skandalon

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✖ Via Kate Macdowell: First and last breath, 11”x9”x12”, hand built porcelain, mixed media, 1/2010

Artist’s statement:

In my work this romantic ideal of union with the natural world conflicts with our contemporary impact on the environment. These pieces are in part responses to environmental stressors including climate change, toxic pollution, and gm crops. They also borrow from myth, art history, figures of speech and other cultural touchstones. In some pieces aspects of the human figure stand-in for ourselves and act out sometimes harrowing, sometimes humorous transformations which illustrate our current relationship with the natural world. In others, animals take on anthropomorphic qualities when they are given safety equipment to attempt to protect them from man-made environmental threats. In each case the union between man and nature is shown to be one of friction and discomfort with the disturbing implication that we too are vulnerable to being victimized by our destructive practices. (read on)

First spotted via Who Killed Bambi.

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What has not cankering Time made worse?
Viler than grandsires, sires beget
Ourselves, yet baser, soon to curse
The world with offspring baser yet.

✖ Via The Odes by Horace, tr. John Conington, London. George Bell and Sons. 1882, book 3, poem 6.

As quoted by Immanuel Kant in part one of his essay Religion within the boundaries of reason, 1794.

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People are not alone in waging war. Their closest living cousins, chimpanzees, also slaughter their own kind—in brutal attacks that primatologists increasingly view as strategic, co-ordinated assaults rather than random acts of violence. But however tempting it is to see these battles through the lens of human warfare, the motives for chimp-on-chimp violence are poorly understood. In particular, researchers have long debated whether the apes fight for land, or for females.

✖ Via The Economist: “Killer instincts”, June 24th, 2010

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art technology bp disaster environment nature animal catastrophe oil petroleum illustration illustrator artist escher

✖ Via The New Yorker: “After Escher: Gulf Sky and Water” by Bob Staake, July 5th, 2010

About Bob Staake:

Bob Staake (born September 26, 1957 in Los Angeles, California) is an American illustrator, cartoonist, children’s book author, and designer. He lives and works in Chatham, Massachusetts on the elbow of Cape Cod. (wikipedia)

I first came to know Bob Staake through this video, were he demonstrates how he uses a subtraction process in Photoshop 3.0 to create his illustration. Visit his official website (and discover a lot more about his art).

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✖ Via The New Yorker: “Five Weeks Later…” by Barry Blitt, June 7th, 2010

Previously on Skandalon : Barry Blitt, British Petroleum

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What DeLillo understood, long ago, is the end of the world would be experienced not as the end of the world but rather as a way of thinking and talking about the end of the world. What he understood is that the toxic cloud that has our name on it would be defined by its lack of definition; that we would never have as much information about it as we need to have or that someone else has; that it would turn into a free-floating void, exactly as withholding as it is encompassing; that it would become part of the landscape and that the landscape would become part of it; and that, of course, there would be footage, endlessly recycled but ultimately inconclusive.
No, Don DeLillo has never written about what about BP, Transocean, the MMS, and our thirst for oil have wrought in the Gulf of Mexico. But 25 years ago he imagined the name for a disaster that would come with its own excruciating and tantalizing Zapruder, and that would allow us to talk it — and ourselves — to death:
The underwater toxic event.

✖ Via Esquire: “Black Noise: How to Define a Gulf Disaster Beyond Definition” by Tom Junod, June 1st, 2010

Jacques Derrida developed a similar idea about the 9/11 attacks. See Philosophy in a Time of Terror

Tom Junod is an American journalist. He’s also the author of the excellent piece : “The Falling Man” (which is also the name of a great novel by Don DeLillo)

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BP Redesigned by Draplin

Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

BP Kills Aquaman by Rob Kelly

✖ Via Multiple Source: Draplin Design, The Christian Science Monitor, The Aquaman Shrine.

Thanks to Innovation Is Dead for the photo of the BP gas station.

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The boundless sea rang terribly around, and the earth crashed loudly: wide Heaven was shaken and groaned, and high Olympus reeled from its foundation under the charge of the undying gods, and a heavy quaking reached dim Tartarus and the deep sound of their feet in the fearful onset and of their hard missiles. So, then, they launched their grievous shafts upon one another, and the cry of both armies as they shouted reached to starry heaven; and they met together with a great battle-cry. […] Astounding heat seized Chaos: and to see with eyes and to hear the sound with ears it seemed even as if Earth and wide Heaven above came together; for such a mighty crash would have arisen if Earth were being hurled to ruin, and Heaven from on high were hurling her down; so great a crash was there while the gods were meeting together in strife. Also the winds brought rumbling earthquake and duststorm, thunder and lightning and the lurid thunderbolt, which are the shafts of great Zeus, and carried the clangour and the warcry into the midst of the two hosts. An horrible uproar of terrible strife arose: mighty deeds were shown and the battle inclined. But until then, they kept at one another and fought continually in cruel war.

✖ Via Theogony by Hesiod (tr. by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, 1914)

When the Gods fought the Titans, Earth was not an hopistable place for the mortals.

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✖ Via Boston.com / The Big Picture: “Oil spill approaches Louisiana coast” April 30th, 2010. AP Photo/The Sun Herald, William Colgin

“Two brown pelicans and a flock of seagulls rest on the shore of Ship Island as a boom line floats just offshore Thursday, April 29, 2010 in Gulfport, Miss. Several hundred yards of boom line has been set up on the north side of the island to try and contain the oncoming oil spill. Crews are placing the boom in different areas on Coast waterways to help protect against an approaching oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico.” (more)

The photo is related to the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion.

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✖ Via Kottke: “Airspace Rebooted” by ItoWorld, April 25th, 2010

“A visualisation of the northern European airspace returning to use after being closed due to volcanic ash. Due to varying ash density across Europe, the first flights can be seen in some areas on the 18th and by the 20th everywhere is open.

The flight data is courtesy of flightradar24.com and covers a large fraction of Europe. There are a few gaps (most noticeably France) and no coverage over the Atlantic, but the picture is still clear.

The map data is CC-by-SA openstreetmap.org and contributors.

This CC-by-SA visualisation was produced by itoworld.com with support from ideasintransit.org

Previously on Skandalon : ITO World visualization.

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