The 944 cabriolet, top up, it lacks the visual coherence of some of its counterparts; however out on the road I expect the 944 S2 holds its own.

“Leave no one behind!” Let’s build a one-world governmental system. Let’s build the Matrix—the Beast System. Everyone will be digitally connected to the spinner’s WEB, can you feel the venom? Everyone will have a digital ID. Everyone will be controlled by a social credit score system. CBDCs: digital currencies, digital thin air. Everyone will receive a free welfare check. Everyone will be a global citizen of the new world order. Hey, we’re already halfway there! All hail the United Nations! All hail Caesar!

 

The Book of Daniel prophesied the rise and fall of previous world empires, and those prophecies came true. They rose, they fell. The Book of Daniel also prophesies about a future empire (Beast). This empire will be ruled by a Beast called the Antichrist (666). Shocker: the kingdom of the Beast will be ruled by a Beast. The Book of Revelation prophesies that no one will be able to buy or sell without the Mark of the Beast. Microchip biometric tattoo anyone!?! Take the Mark, be reborn (recreated) in the Image of the Beast, and become a trans-human (666).

 

While cleaning out my bookmarks, I found a dozen articles from the United Nations. I threw them together, and 98% of what’s written below is quoted verbatim. Sustainable development: building the foundation of the new world order one piece at a time. If you care to take a glimpse, if you dare:

 

By 2030 a new kind of capitalism (stakeholder capitalism/neo-fascism) will take root. A new economy will be established that will address the needs of all stakeholders (banks, corporations, billionaires, and governments). This new breed of new capitalism will be enabled thanks to a new way of assessing the performance of companies based on a valuation of their overall impact (social credit score system). Indeed, this new way of assessing business performance will be based on standardized, comprehensive and simple impact-valuation metrics. These enhance the usual financial statements with other dimensions like society, human rights and the environment, leading to a ‘total impact’ rating that is used by management and investors alike. ‘Total impact’ is a simple way of assessing how much a sector or a business contributes to social coherence, citizens’ wellbeing, environmental protection and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Impact valuation expresses what matters in monetary terms, allowing the full range of stakeholders to agree what ‘good’ looks like—in the economy and in society. Governments, stock markets and businesses will fully embrace the new order that has given rise to a thriving new type of public-private partnership (neo-fascism). We will transition to a more eco-friendly economic system that requires collective action by multiple stakeholders across borders.

 

The new model of circular (dialectic [problem, reaction, solution] uroboros) economy is meant to allow the planet to breathe, while leaving no one behind. A Circular Economy (CE) is an economic model that focuses on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. By decoupling economic growth from resource use, setting global standards in product sustainability, keeping resource use within planetary boundaries and promoting the re-use of materials, a circular economy may be the only sustainable economic model for the future. The global financial sector plays a pivotal role in scaling up finance for pollution-free and circular solutions, by funding innovative businesses that prioritize circular design, resource efficiency and waste reduction. Financial institutions can also leverage their influence to drive policy changes and industry standards that favour circularity. It is evident that ‘business as usual’ will not help us to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Systems-based approaches along with a strong commitment to deep rooted transformations and actions are vital to the reduction of humanity’s footprint in our planet. Our resources are finite and the principles and practices of the circular economy will be catalytic in creating goods, processes and ecosystems that are restorative and regenerative by design. An Inclusive Green Economy (IGE) is a pathway towards achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In its simplest expression, such an economy is low carbon, efficient and clean in production, but also inclusive in consumption and outcomes, based on sharing, circularity, collaboration, solidarity, resilience, opportunity, and interdependence. (A circular [green/sustainable] economy is an economy of degrowth.)

 

With more and more governments exploring the potential of CBDCs, there is a greater need to engage with various aspects of this emerging topic, including design, especially given its potential to foster financial inclusion. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has a long history of promoting technological and digital financial innovations that help advance financial inclusion and the SDGs more broadly. Its teams have worked with various countries on digital finance and infrastructure innovations, enabling underserved business segments, such as MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises), to access more sophisticated financial services or on enabling micro-savers to become micro-investors in green infrastructure projects, or on harnessing the developments in Distributed Ledger Technologies to advance innovative financial instruments for private capital mobilization for nature. Given UNDP’s expertise and leadership in this space, UNDP’s involvement in this discussion will help better support member states as they navigate this changing landscape. Partnership (public-private partnership) is at the heart of everything UNDP does. We offer a nearly universal presence across the world. We are determined to mobilize the means to implement the 2030 Agenda through a revitalized Global Partnership for Sustainable Development, with a focus on the poorest and most vulnerable. We support countries and communities as they work to eradicate poverty, implement the Paris Agreement on climate change and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

 

The importance of legal identity is an integral part of Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG Target 16.9, which aims to ‘provide legal identity for all, including birth registration,’ underscores the widespread significance of civil registration in societies globally. Acknowledging the developing potential and significance of digital legal ID, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has taken the initiative to draft a model governance framework. This blueprint is designed to aid the swift establishment of digital legal ID systems globally. At its core, this framework is intended to outline a normative model of the laws, policies and institutional arrangements that can help ensure the governance of digital legal ID systems is inclusive. It is informed by UNDP’s governance and digital strategies, which emphasize a rights-based and whole-of-society approach. The framework, for instance, recognizes the importance of civil society’s role in accountability, recourse and oversight. It also builds on long-standing experience and lessons from within the UN System on legal identity and the whole legal identity management ecosystem, which is based on civil registration. It is a critical enabler of digital transformation and is helping to accelerate the Sustainable Development Goals. Governments, donors, the private sector and civil society alike have an opportunity to shape it. This campaign is in collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Centre for Digital Public Infrastructure, Co-Develop, the Digital Public Goods Alliance, and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and is supported by GovStack, the Inter-American Development Bank, and UNICEF. This ambitious campaign heralds a new chapter in the global momentum around digital public infrastructure (DPI)—an underlying network of components such as digital payments, ID, and data exchange systems, which is a critical accelerator of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

 

Following the G20 Leaders Declaration in 2023, Digital Public Infrastructure is a key breakthrough that gives the momentum needed to change course and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, across all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Accelerating progress toward the SDGs requires inclusive digital transformation. Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) can maximize the opportunities for digitalization to support the SDGs and reduce the risks that digital technologies may bring. DPI is safe, accessible, affordable, green, financed, and future ready. In partnership with the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology and under the leadership of the UN Secretary-General, the Universal Safeguards initiative which also includes the 2030 Safeguards Action Hub will be launched at the 78th UNGA, leading into the Summit of the Future in 2024 and beyond. This campaign seeks to strengthen DPI partnerships (public-private partnerships) with the private sector and community-based organizations across 100 countries to integrate intermediaries into local digital ecosystems and facilitate greater scale services for inclusion, especially for women, as well as strengthen efforts to ensure universal digital connectivity.

 

The digital divide is further exacerbating these challenges—for example, 2.6 billion people, or around one-third of the world’s population, still lack internet access. But this is not just about access. The ‘usage gap’, the population living within the footprint of mobile internet coverage but not using this potentially game-changing connectivity, is now eight times larger than the total number of those without coverage. Limited digital skills, unaffordable data and devices, concerns of safety and security, and a lack of relevant content and services hinder people from participating in our increasingly digital societies and economies.

 

A new social contract needs to emerge that rebalances deep inequalities that are prevalent across societies. We must implement (universal socialism) Universal Basic Income (UBI). The alternative to not having UBI is the rising likelihood of social unrest, conflict, unmanageable mass migration, and the proliferation of extremist groups that capitalize and ferment on social disappointment. It is against this background that we seriously need to consider implementing a well-designed UBI, so shocks may hit, but they won’t destroy. Moving to such a system would need to ensure that the incentives to have a job remain intact. That is relatively simple to do: A UBI should be sufficient, to sustain a person at a modest minimum, leaving sufficient incentives to work, save, and invest. Lest the naysayers think this is a theory from the left, the idea of tax competition has been touched upon, for years on end, by the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development.

 

Today, more people than ever live in a country other than the one in which they were born. For statistical purposes, the United Nations defines an international migrant as any person who has changed his or her country of residence. This includes all migrants, regardless of their legal status, or the nature, or motive of their movement. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development recognizes the positive contribution of migrants to inclusive growth and sustainable development. The Agenda’s core principle is to ‘leave no one behind,’ which includes migrants. Many of the Agenda’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) contain targets and indicators which are relevant to migrants or migration. SDG target 10.7 calls on countries to ‘facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies.’ Under the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, refugees and migrants have the same universal human rights and fundamental freedoms. It acknowledges the positive contribution of migrants to sustainable and inclusive development, and commits to protecting the safety, dignity and human rights and fundamental freedoms of all migrants, regardless of their migratory status.

 

Global citizenship is the umbrella term for social, political, environmental, and economic actions of globally minded individuals and communities on a worldwide scale. The term can refer to the belief that individuals are members of multiple, diverse, local and non-local networks rather than single actors affecting isolated societies. Promoting global citizenship in sustainable development will allow individuals to embrace their social(ist) responsibility to act for the benefit of all societies (collectivism), not just their own. The concept of global citizenship is embedded in the Sustainable Development Goals though SDG 4: Insuring Inclusive and Quality Education for All and Promote Life Long Learning, which includes global citizenship as one of its targets. By 2030, the international community has agreed to ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including global citizenship. Universities have a responsibility to promote global citizenship by teaching their students that they are members of a large global community and can use their skills and education to contribute to that community.

 

Job 15:31 “If they are foolish enough to trust in evil, then evil will be their reward.”

 

Proverbs 1:32 “For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them.”

 

Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

 

1 John 5:12 “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”

 

Now, an advertisement from the United Nations: Disinformation can be dangerous. With the advance of technology, digital media is increasingly being used to spread misinformation. The UN has been monitoring how mis- and disinformation and hate speech can attack health, security, stability as well as progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. (Those who control information, control society. Those who manipulate information, manipulate society. Those who control the narrative, control the masses.)

 

They are slowly implementing the new world order one sustainable development goal at a time.

 

36"x36", acrylic.

The Postcard

 

A postally unused postkarte that was published by Ottmar Zieher of Munich. The card has a divided back.

 

Richard Wagner

 

Wilhelm Richard Wagner, who was born on the 22nd. May 1813, was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works.

 

Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to the drama.

 

He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen.

 

Richard's compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex textures, rich harmonies and orchestration. He also used leitmotifs—musical phrases associated with individual characters, places, ideas, or plot elements.

 

His advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres, greatly influenced the development of classical music.

 

Richard's Tristan und Isolde is sometimes described as marking the start of modern music.

 

Wagner had his own opera house built, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which embodied many novel design features. Bayreuth is a town on the Red Main river in Bavaria. At its center is the Richard Wagner Museum in the composer's former home, Villa Wahnfried.

 

The Ring and Parsifal were premiered at the Festspielhaus, and Wagner's most important stage works continue to be performed at the annual Bayreuth Festival, run by his descendants.

 

Richard's thoughts on the relative contributions of music and drama in opera were to change again, and he reintroduced some traditional forms into his last few stage works, including Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

 

Until his final years, Wagner's life was characterised by political exile, turbulent love affairs, poverty and repeated flight from his creditors.

 

His controversial writings on music, drama and politics have attracted extensive comment – particularly since the late 20th. century, where they express antisemitic sentiments.

 

The effect of his ideas can be traced in many of the arts throughout the 20th. century; his influence spread beyond composition into conducting, philosophy, literature, the visual arts and theatre.

 

Richard Wagner - The Early Years

 

Richard Wagner was born to an ethnic German family in Leipzig, who lived at No 3, the Brühl (The House of the Red and White Lions) in the Jewish quarter on the 22nd. May 1813.

 

He was baptized at St. Thomas Church. He was the ninth child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, who was a clerk in the Leipzig police service, and his wife, Johanna Rosine (née Paetz), the daughter of a baker.

 

Wagner's father Carl died of typhoid fever six months after Richard's birth. Afterwards, his mother Johanna lived with Carl's friend, the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer. In August 1814 Johanna and Geyer probably married—although no documentation of this has been found in the Leipzig church registers.

 

Johanna and her family moved to Geyer's residence in Dresden, and until he was fourteen, Wagner was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. He almost certainly thought that Geyer was his biological father.

 

Geyer's love of the theatre came to be shared by his stepson, and Wagner took part in his performances. In his autobiography Mein Leben, Wagner recalled once playing the part of an angel.

 

In late 1820, Wagner was enrolled at Pastor Wetzel's school at Possendorf, near Dresden, where he received piano instruction from his Latin teacher. However Richard struggled to play a proper scale at the keyboard, and preferred playing theatre overtures by ear.

 

Following Geyer's death in 1821, Richard was sent to the Kreuzschule, the boarding school of the Dresdner Kreuzchor, at the expense of Geyer's brother.

 

At the age of nine he was hugely impressed by the Gothic elements of Carl Maria von Weber's opera Der Freischütz, which he saw Weber conduct.

 

During this period, Wagner entertained ambitions as a playwright. His first creative effort was a tragedy called Leubald. Begun when he was at school in 1826, the play was strongly influenced by Shakespeare and Goethe.

 

Wagner was determined to set it to music, and persuaded his family to allow him music lessons.

 

By 1827, the family had returned to Leipzig. Wagner's first lessons in harmony were taken during 1828–1831 with Christian Gottlieb Müller.

 

In January 1828 he first heard Beethoven's 7th. Symphony and then, in March, the same composer's 9th. Symphony. Beethoven became a major inspiration, and Wagner wrote a piano transcription of the 9th. Symphony.

 

Richard was also greatly impressed by a performance of Mozart's Requiem.

 

Wagner's early piano sonatas and his first attempts at orchestral overtures date from this period.

 

In 1829 Richard saw a performance by dramatic soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, and she became his ideal of the fusion of drama and music in opera. In Mein Leben, Wagner wrote:

 

"When I look back across my entire life

I find no event to place beside this in

the impression it produced on me.

The profoundly human and ecstatic

performance of this incomparable artist

kindled in me an almost demonic fire."

 

In 1831, Wagner enrolled at Leipzig University, where he became a member of the Saxon student fraternity. He took composition lessons with the Thomaskantor Theodor Weinlig.

 

Weinlig was so impressed with Wagner's musical ability that he refused any payment for his lessons. He arranged for his pupil's Piano Sonata in B-flat major (which was consequently dedicated to him) to be published as Wagner's Op. 1.

 

A year later, Wagner composed his Symphony in C major, a Beethovenesque work performed in Prague in 1832 and at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1833.

 

He then began to work on an opera, Die Hochzeit (The Wedding), which he never completed.

 

Richard Wagner's Early Career and Marriage (1833–1842)

 

In 1833, Wagner's brother Albert managed to obtain for him a position as choirmaster at the theatre in Würzburg. In the same year, at the age of 20, Wagner composed his first complete opera, Die Feen (The Fairies).

 

This work, which imitated the style of Weber, went unproduced until half a century later, when it premiered in Munich shortly after the composer's death in 1883.

 

Having returned to Leipzig in 1834, Wagner held a brief appointment as musical director at the opera house in Magdeburg during which he wrote Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love), based on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure.

 

The work was staged at Magdeburg in 1836, but closed before the second performance. This, together with the financial collapse of the theatre company employing him, left Richard bankrupt.

 

Wagner had fallen for one of the leading ladies at Magdeburg, the actress Christine Wilhelmine "Minna" Planer, and after the disaster of Das Liebesverbot he followed her to Königsberg, where she helped him to get an engagement at the theatre.

 

They married in Tragheim Church on the 24th. November 1836, although In May 1837, Minna left Wagner for another man. This was however only the first débâcle of a tempestuous marriage.

 

In June 1837, Wagner moved to Riga (then part of the Russian Empire), where he became music director of the local opera; having in this capacity engaged Minna's sister Amalie (also a singer) for the theatre, he resumed relations with Minna during 1838.

 

By 1839, the couple had amassed such large debts that they fled Riga on the run from creditors. In fact, debts plagued Wagner for most of his life.

 

Initially they took a stormy sea passage to London, from which Wagner drew the inspiration for his opera Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman), with a plot based on a sketch by Heinrich Heine.

 

The Wagners settled in Paris in September 1839 and stayed there until 1842. Wagner made a scant living by writing articles and short novelettes such as A pilgrimage to Beethoven, which sketched his growing concept of "music drama", and An end in Paris, where he depicts his own miseries as a German musician in the French metropolis.

 

Richard also provided arrangements of operas by other composers, largely on behalf of the Schlesinger publishing house. During this stay he completed his third and fourth operas Rienzi and Der Fliegende Holländer.

 

Richard Wagner in Dresden (1842–1849)

 

Wagner had completed Rienzi in 1840. With the strong support of Giacomo Meyerbeer, it was accepted for performance by the Dresden Court Theatre (Hofoper) in the Kingdom of Saxony.

 

In 1842, Wagner moved to Dresden. His relief at returning to Germany was recorded in his "Autobiographic Sketch" of 1842, where he wrote that, en route from Paris:

 

"For the first time I saw the Rhine—

with hot tears in my eyes, I, poor

artist, swore eternal fidelity to my

German fatherland."

 

Rienzi was staged to considerable acclaim on the 20th. October 1842.

 

Wagner lived in Dresden for the next six years, eventually being appointed the Royal Saxon Court Conductor. During this period, he staged there Der Fliegende Holländer (2nd. January 1843) and Tannhäuser (19th. October 1845), the first two of his three middle-period operas.

 

Wagner also mixed with artistic circles in Dresden, including the composer Ferdinand Hiller and the architect Gottfried Semper.

 

Wagner's involvement in left-wing politics abruptly ended his welcome in Dresden. Wagner was active among socialist German nationalists there, regularly receiving such guests as the conductor and radical editor August Röckel and the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin.

 

Richard was also influenced by the ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Ludwig Feuerbach. Widespread discontent came to a head in 1849, when the unsuccessful May Uprising in Dresden broke out, in which Wagner played a minor supporting role.

 

A warrant for the arrest of Richard Wagner was issued on the 16th. May 1849, along with warrants for other revolutionaries.

 

Wagner had to flee, first visiting Paris and then settling in Zürich where he at first took refuge with a friend, Alexander Müller.

 

Richard Wagner In Exile: Switzerland (1849–1858)

 

Wagner spent the next twelve years in exile from Germany. He had completed Lohengrin, the last of his middle-period operas, before the Dresden uprising, and now wrote desperately to his friend Franz Liszt to have it staged in his absence. Liszt conducted the premiere in Weimar in August 1850.

 

Wagner was in grim personal straits, isolated from the German musical world and without any regular income. In 1850, Julie, the wife of his friend Karl Ritter, began to pay him a small pension which she maintained until 1859.

 

With help from her friend Jessie Laussot, this was to have been augmented to an annual sum of 3,000 thalers per year, but the plan was abandoned when Wagner began an affair with Mme. Laussot.

 

Wagner even plotted an elopement with her in 1850, which her husband prevented. Meanwhile, Wagner's wife Minna, who had disliked the operas he had written after Rienzi, was falling into a deepening depression. Wagner fell victim to ill-health, according to Ernest Newman "Largely a matter of overwrought nerves", which made it difficult for him to continue writing.

 

Wagner's primary published output during his first years in Zürich was a set of essays. In "The Artwork of the Future" (1849), he described a vision of opera as Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art), in which music, song, dance, poetry, visual arts and stagecraft were unified.

 

"Judaism in Music" (1850) was the first of Wagner's writings to feature antisemitic views. In this polemic Wagner argued, frequently using traditional antisemitic abuse, that Jews had no connection to the German spirit, and were thus capable of producing only shallow and artificial music.

 

According to him, they composed music to achieve popularity and, thereby, financial success, as opposed to creating genuine works of art.

 

In "Opera and Drama" (1851), Wagner described the aesthetics of music drama that he was using to create the Ring cycle. Before leaving Dresden, Wagner had drafted a scenario that eventually became Der Ring des Nibelungen.

 

He initially wrote the libretto for a single opera, Siegfrieds Tod (Siegfried's Death), in 1848. After arriving in Zürich, he expanded the story with Der junge Siegfried (Young Siegfried), which explored the hero's background.

 

He completed the text of the cycle by writing the libretti for Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) and Das Rheingold (The Rhine Gold) and revising the other libretti to conform to his new concept, completing them in 1852.

 

The concept of opera expressed in "Opera and Drama" and in other essays effectively renounced all the operas he had previously written through Lohengrin. Partly in an attempt to explain his change of views, Wagner published in 1851 the autobiographical "A Communication to My Friends".

 

This included his first public announcement of what was to become the Ring cycle:

 

"I shall never write an Opera more. As I have

no wish to invent an arbitrary title for my works,

I will call them Dramas ... I propose to produce

my myth in three complete dramas, preceded

by a lengthy Prelude (Vorspiel).

At a specially-appointed Festival, I propose,

at some future time, to produce those three

Dramas with their Prelude, in the course of

three days and a fore-evening."

 

Wagner began composing the music for Das Rheingold between November 1853 and September 1854, following it immediately with Die Walküre (written between June 1854 and March 1856).

 

He began work on the third Ring drama, which he now called simply Siegfried, probably in September 1856, but by June 1857 he had completed only the first two acts.

 

He decided to put the work aside in order to concentrate on a new idea: Tristan und Isolde, based on the Arthurian love story Tristan and Iseult.

 

One source of inspiration for Tristan und Isolde was the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, notably his The World as Will and Representation, to which Wagner had been introduced in 1854 by his poet friend Georg Herwegh.

 

Wagner later called this the most important event of his life. His personal circumstances certainly made him an easy convert to what he understood to be Schopenhauer's philosophy, a deeply pessimistic view of the human condition. He remained an adherent of Schopenhauer for the rest of his life.

 

One of Schopenhauer's doctrines was that music held a supreme role in the arts as a direct expression of the world's essence, namely, blind, impulsive will.

 

This doctrine contradicted Wagner's view, expressed in "Opera and Drama", that the music in opera had to be subservient to the drama. Wagner scholars have argued that Schopenhauer's influence caused Wagner to assign a more commanding role to music in his later operas, including the latter half of the Ring cycle, which he had yet to compose.

 

Aspects of Schopenhauerian doctrine found their way into Wagner's subsequent libretti.

 

A second source of inspiration was Wagner's infatuation with the poet-writer Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of the silk merchant Otto Wesendonck. Wagner met the Wesendoncks, who were both great admirers of his music, in Zürich in 1852.

 

From May 1853 onwards Wesendonck made several loans to Wagner to finance his household expenses in Zürich, and in 1857 placed a cottage on his estate at Wagner's disposal, which became known as the Asyl ("asylum" or "place of rest").

 

During this period, Wagner's growing passion for his patron's wife inspired him to put aside work on the Ring cycle (which was not resumed for the next twelve years) and begin work on Tristan.

 

While planning the opera, Wagner composed the Wesendonck Lieder, five songs for voice and piano, setting poems by Mathilde. Two of these settings are explicitly subtitled by Wagner as "Studies for Tristan und Isolde".

 

Among the conducting engagements that Wagner undertook for revenue during this period, he gave several concerts in 1855 with the Philharmonic Society of London, including one before Queen Victoria. The Queen enjoyed his Tannhäuser overture and spoke with Wagner after the concert, writing in her diary that:

 

"Wagner was short, very quiet, wears

spectacles & has a very finely-developed

forehead, a hooked nose & projecting

chin."

 

Richard Wagner in Exile: Venice and Paris (1858–1862)

 

Wagner's uneasy affair with Mathilde collapsed in 1858, when Minna intercepted a letter to Mathilde from him. After the resulting confrontation with Minna, Wagner left Zürich alone, bound for Venice, where he rented an apartment in the Palazzo Giustinian, while Minna returned to Germany.

 

Wagner's attitude to Minna had changed; the editor of his correspondence with her, John Burk, has said that:

 

"She was to him an invalid, to be treated

with kindness and consideration, but,

except at a distance, was a menace to

his peace of mind."

 

Wagner continued his correspondence with Mathilde and his friendship with her husband Otto, who maintained his financial support. In an 1859 letter to Mathilde, Wagner wrote, half-satirically, of Tristan:

 

"Child! This Tristan is turning into something

terrible. This final act!!!—I fear the opera will

be banned ... only mediocre performances

can save me!

Perfectly good ones will be bound to drive

people mad."

 

In November 1859, Wagner once again moved to Paris to oversee production of a new revision of Tannhäuser, staged thanks to the efforts of Princess Pauline von Metternich, whose husband was the Austrian ambassador in Paris.

 

The performances of the Paris Tannhäuser in 1861 were a notable fiasco. This was partly a consequence of the conservative tastes of the Jockey Club, which organised demonstrations in the theatre to protest at the presentation of the ballet feature in act 1 (instead of its traditional location in the second act).

 

The opportunity was also exploited by those who wanted to use the occasion as a veiled political protest against the pro-Austrian policies of Napoleon III. It was during this visit that Wagner met the French poet Charles Baudelaire, who wrote an appreciative brochure, "Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris".

 

The opera was withdrawn after the third performance, and Wagner left Paris soon after. He had sought a reconciliation with Minna during this Paris visit, and although she joined him there, the reunion was not successful, and they again parted from each other when Wagner left.

 

Richard Wagner's Return and Resurgence (1862–1871)

 

The political ban that had been placed on Wagner in Germany after he had fled Dresden was fully lifted in 1862. The composer settled in Biebrich, on the Rhine near Wiesbaden.

 

Here Minna visited him for the last time: they parted irrevocably, though Wagner continued to give financial support to her while she lived in Dresden until her death in 1866.

 

In Biebrich, Wagner at last began work on Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, his only mature comedy. Wagner wrote a first draft of the libretto in 1845, and he had resolved to develop it during a visit he had made to Venice with the Wesendoncks in 1860, where he was inspired by Titian's painting The Assumption of the Virgin.

 

Throughout this period (1862–1864) Wagner sought to have Tristan und Isolde produced in Vienna. Despite many rehearsals, the opera remained unperformed, and gained a reputation as being "impossible" to sing, which added to Wagner's financial problems.

 

Wagner's fortunes took a dramatic upturn in 1864, when King Ludwig II succeeded to the throne of Bavaria at the age of 18. The young king, an ardent admirer of Wagner's operas, had the composer brought to Munich.

 

The King, who was homosexual, expressed in his correspondence a passionate personal adoration for the composer, and Wagner in his responses had no scruples about feigning reciprocal feelings.

 

Ludwig settled Wagner's considerable debts, and proposed to stage Tristan, Die Meistersinger, the Ring, and the other operas Wagner planned.

 

Wagner also began to dictate his autobiography, Mein Leben, at the King's request. Wagner noted that his rescue by Ludwig coincided with news of the death of his earlier mentor (but later supposed enemy) Giacomo Meyerbeer. Wagner wrote:

 

"I regretted that this operatic master,

who had done me so much harm,

should not have lived to see this day."

 

After grave difficulties in rehearsal, Tristan und Isolde premiered at the National Theatre Munich on the 10th. June 1865, the first Wagner opera premiere in almost 15 years. (The premiere had been scheduled for the 15th. May, but was delayed by bailiffs acting for Wagner's creditors, and also because the Isolde, Malvina Schnorr von Carolsfeld, was hoarse and needed time to recover.)

 

The conductor of this premiere was Hans von Bülow, whose wife, Cosima, had given birth in April that year to a daughter, named Isolde, a child not of Bülow but of Wagner.

 

Cosima was 24 years younger than Wagner and was herself illegitimate, the daughter of the Countess Marie d'Agoult, who had left her husband for Franz Liszt.

 

Liszt initially disapproved of his daughter's involvement with Wagner, though nevertheless, the two men were friends. The indiscreet affair scandalised Munich, and Wagner also fell into disfavour with many leading members of the court, who were suspicious of his influence on the King.

 

In December 1865, Ludwig was finally forced to ask the composer to leave Munich. He apparently also toyed with the idea of abdicating to follow his hero into exile, but Wagner quickly dissuaded him.

 

Ludwig installed Wagner at the Villa Tribschen, beside Switzerland's Lake Lucerne. Die Meistersinger was completed at Tribschen in 1867, and premiered in Munich on the 21st. June the following year.

 

At Ludwig's insistence, "special previews" of the first two works of the Ring, Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, were performed at Munich in 1869 and 1870. However Wagner retained his dream, first expressed in "A Communication to My Friends", of presenting the first complete cycle at a special festival in a new, dedicated, opera house.

 

Not everyone was impressed by Wagner's work at the time; on the cover of the 18th. April 1869 edition of L'Éclipse, André Gill suggested that Wagner's music was ear-splitting. He produced a cartoon showing a misshapen figure of a man with a tiny body below a head with prominent nose and chin standing on the lobe of a human ear. The figure is hammering the sharp end of a crochet symbol into the inner part of the ear as blood pours out.

 

Minna died of a heart attack on the 25th. January 1866 in Dresden. Wagner did not attend the funeral. Following Minna's death Cosima wrote to Hans von Bülow several times asking him to grant her a divorce, but Bülow refused to concede this.

 

He consented only after she had two more children with Wagner; another daughter, named Eva, after the heroine of Meistersinger, and a son Siegfried, named for the hero of the Ring.

 

The divorce was finally sanctioned, after delays in the legal process, by a Berlin court on the 18th. July 1870. Richard and Cosima's wedding took place on the 25th. August 1870.

 

On Christmas Day of that year, Wagner arranged a surprise performance (its premiere) of the Siegfried Idyll for Cosima's birthday. The marriage to Cosima lasted to the end of Wagner's life.

 

Wagner, settled into his new-found domesticity, turned his energies towards completing the Ring cycle. However he had not abandoned polemics: he republished his 1850 pamphlet "Judaism in Music", originally issued under a pseudonym, under his own name in 1869.

 

He extended the introduction, and wrote a lengthy additional final section. The publication led to several public protests at early performances of Die Meistersinger in Vienna and Mannheim.

 

Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (1871–1876)

 

In 1871, Wagner decided to move to Bayreuth, which was to be the location of his new opera house. The town council donated a large plot of land—the "Green Hill"—as a site for the theatre.

 

The Wagners moved to the town the following year, and the foundation stone for the Bayreuth Festspielhaus ("Festival Theatre") was laid.

 

Wagner initially announced the first Bayreuth Festival, at which for the first time the Ring cycle would be presented complete, for 1873, but since Ludwig had declined to finance the project, the start of building was delayed, and the proposed date for the festival was deferred.

 

To raise funds for the construction, "Wagner societies" were formed in several cities, and Wagner began touring Germany conducting concerts. By the spring of 1873, only a third of the required funds had been raised; further pleas to Ludwig were initially ignored, but early in 1874, with the project on the verge of collapse, the King relented and provided a loan.

 

The full building programme included the family home, "Wahnfried", into which Wagner, with Cosima and the children, moved from their temporary accommodation on the 18th. April 1874. Wagner was ultimately laid to rest in the Wahnfried garden; in 1977 Cosima's ashes were placed alongside Wagner's body. The grave is shown in the photograph.

 

The theatre was completed in 1875, and the festival scheduled for the following year. Commenting on the struggle to finish the building, Wagner remarked to Cosima:

 

"Each stone is red with

my blood and yours".

 

For the design of the Festspielhaus, Wagner appropriated some of the ideas of his former colleague, Gottfried Semper, which he had previously solicited for a proposed new opera house at Munich.

 

Wagner was responsible for several theatrical innovations at Bayreuth; these included darkening the auditorium during performances, and placing the orchestra in a pit out of view of the audience.

 

The Festspielhaus finally opened on the 13th. August 1876 with Das Rheingold, at last taking its place as the first evening of the complete Ring cycle. The 1876 Bayreuth Festival therefore saw the premiere of the complete cycle, performed as a sequence as the composer had intended.

 

The 1876 Festival consisted of three full Ring cycles (under the baton of Hans Richter). At the end, critical reactions ranged between that of the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, who thought the work "divinely composed", and that of the French newspaper Le Figaro, which called the music "The dream of a lunatic".

 

The disillusioned included Wagner's friend and disciple Friedrich Nietzsche, who, having published his eulogistic essay "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth" before the festival as part of his Untimely Meditations, was bitterly disappointed by what he saw as Wagner's pandering to increasingly exclusivist German nationalism; his breach with Wagner began at this time.

 

The festival firmly established Wagner as an artist of European, and indeed world, importance: attendees included Kaiser Wilhelm I, the Emperor Pedro II of Brazil, Anton Bruckner, Camille Saint-Saëns and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

 

Wagner was far from satisfied with the Festival; Cosima recorded that months later, his attitude towards the productions was:

 

"Never again, never again!"

 

Moreover, the festival finished with a deficit of about 150,000 marks. The expenses of Bayreuth and of Wahnfried meant that Wagner still sought further sources of income by conducting or taking on commissions such as the Centennial March for America, for which he received $5000.

 

Richard Wagner - The Final Years (1876–1883)

 

Following the first Bayreuth Festival, Wagner began work on Parsifal, his final opera. The composition took four years, much of which Wagner spent in Italy for health reasons.

 

From 1876 to 1878 Wagner also embarked on the last of his documented emotional liaisons, this time with Judith Gautier, whom he had met at the 1876 Festival.

 

Wagner was also much troubled by problems of financing Parsifal, and by the prospect of the work being performed by other theatres than Bayreuth. He was once again assisted by the liberality of King Ludwig, but was still forced by his personal financial situation in 1877 to sell the rights of several of his unpublished works (including the Siegfried Idyll) to the publisher Schott.

 

Wagner wrote several articles in his later years, often on political topics, and often reactionary in tone, repudiating some of his earlier, more liberal, views.

 

These include "Religion and Art" (1880) and "Heroism and Christianity" (1881), which were printed in the journal Bayreuther Blätter, published by his supporter Hans von Wolzogen.

 

Wagner's sudden interest in Christianity at this period, which infuses Parsifal, was contemporary with his increasing alignment with German nationalism, and required on his part, and the part of his associates, "the rewriting of some recent Wagnerian history", so as to represent, for example, the Ring as a work reflecting Christian ideals.

