You might also like to trot over to my sister’s site, aSpire Arts, and check out her weavings. Don’t bother trying to contact her though, she’s in Mongolia for a few months.

Last Friday at the Boekenmarkt Spui I bought a beautiful photo-reproduction of (large parts of) the Book of Kells. I’ve put a few amateurish photographs below the fold (they’re fairly large images), and the wikipedia page has lots of more professional ones. (People tend to focus on the carpet pages and full-page illumination extravaganzas, but I actually prefer the mainly textual pages, so that’s what I’ve snapped.)

The cool thing is, the original is permanently on display in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, where I’m going next month! And apparently they turn over a new leaf every day, so if I’m assiduous in my visiting I’ll get to see 14 pages or so. Pretty amazing to think that I’m going to see a book that’s more than a thousand years old — that ink was wet before the first people arrived in New Zealand.

(I also discovered the virtues of being chatty and interested at the book market: when I came back from agonising my way to the decision to buy the stallholder wasn’t there any more, but the bloke on duty sent a runner with my suggestion of knocking the price down a bit, who came back with the message: “It’s for the guy with the hat? Okay then, he can have it.”)

I’ve constrained the images to fit inside the text column, since otherwise the text on the right overlaps them and it all looks horrible. That’s probably going to make the images look a bit shonky though, and you’re missing all that beautiful detail. You can click through to see them at 800×600 without bloggery getting in the way. If anyone is especially interested I can try setting up the lighting better and post (or mail) some full-detail photos (my camera takes 1536×2048). You can also buy the whole Book of Kells on DVD, although there’s something almost sacrilegious about viewing that sort of work on a computer screen…

First a two-page spread, showing on the left the beginnings of the Argumentum of John and the Breves causae of Luke, and on the right more of the Breves causae of Luke (not that I know what these are, I’m just copying from the table of plates). Check out the rich colour of the text on the right and the finely detailed space-filling patterns.

Next is a single page from the Gospel of Matthew. The illumination in the lower left corner is the initial P of ‘Paternoster’ — this is the Lord’s Prayer. Just to the right of the top of the P you can see a little gymnast or yoga adept waving his leg in the air.

The next two, from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, show some of the variety in ornament and colour to be found — the book consists of 340 folios, while my reproduction has only 126 pages with colour photographs, so I imagine that what it’s missing are the pages with this sort of simpler ornamentation.

More rich colours in this page from the Gospel of John. If you look closely in the upper-left corner you’ll see a bird with serious beak problems, reminding me somehow of Leunig’s Curly Flat characters (which I can’t find online, but if you know them maybe you’ll see what I mean).

And finally, a closeup photo of the closeup photo in which the fish forms an abbreviation of the word ‘Jesus’. I wonder what kind of fish it was? (Note also the hair linking to the base of the I and the neck to the top, in defiance of common sense, and the extraordinary sequence of ligatures on the bottom line — no wonder that reading was a specialised skill reserved for the nobility! It might say tem ad exoris but then again it might say something quite different. Anyone know enough 11th-century Latin to say whether this is at least plausible?)

Via we make money not art, which also has more pics and tries to convince you that this is the work of some “artist.” The discerning reader will doubtless ignore these blandishments and check the fairy traps at once.

(More pics at Clapham Art Gallery.)

Here’s the deal: it’s a cut-out-and-fold-up paper model of a cute little dragon with big teeth. The trick is, the way it’s folded your depth perception gets confused and it looks like he’s watching you, his whole head is pointed at you, even when you move around. The illusion is extraordinarily strong; the whole head twists on the neck, pivots up and down too, to follow your every move. (There’s a video clip on the site, I didn’t figure it would look as cool as that but it’s actually pretty accurate.)

There are two tricks to making this work. The most important is lighting: if this goes wrong the whole illusion collapses. He’ll do his thing reliably if you keep him out of direct lighting (to avoid giveaway shadows). He also works fine for me with his cheek lit but the top of his nose in shadow (more weirdness: it looks as if he’s lit from the opposite side to where the lamp is actually sitting!) but direct light on the whole snout breaks it, at least for me.

The other trick is, to hamstring your depth perception, close one eye. It’s a bit like the Necker cube, which you can see “inwards” or “outwards” by an effort of will. Move your head around a bit, and imagine that he’s looking at you. Pretty soon he will be. (After playing with him for a half-hour or so, and moving him into the shade, I get the effect with both eyes open.)

