Hundred Rabbits (2016 - )

Hundred Rabbits is a small design - software - research studio based onboard a sailboat called Pino. It is run by Rekka, who is a cartoonist and writer, and Devine who is a programmer and musician.  Since 2016, they have been sailing. From Canada, the US West coast, Mexico, French Polynesia, Cook Islands, Niue, Tonga, New Zealand, Fiji, The Marshall Islands, Japan and back to Canada.

Rekka and Devine are very productive. During the past few years they have created an ecosystem of low power, open-source, software tools for programming and design, interactive musical projects, computer games, and books. They focus on alternative ways to store power and minimum viable solutions for technological tooling. HERE.

You Will, You Will, You Will (2020)

This is excellent. The Irish postal service, An Post, has released a new set of stamps in celebration of 25 years of one of my all time favourite sit-coms Father Ted. Pure Craggy Island gold.    

Dread, beat and blood (2006)

Vivien Goldman (b. 1952) is a British journalist, writer and musician. I first read her work in the weekly music paper Sounds in the late 1970s - she focused on punk, reggae, and post-punk bands. Goldman had for a time been Bob Marley's publicist, and in 1981 wrote his biography: Soul Rebel, Natural Mystic. 

HERE is a later piece that she wrote on the events of the night in 1976 when Marley, his band, and family, were attacked by a gang of heavily armed gunmen at his home in Jamaica.

A recent celebration of Goldman's disparate and interesting work as a writer and musician, celebrating her 64th birthday, is HERE on NPR. 

Donald Hall’s Amanuensis (2020)

HERE in the Paris Review is a wonderful piece about the growth of a warm personal relationship between the poet Donald Hall and his assistant Kendel Currier. What started as a professional role blossomed over a long period into a rich and mutually valued working friendship. Currier became a vital part of Hall's working pattern: an amanuensis.

  

Fire and grass-bedding construction 200 thousand years ago at Border Cave, South Africa

HERE is a paper in Science, reporting evidence of human bedding from 200,000 years ago. The Abstract reads:

We report the discovery of grass bedding used to create comfortable areas for sleeping and working by people who lived in Border Cave at least 200,000 years ago. Sheaves of grass belonging to the broad-leafed Panicoideae subfamily were placed near the back of the cave on ash layers that were often remnants of bedding burned for site maintenance. This strategy is one forerunner of more-complex behavior that is archaeologically discernible from ~100,000 years ago.

Color Palettes of The New Yorker (2018)

The New Yorker has been published since 1925. Every cover is a unique illustration - HERE is a wonderful interactive presentation of the colour palettes of these illustrations made by Nicholas Rougeux.

John Graunt at 400 (2020)

An excellent piece on John Graunt, by Timandra Harkness in the Royal Statistical Society's magazine (HERE). Graunt was a London haberdasher born in 1620, who published in 1662 a book which laid the foundations for the statistical analysis of demographics (the study of human populations and their composition).

Joy Unlimited (1975 / 2020)

A rare and long lost album by Harry Beckett - Joy Unlimited from 1975, has just been re-released. Beckett was born in Barbados and lived and worked for much of his life in Britain. The Observer jazz critic Dave Gelly thought that Beckett had "...one of the most beautiful trumpet tones I’ve ever heard".  

Late in his life he made an incredible album with Adrian Sherwood called The Modern Sound of Harry Beckett. 
  

Love in a Time of Terror (2020)

A fantastic multi-layered, and very lyrical, essay by the writer Barry Lopez (HERE).  A sweeping view across Lopez's life experiences as a naturalist - in Australia and Alaska, and a revelation in a desolate terrain near to Willowra, in Australia’s Northern Territory, that "...most of the trouble that afflicts human beings in their lives can be traced to the failure to love".  

Lopez goes on to say: "It is more important now to be in love than to be in power... It is more important to live for the possibilities that lie ahead than to die in despair over what has been lost."
 

The Home Stayer (2020)

Luis Mendo is an illustrator, designer, and writer, who lives and works in Japan. His work is very widely seen on websites, in magazines, in art galleries, and also on clothing. Examples of his work, his bio, and details of a creative residence in Tokyo - called Almost Perfect - that he started with his wife Yuka are (HERE).