 

Many of these later articles, including "What is German?" (1878, but based on a draft written in the 1860's), repeated Wagner's antisemitic preoccupations.

 

Wagner completed Parsifal in January 1882, and a second Bayreuth Festival was held for the new opera, which premiered on the 26th. May.

 

Wagner was by this time extremely ill, having suffered a series of increasingly severe angina attacks.

 

During the sixteenth and final performance of Parsifal on the 29th. August, he entered the pit unseen during act 3, took the baton from conductor Hermann Levi, and led the performance to its conclusion.

 

After the festival, the Wagner family journeyed to Venice for the winter. Wagner died of a heart attack at the age of 69 on the 13th. February 1883 at Ca' Vendramin Calergi, a 16th.-century palazzo on the Grand Canal.

 

The legend that the attack was prompted by argument with Cosima over Wagner's supposedly amorous interest in the singer Carrie Pringle, who had been a Flower-maiden in Parsifal at Bayreuth, is without credible evidence.

 

After a funerary gondola bore Wagner's remains across the Grand Canal, his body was taken to Germany where it was buried in the garden of the Villa Wahnfried.

 

Richard Wagner's Works

 

Wagner's musical output is listed by the Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis (WWV) as comprising 113 works, including fragments and projects.

 

The first complete scholarly edition of his musical works in print was commenced in 1970 under the aegis of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur of Mainz, and is presently (2023) under the editorship of Egon Voss.

 

It will consist of 21 volumes (57 books) of music and 10 volumes (13 books) of relevant documents and texts.

 

Richard Wagner's Early Works (to 1842)

 

Wagner's earliest attempts at opera were often uncompleted. Abandoned works include a pastoral opera based on Goethe's Die Laune des Verliebten (The Infatuated Lover's Caprice), written at the age of 17, Die Hochzeit (The Wedding), on which Wagner worked in 1832, and the singspiel Männerlist Größer als Frauenlist (Men are More Cunning than Women, 1837–1838).

 

Die Feen (The Fairies, 1833) was not performed in the composer's lifetime and Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love, 1836) was withdrawn after its first performance.

 

Rienzi (1842) was Wagner's first opera to be successfully staged.

 

The compositional style of these early works was conventional— the relatively more sophisticated Rienzi showing the clear influence of Grand Opera à la Spontini and Meyerbeer — and did not exhibit the innovations that would mark Wagner's place in musical history.

 

Later in life, Wagner said that he did not consider these works to be part of his oeuvre; and they have been performed only rarely in the last hundred years, although the overture to Rienzi is an occasional concert-hall piece.

 

Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot, and Rienzi were performed at both Leipzig and Bayreuth in 2013 to mark the composer's bicentenary.

 

Richard Wagner's Romantic Operas (1843–1851)

 

Wagner's middle stage output began with Der Fliegende Holländer (1843), followed by Tannhäuser (1845) and Lohengrin (1850).

 

These three operas are referred to as Wagner's "romantic operas". They reinforced the reputation, among the public in Germany and beyond, that Wagner had begun to establish with Rienzi.

 

Although distancing himself from the style of these operas from 1849 onwards, he nevertheless reworked both Der Fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser on several occasions.

 

The three operas are considered to represent a significant developmental stage in Wagner's musical and operatic maturity as regards thematic handling, portrayal of emotions and orchestration.

 

They are the earliest works included in the Bayreuth canon, the mature operas that Cosima staged at the Bayreuth Festival after Wagner's death in accordance with his wishes.

 

All three (including the differing versions of Der Fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser) continue to be regularly performed throughout the world, and have been frequently recorded.

 

They were also the operas by which his fame spread during his lifetime.

 

Richard Wagner's Music Dramas (1851–1882)

 

Wagner's late dramas are considered his masterpieces. Der Ring des Nibelungen, commonly referred to as the Ring or "Ring Cycle", is a set of four operas based loosely on figures and elements of Germanic mythology—particularly from the later Norse mythology—notably the Old Norse Poetic Edda and Volsunga Saga, and the Middle High German Nibelungenlied.

 

Wagner specifically developed the libretti for these operas according to his interpretation of Stabreim, highly alliterative rhyming verse-pairs used in old Germanic poetry.

 

They were also influenced by Wagner's concepts of ancient Greek drama, in which tetralogies were a component of Athenian festivals, and which he had amply discussed in his essay "Oper und Drama".

 

The first two components of the Ring cycle were Das Rheingold, which was completed in 1854, and Die Walküre, which was finished in 1856.

 

In Das Rheingold, with its "relentlessly talky 'realism' and the absence of lyrical 'numbers'", Wagner came very close to the musical ideals of his 1849–1851 essays.

 

Die Walküre, which contains what is virtually a traditional aria (Siegmund's Winterstürme in the first act), and the quasi-choral appearance of the Valkyries themselves, shows more "operatic" traits, but has been assessed by Barry Millington as:

 

"The music drama that most satisfactorily

embodies the theoretical principles of

'Oper und Drama'... A thoroughgoing

synthesis of poetry and music is achieved

without any notable sacrifice in musical

expression."

 

While composing the opera Siegfried, the third part of the Ring cycle, Wagner interrupted work on it, and between 1857 and 1864 wrote the tragic love story Tristan und Isolde and his only mature comedy Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, two works that are also part of the regular operatic canon.

 

Tristan is often granted a special place in musical history; many see it as the beginning of the move away from conventional harmony and tonality, and consider that it lays the groundwork for the direction of classical music in the 20th. century.

 

Wagner felt that his musico-dramatical theories were most perfectly realised in this work with its use of "the art of transition" between dramatic elements and the balance achieved between vocal and orchestral lines. Completed in 1859, the work was given its first performance in Munich, conducted by Bülow, in June 1865.

 

Die Meistersinger was originally conceived by Wagner in 1845 as a sort of comic pendant to Tannhäuser. Like Tristan, it was premiered in Munich under the baton of Bülow, on the 21st. June 1868, and became an immediate success.

 

Millington describes Meistersinger as:

 

"A rich, perceptive music drama

widely admired for its warm

humanity."

 

However its strong German nationalist overtones have led some to cite it as an example of Wagner's reactionary politics and antisemitism.

 

Completing the Ring

 

When Wagner returned to writing the music for the last act of Siegfried and for Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), as the final part of the Ring, his style had changed once more to something more recognisable as "operatic" than the aural world of Rheingold and Walküre, though it was still thoroughly stamped with his own originality as a composer and suffused with leitmotifs.

 

This was in part because the libretti of the four Ring operas had been written in reverse order, so that the book for Götterdämmerung was conceived more "traditionally" than that of Rheingold; still, the self-imposed strictures of the Gesamtkunstwerk had become relaxed.

 

The differences also result from Wagner's development as a composer during the period in which he wrote Tristan, Meistersinger and the Paris version of Tannhäuser. From act 3 of Siegfried onwards, the Ring becomes more chromatic melodically, more complex harmonically, and more developmental in its treatment of leitmotifs.

 

Wagner took 26 years from writing the first draft of a libretto in 1848 until he completed Götterdämmerung in 1874.

 

The Ring takes about 15 hours to perform, and is the only undertaking of such size to be regularly presented on the world's stages.

 

Parsifal

 

Wagner's final opera, Parsifal (1882), which was his only work written especially for his Bayreuth Festspielhaus and which is described in the score as a "Bühnenweihfestspiel" ("Festival Play for the Consecration of the Stage"), has a storyline suggested by elements of the legend of the Holy Grail.

 

It also carries elements of Buddhist renunciation suggested by Wagner's readings of Schopenhauer. Wagner described it to Cosima as his "last card".

 

Parsifal remains controversial because of its treatment of Christianity, its eroticism, and its expression, as perceived by some commentators, of German nationalism and antisemitism.

 

Despite the composer's own description of the opera to King Ludwig as "this most Christian of works", Ulrike Kienzle has commented that:

 

"Wagner's turn to Christian mythology,

upon which the imagery and spiritual

contents of Parsifal rest, is idiosyncratic,

and contradicts Christian dogma in

many ways."

 

Musically, the opera has been held to represent a continuing development of the composer's style, and Millington describes it as:

 

"A diaphanous score of unearthly

beauty and refinement".

 

Richard Wagner's Non-Operatic Music

 

Apart from his operas, Wagner composed relatively few pieces of music. These include a symphony in C major (written at the age of 19), the Faust Overture (the only completed part of an intended symphony on the subject), some concert overtures, and choral and piano pieces.

 

Richard's most commonly performed work that is not an extract from an opera is the Siegfried Idyll for chamber orchestra, which has several motifs in common with the Ring cycle.

 

The Wesendonck Lieder are also often performed, either in the original piano version, or with orchestral accompaniment.

 

More rarely performed are the American Centennial March (1876), and Das Liebesmahl der Apostel (The Love Feast of the Apostles), a piece for male choruses and orchestra composed in 1843 for the city of Dresden.

 

After completing Parsifal, Wagner expressed his intention to turn to the writing of symphonies, and several sketches dating from the late 1870's and early 1880's have been identified as work towards this end.

 

The overtures and certain orchestral passages from Wagner's middle and late-stage operas are commonly played as concert pieces. For most of these, Wagner wrote or re-wrote short passages to ensure musical coherence.

 

The "Bridal Chorus" from Lohengrin is frequently played as the bride's processional wedding march in English-speaking countries.

 

Richard Wagner's Prose Writings

 

Wagner was an extremely prolific writer, authoring many books, poems, and articles, as well as voluminous correspondence. His writings covered a wide range of topics, including autobiography, politics, philosophy, and detailed analyses of his own operas.

 

Wagner planned for a collected edition of his publications as early as 1865; he believed that such a work would help the world to understand his intellectual development and artistic aims.

 

The first such edition was published between 1871 and 1883, but was doctored to suppress or alter articles that were an embarrassment to him (e.g. those praising Meyerbeer), or by altering dates on some articles to reinforce Wagner's own account of his progress.

 

Wagner's autobiography Mein Leben was originally published for close friends only in a very small edition (15–18 copies per volume) in four volumes between 1870 and 1880.

 

The first public edition (with many passages suppressed by Cosima) appeared in 1911; the first attempt at a full edition (in German) appeared in 1963.

 

There have been modern complete or partial editions of Wagner's writings, including a centennial edition in German edited by Dieter Borchmeyer (which, however, omitted the essay "Das Judenthum in der Musik" and Mein Leben).

 

The English translations of Wagner's prose in eight volumes by William Ashton Ellis (1892–1899) are still in print, and commonly used, despite their deficiencies.

 

The first complete historical and critical edition of Wagner's prose works was launched in 2013 at the Institute for Music Research at the University of Würzburg; this will result in at least eight volumes of text and several volumes of commentary, totalling over 5,000 pages.

 

It was originally anticipated that the Würzburg project will be completed by 2030, although this time frame may need to be extended.

 

A complete edition of Wagner's correspondence, estimated to amount to between 10,000 and 12,000 items, is under way under the supervision of the University of Würzburg. As of January 2021, 25 volumes have appeared, covering the period up to 1873.

 

Richard Wagner's Influence on Music

 

Wagner's later musical style introduced new ideas in harmony, melodic process (leitmotif) and operatic structure.

 

Notably from Tristan und Isolde onwards, he explored the limits of the traditional tonal system, which gave keys and chords their identity, pointing the way to atonality in the 20th. century.

 

Some music historians date the beginning of modern classical music to the first notes of Tristan, which include the so-called Tristan chord.

 

Wagner inspired great devotion. For a long period, many composers were inclined to align themselves with or against Wagner's music. Anton Bruckner and Hugo Wolf were greatly indebted to him, as were César Franck, Henri Duparc, Ernest Chausson, Jules Massenet, Richard Strauss, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Hans Pfitzner and many others.

 

Gustav Mahler was devoted to Wagner and his music; at the age of 15, he sought Wagner out on his 1875 visit to Vienna. Mahler became a renowned Wagner conductor, and Richard Taruskin has claimed that:

 

"Mahler's compositions extend

Wagner's maximalization of the

temporal and the sonorous in

music to the world of the

symphony."

 

The harmonic revolutions of Claude Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg (both of whose oeuvres contain examples of tonal and atonal modernism) have often been traced back to Tristan and Parsifal.

 

The Italian form of operatic realism known as verismo owed much to the Wagnerian concept of musical form.

 

Wagner also made a major contribution to the principles and practice of conducting. His essay "About Conducting" (1869) advanced Hector Berlioz's technique of conducting, and claimed that conducting was a means by which a musical work could be re-interpreted, rather than simply a mechanism for achieving orchestral unison.

 

He exemplified this approach in his own conducting, which was significantly more flexible than the disciplined approach of Felix Mendelssohn; in Wagner's view this also justified practices that would today be frowned upon, such as the rewriting of scores.

 

Wilhelm Furtwängler felt that Wagner and Bülow, through their interpretative approach, inspired a whole new generation of conductors (including Furtwängler himself).

 

Among those claiming inspiration from Wagner's music are the German band Rammstein, Jim Steinman, who wrote songs for Meat Loaf, Bonnie Tyler, Air Supply, Celine Dion and others.

 

Wagner also influenced the electronic composer Klaus Schulze, whose 1975 album Timewind consists of two 30-minute tracks, Bayreuth Return and Wahnfried 1883.

 

Joey DeMaio of the band Manowar has described Wagner as:

 

"The father of heavy metal".

 

The Slovenian group Laibach created the 2009 suite VolksWagner, using material from Wagner's operas.

 

Phil Spector's Wall of Sound recording technique was, it has been claimed, heavily influenced by Wagner.

 

Richard Wagner's Influence on Literature, Philosophy and the Visual Arts

 

Wagner's influence on literature and philosophy is significant. Millington has commented:

 

"Wagner's protean abundance meant that

he could inspire the use of literary motif in

many a novel employing interior monologue;

the Symbolists saw him as a mystic hierophant;

the Decadents found many a frisson in his work."

 

Friedrich Nietzsche was a member of Wagner's inner circle during the early 1870's, and his first published work, The Birth of Tragedy, proposed Wagner's music as the Dionysian "rebirth" of European culture in opposition to Apollonian rationalist "decadence".

 

Nietzsche however broke with Wagner following the first Bayreuth Festival, believing that Wagner's final phase represented a pandering to Christian pieties, and a surrender to the new German Reich.

 

Nietzsche expressed his displeasure with the later Wagner in "The Case of Wagner" and "Nietzsche Contra Wagner".

 

The poets Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine worshipped Wagner.

 

Édouard Dujardin, whose influential novel Les Lauriers Sont Coupés is in the form of an interior monologue inspired by Wagnerian music, founded a journal dedicated to Wagner, La Revue Wagnérienne.

 

In a list of major cultural figures influenced by Wagner, Bryan Magee includes D. H. Lawrence, Aubrey Beardsley, Romain Rolland, Gérard de Nerval, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Rainer Maria Rilke and several others.

 

In the 20th century, W. H. Auden once called Wagner:

 

"Perhaps the greatest

genius that ever lived."

 

Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust were heavily influenced by him, and discussed Wagner in their novels. He is also discussed in some of the works of James Joyce, as well as W. E. B. Du Bois, who featured Lohengrin in The Souls of Black Folk.

 

Wagnerian themes inhabit T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, which contains lines from Tristan und Isolde and Götterdämmerung, and Verlaine's poem on Parsifal.

 

Many of Wagner's concepts, including his speculation about dreams, predated their investigation by Sigmund Freud. Wagner had publicly analysed the Oedipus myth before Freud was born in terms of its psychological significance, insisting that incestuous desires are natural and normal, and perceptively exhibiting the relationship between sexuality and anxiety. Georg Groddeck considered the Ring as the first manual of psychoanalysis.

 

Richard Wagner's Influence on the Cinema

 

Wagner's concept of the use of leitmotifs and the integrated musical expression which they can enable has influenced many 20th. and 21st. century film scores.

 

The critic Theodor Adorno has noted that:

 

"The Wagnerian leitmotif leads directly to

cinema music where the sole function of

the leitmotif is to announce heroes or

situations so as to allow the audience to

orient itself more easily".

 

Film scores citing Wagnerian themes include Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, which features a version of the Ride of the Valkyries, Trevor Jones's soundtrack to John Boorman's film Excalibur, and the 2011 films A Dangerous Method (dir. David Cronenberg) and Melancholia (dir. Lars von Trier).

 

Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's 1977 film Hitler has a visual style and set design that are strongly inspired by Der Ring des Nibelungen, musical excerpts from which are frequently used in the film's soundtrack.

 

Richard Wagner's Opponents and Supporters

 

Not all reaction to Wagner was positive. For a time, German musical life divided into two factions, supporters of Wagner and supporters of Johannes Brahms; the latter, with the support of the powerful critic Eduard Hanslick (of whom Beckmesser in Meistersinger is in part a caricature) championed traditional forms, and led the conservative front against Wagnerian innovations.

 

They were supported by the conservative leanings of some German music schools, including the conservatories at Leipzig under Ignaz Moscheles and at Cologne under the direction of Ferdinand Hiller.

 

Another Wagner detractor was the French composer Charles-Valentin Alkan, who wrote to Hiller after attending Wagner's Paris concert on the 25th. January 1860. At this concert Wagner conducted the overtures to Der Fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser, the preludes to Lohengrin and Tristan und Isolde, and six other extracts from Tannhäuser and Lohengrin.

 

Alkan noted:

 

"I had imagined that I was going

to meet music of an innovative

kind, but was astonished to find

a pale imitation of Berlioz.

I do not like all the music of Berlioz

while appreciating his marvellous

understanding of certain instrumental

effects ... but here he was imitated

and caricatured ... Wagner is not a

musician, he is a disease."

 

Even those who, like Debussy, opposed Wagner ("this old poisoner") could not deny his influence. Indeed, Debussy was one of many composers, including Tchaikovsky, who felt the need to break with Wagner precisely because his influence was so unmistakable and overwhelming.

 

"Golliwogg's Cakewalk" from Debussy's Children's Corner piano suite contains a deliberately tongue-in-cheek quotation from the opening bars of Tristan.

 

Others who proved resistant to Wagner's operas included Gioachino Rossini, who said:

 

"Wagner has wonderful moments,

and dreadful quarters of an hour."

 

In the 20th. century Wagner's music was parodied by Paul Hindemith and Hanns Eisler, among others.

 

Wagner's followers (known as Wagnerians or Wagnerites) have formed many societies dedicated to Wagner's life and work.

 

Film and Stage Portrayals of Richard Wagner

 

Wagner has been the subject of many biographical films. The earliest was a silent film made by Carl Froelich in 1913. It featured in the title role the composer Giuseppe Becce, who also wrote the score for the film (as Wagner's music, still in copyright, was not available).

 

Other film portrayals of Wagner include:

 

-- Richard Burton in Wagner (1983).

-- Paul Nicholas in Lisztomania (1975)

-- Trevor Howard in Ludwig (1972)

-- Lyndon Brook in Song Without End (1960)

-- Alan Badel in Magic Fire (1955)

 

Jonathan Harvey's opera Wagner Dream (2007) intertwines the events surrounding Wagner's death with the story of Wagner's uncompleted opera outline Die Sieger (The Victors).

 

The Bayreuth Festival

 

Since Wagner's death, the Bayreuth Festival, which has become an annual event, has been successively directed by his widow, his son Siegfried, the latter's widow Winifred Wagner, their two sons Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner, and, presently, two of the composer's great-granddaughters, Eva Wagner-Pasquier and Katharina Wagner.

 

Since 1973, the festival has been overseen by the Richard-Wagner-Stiftung (Richard Wagner Foundation), the members of which include some of Wagner's descendants.

 

Controversies Associated With Richard Wagner

 

Wagner's operas, writings, politics, beliefs and unorthodox lifestyle made him a controversial figure during his lifetime.

 

Following his death, debate about his ideas and their interpretation, particularly in Germany during the 20th. century, has continued.

 

Racism and Antisemitism

 

A caricature of Wagner by Karl Clic was published in 1873 in the Viennese satirical magazine, Humoristische Blätter. It shows a cartoon figure holding a baton, standing next to a music stand in front of some musicians.

 

The figure has a large nose and prominent forehead. His sideburns turn into a wispy beard under his chin. The exaggerated features refer to rumours of Wagner's Jewish ancestry.

 

Wagner's hostile writings on Jews, including Jewishness in Music, correspond to some existing trends of thought in Germany during the 19th century.

 

Despite his very public views on this topic, throughout his life Wagner had Jewish friends, colleagues and supporters. There have been frequent suggestions that antisemitic stereotypes are represented in Wagner's operas. The characters of Alberich and Mime in the Ring, Sixtus Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger, and Klingsor in Parsifal are sometimes claimed as Jewish representations, though they are not identified as such in the librettos of these operas.

 

The topic is further complicated by claims, which may have been credited by Wagner, that he himself was of Jewish ancestry, via his supposed father Geyer. However, there is no evidence that Geyer had Jewish ancestors.

 

Some biographers have noted that Wagner in his final years developed interest in the racialist philosophy of Arthur de Gobineau, notably Gobineau's belief that Western society was doomed because of miscegenation between "superior" and "inferior" races.

 

According to Robert Gutman, this theme is reflected in the opera Parsifal.

 

Other biographers however (including Lucy Beckett) believe that this is not true, as the original drafts of the story date back to 1857 and Wagner had completed the libretto for Parsifal by 1877, but he displayed no significant interest in Gobineau until 1880.

 

Other Interpretations

 

Wagner's ideas are amenable to socialist interpretations; many of his ideas on art were being formulated at the time of his revolutionary inclinations in the 1840's. Thus, for example, George Bernard Shaw wrote in The Perfect Wagnerite (1883):

 

"Wagner's picture of Niblunghome under the

reign of Alberic is a poetic vision of unregulated

industrial capitalism as it was made known in

Germany in the middle of the 19th. century by

Engels's book 'The Condition of the Working

Class in England."

 

Left-wing interpretations of Wagner also inform the writings of Theodor Adorno among other Wagner critics.

 

Walter Benjamin gave Wagner as an example of "bourgeois false consciousness", alienating art from its social context.

 

György Lukács contended that the ideas of the early Wagner represented the ideology of the "true socialists" (wahre Sozialisten), a movement referenced in Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto" as belonging to the left-wing of German bourgeois radicalism.

 

Anatoly Lunacharsky said about the later Wagner:

 

"The circle is complete. The revolutionary

has become a reactionary. The rebellious

petty bourgeois now kisses the slipper of

the Pope, the keeper of order."

 

The writer Robert Donington has produced a detailed, if controversial, Jungian interpretation of the Ring cycle, described as "an approach to Wagner by way of his symbols", which, for example, sees the character of the goddess Fricka as part of her husband Wotan's "inner femininity".

 

Millington notes that Jean-Jacques Nattiez has also applied psychoanalytical techniques in an evaluation of Wagner's life and works.

 

Nazi Appropriation of Richard Wagner's Work

 

Adolf Hitler was an admirer of Wagner's music, and saw in his operas an embodiment of his own vision of the German nation; in a 1922 speech he claimed that:

 

"Wagner's works glorify the heroic

Teutonic nature ... Greatness lies in

the heroic."

 

Hitler visited Bayreuth frequently from 1923 onwards, and attended productions at the theatre.

 

There continues to be debate about the extent to which Wagner's views might have influenced Nazi thinking. Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927), who married Wagner's daughter Eva in 1908 but never met Wagner, was the author of the racist book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, approved by the Nazi movement.

 

Chamberlain met Hitler several times between 1923 and 1927 in Bayreuth, but cannot credibly be regarded as a conduit of Wagner's own views.

 

The Nazis used those parts of Wagner's thought that were useful for propaganda, and ignored or suppressed the rest.

 

While Bayreuth presented a useful front for Nazi culture, and Wagner's music was used at many Nazi events, the Nazi hierarchy as a whole did not share Hitler's enthusiasm for Wagner's operas, and resented attending these lengthy epics at Hitler's insistence.

 

Guido Fackler has researched evidence that indicates that it is possible that Wagner's music was used at the Dachau concentration camp in 1933–1934 to "re-educate" political prisoners by exposure to "national music".

 

There has been no evidence to support claims, sometimes made, that his music was played at Nazi death camps during the Second World War, and Pamela Potter has noted that Wagner's music was explicitly off-limits in the camps.

 

Because of the associations of Wagner with antisemitism and Nazism, the performance of his music in the State of Israel has been a source of controversy.

Court Zwolle, Zwolle, The Netherlands – architect: De Architekten Cie – project architect Rob Hootsmans – 2004-2013.

The design consists of a newly constructed building (16,420 m² gross floor area + a two-story underground car park) and renovation of the existing building (11,725 m² gross floor area). The new building will be located next to the existing building, and it will adjoin the historic canal of Zwolle at a crossroads of many directions and routes. The client and user found it important to give the expansion a transparent and accessible character, based on the statement "The Administration of Justice is at the centre of society, the Administration of Justice belongs to society". The design for the new building was created based on the demand for a new, timeless whole with a clear distinction between new and existing parts. In order to connect to the sculptural volume of architect Jo Kruger, a strong relationship with the surroundings had to be created: the contours of our design for the new building are determined from an urban planning point of view by directions and borders, heights and even the positions of trees.

 

The construction of the new building is characterized by a classic organization into three parts: a closed pedestal, a public part surrounded by columns and a cornice with a restricted working area. The public layer will consist of a double-height floor encircled by a public waiting area, hearing rooms, council chambers and a library. Finally, the upper layer will consist of three restricted floors with offices for the staff of the judiciary and the Public Prosecution Service. The construction principle, installation concept and the use of materials for the interior are determined for each layer according to its function. In contrast with the closed and inward-facing character of Kruger's building, the new building is highly transparent and emphasizes the public character of the court. For instance, the public waiting area is orientated towards the surroundings, and thus forms a part of the city. The facade of the new building will be made of glass. The facade is pulled around the building like a pleated skirt, thereby creating a crenulated structure. A fragmentary reflection of the surroundings can be seen in the facade. The "pleats" will vary in height, and their depth is derived from Kruger's natural stone facade, creating formal coherence with the existing structure.

St Pancras, Ipswich, Suffolk

 

Until its clearance in the post-war years, the area spreading eastwards of Ipswich town centre was a vast slum. The Rope Walk area was redeveloped and is now home to Suffolk New College and parts of the University. The housing in the Cox Lane area became a car park. I met a man a few years ago who always tries to park his car on the site of the house where he grew up.

 

Two grand red brick churches survive as islands. The Anglican St Michael is now a burnt out shell. It was declared redundant in the 1990s, and in truth it is hard to see how it can ever have been needed as more than a triumphalist gesture, with the parish church of St Helen only a hundred yards or so away. It was destroyed by fire in March 2011. Still standing tall is George Goldie's 1861 Catholic church of St Pancras. Seen from across the car park, the only clue that it was once tightly surrounded by poor people's houses is that there are no windows in the wall of the north aisle. As at Brighton's St Bartholomew, this great ship was designed to sail above roof tops.

 

St Pancras looks like a bit dropped off, and that is exactly what it is. Goldie's commission was for the huge, recently demolished School of Jesus and Mary on the campus of the Woodbridge Road church of St Mary, and this town centre church in the same style. St Pancras was intended to be the start of a church of cathedral scale, of which the surviving church was but the chancel. At the time, Ipswich was in the Diocese of Northampton. Today, it is in the Diocese of East Anglia, with a great stone Gothic cathedral at Norwich. But the Norwich cathedral, built as the church of St John the Baptist, and the equally grand Our Lady and the English Martyrs in Cambridge, were both begun a good thirty years after St Pancras. If it had ever been finished, St Pancras would have been one of the biggest red brick churches in England.

 

The north elevation is stark, that on the south side rather more comfy, with good modern glass in the south aisle windows. The most impressive view is from the west, where the vast rose window fills in what would have been the top of the chancel arch. Here, where the 1970s parish hall stands, would have been the crossing tower, with transepts either side. Looking further west, the nave would have stretched, and here is perhaps one of the reasons why St Pancras the great was never built. Immediately to the west of the church, across Cox lane, stands the fortress-like Christ Church. Although the present building post-dates St Pancras, there has been a Congregationalist church on the site for more than three hundred years, and the planned Catholic church would have stretched in front of it. Given the ecclesiastical politics of the late 19th century, one can't imagine them giving up the site very lightly.

 

The Catholic presence in Ipswich had been re-established in the 1790s, at the time of the French Revolution, by a refugee Priest, Louis Simon. He said Mass in the home of a rich local lady Margaret Wood, and then with her help established a mission church near the Woodbridge Road barracks. This church, St Anthony, formed the transepts of the building that still survives as the parish hall of the 1960 St Mary.

 

After the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy in England in 1850, which you can read about on the entry for St Mary, the plan was to create a town centre profile for the Church, and this was why Goldie was commissioned to build St Pancras. However, anti-Catholic feeling was rather stronger than it had been seventy years previously. On a night in November 1862, the protestant ministers of the town whipped up such a state of hysteria that angry mobs ran through Ipswich smashing windows of Catholic churches, homes and businesses.

 

Although the exterior of this building is rather severe, the inside is a delight, quite the loveliest Victorian interior in Ipswich. It doesn't have the gravitas of St Mary le Tower, or the mystery of St Bartholomew, but it is a cascade of red and white brick banding, cast-iron pillars and wall tiling. Along with the statues and the candles and the smell of incense, it is everything a 19th century town centre church should be.

 

The post-Vatican II re-ordering of the sanctuary has not destroyed its coherence (or, indeed, the traditionalist flavour of the liturgy here). Above the altar, Christ stands in majesty, flanked by the four evangelists. The tabernacle is set curiously off-centre to the south.

 

Exposed as St Pancras is in comparison with many town centre churches, it is always full of light, and this light takes on the resonances of some good glass. The west window was filled with a design depicting the descent of the Holy Spirit as recently as 2001, by the Danielle Hopkinson studio. As a point of interest, they also did the glass in my front door. This is unfortunately obscured by a massive organ (the west window, not my front door). Below the west gallery is the baptistery, one of Ipswich's busiest, and just some of the church's collection of devotional statues. In the south aisle are three sets of triple lancets. The older glass in the most easterly depicts St Thomas, St Andrew and St John. The splendid 1974 glass by John Lawson in the other two sets depicts St Martin de Porres and St Francis of Assisi.

 

Not many people live in the parish itself, but as the busiest town centre church in Ipswich St Pancras continues to have a major role to play. Its Masses attract people from far and wide, including many from the town's sizeable minority communities. Perhaps this is because it does have such a traditionalist flavour, but also perhaps because of the work of the tireless and charismatic Parish Priest, Father 'Sam' Leeder. 'He's been here for forty years, and is a familiar character in the town centre, wandering the streets and talking to local traders, as well as being the cornerstone of the town's scouts. Ipswich would be diminished without him.

St Thomas, a member of the noble family of Aquino, was born in the castle of Rocca Sicca in 1225, and spent his early years at the Abbey of Monte Cassino. Against the will of his parents, he chose the Order of Preachers, entering at Naples in 1244. He lived in its major centres of intellectual life, Cologne, Paris, Rome and Naples, and became renowned for the innocence of his life and his faithfulness in regular observance. The Order’s work of preaching in voluntary poverty took two forms in his life, studiously seeking the truth and lovingly passing on to others the fruits of his contemplation. He was a heavenly master of sacred teaching and a most gracious preacher of evangelical truth. He showed the beautiful coherence between human reason and divine revelation. Most devoted to Christ the Saviour, notably to the passion of the Cross and the Eucharistic mystery, for which he composed the office of Corpus Christi, he burned with filial piety towards Mary, the Virgin Mother of God. He died at Fossanova on 7 March 1274, while he was on the way to the Council of Lyons. He was canonized by John XXII on 18 July 1323. He was declared the fifth doctor of the Latin Church by St Pius V on 11 April 1567. On 4 August 1880 Leo XIII declared him Patron of all Catholic universities and schools. His feast (28 January) is celebrated on the day which marked the translation of his relics to Toulouse.

 

This mosaic of St Thomas Aquinas writing the sequence hymn of Corpus Christi is on the facade of the church of St Joachim in Rome.

Actually, it has some applications, albeit cliche.

On that note, I cross processed for hue coherence.

Don't worry, I've moved on from this 5-armed wonder.

 

Press L

online.fliphtml5.com/flyvk/xlvp/

"65" is a contemporary abstract painting project that is divided into sixty - five works, each of which represents a stage in an ongoing dialogue between the artist and artificial intelligence. This incessant exchange has allowed us to explore new expressive frontiers, merging human intuition with the possibilities offered by advanced technology.

The common thread of the entire collection is the color red, chosen for its emotional and symbolic charge. Red evokes intense passions, vital energy and, at the same time, recalls concepts of danger and prohibition, creating fertile ground for artistic exploration. Within this chromatic context, barely recognizable anthropomorphic and animalistic figures emerge, dissolving and recomposing themselves in abstract forms, with the aim of stimulating the viewer's imagination.

The use of artificial intelligence in the creative process has opened up new perspectives in the field of contemporary art. As highlighted in the essay "Art and technology of the third millennium (Selvaggi-Catricalà, coll. Farnesina)", the integration between human creativity and advanced algorithms raises questions about the nature of art and the very definition of creativity.

In "65", AI becomes a tool in the hands of the artist who, through his authorship, pushes Artificial Intelligence to generate shapes and textures in an infinite dialogue of instructions. When the result achieved becomes satisfactory or corresponds to his mental representation, the tool is set aside as certain artists once did with shop assistants for the preparatory phases of a painting and a path is taken that the "intelligent machine" is not yet (and perhaps never will be) able to travel: painting.

The colors take shape, matter is added to matter, the image is transformed by passing from a two-dimensional plane to a three-dimensional plane, thus completing the creative cycle and adding emotions. And as always, colors are used to express in every possible variant the thematic core that is addressed from time to time, with coherence and stubbornness to access the chosen theme to the end.

Through "65", I invite the user in the first instance to reflect on the relationship between man and machine, exploring how the relationship between artistic sensitivity and artificial intelligence can generate new forms of expression. The works thus become the result of a symbiotic interaction, in which AI amplifies and transforms the artist's inspiration, giving life in my opinion to a collection that challenges conventions and opens new paths in the panorama of contemporary abstract art.

