A free Spirit

Mirit Ben-Nun was born in Beer- Sheva in 1966. Over the years she has presented in solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Israel and around the world.

When she was six, her father was killed in a car accident, leaving behind his wife and two daughters, Mirit and Dana.

Ben-Nun had difficulty concentrating on studies, which caused behavioral problems, and at the age of fourteen she dropped out of the education system and went to work. The colors and writing tools gave her a quiet private space and her own way of surviving. Creativity eased her tumultuous soul.

Until her early 30’s she worked as a telemarketer and for the next fourteen years she doodled and doodled. While talking to customers she filled thousands of pages with lines and dots that resembled hundreds of compressed eggs and seeds which she threw away.

In a large portion of each page she would pick a random word and would write it down over and over while concentrating on her hand movements.

Even then she noticed the rising of her need and obsession as she practiced the endless doodling and writing.

Ben-Nun testifies that the lack of artistic training to paint "correctly" freed her from adhering to the rules of painting and allowed her freedom and spirit of rebellion.

In 1998, she received a bunch of canvases and acrylic paints as a gift from her sister.

She brought the acrylic into her world of lines and dots; she went back to painting women and masks that appeared in her childhood paintings and flooded them with lines and dots without separating body and background.

This is also the moment when Ben-Nun began to refer to herself as a painter.

and when art became the center of her life.

The intense colors in Ben-Nun's paintings sweep the viewer into a sensual experience. The viewer traces the surge of dots and lines formed in packed layers of paint. The movement leads to a kind of female-male hormonal dance within the human body and to a communion with an artistic experience of instinct, passion, conceiving and birth.

Contributing to this experience is the wealth of characteristics reminiscent of tribal art. Ben-Nun merges these with a humorous and kicking contemporary Western Pop art. In the language of unique art, Ben-Nun creates an unconventional conversation between past and present cultures.

It is evident that the paintings emerge from a regenerated need and desire, a force that erupts from her soul, a subconscious survival instinct to which she cannot or does not want to resist.

Ben-Nun places women at the center stage where they are her work focus. The paintings obsessively deal with the existential experience of being a woman in the world. A few of the women's paintings carry feminist slogans stressing the women's struggle in society, a critique for being held to perfection and being required to perform as a model of "beauty, purity and motherhood". Feminism pulsates in Ben-Nun's psyche, through her diverse female images and the play between beauty and unsightliness; Ben-Nun assimilates the consciousness of feminine possibility, of not being "perfect", of being powerful, influential, and outside social norms. This mandates a departure from acceptable limitations where Ben-Nun creates a new world of free spirit for women.

Mirit Ben-Nun is a mother of three and the grandmother of three grandchildren.

 

Mirela Tal

 

Cours Saleya market in Nice is at the heart of the Old Town and it’s always pulsating with life. Striped awnings cover its centre and shelter the products on offer in the daily market. Crowds of locals and tourists come here to do their shopping or sometimes just to look and snap photos of the colourful displays. The scents of fresh produce and flowers seem to put everyone in a good mood and the atmosphere is friendly.*

 

*https://www.thegoodlifefrance.com/cours-saleya-market-in-nice-france/

Build by Titans Creations for Legoland Malaysia May the 4th event.

Minifig scaled and measuring 110 cm by 85 cm , its bigger than the UCS Millennium Falcon.

Main objective of this build is to replicate the interior of the popular Millennium Falcon as accurate as possible with references to different online materials.

Features 24 LED , 7 which are programmed to pulsate at the rear thrusters for realism , and the rest spread among the corridor, hyperdrive and cockpit.

Took a total of 2 months to plan and build.

Thank you for viewing !

 

Do check us out on www.titanscreations.com

Build by Titans Creations for Legoland Malaysia May the 4th event.

Minifig scaled and measuring 110 cm by 85 cm , its bigger than the UCS Millennium Falcon.

Main objective of this build is to replicate the interior of the popular Millennium Falcon as accurate as possible with references to different online materials.

Features 24 LED , 7 which are programmed to pulsate at the rear thrusters for realism , and the rest spread among the corridor, hyperdrive and cockpit.