During the first period of COVID-19 lockdown, Luis began making wonderful cover art for a magazine that is inspired by The New Yorker, but doesn't exist (yet), called The Home Stayer (HERE).  Above is Issue 7: THE ZOOM.

Image copyright Luis Mendo: limited edition prints of the full set of Home Stayer covers available to buy (HERE).



 

Typographically, poise is made of white space.

The Idea of the North

The Idea of North (1967), The Latecomers (1969), and The Quiet in the Land (1977) - collectively known as the Solitude Trilogy, are so-called documentaries by Canadian composer and pianist Glenn Gould (1932 - 1982).  They are complex multi-layered 'polyphonic' spoken pieces. They are built from hours of Gould's tape recorded material - spliced carefully together into three one hour long pieces. 

The Canadian poet and translator Robert Bringhurst rates these pieces as '...one of the most accomplished and important works of literature ever produced in North America, in any medium or language'. (Licking the Lips with a Forked Tongue 2005).

He goes on to explain how he first came across these works - much later than when they were first broadcast - 'I began, then,  to understand that Gould was the most colossally improbable of all Canadian poets - and that he was, more improbably still, one of the greatest'.  (Singing with the Frogs 1997).

The pieces are available on YouTube.

How the Pandemic Defeated America (2020)

HERE is an excellent long article, How the Pandemic Defeated America, by The Atlantic staff writer Ed Yong on the way that the US has tackled the COVID pandemic. 

... required reading for the entire human race (1967).

From the first paragraph of William Kenedy's review of One Hundred Years of Solitude when the book was first published in the United States. This novel, he wrote is “the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race. It takes up not long after Genesis left off . . . reporting on everything that happened since then with more lucidity, wit, wisdom, and poetry than is expected from a hundred years of novelists, let alone one man.”

An article HERE by William Kennedy on how he got to know Marquez.

Rope making 40,000 years ago

A fascinating story HERE, in the Guardian about 40,000 year old antlers with specialised holes whcih were made by humans to aid in making twine and rope: a profound and game-changing human innovation. 

Form, Substance and Difference (1970)

...what we mean by information—the elementary unit of information—is a difference which makes a difference...

From Steps to an Ecology of Mind, by Gregory Bateson 1972, Chandler Publishing Co. This essay was the Nineteenth Annual Korzybski Memorial Lecture, delivered January 9, 1970. (HERE)

Inventing Posters

The Besieged Elephant, etching and engraving after Hieronymus Bosch, published by Hieronymus Cock, c. 1563. From the early history of the Poster: a print on paper.

 HERE

That moment when you peel the tape off a box but it’s obstructed by another piece of tape...

By Ryosuke Otomo. HERE

Like sprites...dancing in the flames

Tokihiro Sato is a Japanese photographer who specialises in very long exposure photos - often using exposures of more than an hour. He records his own movements during these lengthy exposures and ends up with beautiful black and white images of natural scenes, overlaid with points and patches of light. These uncanny images pick out his movements through space, but do not record his physical form.

More examples HERE.

Voices of Art - Norman Ackroyd

HERE is a wonderful series of short recordings of the etcher Norman Ackroyd, on his early life, his experiences at art school, and his use of materials. 

Below is a transcript of a discovery he made when he visited the Lacourière workshops in Paris, where Pablo Picasso’s etching for his Histoire Naturelle were printed.

Picasso would be sixty-one, I think, and set off and do this book with thirty-six animals.  Each plate’s about twelve inches by eight inches.  And I think one or two of the plates in that set are as good as anything he’s ever done.  When you do thirty-six plates, it’s going to be patchy.  I mean, they’re all good, but,some are better than others.  And the bull is a good as anything he did.  I’ve always envied it. 

But there were very very fine lines drawn, but they weren’t needled lines, etch needle lines; they were obviously drawn with the freedom of a pen, nib, and then the aquatint on top of that, and then, scraping out in a very broad way, and then the, the sheer energy in the drawing.  It’s just magic technically.  It wasn’t until I actually saw that etching that I realised that you could put sugar lift on with a pen.  And even a fine mapping pen, which could give you the finest of lines.  And if you were technically good enough, which Lacourière was, Lacourière was the great master etcher of the twentieth century technically, and, working with Picasso, that was one of the great tandems, you know. 

