Thursday, 30 October 2014

Cross Section of Walled City of Kowloon

One of the strangest illustrations I have ever seen is this Japanese cross-sectional image of the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong.



A hi-resolution version is HERE.

Alphabets, numerals & devices of the Middle Ages (1843)


From HERE

Saturday, 18 October 2014

Venice 1904

The following collection of images is from Venice by the Australian artist Mortimer Menpes, 1904.




Friday, 17 October 2014

February by Viktor Olgyai

From HERE.

From the volume:
Viktor Olgyai studied under William Unger in Vienna and under Theodore Alphonse in Paris. As he originally intended to devote himself entirely to the graphic arts, and only later took up oil-painting, his technical knowledge of etching is remarkable. He is pre-eminently a draughtsman, and though his plates are finely toned, the most notable thing about them is their sense of line. Some of his best works are contained in an album of ten plates entitle 'Winter,' and other notable ones are The Oak, The Mill and Way of Cypresses
Further information about the artist from the Imperial War Museum:
Victor Olgyai (1870-1929) was born in Igló in Hungary. He worked as a painter and designer, and taught at the Graphics Department of the College of Fine Arts in Budapest. He died in Salzburg, Austria.

Thursday, 16 October 2014

Everyman Wins Stirling Prize!

I have been going to the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool for 35 years. 
It is a key part of the cultural life of Liverpool. 
It was recently re-built from scratch and it is superb.
Tonight it won the RIBA Stirling award.



Tuesday, 14 October 2014

There are 26 sheep and 10 goats on a ship. How old is the captain?

The ex Cambridge University physicist and educator Sanjoy Mahajan (of Streetfighting Mathematics renown), has been busy with an outfit called Center for Curriculum Redesign (CCR) which is here

Mahajan has continued his interests in teaching maths and physics without rote learning methods - building on the pioneering work of Louis Benezet (1935), Etta Berman (1935) and Harold Fawcett (1938) also re-counted in Flener (2001) HERE

His latest at the CCR is the following PDF - Maths, Methods & Tools. 

Earlier proposals and great references are HERE

It's great to see that he is still going strong and bringing our attention to the shortcomings of rote learning.








Thursday, 9 October 2014

La Tour St. Jacques

Eugène Béjot (1867 – 1931) was a French artist who specialised in drawing and etching.

Below - from Paris: a sketch book (1912)


Splat!





Image Copyright M.G. Reed 2014

Stereogram


Copyright M.G. Reed 2014

Postcards from Google Earth

Here is a great site. A collection of wierd images from Google Earth - collected by the Brooklyn based artist Clement Valla. 

From the INFO:

I collect Google Earth images. I discovered strange moments where the illusion of a seamless representation of the Earth’s surface seems to break down. At first, I thought they were glitches, or errors in the algorithm, but looking closer I realized the situation was actually more interesting — these images are not glitches. They are the absolute logical result of the system. They are an edge condition—an anomaly within the system, a nonstandard, an outlier, even, but not an error. These jarring moments expose how Google Earth works, focusing our attention on the software. They reveal a new model of representation: not through indexical photographs but through automated data collection from a myriad of different sources constantly updated and endlessly combined to create a seamless illusion; Google Earth is a database disguised as a photographic representation. These uncanny images focus our attention on that process itself, and the network of algorithms, computers, storage systems, automated cameras, maps, pilots, engineers, photographers, surveyors and map-makers that generate them.