Took a total of 2 months to plan and build.

Thank you for viewing !

 

Do check us out on www.titanscreations.com

A Pulsating ride.

 

Pictured as it leaves Telford bus station, Wrightbus Pulsar bodied VDL SB200 3781 carries the revised Arriva colours, along with Arriva connecting Telford legends along its sides.

A free Spirit

Mirit Ben-Nun was born in Beer- Sheva in 1966. Over the years she has presented in solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Israel and around the world.

When she was six, her father was killed in a car accident, leaving behind his wife and two daughters, Mirit and Dana.

Ben-Nun had difficulty concentrating on studies, which caused behavioral problems, and at the age of fourteen she dropped out of the education system and went to work. The colors and writing tools gave her a quiet private space and her own way of surviving. Creativity eased her tumultuous soul.

Until her early 30’s she worked as a telemarketer and for the next fourteen years she doodled and doodled. While talking to customers she filled thousands of pages with lines and dots that resembled hundreds of compressed eggs and seeds which she threw away.

In a large portion of each page she would pick a random word and would write it down over and over while concentrating on her hand movements.

Even then she noticed the rising of her need and obsession as she practiced the endless doodling and writing.

Ben-Nun testifies that the lack of artistic training to paint "correctly" freed her from adhering to the rules of painting and allowed her freedom and spirit of rebellion.

In 1998, she received a bunch of canvases and acrylic paints as a gift from her sister.

She brought the acrylic into her world of lines and dots; she went back to painting women and masks that appeared in her childhood paintings and flooded them with lines and dots without separating body and background.

This is also the moment when Ben-Nun began to refer to herself as a painter.

and when art became the center of her life.

The intense colors in Ben-Nun's paintings sweep the viewer into a sensual experience. The viewer traces the surge of dots and lines formed in packed layers of paint. The movement leads to a kind of female-male hormonal dance within the human body and to a communion with an artistic experience of instinct, passion, conceiving and birth.

Contributing to this experience is the wealth of characteristics reminiscent of tribal art. Ben-Nun merges these with a humorous and kicking contemporary Western Pop art. In the language of unique art, Ben-Nun creates an unconventional conversation between past and present cultures.

It is evident that the paintings emerge from a regenerated need and desire, a force that erupts from her soul, a subconscious survival instinct to which she cannot or does not want to resist.

Ben-Nun places women at the center stage where they are her work focus. The paintings obsessively deal with the existential experience of being a woman in the world. A few of the women's paintings carry feminist slogans stressing the women's struggle in society, a critique for being held to perfection and being required to perform as a model of "beauty, purity and motherhood". Feminism pulsates in Ben-Nun's psyche, through her diverse female images and the play between beauty and unsightliness; Ben-Nun assimilates the consciousness of feminine possibility, of not being "perfect", of being powerful, influential, and outside social norms. This mandates a departure from acceptable limitations where Ben-Nun creates a new world of free spirit for women.

Mirit Ben-Nun is a mother of three and the grandmother of three grandchildren.

 

Mirela Tal

 

Cliff Steele, the Robotman, sits out the back of Caulder manor. A cold, silent sentinel gazing out into the dawn, he’s perhaps closer to his past self than he’d like to believe. His thick legs pillars; his heavy metal boots hugged by dew from the unkempt grass. His dull eyes glow with a crimson luminescence, staring at nothing and rousing no feeling in the space where his heart should be. He doesn’t turn around as the bandaged man edges carefully out the back door and gently closes it behind him.

 

Cliff: You’re up early.

 

Larry: Bad dreams.

 

Larry eases himself down and sits next to Cliff, giving him a wry smile underneath his bandages. He knows Cliff won’t see, but he reasons it’s force of habit. Cliff’s red eyes, impassive and cold, stay fixed ahead as he makes no effort to move. Of course Cliff doesn’t see, but Larry’s smile fades.

 

Larry: Couldn’t sleep?

 

Cliff: I dunno. I don’t sleep much anymore. I kinda miss it.

