How and when Muslim societies will move away from seeing violence as a resolution to human conflict
"This week the minaret of one of Syria's most beautiful mosques was destroyed in the northern city of Aleppo. The Ummayad mosque established in 715 was rebuilt in 1159 after being damaged by a fire and then built again a century later after the Mongol invasion. The oldest surviving part was the minaret and both the State forces and the rebels accuse each other of its destruction. Lying in the Old City, the mosque is a Unesco world heritage site but has become part of the wider devastation of Syria's rich cultural heritage; a Crusader castle and Roman ruins in the ancient city of Palmyra have also been damaged.
However sad this physical destruction of history and art is, it should matter less to us than the recent reports that some 70,000 lives have been lost in this terrible civil war with hundreds of thousands more displaced. This is a war which is gradually ripping the country apart but about which the rest of the world doesn't seem to know what to do. Yet there is a different poignancy to the loss of a country's artistic and cultural past. It is these visual artifacts, building and ruins which speak to us of a country's history, its collective memory, the love and passion of the people who make a piece of land into a nation state. That so many Syrians are now killing each other and destroying ruins and religious sites poses the disturbing question, what exactly is still held sacred in so many part of the Muslim world?
A couple of weeks ago I returned from a short break to Istanbul. The area surrounding the majestic Hagia Sophia and the Blue mosque is also a Unesco world heritage site, tourists wander freely, the buildings stand sublime, the contested past of the place breathing its religious spirit into a refashioned, modern and vibrant city. But I wonder whether the preservation of history is only meaningful in countries where there is the preservation of peace, where people can enjoy the ordinariness of life, where there is order and purpose and we have the luxury of self reflection.
Earlier this week the former Met commissioner sir Ian Blair said societies choose what kind of violence they will tolerate. Looking across to so many part of the Islamic world where there is civil war, state violence and individual acts of terror, I wonder how and when Muslim societies will move away from seeing violence as a resolution to human conflict. When God is great is uttered as people and buildings are blown up what kind of God have so many created in their hearts and minds? The destruction of the minaret is not just a physical destruction but a tragic metaphor for a nation's soul."
(Mona Siddiqui, 26 April 2013, BBC Radio 4: Thought for the Day)
Fig.1 At left, the damaged Umayyad mosque in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria, on Wednesday 24 April 2013; at right, the view of the mosque with the minaret intact on 6 March 2013. (AP) [http://www.wbur.org/npr/178906558/minaret-of-iconic-syrian-mosque-destroyed-in-fighting].
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Neil Young Expands Pono Digital-to-Analogue Music Service
"Beginning next year [2013], Pono will release a line of portable players, a music-download service and digital-to-analog conversion technology intended to present songs as they first sound during studio recording sessions. In his book out this week, Waging Heavy Peace, Young writes that Pono will help unite record companies with cloud storage 'to save the sound of music.' As Flea raves to Rolling Stone, 'It's not like some vague thing that you need dogs' ears to hear. It's a drastic difference.'
Pono's preservation of the fuller, analog sound already has the ear of the Big Three record labels: Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony Music. WMG - home to artists including Muse, the Black Keys, Common and Jill Scott - has converted its library of 8,000 album titles to high-resolution, 192kHz/24-bit sound. It was a process completed prior to the company's partnership with Young's Pono project last year, said Craig Kallman, chairman and chief executive of Atlantic Records.'"
(Patrick Flanary, 27 September 2012, Rolling Stone)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Archives New Zealand, Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga
"Archives New Zealand, Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga is the official guardian of New Zealand’s public archives. We gather, store and protect an extremely wide range of material. Our holdings include the originals of the Treaty of Waitangi, government documents, maps, paintings, photographs and film."
(The Aotearoa New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs Te Tari Taiwhenua)
Fig.1 "Toehold on a Harbour (1966)", Colour, 10 minutes, 35mm, 972 ft., DV file of Beta SP of telecini of 35mm film. W3606/c/25.
Fig.2 "Introducing New Zealand (1955)", W3471/kk/619 DV file of Beta SP telecini of 35mm film.
Fig.3 "Four Cities (1951) (AAPG W3471/3398)", Silent colour travelogue film around the major cities of New Zealand, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. The major sites and scenes of the cities are shown. 2K scan of 16mm reversal print.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
New Zealand National Library and the Alexander Turnbull Library
"We're in Beta, and we're excited to share this new National Library website with you. Why are we so excited? For the first time you can search right across our collections in one place. It's easier to get what you're after and easier to use it."
(The Aotearoa New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs Te Tari Taiwhenua)
Fig.1 Ref: 1/2-220232-F, Portrait of girl with fan, 1968, photographed by K E Niven & Co of Wellington.
,K.E.Niven.Co.jpg)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Internet Archaeology: graphic artefacts from our recent past
"Internet Archaeology seeks to explore, recover, archive and showcase the graphic artifacts found within earlier Internet Culture. Established in 2009, the chief purpose of Internet Archaeology is to preserve these artifacts and acknowledge their importance in understanding the beginnings and birth of an Internet Culture. We focus on graphic artifacts only, with the belief that images are most culturally revealing and immediate. Most of the files in our archive are in either JPG or GIF format and are categorized by either still or moving image, they are then arranged in various thematic subcategories. Currently, a major focus of Internet Archaeology is on the archiving and indexing of images found on Geocities websites, as their existence has been terminated by parent company Yahoo; who discontinued GeoCities operation on October 26, 2009. Internet Archaeology is an ongoing effort which puts preservation paramount. Unlike traditional archaeology, where physical artifacts are unearthed; Internet Archaeology's artifacts are digital, thus more temporal and transient. Yet we believe that these artifacts are no less important than say the cave paintings of Lascaux. They reveal the origins of a now ubiquitous Internet Culture; showing where we have been and how far we have come."
(Internet Archaeology)
Via Chelsea Nichols [http://ridiculouslyinteresting.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/internet-archaeology-the-best-of-90s-internet-graphics/]
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
