Hand dryers from around the world. Photos: Douglas Wilson. (Click to enlarge.)

[Via Gizmodo]

Cold War era playground rockets. Photos by Lauren Orchowski. Click to enlarge.

Artist Lauren Orchowski created a great photographic series of 23 Cold War era rocket-theme playground structures, called Rocket Science, made with an 8 x 10 inch view camera between 2005 and 2008 all over the United States. [Source: Lauren Orchowski, via Gizmodo]

Mash-up Stefan Hester photos of Tom Fuller's Roadside Church. Click to enlarge.

Accidental Mysteries has a story about photographer Stefan Hester’s photographs of Tom Fuller’s sign-saturated “religious environment” in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, that Mr. Fuller calls the “Roadside Church.”

I created the mash-up, above, from four of Stefan’s photos, just to highlight the obsessive textification of this religious environment. Be sure to check out the Accidental Mysteries post, not only for the photos, but for Stefan’s story about meeting Tom Fuller and encountering “Libby’s Potted Meat Food Product.”

Satellite and computer visualizations of human activity. Click to enlarge.

The first image, in the upper left,

…shows air traffic in the US based on the data from FlightView, a page that tracks air traffic in real time. You can see it using three different criteria. The first is altitude—which is the one you are seeing here. The darker blues indicate higher altitude, while the lightest blue indicates take off and landing. [Source, with more images: Gizmodo ]

The other images are all of the United Kingdom, and are from a new BBC TV series, “Britain from Above“. These aerial/computer images show, clockwise from the top right: aircraft flight paths, London Taxi activity, Internet activity in the South of England, images on Britain’s roads as seen from over the M4/M5 junction near Bristol, and UK telephone exchange activity. [Source, with videos: Gizmodo]

Images from Masahisa Fukase's The Solitude of Ravens

The Solitude of Ravens sadly foreshadows the photographer’s own deep solitude to come, as Wikipedia explains:

His greatest and last photobook was “Raven”. Shot in Hokkaido in 1976 in the wake of his divorce, the gloomy and emotional photos are a sharp contrast to his earlier works. The enormous renown won by their release in 1986 then the American release (“The Solitude of the Raven”) in 1991 was short lived as he fell down a flight of stairs while intoxicated and into a coma which he remains in today.

The Photo Book Guide review of The Solitude of Ravens tells Fukase’s haunting story in more detail, and includes some other brilliant photos, such as this gem:

A page from The Solitude of Ravens, by Masahisa Fukase

Michaux’s drug investigations also landed him the job of making his only film, Images du monde visionnaire, in 1964 for the drug company Sandoz, the company that first synthesized LSD.

Henri Michaux, Images du monde visionnaire, 1964. Click to enlarge.

You can view a video of the 38 minute film in its entirety at UBUWEB, which found the film via the blog Ombres Blanches, which tells the story of how this amazing and forgotten film came into being:

It’s not an experimental but an educational film which was produced in 1963 by the film department of Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz (best known for synthesizing LSD in 1938) in order to demonstrate the hallucinogenic effects of mescaline and hashish. Still it shares many traits with some of the more interesting efforts in avant-garde film making of its time. Maybe the most remarkable about it is that it is the only venture in film of notable French writer and painter Henri Michaux who wrote several accounts of his experiments with drugs. In charge with the filmic translation of Michaux’ prescriptions was director Eric Duvivier (a nephew of Julien Duvivier) whose other films include an adaptation of Max Ernst’s collage novel La femme 100 têtes.

You can read more about Images du monde visionnaire at each of these sites, and see some film stills. I went through the film and assembled the above composite of 30 images that especially struck me and evoke the flavor of this film – click on it for a larger version. It’s a beautiful film.

Hamish Fulton at Little Big Horn Battlefield, Montana, Summer 1969.

Hamish Fulton understands the connection between art and walking. Notes Wikipedia,

Hamish Fulton (born 1946 ,London England), is a “Walking artist” and photographer. His initial work concerned the experience of walking but in the last twenty years Fulton has painted more directly on exhibition walls. Author and writer of books and essays. His wall installation A 21 day coast to coast walking journey, Japan 1996 at the John Weber Gallery, NY incorporates the concrete poetry format and his earlier work A Seven day walk in the mountains Switzerland early summer 1984 was the inspiration for the ‘fulton’ Visual poetry form.

I thought about Hamish Fulton tonight when I read a profile of the British (another walking Brit artist!) novelist Ian McEwan in the February 23, 2009 issue of the New Yorker, The Background Hum: Ian McEwan’s art of unease:

We ascended the crop field; behind us, solar panels on the roof of McEwan’s cottage glistened in the sun. Entering a fern-carpeted wood, McEwan joked that he places his friends along a divide: those who enjoy hiking (Barnes, Michael Frayn) and those who consider it a fatuous premodern practice (Amis, Christopher Hitchens). McEwan relishes the mental restoration that comes from being in nature. “The sensual pleasure of it traps you fiercely in the present,” he said. “It has knock-on effects when you go back to work.”