So go there, now, and print that PDF out. Mine is just ordinary A4 lightweight paper, and he’s standing up fine, although I’ll probably do a colour version on heavier card if I ever get around to it. It’ll take you about seven minutes to cut him out and stick him together (I suggest printing two copies, one for reference, because the folding is a bit counterintuitive around the head region). You won’t regret it.

(He’s too cute to give you nightmares.)

(Via a BoingBoing post.)

What this means is, if you’re a SL subscriber you can visit these fish in their natural environment. The artifishies (sorry, couldn’t resist) are hanging out in a shared public virtual space. I don’t know if this is unique, but it’s the first ALife project I’ve heard about that doesn’t reside in its own purpose-built sandbox.

There is a SL group devoted to ALife, but you’ve got to be a subscriber to even view the forums :-( Still, this looks pretty promising. It costs, which counts me out at the moment (not much, but I could also see it devouring time). I’d hope to see more of this sort of thing in the coming years though, when *sigh* I have an income.

(Found via the excellent blog collision detection.)

The first is an eerie, atmospheric piece showing a the arrival of a pilgrim at a partially ruined cathedral. Visually stunning, and the story (while very simple) is weird and original. (You might have seen parts of this, as a shorter promotional version was released some years back. If you don’t remember any story beyond “a pilgrim arrives, etc,” you haven’t seen the whole thing.) The website appears permanently under construction, with no working link to a file, unfortunately, but if you can track it down it’s worth the effort.

The second is almost unbelievably dark and nasty humour, and quite simply a work of genius. I can’t recommend it enough. This website works, but you only get the trailer. A warning: if you’re emotionally sensitive, this film is not for you. It’s not particularly gory, but the darkness on display here is pretty extreme. Part of the genius of this film is that this darkness is also extraordinarily funny; it left me feeling slightly sick at the thought of what I’d been laughing at. This is not just “worth the effort,” it’s “I can’t speak to you until you’ve watched this film” material.

new media: art vs. technology

The exhibition intends to showcase a number of new media projects (some very much still “works in progress”) and suffers a classic new media difficulty: almost nothing I saw was both artistically satisfying and technologically interesting, while several were one or the other (the occasional piece was neither). I’m not really qualified to judge artistic merit in a consciously modern musical composition (to pick on my anti-favourite example), especially as I made a quiet exit before it had finished, so it may be that I’m missing some deep and significant contribution here. It might also be that my impression was correct, and it was pure self-indulgent pretentious nonsense.

But enough of the bad and ugly, most was good. The exhibition includes a number of installations, but also “performances” in the evenings that range from the afore-mentioned nonsense to the sort of demonstration you might expect at a technology fair. One installation consists of a number of balloons fitted with fan motors for altitute control and steering, all controlled from a central computer. We were given a demonstration of one of these airships (an easy 1.5m tall, not your simple birthday party toy) which was technically pretty neat, and a bright-eyed enthusiastic discussion of the potential for a full installation (balloons reacting to the movements of visitors through the space, flocking, and so on) as well as some video footage of previous events, which was sadly much less impressive than the balloons “in person”.

“ik wil fliegen, als een vogel”

My favourite, though, was easily the virtual reality flying simulation. This was very much a technological work-in-progress, with no sign yet of artistic content (although the potential is definitely there). The idea is to combine a depth-perception virtual reality headset with a climbing harness (yes, you heard me correctly) and elbow-mounted motion sensors, to give a realistic flying experience. You hang horizontally in the harness, and when you flap your arms, your simulated wings propel you through the air.

There were of course technical difficulties. The biggest is that your orientation in the harness affects your simulated body, but not vice versa. So if you simply stop flapping, your simulated body plummets to the ground and ends up lying on its side (the view in the headset twists ninety degrees, so the horizon is vertical) but you’re still hanging comfortably in the harness. Serious cognitive dissonance, and a conceptual problem that has not yet been solved.

A second problem concerns basic human laziness. The original idea was to flap your whole arm, sort of majestically (think albatrosses, or eagles). But this turns out to be very tiring, and the sensors are mounted just above the elbow, so you can get away with tucking your hands into your armpits and making little shoulder-twitches (think chicken, or the “birdy dance” for those with a Kiwi high-school upbringing). Rather spoils the solemnity of the experience…

over de sfeer

Somehow this seemed entirely appropriate, however. The occasional pretension aside, most of the exhibition has a fresh, open and slightly incomplete feel that is very relaxing. There’s lots of work-in-progress, and the discussions focus on further potential for development. The Flemish accents help this atmosphere (much of the work was supported by Flemish cultural grants), as does the evident enthusiasm and unfamiliarity with public speaking of some of the artists. It’s the real thing, go see it and enjoy.