Specifically, without anchoring itself to a realistic story, with this work we wanted to identify various elements that intersect with each other such as passion, strength, desire, conflict and comparison, all situations linked to the human condition.

Who are these figures, what do they represent, why are they interacting?

We are constantly involved in a representation that often overwhelms us and of which we are not participants. We are not the architects of our own destinies except to a minimal extent. We are continually subjected to the aggression of strong powers that decide over our heads by virtue of an “imposed” mandate and which in its content is always disregarded or distorted. Few figures arrogate to themselves the right to impose their will on a global level, even with force if necessary. In the third millennium we are still helpless spectators of territorial aggression between nations aimed at satisfying the ego of the dictator of the moment where force and arrogance become, in a violent and incontrovertible way, a bargaining chip. Arrogance and ignorance are transformed into instruments of domination, fueling a Risk that from a simple game of strategy becomes a modus vivendi for those who hold power. Wars, economic and social conflicts are orchestrated without any regard in the name of the people, relegated to a role of extras, in a script written by a few. The democratic system, which should guarantee fairness and justice, is often bent to the interests of narrow elites who exploit the mechanisms of "induced" representation to pursue personal, economic and geopolitical objectives, often due to the personalism of some or the foolishness of others. Not only that, the manipulation of information and the control of the masses through the media and new digital technologies have accentuated this dynamic, making it even more difficult to distinguish truth from propaganda. Opinions are shaped, consciences are anesthetized, and the perception of reality is distorted to serve the interests of the few who hold power. In an era in which communication should be free and accessible to all, the truth is often filtered and artfully constructed to favor certain interests, leaving the common citizen in a state of powerlessness and disorientation.

Fear becomes a powerful weapon in the hands of those who govern. The ideologies of a few, skillfully employed, manipulate the most fragile, while others remain helpless spectators under blackmail. Fear is often used to justify restrictions on personal freedoms, military interventions, predatory economic policies, and decisions that go against collective well-being. The rhetoric of national or supranational security (as dictated by certain authorities), of progress, and of economic stability is wielded to mask the reality of a world where a few decide for the many, often with disastrous consequences for all.

In this scenario of oppression and manipulation, one must ask what the role of the individual is and whether there is still a way to reclaim autonomy. History teaches us that revolutions have arisen from the awareness and determination of people refusing to accept an imposed fate. However, today more than ever, pervasive control and social division make any attempt at rebellion or change increasingly difficult.

Few voices, in this medieval orgy, rise faintly and go unheard, pleading for the world to stop. One wonders if history has taught us nothing; the time from the cudgel to Hiroshima has passed in vain.

Perhaps the true challenge of our time is to rediscover the sense of community, participation, and collective responsibility. Only through Culture, Education, and Awareness can we counter oppressive dynamics and reaffirm the right of every individual to be not just a spectator, but the protagonist of their own destiny. Awareness is the first step in reclaiming the space that has been taken from us, in breaking the chains of ignorance and fear, and in rejecting a world where arrogance and arbitrariness are the only rules of the game. To prevent ourselves from plunging into a looming new Middle Age.

The proposed work seeks to tell this story. It aims to be a tool of denunciation, a moment of reflection where the viewer, even unconsciously, can perceive the same emotions that drove me to create all of this.

As in the theater of life, everyone plays a role. This is my part, dictated by my coherence and the privilege of expressing my thoughts through Art. I do not know if the result is convincing, and for that, I ask for clemency, but from an ethical standpoint, I had an obligation to fulfill. It was my conscience that demanded it, and I could not silence it.

Enjoy the experience.

  

I photographed my copy of the book on my kitchen counter in Tucson, Arizona

 

In Schrödinger's cat experiment, a cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source connected to a Geiger counter are placed in a sealed box. As illustrated, the objects are in a state of superposition: the cat is both alive and dead.

 

In quantum mechanics, Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment that illustrates a paradox of quantum superposition. In the thought experiment, a hypothetical cat may be considered simultaneously both alive and dead, while it is unobserved in a closed box, as a result of its fate being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur. This thought experiment was devised by physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935[1] in a discussion with Albert Einstein[2] to illustrate what Schrödinger saw as the problems of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.

 

In Schrödinger's original formulation, a cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal monitor (e.g. a Geiger counter) detects radioactivity (i.e. a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison, which kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation implies that, after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. This poses the question of when exactly quantum superposition ends and reality resolves into one possibility or the other.

 

Though originally a critique on the Copenhagen interpretation, Schrödinger's seemingly paradoxical thought experiment became part of the foundation of quantum mechanics. The scenario is often featured in theoretical discussions of the interpretations of quantum mechanics, particularly in situations involving the measurement problem. The experiment is not intended to be actually performed on a cat, but rather as an easily understandable illustration of the behavior of atoms. As a result, Schrödinger's cat has had enduring appeal in popular culture. Experiments at the atomic scale have been carried out, showing that very small objects may be superimposed; superimposing an object as large as a cat would pose considerable technical difficulties.

 

Fundamentally, the Schrödinger's cat experiment asks how long superpositions last and when (or whether) they collapse. Interpretations for resolving this question include that the cat is dead or alive when the box is opened (Copenhagen); that a conscious mind must observe the box (Von Neumann–Wigner); that upon observation, the universe branches into one universe where the cat is alive and another one where it is dead (many-worlds); that every object (such as the cat, and the box itself) is an observer, but superposition is relative depending on the observer (relational); that superposition never truly exists due to time-travelling waves (transactional); that merely observing the box either slows or accelerates the cat's death (quantum Zeno effect); among other theories that assert that the cat is dead or alive long before the box is opened. It is unclear which interpretation is correct; the underlying issue raised by Schrödinger's cat remains an unsolved problem in physics.

  

Origin And Motivation

Schrödinger intended his thought experiment as a discussion of the EPR article—named after its authors Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen—in 1935.[3][4] The EPR article highlighted the counterintuitive nature of quantum superpositions, in which a quantum system such as an atom or photon can exist as a combination of multiple states corresponding to different possible outcomes.

 

The prevailing theory, called the Copenhagen interpretation, says that a quantum system remains in superposition until it interacts with, or is observed by, the external world. When this happens, the superposition collapses into one or another of the possible definite states. The EPR experiment shows that a system with multiple particles separated by large distances can be in such a superposition. Schrödinger and Einstein exchanged letters about Einstein's EPR article, in the course of which Einstein pointed out that the state of an unstable keg of gunpowder will, after a while, contain a superposition of both exploded and unexploded states.[4]

 

To further illustrate, Schrödinger described how one could, in principle, create a superposition in a large-scale system by making it dependent on a quantum particle that was in a superposition. He proposed a scenario with a cat in a locked steel chamber, wherein the cat's life or death depended on the state of a radioactive atom, whether it had decayed and emitted radiation or not. According to Schrödinger, the Copenhagen interpretation implies that the cat remains both alive and dead until the state has been observed. Schrödinger did not wish to promote the idea of dead-and-live cats as a serious possibility; on the contrary, he intended the example to illustrate the absurdity of the existing view of quantum mechanics.[1]

 

Since Schrödinger's time, various interpretations of the mathematics of quantum mechanics have been advanced by physicists, some of which regard the "alive and dead" cat superposition as quite real, others do not.[5][6] Intended as a critique of the Copenhagen interpretation (the prevailing orthodoxy in 1935), the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment remains a touchstone for modern interpretations of quantum mechanics and can be used to illustrate and compare their strengths and weaknesses.[7]

  

Thought experiment

Schrödinger wrote: [1][8]

One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives. if meanwhile, no atom has decayed. The first atomic decay would have poisoned it. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.

 

It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naïvely accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.

 

Schrödinger's famous thought experiment poses the question, "When does a quantum system stop existing as a superposition of states and become one or the other?" (More technically, when does the actual quantum state stop being a non-trivial linear combination of states, each of which resembles different classical states, and instead begin to have a unique classical description?) If the cat survives, it remembers only being alive. But explanations of the EPR experiments that are consistent with standard microscopic quantum mechanics require that macroscopic objects, such as cats and notebooks, do not always have unique classical descriptions. The thought experiment illustrates this apparent paradox. Our intuition says that no observer can be in more than one state simultaneously—yet the cat, it seems from the thought experiment, can be in such a condition. Is the cat required to be an observer, or does its existence in a single well-defined classical state require another external observer? Each alternative seemed absurd to Einstein, who was impressed by the ability of the thought experiment to highlight these issues. In a letter to Schrödinger dated 1950, he wrote:

 

You are the only contemporary physicist, besides Laue, who sees that one cannot get around the assumption of reality, if only one is honest. Most of them simply do not see what sort of risky game they are playing with reality — reality as something independent of what is experimentally established. Their interpretation is, however, refuted most elegantly by your system of radioactive atom + amplifier + charge of gun powder + cat in a box, in which the psi-function of the system contains both the cat alive and blown to bits. Nobody really doubts that the presence or absence of the cat is something independent of the act of observation.[9]

 

Note that the charge of gunpowder is not mentioned in Schrödinger's setup, which uses a Geiger counter as an amplifier and hydrocyanic poison instead of gunpowder. The gunpowder had been mentioned in Einstein's original suggestion to Schrödinger 15 years before, and Einstein carried it forward to the present discussion.[4]

  

Interpretations

 

Since Schrödinger's time, other interpretations of quantum mechanics have been proposed that give different answers to the questions posed by Schrödinger's cat of how long superpositions last and when (or whether) they collapse.

 

Copenhagen interpretation

 

Main article: Copenhagen interpretation

A commonly held interpretation of quantum mechanics is the Copenhagen interpretation.[10] In the Copenhagen interpretation, a system stops being a superposition of states and becomes either one or the other when an observation takes place. This thought experiment makes apparent the fact that the nature of measurement, or observation, is not well-defined in this interpretation. The experiment can be interpreted to mean that while the box is closed, the system simultaneously exists in a superposition of the states "decayed nucleus/dead cat" and "undecayed nucleus/living cat" and that only when the box is opened and an observation performed does the wave function collapse into one of the two states.

  

Von Neumann interpretation

 

Main article: Von Neumann–Wigner interpretation

In 1932, John von Neumann described in his book Mathematical Foundations a pattern where the radioactive source is observed by a device, which itself is observed by another device and so on. It makes no difference in the predictions of quantum theory where along this chain of causal effects the superposition collapses.[11] This potentially infinite chain could be broken if the last device is replaced by a conscious observer. This solved the problem because it was claimed that an individual's consciousness cannot be multiple.[12] Neumann asserted that a conscious observer is necessary for collapse to one or the other (e.g., either a live cat or a dead cat) of the terms on the right-hand side of a wave function. This interpretation was later adopted by Eugene Wigner, who then rejected the interpretation in a thought experiment known as Wigner's friend.[13]

  

Wigner supposed that a friend opened the box and observed the cat without telling anyone. From Wigner's conscious perspective, the friend is now part of the wave function and has seen a live cat and seen a dead cat. To a third person's conscious perspective, Wigner himself becomes part of the wave function once Wigner learns the outcome from the friend. This could be extended indefinitely.[13]

  

Bohr's interpretation

 

One of the main scientists associated with the Copenhagen interpretation, Niels Bohr, offered an interpretation that is independent of a subjective observer-induced collapse of the wave function, or of measurement; instead, an "irreversible" or effectively irreversible process causes the decay of quantum coherence, which imparts the classical behavior of "observation" or "measurement".[14][15][16][17] Thus, Schrödinger's cat would be either dead or alive long before the box is observed.[18]

 

A resolution of the paradox is that the triggering of the Geiger counter counts as a measurement of the state of the radioactive substance. Because a measurement has already occurred deciding the state of the cat, the subsequent observation by a human records only what has already occurred.[19] Analysis of an actual experiment by Roger Carpenter and A. J. Anderson found that measurement alone (for example by a Geiger counter) is sufficient to collapse a quantum wave function before any human knows of the result.[20] The apparatus indicates one of two colors depending on the outcome. The human observer sees which color is indicated, but they don't consciously know which outcome the color represents. A second human, the one who set up the apparatus, is told of the color and becomes conscious of the outcome, and the box is opened to check if the outcome matches.[11] However, it is disputed whether merely observing the color counts as a conscious observation of the outcome.[21]

  

Many-worlds interpretation and consistent histories

 

Main article: Many-worlds interpretation

In 1957, Hugh Everett formulated the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which does not single out observation as a special process. In the many-worlds interpretation, both alive and dead states of the cat persist after the box is opened, but are decoherent from each other. In other words, when the box is opened, the observer and the possibly dead cat split into an observer looking at a box with a dead cat and an observer looking at a box with a live cat. But since the dead and alive states are decoherent, there is no effective communication or interaction between them.

 

When opening the box, the observer becomes entangled with the cat, so "observer states" corresponding to the cat's being alive and dead are formed; each observer state is entangled, or linked, with the cat so that the observation of the cat's state and the cat's state correspond with each other. Quantum decoherence ensures that the different outcomes have no interaction with each other. The same mechanism of quantum decoherence is also important for the interpretation in terms of consistent histories. Only the "dead cat" or the "live cat" can be a part of a consistent history in this interpretation. Decoherence is generally considered to prevent simultaneous observation of multiple states.[22][23]

 

A variant of the Schrödinger's cat experiment, known as the quantum suicide machine, has been proposed by cosmologist Max Tegmark. It examines the Schrödinger's cat experiment from the point of view of the cat, and argues that by using this approach, one may be able to distinguish between the Copenhagen interpretation and many-worlds.

  

Ensemble interpretation

 

The ensemble interpretation states that superpositions are nothing but subensembles of a larger statistical ensemble. The state vector would not apply to individual cat experiments, but only to the statistics of many similarly prepared cat experiments. Proponents of this interpretation state that this makes the Schrödinger's cat paradox a trivial matter, or a non-issue.

  

This interpretation serves to discard the idea that a single physical system in quantum mechanics has a mathematical description that corresponds to it in any way.[24]

  

Relational interpretation

 

The relational interpretation makes no fundamental distinction between the human experimenter, the cat, and the apparatus or between animate and inanimate systems; all are quantum systems governed by the same rules of wavefunction evolution, and all may be considered "observers". But the relational interpretation allows that different observers can give different accounts of the same series of events, depending on the information they have about the system.[25] The cat can be considered an observer of the apparatus; meanwhile, the experimenter can be considered another observer of the system in the box (the cat plus the apparatus). Before the box is opened, the cat, by nature of its being alive or dead, has information about the state of the apparatus (the atom has either decayed or not decayed); but the experimenter does not have information about the state of the box contents. In this way, the two observers simultaneously have different accounts of the situation: To the cat, the wavefunction of the apparatus has appeared to "collapse"; to the experimenter, the contents of the box appear to be in superposition. Not until the box is opened, and both observers have the same information about what happened, do both system states appear to "collapse" into the same definite result, a cat that is either alive or dead.

  

Transactional interpretation

 

In the transactional interpretation, the apparatus emits an advanced wave backward in time, which combined with the wave that the source emits forward in time, forms a standing wave. The waves are seen as physically real, and the apparatus is considered an "observer". In the transactional interpretation, the collapse of the wavefunction is "atemporal" and occurs along the whole transaction between the source and the apparatus. The cat is never in superposition. Rather the cat is only in one state at any particular time, regardless of when the human experimenter looks in the box. The transactional interpretation resolves this quantum paradox.[26]

  

Zeno effects

 

The Zeno effect is known to cause delays to any changes from the initial state.

 

On the other hand, the anti-Zeno effect accelerates the changes. For example, if you peek a look into the cat box frequently you may either cause delays to the fateful choice or, conversely, accelerate it. Both the Zeno effect and the anti-Zeno effect are real and known to happen to real atoms. The quantum system being measured must be strongly coupled to the surrounding environment (in this case to the apparatus, the experiment room ... etc.) in order to obtain more accurate information. But while there is no information passed to the outside world, it is considered to be a quasi-measurement, but as soon as the information about the cat's well-being is passed on to the outside world (by peeking into the box) quasi-measurement turns into measurement. Quasi-measurements, like measurements, cause the Zeno effects.[27]

Zeno effects teach us that even without peeking into the box, the death of the cat would have been delayed or accelerated anyway due to its environment.

  

Objective collapse theories

 

According to objective collapse theories, superpositions are destroyed spontaneously (irrespective of external observation) when some objective physical threshold (of time, mass, temperature, irreversibility, etc.) is reached. Thus, the cat would be expected to have settled into a definite state long before the box is opened. This could loosely be phrased as "the cat observes itself" or "the environment observes the cat".

 

Objective collapse theories require a modification of standard quantum mechanics to allow superpositions to be destroyed by the process of time evolution.[28] These theories could ideally be tested by creating mesoscopic superposition states in the experiment. For instance, energy cat states has been proposed as a precise detector of the quantum gravity related energy decoherence models.[29]

  

Applications and tests

 

Schrödinger's cat quantum superposition of states and effect of the environment through decoherence

The experiment as described is a purely theoretical one, and the machine proposed is not known to have been constructed. However, successful experiments involving similar principles, e.g. superpositions of relatively large (by the standards of quantum physics) objects have been performed.[30][better source needed] These experiments do not show that a cat-sized object can be superposed, but the known upper limit on "cat states" has been pushed upwards by them. In many cases the state is short-lived, even when cooled to near absolute zero.

 

A "cat state" has been achieved with photons.[31]

A beryllium ion has been trapped in a superposed state.[32]

An experiment involving a superconducting quantum interference device ("SQUID") has been linked to the theme of the thought experiment: "The superposition state does not correspond to a billion electrons flowing one way and a billion others flowing the other way. Superconducting electrons move en masse. All the superconducting electrons in the SQUID flow both ways around the loop at once when they are in the Schrödinger's cat state."[33]

A piezoelectric "tuning fork" has been constructed, which can be placed into a superposition of vibrating and non-vibrating states. The resonator comprises about 10 trillion atoms.[34]

An experiment involving a flu virus has been proposed.[35]

An experiment involving a bacterium and an electromechanical oscillator has been proposed.[36]

In quantum computing the phrase "cat state" sometimes refers to the GHZ state, wherein several qubits are in an equal superposition of all being 0 and all being 1; e.g.,

  

|\psi \rangle ={\frac {1}{\sqrt {2}}}{\bigg (}|00\ldots 0\rangle +|11\ldots 1\rangle {\bigg )}.

According to at least one proposal, it may be possible to determine the state of the cat before observing it.[37][38]

  

Extensions

 

Prominent physicists have gone so far as to suggest that astronomers observing dark energy in the universe in 1998 may have "reduced its life expectancy" through a pseudo-Schrödinger's cat scenario, although this is a controversial viewpoint.[39][40]

  

In August 2020, physicists presented studies involving interpretations of quantum mechanics that are related to the Schrödinger's cat and Wigner's friend paradoxes, resulting in conclusions that challenge seemingly established assumptions about reality.[41][42][43]

  

See also

 

iconPhysics portal

Basis function

Complementarity (physics)

Double-slit experiment

Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester

Heisenberg cut

Modal realism

Observer effect (physics)

Schroedinbug

Schrödinger's cat in popular culture

References

  

^ a b c Schrödinger, Erwin (November 1935). "Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik (The present situation in quantum mechanics)". Naturwissenschaften. 23 (48): 807–812. Bibcode:1935NW.....23..807S. doi:10.1007/BF01491891. S2CID 206795705.none

Fine, Arthur. "The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Argument in Quantum Theory". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 11 June 2020.none

Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete? Archived 2006-02-08 at the Wayback Machine A. Einstein, B. Podolsky, and N. Rosen, Phys. Rev. 47, 777 (1935)

^ a b c Fine, Arthur (2017). "The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Argument in Quantum Theory". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University. Retrieved 11 April 2021.none

Polkinghorne, J. C. (1985). The Quantum World. Princeton University Press. p. 67. ISBN 0691023883. Archived from the original on 2015-05-19.none

Tetlow, Philip (2012). Understanding Information and Computation: From Einstein to Web Science. Gower Publishing, Ltd. p. 321. ISBN 978-1409440406. Archived from the original on 2015-05-19.none

Lazarou, Dimitris (2007). "Interpretation of quantum theory - An overview". arXiv:0712.3466 [quant-ph].none

Trimmer, John D. (1980). "The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics: A Translation of Schrödinger's "Cat Paradox" Paper". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 124 (5): 323–338. JSTOR 986572.none Reproduced with some inaccuracies here: Schrödinger: "The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics." 5. Are the Variables Really Blurred?

Maxwell, Nicholas (1 January 1993). "Induction and Scientific Realism: Einstein versus van Fraassen Part Three: Einstein, Aim-Oriented Empiricism and the Discovery of Special and General Relativity". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 44 (2): 275–305. doi:10.1093/bjps/44.2.275. JSTOR 687649.none

Wimmel, Hermann (1992). Quantum physics & observed reality: a critical interpretation of quantum mechanics. World Scientific. p. 2. ISBN 978-981-02-1010-6. Archived from the original on 20 May 2013. Retrieved 9 May 2011.none

^ a b Hobson, Art (2017). Tales of the Quantum: Understanding Physics' Most Fundamental Theory. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 200–202. ISBN 9780190679637. Retrieved April 8, 2022.none

Omnès, Roland (1999). Understanding Quantum Mechanics. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp. 60–62. ISBN 0-691-00435-8. Retrieved April 8, 2022.none

^ a b Levin, Frank S. (2017). Surfing the Quantum World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 229–232. ISBN 978-0-19-880827-5. Retrieved April 8, 2022.none

John Bell (1990). "Against 'measurement'". Physics World. 3 (8): 33–41. doi:10.1088/2058-7058/3/8/26.none

Niels Bohr (1985) [May 16, 1947]. Jørgen Kalckar (ed.). Foundations of Quantum Physics I (1926-1932). Niels Bohr: Collected Works. Vol. 6. pp. 451–454.none

Stig Stenholm (1983). "To fathom space and time". In Pierre Meystre (ed.). Quantum Optics, Experimental Gravitation, and Measurement Theory. Plenum Press. p. 121. The role of irreversibility in the theory of measurement has been emphasized by many. Only this way can a permanent record be obtained. The fact that separate pointer positions must be of the asymptotic nature usually associated with irreversibility has been utilized in the measurement theory of Daneri, Loinger and Prosperi (1962). It has been accepted as a formal representation of Bohr's ideas by Rosenfeld (1966).none

Fritz Haake (April 1, 1993). "Classical motion of meter variables in the quantum theory of measurement". Physical Review A. 47 (4): 2506–2517. Bibcode:1993PhRvA..47.2506H. doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.47.2506. PMID 9909217.none

Faye, J (2008-01-24). "Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The Metaphysics Research Lab Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University. Retrieved 2010-09-19.none

Puri, Ravinder R. (2017). Non-Relativistic Quantum Mechanics. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. p. 146. ISBN 978-1-107-16436-9. Retrieved April 8, 2022.none

Carpenter RHS, Anderson AJ (2006). "The death of Schrödinger's cat and of consciousness-based wave-function collapse" (PDF). Annales de la Fondation Louis de Broglie. 31 (1): 45–52. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-11-30. Retrieved 2010-09-10.none

Okón E, Sebastián MA (2016). "How to Back up or Refute Quantum Theories of Consciousness". Mind and Matter. 14 (1): 25–49.none

Zurek, Wojciech H. (2003). "Decoherence, einselection, and the quantum origins of the classical". Reviews of Modern Physics. 75 (3): 715. arXiv:quant-ph/0105127. Bibcode:2003RvMP...75..715Z. doi:10.1103/revmodphys.75.715. S2CID 14759237.none

Wojciech H. Zurek, "Decoherence and the transition from quantum to classical", Physics Today, 44, pp. 36–44 (1991)

Smolin, Lee (October 2012). "A real ensemble interpretation of quantum mechanics". Foundations of Physics. 42 (10): 1239–1261. arXiv:1104.2822. Bibcode:2012FoPh...42.1239S. doi:10.1007/s10701-012-9666-4. ISSN 0015-9018. S2CID 118505566.none

Rovelli, Carlo (1996). "Relational Quantum Mechanics". International Journal of Theoretical Physics. 35 (8): 1637–1678. arXiv:quant-ph/9609002. Bibcode:1996IJTP...35.1637R. doi:10.1007/BF02302261. S2CID 16325959.none

Cramer, John G. (July 1986). The transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics. Vol. 58. Reviews of Modern Physics. pp. 647–685.none

"How the quantum Zeno effect impacts Schrodinger's cat". phys.org. Archived from the original on 17 June 2017. Retrieved 18 June 2017.none

Okon, Elias; Sudarsky, Daniel (2014-02-01). "Benefits of Objective Collapse Models for Cosmology and Quantum Gravity". Foundations of Physics. 44 (2): 114–143. arXiv:1309.1730. Bibcode:2014FoPh...44..114O. doi:10.1007/s10701-014-9772-6. ISSN 1572-9516. S2CID 67831520.none

Khazali, Mohammadsadegh; Lau, Hon Wai; Humeniuk, Adam; Simon, Christoph (2016-08-11). "Large energy superpositions via Rydberg dressing". Physical Review A. 94 (2): 023408. arXiv:1509.01303. Bibcode:2016PhRvA..94b3408K. doi:10.1103/physreva.94.023408. ISSN 2469-9926. S2CID 118364289.none

"What is the world's biggest Schrodinger cat?". stackexchange.com. Archived from the original on 2012-01-08.none

"Schrödinger's Cat Now Made Of Light". www.science20.com. 27 August 2014. Archived from the original on 18 March 2012.none

Monroe, C.; Meekhof, D. M.; King, B. E.; Wineland, D. J. (1996-05-24). "A "Schrödinger's cat" Superposition State of an Atom". Science. 272 (5265): 1131–1136. Bibcode:1996Sci...272.1131M. doi:10.1126/science.272.5265.1131. PMID 8662445. S2CID 2311821.none

"Physics World: Schrödinger's cat comes into view". 5 July 2000.none

Scientific American : Macro-Weirdness: "Quantum Microphone" Puts Naked-Eye Object in 2 Places at Once: A new device tests the limits of Schrödinger's cat Archived 2012-03-19 at the Wayback Machine

Romero-Isart, O.; Juan, M. L.; Quidant, R.; Cirac, J. I. (2010). "Toward Quantum Superposition of Living Organisms". New Journal of Physics. 12 (3): 033015. arXiv:0909.1469. Bibcode:2010NJPh...12c3015R. doi:10.1088/1367-2630/12/3/033015. S2CID 59151724.none

"Could 'Schrödinger's bacterium' be placed in a quantum superposition?". physicsworld.com. Archived from the original on 2016-07-30.none

Najjar, Dana (7 November 2019). "Physicists Can Finally Peek at Schrödinger's Cat Without Killing It Forever". Live Science. Retrieved 7 November 2019.none

Patekar, Kartik; Hofmann, Holger F. (2019). "The role of system–meter entanglement in controlling the resolution and decoherence of quantum measurements". New Journal of Physics. 21 (10): 103006. arXiv:1905.09978. Bibcode:2019NJPh...21j3006P. doi:10.1088/1367-2630/ab4451.none

Chown, Marcus (2007-11-22). "Has observing the universe hastened its end?". New Scientist. Archived from the original on 2016-03-10. Retrieved 2007-11-25.none

Krauss, Lawrence M.; James Dent (April 30, 2008). "Late Time Behavior of False Vacuum Decay: Possible Implications for Cosmology and Metastable Inflating States". Phys. Rev. Lett. US. 100 (17): 171301. arXiv:0711.1821. Bibcode:2008PhRvL.100q1301K. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.171301. PMID 18518269. S2CID 30028648.none

Merali, Zeeya (17 August 2020). "This Twist on Schrödinger's Cat Paradox Has Major Implications for Quantum Theory - A laboratory demonstration of the classic "Wigner's friend" thought experiment could overturn cherished assumptions about reality". Scientific American. Retrieved 17 August 2020.none

Musser, George (17 August 2020). "Quantum paradox points to shaky foundations of reality". Science Magazine. Retrieved 17 August 2020.none

Bong, Kok-Wei; et al. (17 August 2020). "A strong no-go theorem on the Wigner's friend paradox". Nature Physics. 27 (12): 1199–1205. arXiv:1907.05607. Bibcode:2020NatPh..16.1199B. doi:10.1038/s41567-020-0990-x.none

Further reading

  

Einstein, Albert; Podolsky, Boris; Rosen, Nathan (15 May 1935). "Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?". Physical Review. 47 (10): 777–780. Bibcode:1935PhRv...47..777E. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.47.777.none

Leggett, Tony (August 2000). "New Life for Schrödinger's Cat" (PDF). Physics World. pp. 23–24. Retrieved 28 February 2020.none An article on experiments with "cat state" superpositions in superconducting rings, in which the electrons go around the ring in two directions simultaneously.

Trimmer, John D. (1980). "The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics: A Translation of Schrödinger's "Cat Paradox" Paper". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 124 (5): 323–338. JSTOR 986572.none(registration required)

Yam, Phillip (October 9, 2012). "Bringing Schrödinger's Cat to Life". Scientific American. Retrieved 28 February 2020. A description of investigations of quantum "cat states" and wave function collapse by Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland, for which they won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Kalmbach, Gudrun (1983). Orthomodular Lattices. Academic Press.

Whenever “the shadows of faith” (C, 131) overtook him, Teilhard was comforted by the coherence, integrity, and power of his synthesis. “I am prepared to press on to the end along a road in which each step makes me more certain, towards horizons that are ever more shrouded in mist” (C, 132)

-Teilhard's Mysticism: Seeing the Inner Face of Evolution by Kathleen Duffy

Sur fond noir/

View On Black

 

NB : j'ai changé artificiellement la date de mise en ligne de cette photo, pour la cohérence du "stream"

I changed artificially the date I posted this image, for a better coherence in the stream.

The University of Aarhus, which dates from 1931, is a unique and coherent university campus with consistent architecture, homogenous use of yellow brickwork and adaptation to the landscape. The university has won renown and praise as an integrated complex which unites the best aspects of functionalism with solid Danish traditions in form and materials.

 

The competition for the university was won by the architects Kay Fisker, C. F. Møller og Povl Stegmann in 1931. Stegman left the partnership in 1937, Fisker in 1942 and C. F. Møller Architects has been in charge of the continued architectural development and building design of the university until today.

 

The University of Aarhus, with its extensive park in central Aarhus, includes teaching rooms, offices, libraries, workshops and student accommodation. The university has a distinct homogeneous building style and utilises the natural contours of the landscape. The campus has emerged around a distinct moraine gorge and the buildings for the departments and faculties are placed on the slopes, from the main buildings alongside the ring road to the center of the city at Nørreport. All throughout the campus, the buildings are variations of the same clear-cut prismatic volume with pitched roofs, oriented orthogonally to form individual architectural clusters sharing the same vocabulary. The way the buildings emerge from the landscape makes them seem to grow from it, rather than being superimposed on the site.

 

The original scheme for the campus park was made by the famous Danish landscape architect C. Th. Sørensen. Until the death of C. Th. Sørensens in 1979 the development of the park areas were conducted in a close cooperation between C. Th. Sørensen, C. F. Møller and the local park authorities. Since 1979 C. F. Møller Architects - in cooperation with the staff at the university - has continued the intentions of the original scheme for the park, and today the park is a beautiful, green area and an immense contribution to both the university and the city in general.

 

In 2001, C. F. Møller Architects prepared a new masterplan for the long and short term development of the university. Although the university has been extended continuously for more than 75 years, the original masterplan and design principles have been maintained, and have proven a simple yet versatile tool to create a timeless and coherent architectural expression adaptable to changing programs. Today, the university is officially recognized as a Danish national architectural treasure and is internationally renowned as an excellent example of early modern university campus planning.

 

Testing, Testing, ... BANG!!!

  

Nondestructive testing

  

Nondestructive testing or Non-destructive testing (NDT) is a wide group of analysis techniques used in science and industry to evaluate the properties of a material, component or system without causing damage.[1] The terms Nondestructive examination (NDE), Nondestructive inspection (NDI), and Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) are also commonly used to describe this technology.[2] Because NDT does not permanently alter the article being inspected, it is a highly valuable technique that can save both money and time in product evaluation, troubleshooting, and research. Common NDT methods include ultrasonic, magnetic-particle, liquid penetrant, radiographic, remote visual inspection (RVI), eddy-current testing,[1] and low coherence interferometry.[3][4] NDT is commonly used in forensic engineering, mechanical engineering, petroleum engineering, electrical engineering, civil engineering, systems engineering, aeronautical engineering, medicine, and art.[1] Innovations in the field of nondestructive testing have had a profound impact on medical imaging, including on echocardiography, medical ultrasonography, and digital radiography.

  

Methods[edit]

 

NDT methods may rely upon use of electromagnetic radiation, sound, and inherent properties of materials to examine samples. This includes some kinds of microscopy to examine external surfaces in detail, although sample preparation techniques for metallography, optical microscopy and electron microscopy are generally destructive as the surfaces must be made smooth through polishing or the sample must be electron transparent in thickness. The inside of a sample can be examined with penetrating radiation, such as X-rays, neutrons or terahertz radiation. Sound waves are utilized in the case of ultrasonic testing. Contrast between a defect and the bulk of the sample may be enhanced for visual examination by the unaided eye by using liquids to penetrate fatigue cracks. One method (liquid penetrant testing) involves using dyes, fluorescent or non-fluorescent, in fluids for non-magnetic materials, usually metals. Another commonly used NDT method used on ferrous materials involves the application of fine iron particles (either liquid or dry dust) that are applied to a part while it is in an externally magnetized state (magnetic-particle testing). The particles will be attracted to leakage fields within the test object, and form on the objects surface. Magnetic particle testing can reveal surface & some sub-surface defects within the part. Thermoelectric effect (or use of the Seebeck effect) uses thermal properties of an alloy to quickly and easily characterize many alloys. The chemical test, or chemical spot test method, utilizes application of sensitive chemicals that can indicate the presence of individual alloying elements. Electrochemical methods, such as electrochemical fatigue crack sensors, utilize the tendency of metal structural material to oxidize readily in order to detect progressive damage.

