips -- your lips
like a warm sense of being! --
entrust! -- your lips to the caresses of my
-- loving lips -- lover's lips!
the wind will carry us with it
the wind will carry us with it
The Earth Scything Its Way Across the Persian Landscape
Astrogeology
Gorgeous renderings of the geology of the Martian and lunar polar regions, just the right patterns to replace the rose windows of Notre-Dame. Because surely there's something more transcendent when one is lit with the creative primordial forces of alien landscapes, your entire body aglow with abstracted asteroid impact craters, volcanic ejecta and ancient river channels, rather than with dubious hagiography and occultish propaganda. Right?
The iconography of extraterrestrial landscapes
Gorgeous renderings of the geology of the Martian and lunar polar regions, just the right patterns to replace the rose windows of Notre-Dame. Because surely there's something more transcendent when one is lit with the creative primordial forces of alien landscapes, your entire body aglow with abstracted asteroid impact craters, volcanic ejecta and ancient river channels, rather than with dubious hagiography and occultish propaganda. Right?
The iconography of extraterrestrial landscapes
Passiflora Unfurled
A Passiflora as charted by the Swiss botanist Arnold Dodel-Port and archived for The Memory of the Netherlands Project. Much thanks to Peacay of BibliOdyssey for reminding me of it again.
Meanwhile, here's an interesting botanical history: “The 'Passion flower' acquired its name from descriptions of its flower parts supplied by priests in South America known at that time as the 'New Spain'. The parts were interpreted by Giacomo Bosio, a churchman and historian, in Rome (1609), as representing various elements of the Crucifixion. The five petals and five sepals are the ten disciples less Judas & Peter. The corona filaments are the crown of thorns. The five stamen with anthers match the five sacred wounds & the three stigma the nails. This symbolism is not universal however, in Japan it is sometimes known as 'The Clock Plant'.”
And from the same website, there's a movie of a Passiflora edulis blooming: an exhilarating 20-second Passion Play as directed by Richard Dawkins.
A Passiflora as charted by the Swiss botanist Arnold Dodel-Port and archived for The Memory of the Netherlands Project. Much thanks to Peacay of BibliOdyssey for reminding me of it again.
Meanwhile, here's an interesting botanical history: “The 'Passion flower' acquired its name from descriptions of its flower parts supplied by priests in South America known at that time as the 'New Spain'. The parts were interpreted by Giacomo Bosio, a churchman and historian, in Rome (1609), as representing various elements of the Crucifixion. The five petals and five sepals are the ten disciples less Judas & Peter. The corona filaments are the crown of thorns. The five stamen with anthers match the five sacred wounds & the three stigma the nails. This symbolism is not universal however, in Japan it is sometimes known as 'The Clock Plant'.”
And from the same website, there's a movie of a Passiflora edulis blooming: an exhilarating 20-second Passion Play as directed by Richard Dawkins.
Pictorial Stones
The earth as a landscape painter, inscribing on itself a record of its own lived geomythology.
Could we be reading in these pictorial stones the birth pangs of mountains; the deaths of breathless oceans, vaporized by the paroxysms of continental drift; the sorting of dunes by an indulgent river; the melancholic dawn of a twilight-bound, Cambrian day?
One thing is for sure: these terrestrial epics — whatever they might be — are now sung today by a new breed of Homers and Virgils, equipped with electric drills, pick axes and polishing tools.
The earth as a landscape painter, inscribing on itself a record of its own lived geomythology.
Could we be reading in these pictorial stones the birth pangs of mountains; the deaths of breathless oceans, vaporized by the paroxysms of continental drift; the sorting of dunes by an indulgent river; the melancholic dawn of a twilight-bound, Cambrian day?
One thing is for sure: these terrestrial epics — whatever they might be — are now sung today by a new breed of Homers and Virgils, equipped with electric drills, pick axes and polishing tools.
Sunscapes
The surface of the sun as observed by the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) in high temporal and spatial resolution. Coronal filaments, loops and mass ejections; magnetic arcades, ultraviolet typhoons and X-ray hurricanes; fugitive prominences, earth-bound to create spectacular auroral displays or to wreak havoc on power grids and satellite telecommunication systems — all archived in one giant database.
And by giant I mean you can download 200+ gigabytes of movies in QuickTime and DVD img files!
For free!
Because the surface of the sun is a legitimate site for topographical investigation and landscape design.
A world of spin and flame is born in the head of the dreamer, blue suns, green whirlwinds, birdbeaks of light pecking open the pomegranate stars
The surface of the sun as observed by the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) in high temporal and spatial resolution. Coronal filaments, loops and mass ejections; magnetic arcades, ultraviolet typhoons and X-ray hurricanes; fugitive prominences, earth-bound to create spectacular auroral displays or to wreak havoc on power grids and satellite telecommunication systems — all archived in one giant database.
And by giant I mean you can download 200+ gigabytes of movies in QuickTime and DVD img files!
For free!
Because the surface of the sun is a legitimate site for topographical investigation and landscape design.
A world of spin and flame is born in the head of the dreamer, blue suns, green whirlwinds, birdbeaks of light pecking open the pomegranate stars
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