 

Larry: I was the same once. You start to think differently once the nightmares come.

 

Cliff is silent.

 

Larry: Christ it’s cold.

 

Under the bandages, Larry Trainor cringes, realising what he’s said.

 

Larry: Oh, yeah. Right. Sorry.

 

He looks down and picks at a lichen blooming on the stone beneath him.

 

Larry: You okay, big guy? I’ve been out here almost thirty seconds and you haven’t even made so much as a reference to the Mummy.

 

Cliff grunts, but remains silent – eyes fixated on the tangled bushes ahead.

 

Larry: You been out here long?

 

Cliff: Hour or so, probably. Sorta lost track.

 

Larry: How’d you manage to get past Ray?

 

Cliff: Chief turns him off overnight. You didn’t know that? And don’t call it Ray.

 

Larry: Why not?

 

Cliff: Its name is R.A It ain’t a person, it’s just a…a...

 

Larry: Robot?

 

Cliff is silent. He pulls his gaze away from the bushes.

 

Cliff: Yeah.

 

There’s an awkward tension in the air. For the slightest moment, the thought of laying a consoling hand on Cliff’s shoulder flashes across Larry’s mind. But it’s just that – a thought – and as quick as it arrives it’s gone again. He keeps his hand to himself.

 

Cliff: It’s one year today, y’know?

 

Larry: What is?

 

He catches himself.

 

Larry: Oh. I’m sorry man, I didn’t-

 

Cliff: S’fine.

 

Cliff shrugs.

 

Cliff: I try not to keep track, but, uh, I can just sorta tell. I dunno, I don’t do it deliberately. You don’t forget somethin’ like that in a hurry, I guess.

 

Larry: I feel ya. Every night it’s the same. The sky, the plane, the…

 

He looks at the spot on his chest that earlier had been pulsating.

 

Larry: Him. I still see it all, like it’s actually happening again over and over.

 

Cliff: You ever get used to it?

 

Larry: No.

 

Cliff: Yeah, I figured as much.

 

Larry sighs and frantically looks around the garden for something else to talk about.

 

Larry: You know, someone really ought to do something with this place. This garden is a mess. Could put some planters over there. Plant a tree, perhaps. A big thing, like an oak, or something. Get some colour out here too, some hydrangeas. Yeah. That’d be nice. Some hydrangeas.

 

Cliff: I’m a fuckin’ brain in a can, man. I don’t care about the garden.

 

Larry: Oh.

 

Cliff: Y’know, sometimes – just for a second – I think I catch a whiff o’ somethin’, or feel the wind on my face. And then I remember, and there’s nothin’ there. Phantom fuckin’ body syndrome.

 

Larry: I admit, it would be nice to feel the wind on my skin again.

 

Cliff: I think sometimes I just fill in stuff that’s meant to be there. It’s like my head still ain’t used to feelin’… well, nothin’.

 

Larry is silent.

 

Cliff: Hell I can’t even piss. Do you know what that’s like, to miss pissin’? Fuck.

 

He kicks his heel into the ground.

 

Cliff: What kinda life is this?

 

Larry: It’s the one you’ve got. It’s the one we’ve all got. Plus, you try taking a piss in these bandages. Talk about the curse of the mummy.

 

Cliff comes incredibly close to a laugh, but the idea leaves his mind as Larry groans and clutches his chest, something stirring deep inside him.

 

Cliff: Uh…you okay?

 

Larry: Fine, yeah.

 

The being inside his body subsides, and a shiver spreads through him that has nothing to do with the chilled morning air.

 

Larry: It’s been doing that more recently. Probably nothing. Nothing Chief can’t fix, anyway.

 

They share a moment of silence together, staring out into the garden. Larry now wishing more than ever there were some hydrangeas out here. He’s pulled from his thoughts by the first droplets of a morning storm as they begin to pitter-patter neatly off Cliff’s head.

 

Cliff: I used to hate the rain. Guess there’s nothin’ to hate about it now, huh?

 

Larry: Well, you sit there too long and you are gonna start rusting.