 

Analyzing and documenting a non-destructive failure mode can also be accomplished using a high-speed camera recording continuously (movie-loop) until the failure is detected. Detecting the failure can be accomplished using a sound detector or stress gauge which produces a signal to trigger the high-speed camera. These high-speed cameras have advanced recording modes to capture some non-destructive failures.[5] After the failure the high-speed camera will stop recording. The capture images can be played back in slow motion showing precisely what happen before, during and after the non-destructive event, image by image.

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondestructive_testing

IMG_1392

An active fortress to this day, it is home to 29 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery.

 

**Precis of Reasons for Designation and Historical Development of The Citadel, Plymouth**

 

The Citadel at Plymouth is one of the most complete surviving examples of a bastioned artillery fortress in England, constructed between 1665 and 1675 on the site of an earlier Elizabethan fort (1592–98). Designed by Sir Bernard de Gomme for Charles II, it demonstrates an unusual irregular plan adapted to the site’s topography, with its substantial stone walls backed by earth ramparts. Its strategic placement on Plymouth Hoe protected the Cattewater anchorage and reflects the evolution of coastal defence systems from the Elizabethan period to the 20th century.

 

Much of the original fort’s lower elements were incorporated into the Citadel, including parts of the curtain wall and bastions. The fortification includes six bastions and one demi-bastion linked by curtain walls, with ramparts, ditches, outworks (such as ravelins and covered ways), and the Queen’s Battery. The main Baroque-style gateway, designed by an associate of Wren, survives and is rich in architectural detail. The site also retains several 17th-century internal buildings including the guardhouse, Great Store, and Governor’s and Lieutenant-Governor’s houses.

 

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the Citadel was adapted and upgraded in response to changing military requirements, including the construction of casemates, additional batteries, and traverses. The 1728 statue of George II is a notable feature. Major works in the 1890s included demolition of earlier elements and additions such as barracks and a canteen. During World War II, the Citadel served as the Coast Artillery Training Centre.

 

The monument offers an extensive physical and documentary record of evolving military architecture and coastal defence strategy. While many modern structures are excluded from the scheduling, the ground beneath remains protected. The Citadel’s historical significance is underscored by its architectural coherence, rarity, and association with pivotal national events, including the Glorious Revolution of 1688. It is a Scheduled Monument, with many buildings designated as Grade II Listed.

 

Scheduled Monument. Scheduling is the process of legally protecting nationally important archaeological sites—both above and below ground—such as burial mounds, standing stones, and monastic remains. A site is added to the Schedule if deemed of national significance by the Secretary of State and if scheduling is considered beneficial for its preservation.

 

The Royal Citadel Mid-17th Century Bastioned Artillery Defence..., Non Civil Parish - 1012943 | Historic England. historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1012943.

This is the "Soleri Bridge" on the Scottsdale Waterfront. This is just south of the Southwest corner of Scottsdale Road and Camelback Road. I had an opportunity to walk around Scottsdale Fashion Square and The Waterfront.

 

scottsdalepublicart.org/work/soleri-bridge-and-plaza/

"Scottsdale’s breathtaking Soleri Bridge and Plaza, by renowned artist, architect, and philosopher Paolo Soleri, is at once a pedestrian passage, solar calendar, and gathering place along the Scottsdale Waterfront. The public space in Old Town Scottsdale appeals to a diverse audience, ranging from casual Waterfront visitors and local residents to students, tourists, architects, and art lovers. By celebrating solar events, the signature bridge and plaza unify the past and the present. The site of the waterway, rich with historic undertones, mingles with modern cultures striving for coherence between humanity and nature.

The bridge is anchored by two 64-foot pylons and is 27 feet wide on the south side narrowing to 18 feet on the north. Situated at a true north axis, the bridge is intended to mark solar events produced by the sun’s shadow. The 6-inch gap between both sets of pylons allows the sun to create a shaft of light as the earth moves. Each solar noon—which can vary up to 40 minutes from 12 p.m. noon—light coming through the gap produces a shadow. The length of this shaft of light varies depending upon the time of year.

One of the most imaginative thinkers of our time, Paolo Soleri dedicated his life to addressing the ecological and social concerns raised by modern urban existence. Soleri’s career contained significant accomplishments in the field of architecture and urban planning. He conceived the idea of arcology: architecture with ecology. His seminal work of arcology—Arcosanti—continues under construction to this day, 50 years after its inception. Soleri’s design of the bridge and plaza encourages awareness of our connections to the sun and the natural world. Although designing bridges for 60 years, this was the first commissioned and completed bridge for the then 91-year old Soleri."

I recently uncovered a trippy little piece I wrote on constructive constructions for the creatives at ARUP:

 

Evolving Cities and Culture

 

Innovation is critical to economic growth, progress, and the fate of the planet. Yet, it seems so random. But patterns emerge in the aggregate, and planners and politicians may be able to promote innovation and growth despite the overall inscrutability of this complex system.

 

One emergent pattern, spanning centuries, is that the pace of innovation is perpetually accelerating, and it is exogenous to the economy. Rather, it is the combinatorial explosion of possible innovation-pairings that creates economic growth. And that is why cities are the crucible of innovation.

 

Geoffrey West of the Santa Fe Institute argues that cities are an autocatalytic attractor and amplifier of innovation. People are more innovative and productive, on average, when they live in a city because ideas can cross-pollinate more easily. Proximity promotes propinquity and the promiscuity of what Matt Ridley calls “ideas having sex”. This positive network effect drives another positive feedback loop - by attracting the best and the brightest to flock to the salon of mind, the memeplex of modernity.

 

Cities are a structural manifestation of the long arc of evolutionary indirection, whereby the vector of improvement has risen steadily up the ladder of abstractions from chemicals to genes to systems to networks. At each step, the pace of progress has leapt forward, making the prior vectors seem glacial in comparison – rather we now see the nature of DNA and even a neuron as a static variable in modern times. Now, it’s all about the ideas - the culture and the networks of humanity. We have moved from genetic to mimetic evolution, and much like the long-spanning neuron (which took us beyond nearest neighbor and broadcast signaling among cells) ushering the Cambrian explosion of differentiated and enormous body plans, the Internet brings long-spanning links between humans, engendering an explosion in idea space, straddling isolated pools of thought.

 

And it’s just beginning. In the next 10 years, four billion minds will come online for the first time to join this global conversation (via Starlink broadband satellites).

 

But why does this drive innovation and accelerating change? Start with Brian Arthur’s observation that all new technologies are combinations of technologies that already exist. Innovation does not occur in a vacuum; it is a combination of ideas from before. In any academic field, the advances today are built on a large edifice of history. This is the foundation of progress, something that was not so evident to the casual observer before the age of science. Science tuned the process parameters for innovation, and became the best method for a culture to learn.

 

From this conceptual base, come the origin of economic growth and accelerating technological change, as the combinatorial explosion of possible idea pairings grows exponentially as new ideas come into the mix (on the order of 2^n of possible groupings per Reed’s Law). It explains the innovative power of urbanization and networked globalization. And it explains why interdisciplinary ideas are so powerfully disruptive; it is like the differential immunity of epidemiology, whereby islands of cognitive isolation (e.g., academic disciplines) are vulnerable to disruptive memes hopping across, much like South America was to smallpox from Cortés and the Conquistadors. If disruption is what you seek, cognitive island-hopping is good place to start, mining the interstices between academic disciplines.

 

So what evidence do we have of accelerating technological change? At Future Ventures, we see it in the diversity and quality of the entrepreneurial ideas arriving each year across our global offices. Scientists do not slow their thinking during recessions.

 

For a good mental model of the pace of innovation, consider Moore’s Law in the abstract – the annual doubling of compute power or data storage. As Ray Kurzweil has plotted, the smooth pace of exponential progress spans from 1890 to today, across countless innovations, technology substrates, and human dramas — with most contributors completely unaware that they were fitting to a curve.

 

Moore’s Law is a primary driver of disruptive innovation – such as the iPod usurping the Sony Walkman franchise – and it drives not only IT and communications, but also now genomics, medical imaging and the life sciences in general. As Moore’s Law crosses critical thresholds, a formerly lab science of trial and error experimentation becomes a simulation science and the pace of progress accelerates dramatically, creating opportunities for new entrants in new industries. And so the industries impacted by the latest wave of tech entrepreneurs are more diverse, and an order of magnitude larger — from automobiles and rockets to energy and chemicals.

 

At the cutting edge of computational capture is biology; we are actively reengineering the information systems of biology and creating synthetic microbes whose DNA was manufactured from bare computer code and an organic chemistry printer. But what to build? So far, we largely copy large tracts of code from nature. But the question spans across all the complex systems that we might wish to build, from cities to designer microbes, to computer intelligence.

 

As these systems transcend human comprehension, will we continue to design them or will we increasingly evolve them? As we design for evolvability, the locus of learning shifts from the artifacts themselves to the process that created them. There is no mathematical shortcut for the decomposition of a neural network or genetic program, no way to "reverse evolve" with the ease that we can reverse engineer the artifacts of purposeful design. The beauty of compounding iterative algorithms (machine learning, evolution, fractals, organic growth, art) derives from their irreducibility.

 

And what about human social systems? The corporation is a complex system that seeks to perpetually innovate. Leadership in these complex organizations shifts from direction setting to a wisdom of crowds. And this “process learning” is a bit counterintuitive to some alpha leaders: cognitive diversity is more important than ability, disagreement is more important than consensus, voting policies and team size are more important than the coherence or comprehensibility of the decisions, and tuning the parameters of communication (frequency and fanout) is more important than charisma.

 

The same could be said for urban planning. How will cities be built and iterated upon? Who will make those decisions and how? We are just starting to see the shimmering refractions of the hive mind of human culture, and now we want to redesign the hives themselves to optimize the emergent complexity within. Perhaps the best we can do is set up the grand co-evolutionary dance and listen carefully for the sociobiology of supra-human sentience.

 

-----------

I first brainstormed about reinventing construction with Astro Teller and Sebastian Thrun when they were forming Google X and looking for the largest markets in the world that look ripe for disruption from advancing information technology and machine learning. The $10 trillion spent each year on buildings certainly qualified, and the global construction industry is growing from 13% of the entire global economy to 15% in 2020. Helix.re became the first Google X spinout, taking a data and software-driven approach to building design and optimization.

 

Title

 

Kitty’s Life Through the Lens

 

Subtitle

 

Imagining My Female Self Across a Lifetime Using AI and Photographic Influence

 

⸻

 

Abstract

 

I uploaded photographs of my male self at different ages to explore how I might look as a female over time. My goal was to create realistic, emotionally plausible female versions of myself—not idealised or flattered. I used generative AI as a visual tool, guided by the work of photographers Rankin and British portraitist Mark Wilkinson. To support the process, I created a panel of reviewers: a physiognomist, a plastic surgeon, a gender-affirming medical specialist, an imagined world-class image prompt engineer, and myself as subject and creative director. This project remains ongoing.

 

Full Version

 

The purpose of this project has always been to explore a simple but personal question: *What would I have looked like if I’d been born female?* I wanted something that felt emotionally honest and visually plausible—something rooted in realism, not fantasy or flattery.

 

#### **Origins and Intent**

 

I began by uploading photographs of myself at different ages, including a central reference at 40. These served as starting points for generating female portraits that felt true to the age, expression, and character captured in the originals. The idea was not to imagine an idealised or perfected version of myself, but rather a credible female counterpart at various stages of life. This female version—whom I call *Kitty*—emerged as a coherent and evolving presence through a series of photographic interpretations.

 

#### **Method and Tools**

 

To create the images, I used generative AI as a tool, refining its output through careful, iterative prompt writing. I was especially attentive to small but telling visual features: freckles, dimples, blue-grey eyes, the slight gap between the front teeth. These features, drawn from my own appearance, were important in grounding Kitty in visual truth.

 

Over time, I found that one instruction helped me stay on track: *"Check with me before proceeding."* It was a simple phrase that allowed me to retain control, stay collaborative with the technology, and reject anything that felt overly stylised or artificial.

 

#### **Photographic Influence**

 

Two photographers strongly shaped the direction of this project. The first was **Rankin**, whose writing on the psychological dimensions of portraiture helped clarify what makes an image resonate as emotionally truthful. The second was **Mark Wilkinson**, a British photographer whose portraits—especially those of his model Imogen—exemplified the softness, realism, and tonal integrity I wanted in my own work.

 

Rather than attempting to imitate either style directly, I allowed their sensibilities to guide decisions around lighting, framing, texture, and expression. Wilkinson's square-format portraits with shallow depth of field, for example, became a visual reference point for Kitty at 40.

 

#### **The Evaluation Panel**

 

To test and refine each image, I assembled an imaginary but rigorous panel of evaluators:

 

1. A **physiognomist**, to check for facial coherence and believability

2. A **plastic surgeon**, to assess proportion and anatomical realism

3. A **gender-affirming medical specialist**, to evaluate credibility across age and gender markers

4. A fictional **world-class image prompt engineer**, to help improve technical specificity

5. **Myself**, as both subject and creative director

6. Two **accomplished creative photographers**, whose judgment grounded the images in visual taste and authenticity

 

Each image was informally reviewed from these perspectives, allowing me to spot and correct issues like over-symmetry, expression mismatch, poor lighting choices, or features that didn’t quite reflect the intended age.

 

#### **The Process of Refinement**

 

Several common problems emerged during the process. Cropping was often too tight; clothing could look flat or digitally overworked; and monochrome outputs tended to add unintended age. I addressed these issues by modifying prompts, referencing specific materials (e.g. Harris tweed coats), or adding physical context (windblown dunes, natural shadows).

 

In one representative image—Kitty at 40 standing in windswept dunes—I ensured the coat had visual weight and texture, the collar framed her jawline, and a silver starfish ring (inspired by Dürer) subtly grounded her hands in realism. That portrait was later extended, reworked in monochrome, and reviewed for consistency across age and format.

 

#### **A Life in Portraits**

 

This project isn’t only about one moment in time. It’s part of a wider exploration of *Kitty’s life through the lens*—portraits imagined at ten-year intervals or more, allowing me to visualise a kind of parallel life. Whether at 18, 28, 40 or 60, each image is built with the same goal in mind: to imagine who I might have been, realistically and thoughtfully.

 

#### **Still Evolving**

 

The project remains a work in progress. I’m still adjusting visual language, experimenting with subtle expressions (like amusement or love), and learning to avoid the uncanny fingerprints of AI. Some images still feel “off” despite being technically correct. Others—usually the ones that need no explanation—feel immediately right.

 

I’m still exploring. Still developing. Still refining the approach.

 

An impersonal Moloch, devouring the lives and land of his people. Magnus Zeller - The Hitler State, 1937. Märkisches Museum, Berlin.

In: TOYNBEE, Arnold (1972). A Study of History. Weathervane Books, New York. ISBN 0-117-179415

---

The 'Führer State'

 

The staging of mass rallies of the Nazi Party and visits of state provided dazzling images of an orderly and consensual dictatorship. The regime utilized every means of technological civilization to convey the glossy appearance of mutual concurrence between »Führer« and »national community« as well as the feeling of greatness and coherence. Hidden behind the façade of a united »Führer will« were infighting about areas of responsibility and a growing breakdown of clear structures. The unchecked power dynamics and internal and external political radicalization fostered this collapse of order. At the same time this gave Hitler the opportunity to assert his will to wage war and to annihilate all alien elements.

---

The Märkisches Museum (Marcher Museum; originally Märkisches Provinzial-Museum, i.e. Museum of the Province of the March [of Brandenburg]) is a museum in Mitte, Berlin. Founded in 1874 as the museum of the city of Berlin and its political region, the March of Brandenburg, it occupies a building on the northern edge of Köllnischer Park, facing the Spree, which was designed by Ludwig Hoffmann and completed in 1908. It is now the main facility of the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, Landesmuseum für Kultur und Geschichte Berlins, the City of Berlin museum foundation, which also operates four other sites.

 

In the second half of the 19th century, Berlin grew very rapidly. The foundation stone of a new, much larger town hall, the Rotes Rathaus, was laid in 1861. The changes provoked interest amongst the bourgeoisie in the city's past and in preserving what had not already been lost. The Verein für die Geschichte Berlins (Association for the history of Berlin) was founded. It included early photographers such as Friedrich Albert Schwartz who began to document the changes to the city, assembling one of the first systematic photographic portraits of a city and its architecture. Beginning in the 1860s, they urged the foundation of a regional history museum. Ernst Friedel, a judge and antiquarian who had personally collected prehistoric and historic objects and paintings from Brandenburg for this purpose, persuaded the Magistrat, the executive council of Berlin, to form a new department of "Collections" and Friedel was appointed to head it together with the existing library and archive. On 9 October 1874 with the city's official acceptance of his plan, the Märkisches Provinzialmuseum (Provincial museum of the March) was founded. This was the first museum in Berlin to be completely independent of the Prussian crown. It had a budget of only 2,000 Goldmarks a year for purchases, and was therefore dependent from the start on donations from foundations and individuals. The Emperor later contributed a small fund for the purchase of photographs of the city.

 

In March 1875, Friedel put out a call for the donation or loan of objects of historical or scientific interest, which was so successful that the collection had to move late that year from the old town hall to the Palais Podewils, a Baroque residence in Klosterstraße, and in 1880 to the former town hall of Cölln. At that time it had over 29,500 objects. In addition, Berlin in the "Gründerzeit" was full of demolitions and excavations, which yielded both fragments of old buildings and prehistoric and medieval finds. The collection was crowded and in particular the large pieces taken from churches could not be properly displayed. However, the inventory was not without its uses: an executioner's axe from the collection was used on 16 August 1878 to behead Max Hödel after his attempted assassination of Emperor Wilhelm I.

 

At the urging of Friedel, a competition was held in 1892 for a building to house the collection, but the results were disappointing. 76 entries were received, but the winning design, by Wilhelm Möller, proved on examination to be both unsuitable and too expensive, and the architect had died, so the project was shelved.

 

Creating a new building for the museum was the first large task for Ludwig Hoffmann after his appointment in 1896 as Stadtbaurat (chief of construction) for the city of Berlin. His first sketches date to that year; the plans were accepted the following year, and construction began in 1899 and was completed in 1907. It was not ready for occupation until 1908,[ 12 years after the start of the project. Meanwhile, in 1899, in advance of the demolition of the Cölln town hall, some of the collection had been placed in storage and some shown in temporary quarters on the first floor of one of the city's covered markets, until 1904.

 

Hoffmann designed the museum as a complex of six differing buildings which echo Brandenburg brick architecture of periods from the Gothic to the Renaissance in a "historical collage", in order to reflect the contents of the museum and evoke the "atmosphere" of various times and types of building. Part of his reasoning was that Berlin no longer had much of an old centre. The buildings are grouped around two courtyards and based on historic details which he had studied and sketched throughout the region; his "quotations" are accurate copies, but there is disagreement as to the originals, as in a façade which has been said to be based on the town hall at Tangermünde or on St. Catherine's Church in Brandenburg an der Havel, and the hip-roofed tower, 53 metres (174 ft) high, based on the bergfried (keep) of the Bishop's Castle in Wittstock or on the cathedral of Ratzeburg. Hoffmann also modified the layout of Köllnischer Park to make an attractive setting for the museum.

 

The interior of the museum also seeks to evoke the atmosphere of different historical settings (as was then the fashion in provincial museums in Germany). For example, the low vaulted ceilings and roughly plastered walls on the ground floor were intended to suggest great age and housed the displays on prehistory, where the display cases for funerary urns and flint axes were rough in form; the setting for the medieval altars and sculptures was a vaulted Gothic chapel echoing medieval church interiors; weapons were shown in a room with thick columns, recalling a monastery; and rococo porcelain and snuffboxes were displayed in elegant vitrines in a light and airy room on the second floor. There were a total of about 50 exhibition galleries. The visitor was led repeatedly back to the central vaulted Great Hall.

 

A week before the opening on 10 June 1908, Emperor Wilhelm II and Empress Auguste Viktoria toured the exhibits for two hours. The museum is now judged to be amongst Hoffmann's most important works, and also one of the most outstanding German museum buildings (Wikipedia).

Messier 53, M53, NGC 5024, Globular Cluster in Coma Berenices, REPROCESSED

 

M53 (NGC 5024) is a well organized globular cluster in Coma Berenices, discovered in 1775 by German astronomer Johann Bode, then independently discovered by Messier in 1777, and described as a "nebula". William Herschel was the first to resolve it into stars using a larger telescope. He documented it as, "...one of the most beautiful objects I remember to have seen in the heavens." With angular diameter of 13 arcmin, and integrated apparent magnitude of 8.3 (V), it is easily observed in small telescopes as an oval nebulosity, but requires larger apertures for resolution. Its brightest stars are listed as magnitude 13.8, and are predominantly population II red giants. Its lowest metallicity stars indicate the cluster started forming around 12.67 billion years ago. From its estimated mass of 826,000 solar, we can approximate its tidal diameter of nearly 1,600 light years, and well over a million member stars. In its central region, the stars are on average only 0.3 light years apart. The cluster lies at a heliocentric distance of 58,000 ly, and is approaching us at 63 km/s. Situated within the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal galaxy stellar stream, about 60,000 ly above the Galactic plane, it is one of the more outlying globular clusters. Considering its well preserved structural coherence during a turbulent history, it is not unreasonable to hypothesize the presence of a central black hole population, or a dense subhalo envelope of dark matter. M53 has a globular cluster companion, the disorganized cluster NGC 5053, which also originated in the Sagittarius Dwarf. The two are gravitationally bound and share a common stellar envelope and a tidal bridge. This binary globular cluster system is so far unique in the Milky Way.

 

Image details:

-TSAPO100Q astrograph, Sigma APO 1.4x tele-extender, 100 x 812mm

-Canon 600D camera, Astronomik CLS-CCD filter,

-Celestron AVX mount, Orion 60mm F/4 SSAGpro autoguider,

-13 x 240 second exposures, iso 1600,

-Software: PHD2, DSS, XnView, StarNet++ V2, StarTools v 1.3 and 1.7.

 

St Pancras, Ipswich, Suffolk

 

Until its clearance in the post-war years, the area spreading eastwards of Ipswich town centre was a vast slum. The Rope Walk area was redeveloped and is now home to Suffolk New College and parts of the University. The housing in the Cox Lane area became a car park. I met a man a few years ago who always tries to park his car on the site of the house where he grew up.

 

Two grand red brick churches survive as islands. The Anglican St Michael is now a burnt out shell. It was declared redundant in the 1990s, and in truth it is hard to see how it can ever have been needed as more than a triumphalist gesture, with the parish church of St Helen only a hundred yards or so away. It was destroyed by fire in March 2011. Still standing tall is George Goldie's 1861 Catholic church of St Pancras. Seen from across the car park, the only clue that it was once tightly surrounded by poor people's houses is that there are no windows in the wall of the north aisle. As at Brighton's St Bartholomew, this great ship was designed to sail above roof tops.

 

St Pancras looks like a bit dropped off, and that is exactly what it is. Goldie's commission was for the huge, recently demolished School of Jesus and Mary on the campus of the Woodbridge Road church of St Mary, and this town centre church in the same style. St Pancras was intended to be the start of a church of cathedral scale, of which the surviving church was but the chancel. At the time, Ipswich was in the Diocese of Northampton. Today, it is in the Diocese of East Anglia, with a great stone Gothic cathedral at Norwich. But the Norwich cathedral, built as the church of St John the Baptist, and the equally grand Our Lady and the English Martyrs in Cambridge, were both begun a good thirty years after St Pancras. If it had ever been finished, St Pancras would have been one of the biggest red brick churches in England.

 

The north elevation is stark, that on the south side rather more comfy, with good modern glass in the south aisle windows. The most impressive view is from the west, where the vast rose window fills in what would have been the top of the chancel arch. Here, where the 1970s parish hall stands, would have been the crossing tower, with transepts either side. Looking further west, the nave would have stretched, and here is perhaps one of the reasons why St Pancras the great was never built. Immediately to the west of the church, across Cox lane, stands the fortress-like Christ Church. Although the present building post-dates St Pancras, there has been a Congregationalist church on the site for more than three hundred years, and the planned Catholic church would have stretched in front of it. Given the ecclesiastical politics of the late 19th century, one can't imagine them giving up the site very lightly.

 

The Catholic presence in Ipswich had been re-established in the 1790s, at the time of the French Revolution, by a refugee Priest, Louis Simon. He said Mass in the home of a rich local lady Margaret Wood, and then with her help established a mission church near the Woodbridge Road barracks. This church, St Anthony, formed the transepts of the building that still survives as the parish hall of the 1960 St Mary.

 

After the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy in England in 1850, which you can read about on the entry for St Mary, the plan was to create a town centre profile for the Church, and this was why Goldie was commissioned to build St Pancras. However, anti-Catholic feeling was rather stronger than it had been seventy years previously. On a night in November 1862, the protestant ministers of the town whipped up such a state of hysteria that angry mobs ran through Ipswich smashing windows of Catholic churches, homes and businesses.

 

Although the exterior of this building is rather severe, the inside is a delight, quite the loveliest Victorian interior in Ipswich. It doesn't have the gravitas of St Mary le Tower, or the mystery of St Bartholomew, but it is a cascade of red and white brick banding, cast-iron pillars and wall tiling. Along with the statues and the candles and the smell of incense, it is everything a 19th century town centre church should be.

 

The post-Vatican II re-ordering of the sanctuary has not destroyed its coherence (or, indeed, the traditionalist flavour of the liturgy here). Above the altar, Christ stands in majesty, flanked by the four evangelists. The tabernacle is set curiously off-centre to the south.

 

Exposed as St Pancras is in comparison with many town centre churches, it is always full of light, and this light takes on the resonances of some good glass. The west window was filled with a design depicting the descent of the Holy Spirit as recently as 2001, by the Danielle Hopkinson studio. As a point of interest, they also did the glass in my front door. This is unfortunately obscured by a massive organ (the west window, not my front door). Below the west gallery is the baptistery, one of Ipswich's busiest, and just some of the church's collection of devotional statues. In the south aisle are three sets of triple lancets. The older glass in the most easterly depicts St Thomas, St Andrew and St John. The splendid 1974 glass by John Lawson in the other two sets depicts St Martin de Porres and St Francis of Assisi.

 

Not many people live in the parish itself, but as the busiest town centre church in Ipswich St Pancras continues to have a major role to play. Its Masses attract people from far and wide, including many from the town's sizeable minority communities. Perhaps this is because it does have such a traditionalist flavour, but also perhaps because of the work of the tireless and charismatic Parish Priest, Father 'Sam' Leeder. 'He's been here for forty years, and is a familiar character in the town centre, wandering the streets and talking to local traders, as well as being the cornerstone of the town's scouts. Ipswich would be diminished without him.

Salisbury Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is an Anglican cathedral in the city of Salisbury, England. The cathedral is regarded as one of the leading examples of Early English Gothic design. Built over a relatively short period, some 38 years between 1220 and 1258, it has a unity and coherence that is unusual in medieval English cathedrals. The tower and spire were completed by 1330. The cathedral's spire, at 404 feet (123 m), is the tallest in England.

 

The original cathedral in the district was located at Old Sarum, about 2 miles (3.2 km) north of the present city. In 1197 bishop Herbert Poore determined on a relocation but this was not taken forward until the episcopate of his brother, Richard Poore in the early 13th century. Foundation stones for the new building were laid on 28 April 1220 by the Earl and Countess of Salisbury. By 1258 the nave, transepts and choir were complete. The only major additions were the cloisters, added 1240, the chapter house in 1263, and the tower and spire, which was constructed by 1330. At its completion it was the third highest in England, but the collapse of those at Lincoln Cathedral and Old St Paul's Cathedral in the 16th century saw Salisbury become England's tallest.

 

The cathedral close is Britain's largest, and has many buildings of architectural and/or historical significance. Pevsner describes it as "the most beautiful of England's closes". The cathedral contains a clock which is among the oldest working examples in the world. It also holds one of the four surviving original copies of Magna Carta. In 2008, the cathedral celebrated the 750th anniversary of its consecration. In 2023, the completion of a programme of external restoration begun in 1985 saw the removal of scaffolding that had stood around the building for some 37 years.

 

Salisbury became the seat of a bishop in 1075. At the time, the city was at the now-abandoned site of Old Sarum, on a hill about 2 miles (3.2 km) north of the present-day cathedral. Old Sarum Cathedral was built in the years after and was consecrated in 1092.

 

In 1197, bishop Herbert Poore sought permission to re-site the cathedral, possibly due to deteriorating relations between the clergy and the military at Old Sarum. Permission was granted but the move was delayed repeatedly until the tenure of his successor and brother Richard Poore. A legend tells that Bishop Poore shot an arrow in the direction he would build the cathedral; the arrow hit a deer, which died in the place where Salisbury Cathedral is now.

 

Construction was paid for by donations, principally from the canons and vicars of southeast England, who were asked to contribute a fixed annual sum until the building was completed The foundation stones were laid on 28 April 1220 by William Longespée, 3rd Earl of Salisbury, and by Ela of Salisbury, 3rd Countess of Salisbury. Much of the freestone for the cathedral came from the Teffont Evias Quarry. As a result of the high water table on the new site, the cathedral was built on foundations only 4 feet (1.2 m) deep. By 1258, the nave, transepts, and choir were complete. As a result of being mostly built in only 38 years, Salisbury has by far the most consistent architectural style of any medieval English cathedral. The style used is known as Early English Gothic or Lancet Gothic, the latter referring to the use of lancet windows which are not divided by tracery.

 

The only major sections begun later were the cloisters, added in 1240, the chapter house in 1263, the tower and spire, which at 404 feet (123 m) dominated the skyline from 1330. In total, 70,000 tons of stone, 3,000 tons of timber and 450 tons of lead were used in the construction of the cathedral. Upon completion, it had the highest masonry spire in England and the third highest overall, after Lincoln and St Paul's. The collapse of the latter two spires in the mid-16th century left Salisbury's as the highest overall.[citation needed]

 

In the 17th century, Christopher Wren designed restoration measures to strengthen the central pillars, which by then had visibly deformed under the weight of the tower and spire. Significant changes to the cathedral were made by the architect James Wyatt in 1790, including the replacement of the original rood screen and demolition of a bell tower which stood about 320 feet (98 m) northwest of the main building.

 

__________________________________________

Outlining a Theory of General Creativity . .

. . on a 'Pataphysical projectory

 

Entropy ≥ Memory ● Creativity ²

__________________________________________

 

- The allεgory oƒ Phılo▲Sophy . . (1)

- The allεgory oƒ Phılo▲Sophy . . (2)

 

Study of the day, The allεgory oƒ Phılo▲Sophy . . (3) :

 

Le moment est venu de révéler les immanences et les transcendances de notre monde. Mais comment concilier la profonde cohérence des agencements de Sophy avec la large clairvoyance des inventaires de Philo ? Quel Verbe pour dire la reliance harmonieuse de leurs émerveillements respectifs ?

 

Philo et Sophy d’achever leur exploration par celle de nos mots, pour retenir les plus justes, conjuguer les plus vrais, néologir les plus beaux. Notre langage se révèle malheureusement nébuleux, maladroitement confus, fâcheusement ambigu, tragiquement ambivalent, cruellement disjonctif.

 

Dotés d’une infaillible sagesse, dénués du moindre préjugé, partant vers d’autres mondes, ils nous donnent les clés pour pénétrer le nôtre. Ces dialemmes redresseront-ils nos filtres ? Refondront-ils nos index ? Sous quelles formes nos affects et nos percepts émergeront-ils de nos plans de résilience ?

 

Pensons-classons ces dialemmes dans un réseau sémantique performatif. Dé(re)construisons les adversaires métaphysiques, les opposés subjectifs, les disjonctions manichéennes, les dialogiques mécanistes, les exclusions théologiques, les dialectiques récurrentes. Inventons l’idiome d’un nouveau rhizome ; soyons notre dialemmatique !

 

Deux petits princes dotés d’une infaillible sagesse, deux petits démons dénués du moindre préjugé, désormais raisonnent en chacun de nous. On ne peut révéler deux fois le même secret ? Le moment est venu d’en concevoir ensemble de nouveaux, comme autant d’intimes extimités !

__________________________________________

 

Time is come to reveal us immanences and transcendences of our world. But how to conciliate the deep consistency of Sophy’s arrangements with the wide perspicacity of Philo’s inventories ? Which Word to say the harmonious reliance of their respective wonders?

 

Philo and Sophy complete their exploration by our words, to retain the more right, to conjugate the truest, to neologize the nicest. Unfortunately our language shows itself nebulous, sadly confused, awkwardly ambiguous, tragically ambivalent, cruelly disjunctive.

 

Endowed of an infallible wisdom, devoid of any prejudice, going away to other worlds, they give us the keys to penetrate our own. Will these dialemmas rectify our filters ? Will they revise our index ? Through what forms our affects and our percepts will emerge from our planes of resilience ?

 

Let us think-classify these dialemmas in a performative semantic network. Let us dis(re)construct the metaphysical enemies, the subjective opponents, the manichean disjunctions, the mechanist dialogics, the theogical exclusions, the recurrent dialectics. Let us invent the idiom of a new rhizome ; let us be our dialemmatics !

 

Two little princes endowed of an infallible wisdom, two small demons devoid of any prejudice, are now reasonning in each one of us. One can not reveal the same secret twice ? Time is come to create new ones together, as so many intimate extimities !

__________________________________________

 

El momento ha llegado de revelar las inmanencias y las trascendencias de nuestro mundo. Pero ¿ cómo conciliar la profunda coherencia de las disposiciones de Sophy con la vasta clarividencia de los inventarios de Philo ? ¿ Qué Verbo para decir la relianza armoniosa de sus respectivos asombros ?

 

Philo y Sophy completan su exploración por medio de nuestras palabras, para retener las más justas, conjugar las más verdaderas, neologizar las más bellas. Desgraciadamente nuestro lenguaje se revela nebuloso, tristemente confuso, torpemente ambiguo, trágicamente ambivalente, cruelmente disyuntivo.

