Nasmyth's models

...some more of James Nasmyth's photographs made using the plaster models he created to represent the lunar surface.

canyon

Image of the groove in a vinyl record. It still amazes me that the vibration of a tiny piece of diamond on this surface is capable of producing music.

airborne particles 5 - Simon Patterson

Simon Patterson Landskip Battersea Park 2008

airborne particles 4 - Graham Gussin

Graham Gussin stills from Spill 1999

airborne particles 3 - Johan Christian Dahl

Johan Christian Dahl Vesuvius 1826

 

Johan Christian Dahl

The Neapolitan coast with Vesuvius erupting

airborne particles 2 - Hans Haacke

Hans Haacke Condensation Cube 1963

Hans Haacke Condensation Wall 1963-66

airborne particles 1 - Robert Morris

Robert Morris Cloud Garden/steam 1968/9 remade 2009

wind, clouds and rain as ephemeral sculpture

Landscapes in the drawings and events of Roman Signer

 

Spazierstock (Walking Stick), 1997
Project for Skulptur Projekte Münster

"...His contribution in 1997 for the sculpture project in Münster illustrates Signer's artistic perception in all it's complexity. With the use of hydraulic pressure, he has a walking stick dance across the surface of a lake. The water, carried through a bent pipe to the walking stick, allowed the walking stick to move, drawing lines of water across the surface of the lake. The hiker's accessory breaks free to become the drawing tool. Signer thereby also alludes to the Romantic period, where the walking stick represented the landscape experience. In Signer's installation, Spazierstock (Walking Stick), hiking and drawing are identical, where, just as in the Romantic period, the concept of landscape was completely tied to the drawn or painted landscape image. However, while Romantic painters filled entire sketchbooks on their walks and by doing so collected a subject reservoir for their oftentimes lengthy work in their studios, Signer's drawing on the water's surface is fleeting, its documentation futile, if not almost impossible."

an excerpt from catalogue essay for Zeichnungen by Ortrud Westheider

interviewed..

in The Herald today, though I haven't seen it in print myself yet.

room-travel

“The sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.

Pascal, Pensées

From around 1799 to 1804, Alexander von Humboldt undertook a journey around South America, later entitling the account of what he had seen Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent.

Nine years earlier, in the spring of 1790, a twenty-seven-year-old Frenchman, Xavier de Maistre, undertook a journey around his bedroom, later entitling the account of what he had seen Journey around My Bedroom. Gratified by his experiences, in 1798, De Maistre undertook a second journey. This time he traveled by night and ventured out as far as the window ledge, later entitling his account Nocturnal Expedition around My Bedroom.

Two approaches to travel: Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, Journey around My Bedroom. The first required ten mules, thirty pieces of luggage, four interpreters, a chronomoter, a sextant, two telescopes, a Borda theodolite, a barometer, a compass, a hygrometer, letters of introduction from the King of Spain and a gun. The second, a pair of pink and blue cotton pyjamas.

…it was not Xavier’s intentions to cast aspersions on the heroic deeds of the great travelers of the past: Magellan, Drake, Anson and Cook. …it was just that (de Maestre) had discovered a way of traveling that might be infinitely more practical for those neither as brave or as wealthy as they. ‘The most indolent beings won’t have any reason to hesitate before setting off to find pleasures that will cost them neither money nor effort’. He particularly recommended room-travel to the poor and to those afraid of storms, robberies, and high cliffs.”

Alain de Botton – The Art of Travel p243-245

Baedecker's Switzerland.

Switzerland with a Baedecker

I've not been out in the hills as much as normal lately (see previous post..) so have been looking through some of my books on mountains for my only fix. The fold out images from my Baedecker's guide to Switzerland are quite fantastic, so I scanned them a couple of weeks ago with a plan to do something with them. Still in progress, but here are two panoramas.

There are a good deal more in this fabulous book, and the one with the Mer de Glace is particularly fine. Having travelled to Chamonix, France a few summers ago, the mental travel of the Baedecker is proving really very enjoyable.

collaboration...

current collaboration with Jim! (...this image was made after 13 wk's and 4 days)

aurora borealis

One more pretty wild image by Truvelot, this time of a rather exaggerated aurora borealis.

Partial eclipse of the moon

Partial eclipse of the moon. Observed October 24, 1874. (1881-1882), again by Trouvelot.