 

Cliff stoops as he turns to look at Larry.

 

Cliff: Haven’t you got a pyramid to go hide in or somethin’?

 

Larry: That’s better.

 

For the second time, Cliff comes close to a laugh. But like Larry’s consoling hand, the thought dies before it can even be born.

 

Larry: Come on big guy, let’s get you inside.

 

Cliff: Yeah. Alright.

 

But they don’t move. Instead, they watch through the haze as the first beams of the dawn sun ignite the morning clouds, with nothing but the sound of the neat pitter-patter for company.

  

====================-Colombia-====================

  

Through the ebbing flow of the airport crowd stands a man. He’s nothing special, and certainly nothing interesting – but, when thinking about it, not all that dull either. He just exists, like bricks. Or grass. To look at him is like looking at someone from the corner of your eye. He’s there, but no one’s ever really cared enough to pay him a second glance; he holds about as much prowess as a wet dishcloth. A weak smirk implants itself on his dry lips and he gazes at the crowd, holding aloft in his hands a piece of cardboard, scrawled across it in a hurried scribble the name:

 

B. HUNTER

 

He props the sign on a shaky knee as he reaches into his pocket for a grimy handkerchief and dabs it across his forehead and upper lip. He shoves it back in his pocket, runs his fingers over his moustache and spots a face in the crowd, heading his way. He grins and gives a feeble little wave, still wrestling with the sign.

 

Morden: Mr. Hunter? My name is Eric Morden. Welcome to Colombia! I trust all your belongings got back to you safely?

 

He gestures towards a large bag in the man’s hand, barely containing its contents.

 

Beard Hunter: Yes.

 

Morden: Groovy! You’ll find the authorities here susceptible to a, how shall we say… cheeky backhander! If you know what I mean!

 

His chuckles die out as the man stares him down. Eric takes in his appearance: sleek, slicked back hair, severe cheekbones and smooth jaw. He shifts a little as the man continues to stare at him.

 

Morden: Anyway, best not hang around. The Brotherhood eagerly await your arrival!

 

Beard Hunter: The what?

 

Morden: The Brotherhood! Oh, of course you wouldn’t know. It’s just an idea I’ve been spitballing. For our team name, you know? I’ve got loads of ideas for team names, I’ll tell you some of them later if you like? I seem to be the only one who likes ‘The Brotherhood’, but I’m sure they’ll come round. You know what? Don’t worry about it…

 

Eric trails off as the man sniffs the air and something in his eyes lights up. Eric once again mops his forehead as the man leans in towards him, inches away from his face, and flares his nostrils.

 

Beard Hunter: You’re lucky your bosses are paying me so much. Any less and I’d rip that slug right off your damn lips.

 

Eric squirms and steps back. He mutters slyly under his breath.

 

Morden: You’re getting more for one job than I earn in a year. Not that it matters, or course, Mister Hunter sir.

 

Beard Hunter: You’re right. It doesn’t. And don’t call me ‘Mister.’ While we do business you and your bosses will refer to me only as ‘Beard Hunter.’ Understand?

 

Morden: Uh, yes of course sir!

 

Beard Hunter: See to it they do, too. And I’d put to bed any idea of me joining your sad little club. I’m here for the job and then I’m done. Speaking of which, where are those idiots?

 

Morden: Back at HQ Mist-Beard Hunter.

 

Beard Hunter: Hmm.

 

His eyes drift across the crowd to a large man with a thick, black beard. He licks his lips and grunts, then with a snap of his neck turns his attention back to Eric.

 

Beard Hunter: Well? Are we going to stand here all day?

 

Morden: No, of course! This way please.

 

He leads the way to the airport parking lot, depositing the cardboard sign in a trash can. He walks over to a rusting old pick up, which he notices bears a worrying resemblance to the trash can.

 

Morden: Sorry about the wheels. Unlike customs officials, the rentals out here leave a lot to be desired!

 

Morden winces at his own incessant giggling as Beard Hunter gives the truck a once over. He grunts and turns back to Morden.

 

Beard Hunter: This is… adequate. Where will you go?