 

Dotados de una infalible sabiduría, desprovistos del menor prejuicio, partiendo hacia otros mundos, nos dan las claves para penetrar el nuestro. ¿ Rectificarán estos dialemas nuestros filtros ? ¿ Reformarán nuestros índices ? ¿ Bajo qué formas nuestros afectos y percepciones emergerán de nuestros planos de resiliencia ?

 

Pensemos-clasifiquemos estos dialemas en una red semántica performativa. De(re)construyamos los adversarios metafísicos, los opuestos subjetivos, las disyunciones maniqueas, los dialógicos mecanistas, las exclusiones teológicas, las dialécticas recurrentes. Inventemos el idioma de un nuevo rizoma ; ¡ seamos nuestra dialemática !

 

Dos pequeños príncipes dotados de una infalible sabiduría, dos pequeños demonios desprovistos del menor prejuicio, razonan ahora en cada uno de nosotros. ¿ No se puede revelar dos veces el mismo secreto ? ¡ Ha llegado el momento de concebir algunos nuevos, como tantas íntimas extimidades !

  

spanish translation by Alicia Pallas alias Alificacion

 

__________________________________________

| . rectO-persO . | . E ≥ m.C² . | . co~errAnce . | . TiLt . |

Testing, Testing, ... BANG!!!

  

Nondestructive testing

  

Nondestructive testing or Non-destructive testing (NDT) is a wide group of analysis techniques used in science and industry to evaluate the properties of a material, component or system without causing damage.[1] The terms Nondestructive examination (NDE), Nondestructive inspection (NDI), and Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) are also commonly used to describe this technology.[2] Because NDT does not permanently alter the article being inspected, it is a highly valuable technique that can save both money and time in product evaluation, troubleshooting, and research. Common NDT methods include ultrasonic, magnetic-particle, liquid penetrant, radiographic, remote visual inspection (RVI), eddy-current testing,[1] and low coherence interferometry.[3][4] NDT is commonly used in forensic engineering, mechanical engineering, petroleum engineering, electrical engineering, civil engineering, systems engineering, aeronautical engineering, medicine, and art.[1] Innovations in the field of nondestructive testing have had a profound impact on medical imaging, including on echocardiography, medical ultrasonography, and digital radiography.

  

Methods[edit]

 

NDT methods may rely upon use of electromagnetic radiation, sound, and inherent properties of materials to examine samples. This includes some kinds of microscopy to examine external surfaces in detail, although sample preparation techniques for metallography, optical microscopy and electron microscopy are generally destructive as the surfaces must be made smooth through polishing or the sample must be electron transparent in thickness. The inside of a sample can be examined with penetrating radiation, such as X-rays, neutrons or terahertz radiation. Sound waves are utilized in the case of ultrasonic testing. Contrast between a defect and the bulk of the sample may be enhanced for visual examination by the unaided eye by using liquids to penetrate fatigue cracks. One method (liquid penetrant testing) involves using dyes, fluorescent or non-fluorescent, in fluids for non-magnetic materials, usually metals. Another commonly used NDT method used on ferrous materials involves the application of fine iron particles (either liquid or dry dust) that are applied to a part while it is in an externally magnetized state (magnetic-particle testing). The particles will be attracted to leakage fields within the test object, and form on the objects surface. Magnetic particle testing can reveal surface & some sub-surface defects within the part. Thermoelectric effect (or use of the Seebeck effect) uses thermal properties of an alloy to quickly and easily characterize many alloys. The chemical test, or chemical spot test method, utilizes application of sensitive chemicals that can indicate the presence of individual alloying elements. Electrochemical methods, such as electrochemical fatigue crack sensors, utilize the tendency of metal structural material to oxidize readily in order to detect progressive damage.

 

Analyzing and documenting a non-destructive failure mode can also be accomplished using a high-speed camera recording continuously (movie-loop) until the failure is detected. Detecting the failure can be accomplished using a sound detector or stress gauge which produces a signal to trigger the high-speed camera. These high-speed cameras have advanced recording modes to capture some non-destructive failures.[5] After the failure the high-speed camera will stop recording. The capture images can be played back in slow motion showing precisely what happen before, during and after the non-destructive event, image by image.

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondestructive_testing

Testing, Testing, ... BANG!!!

  

Nondestructive testing

  

Nondestructive testing or Non-destructive testing (NDT) is a wide group of analysis techniques used in science and industry to evaluate the properties of a material, component or system without causing damage.[1] The terms Nondestructive examination (NDE), Nondestructive inspection (NDI), and Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) are also commonly used to describe this technology.[2] Because NDT does not permanently alter the article being inspected, it is a highly valuable technique that can save both money and time in product evaluation, troubleshooting, and research. Common NDT methods include ultrasonic, magnetic-particle, liquid penetrant, radiographic, remote visual inspection (RVI), eddy-current testing,[1] and low coherence interferometry.[3][4] NDT is commonly used in forensic engineering, mechanical engineering, petroleum engineering, electrical engineering, civil engineering, systems engineering, aeronautical engineering, medicine, and art.[1] Innovations in the field of nondestructive testing have had a profound impact on medical imaging, including on echocardiography, medical ultrasonography, and digital radiography.

  

Methods[edit]

 

NDT methods may rely upon use of electromagnetic radiation, sound, and inherent properties of materials to examine samples. This includes some kinds of microscopy to examine external surfaces in detail, although sample preparation techniques for metallography, optical microscopy and electron microscopy are generally destructive as the surfaces must be made smooth through polishing or the sample must be electron transparent in thickness. The inside of a sample can be examined with penetrating radiation, such as X-rays, neutrons or terahertz radiation. Sound waves are utilized in the case of ultrasonic testing. Contrast between a defect and the bulk of the sample may be enhanced for visual examination by the unaided eye by using liquids to penetrate fatigue cracks. One method (liquid penetrant testing) involves using dyes, fluorescent or non-fluorescent, in fluids for non-magnetic materials, usually metals. Another commonly used NDT method used on ferrous materials involves the application of fine iron particles (either liquid or dry dust) that are applied to a part while it is in an externally magnetized state (magnetic-particle testing). The particles will be attracted to leakage fields within the test object, and form on the objects surface. Magnetic particle testing can reveal surface & some sub-surface defects within the part. Thermoelectric effect (or use of the Seebeck effect) uses thermal properties of an alloy to quickly and easily characterize many alloys. The chemical test, or chemical spot test method, utilizes application of sensitive chemicals that can indicate the presence of individual alloying elements. Electrochemical methods, such as electrochemical fatigue crack sensors, utilize the tendency of metal structural material to oxidize readily in order to detect progressive damage.

 

Analyzing and documenting a non-destructive failure mode can also be accomplished using a high-speed camera recording continuously (movie-loop) until the failure is detected. Detecting the failure can be accomplished using a sound detector or stress gauge which produces a signal to trigger the high-speed camera. These high-speed cameras have advanced recording modes to capture some non-destructive failures.[5] After the failure the high-speed camera will stop recording. The capture images can be played back in slow motion showing precisely what happen before, during and after the non-destructive event, image by image.

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondestructive_testing

Student residences 1936

 

The University of Aarhus, which dates from 1931, is a unique and coherent university campus with consistent architecture, homogenous use of yellow brickwork and adaptation to the landscape. The university has won renown and praise as an integrated complex which unites the best aspects of functionalism with solid Danish traditions in form and materials.

 

The competition for the university was won by the architects Kay Fisker, C. F. Møller og Povl Stegmann in 1931. Stegman left the partnership in 1937, Fisker in 1942 and C. F. Møller Architects has been in charge of the continued architectural development and building design of the university until today.

 

The University of Aarhus, with its extensive park in central Aarhus, includes teaching rooms, offices, libraries, workshops and student accommodation. The university has a distinct homogeneous building style and utilises the natural contours of the landscape. The campus has emerged around a distinct moraine gorge and the buildings for the departments and faculties are placed on the slopes, from the main buildings alongside the ring road to the center of the city at Nørreport. All throughout the campus, the buildings are variations of the same clear-cut prismatic volume with pitched roofs, oriented orthogonally to form individual architectural clusters sharing the same vocabulary. The way the buildings emerge from the landscape makes them seem to grow from it, rather than being superimposed on the site.

 

The original scheme for the campus park was made by the famous Danish landscape architect C. Th. Sørensen. Until the death of C. Th. Sørensens in 1979 the development of the park areas were conducted in a close cooperation between C. Th. Sørensen, C. F. Møller and the local park authorities. Since 1979 C. F. Møller Architects - in cooperation with the staff at the university - has continued the intentions of the original scheme for the park, and today the park is a beautiful, green area and an immense contribution to both the university and the city in general.

 

In 2001, C. F. Møller Architects prepared a new masterplan for the long and short term development of the university. Although the university has been extended continuously for more than 75 years, the original masterplan and design principles have been maintained, and have proven a simple yet versatile tool to create a timeless and coherent architectural expression adaptable to changing programs. Today, the university is officially recognized as a Danish national architectural treasure and is internationally renowned as an excellent example of early modern university campus planning.

 

Title

 

Kitty’s Life Through the Lens

 

Subtitle

 

Imagining My Female Self Across a Lifetime Using AI and Photographic Influence

 

⸻

 

Abstract

 

I uploaded photographs of my male self at different ages to explore how I might look as a female over time. My goal was to create realistic, emotionally plausible female versions of myself—not idealised or flattered. I used generative AI as a visual tool, guided by the work of photographers Rankin and British portraitist Mark Wilkinson. To support the process, I created a panel of reviewers: a physiognomist, a plastic surgeon, a gender-affirming medical specialist, an imagined world-class image prompt engineer, and myself as subject and creative director. This project remains ongoing.

 

Full Version

 

The purpose of this project has always been to explore a simple but personal question: *What would I have looked like if I’d been born female?* I wanted something that felt emotionally honest and visually plausible—something rooted in realism, not fantasy or flattery.

 

#### **Origins and Intent**

 

I began by uploading photographs of myself at different ages, including a central reference at 40. These served as starting points for generating female portraits that felt true to the age, expression, and character captured in the originals. The idea was not to imagine an idealised or perfected version of myself, but rather a credible female counterpart at various stages of life. This female version—whom I call *Kitty*—emerged as a coherent and evolving presence through a series of photographic interpretations.

 

#### **Method and Tools**

 

To create the images, I used generative AI as a tool, refining its output through careful, iterative prompt writing. I was especially attentive to small but telling visual features: freckles, dimples, blue-grey eyes, the slight gap between the front teeth. These features, drawn from my own appearance, were important in grounding Kitty in visual truth.

 

Over time, I found that one instruction helped me stay on track: *"Check with me before proceeding."* It was a simple phrase that allowed me to retain control, stay collaborative with the technology, and reject anything that felt overly stylised or artificial.

 

#### **Photographic Influence**

 

Two photographers strongly shaped the direction of this project. The first was **Rankin**, whose writing on the psychological dimensions of portraiture helped clarify what makes an image resonate as emotionally truthful. The second was **Mark Wilkinson**, a British photographer whose portraits—especially those of his model Imogen—exemplified the softness, realism, and tonal integrity I wanted in my own work.

 

Rather than attempting to imitate either style directly, I allowed their sensibilities to guide decisions around lighting, framing, texture, and expression. Wilkinson's square-format portraits with shallow depth of field, for example, became a visual reference point for Kitty at 40.

 

#### **The Evaluation Panel**

 

To test and refine each image, I assembled an imaginary but rigorous panel of evaluators:

 

1. A **physiognomist**, to check for facial coherence and believability

2. A **plastic surgeon**, to assess proportion and anatomical realism

3. A **gender-affirming medical specialist**, to evaluate credibility across age and gender markers

4. A fictional **world-class image prompt engineer**, to help improve technical specificity

5. **Myself**, as both subject and creative director

6. Two **accomplished creative photographers**, whose judgment grounded the images in visual taste and authenticity

 

Each image was informally reviewed from these perspectives, allowing me to spot and correct issues like over-symmetry, expression mismatch, poor lighting choices, or features that didn’t quite reflect the intended age.

 

#### **The Process of Refinement**

 

Several common problems emerged during the process. Cropping was often too tight; clothing could look flat or digitally overworked; and monochrome outputs tended to add unintended age. I addressed these issues by modifying prompts, referencing specific materials (e.g. Harris tweed coats), or adding physical context (windblown dunes, natural shadows).

 

In one representative image—Kitty at 40 standing in windswept dunes—I ensured the coat had visual weight and texture, the collar framed her jawline, and a silver starfish ring (inspired by Dürer) subtly grounded her hands in realism. That portrait was later extended, reworked in monochrome, and reviewed for consistency across age and format.

 

#### **A Life in Portraits**

 

This project isn’t only about one moment in time. It’s part of a wider exploration of *Kitty’s life through the lens*—portraits imagined at ten-year intervals or more, allowing me to visualise a kind of parallel life. Whether at 18, 28, 40 or 60, each image is built with the same goal in mind: to imagine who I might have been, realistically and thoughtfully.

 

#### **Still Evolving**

 

The project remains a work in progress. I’m still adjusting visual language, experimenting with subtle expressions (like amusement or love), and learning to avoid the uncanny fingerprints of AI. Some images still feel “off” despite being technically correct. Others—usually the ones that need no explanation—feel immediately right.

 

I’m still exploring. Still developing. Still refining the approach.

St Pancras, Ipswich, Suffolk

 

Until its clearance in the post-war years, the area spreading eastwards of Ipswich town centre was a vast slum. The Rope Walk area was redeveloped and is now home to Suffolk New College and parts of the University. The housing in the Cox Lane area became a car park. I met a man a few years ago who always tries to park his car on the site of the house where he grew up.

 

Two grand red brick churches survive as islands. The Anglican St Michael is now a burnt out shell. It was declared redundant in the 1990s, and in truth it is hard to see how it can ever have been needed as more than a triumphalist gesture, with the parish church of St Helen only a hundred yards or so away. It was destroyed by fire in March 2011. Still standing tall is George Goldie's 1861 Catholic church of St Pancras. Seen from across the car park, the only clue that it was once tightly surrounded by poor people's houses is that there are no windows in the wall of the north aisle. As at Brighton's St Bartholomew, this great ship was designed to sail above roof tops.

 

St Pancras looks like a bit dropped off, and that is exactly what it is. Goldie's commission was for the huge, recently demolished School of Jesus and Mary on the campus of the Woodbridge Road church of St Mary, and this town centre church in the same style. St Pancras was intended to be the start of a church of cathedral scale, of which the surviving church was but the chancel. At the time, Ipswich was in the Diocese of Northampton. Today, it is in the Diocese of East Anglia, with a great stone Gothic cathedral at Norwich. But the Norwich cathedral, built as the church of St John the Baptist, and the equally grand Our Lady and the English Martyrs in Cambridge, were both begun a good thirty years after St Pancras. If it had ever been finished, St Pancras would have been one of the biggest red brick churches in England.

 

The north elevation is stark, that on the south side rather more comfy, with good modern glass in the south aisle windows. The most impressive view is from the west, where the vast rose window fills in what would have been the top of the chancel arch. Here, where the 1970s parish hall stands, would have been the crossing tower, with transepts either side. Looking further west, the nave would have stretched, and here is perhaps one of the reasons why St Pancras the great was never built. Immediately to the west of the church, across Cox lane, stands the fortress-like Christ Church. Although the present building post-dates St Pancras, there has been a Congregationalist church on the site for more than three hundred years, and the planned Catholic church would have stretched in front of it. Given the ecclesiastical politics of the late 19th century, one can't imagine them giving up the site very lightly.

 

The Catholic presence in Ipswich had been re-established in the 1790s, at the time of the French Revolution, by a refugee Priest, Louis Simon. He said Mass in the home of a rich local lady Margaret Wood, and then with her help established a mission church near the Woodbridge Road barracks. This church, St Anthony, formed the transepts of the building that still survives as the parish hall of the 1960 St Mary.

 

After the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy in England in 1850, which you can read about on the entry for St Mary, the plan was to create a town centre profile for the Church, and this was why Goldie was commissioned to build St Pancras. However, anti-Catholic feeling was rather stronger than it had been seventy years previously. On a night in November 1862, the protestant ministers of the town whipped up such a state of hysteria that angry mobs ran through Ipswich smashing windows of Catholic churches, homes and businesses.

 

Although the exterior of this building is rather severe, the inside is a delight, quite the loveliest Victorian interior in Ipswich. It doesn't have the gravitas of St Mary le Tower, or the mystery of St Bartholomew, but it is a cascade of red and white brick banding, cast-iron pillars and wall tiling. Along with the statues and the candles and the smell of incense, it is everything a 19th century town centre church should be.

 

The post-Vatican II re-ordering of the sanctuary has not destroyed its coherence (or, indeed, the traditionalist flavour of the liturgy here). Above the altar, Christ stands in majesty, flanked by the four evangelists. The tabernacle is set curiously off-centre to the south.

 

Exposed as St Pancras is in comparison with many town centre churches, it is always full of light, and this light takes on the resonances of some good glass. The west window was filled with a design depicting the descent of the Holy Spirit as recently as 2001, by the Danielle Hopkinson studio. As a point of interest, they also did the glass in my front door. This is unfortunately obscured by a massive organ (the west window, not my front door). Below the west gallery is the baptistery, one of Ipswich's busiest, and just some of the church's collection of devotional statues. In the south aisle are three sets of triple lancets. The older glass in the most easterly depicts St Thomas, St Andrew and St John. The splendid 1974 glass by John Lawson in the other two sets depicts St Martin de Porres and St Francis of Assisi.

 

Not many people live in the parish itself, but as the busiest town centre church in Ipswich St Pancras continues to have a major role to play. Its Masses attract people from far and wide, including many from the town's sizeable minority communities. Perhaps this is because it does have such a traditionalist flavour, but also perhaps because of the work of the tireless and charismatic Parish Priest, Father 'Sam' Leeder. 'He's been here for forty years, and is a familiar character in the town centre, wandering the streets and talking to local traders, as well as being the cornerstone of the town's scouts. Ipswich would be diminished without him.

This is the "Soleri Bridge" on the Scottsdale Waterfront. This is just south of the Southwest corner of Scottsdale Road and Camelback Road. I had an opportunity to walk around Scottsdale Fashion Square and The Waterfront.

 

scottsdalepublicart.org/work/soleri-bridge-and-plaza/

"Scottsdale’s breathtaking Soleri Bridge and Plaza, by renowned artist, architect, and philosopher Paolo Soleri, is at once a pedestrian passage, solar calendar, and gathering place along the Scottsdale Waterfront. The public space in Old Town Scottsdale appeals to a diverse audience, ranging from casual Waterfront visitors and local residents to students, tourists, architects, and art lovers. By celebrating solar events, the signature bridge and plaza unify the past and the present. The site of the waterway, rich with historic undertones, mingles with modern cultures striving for coherence between humanity and nature.

The bridge is anchored by two 64-foot pylons and is 27 feet wide on the south side narrowing to 18 feet on the north. Situated at a true north axis, the bridge is intended to mark solar events produced by the sun’s shadow. The 6-inch gap between both sets of pylons allows the sun to create a shaft of light as the earth moves. Each solar noon—which can vary up to 40 minutes from 12 p.m. noon—light coming through the gap produces a shadow. The length of this shaft of light varies depending upon the time of year.

One of the most imaginative thinkers of our time, Paolo Soleri dedicated his life to addressing the ecological and social concerns raised by modern urban existence. Soleri’s career contained significant accomplishments in the field of architecture and urban planning. He conceived the idea of arcology: architecture with ecology. His seminal work of arcology—Arcosanti—continues under construction to this day, 50 years after its inception. Soleri’s design of the bridge and plaza encourages awareness of our connections to the sun and the natural world. Although designing bridges for 60 years, this was the first commissioned and completed bridge for the then 91-year old Soleri."

The Reconnection® is an accelerated exchange of the energy, light and information found in the Reconnective Healing Frequencies™. It is a tool to connect three systems: the lines of our planet, the meridian lines of the human body, including chakras and the universal energy grid. The Reconnection® is a once in a lifetime experience that ties us back into a timeless system of intelligence. Originally the meridian lines (sometimes called acupuncture lines) on our bodies were connected to the grid lines that encircle the planet and cross at acknowledged power places such as Machu Picchu and Sedona. These grid lines were designed to continue out and connect us to a vastly larger grid, into the entire universe.

 

As we reconnect and awaken to the depths of the Light that we are, we become aware of our ‘multi-dimensional’ existence and our dormant DNA is awakened. The Reconnection is about restoring yourself to spiritual wholeness and releasing or removing the blocks or interferences that have kept you separate from your intrinsic perfection.

 

The Reconnection takes place in two sessions, each session lasting about 45-60 minutes. You’ll lie on a massage table, shoes off, eyes closed. Sessions take place on consecutive days or with one day in-between. The Reconnection is a touch-free procedure.

 

Extra rest may be needed in the days following the Reconnection to allow the body to assimilate the energy change. The process of reconnecting can continue for months after the actual Reconnection takes place. As you include these frequencies into your life, your consciousness and awareness begin to shift and expand, and so do you within yourself. The Reconnection is highly recommended for people who practice any form of energy healing. Many practitioners have reported an increase in their ability to access healing energy after their Reconnection.Recognized and supported by science, Reconnective Healing® is a form of healing that facilitates us to return to an optimum state of balance by interacting with the full spectrum of frequencies that consists of energy, light and information.

 

These frequencies work on the whole person, therefore the work is not symptom based. Dr. Eric Pearl defines healing as, “the restoration of the person to spiritual wholeness”. This is what allows for a possible release of symptom and disease. He also points out that healing is about our evolution. It includes the evolutionary restructuring of our DNA and our reconnection to the Universe (or to God/Light/Love/ So/ Creator) on a new level.

 

It is recommended for persons feeling that something on the physical, mental, emotional or spiritual level is out of sync. Animals as well as humans respond very well to the Reconnective Healing experience. It is a wonderful way to honour our friends and companions of many dispositions by offering this experience to them.

Personal reconnection is the process of re-connecting the physical energy meridians person (allowing for the exchange lines) with grid lines of the planet Earth and the Cosmos. Specifically, each body has its own set of energetic lines and points that have the role of our relationship with the universe as a channel for the transmission of energy, light and information between large and small, macrocosm and microcosm, the universe and humankind.Reconnective Healing (RH) is a return to an optimal state of balance. It is the result of interacting with the fully comprehensive RH spectrum of frequencies that consists of energy, light and information. Its first basic element is energy. Energy is everything we are made up of organically, our very essence and our actual physical body. Light is the resonance and communication within these frequencies between the universe and us. The information comes through the very interaction and entrainment with the energy and the light. It’s tangible, measurable… you can actually feel it.

 

Reconnective Healing completely transcends traditional energy healing techniques as it allows us to let go of the concept and approach of technique itself. It is neither a therapy nor a treatment, as it does not focus on symptoms. It is something much, much more. In Reconnective Healing we do not diagnose or treat. We simply interact with the RH frequencies, bringing about healings that are often instantaneous and tend to be life long.

 

While science continues to explore how it works, Reconnective Healing has been confirmed and documented in more than a dozen international studies. When RH frequencies entrain with our energy body we emit and vibrate at a higher level of light. This has been shown to restructure our DNA, resulting in the emission of measurably higher levels of bio-photonic light. Stanford Professor Emeritus Dr. William Tiller says that when information carried through the Reconnective Healing frequencies is introduced, it creates coherence and order. In other words, greater harmony and balance within us.

 

"If you're lucky, your healing will come in the form you anticipate. If you're really lucky, your healing will come in a form

you've not even dreamed of--one which the Universe specifically has in mind for you." ~Dr. Eric Pearl

HERE

"The Reconnection is the umbrella process of reconnecting to the universe that allows for Reconnective Healing to take place. These healings and evolutionary frequencies are of a new bandwidth and are brought in via a spectrum of light and information that has never before been present on Earth. It is through

The Reconnection that we are able to interact with these new levels of light and information, and it is through these

new levels of light and information that we are able to reconnect." ~Dr. Eric Pearl

 

The Reconnection is about connecting our personal energy grid system, acupuncture lines and subtle anatomy, including chakras, with the energy grid system of the greater universe and the energy system of Planet Earth. When we connect with the greater universal energy grid, we receive an influx of light and information. When we connect to our planets energy grid, the circuit is complete with grounding. The full connection completely transforms our body-mind-spirit, by bringing our system to optimal balance.

 

Imagine your personal energy grid as a computers’ operating system. The Reconnection basically upgrades your system exponentially. Circuits fly open, new connections are made and dormant DNA is awakened as huge amounts of "new" information/light pours in. Your energy lines connect with axiatonal lines; circuits of the higher frequency grids that open the flow to higher dimensions. You are now able to receive light and information that your system was not able to receive or process before. Imagine, what that would mean for you to be fully functioning energetically?

 

To describe the awakenings, knowing’s, insights, aha moments, connections, or quantum leaps in knowledge that occur when you receive, or are awakened to, more Light, or to the greater being that you are, is a unique description for each individual. The Reconnection is about restoring yourself to spiritual wholeness. It's about releasing or removing the blocks or interferences that have kept you separate from your intrinsic perfection. It's about the restructuring/awakening of your DNA and your reconnection to the universe on a new level.

  

The Reconnection is different from Reconnective Healing. For The Reconnection, Shanell uses a “hands-off” technique and you are fully clothed. The session spans 2 days, one hour each day, in which you lay on a massage table and experience the frequencies of energy, light and information, in a way that is unique for you - sometimes you may experience pleasant physical sensations, sometimes you may see colours or symbols, you may hear sounds or you may simply enter a deep sleep for the hour. There is a higher intelligence at work during the session which supplies you with exactly the experience you need to have. The Reconnection has been known to catapult individuals on their life path, bringing clarity to life purpose and creating positive and lasting shifts.

 

www.healingyogini.com/reconnective-healing--the-reconnect...

Making distinctions is the task of the intellect (Verstandes). It has only to separate concepts and maintain them in this separation. This is a necessary preliminary stage of any higher scientific work. Above all, in fact, we need firmly established, clearly delineated concepts before we can seek their harmony. But we must not remain in this separation. For the intellect, things are separated that humanity has an essential need to see in a harmonious unity. Remaining separate for the intellect are: cause and effect, mechanism and organism, freedom and necessity, idea and reality, spirit and nature, and so on. All these distinctions are introduced by the intellect. They must be introduced, because otherwise the world would appear to us as a blurred, obscure chaos that would form a unity only because it would be totally undefined for us.The intellect itself is in no position to go beyond this separation. It holds firmly to the separated parts. To go beyond this is the task of reason (Vernunft). It has to allow the concepts created by the intellect to pass over into one another. It has to show that what the intellect keeps strictly separated is actually an inner unity. The separation is something brought about artificially, a necessary intermediary stage for our activity of knowing, not its conclusion. A person who grasps reality in a merely intellectual way distances himself from it. He sets in reality's place — since it is in truth a unity — an artificial multiplicity, a manifoldness that has nothing to do with the essential being of reality.The conflict that has arisen between an intellectually motivated science and the human heart stems from this. Many people whose thinking is not yet developed enough for them to arrive at a unified world view grasped in full conceptual clarity are, nevertheless, very well able to penetrate into the inner harmony of the universe with their feeling. Their hearts give them what reason offers the scientifically developed person. When such people meet the intellectual view of the world, they reject with scorn the infinite multiplicity and cling to the unity that they do not know, indeed, but that they feel more or less intensely. They see very well that the intellect withdraws from nature, that it loses sight of the spiritual bond joining the parts of reality. Steiner teach that heart is sung-sang and intellect is hyung-sang. Naturally the sung-sang aspect should be developed first. If Adam and Eve's intellect had been developed on the base of their heartistic maturity, they would have been well balanced. Heart would have been subject and intellect would have followed as object. Based on the harmonious give and take of heart and intellect they could have led a life of goodness. Due to the fall, however, man severed his relationship with God and as a result his heart could not develop to its full extent. Your heart cannot develop fully without God in your life, but your intellect continues to develop despite His absence. Reason must be guided by truth in order to develop in the proper direction. The problem is that man also lost the truth through the fall and thus his reason couldn't develop properly either. So even though we learn many things, our knowledge is incomplete without the truth. Mankind has developed many things; unfortunately they are all based on man-centered ideologies, not God. When you lose God, man becomes the center. In other words people's lifestyles become egocentric; each individual has his own view of life and perspective of value which often doesn't harmonize with other's views. As a result conflicts arise and man cannot have good give and take. When God is our center we have a common base to relate with others, otherwise each one goes their separate way and conflicts arise. Contemporary problems are a result of man's lack of relationship with God. Another reason is that we don't have good give and take with our parents and brothers and sisters. Originally man's heart should have developed through his give and take with God. This relationship would later have been passed on to his children and the childrens' hearts would have developed through their relationship with their parents. This relationship would then have been expanded to brothers and sisters. These three relationships are the base for the development of man's heart: the relationship between God and man, parent and child and brothers and sisters. The family is the schoolroom where we learn about human relations. Many people suffer because they didn't have a good relationship with their parents or brothers and sisters. Even if you have a good relationship with your parents, if you don't have good relationships with your brothers and sisters, it will be difficult to connect to other people or establish good relationships with those around you. So in order to develop our hearts we must restore our relationship to God, our parents and our siblings. On this foundation we can develop our relationship with our spouse, our children and our neighbors. Seeds absorb all the nutrients they need from the earth. We also need nutrients if we are to develop our spirit and our body. If we don't receive the proper nutrition our spirit and body cannot grow. Then what do we need for our heart to grow? Our heart can only grow in the soil of heart; it can never grow if we don't have good relationships. If we live with hateful people, our heart can never grow. It needs positive heartistic elements in order to develop. Many members live alone; they say that they cannot live together with many other people. This is not challenging the problem though, but trying to escape it. You can never develop your heart by living alone. If man doesn't have contact with people, he loses his ability to deal with them. If you don't exercise your physical body but just lie down all the time, after a while you may not be able to walk. God made man to walk, but if you don't use this ability for a long time, your body cannot function normally. Man's mind is the same. Many people use computers nowadays, working from morning till night in front of a computer. And new diseases are being discovered in these people. Of course, if you work with computers after your character is formed, you may not be so strongly affected. But if you work with computers at a young age, you may lose the capacity to deal with people. You may feel more comfortable with a computer than with people. Many such phenomena are being discovered. If you cut yourself off from human contact and just work with machines all the time, you cannot work with people anymore. This demonstrates the importance of having contact with people. Living alone doesn't contribute to the development of our heart and is therefore not advisable. In many families the parent-child relationship isn't very good. The parents often say they must earn money to support their family, so they work day and night. Some people have two jobs, or husband and wife both work and the children are often alone. In such a situation the contact between parents and children constantly decreases. This is why parents cannot control their children anymore. They don't know their children and therefore have no base upon which to control them. This lack of relationship between parents and children causes serious problems in society. Children don't have a good example of harmonious life in their parents, and thus cannot live together in harmony with each other. Parents should set a good example, but in many cases they cannot. So there is no one the children can learn from. And even if you do have a good relationship with your parents, if you are an only child, you may still experience difficulties dealing with other people as an adult. Actually all the current problems in society stem from this lack of good give and take in the family. We must restore this, otherwise we cannot restore society. Restoration must start in the family. We are already grown up though, so how can we restore this? We don't live with our parents anymore; in many cases they have even passed on already. So how can we restore these things? We need God. If we restore our relationship with our True Parents in our daily life and can live in harmony with other brothers and sisters, we can restore what we didn't have in our own family. We hear that the Orient is more emotional and that the West is more rational. Sometimes Japanese sisters have difficulty in the West because they are used to more intimate relationships among sisters. We must realize the need to develop our hearts. A man without heart is like a computer without software. You have the hardware but you cannot function properly. Heart is so important. We need to be more concerned about others. Sometimes we hear people say, "I like my independence and therefore I don't want to interfere in someone else's life either. He is he and I am I; we are separate." It sounds good externally, but in reality it isn't good. We can never develop our heart with such an attitude. Heart and intellect both need truth in order to develop properly. The desert is a good example to illustrate the relationship between heart and intellect. Just as this world becomes a desert when there is no water, our character becomes a desert if we have no heart. Heart is the water of life. Too much water can cause floods though. So God created emotion and intellect to interact in harmony and control each other. All things need some form of control. For example, no matter how rich you are, if you don't control how your money is spent, it will soon be gone. And if we don't control our physical body, it will quickly wear out or get sick. Complete freedom cannot exist; there must always be some kind of control. Our mind controls our body so it can remain healthy and our mind is controlled by our body. Likewise our emotion controls our intellect and vice versa. In this way a harmonious relationship can exist between the two. Sometimes members want to live alone because they don't want to be controlled or told what to do by someone else. Of course domination is not good, but everyone needs proper control. We should be able to control ourselves, then nobody would need to control us. But if we cannot control ourselves properly, someone must help us. Of course there are limits, we cannot intervene too much. It is important to have a good balance. We need some control, but not domination; we all need some freedom. So freedom and control must be balanced. Then how can we find the balancing point?

This is difficult but we must find this balance in our lives. If we control our subordinates with love no one will ever complain. The base for good relationships is love; control and freedom must both be based on love. If we cannot succeed in establishing this balance in our church life, there will be no other chance in our lifetime. Therefore we must try to find this balance. The best time for you to establish successful relationships with members is before starting family life. I hope everyone will find a way and succeed in developing good relationships in your life. What is Heart Intelligence? And, what exactly is the difference between Heart Intelligence, IQ, and EQ? In this article, I’ll give you a clear definition of each, and at the end, I will tell you what you can do next to start accessing the intelligence, wisdom and power of your heart. These days everyone is talking about the Heart. Every where you look and listen, people from all religions, cultures, and ages speak about the heart as if was the true center of wisdom: ‘follow your heart’, ‘connect to your heart’, ‘lead from the heart’, ‘speak from the heart’, ‘consult your heart’…Surely, if Aristoteles were alive today, there would be a big smile on his face! A student of Plato and tutor to Alexander the Great, Aristoteles believed and taught a ‘cardiocentric‘ model of human anatomy where the heart was the true center of human intelligence and not the brain.

