Category Archives: Art

Der fotografierende Rettungssanitäter

ze.tt: 30 Jahre später: Fotograf zeigt mit Damals-heute-Fotos, wie sich Menschen verändern. “Chris Porsz fotografierte in den Siebzigern und Achtzigern Passant*innen auf den Straßen seiner Heimatstadt in Ost-England. Sein Projekt zeigt, welche Auswirkungen es auf eine Gesellschaft und ihre Menschen hat, wenn die Zeit vergeht.” Mit 27 Fotos von damals und heute.

“I think of myself not as an astronaut who paints, but as an artist who was once an astronaut.“

The New York Times: Alan Bean, 4th Person to Walk on the Moon, Dies at 86.

“Alan Bean, who became the fourth man to walk on the moon and turned to painting years later to tell the story of NASA’s Apollo missions as they began receding into history, died on Saturday at Houston Methodist Hospital. He was 86.

His death was announced by his family in a statement released by NASA.

Mr. Bean stepped onto the lunar surface preceded by Pete Conrad, the mission commander of their Apollo 12 flight, in November 1969, four months after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first lunar explorers.

The flight of Apollo 12, while thrilling in its own right, was not nearly as dramatic as the pioneering mission of Apollo 11, but it resulted in a more extensive exploration of the moon.

Mr. Bean returned to space in July 1973, when he commanded a three-man flight to the orbiting space research station Skylab, the forerunner of the International Space Station. The astronauts on that mission spent 59 days in space, a record at the time.”

ars technica: Alan Bean, the fourth human to walk on the Moon, has died. “Bean loved being an astronaut. He may have loved being an artist more.”

I’m just now watching an interview with Alan Bean in two parts from 2011. (YouTube, ca. 40min altogether)

See also MeFi obit thread.

It’s a spherical video in a mathematically triplified space with symmetry in space-time

Vihart: Peace for Triple Piano. (YouTube 3D video, 4:15min)

This has got to be one of the most amazing things done with a 3D camera I’ve ever seen. Pro tip: Watch this in fullscreen mode on your phone so you can look around by moving the entire phone, and use headphones to get the full 3D sound effect as well.

Make sure to also watch

Henry Segerman: The Making of “Peace for Triple Piano”. (YouTube video, 13:52min including a “flat” version of the above 3D video).

In this video Vi Hart and Henry Sergerman explain how the video works: how they made one grand piano and one Vi look like three, but one Henry look like only two at the same time.

Vi writes a little more about this project on her weblog: Vihart.com: Peace for Triple Piano.

(This was published back in February, but I only now realized that the RSS feed of this YouTube channel stopped working.)

“Are you sure there isn’t something else we could calculate?”

XKCD What if: Earth-Moon Fire Pole. “My son (5y) asked me today: If there were a kind of a fireman’s pole from the Moon down to the Earth, how long would it take to slide all the way from the Moon to the Earth? – Ramon Schönborn, Germany”

I loved this and am tempted to use it in one of my next physics lessons…

Link via MetaFilter.

Free to Use and Reuse

Valet: Print Your Own Vintage Images from the Library of Congress. “Download all this old school WPA artwork (legally!) for free.”

“You see, we just stumbled upon a vast archive of historic images digitally housed at the Library of Congress. The Library shares the images (available for download in multiple sizes) because the artwork is “either in the public domain, has no known copyright, or has been cleared by the copyright owner for public use.” What does that mean? We’re all free to print them and hang them in our place, at no charge.

There’s plenty to choose from, but we’re particularly drawn to the WPA posters. Between 1935 and 1943 the Work Projects Administration’s Federal Art Project printed over two million posters in 35,000 different designs to stir the public’s imagination for education, theater, health, safety and travel.”

I especially like the Travel Posters and the Work Projects Administration (WPA) Posters.

Link via Garret (dangerousmeta).