 

Morden: Oh, well I’ll be driving, and it’s quite a squeeze up front so… you’ll have to go in the back. It’s quite a short drive…

 

Beard Hunter: No, that won’t do. I’m driving. You’re in the back. If you want to come get in.

 

He dumps his bag in the back and climbs into the driver’s seat, starting the engine.

 

Beard Hunter: Look after that bag. It’s probably worth more than your life.

 

Morden: Uhh okay, only I don’t think you know where to – oh okay it doesn’t matter I’ll direct. Sure I’ll go back. Are you – oh okay we’re going.

 

He barely manages to haul himself into the back of the truck as Beard Hunter pulls out of the parking lot and into the sticky mid-morning heat.

  

Build by Titans Creations for Legoland Malaysia May the 4th event.

Minifig scaled and measuring 110 cm by 85 cm , its bigger than the UCS Millennium Falcon.

Main objective of this build is to replicate the interior of the popular Millennium Falcon as accurate as possible with references to different online materials.

Features 24 LED , 7 which are programmed to pulsate at the rear thrusters for realism , and the rest spread among the corridor, hyperdrive and cockpit.

Took a total of 2 months to plan and build.

Thank you for viewing !

 

Do check us out on www.titanscreations.com

-Recommended Listening-

  

“Captain Trainor? Captain Trainor do you copy? Flight KF-2, what is your status?”

 

“He’s going out of orbit!”

 

“Captain Trainor, report.”

 

“Things are looking strange on our end, Larry. What’s your status?”

 

“We’ve lost contact-“

 

“What?”

 

“Repeat, test flight KF-2 has lost contact. Captain Trainor, do you copy?”

 

“Do you copy Captain? What’s happening?”

 

“You’re drifting into a rad-field. Larry, do you copy? Larry, get out of there!”

 

“It’s too dangerous – Trainor, terminate! Terminate now Larry, I repeat, terminate!”

 

“We’re losing him! The rad-field is too strong! Captain Trainor! Captain Trainor! Larry, if you copy, get out of there! It’s not worth it!”

 

“It’s too late! We need you to bail! Goddamnit, Larry! Abort mission! Abort!”

 

“Larry!”

 

Larrytrainor

 

It’s five o’clock, perhaps?

We are standing somewhere, together.

Twilight’s careful shadow creeping onwards.

Night has come now, I think.

Maybe it never left.

What has happened to me?

 

~While you make pretty speeches~

 

IneedyoureachoutlarrytrainoryouknowIamtherereachoutandtouchmeyourspiritisstronganduntaintedtouchmecaptaintrainorimprintmeintoyourbeing

 

I take a hand.

Warm fingers. Soft.

The closest living souls in our world.

No one else matters.

Perhaps no one else ever will.

 

Will you think of me as you sleep?

 

~I’m being cut to shreds~

 

Tears are gone.

Sockets dry.

 

Bloodstains and starbursts erupt atop dreamy eyes.

 

Thundering now.

When did it get this loud?

Won’t anyone stop this noise?

 

He’s coming.

 

YouhavebeenchosenlarrytraimortakemyhandlarrytrainortakemyhanditisonlyasimpletouchlarryandtogetherwewillbothbefreeIneedyou

 

Ripped apart and reconstructed.

Now is a happier time;

A most honest glimpse.

 

We knew the risks.

Now destined to kill all that’s touched.

 

~You feed me to the lions~

 

How would you see me now?

Shatter my being and finish this.

I beg of you.

 

A means to an end –

And what if the end isn’t worth it?

 

~A delicate balance~

 

Standing before family.

Smiling?

A small room, packed, to look full?

Everything I need is in front of me. Everyone I need around me.

This is the happiest I have been.

This is the happiest I will ever be.

A canvas fades when exposed to light.

Now they start to fade too.

So young.

Too young, they said.

 

What have I done?

 

~And this just feels like spinning plates~

 

EmbracemycallinglarryyouneedmelarrytrainorandIneedyouletthisendIbegofyouletmeinlarryletmeinwearestrongertogetherwebindyouhavebeenchosenthespiritisstrong

 

All gone now.