For the past 30 years Scientist at the HeartMath Institute as well as hundreds of independent researchers, including researchers in the fields neurocardiology, have been speaking about Heart Intelligence, a higher level of awareness that arises from the heart. The human heart has approximately 40,000 neural cells. This means the heart has it’s own nervous system, which actually sends more information to the brain, than the brain sends to the heart!

From a biophysical perspective, every heart contraction creates a wave that pushes blood through the veins and arteries providing the energetic signal that helps synchronize all the cells of the body, including the brain.

From a hormonal perspective, the heart is a hormone-producing endocrine gland, producing ANF to control blood- pressure, adrenaline, dopamine, and oxytocin (the love hormone). Oxytocin reduces fear, increases eye-contact, and increases trust and generosity. From an electromagnetic perspective, the heart’s electromagnetic field is 5,000 times more powerful than the brain’s! Our heart’s electromagnetic field expands and touches those within 8 – 25 feet of where we are positioned! What science is doing is validating what our spiritual traditions have been telling us for thousands of years: that the heart stands at the center of an intelligence system that gives us access to not only our soul’s wisdom, but the wisdom contained in the entire Universe! Heart Intelligence (also known as HQ or Heart IQ) is a higher level of awareness that arises when you are able to integrate your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual intelligence. When fully embodied and integrated, Heart Intelligence gives you the ability to be fully real, present, connected and heart-directed in every area of your life so that you can experience greater levels of performance, creativity, intuition and higher order thinking. What’s the difference between Mental Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence, and Heart Intelligence?

Physical Intelligence is the natural intelligence of the body and each one of it’s parts. It’s the consciousness or programming behind each cell, our DNA and molecular structure that tells the body exactly what to do and when. This is how physical healing takes place. Mental Intelligence, also known as IQ (Intelligence Quotient) is the measure of your ability to think and reason. This intelligence is normally associated with the left side of your brain that thinks in terms of logic, and language. Emotional Intelligence, also referred to as EQ (Emotional Quotient), is your ability to identify and assess your emotions and the emotions of others. This intelligence is normally associated with the right side of your brain, that associated with creativity and emotions. Spiritual Intelligence, also referred to as SQ, is the intelligence or wisdom of the soul. Think of this as the accumulation of wisdom your soul has acquired as it journey through different dimensions and lifetimes. It’s also an intelligence that connects us to the Greater Intelligence system we call God, Spirit, the Universe, the Great Spirit, or simply Life.

Your heart, when energized, has the capacity to unify, or bring into a state of coherence all systems in your body. This includes not only all your organs but also your intelligences. Doing this will allow you experience a state of flow, or Coherence. Coherence (also known as psycho-physiological coherence), can be understood as the capacity to flow and the capacity to accept things as they happen: accept life and accept the moment-to-moment experience. When we experience coherence, we tend to be in an accepting state that allows us to flow with rather than resist the unfolding of events. Coherence is a fluid state; a state that is relaxed; a state in which you have your full attention on the here and now—you inhabit your moment, your body, and your mind in the most relaxed and joyful way From this space, you can respond to life from a deeper place of Love, Compassion, and Acceptance which we call the Heart. You can think of Heart Intelligence as the process of integrating the heart, body, and mind so that you can access the Heart behind the heart.

 

The Dog's Notes

The Dog's Notes is not meant to be lifelike sculpturing, but a simplified approach to create an artistic concept. Poren Huang hopes to attract his audience, and hence deliberately enlarged the heads to render them amusing. Whether dog or human-like sculptures, the chest is often prominent. Since the chest of a short-haired dog tends to be protruding, Poren Huang exaggerated its perspective to emphasize confidence or a strong heart. In addition, the nose is also enlarged and the eyes omitted because dogs have weak eyesight but a sensitive sense of smell. The body of the sculpture tends to be strong and powerful, often with the head held high and even a little arrogant to arouse in audience the urge to whack its head. Due to their high melting points and durability, copper and the occasional stainless steel are mainly used in The Dog's Notes to emphasize eternity. Some of the works are welded with three layers of 99% pure gold foils to further convey the idea of light or extreme positivity. The Dog's Notes further emerges into two new series entitled "The Vision" and "i Dog".

Taiwan Black Dog

Taiwan Dog, characterized by short black fur, upright curled tail, staunch loyalty to its master, strong learning ability, adaptability, and intelligence, became an inspiration to Poren Huang. Having once raised more than 20 dogs at the same time, Poren Huang had frequently helped in the birthing of puppies, and observed that many qualities of the breed, such as standing tall, positivity, and vibrant spirit, happened to be lacking in people living in modern society. On the other hand, people today are unable to cope with stress, and are often self-defeating and depressed. Moreover, the alienation between people, especially apathy among relatives, has resulted in modern people replacing humans with dogs for companionship because despite venting their emotional ups and downs on their pets, dogs remain faithful and obedient.

Humanized Dog Works

Using the dog as a creative starting point, each piece of work is suggestive of the "human". About 10% to 90% of the works borrow from the dog to explore various human behaviors. Modern people generally feel kindly toward dogs because of their ability to soothe. Therefore, Poren Huang uses the dog as his creative theme to convey positive traits such as self-confidence, courage, loyalty or innocence, and to provoke in people deeper thoughts as they come in contact with his work. Many people are first attracted by the amusing forms; however, after a period of contact and interaction with the pieces, they seem to sense the deeper significance and remain inspired by positive ideas and thoughts.

There are primarily two types of animals that appear in The Dog's Notes, the dog and the panda. They share a common characteristic of being humanized. These animals do not appear completely animal-like under Poren Huang's sculpting, but instead, they appear to have the scent of a human. That is why viewers tend to stand in front of the artwork and stare for quite a long time, unwittingly; perhaps it is because they did not get an affirmative answer as to whether the artwork is human or animal? When the dog and the panda enter the human's environment, they naturally learn to cohabitate with humans. They lose the wild nature of being wild animals, and become more humanized. People are the same way. Poren Huang wishes that humans can be more inspired by the dogs, and to learn the positive characters found in dogs, such as innocence, loyalty, kindness, bravery, and being passionate. Much like the Chinese proverb, "The son does not despise the mother for being ugly, and the dog does not blame the owner for being poor"; the dog will not despite the owner, and will not leave the owner, instead he will spend the rest of his life by his owner's side. Humans, on the other hand are different. They might look down on others or alienate others. They might even become disrespectful toward parents. The selfishness of humans causes wars and unrest in the world. Therefore, Poren Huang is not just creating artworks of animals, but instead, he is making his sculptures more humanized, so that the viewers can naturally reflect and be inspired.

In addition, Poren Huang's humanized works of art also have a little bit of the "Oriental Literati" essence. Although these artworks will have various emotions, but they are never too intense, and are never over the top. Just like Ang Lee, Xi Jinping, Yo-Yo Ma, Jeremy Lin, as well as other generally well-known Chinese, whose personalities are perhaps the same way, which is gentle and refined, and with the modesty of a gentleman. Much like the Eastern literai who are well read of poetry and literature, their emotions are not easily shown; they are more restrained, and are full of character and depth.

Confucianism

During the 1970s, Poren Huang's father, Mingde Huang, had a successful wood carving industry and huge export volume. As a major wood carving factory in Taiwan,[6] the factory employed more than 100 craftsmen to produce wood handicrafts during peak seasons. Mingde Huang expected his son Poren Huang to inherit the family business, but Poren Huang preferred artistic creation to wood handicraft production, resulting in years of differences between the father and son. In 2005, Poren Huang fully expressed his ideas through his series of works, The Dog's Notes. Although he and his father held different viewpoints, he highly values family interaction. He focused on mending his family relationship before pursuing his personal ambition, and some of his works in The Dog's Notes strongly convey enlightenment and morality.[7] After World War II, with the recovery of the global economy, prosperity and focus on human rights, the hard work of the previous generation is often reciprocated with the disregard, self-centeredness, mockery and impiety of the next generation. In The Dog's Notes, Poren Huang added the quality of loyalty and kindness to purify the human heart and create positive influence.

  

Poren Huang (Chinese: 黃柏仁, born 1970), a Taiwanese sculptor, was born in Taichung, located in central Taiwan. His grandfather and parents engaged in wood carving business.[1] In his youth, he majored in sculpture at Fu-Hsin Trade & Art School. In 2001, Poren Huang had joined Graz International Sculpture Exhibition in Austria. He has also participated in several prominent art fairs in both Taiwan and overseas. His well-known pieces include aboriginal-figures and personified dogs. The National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art has already collected two of his works.[3] His work "The Archer" has been published in textbooks for senior high school students in Taiwan.Poren Huang was born into a family of woodcarvers in Dajia District, Taichung. Both his grandfather and father were engaged in the woodcarving business. During its heyday between 1960 and 1980, more than 100 woodcarvers were restlessly working at the Huang's woodcarving factory. They even had to sleep at the factory's dormitory at night. The scale of the woodcarving factory was very big; the products were exported to various countries. The land where the factory situated is very big and stored a lot of woodcrafts. A single piece of unprocessed high-end wood costs more than US$30,000 at that time. However, since the security system was not install during that time, the "Taiwan Dogs" were used to guard the factory and home in order to prevent the woods from getting stolen. The Huang's Taiwan Dogs have existed continuously for generation, hence Poren Huang grew up in an environment surrounded by sculptures and Taiwan Dogs.

Poren Huang has an innate sense of delicacy and fancifulness. In today's society, he has his own distinct thoughts toward human nature and generational changes. He wants to transmit his thoughts through new art creations instead of duplicating craft (such as 80,000 pieces of the same Guan Gong sculptures). However, his father threatened to "renounce" him if he became an artist. He wanted him to continue producing wood sculptures, so that he could at least have a steady income. His father had no choice but to use the threatening tone because there were quite a few woodcarvers who had left the woodcarving factory in the hope of becoming romantic artists. However, they ended up suffering from the strain of poverty. Moreover, Poren Huang is the only male child in the family, as he has several sisters, but his father already advanced in age. Thus, his father very worried that his son would be starved to death if pursued artistic works, he had no choice but to threaten him.

Through "The Dog's Notes", Poren Huang expresses that he will never abandon either his family or his creative artworks.

Since graduating from the sculpting group of Fu-Hsin Trade & Arts School in 1989, he did not run away from home like other romantic artists. Instead, he designated a small area at the factory for himself. He used wood, metal, rocks, and other cheap sculpting materials, and he strived to participate in sculpting competitions in various places. Throughout the years, he has received numerous awards. He has also attracted numerous visits from the media. His father then became aware of the matter, but he could not help in worrying his son.

Starting 2005, Poren Huang created "The Dog's Notes" to express his care and loyalty toward his family. Although the elders were not being understanding, he has tried really hard to express himself. While using humorous ways to convey his ideas, he has also demonstrated his determination for guarding the freedom of creative artworks. Like the Taiwan Dogs, he is loyal, pure, and courageous; he manifests the positive attitude as a whole. This is exactly the inspiration obtained from the Taiwan Dogs in his home. In 2007, Poren Huang's father passed away. He accompanied his father through the last days of his life in the hospital and created the sculpture "Every Day is a New Start". He hopes that people can cherish every present moments and manifests golden-like positive radiance which shines eternally everyday in life.

Poren Huang's works became popular globally and continued to manifest positive attitudes which influence and touch a lot of people. Every sculptures are highly meaningful and have long-term mission, which is for the betterment of people in this 21st century, especially in the mind!

 

黃柏仁

 

黃柏仁（Poren Huang，1970年－），台灣台中市雕刻家，1999年中部美展雕塑類第一名及市長獎。家族從事木雕事業，因而影響其志趣。高中時期於復興商工專攻立體多媒材。畢業後則選擇致力金屬雕塑創作，多年來參與國內外畫廊與藝術博覽會之展出。作品有「鐵木叢林」的鐵雕與「狗札記」之銅雕系列。台灣美術館於2006及2008年青睞典藏「狗札記」中的兩個作品。台灣文化部於2013年典藏《不爽》。[1]鐵雕作品《神射手》則榮列高中美術教科書之課程

受到自己養的台灣犬啟發，這種犬的特徵是黑色短毛，像月彎翹起的尾巴，對主人極為忠心，學習力及適應力強，非常聰明。黃柏仁曾經同時間養了數十隻的狗，經常幫母狗接生，觀察到狗的諸多特質，剛好是生活在先進社會的現代人所缺乏的，比方抬頭挺胸、朝氣蓬勃的正向精神，反觀現代人抗壓性不足，經常自尋煩惱及憂鬱。還有，人與人之間的疏離，尤其是親人之間的冷感，以致現代人喜歡養狗，讓狗陪伴著自己，以取代人，就算自己情緒起伏不定，對狗發脾氣，狗一樣不離不棄，乖乖陪著身邊。[3]

以狗為出發點進行創作，但每一件作品幾乎有「人」的意味，借用狗來探討人的各項行為。現代人普遍對狗有相當的好感，狗可以讓人心情轉好，因此黃柏仁在創作上使用狗的題材，讓人們主動去接觸作品，進而將自信、勇氣、忠誠或純真等正向特質傳遞給人，發人深省。很多人一開始會被作品的逗趣型式給吸引，然而在與作品接觸與互動一段時間後，彷彿感受到一篇經文的內涵，不斷傳導著好的觀念及思想。[4]

黃柏仁的父親黃明德，在二戰後經營木雕事業有成，大量外銷出口，為當時台灣重要的木雕工廠，極盛時期有超過百位木雕匠師一起製作木雕工藝品。黃明德希望自己兒子黃柏仁能夠繼承家業，然而黃柏仁偏好藝術創作，而不是生產木雕工藝品，產生了多年的歧見。黃柏仁創作「狗札記」系列作品，徹底表達自己的想法，雖然他與父親有著不同意見，但他反而更著重親人之間的互動關係，先修身齊家，再去開創自己的一片天地。「狗札記」其中部分作品蘊含濃烈的教化，重視德性。在二次大戰後，全球經濟復甦，繁榮昌盛，人權當道，上一代的努力耕耘，經常換來下一代兒孫的不珍惜，自我意識過強，逆天悖理，孝道式微。黃柏仁在「狗札記」加入了忠誠及善良特質，藉以洗滌人心，帶給人們正面的影響。

「狗札記」的雕塑作品不是寫實，簡化方式處理型態，形成一個意境。黃柏仁希望作品帶給觀者一種親和力，因此作品的頭部刻意放大比例，使其趣味化。無論是狗或接近「人樣」的雕塑，在胸膛之處常有凸起物，因為短毛狗的胸部有一個部位比較凸出，黃柏仁誇大它的立體，強調自信滿滿，抑或很強的心臟。此外，鼻子也被放大了，眼睛省略，因為狗的視力比較弱，而是有著靈敏嗅覺。雕塑的身形偏壯，有力量，而且通常是昂首，甚至有點拽的樣子，讓有些觀者想敲他們的頭。[6]「狗札記」雕塑的材質以銅偏多，偶有不鏽鋼，強調永恆性，因為銅或不鏽鋼溶點高，非常適於保存。[7]還有一些作品貼上三層純度99%的金箔，延伸出光芒或極度正向的概念。

「狗札記」延伸出了二個系列，分別為「視野」系列及「i Dog」系列。[8]「狗札記」受到眾多個人及機構收藏，不少知名人士皆表示能感受到黃柏仁帶來的正面思考。2015年豪宅"陶朱隱園"便購藏系列多件作品，融合住宅空間與人文藝術[9]，該建築亦獲得CNN評選2016全球九大城市地標之一。

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poren_Huang

 

Testing, Testing, ... BANG!!!

  

Nondestructive testing

  

Nondestructive testing or Non-destructive testing (NDT) is a wide group of analysis techniques used in science and industry to evaluate the properties of a material, component or system without causing damage.[1] The terms Nondestructive examination (NDE), Nondestructive inspection (NDI), and Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) are also commonly used to describe this technology.[2] Because NDT does not permanently alter the article being inspected, it is a highly valuable technique that can save both money and time in product evaluation, troubleshooting, and research. Common NDT methods include ultrasonic, magnetic-particle, liquid penetrant, radiographic, remote visual inspection (RVI), eddy-current testing,[1] and low coherence interferometry.[3][4] NDT is commonly used in forensic engineering, mechanical engineering, petroleum engineering, electrical engineering, civil engineering, systems engineering, aeronautical engineering, medicine, and art.[1] Innovations in the field of nondestructive testing have had a profound impact on medical imaging, including on echocardiography, medical ultrasonography, and digital radiography.

  

Methods[edit]

 

NDT methods may rely upon use of electromagnetic radiation, sound, and inherent properties of materials to examine samples. This includes some kinds of microscopy to examine external surfaces in detail, although sample preparation techniques for metallography, optical microscopy and electron microscopy are generally destructive as the surfaces must be made smooth through polishing or the sample must be electron transparent in thickness. The inside of a sample can be examined with penetrating radiation, such as X-rays, neutrons or terahertz radiation. Sound waves are utilized in the case of ultrasonic testing. Contrast between a defect and the bulk of the sample may be enhanced for visual examination by the unaided eye by using liquids to penetrate fatigue cracks. One method (liquid penetrant testing) involves using dyes, fluorescent or non-fluorescent, in fluids for non-magnetic materials, usually metals. Another commonly used NDT method used on ferrous materials involves the application of fine iron particles (either liquid or dry dust) that are applied to a part while it is in an externally magnetized state (magnetic-particle testing). The particles will be attracted to leakage fields within the test object, and form on the objects surface. Magnetic particle testing can reveal surface & some sub-surface defects within the part. Thermoelectric effect (or use of the Seebeck effect) uses thermal properties of an alloy to quickly and easily characterize many alloys. The chemical test, or chemical spot test method, utilizes application of sensitive chemicals that can indicate the presence of individual alloying elements. Electrochemical methods, such as electrochemical fatigue crack sensors, utilize the tendency of metal structural material to oxidize readily in order to detect progressive damage.

 

Analyzing and documenting a non-destructive failure mode can also be accomplished using a high-speed camera recording continuously (movie-loop) until the failure is detected. Detecting the failure can be accomplished using a sound detector or stress gauge which produces a signal to trigger the high-speed camera. These high-speed cameras have advanced recording modes to capture some non-destructive failures.[5] After the failure the high-speed camera will stop recording. The capture images can be played back in slow motion showing precisely what happen before, during and after the non-destructive event, image by image.

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondestructive_testing

INTRODUCTION

36 years after his death, the message of Nicola is still alive, or rather is more alive than ever, and lives in the hearts of so many people who know him from the writings and testimony of the witnesses.

In these few pages, the reader will find a concise account of the human and spiritual vicissitudes of a boy resolved to offer his young life with joy to the Lord, in the religious family of St. Camilles de Lellis, at the service of the sick people. With this biography we intend to reach other people, especially the youth, hoping that this will arouse in them the desire to give to their life that special quality, which comes from surrendering completely to the Highest Love.

Special thanks go to the author, Father Felice Ruffini, not only for this book and others written about Nicola D'Onofrio, but also for the accurate and passionate research he has done in these years, which is the basis of this book that we hope will have a wide circulation.

  

THE FIRST YEARS

Nicola D'Onofrio was born on March 24, 1943, in Villamagna in the diocese of Chieti - Abruzzo. He was baptized in the parish church of St. Mary Major (Santa Maria Maggiore) on March 27, and was given the name Nicola. His father was called Giovanni, an honest and religious man, a good farmer endowed with the simple and popular wisdom of the old country families of Abruzzo. His mother, Virginia Ferrara was a strong but considerate woman, known for her piety and Christian spirit. She was able to transmit to her son a genuine religious sense of life, sensitiveness, an outstanding kindness and peace of mind.

On the Feast of Corpus Domini, June 8, 1950, he received his first Holy Communion and three years later on October 17, 1953, he was confirmed. He went to the primary school in Villamagna, close to Madonna del Carmine, where according to the teachers and his contemporaries, he distinguished himself for his diligence, kindness and availability for others. He never missed serving Holy Mass at the parish church, where he was constant even in winter, though his home was several kilometers away, at the border with neighboring Bucchianico, the birthplace of St. Camilles de Lellis.

 

AT THE SEMINARY IN ROME

A priest of the religious order of St. Camilles, a native of his village, invited him to join the Camillian seminary in Rome. Nicola accepted the proposal with joy and he immediately revealed his decision to his parents. But they objected. Because, his mother wanted him to go to the diocesan seminary in the neighboring town of Chieti, and his father did not want to lose the promising strong hands for the fields. Even his two unmarried paternal aunts, who lived with the family, were blandishing him with the promise of making him the sole heir if he could only stay. All the life of little Nicola was simple and genuine.

The opposition from his family lasted for a year. Nicola lived this period in prayer and study, until he finally obtained the permission to join the Seminary of St. Camilles in Rome. It was on October 3, 1955 that he entered, the feast of St. Theresa of Lisieux, of the Child Jesus, who would later become his spiritual guide. Though the Seminary was brimming with students, just like all other centers for vocation to the priesthood at that time, the young Nicola did not escape the notice of those who were supposed to observe the distinguishing signs of a true vocation. They immediately noticed in him the determination to model his total personality, entrusting himself completely to the superiors to guide him spiritually. Two years later, he came to know that his father wanted to withdraw him and take him back home. He then wrote a strong letter about his resolute decision to continue with the formation to the Priesthood in the Order of St. Camilles, whatever that would cost. He gave many motivations in support of his decision, among which was the saying of St. John Bosco: "The most beautiful blessing for a family is to have a son Priest." (1)

NOVICE

On October 6, 1960, he was dressed for the first time in the Habit of the religious order of St. Camilles, which marked the beginning of the novitiate year. At the end of the spiritual exercises, for this important stage in his life, he wrote: "...Jesus, if one day I have to throw the sacred Habit, like many do, please let me die before I receive it for the first time; I am not afraid of dying at this moment, now that I have your grace. What a gracious thing to be able to come and see You together with Your and my mother: Mary." (2)

Throughout the year of the novitiate he wrote in his "Diary" his objectives and small victories, moments of struggle and spiritual dryness. From his writings, one notices a strong will to continue in pursuit of the divine call, entrusting himself to God's help, which is synthesized in this statement: "We can win the evil only by staying close to Jesus and Mary with the Sacraments and prayer." (3) Already at this moment, he intensively lived the spirituality of the Order of St. Camilles. This was observed especially when he had to assist an older brother who was seriously ill from cancer in the throat. It is particularly important to remember what he said to this priest on the feast of Good Friday that year: "Father, unite your pains to those of Christ in agony, today is Good Friday, a blessed day for you who suffers together with Jesus." (4)

 

THE FIRST RELIGIOUS VOWS

 

On the morning of October 7, 1961, the feast of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary, after a year of intense training, which his superiors judged excellent, he took the vows of Poverty, Chastity, Obedience and Charity towards the sick even in cases of contagious diseases. These vows were binding for three years. So on that day he started a period of formation as a professed Camillian religious. He was serene and content, available to everyone, observed well the dispositions of community life with humility and simplicity, was assiduous at prayer and diligent in his studies.

 

His immediate Superiors, -the Provincial and the mentor of the clerics, - were his guide and the witnesses to his slow but continuous advancement on the way to the top of the Holy Mountain of God. He had a deep love for the Eucharistic Jesus, whom he received every day and visited often during the day in the church of the Seminary or in the chapel of the Gregorian University. He even enrolled himself to the "Guard of Honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus," choosing the time from 8.00 am to 9.00 am as his hour of reparation. (5) He had both a filial and tender devotion to the Virgin Mary and a strong devotion to St. Theresa of the Child Jesus, making his own her spirituality of the little way.

  

He had a profound love for his Father and Founder, St. Camilles, and deeply studied his spirituality while dreaming about future intense days of work and service to the sick, when he would finally become a priest one day. He was not afraid to show to anybody, his enthusiasm for the vocation in the Order of St.Camilles. Being diligent in his studies, he took his scholastic duties seriously and both loved and respected his teachers. He was docile and careful, anxious to receive the knowledge that was being imparted, because he considered it necessary for the good exercise of his Priesthood at the service of the suffering brothers.

 

During the short period of life as a student of the religious Order of the Camillians, he showed great love and attachment to his new family. He limited his outings, and preferred to stay in the House to dedicate his heart, mind and time to the several necessities and the most urgent needs of the religious community.

 

THE TIME OF SUFFERING AND ILLNESS

 

Towards the end of 1962 he started to feel the first symptoms of the illness that would later lead to his death at the age of 21. He obediently accepted the decisions of his Superiors and doctors from the very beginning. On June 31, 1963, he was operated upon in the Urological Ward of St.Camilles Hospital in Rome. (6) The result of the histological analysis made on the removed part gave the indisputable answer of a certain end: cancer. (7)

  

During his recovery at the Hospital chapliancy after the operation, he revealed himself as a person who is always patient and smiling, careful not to disturb his brothers who were concern for him. Afterwards, on August 19, he was admitted to the Polyclinic Umberto 1st of Rome for the cobalt-therapy, because his doctor had the secret hope of circumscribing the illness. From the 24th of the same month he continued this therapy at the outpatient clinic of the same hospital.

  

His behavior during this period is a great example to all, both for his patience in tolerating the pain and the willingness to do the will of God. No matter what it was. As to whether he already by this summer knew or at least suspected to be suffering from a serious illness, could be deduced from a note found in his papers, where he wrote: "End of June: in 2-3 days it assumes enormous proportions. Treatment of Penicillin and Strepto dissolved with vitamins B and C," and ahead -besides the dates of admission at the two hospitals in Rome and of the surgical operations - he wrote: "12/8- Beginning of the treatments with gamma-rays and not gamma (200 in a day)...20/8, VIIth application, two X-rays of the lungs, blood tests...23/8, Xth application, 22 X-rays to the digestive apparatus..."

  

When the Academic Year resumed in autumn, his superiors enrolled him in the first year of philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University, even though he was already seriously affected by the cancer. (8) Even here, his diligence, serenity and kindness were noted by the teachers and the other students. At the beginning of January 1964 another X-ray was perfomed on the thorax. The right lung appeared largely infected by the illness. (9) Even though nobody up to now had talked to him about the gravity of his state, and on the contrary all were trying to hide from him the reality of his now hopeless situation, Nicola definitively realized his actual state of health. This can be deduced from a conversation he had with his brother, Tommaso, in which he alluded to the certainty of his approaching death, but that his only worry was the great suffering his death would cause to their mother. (10)

Towards the end of March that year, he asked for a meeting with the provincial superior, in order to know from him the exact truth about his state of health. With his back against the wall, the superior was unable to hide the truth, which he accompanied with words of great hope especially trust in the goodness and power of God, to whom nothing is impossible, even a great miracle like the one Nicola needed. After knowing the truth about his health, he did not react with desperation, on the contrary, after a moment of intense reflection spent before the Eucharistic Jesus in the church of the Seminary, he recovered his usual smile and intensified his prayers, giving more time to meditation. When he had the occasion to talk with some friends about his approaching death, he neither avoided the topic nor dramatized about it, he spoke with serenity and detachment.

 

People who lived with him remember that he gave them the impression of a person who was already living the reality of the life to come, as something already present in his existence, which was very prematurely drawing to its end.

 

They still strongly remember that his conversation about life after death was calm and peaceful, with no strain or fanaticism, and a great spirit of faith enlightened his life, which he continued to conduct normally, sharing in the common life of the Seminary. With a hidden hope of obtaining a great miracle, his Superiors decided to send him on a pilgrimage to Lourdes and Lisieux. Nicola accepted to go, out of obedience, but he went above all with the intention of beseeching the help of the Immaculate Virgin and his little, great Saint Theresa, to do God's will up to the last hour, peacefully united with the Cross of Christ. It was May 10, only 33 days before his meeting with God for the eternity.

 

TO GOD WITH ALL HIMSELF

 

With the dispensation "super triennium" Pope Paul VI allowed him to take the Perpetual Vows. On May 28, the feast of Corpus Domini, in the church of the Camillian Seminary, he consecrated himself to God forever; it was the last act of love of a short life, lived fervently through "praying and loving". The morning of June 5, feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in full consciousness, he accepted to receive the Anointing of the Sick as his Provincial Superior had proposed. It was a moment of intense commotion for all his brothers, at the end of the Holy Mass celebrated in the small room on the ground floor where had been placed for some months now, in order to facilitate his movements that were by now only possible in a wheel-chair, and where he received his numerous friends and his mother.

An awful, dramatic and continuous pain marked the last days of his life on earth. The cancer, which advanced and completely invaded his lungs, did not only cause terrific pain, but also moments of suffocation. Nicolino lived this pain heroically, united to the Cross of Christ, invoking help from the Virgin Mary and the Saints Camilles and Theresa of Lisieux, always calm and never abandoning himself to desperation, careful not to inconvenience those assisting him and trying to do his very best to hide the inevitable mask of suffering in order to avoid bringing sorrow to his mother, who stayed close by him. This extraordinary confidence in God's will is a cause for admiration and devotion even for those who knew him from childhood.

A FLOWER IN THE HEART OF GOD

The last day for Nicolino came on June 12, 1964. It was a long agony, which started at 16.00 to close his last evening at 21.15, after a day spent in prayer and manifestation of his deep faith and burning Love for Jesus and Mary, with the help of his two beloved Saints and the comfort of the touching prayers of the brothers and friends. Up till now, his superior remembers his last moments thus: "I would lead the prayers and all the young brothers reunited around him in his small room would answer with hearts full of faith. Sometimes he would ask us to continue, saying: again, again, ....stronger , now and then he would add his own personal invocations to ours, which revealed his deep faith in an ultrasensitive reality that he felt really near."( 11)

This contact with the ultrasensitive world was also noticed by other people who assisted at his death. Heaven opened its doors to him while he, lucid up to the end, continuously repeated the act of offering his life and all his pains, refusing the analgesics and inviting those present to pray with him and for him. A conclusion, very much coherent with the ideals he had chosen to live up to in his life. The strong impression that with his death a Passion was accomplished, can be noticed in the simple words of a country lady, an old family friend: "Having verified his death, the doctor opened the door and said to his mother: Lady, here is your son! Just as if it were the Virgin Mary receiving her crucified Son."(12 ).

  

A confrère who was a great friend of Nicola wrote during the days immediately after his death: "Now down here with us remains only a cut stem, his stem. The flower is up there, engrossed in the Heart of God. For this reason every time that I think or speak of beloved Nicola I feel I have to look up there as in a dream, bowing. My Hero! I had seen vaguely, I had only dreamed the ideal of holiness, without reaching it, because to touch something you've got to be close to it, and to have an admiration with no obscurity, you've got to be similar to the hero who inspires it. I've touched my hero and then...he seems to vanish. But, like the little Theresa with Celina, I believe that he will always walk at the side of every person who is able to discover him. I loved him, he died in my arms, and he looked at me with his last gaze, waving his hand to me to say "goodbye." I love him, by now he's my great, little Saint together with his, and my little Theresa." (13)

 

WAITING FOR THE RESURRECTION

 

At the sacred funeral rites there was a great multitude of confères, friends and acquaintances. His mother's sad and tormented prayers persuaded the superiors to allow the burial of the remains of Nicola D'Onofrio in Villamagna, his birthplace, in the family grave. His last journey back home was on June 15, accompanied by his confrères and superiors. After a solemn Eucharistic celebration he was buried in the Ferrara Chapel, his mother's family. Since October 8, 1979, Nicola D'Onofrio rests near the Crypt of the Sanctuary of St. Camilles in Bucchianico, reunited to his religious family, waiting for the Resurrection of the last day, when Christ who triumphed over death will come again.

...IT COMES FROM AFAR!

The way he touched people who were close to him or those who managed to know him during the well-known period of his rapid end, which he faced with serenity and with a smile on his lips, proves his exceptional behavior. But this was not improvised or even superficial. His ascent to the Holy Mountain of God comes from afar. The pages of his original writings reveal to us that this way started from the first days of his life at the Camillian Seminary. The last period of his existence and his death are only the revealing moment of his spiritual dimension.

 

THE SPIRITUAL INHERITANCE

 

The extraordinary wave of affective and religious emotions that accompanied his death, which was rendered more tragic by the terrible suffering caused by the sickness, is to be attributed to the fact that: "In suffering one becomes a completely new person... When this body is seriously sick, completely disabled and the person is almost incapable of living and acting, then ones inner maturity and spiritual greatness become more manifest, thus offering a touching lesson for all the normal and healthy people. ( 14) Except for arbitrary cases of incomprehension, all people felt that God had stimulated extraordinary answers in his soul, and that his journey to the Holy Mountain was really fast. A religious woman, his contemporary and friend since childhood, wrote that on learning of his death she felt the words of Wisdom ringing in her heart: "Having come to perfection so soon, he has lived long; his soul being pleasing to the Lord, he has hurried away from the wickedness around him." (Wis. 4:13-14a)

Such a conclusion to life cannot be improvised. It comes from afar and the moment of death is only the occasion that reveals the interior work done. And he founded it essentially upon the Passion and Cross of the Lord Jesus, with his eyes always fixed on the Glory of the Resurrection. This is clear from his "Writings" and from the testimony of the people who knew him.

