Thumbs and Ammo posits the idea: would it be funny to replace guns with thumbs up in stills from movies?
YES!
Shadow Puppets Tell American History from 1935-1985
”Leaves of Grass” is series from Canadian artist Geoffrey Farmer of clippings and photographs from the American Life magazine, each turned into a functional puppet.
1 - Flying Great White Sharks Caught on Film
Travel and adventure photographer, Chris Mclennan has taken these truly terrifying photos of great white sharks breaching.
According to Wikipedia:
Seal Island is a small land mass located 5.7 km off the northern beaches of False Bay, near Cape Town, in South Africa. The island is so named because of the great number of Cape Fur Seals that occupy it. There are a few sea birds as well. It is an outcrop of the Cape granite and rises no more than about six metres above the high tide mark. The island is long and narrow- 800 metres by 50 metres. There is no vegetation or soil of any significance. A radar mast was built on the island during World War II by a crew who lived in prefabricated huts for the duration of the construction but this tower gradually succumbed to corrosion and was blown over in a winter storm in 1970. All that remains of it is rusty, twisted metal. There are the ruins of a few huts and other structures from the sealing and guano-collection era (first half of the 20th century). Some rock inscriptionsmade by sealers in the 1930s are still evident.
The dense population of fur seals at certain times of the year attracts the seal's main predator, the Great White Shark. Seal Island provides unique opportunities for those who wish to observe attacks by White Sharks on Cape Fur Seal and to observe social interactions amongst both species. The island is well known for the interesting way the sharks grab their prey: They come up from underneath and literally launch themselves out of the water with the seal in their mouth. It has been shown that if the seals enter the "Ring of Death" (where the sharks circle the island) on the surface instead of at the murky bottom, they will be picked off by the faster and more aggressive Great White.
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"Another incredible set of jaws on a great white shark near Seal Island, False Bay, South Africa. This is one of nature's marvels and was really a sight to behold! Let's hope that these incredible creatures will survive
for generations to come. This shark was attacking a seal decoy being towed behind the boat. The action happens so fast and without warning that it is very easy to miss... The decoy is used by researchers to study the Great White's unique feeding behavior in False Bay. I chose to lie on the deck of the boat shooting out the open transom to get the low angle."
3 - A Sculpture Made from 100lbs of Rice Win the National Portrait Competition
NY-based artist who originally hails from Kanazawa, Saeri Kiritani is the winners of the National Portrait Gallery’s 2013 portrait competition.
From the Introduction to the National Portrait Gallery’s 2013 portrait competition:
"Artists know that a portrait can communicate much more than a likeness. Personal identity, cultural differences, illusory moments can be captured through portraits. Portraits are created in a dizzying variety of media, including painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, video and other time-based media, even images based on individual DNA."
4 - Competitive RC Flying
5 - Rap Lyric Street Signs
For his new project: “Rap Quotes,” artist Jay Shells made official-looking street signs quoting famous rap lyrics that refer to specific locations in NYC, and placed the signs there.
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Recordings from the Rapp Saloon Poetry Series
The Rapp Saloon Poetry Reading Series, hosted by Tresha Haefner. I was privileged to read again withBrendan Constantine.
Download the text: Ryan Scott Nance Rapp Saloon Poetry Reading Series
1 - Works in Paper from a Paragon of Mid-Century Modern
Irving Harper was the director of design at George Nelson Associates in the 1960s and is known for designing the Marshmallow Sofa for Herman Miller. He was also an artist working in paper. His work is showcased in Irving Harper Works in Paper.
Via Rizzoli:
Encompassing influences as diverse as Picasso, Egyptian hieroglyphs, the art of Oceana and Africa, the architecture of Paris, and the American beech tree that shades the Rye, New York home he has lived in for over 50 years, the artist’s private meditations reveal an informed aesthetic consciousness expressing itself as pure joy. Harper’s private work delivers on the promise of modernism: humble materials elevated by brilliant design and craftsmanship, and integrating the natural world to create objects in a universally understood language.
2 - The Seven Strong Men Rock Formations
From Wikipedia:
"The Manpupuner rock formations (Man-Pupu-Nyer; Мань-Пупу-нёр) or the Seven Strong Men Rock Formations or Poles of the Komi Republic are a set of 7 gigantic abnormally shaped stone pillars located north of the Ural mountains in the Troitsko-Pechorsky District of the Komi Republic. These monoliths are around 30 to 42 m high and jut out of a hilly plateau formed through the weathering effects of ice and winds."