Why did you leave?

Were you ever there?

 

You were never there.

 

Fading.

 

Falling.

 

Falliiiiiiiing.

 

~I’m living in cloud cuckoo land~

 

I’m sorry.

It appears we have forgotten how to be ourselves.

When I close my eyes, I think of you.

When I soar, I will think of you.

In all my haunted dreams I will find you.

But I know you won’t let me in.

You knew it was only a matter of time.

Time…

 

Trustmelarrytrainorthisismydesignwecanbetogetherweneedtobetogetheryouarethechosenthecirclehaschosenreachoutandfindmetouchmelarrytrainorreachoutandtouch

 

Memory sapped.

Senses depleted.

Being switched off.

Ego drained.

Face dwindles from mind.

An imprint – pressed onto consciousness – begins to fade; the canvas begins to fade.

What is, and what may be, is never.

Was never?

Back together; torn apart.

 

We all once believed we could rule this life.

 

We were wrong.

 

God help me

 

I’m sorry. It appears I have forgotten how to be myself.

 

~And this just feels like spinning plates~

 

Doitnowlarrytrainordoitnowwearerunningoutoftimetimeisslippingawayreachoutandsaveyourselftakebackwhatisandwhatwillbetakemelarrytrainortakemethecirclemustbecomplete

 

Canvas fading…

Where is Larry Trainor?

Fading…

What is Larry Trainor?

Fading…

Who is Larry Trainor?

 

Gone

 

Igrowdesperatelarrytrainorreachoutandtouchmetakemyhandtakemyhanditistheonlythingtododoitnowthecircleiscompletethecircleiscompletetouchmeembracemeencasemewithyoursoulandwelcomemewithasimpletouchlarrytrainorasimpletouchasimpletouchasimpletouchasimple

 

All gone.

 

All gone.

 

Please help me.

 

All gone.

 

God save us.

 

No more to lose, yet everything – gone.

 

He’s right.

 

It’s just a simple

 

-touch-

 

~Our bodies floating down a muddy river…~

 

Larrytrainoryouareawake-

 

Larry Trainor awakens with a start; new-born dreams still whimpering in his mind. Cool, damp sweat covers what’s left of his skin in a fine sheen. He didn’t know he could still do that. From deep within his body he feels a dull pulsating; a polyrhythmic beat in harmony with his steadily thumping heart. Still there, he thinks. He looks at the clock – nearly five a.m – and swings his legs out of bed. He goes over to the mirror, trying his best to avoid direct eye contact with his own image, and begins to wrap his body in bandages, an action now that comes to him all too easily. Though his room’s solitary, insulated window reveals little of the outside world, he feels the chill of the early morning air in his bones and spots a hulking shape sat at the back door. He throws on some jeans and a sweater and heads for the door. It’s a lonely night out, and there’s someone who could use his company.

  

A free Spirit

Mirit Ben-Nun was born in Beer- Sheva in 1966. Over the years she has presented in solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Israel and around the world.

When she was six, her father was killed in a car accident, leaving behind his wife and two daughters, Mirit and Dana.

Ben-Nun had difficulty concentrating on studies, which caused behavioral problems, and at the age of fourteen she dropped out of the education system and went to work. The colors and writing tools gave her a quiet private space and her own way of surviving. Creativity eased her tumultuous soul.

Until her early 30’s she worked as a telemarketer and for the next fourteen years she doodled and doodled. While talking to customers she filled thousands of pages with lines and dots that resembled hundreds of compressed eggs and seeds which she threw away.

In a large portion of each page she would pick a random word and would write it down over and over while concentrating on her hand movements.

Even then she noticed the rising of her need and obsession as she practiced the endless doodling and writing.

Ben-Nun testifies that the lack of artistic training to paint "correctly" freed her from adhering to the rules of painting and allowed her freedom and spirit of rebellion.

In 1998, she received a bunch of canvases and acrylic paints as a gift from her sister.

She brought the acrylic into her world of lines and dots; she went back to painting women and masks that appeared in her childhood paintings and flooded them with lines and dots without separating body and background.