Much of McEwan’s best writing can be tied directly to a long walk….

“The sensual pleasure of it traps you fiercely in the present,” is a fantastic description of the in-the-moment feeling I have when hiking, and even more so when skiing. Two days ago I went skiing for the day up at Sugar Bowl, near Lake Tahoe, California. I left home near Berkeley at 5:15 in the morning, drove for three hours, skied from nine until just after 3:00pm, then drove the three hours back home. On the drive home, I was thinking about the beauty of skiing, for me, being inexorably linked to the focus of concentration that this sport demands of me: if I don’t give what I am doing 100% of my attention, I could be horribly injured or die on the mountain. Really good skiers and snowboarders may be able to do it blindfolded, but for me, a merely decent intermediate slope tumbler, exhilaration and terror are bound at the wrists and poised at the edge of a cornice, awaiting my push.

Though I have never been a soldier, I think this feeling must have something in common with the oft-mentioned notion that many soldiers fighting in wars feel most alive when their lives are most threatened. I don’t think it’s a case of being more or less “alive” at any given moment, only that certain situations provide us with a moment of focus and clarity where we are really paying attention to life to a much greater degree than we normally do in our daily lives. This is certainly what Zen Buddhism and mediation point toward, but for me I find it easier and more natural to achieve while flying down a steep snowy mountain nearly out of control than sitting cross-legged on a mat “trying” to think of nothing. While skiing, I don’t have to “try” to think of nothing but the task at hand, it is simply gone from my mind for those blissful moments that I am “trapped fiercely in the present.” And being forced by circumstance to fully confront the moment is a great gift.

It arose through the pursuit of individual expression by Chinese artists that broke away from the collective mindset that existed since the Cultural Revolution. The major themes tend to focus on socio-political issues and events since Revolutionary China (1911) to the present. These include having a, usually humorous and post-ironic, take on a realist perspective and interpretation of transition that Chinese society has been through, from the advent of Communism to today’s industrialization and modernization.

Yue Minjun is probably the most successful of the new Chinese Cynical Realists, and his unique brand is easily identified, as he always paints (or sculpts, draws, prints) smiling figures in action:

Galliant Hero, by Yue Minjun -- 1995, oil on canvas

He’s actually a pretty great artist, and his work is very funny — check out his website gallery for many more images.

Yue Minjun is very successful, but that also means is work is way too expensive for most of us. In an ironic exclamation mark to the phrase “Cynical Realism”, you can buy cheap Chinese knockoffs of expensive Chinese art online at Reorient., which features “furniture,  décor, lifestyle” items for sale from Asia. Here is a painting by an anonymous artist in the style of Yue Minjun:

Not Yue Minjun (Anonymous) -- ND, oil on canvas 32"x32"

This painting would ship to you rolled up and ready to frame, were it not SOLD OUT in the Reorient Store. So I’m looking for a source where I can buy cheap(er) knockoffs of the unavailable knockoffs of contemporary Chinese art.

I just think this is a great art installation, no matter if unintended as such. Who knows — these two dudes could be the Gilbert & George of China.

Click on the photo at left to see a larger version, and check out the video, below. [PSFK]

Not to be confused with the Metaverse, from Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash, the concept of the multiverse has been around quite a while, and the specific term “multiverse” was coined in 1895 by psychologist William James:

The multiverse (or meta-universe) is the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes (including our universe) that together comprise all of reality. The different universes within the multiverse are sometimes called parallel universes. The structure of the multiverse, the nature of each universe within it and the relationship between the various constituent universes, depend on the specific multiverse hypothesis considered.

Multiverses have been hypothesized in cosmology, physics, astronomy, philosophy, transpersonal psychology and fiction, particularly in science fiction and fantasy. The specific term “multiverse” was coined in 1895 by psychologist William James. In these contexts, parallel universes are also called “alternative universes”, “quantum universes”, “interpenetrating dimensions”, “parallel worlds”, “alternate realities”, “alternative timelines”, etc. [Wikipedia]

And the middle ground? How about firing beer bottles at your living room wall at 373 mph with a bottle cannon?

It’ll make great punctuation for your raving, domestic squabbles, and Super Bowl parties. Set it to fire at random, 24/7, and let the magic begin. Read all about it over at Gizmodo.

Check out the amazing images of the Buddha’s Caves in the New York Times slideshow that accompanies this article online.