  

FROM HIS WRITINGS

 

The key to understanding his spiritual journey appears almost immediately at the beginning of his new life in the minor seminary, when listening to a meditation on the love of God the Father for Man, during the annual Spiritual Retreat, he wrote: "We could say that he was not concerned for his only Son, if only he could save us. Jesus died for us and his blood, up to the last drop, washed our soul. How much Jesus loved us!"(16 )

And some few months later, at the end of the monthly retreat, he notes down a dictated meditation in this way: "Jesus has come into the world to glorify the Father who sent him, and to come down here "exinanivit se" he annihilated, humbled himself. The Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the Eucharist, are acts of self-destruction for the love he has for us, and for the glory of the Father. Now it is upon us to follow him, in order to give to the Sacred Heart that due glory as a response to his love."( 17)

...CRUCIFIED JESUS, HIS MODEL

 

The crucified Christ entered his life and became his daily reference. The religious life that he started with the Novitiate during the Vespers on October 6, 1960, is a good school for the spirit which convinced him of the necessity to control the human faculty necessary for the practice of mysticism: the will. For a whole year, the messages received from his spiritual guides found him well disposed at the eve of the first religious vows consecrating him to God. He writes thus at the end of the first day of spiritual exercises: "The will has to be strong, complete, and heroic in the mystical ascent. One that does not change direction according to the winds, but remains faithful to the principles of the Crucified Christ. A will, which is not caught up in the many fatuities of this world, but stays vibrant and strong in sustaining and facilitating the progress of our journey towards God. Moreover, our ascent requires a heroic will because the goal is difficult. We aim at imitating a crucified Christ, who does not present to us anything else but the Cross, to embrace everyday. Heroic too, because our ascent is not in phases, but continuous and demanding, an ascent which ought to consume us completely. But to reach this point Confession and Spiritual Direction are indispensable. (18 )

"I am glad to have had the opportunity to assist beloved Father Del Greco, during the night between Wednesday and Holy Thursday. During this night there was the adoration of Jesus from eleven to midnight here in the house. I instead, have done it close to the suffering Jesus in the person of Fr. Del Greco. (I have really done it with this intention). Now he seems to feel better, let's hope for the best!" ( 19)

  

The assisted camillian priest, who had been operated for a cancer in his throat, completed later what D'Onofrio did not write in his Spiritual Notes: "I was almost dying, and the cleric D'Onofrio assisted me and comforted me saying: 'Father, unite your pains to the suffering of Jesus in agony. Today is Good Friday, a beautiful day for you, who are suffering together with Jesus!" I have never forgotten those words suggested to me by our cleric, with so much lovableness and faith."( 20)

...AND FOR IMMACULATE MOTHER MARY

 

Along with his devotion to Crucified Jesus, Nicolino had a tender and really filial relationship with his Mother, the Immaculate Virgin Mary. In his Writings, and on the death bed, he had sweet and tender expressions for Her, that we must contemplated within the realm of a inner and secret relationship of the soul, deserving of respect and great consideration. Exactly as we do, when contemplating similar relationships of the Saints proposed by the Church as life models. This is an extract from his writings: "I'm tired, I would say almost discouraged...I find life in the novitiate hard...Why?... It is the deadly enemy of my soul who overworks me, it is the Lord who purifies me...When will this place of exile come to end?... Ah, difficult world!... I would like to die soon, if it is pleasing to God, to fly in my Mothers' arms. I want to go to rest in Heaven...yes...sweet Mum...But here, serenity comes back slowly into my soul, so I can aim further...This is God's will... "Tota vita Christi crux fuit et martyrium"...and so, what do I pretend?... To live like a lord? No, no, no. But everything for you, Jesus, Mary!"( 21)

 

...ON THE "LITTLE WAY" OF ST. THERESA

One of the intermediate life models that guided his way to the Lord was St. Theresa of the Holy Child and of the Holy Face. Her "little way" became the code of behavior for his life. In a letter to his mother, who might have been worried about eventual penances imposed by the religious life, Nicolino, wrote reassuring her about the normality and simplicity of the daily acts: "...All is done for the Lord, for his love. There are no extraordinary things to do, like exceptional penances, or sleeping on the ground...Saint Theresa of the Child Jesus, a Carmelite French nun, did nothing special during her life, she did nothing unique, she only did her duty; at the age of 24 she died of tuberculosis and became a saint...." ( 22) We have a Prayer written by Nicolino, which comes from a mystic soul. We are not sure whether it belongs to St. Theresa. We present here a little extract which can largely explain our thesis: "Give me the suffering, give me the martyrdom of love, only and always what is more pleasing to you, to possess you forever completely ...I am in love with Christ Crucified. Far from me every other joy, every other liking that is not for my beloved Crucified Bridegroom. I desperately want to own your torn Heart completely, to be inside it, incarnated into one reality: I want to renounce myself completely, to completely be You, my Love. I want to renounce myself always, even in the most hard way, not me anymore, but You, You, Crucified Love."(23 )

  

At the foot of the page Nicolino annotated: "I will recite this prayer at least three times every day: if it is possible, in the morning, at midday and in the evening, before going to bed." He collected every published work of St.Theresa, asking directly from the Convent of Lisieux the last editions. He knew very well the French language and started to translate her poems. To complete these few considerations, we would like to quote stanzas from "To Live for Love," which reveal to us his inner tension to conform himself completely to His beloved Crucified Jesus: "...Living for love on this Earth does not mean/ to pitch a tent on the top of Tabor. / It means climbing Calvary together with Jesus. / It means considering the cross as a treasure! / In Heaven, I will live of joy. / Then, the affliction will have disappeared forever, / but here, in suffering, / I want to live for love!--...To die for love is too sweet a martyrdom, / and that's what I'd like to suffer. / Oh Cherubim! light the lyres, / because I feel it, my exile is close to end.../ Arrow of fire consume me restlessly, / tear my heart in this sad sojourn. / Divine Jesus, please realize my dream: to die for love!"( 24)

 

This is the secret of the great emotion, esteem and enthusiasm caused by his tragic last year of life and by his passage to Heaven. Everyone could basically feel the spiritual dimension in which he was absorbed, and which is faithfully synthesized in the following passage of the last letter he wrote to his parents: "I'm really glad to have the possibility of suffering a little bit now that I'm young, because these are the most beautiful years to offer (something) to the Lord. St. Theresa of Lisieux is the saint that I like most, because she is very similar to me. She too fell sick when she was only about twenty years old, she suffered a lot and died at the age of 24...Dearest parents, you too pray that the Lord may help me to recover the strength, so that I may become a priest and work a lot more for the souls. But if the good Lord wants something different from you and me, may God be blessed, because He knows what he does and what is really good for us. There is no way, we can't know those things...Only God knows..."( 25)

SOME TESTIMONIES

  

Everyone who was able to read the signs of his behavior during the time of the extreme test of his life understood his Message. The demonstrations of esteem expressed at the moment of his death, which as we said were concretized in an extraordinary wave of affective and religious feelings, went beyond the realm of the Camillian Community and time. We are not going to expound the proof of what Nicolino left to us in writing with our own words, rather we shall use a short selection from what the Testimonies have written for the General Postulation of the Order of St. Camilles.

 

...MILITIAMAN OF THE IMMACULATE:

 

With these words the review of the Militia of the Immaculate presented him to the readers: "He has reached the third grade of the M.I.: the one of the total donation: to give himself completely to Mary, accepting every suffering with spirit of faith and generosity in order to conform himself to the Mystery of the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ, to the point of martyrdom. Nicolino, consumed by pain, offered himself as a victim for so many brothers and sisters in need of hope and spiritual salvation. Even though the circumstances and the mode were different, we can compare his offering to that of Father Kolbe, who found in the Immaculate Mother the strength and love to give himself completely, not only for the father of a family, but for all the human kind. The death of the young camillian and the martyrdom of Father Kolbe find their explanation and message in the eternal Word of the Gospel... Nicolino, so young but yet so wise, understood very well what Father Kolbe says in one of his writing: "There's only one life to live, not two. We have to become saints completely, not half-way, for the greater glory of the Immaculate, and trough her, for the greater glory of God."( 26)

 

...REDEMPTIVE SUFFERING

 

"He saw God's plan in everything, directed to Him all his action and accepted with joy the pains and suffering. He used to say to me: "Suffering is the best currency with which we can buy Heaven." His death was peaceful and I had the grace to be present at this moment.

The following months his illness started to become more and more serious and he was evidently suffering, but with great dignity. He intensively prayed for the sinners and considered the Passion of Jesus and the suffering of St Theresa of Lisieux as models to be imitated, almost literally... During his illness he, like Christ, was able to face the stages of the long Calvary, walking with joy towards the Father, in the Kingdom promised to the good and faithful servants.

  

"During that night I was assisting Nicola D'Onofrio and I was woken up at dawn by his troubled screams. I run into his small room; leaning on his elbows, as the strength permitted him, he asked God in a loud voice to be healed: "I'll become a priest... I will save many souls...I pray You my Lord, heal me...Mother Mary, please intercede...St.Camilles...! Please father; help me...let us pray together, I have to obtain this miracle... I have to get well...!" I raised him and helped him until, shortly after, he became calm, exhausted. Then, speaking softly and full of submissive abandonment, he said: "Well...but if it's not possible...let it be as you will my God!" This is the gist of his words, even though I may not remember them literally. I was very impressed by that submission to God, that extreme acceptance, so much that it was impossible for me not to compare it with that of Christ on the Cross, who asks imploring and ends with a wonderful submission to His Father's Will.The Doctors in charge almost immediately decided for a surgical operation. Always docile and obedient as usual, he accepted in a spirit of deep union with the Suffering Christ, following the example of St.Theresa of Lisieux in the last period of her illness, and accepted to subject himself to such a delicate operation...But he accepted everything without reacting, and submissively let himself be gradually laid and nailed on his Cross...He spent the Easter period in a special, deep recollection and meditation on the Passion of the Lord, endeavoring to conform himself as much as possible to Him. In fact, he had no doubt anymore about the nature of his illness, he felt it stronger everyday, expanding in his body. Even the easiest things were becoming difficult for him, because he increasingly breathed with difficulty. Though every possible means and cure were attempted in order to sustain him and stimulate his appetite, he kept on loosing weight day by day."

 

"But it was pleasing to Jesus, the Eternal Priest, to shorten his time of waiting, and he took him soon to the top of Calvary, where Nicolino, became an holocaust for everyone, offered himself to God with heroism as a victim of Love, after the example of St.Theresa of Lisieux, who wanted him as her guest in her city, in France, just before his passage from earth to the realm of the blessed, passing through the narrow door indicated by Jesus for the elected few."

 

"I saw him again on his death-bed. His face impressed me. A gaunt, serious and pallid face. His passage must have been a real martyrdom. His last hour absorbed in darkness. Nicolino had tasted the bitterness of Jesus' Cup. And he still had on his face the sign of disgust for the bitterness. I remember now, the physiognomy of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah: "He has no appearance or beauty / to attract our eyes / no splendor to delight us" (Is. 54, 2). So, like Jesus, Nicolino was "eliminated from the land of the living."(Is 54,8). We conclude with the expression used by his mother's friend, who lived for many years in Rome and assisted the young camillian student throughout all his suffering. Simple soul, who after so many years remembers those moments in this way: "He seemed to me like Jesus Christ on the Cross, so calm and confident, with prayers on his lips, calling Our Lady 'Mum'. Then, he reclined the head on the left, his tongue moved a little, and he died so peacefully. The Doctor verified the fact, then opened the door and called the mother: "Lady, here is your son!" As if she was Our Lady receiving Her Crucified Son. The mother fell on her son, then knelt down crying loudly, loudly..."

 

...HIS MESSAGE

 

The title of the small and successful biography written some months after his death, "When Love Prays", (27) was the incipit of one of the reflections that Nicola D'Onofrio used to jot down on paper in order to be able to follow them for along time. It was lost. But his teacher in the major Seminary, who had seen it, attests that: "the concept, expressed in four short verses, was connected to the words of St Augustine: "Love and do what you like." Actually it affirmed that, when love resembles the Love of God, trough prayer and service to Him, then it is possible to walk confidently towards the goal."

 

When the Lord called him to live like St. Paul: "I complete in my flesh what is missing in the suffering of Christ, for his body, which is the Church."(Col. 1, 24), Nicola D'Onofrio did not draw back.

Strongly united to the Mother of God, he lived with coherence the phrase he wrote on a quiet evening in the Novitiate, "Tota vita Christi crux fuit et martyrium," adhering to it strongly with "All for you, Jesus, Mary".

The "new maternity" that the Virgin Mary received from Her Son dying on the Cross, "spiritual and universal to all the human kind, so that everyone, in the pilgrimage of faith, could remain strongly united to Her up to the Cross, and, for the strength of this Cross, every suffering, regenerated, could from weakness of man become power of God" ( 28), found its complete realization in Nicola D'Onofrio, and remains a wonderful example for ages.

  

The young camillian student, having gone with joy and serenity through the mystery of human suffering, elevated by Christ to the level of redemption (29 ), was and remains a credible testimony of the fact that the choice to live the Gospel Values reveals "the heavenly treasures already present in this world, shows better the new and eternal life acquired from the Redemption of Christ, and preannounce as well the future Resurrection and the Glory of the Heavenly Kingdom." ( 30)

Young people who get to know his short experience on earth are fascinated by it. Of these, we remember Marie-Louise, a girl who, wanting to follow the invitation of John Paul II, at Compostela: "N'ayez pas peur de devenir saints! - Don't be afraid to become saints!" wrote to us saying that she has decided to take " Nicolas D'Onofrio as a life model...I was looking for a contemporary model of life, and I found in the life of this young boy the plans that I've decided to follow, a few moments ago." ( 31) For years now, Marie-Louise has dedicated her life to one of the new institutes of consecrated life in the world, serving God through the service to the sick and poor brothers and sisters.

 

Have you ever felt like your heart was on fire? Maybe you fell in love, gazed into the eyes of your new baby, or caught the fire of the love of the divine.

 

You would definitely recognize that heart-on-fire feeling if you’ve ever had it before. It’s hard to describe, but it kind of feels like your heart warms your entire body and soul with the heat of an internal flame. Do you know what it’s like to sit in front of a blazing hearth on a cold night? Well, that’s what pure love feels like inside.

 

It’s easy for most of us to understand how we can love another human being—but not always as easy to figure out how to love the unknowable essence of the Creator. The Baha’i teachings say that one of the requirements of being a Baha’i, though, is “becoming enkindled with the fire of the love of God …” – Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 336.

 

What does that mean?

 

The symbol of fire has always stood for life, love and health, for energy, transformation and regeneration, for light and warmth. When we feel passion for something or someone, we feel the fiery heat of an enkindled inner flame. We burn with it, that fire of inner feeling, and it sustains us.

 

To understand it, to comprehend its mystical meanings, I suspect, we need to turn to poetry, to the mystical and to the revelatory:

 

Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames. – Rumi

 

… heaven set the fire that burns in our spirits. – Gibran

 

Cause our souls to be enkindled with the fire of Thy tender affection and give us to drink of the living waters of Thy bounty. – The Bab, Selections from the Writings of the Bab, p. 199.

 

The Word of God hath set the heart of the world afire; how regrettable if ye fail to be enkindled with its flame! – Baha’u’llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, p. 316.

 

You’ve probably recognized that inner fire in others. Those who have it burn with passion and enthusiasm for life. They have a contagious ardor for what they do; they live and love with great eagerness. Their excitement, because it generates so much heat, can catch everyone around them on fire, too:

 

All creatures that exist are dependent upon the Divine Bounty. Divine Mercy gives life itself. As the light of the sun shines on the whole world, so the Mercy of the infinite God is shed on all creatures. As the sun ripens the fruits of the earth, and gives life and warmth to all living beings, so shines the Sun of Truth on all souls, filling them with the fire of Divine love and understanding. – Abdu’l-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 26.

 

Everyone can access that “fire of divine love and understanding.” It’s simple—just turn your face toward the sun. When you do, it will gradually warm you with its rays:

 

Likewise, in the spiritual realm of intelligence and idealism there must be a center of illumination, and that center is the everlasting, ever-shining Sun, the Word of God. Its lights are the lights of reality which have shone upon humanity, illumining the realm of thought and morals, conferring the bounties of the divine world upon man. These lights are the cause of the education of souls and the source of the enlightenment of hearts, sending forth in effulgent radiance the message of the glad tidings of the Kingdom of God. In brief, the moral and ethical world and the world of spiritual regeneration are dependent for their progressive being upon that heavenly Center of illumination. It gives forth the light of religion and bestows the life of the spirit, imbues humanity with archetypal virtues and confers eternal splendors. This Sun of Reality, this Center of effulgences, is the Prophet or Manifestation of God. Just as the phenomenal sun shines upon the material world producing life and growth, likewise, the spiritual or prophetic Sun confers illumination upon the human world of thought and intelligence, and unless it rose upon the horizon of human existence, the kingdom of man would become dark and extinguished. – Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 94.

 

We all owe our lives to that ever-burning fire we call the sun. Without it, nothing could survive. In the same way, we owe our inner lives, the realities of our souls and their attributes and perfections, to that heavenly center of illumination we call God:

 

Every man trained through the teachings of God and illumined by the light of His guidance, who becomes a believer in God and His signs and is enkindled with the fire of the love of God, sacrifices the imperfections of nature for the sake of divine perfections. – Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 452.

 

When you start that fire burning in your heart, when you enkindle your soul with the fire of the love of God, you’re on your way to achieving the greatest possible attainment in the world of humanity.

 

bahaiteachings.org/feeling-get-hearts-fire

 

Heart intelligence is the flow of awareness, understanding and intuition we experience when the mind and emotions are brought into coherent alignment with the heart. It can be activated through self-initiated practice, and the more we pay attention when we sense the heart is speaking to us or guiding us, the greater our ability to access this intelligence and guidance more frequently. Heart intelligence underlies cellular organization and guides and evolves organisms toward increased order, awareness and coherence of their bodies’ systems.

 

Throughout much of recorded history, human beings have understood that intelligence, the ability to learn, understand, reason and apply knowledge to shape their environment, was a function of the brain in the head.

 

There also is ample evidence in the writings and oral traditions societies passed down through the generations that they strongly believed in an intelligent heart.

 

Research into the idea of heart intelligence began accelerating in the second half of the 20th century. During the 1960s and ’70s pioneer physiologists John and Beatrice Lacey conducted research that showed the heart actually communicates with the brain in ways that greatly affect how we perceive and react to the world around us. In 1991, the year the HeartMath Institute was established, pioneer neurocardiologist Dr. J. Andrew Armour introduced the term “heart brain.” He said the heart possessed a complex and intrinsic nervous system that is a brain.

 

Today, more than a half century after the Laceys began their research, we know a great deal more about the heart:

 

The heart sends us emotional and intuitive signals to help govern our lives.

The heart directs and aligns many systems in the body so that they can function in harmony with one another.

The heart is in constant communication with the brain. The heart’s intrinsic brain and nervous system relay information back to the brain in the cranium, creating a two-way communication system between heart and brain.

The heart makes many of its own decisions.

The heart starts beating in the unborn fetus before the brain has been formed, a process scientists call autorhythmic.

Humans form an emotional brain long before a rational one, and a beating heart before either.

The heart has its own independent complex nervous system known as “the brain in the heart.”

Although scientists say it is clear there is still much to learn, future generations may well look back and cite another important discovery as one of the most pivotal of the 20th century. The HeartMath Solution, the book that details the program used by hundreds of thousands of people to access and utilize heart intelligence to improve their lives, discusses this discovery.

 

“Researchers began showing in the 1980s and ’90s that success in life depended more on an individual’s ability to effectively manage emotions than on the intellectual ability of the brain in the head,” says The HeartMath Solution, by HeartMath founder Doc Childre and his associate and longtime HeartMath spokesman Howard Martin.

 

This discovery naturally resulted in people wanting to know how to infuse emotions with intelligence.

 

Scientists at the nonprofit HeartMath Institute , which had been conducting research into heart intelligence and emotions posed the theory that “heart intelligence actually transfers intelligence to the emotions and instills the power of emotional management,” the book explains. “In other words, heart intelligence is really the source of emotional intelligence.

 

“From our research at the HeartMath Institute, we've concluded that intelligence and intuition are heightened when we learn to listen more deeply to our own heart. It’s through learning how to decipher messages we receive from our heart that we gain the keen perception needed to effectively manage our emotions in the midst of life’s challenges. The more we learn to listen to and follow our heart intelligence, the more educated, balanced and coherent our emotions become. Without the guiding influence of the heart we easily fall prey to reactive emotions such as insecurity, anger, fear and blame as well as other energy-draining reactions and behaviors.”

 

Early HeartMath research found that negative emotions threw the nervous system out of balance and when that happened heart rhythms became disordered and appeared jagged on a heart monitor. This placed stress on the physical heart and other organs and threatened serious health problems.

 

“Positive emotions, by contrast, were found to increase order and balance in the nervous system and produce smooth, harmonious heart rhythms,” Childre and Martin wrote. “But these harmonious and coherent rhythms did more than reduce stress: They actually enhanced people’s ability to clearly perceive the world around them.”

 

The heart has been considered the source of emotion, courage and wisdom for centuries. For more than 27 years, the HeartMath Institute Research Center has explored the physiological mechanisms by which the heart and brain communicate and how the activity of the heart influences our perceptions, emotions, intuition and health. Early on in our research we asked, among other questions, why people experience the feeling or sensation of love and other regenerative emotions as well as heartache in the physical area of the heart. In the early 1990s, we were among the first to conduct research that not only looked at how stressful emotions affect the activity in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and the hormonal and immune systems, but also at the effects of emotions such as appreciation, compassion and care. Over the years, we have conducted many studies that have utilized many different physiological measures such as EEG (brain waves), SCL (skin conductance), ECG (heart), BP (blood pressure) and hormone levels, etc. Consistently, however, it was heart rate variability, or heart rhythms that stood out as the most dynamic and reflective indicator of one’s emotional states and, therefore, current stress and cognitive processes. It became clear that stressful or depleting emotions such as frustration and overwhelm lead to increased disorder in the higher-level brain centers and autonomic nervous system and which are reflected in the heart rhythms and adversely affects the functioning of virtually all bodily systems. This eventually led to a much deeper understanding of the neural and other communication pathways between the heart and brain. We also observed that the heart acted as though it had a mind of its own and could significantly influence the way we perceive and respond in our daily interactions. In essence, it appeared that the heart could affect our awareness, perceptions and intelligence. Numerous studies have since shown that heart coherence is an optimal physiological state associated with increased cognitive function, self-regulatory capacity, emotional stability and resilience.

 

We now have a much deeper scientific understanding of many of our original questions that explains how and why heart activity affects mental clarity, creativity, emotional balance, intuition and personal effectiveness. Our and others’ research indicates the heart is far more than a simple pump. The heart is, in fact, a highly complex information-processing center with its own functional brain, commonly called the heart brain, that communicates with and influences the cranial brain via the nervous system, hormonal system and other pathways. These influences affect brain function and most of the body’s major organs and play an important role in mental and emotional experience and the quality of our lives.

 

In recent years, we have conducted a number of research studies that have explored topics such as the electrophysiology of intuition and the degree to which the heart’s magnetic field, which radiates outside the body, carries information that affects other people and even our pets, and links people together in surprising ways. We also launched the Global Coherence Initiative (GCI), which explores the interconnectivity of humanity with Earth’s magnetic fields.

 

This overview discusses the main findings of our research and the fascinating and important role the heart plays in our personal coherence and the positive changes that occur in health, mental functions, perception, happiness and energy levels as people practice the HeartMath techniques. Practicing the techniques increases heart coherence and one’s ability to self-regulate emotions from a more intuitive, intelligent and balanced inner reference. This also explains how coherence is reflected in our physiology and can be objectively measured.

 

The discussion then expands from physiological coherence to coherence in the context of families, workplaces and communities. Science of the Heart concludes with the perspective that being responsible for and increasing our personal coherence not only improves personal health and happiness, but also feeds into and influences a global field environment. It is postulated that as increasing numbers of people add coherent energy to the global field, it helps strengthen and stabilize mutually beneficial feedback loops between human beings and Earth’s magnetic fields.

 

www.heartmath.org/research/science-of-the-heart/

 

Note what he wrote concerning the machaira sword in Ephesians 6:17, “And take up…the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

 

The sword (machaira) that Paul referenced was approximately nineteen inches long and both sides of the blade were razor sharp. This sword was used for cutting and slicing flesh. The tip of the sword was turned upward so that it could rip out the entrails of the enemy. It was extremely lethal. Paul said that we could stand firm against the schemes of the enemy by taking up, among other things, a spiritual sword—the sword of the Spirit. Paul said that the sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. This is the rhema word, which is an inspired utterance from the Lord. It can be defined as a spoken word by a living voice or a divine word spoken through the Holy Spirit.

 

A rhema word is a clearly spoken word in undeniable, unmistakable, and unquestionable language that we hear and understand. Renner wrote, “In the New Testament, the word rhema carries the idea of a quickened word, such as a word of scripture or a ‘word from the Lord’ that the Holy Spirit supernaturally drops into a believer’s mind, thus causing it to supernaturally come alive and impart special power or direction to that believer.” Throughout history, there have been men and women who have made critical decisions or life-changing moves simply because they heard a word from the Lord. God spoke an undeniable, unmistakable, unquestionable word to them and they obeyed it. As a result, through God’s people who were obedient to the spoken Word of God, extraordinary accomplishments have occurred. The sword of the Lord was picked-up by those believers and used to stand firm against the enemy by cutting down the work of darkness.

 

Much of Paul’s ministry was influenced by rhema words being spoken to him. For example: God spoke to Paul at the time of his conversion (Acts 9:4-6), God spoke to Ananias concerning Paul’s life and need of a healing (Acts 9:10-16), the Holy Spirit spoke at the time of Paul’s “commissioning” into public ministry (Acts 13:2), the Holy Spirit warned Paul where he was not to preach (Acts 16:6), God spoke to Paul in preparation for a period of persecution that he would experience in Jerusalem (Acts 21:11), and the Holy Spirit spoke concerning Paul’s ministry in the city of Rome (Acts 23:11).

 

We can conclude that Paul used the sword of the Spirit to advance the kingdom of God. He heard the rhema Word of God and by obeying it, the gospel of Christ was advance against the perils and wiles of the devil. The Holy Spirit desires to speak a rhema word to you, too. He wants to speak to you in undeniable, unmistakable, and unquestionable language that you hear and understand. Have you heard a word from the Lord recently? The challenge becomes living in such a way that we’re able to hear the subtle voice of the Holy Spirit. The Bible says today if we hear His voice we’re not to harden our hearts (Heb. 4:7). I believe the issue is not if God is speaking, but if we’re listening. Recently, I wrote that one of the most significant things that we can do to stand firm against the schemes of the enemy is to “listen” to the voice of the Holy Spirit. Life is in His voice; we don’t live by bread alone, but by every word (rhema) that proceeds out of God’s mouth (Matt. 4:4). If we live by His words, then, could we spiritually die by the absence of hearing them?

 

We must arrange our lives in a posture of intimacy to hear what Jesus is saying to us. Choose to live a “Mary lifestyle” at the feet of Jesus. This is a challenge, no doubt, because we live in a “Martha world” that is worried, bothered and distracted about so many things (see Luke 10:38-42). Intimacy with Jesus is fundamental to hearing, and it’s how we’re equipped to use the sword of the Spirit against the schemes of the enemy. Additionally, some of the greatest spoken words that you will hear occur when you read the written words of God. The Bible says, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). Become a student of the Bible so that you can be adequately equipped for every work that the Lord calls you to do. Read, soak, immerse, listen, study, and memorize the written Word of God, and watch how frequently He will speak a living word into your heart.

 

Stand firm, my friends, and use the sword of the Spirit against the schemes of the enemy so that you can advance the kingdom of God.

 

www.fireschoolministries.com/blog/the-sword-of-the-spirit

The importance of defending airfields against attack was realised before the outbreak of World War II and a strategy evolved as the war went on. Initially based on the principle of defence against air attack, anti-aircraft guns, air raid shelters and dispersed layouts, with fighter or `blast' pens to protect dispersed aircraft, are characteristics of this early phase. With time, however, the capture of the airfield became a more significant threat, and it was in this phase that the majority of surviving defence structures were constructed, mostly in the form of pillboxes and other types of machine gun post. The scale of airfield defence depended on the likelihood of attack, with those airfields in south or east England, and those close to navigable rivers, ports and dockyards being more heavily defended. But the types of structure used were fairly standard. For defence against air attack there were anti-aircraft gun positions, either small machine gun posts or more substantial towers for Bofors guns; air raid shelters were common, with many examples on each airfield; and for aircraft, widely dispersed to reduce the potential effects of attack, fighter pens were provided. These were groups together, usually in threes, and took the form of `E' shaped earthworks with shelter for ground crew. Night fighter stations also had sleep shelters where the crew could rest. For defence against capture, pillboxes were provided. These fortified gun positions took many forms, from standard ministry designs used throughout Britain and in all contexts, to designs specifically for airfield defence. Three Pickett-Hamilton forts were issued to many airfields and located on the flying field itself. Normally level with the ground, these forts were occupied by two persons who entered through the roof before raising the structure by a pneumatic mechanism to bring fire on the invading force. Other types of gun position include the Seagull trench, a complex linear defensive position, and rounded `Mushroom' pillboxes, while fighter pens were often protected by defended walls. Finally, airfield defence was co-ordinated from a Battle Headquarters, a heavily built structure of which under and above ground examples are known. Defences survive on a number of airfields, though few in anything like the original form or configuration, or with their Battle Headquarters. Examples are considered to be of particular importance where the defence provision is near complete, or where a portion of the airfield represents the nature of airfield defence that existed more widely across the site. Surviving structures will often be given coherence and context by surviving lengths of perimeter track and the concrete dispersal pads. In addition, some types of defence structure are rare survivals nationally, and all examples of Pickett- Hamilton forts, fighter pens and their associated sleep shelters, gun positions and Battle Headquarters closely associated with defence structures, are of national importance.

 

Despite the loss of parts of West Malling airfield to modern development, elements of its World War II defences survive well and represent a range of structures originally present. The Pickett-Hamilton fort is a well-preserved example of a rare form of gun emplacement, 242 of which were installed on 82 airfields in 1940-41 by a commercial construction company. The structure remains substantially unchanged and still retains all the principal elements of its original design, including its operating equipment. Its use in this location illustrates the often unique character of airfield structures, in this case specifically designed for the defence of the flying field. The anti-aircraft defences at West Malling are also notable for the survival of a Bofors Light Anti-aircraft gun tower at the north western corner of the former airfield, one of only three examples recorded on airfields nationally (the other two survive at Brooklands and Weston-super-Mare). As such, it is an important historic structure, serving as a physical record of similar emplacements which have been demolished elsewhere. The Type 24 irregular hexagonal pillbox is the most common form of pillbox built between 1939 and 1941. Pillboxes are especially representative of World War II defence structures and its association with the adjacent airfield adds to the significance of the structure. The pillbox, located on the southern side of West Malling airfield survives comparatively well. Its presence, as well as the strengthening of its walls in concrete, illustrates the perceived vulnerability of the airfield to attack by heavy German artillery. The importance of the surviving defence structures at West Malling is further enhanced by the overall significance of the airfield itself and the necessity to safeguard crucial elements in the defence of Britain against the threat of invasion during the greatest conflict of the 20th century.

Details

The monument, which falls into three separate areas, includes a Bofors Light Anti-aircraft gun tower, a Pickett-Hamilton fort and a Type 24 pillbox. These structures formed part of the World War II defences of West Malling airfield, situated at Kings Hill, on top of the Greensand ridge, about 5km west of Maidstone. West Malling opened in 1930 as a private airfield for the Maidstone School of Flying, and was subsequently registered as Maidstone airport two years later. With the outbreak of World War II the airfield, which fell within Fighter Command's strategically important 11 Group (that part of Fighter Command covering the south east of England), was requisitioned by the RAF and soon re-opened as a front line fighter station in June 1940, and a satellite airfield to Biggin Hill, the principal fighter station in the area. A series of German bombing raids in August 1940 rendered the airfield unserviceable during the Battle of Britain, although it became a leading night fighter station the following year and played a key role in the 1944 campaign, code named Operation Diver, to defend the South East against the V1 flying bomb. With the end of the war West Malling became the main rehabilitation centre for prisoners of war returning from Germany. By this time its former grass runways, reinforced with Somerfield track (a heavy steel netting), had been replaced in concrete to meet the needs of the new jet aircraft. After the war the airfield was used for peacetime training, and during the 1960s the station was placed on `care and maintenance' by the RAF. The site was acquired by Kent County Council in 1970 and many of the airfield buildings are now used as offices by Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council. Since the 1990s, parts of the airfield have been lost to modern development. With the deepening threat of German invasion, the defence of Britain's airfields became a high priority during 1940. Fear of German `blitzkrieg' or `lightening' war tactics (involving rapid assault by air and seaborne troops, as witnessed in Europe in the Spring of 1940), led to the implementation of a national strategy for the defence of airfields in September 1940. West Malling was identified as one of 149 important airfields, located within 20 miles of vulnerable ports which could be targets for seaborne landings. Heavy defence of these airfields was therefore crucial to prevent capture of strategic landing grounds by enemy paratroops or gliderborne forces, rapidly followed by the arrival of transport aircraft carrying the principal invasion force. By the end of 1940, three Pickett-Hamilton forts had been installed at West Malling. These structures were designed in June 1940 by the New Kent Construction Company, specifically for the close defence of airfield runways. One of these forts was located towards the northern end of the flying field and survives next to what is now a modern access track. The structure consists of two, vertically sunken concrete cylinders, one mounted inside the other. The inner cylinder, known as the lifting head, remains in its lowered position, flush with the ground surface. The lifting head, pierced with three apertures for its main Vickers or Bren gun, was designed to be raised to its firing position by means of a pneumatic jack, supplemented by a manual pump for emergency use. The fort retains most of its original features, including its internal operating equipment as well as the access hatch in the lid of the lifting head through which the crew of two men entered at ground level. The second fort was removed from the airfield in 1983, and survives on display at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford. The location of the third fort has not yet been identified. Adjacent to the southern perimeter track at West Malling is a Type 24 hexagonal pillbox which originally formed part of an inner and outer series of about 20-30 pillboxes. The small squat structure measures about 6m by 5.5m and is entered through a doorway on its longer eastern side. The entrance is protected by a low externally attached brick wall, and is flanked by one of two loopholes, the second of which is located in the opposite wall of the pillbox. In accordance with orders issued in 1941, the walls of the original brick built structure were thickened by the external application of reinforced concrete, and evidence suggests that at least two additional loopholes were also blocked at this time. These measures were intended to strengthen pillboxes at vulnerable locations against heavy German artillery. The presence of a recess in the edge of the roof above each opening suggests that further protection for the gun crew may have been provided in the form of shields, designed to deflect flame-throwers. A rare surviving example of a Bofors Light Anti-aircraft gun tower also survives close to a modern roundabout, at the north western approach to the airfield. The concrete and brick built tower appears to conform to type `DFW 55087', which was designed at the end of 1939, with the earliest examples constructed during the first half of 1940. The tower was designed to raise a 40mm Bofors gun and its operational equipment, above surrounding obstacles in order to achieve an all-round field of fire in defending the airfield from attack by fast moving, low flying enemy aircraft. The tower stands to a height of about 20m and consists of two parallel, independent structures, separated for much of their height by a 1m gap and linked at intervals by cantilevered concrete bridges to allow movement between the towers. At ground level, the gap functioned as a passageway, providing access to the chambers on either side. The combined structure measures 9m from north to south by 4m east to west and each tower was constructed on four levels: three internal levels contained the magazine and accommodation chambers, lit by vertical two-light windows. The emplacement was located on the flat concrete roof, which projects beyond the brick walls of the tower and was reached via a ladder from the chamber below. The ordnance was centrally mounted on the roof of the northern tower and was served by ammunition lockers at each corner of the roof space. The roof of the southern tower supported the target predictor and was separated from the gun platform by a narrow intervening gap, above the passage below, to insulate this sensitive equipment from the vibration of the Bofors gun. Several temporary station buildings survive around the airfield perimeter. These derelict structures include externally rendered, temporary brick buildings, dispersed from the main technical site in anticipation of concentrated bombing raids. These structures are not included in the current scheduling. Among the more architecturally sophisticated airfield buildings, the Neo-Georgian style Officers' Mess is Listed Grade II. Several semi-sunken Stanton air raid shelters survive, in buried form, near the barrack buildings. These are infilled and are not therefore included in the scheduling. Other structures associated with the defence of the airfield, such as the battle headquarters and the protected aircraft dispersal pens, were destroyed towards the end of the 20th century, although further, as yet unidentified elements may survive beyond the area of the monument. All modern fixtures and fittings associated with the Bofors tower, including modern doors and window boxes, and all modern materials and equipment stored within the tower are excluded from the scheduling; the ground beneath these features, or the structures to which they are attached, however, is included.