I got talking about the way he must have used a pen.  She said, ‘Oh yes.’  She took my coffee cup out of the saucer, and she put three lumps of sugar in the saucer, and then she put a bit of water in with it until the sugar was dissolved.  And then she went to a cupboard on the wall, and she pulled out a tube of gamboge watercolour, and she squeezed about half a tube in, and then she stirred it all round.  And then she spat in it, which breaks the surface tension.  If you, if you had enough spit in your mouth, you could use it to wash up you know.  I understood exactly what she was doing.  And then she mixed it up, and then she put poured some more into another clean saucer and added more water and then she got a dip in pen and she put it in and it flowed off the pen.  And she said, ‘Picasso did it like that.’  And so I said, ‘How do you know?’  She said, ‘Well I used to mix it for him every morning.’  [laughs]  And I thought, well you can’t say fairer than that.  

I developed a way of doing it.  I make up a different mixture, but I can work with very fine pen marks, as well as brushes.  So you can draw with like, pen and and wash, on, straight onto the copper plate with this saturated sugar solution.  And you can just draw very freely on it.  Then if it doesn’t work, you just wash it off and you can dry the plate and start again.  And that’s, that’s how Picasso did the Histoire Naturelle. 

And I found out, it was absolutely fabulous for going out on a landscape trip, you could take a, a dozen plates in clean envelopes and you could draw in your drawing books and everything and you could bring a plate out and you could just draw on the plate, slip it back in an envelope.  And then you could come back to the studio and get these plates out, and then decide that maybe one or two aren’t good enough, you can wash them off and you use them again.  And then, the others, you take right through the process.  I love the technique.

Ridgeline #81

Ridgeline is a free email newsletter on walking from Craig Mod. You can subscribe to it HERE. In the first newsletter Craig asked his readers to submit a short bio in answer to his question: What shell were you torn from? This is from Ridgeline #81.

I’ve moved house recently, from the coast to the country but I’ve rewalked every day for a decade. My old home was 400 hundred yards from an unloved and shingly, muddy, stretch of beach on a busy industrial sea-way and I used to tread the same steps, from south to north and back again; my footprints and my companion’s pawprints, washed away every time with every tide. Every beach is a borderland between solid ground and the fluid wilderness of the sea and no two days are the same, so no two walks are the same. Every walk a small but perfect communion between the edge of stability and something wildly unpredictable. Am I glamorizing the drab routine of walking the dog? Maybe. Now I live, surrounded by pasture and crop, up a farm track, half a mile from the nearest road. The old dog is too arthritic to come with me but each morning I’m up with the dawn, committed to a simple, meditative mile there and back. Every morning is different here too. The mew of buzzards and chuck-chuck of pheasants; the soft cropping of cows grazing; the mist inverted in the valley; an inky gibbous moon; beech nuts and leaves in the puddles. I miss the power of the whip of the sea and the tang of salt, but the communion is just as wonderful.

Russia’s Dr. Seuss (2020)

A great piece HERE in the Paris Review on the Russian childrens' author Kornei Chukovsky (1882 - 1969) by the always entertaining Anthony Madrid.

Included is Madrid's attempt to render the beginning of Chukovsky's Telephone:

У меня зазвонил телефон.
—Кто говорит?
—Слон.
—Откуда?
—От верблюда.
—Что вам надо?
—Шоколада.
—Для кого?
—Для сына моего.
—А много ли прислать?
—Да пудов этак пять.
Или шесть:
Больше ему не съесть,
Он у меня ещё маленький!

"Sigh. I’m going to close with my own attempt at the first three lines—an attempt that, for all its faults, has at least this authority: it was created on horseback, as it were. I just mean it was created without recourse to writing implements. I had been trying to solve the problem of those opening lines for years; I wanted the first line to be an anapestic trimeter, like it is in Russian. Suddenly the following bit came to me, alone in the Mazda on the way to Austin, Northbound 183, November 2019:

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the phone.
That thing will not leave me alone.
Obnoxious, annoying, irrelevant…
—Brrrrng!!!—I pick up. It’s the elephant."

 

The Cult of Innovation: Its Colorful Myths and Rituals (2017)

Langdon Winner (b. 1944) is an american academic, interested in science, technology, and society. His particular focus is on the political ramifications of technology - in the widest senses of both political and technology.  

