Marianne North: pioneering botanical artist
"Victorian artist Marianne North, one of the only women of her time to travel to places like the Seychelles Islands, Australia, and Chile, and who left behind a trail of impressive art and writing about her botanical discoveries, is not a household name. ...
In 1871, when a 40-year-old North set out after the death of her father to travel around the world and to paint as many of world's flora in oils as possible, she unwittingly found herself both ahead of and behind her times. In the art world, she was definitely not part of the avant-garde; in France, Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir had already started their Impressionist paintings, creating works that were worlds away from the status quo of a polished depiction of nature.
North went around the world twice, in fifteen years, traveling by train, boat, mule, and on foot, to every continent, except for Antarctica. In Brazil, where she spent 13 months, North painted lush landscapes and tropical flowers with tight brushstrokes and clean lines - a style that would soon be left behind with the revolutionary style of the Impressionists. North didn't perceive or paint her subjects in a particularly unique way, but she relayed every minute detail of a plant, flower, or landscape with breathtaking precision. Her paintings give you a straight, dispassionate look at an unfamiliar world."
(Alexia Nader, Garden Design)
Fig.1 Marianne North, New Zealand Flowers and Fruit, Date painted: early 1880s, Oil on board, 50.9 x 35.4 cm, Collection: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Pulp International: retro popular culture and graphic novel illustration
"Yes, fifteen years ago it was. We were kids who didn't know squat about print publishing and now we're older and we don't know squat about web publishing. But we hope Pulp International manages to entertain. It's a bit different from our old Pulp, but it's similar in many ways too. We'll be looking for pulp everywhere - certainly in the usual places, like books and magazines, but also in music and art. For that matter, we'll also be looking for pulp events - that is, real-world crimes with a touch of deceit or corruption. And lastly, we'll be posting images from blaxploitation, sexploitation, noir, horror, sci-fi and psychedelia films, because these too seem like pulp. At least to us. So there you go. Nothing is permanent, and this site won't be either, but as long as it’s fun, and you enjoy it, we’ll be here."
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Sketch-thinking: the processes of 'seeing as' and 'seeing that'
"Sketches are obviously pictorial, for they refer to shape and orientation, and often to approximate size even if they maintain a varying degree of abstractness. Yet it is impossible to confirm that there is a direct one-to-one correspondence between shapes and figures on paper and the images they stand for. It is therefore proposed to refer to the (pictorial) reasoning evident in interactive imagery at the time of sketching as consisting of two modalities. The designer is 'seeing as' when he or she is using figural, or 'gestalt' argumentation while 'sketch-thinking'. When 'seeing that', the designer advances no figural arguments pertaining to the entity that is being designed. The process of sketching is a systematic dialectics between the 'seeing as' and 'seeing that' reasoning modalities. To examine this proposition, design moves and arguments were inspected as they are established through protocol analysis. The notion of 'seeing as' and 'seeing that' will be further elucidated as we proceed, so as to best exploit documentation from the protocols."
(Gabriela Goldschmidt 1991, p.131)
Goldschmidt, G. (1991). "The dialectics of sketching." Creativity Research Journal, Routledge 4(2): 123-143.
Fig.1 Donald Owen Colley [http://buttnekkiddoodles.com/2012/12/26/knockin-about-chicago/]
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
BioShock Infinite: How Four Women Became One
The developer of BioShock Infinite "gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the voice (Courtnee Draper), body (Heather Gordon), brain (Amanda Jeffrey), and face (Anna Moleva) behind Booker DeWeitt’s in-game companion, Elizabeth."
(Chad Lakkis, 20 March 2013)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Lady in the Lake: the dramatic effect of subjective point of view
"Robert Montgomery drehte 'Lady in the Lake' 1947 nach einem Plot, das Raymond Chandlers gleichnamigen Roman adaptierte. In diesem Spielfilm verfolgen Beobachter die Handlung aus der Perspektive des Detektivs Philip Marlowe: Personen, die sich Marlowe zuwenden und mit ihm sprechen, wenden sich der Kamera zu. Das wirkt in Filmvorführungen im Kino, als wenden sie sich in den Projektionsraum und sprechen die Zuschauer an. Der Beobachter wird zugleich ins Bildgeschehen durch die szenische Konstellation hineingezogen (Immersion), wie auf die Grenze zwischen Filmraum und Projektionsraum verwiesen, da er im Filmraum nicht selbst handeln kann, sich aber wie Marlowe im Bildraum verortet. Marlowe bleibt ein anderer, meist unsichtbarer Körper, der aber sieht und den Anschluss des Beobachters an seine Wahrnehmung einfordert: Die Kamera verleiht ihren Beobachtern einen szenischen Kontext, in den Kinozuschauer sich versetzen können. Sie stossen dabei sowohl auf Vorgaben (wie Marlowe spricht) wie auf Fehlstellen (das Sichtbare von Marlowes Auftreten, wenn er nicht in einen Spiegel schaut)."
(Thomas Dreher, IASLonline)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