 

MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract. It includes a 2 metre boundary around the archaeological features, considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.

St Pancras, Ipswich, Suffolk

 

Until its clearance in the post-war years, the area spreading eastwards of Ipswich town centre was a vast slum. The Rope Walk area was redeveloped and is now home to Suffolk New College and parts of the University. The housing in the Cox Lane area became a car park. I met a man a few years ago who always tries to park his car on the site of the house where he grew up.

 

Two grand red brick churches survive as islands. The Anglican St Michael is now a burnt out shell. It was declared redundant in the 1990s, and in truth it is hard to see how it can ever have been needed as more than a triumphalist gesture, with the parish church of St Helen only a hundred yards or so away. It was destroyed by fire in March 2011. Still standing tall is George Goldie's 1861 Catholic church of St Pancras. Seen from across the car park, the only clue that it was once tightly surrounded by poor people's houses is that there are no windows in the wall of the north aisle. As at Brighton's St Bartholomew, this great ship was designed to sail above roof tops.

 

St Pancras looks like a bit dropped off, and that is exactly what it is. Goldie's commission was for the huge, recently demolished School of Jesus and Mary on the campus of the Woodbridge Road church of St Mary, and this town centre church in the same style. St Pancras was intended to be the start of a church of cathedral scale, of which the surviving church was but the chancel. At the time, Ipswich was in the Diocese of Northampton. Today, it is in the Diocese of East Anglia, with a great stone Gothic cathedral at Norwich. But the Norwich cathedral, built as the church of St John the Baptist, and the equally grand Our Lady and the English Martyrs in Cambridge, were both begun a good thirty years after St Pancras. If it had ever been finished, St Pancras would have been one of the biggest red brick churches in England.

 

The north elevation is stark, that on the south side rather more comfy, with good modern glass in the south aisle windows. The most impressive view is from the west, where the vast rose window fills in what would have been the top of the chancel arch. Here, where the 1970s parish hall stands, would have been the crossing tower, with transepts either side. Looking further west, the nave would have stretched, and here is perhaps one of the reasons why St Pancras the great was never built. Immediately to the west of the church, across Cox lane, stands the fortress-like Christ Church. Although the present building post-dates St Pancras, there has been a Congregationalist church on the site for more than three hundred years, and the planned Catholic church would have stretched in front of it. Given the ecclesiastical politics of the late 19th century, one can't imagine them giving up the site very lightly.

 

The Catholic presence in Ipswich had been re-established in the 1790s, at the time of the French Revolution, by a refugee Priest, Louis Simon. He said Mass in the home of a rich local lady Margaret Wood, and then with her help established a mission church near the Woodbridge Road barracks. This church, St Anthony, formed the transepts of the building that still survives as the parish hall of the 1960 St Mary.

 

After the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy in England in 1850, which you can read about on the entry for St Mary, the plan was to create a town centre profile for the Church, and this was why Goldie was commissioned to build St Pancras. However, anti-Catholic feeling was rather stronger than it had been seventy years previously. On a night in November 1862, the protestant ministers of the town whipped up such a state of hysteria that angry mobs ran through Ipswich smashing windows of Catholic churches, homes and businesses.

 

Although the exterior of this building is rather severe, the inside is a delight, quite the loveliest Victorian interior in Ipswich. It doesn't have the gravitas of St Mary le Tower, or the mystery of St Bartholomew, but it is a cascade of red and white brick banding, cast-iron pillars and wall tiling. Along with the statues and the candles and the smell of incense, it is everything a 19th century town centre church should be.

 

The post-Vatican II re-ordering of the sanctuary has not destroyed its coherence (or, indeed, the traditionalist flavour of the liturgy here). Above the altar, Christ stands in majesty, flanked by the four evangelists. The tabernacle is set curiously off-centre to the south.

 

Exposed as St Pancras is in comparison with many town centre churches, it is always full of light, and this light takes on the resonances of some good glass. The west window was filled with a design depicting the descent of the Holy Spirit as recently as 2001, by the Danielle Hopkinson studio. As a point of interest, they also did the glass in my front door. This is unfortunately obscured by a massive organ (the west window, not my front door). Below the west gallery is the baptistery, one of Ipswich's busiest, and just some of the church's collection of devotional statues. In the south aisle are three sets of triple lancets. The older glass in the most easterly depicts St Thomas, St Andrew and St John. The splendid 1974 glass by John Lawson in the other two sets depicts St Martin de Porres and St Francis of Assisi.

 

Not many people live in the parish itself, but as the busiest town centre church in Ipswich St Pancras continues to have a major role to play. Its Masses attract people from far and wide, including many from the town's sizeable minority communities. Perhaps this is because it does have such a traditionalist flavour, but also perhaps because of the work of the tireless and charismatic Parish Priest, Father 'Sam' Leeder. 'He's been here for forty years, and is a familiar character in the town centre, wandering the streets and talking to local traders, as well as being the cornerstone of the town's scouts. Ipswich would be diminished without him.

What’s the matter with Idealism?

Solo exhibition by Charles Avery at GEM, Museum for Contemporary Art The Hague

 

Charles Avery (1973, Oban, Schotland) is een ontdekkingsreiziger van het ‘ouderwetse’ soort. Al tien jaar werkt hij aan zijn project ‘The Islanders’, waarin hij met behulp van tekeningen, teksten, video, objecten en installaties een fictief eiland in kaart brengt. In Charles Avery - What’s the matter with Idealism? etaleert hij de resultaten van de afgelopen vijf jaar.

 

De tentoonstelling laat bezoekers reizen naar de bruisende hoofdstad Onomatopoeia met haar drukke haven, het stadspark en de toegangspoort tot de onherbergzame wildernis eromheen. Het is een diep uitgedachte fantasiewereld die Charles Avery op allerlei manieren vormgeeft en voedt met filosofische bespiegelingen. Daarbij laat hij zich inspireren door het gedachtegoed van bestaande filosofen en kunstenaars als William Blake en Joseph Beuys. Ook is in Onomatopoeia een discussie gaande over het bestaan van het mythische wezen Noumenon. Ondanks de inspanningen van jagers en avonturiers heeft niemand het beest ooit gezien. De tentoonstelling omvat karakterstudies, objecten en scènes die inzicht geven in de cultuur, de economie en de overtuigingen van de bewoners.

 

Avery’s interesse in literatuur, wiskunde en filosofie zien we op allerlei manieren terug. Zo ontwierp hij bomen voor zijn eiland die qua vorm gebaseerd zijn op wiskundige formules. Mooi, fantasierijk, uiterst gedetailleerd en humorvol zijn de verhalende tekeningen die de basis vormen van zijn project. In de loop der jaren heeft hij zijn ideeën en technieken verder uitgebreid, is het formaat van zijn tekeningen groter geworden en het kleurgebruik divers. Met veel aandacht voor details creëert Avery zo een meeslepend verhaal, als beschouwer ga je bijna op in zijn wereld.

 

Met ‘The Islanders’ wil Charles Avery geen utopie neerzetten. Het eiland is een fictieve samenleving, die op verschillende manieren een spiegel vormt voor de onze. Zo is de eindeloze wijsgerige discussie die op het eiland gaande is een humoristische verwijzing naar de praktijk van de filosofie en is de relatie van het eiland met haar voormalige overheerser Triangland te lezen als een politieke metafoor. Door het eiland als overkoepelend thema van zijn kunstenaarschap te nemen, geeft Avery zichzelf bovendien de vrijheid om met uiteenlopende materialen te werken.

  

Charles Avery (b. 1973, Oban, Scotland) is an explorer of the ’old-fashioned’ kind. For the last decade he has been hard at work on his project ’The Islanders’, using drawings, texts, video, objects and installations to create a portrait of a fictional island. Charles Avery – What’s the matter with Idealism? showcases the results of the last five years of his project.

 

The exhibition will transport visitors to Onomatopoeia; bustling port, main town and gateway to the island’s great wilderness: one time colonial outpost turned boomtown, turned depression-ravaged slum and regenerated city of culture and tourist destination.

 

The island is a carefully considered fictional world described by Charles Avery in a multitude of different ways and nourished by philosophical reflection. The project is inspired by the ideas of real-life philosophers and artists such as William Blake and Joseph Beuys. For example, there is an ongoing debate in Onomatopoeia about the existence of a mythical being called the Noumenon, which – despite the best efforts of hunters and adventurers – nobody has ever glimpsed. The exhibition will include character studies, objects and scenes that give an insight to the culture, economy and beliefs of the Onomatopoeians.

 

His interest in literature, mathematics and philosophy is apparent throughout his work. For example, Avery has designed trees for his island, the forms of which are based on numerical patterns. The narrative drawings that form the basis of his oeuvre are skilfully rendered, highly imaginative, extremely detailed and full of humour. Over the years Avery has developed an ever-growing vocabulary of ideas, characters, architecture and techniques, enabling him to portray this ’other country’. With increasing conviction, coherence and attention to detail, he creates a compelling and immersive narrative that the viewer can identify with and inhabit.

 

The world Charles Avery depicts in ’The Islanders’ is not intended to be a utopia. The island is a fictive society, which, in various ways, holds up a mirror to our own. For example, ’The Eternal Dialectic’ (the given name of the endless philosophical argument that smolders throughout the bars and salons of the town) is a reflection on our own pursuit of knowledge, understanding of the concept of truth and our beliefs in its attainability.

 

By taking the island as the overarching theme of his artistic oeuvre, Avery also gives himself the freedom to work with a wide range of media and ideas.

The Tiburon was aimed to compete with Toyota's Celica. I thought that the shapes and relationships of its lights in front lacked coherence and harmony. The shape and bulk of the fenders seemed awkward to me.

St Pancras, Ipswich, Suffolk

 

Until its clearance in the post-war years, the area spreading eastwards of Ipswich town centre was a vast slum. The Rope Walk area was redeveloped and is now home to Suffolk New College and parts of the University. The housing in the Cox Lane area became a car park. I met a man a few years ago who always tries to park his car on the site of the house where he grew up.

 

Two grand red brick churches survive as islands. The Anglican St Michael is now a burnt out shell. It was declared redundant in the 1990s, and in truth it is hard to see how it can ever have been needed as more than a triumphalist gesture, with the parish church of St Helen only a hundred yards or so away. It was destroyed by fire in March 2011. Still standing tall is George Goldie's 1861 Catholic church of St Pancras. Seen from across the car park, the only clue that it was once tightly surrounded by poor people's houses is that there are no windows in the wall of the north aisle. As at Brighton's St Bartholomew, this great ship was designed to sail above roof tops.

 

St Pancras looks like a bit dropped off, and that is exactly what it is. Goldie's commission was for the huge, recently demolished School of Jesus and Mary on the campus of the Woodbridge Road church of St Mary, and this town centre church in the same style. St Pancras was intended to be the start of a church of cathedral scale, of which the surviving church was but the chancel. At the time, Ipswich was in the Diocese of Northampton. Today, it is in the Diocese of East Anglia, with a great stone Gothic cathedral at Norwich. But the Norwich cathedral, built as the church of St John the Baptist, and the equally grand Our Lady and the English Martyrs in Cambridge, were both begun a good thirty years after St Pancras. If it had ever been finished, St Pancras would have been one of the biggest red brick churches in England.

 

The north elevation is stark, that on the south side rather more comfy, with good modern glass in the south aisle windows. The most impressive view is from the west, where the vast rose window fills in what would have been the top of the chancel arch. Here, where the 1970s parish hall stands, would have been the crossing tower, with transepts either side. Looking further west, the nave would have stretched, and here is perhaps one of the reasons why St Pancras the great was never built. Immediately to the west of the church, across Cox lane, stands the fortress-like Christ Church. Although the present building post-dates St Pancras, there has been a Congregationalist church on the site for more than three hundred years, and the planned Catholic church would have stretched in front of it. Given the ecclesiastical politics of the late 19th century, one can't imagine them giving up the site very lightly.

 

The Catholic presence in Ipswich had been re-established in the 1790s, at the time of the French Revolution, by a refugee Priest, Louis Simon. He said Mass in the home of a rich local lady Margaret Wood, and then with her help established a mission church near the Woodbridge Road barracks. This church, St Anthony, formed the transepts of the building that still survives as the parish hall of the 1960 St Mary.

 

After the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy in England in 1850, which you can read about on the entry for St Mary, the plan was to create a town centre profile for the Church, and this was why Goldie was commissioned to build St Pancras. However, anti-Catholic feeling was rather stronger than it had been seventy years previously. On a night in November 1862, the protestant ministers of the town whipped up such a state of hysteria that angry mobs ran through Ipswich smashing windows of Catholic churches, homes and businesses.

 

Although the exterior of this building is rather severe, the inside is a delight, quite the loveliest Victorian interior in Ipswich. It doesn't have the gravitas of St Mary le Tower, or the mystery of St Bartholomew, but it is a cascade of red and white brick banding, cast-iron pillars and wall tiling. Along with the statues and the candles and the smell of incense, it is everything a 19th century town centre church should be.

 

The post-Vatican II re-ordering of the sanctuary has not destroyed its coherence (or, indeed, the traditionalist flavour of the liturgy here). Above the altar, Christ stands in majesty, flanked by the four evangelists. The tabernacle is set curiously off-centre to the south.

 

Exposed as St Pancras is in comparison with many town centre churches, it is always full of light, and this light takes on the resonances of some good glass. The west window was filled with a design depicting the descent of the Holy Spirit as recently as 2001, by the Danielle Hopkinson studio. As a point of interest, they also did the glass in my front door. This is unfortunately obscured by a massive organ (the west window, not my front door). Below the west gallery is the baptistery, one of Ipswich's busiest, and just some of the church's collection of devotional statues. In the south aisle are three sets of triple lancets. The older glass in the most easterly depicts St Thomas, St Andrew and St John. The splendid 1974 glass by John Lawson in the other two sets depicts St Martin de Porres and St Francis of Assisi.

 

Not many people live in the parish itself, but as the busiest town centre church in Ipswich St Pancras continues to have a major role to play. Its Masses attract people from far and wide, including many from the town's sizeable minority communities. Perhaps this is because it does have such a traditionalist flavour, but also perhaps because of the work of the tireless and charismatic Parish Priest, Father 'Sam' Leeder. 'He's been here for forty years, and is a familiar character in the town centre, wandering the streets and talking to local traders, as well as being the cornerstone of the town's scouts. Ipswich would be diminished without him.

Testing, Testing, ... BANG!!!

  

Nondestructive testing

  

Nondestructive testing or Non-destructive testing (NDT) is a wide group of analysis techniques used in science and industry to evaluate the properties of a material, component or system without causing damage.[1] The terms Nondestructive examination (NDE), Nondestructive inspection (NDI), and Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) are also commonly used to describe this technology.[2] Because NDT does not permanently alter the article being inspected, it is a highly valuable technique that can save both money and time in product evaluation, troubleshooting, and research. Common NDT methods include ultrasonic, magnetic-particle, liquid penetrant, radiographic, remote visual inspection (RVI), eddy-current testing,[1] and low coherence interferometry.[3][4] NDT is commonly used in forensic engineering, mechanical engineering, petroleum engineering, electrical engineering, civil engineering, systems engineering, aeronautical engineering, medicine, and art.[1] Innovations in the field of nondestructive testing have had a profound impact on medical imaging, including on echocardiography, medical ultrasonography, and digital radiography.

  

Methods[edit]

 

NDT methods may rely upon use of electromagnetic radiation, sound, and inherent properties of materials to examine samples. This includes some kinds of microscopy to examine external surfaces in detail, although sample preparation techniques for metallography, optical microscopy and electron microscopy are generally destructive as the surfaces must be made smooth through polishing or the sample must be electron transparent in thickness. The inside of a sample can be examined with penetrating radiation, such as X-rays, neutrons or terahertz radiation. Sound waves are utilized in the case of ultrasonic testing. Contrast between a defect and the bulk of the sample may be enhanced for visual examination by the unaided eye by using liquids to penetrate fatigue cracks. One method (liquid penetrant testing) involves using dyes, fluorescent or non-fluorescent, in fluids for non-magnetic materials, usually metals. Another commonly used NDT method used on ferrous materials involves the application of fine iron particles (either liquid or dry dust) that are applied to a part while it is in an externally magnetized state (magnetic-particle testing). The particles will be attracted to leakage fields within the test object, and form on the objects surface. Magnetic particle testing can reveal surface & some sub-surface defects within the part. Thermoelectric effect (or use of the Seebeck effect) uses thermal properties of an alloy to quickly and easily characterize many alloys. The chemical test, or chemical spot test method, utilizes application of sensitive chemicals that can indicate the presence of individual alloying elements. Electrochemical methods, such as electrochemical fatigue crack sensors, utilize the tendency of metal structural material to oxidize readily in order to detect progressive damage.

 

Analyzing and documenting a non-destructive failure mode can also be accomplished using a high-speed camera recording continuously (movie-loop) until the failure is detected. Detecting the failure can be accomplished using a sound detector or stress gauge which produces a signal to trigger the high-speed camera. These high-speed cameras have advanced recording modes to capture some non-destructive failures.[5] After the failure the high-speed camera will stop recording. The capture images can be played back in slow motion showing precisely what happen before, during and after the non-destructive event, image by image.

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondestructive_testing

"We see with the eyes, but we see with the brain as well.

 

10% of visually-impaired people hallucinate, but no more than 1% acknowledge them because they fear that they will be seen as insane.

 

As you lose vision, as the visual parts of the brain are not getting any input, they become hyperactive and excitable and they start to fire spontaneously and you start to see things.

 

[although he did not reference Ramachandran, it reminded me of phantom limb pain in amputees]

 

Distorted human faces and cartoon images are the most common.

 

How the theater of the mind is generated by the machinery of the brain.

 

I'm blind in one eye, and not terribly good in the other. And I see the geometrical hallucinations… And when I see all these hexagons and complex things, which I also have, in visual migraine, I wonder whether everyone sees things like this, and whether things like cave art, or ornamental art may have been derived from them a bit.

 

So, what is going on? Fascinatingly, in the last few years, it's been possible to do functional brain imagery, to do fMRI on people as they are hallucinating. And in fact, to find that different parts of the visual brain are activated as they are hallucinating. When people have these simple geometrical hallucinations, the primary visual cortex is activated. This is the part of the brain which perceives edges and patterns.

 

When images are formed, a higher part of the visual cortex is involved in the temporal lobe. And in particular, one area of the temporal lobe is called the fusiform gyrus. And it's known that if people have damage in the fusiform gyrus, they maybe lose the ability to recognize faces. But if there is an abnormal activity in the fusiform gyrus, they may hallucinate faces. And this is exactly what you find in some of these people. There is an area in the anterior part of this gyrus where teeth and eyes are represented. And that part of the gyrus is activated when people get the deformed hallucinations.

 

There is another part of the brain which is especially activated when one sees cartoons. It's activated when one recognizes cartoons, when one draws cartoons, and when one hallucinates them. It's very interesting that that should be specific. There are other parts of the brain which are specifically involved with the recognition and hallucination of buildings and landscapes…

 

Now, at this level, in what's called the inferotemporal cortex, there are only visual images, or figments or fragments. It's only at higher levels that the other senses join in and there are connections with memory and emotion… Normally these are all part of the integrated stream of perception, or imagination. And one is not conscious of them.

 

It is only if one is visually impaired, or blind, that the process is interrupted. And instead of getting normal perception, you're getting an anarchic, convulsive stimulation, or release, of all of these visual cells, in the inferotemporal cortex. So, suddenly you see a face. Suddenly you see a car. Suddenly this, and suddenly that. The mind does its best to organize, and to give some sort of coherence to this. But not terribly successfully."

 

Here's the Video of his talk at TED.

Come see me at : www.Chanyungco.com / Breaking The Ice / Good Press Gallery / Fistful Of Books & follow me @elchanyungco on instagram ❤︎

Pluripotent Structures

Ferda Kolatan+Erich Schoenenberger

su11 architecture+design

An investigation into adaptive and variable formal and structural organizations that have more than one possible outcome yet maintain coherence.

IMPRESIONISMO: ¿UNA RUPTURA?

 

“Algunos considerarán a los impresionistas los primeros modernos porque desafiaron ciertas normas de la pintura tal como eran enseñadas en las academias; pero conviene recordar que los impresionistas no se distinguieron en sus fines de las tradiciones del arte que se habían desarrollado desde el descubrimiento de la naturaleza en el Renacimiento. También ellos querían pintar la naturaleza tal como la veían, y su oposición a los maestros conservadores no radicó tanto en el fin como en los medios de conseguirlo. Su exploración de los reflejos del color, así como sus experiencias con la pincelada suelta, se encaminaban a crear una ilusión aún más perfecta de la impresión visual. Sólo con el impresionismo, en efecto, se completó la conquista de la naturaleza, convirtiéndose en tema del cuadro todo lo que pudiera presentarse ante los ojos del pintor, mereciendo constituir el objeto del estudio del artista el mundo real en todos sus aspectos”. (Gombrich, Historia del Arte)

  

Por un lado, con el Impresionismo culmina un largo recorrido iniciado por la pintura en los albores del siglo XV: la captación de la realidad y, por otro lado, se abren las puertas del arte del siglo XX. Conceptos como los de luz y color, se encontraban ya, por ejemplo, en la pintura veneciana de mediados del siglo XVI, mediante la valoración de la luz natural con toques ligeros de color. Estos efectos también están presentes en la pintura holandesa del siglo XVII y en las obras de Velázquez y Goya. Recordemos por ejemplo a Francesco Guardi y su manera de sugerir las figuras de los remeros venecianos con unas cuantas motas de color, o al genio de Leonardo con sus sfumato.

Sin embargo el antecedente más inmediato del Impresionismo lo encontramos en la pintura francesa de la primera mitad del siglo XIX. El pintor romántico Delacroix (antecedente indiscutible del Impresionismo) afirmaba en su Diario que “en la naturaleza todo es reflejo”. Delacroix renovó la pintura del momento al iniciar la tendencia de otorgarle más importancia a la forma que a la línea, alejándose así de los parámetros puramente clasicistas.

En su arte, resulta peligroso dramatizar sus logros simplemente viéndolos tan solo como personajes revolucionarios e idealistas que reaccionaron contra un establishment artístico que había instituido sus Salones, su prestigio y todo su aparato en Francia desde los tiempos de Colbert.

En general, fueron modelos de rectitud. Asimismo, sería totalmente erróneo visualizarlos, hasta en su contexto puramente profesional, como dependiendo, indolentes, de los caprichos de la creatividad o de las fluctuaciones de la inspiración.

El verdadero logro de los impresionistas es que dieron coherencia y forma a tendencias que durante un período considerable de tiempo habían estado latentes en el arte europeo. Turner y Constable, por ejemplo, se habían dedicado a muchos de los mismos problemas sobre la luz y el color, o toda la escuela de Barbizon donde se había practicado el trabajo “au plein air” desde 1840.

Así también lo hicieron los impresionistas poniendo de manifiesto la importancia de la pintura al aire libre, en contacto emocional con el tema que les demandaba su atención, perfeccionando de esta forma esa tradición paisajística.

En realidad es un arte que no deja de ser burgués, al contrario, la burguesía, como imperante fenómeno social, trae sus propios usos y costumbres; unos afectan al campo, que deja de ser lugar de trabajo para convertirse en lugar de ocio: las vacaciones y las excursiones campestres. Es el mundo retratado por Monet y Renoir.

La ciudad, por el contrario, se convierte en nuevo espacio para la nueva clase social: aparecen los flanneurs, paseantes ociosos que se lucen y asisten a conciertos en los boulevards y los jardines de París. También cobra relevancia la noche y sus habitantes, los locales nocturnos, el paseo, las cantantes de cabaret, el ballet, los cafés y sus tertulias.

Es un mundo fascinante, del cual los impresionistas extraen sus temas: en especial Degas o Toulouse-Lautrec. Porque para ellos se han terminado los temas grandiosos e intemporales del pasado. El positivismo acarrea una concepción de objetividad de la percepción, de un criterio científico que resta valor a todo lo que no sea clasificable según las leyes del color y de la óptica. Según esto, cualquier objeto natural, visible, afectado por la luz y el color, es susceptible de ser representado artísticamente. Así pues, el cuadro impresionista se vuelca pues en los paisajes, las regatas, las reuniones domingueras, etc.

Los impresionistas se agruparon en torno a la figura de Manet, el rechazado de los Salones oficiales y promotor del Salon des Refusés. Ante el nuevo léxico que proponen, de pincelada descompuesta en colores primarios que han de recomponerse en la retina del espectador, el público reacciona en contra, incapaz de "leer" correctamente el nuevo lenguaje. Pero el Impresionismo no acaba en el oscurantismo pues cuenta con el apoyo de dos fuerzas sociales emergentes: la crítica de arte, que se encargará de encauzar el gusto del público; y los marchands (marchantes), los vendedores de arte, que colocan sus cuadros en las mejores colecciones del país. Las tertulias, los Salones extra-oficiales y el propio escándalo se convirtieron en vehículos propagandísticos del nuevo estilo.

La lucha de los impresionistas se convirtió en una especie de leyenda áurea de todos los innovadores en arte, quienes en lo sucesivo podrían acogerse siempre a aquella manifiesta incapacidad del público para admitir nuevos métodos.

__________________

IMPRESSIONISM: A BREAK-UP?

"Some will consider the Impressionists to be the first moderns because they challenged certain standards of painting as taught in the academies; but it should be remembered that the Impressionists did not distinguish themselves in their aims from the traditions of art that had developed since the discovery of nature in the Renaissance. They too wanted to paint nature as they saw it, and their opposition to the conservative masters was not so much in the end as in the means of achieving it. Their exploration of color reflections, as well as their experiences with loose brushstrokes, were aimed at creating an even more perfect illusion of visual impression. It was only with impressionism that the conquest of nature was completed, and everything that could be presented to the painter's eyes became the subject of the painting, and the real world in all its aspects deserved to be the object of the artist's study". (Gombrich, History of Art).

 

On the one hand, Impressionism culminates a long journey initiated by painting at the beginning of the 15th century: the capture of reality and, on the other hand, opens the doors of 20th century art. Concepts such as those of light and colour were already found, for example, in Venetian painting in the mid-sixteenth century, through the appreciation of natural light with light touches of colour. These effects are also present in 17th century Dutch painting and in the works of Velázquez and Goya.

However, the most immediate antecedent of Impressionism is found in French painting of the first half of the 19th century. The Romantic painter Delacroix (the undisputed forerunner of Impressionism) stated in his Diary that "in nature everything is a reflection". Delacroix renewed the painting of the time by starting the trend of giving more importance to form than to line, thus moving away from purely classicist parameters.

In his art, it is dangerous to dramatize his achievements simply by seeing them as revolutionary and idealistic characters who reacted against an artistic establishment that had instituted its Salons, its prestige and all its apparatus in France since the time of Colbert.

In general, they were models of righteousness. Likewise, it would be totally wrong to visualize them, even in their purely professional context, as depending, indolently, on the whims of creativity or the fluctuations of inspiration.

The real achievement of the Impressionists is that they gave coherence and form to trends that had been dormant in European art for a considerable period of time. Turner and Constable, for example, had devoted themselves to many of the same problems about light and colour, or the whole Barbizon school where work had been practised "au plein air" since 1840.

So did the Impressionists, demonstrating the importance of painting in the open air, in emotional contact with the subject that demanded their attention, thus perfecting that landscape tradition.

In reality it is an art that does not cease to be bourgeois, on the contrary, the bourgeoisie, as a prevailing social phenomenon, brings its own uses and customs; some affect the countryside, which ceases to be a place of work to become a place of leisure: holidays and country excursions. This is the world portrayed by Monet and Renoir.

The city, on the other hand, becomes a new space for the new social class: the flanneurs appear, idle strollers who show off and attend concerts in the boulevards and gardens of Paris. The night and its inhabitants, the nightclubs, the promenade, the cabaret singers, the ballet, the cafés and their gatherings are also important.

It is a fascinating world, from which the impressionists draw their themes: especially Degas or Toulouse-Lautrec. Because for them the great and timeless songs of the past are over. Positivism brings with it a conception of objectivity of perception, of a scientific criterion that detracts from anything that cannot be classified according to the laws of colour and optics. According to this, any natural object, visible, affected by light and colour, is susceptible of being represented artistically. Thus, the impressionist painting turns to landscapes, regattas, Sunday meetings, etc.

The Impressionists were grouped around the figure of Manet, the reject of the official Salons and promoter of the Salon des Refusés. Faced with the new lexicon they proposed, with a brushstroke broken down into primary colours that had to be recomposed in the spectator's retina, the public reacted against it, unable to "read" the new language correctly. But Impressionism does not end in obscurantism, for it has the support of two emerging social forces: the art critics, who will be responsible for channelling the public's taste; and the art dealers, who place their paintings in the country's best collections. Gatherings, unofficial salons and the scandal itself became propaganda vehicles for the new style.

 

Located in Nuremberg, Germany, the Documentation Center of the Nazi Party (Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgelande) is a museum that displays and studies the causes, coherence and consequences of National Socialism.

 

Established in 1994 by the city council of Nuremberg, the museum is housed in the former Nazi Congress Hall on the Party Rally Grounds, one of the few pieces of Nazi architecture to survive post World War II. What used to be a celebration of Imperial power is now a stark and complex reminder of the era.

The permanent exhibition at the Documentation Center titled "Fascination and Terror" (Faszination und Gewalt) studies the causes, coherence, and consequences of National Socialism. It describes the Nazi Party Rallies and explains the fascination they exercised upon participants and visitors. At the same time, the exhibition endeavors to explain what led to the National Socialists' criminal exercise of power and to reveal how the various causal factors were interrelated. A further goal is a frank presentation of the violent consequences that ensued for the population.

 

Austrian architect Gunther Domenig (1934-2012) designed the museum. A glass and metal spike sticks out of the entrance dangling unfinished at both ends. This spike runs through the building, an act of intentional disruption that stabs through the heart of the Monumentalist architecture. The museum presents a picture of human destruction and makes an important statement for the city of Nuremberg....that they won't forget or hide the part it played during the Third Reich.

smena 8m | some cheap expired film

 

James Brown 1774-79, with alterations and additions. One of a rectangular plan classical style houses forming a terrace, now a series of university departments. Numbers 55-59 Craigleith droved ashlar; number 60 (shown) has interesting squared snecked pink and cream Craigmillar rubble sandstone with blue whin pinnings. Set on ground sloping north to south and forming the north east portion of George Square. Roman Doric doorcases (some with coupled columns) with elided friezes; number 60 with later Greek Ionic doorcase. Tall corniced gable stacks with yellow clay cans.

 

Numbers 55-60 George Square designed by the architect James Brown in 1766 and built from 1774-79 is an important surviving component of the square. The classical details and regulated style of windows give the terrace coherence although there is considerable variation in the materials used in construction. The concept of terraces with individual houses designed for occupation by one family was relatively new in Edinburgh where tenement living had been the norm and proved an immediate success with the aristocracy and leading citizens. This part of the square is little altered externally and while there have been a number successive occupants and uses, there are many surviving 18th century interior features.

 

Some small scale projects such as Brown Square also designed by James Brown and John Adam's Adam Square (both now demolished) had been built in the early 1760s in Edinburgh but George Square represents a milestone in the development of planning because of its size and the coherence of its design.

 

The conception of James Brown's George Square probably predates James Craig's New Town plan by a number of months. The Town Council of Edinburgh resolved to set up a subcommittee to develop the New Town project and to advertise a competition for a plan in January 1766. In May of that year competition entries were received and the results became known in August. However by comparison, James Brown had acquired the lands on which George Square is built in 1761 and the first occupant had moved into the square during 1766. The scheme must have been proposed some time before.