HERE is a piece by Winner on the cult of innovation, which includes his definition of benign innovation:

To my way of thinking activities and projects that modify and renew traditions and instruments of practice, might be called graceful or benign innovation.  What characterizes them, in my view, is that they usually deeply respect what came before and yet chart new, challenging, fruitful possibilities.  The old traditions are not trashed, but modified, gracefully unfolding into something new.

On the Wire (1977 - 2020)

Steve Barker has been playing fantastic music on BBC Radio Lancashire for forty years. He has set up an excellent Mixcloud page HERE. A write-up in the Guardian about his show and efforts to carry on HERE.

40 Years Later: Closer & The Last Days Of Joy Division (2020)

Joy Division, were one of the first (if not the first) bands that I saw live - on 2nd October 1979, at Mountford Hall in the University of Liverpool students Union. They supported the Buzzcocks on the opening night of their British tour. Joy Division were thrilling to watch, and Ian Curtis was the most mesmerising lead singer I have ever seen. 

HERE is an appreciation of their work at that time, and their second and final album Closer, released forty years ago. 

Kranzberg's laws of Technology (1986)

Melvin Kranzberg (1917 - 1995) was the Callaway professor of the history of technology at Georgia Tech from 1972 to 1988. He also founded the Society for the History of Technology in 1958.  In 1986, he summarised a lot of his activity in the following 'laws of technology' (HERE):

[1] Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.
[2] Invention is the mother of necessity
[3] Technology comes in packages, big and small.
[4] Although technology might be a prime element in many public issues, nontechnical factors take precedence in technology-policy decisions.
 [5] All history is relevant, but the history of technology is the most relevant.
 [6] Technology is a very human activity – and so is the history of technology.

Here is an appreciation by one of his colleagues.

The theory and practice of landscape painting in water-colours (1871)

The theory and practice of landscape painting in water-colours. Illustrated by a series of twenty-six drawings and diagrams in colours, and numerous woodcuts. By George Barnard (HERE).

Sunrise at Core Banks (1983)

A photo by Steve Murray, which appeared in the Jan 1983 edition of the erstwhile Coast Watch (North Carolina Sea Grant), the latest edition is HERE.

Blueprint reading (1919)

From Blueprint reading; a practical manual of instruction in blueprint reading through the analysis of typical plates with reference to mechanical drawing conventions and methods, the laws of projection, etc (HERE)

Chinese Sage Reading While Riding on a Buffalo (c1820)

Chinese Sage Reading While Riding on a Buffalo (c1820)

By Totoya Hokkei (1780–1850)

From HERE.

Excavations at Roman Corbridge: the Hoard (1988)

The diagram above is taken from a document written by L Allason-Jones and MC Bishop, and published in 1988 by English Heritage. The Roman site of Corbridge was excavated in annual seasons, partly as a training school run by the University of Durham, from 1947 to 1973. These investigations were mainly devoted to the examination of the remains of a series of forts which occupied the central portion of the later Roman town of Corbridge from about AD 80 to 163. The most remarkable single find, uncovered in July 1964, was the Corbridge 'hoard', pictured above. The armour discovered in the Corbridge Hoard was described in a book by H Russell Robinson The Armour of Imperial Rome (1975). Interest in the armour overshadowed the fact that the chest contained other objects of great interest. This volume is a definitive publication of all known objects from the Corbridge Hoard.   (HERE)

You can’t understand (1977)

In 1977, the expat British writer Alan Booth (1946 - 1993) walked the length of Japan from North to South, from Cape Soya to Cape Sata. Booth wrote a wonderful memoir of his long (128 days and 3,000 kilometres) and insightful journey called The Roads to Sata. At the end of the book, Booth recounts an encounter he had with an old man in Hokkaido during the early part of his walk. 

The old man tells Booth that, not only could he not understand Japan by living in Tokyo, ‘You can’t understand Japan just by looking at it’. Booth goes on to explain that he is not looking like a tourist would, but also walking, and talking to people, whilst he was walking. The old man explains that Booth can’t understand Japan by walking or talking. In the end, Booth asks the old man; 

‘How do you suggest I try to understand Japan, then?’

He seemed surprised by the question, and a little hurt, and a little angry. ‘You can’t understand Japan’, he said.