"According to a local legend, the stone pillars were once an entourage of Samoyeds giants walking through the mountains to Siberia in order to destroy the Vogulsky people. However, upon seeing the holy Vogulsky mountains, the shaman of the giants dropped his drum and the entire team froze into the stone pillars."
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3 - Prince Rupert's Drop [a video to explain this phenomenon]
So, apparently when molten hot glass is dropped into a bucket of cold water, it acquires so strange physical properties. Its compression strength (i.e. getting pounded by a hammer) gets many times stronger than normal glass, but its sheer and tensile strength (i.e. breaking of its surface tension through cutting or stretching) gets many many times weaker. In fact the slightest nick can cause it to explode.
Smarter Every Day has the super hi-speed/high-res footage to prove it.
Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere at Sacred Fools Theater in Hollywood
Our own Devereau Chumrau, along with a tremendously strong cast and Herculean crew are putting on a stunning new production of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere at Sacred Fools Theater in Hollywood, opening April 5, running through May 11.
Devereau Chumrau plays the role of Hunter
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Rapp Saloon Poetry Reading Series
Here are the poems I read at last Friday's Rapp Saloon Poetry Reading Series, hosted by Tresha Haefner. I was privileged to read again with Brendan Constantine.
Download: Ryan Scott Nance Rapp Saloon Poetry Reading Series
Look for audio recordings and a few videos to come.
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5 - Voodoo Child by Jimi Hendrix played on a Gayageum
Here is Luna Lee playing her version of Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Child on the gayageum.
From wikipedia:
The gayageum or kayagum is a traditional Korean zither-like string instrument, with 12 strings, although more recently variants have been constructed with 21 or other numbers of strings. It is probably the best known traditional Korean musical instrument.
It is related to other Asian instruments, including the Chinese guzheng, the Japanese koto, the Mongolian yatga, and the Vietnamese đàn tranh.
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4 - Sound Recordings from Around the World
Sound has a special place in our array of senses... often the passage of time is marked by sound (drumbeat, clock tick, cicada, footsteps). So Soundtransit.nl (while almost entirely outmoded by SoundCloud) has in its libraries magical time and space travel technology. Here are some of my favorites.
Flamenco in a park in Sevilla, Espana
Ole Ole at a Football match in San Sebastian
Near Yang-ming Shan in Taipei
Seafood Market in Taiwan
Accordian in Den Hague
Capoeira in the Cape Verde Islands
Music for the Barong Dance in Bali
Midday Prayer in Cairo
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1 - Aircraft as Art
At the AIPAD Photography Show in New York from April 4 to 7, American photographer Jeffrey Milstein will show a collection from his ongoing ‘AirCraft: The Jet as Art‘ series 2013.
Large-scale photos of the planes shot at the instant when the aircraft was overhead.
“They are an attempt to share my sense of wonder. Watching a mammoth Boeing 747 gracefully gliding overhead on the way to touch down never ceases to amaze me, but they are also a meditation on how technology can be a double-edged sword when things go wrong” says Jeffrey.
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2 - The Wilderness of Patagonia
Torres Del Paine in Chile, the Cerro Fitz Roy trip in Argentina and the Glacier Perito Moreno.
Stunning.
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POTD - The Heart of Things by Ralph Angel
The Heart of Things
by Ralph Angel
And so say nothing of the birds
out back, or how the leaves of trees grow louder
than the city, how a room
begins again as though it had been taken away
only. Whatever now
that I’m afraid of, but casually, like someone
sitting crosswise in her chair, her legs
curved over one side, sipping a glass of wine
and spying on her neighbors,
not ill-arranged things really, but that sense
of realism that takes up a lot more time
than I or anyone together
has to give.
And so stayed longer, he said, into the evening
behind the page and out of the cold,
even the dead are free again
to love us as in life a human being
is singled out and standing there, on the curb,
shifting the way we do from
foot to shoeless foot,
and so broke
apart the vision I expected
of myself, confused among those
dozing on the platform, and at home the air
is moist again with tea, but
faintly so, those fragrant several moments
that sound the most like dream,
like dreaming aloud the nightmare
that I alone am still.
I was lucky enough to study with Angel while at the University of Redlands in Southern California.
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QOTD - Zen Aphorism
Student says "I am very discouraged. What should I do?"
Master says "encourage others."
–Zen aphorism
Get the t-shirt: http://5thin.gs/StudentMaster
3 - Foursquare Check-ins for 4 days in Tokyo and NYC
Each dot represents a check-in during this 96 hour period. Super fascinating to see the different types of check-ins ripple across the city as time of day effects the rhythm of all of these individuals in a fairly regular pattern.
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4 - How to Unload a Truck
This video from Taiwan... yeah, that'll do it.
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