This is also the moment when Ben-Nun began to refer to herself as a painter.

and when art became the center of her life.

The intense colors in Ben-Nun's paintings sweep the viewer into a sensual experience. The viewer traces the surge of dots and lines formed in packed layers of paint. The movement leads to a kind of female-male hormonal dance within the human body and to a communion with an artistic experience of instinct, passion, conceiving and birth.

Contributing to this experience is the wealth of characteristics reminiscent of tribal art. Ben-Nun merges these with a humorous and kicking contemporary Western Pop art. In the language of unique art, Ben-Nun creates an unconventional conversation between past and present cultures.

It is evident that the paintings emerge from a regenerated need and desire, a force that erupts from her soul, a subconscious survival instinct to which she cannot or does not want to resist.

Ben-Nun places women at the center stage where they are her work focus. The paintings obsessively deal with the existential experience of being a woman in the world. A few of the women's paintings carry feminist slogans stressing the women's struggle in society, a critique for being held to perfection and being required to perform as a model of "beauty, purity and motherhood". Feminism pulsates in Ben-Nun's psyche, through her diverse female images and the play between beauty and unsightliness; Ben-Nun assimilates the consciousness of feminine possibility, of not being "perfect", of being powerful, influential, and outside social norms. This mandates a departure from acceptable limitations where Ben-Nun creates a new world of free spirit for women.

Mirit Ben-Nun is a mother of three and the grandmother of three grandchildren.

 

Mirela Tal

 

A free Spirit

Mirit Ben-Nun was born in Beer- Sheva in 1966. Over the years she has presented in solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Israel and around the world.

When she was six, her father was killed in a car accident, leaving behind his wife and two daughters, Mirit and Dana.

Ben-Nun had difficulty concentrating on studies, which caused behavioral problems, and at the age of fourteen she dropped out of the education system and went to work. The colors and writing tools gave her a quiet private space and her own way of surviving. Creativity eased her tumultuous soul.

Until her early 30’s she worked as a telemarketer and for the next fourteen years she doodled and doodled. While talking to customers she filled thousands of pages with lines and dots that resembled hundreds of compressed eggs and seeds which she threw away.

In a large portion of each page she would pick a random word and would write it down over and over while concentrating on her hand movements.

Even then she noticed the rising of her need and obsession as she practiced the endless doodling and writing.

Ben-Nun testifies that the lack of artistic training to paint "correctly" freed her from adhering to the rules of painting and allowed her freedom and spirit of rebellion.

In 1998, she received a bunch of canvases and acrylic paints as a gift from her sister.

She brought the acrylic into her world of lines and dots; she went back to painting women and masks that appeared in her childhood paintings and flooded them with lines and dots without separating body and background.

This is also the moment when Ben-Nun began to refer to herself as a painter.

and when art became the center of her life.

The intense colors in Ben-Nun's paintings sweep the viewer into a sensual experience. The viewer traces the surge of dots and lines formed in packed layers of paint. The movement leads to a kind of female-male hormonal dance within the human body and to a communion with an artistic experience of instinct, passion, conceiving and birth.

Contributing to this experience is the wealth of characteristics reminiscent of tribal art. Ben-Nun merges these with a humorous and kicking contemporary Western Pop art. In the language of unique art, Ben-Nun creates an unconventional conversation between past and present cultures.

It is evident that the paintings emerge from a regenerated need and desire, a force that erupts from her soul, a subconscious survival instinct to which she cannot or does not want to resist.

Ben-Nun places women at the center stage where they are her work focus. The paintings obsessively deal with the existential experience of being a woman in the world. A few of the women's paintings carry feminist slogans stressing the women's struggle in society, a critique for being held to perfection and being required to perform as a model of "beauty, purity and motherhood". Feminism pulsates in Ben-Nun's psyche, through her diverse female images and the play between beauty and unsightliness; Ben-Nun assimilates the consciousness of feminine possibility, of not being "perfect", of being powerful, influential, and outside social norms. This mandates a departure from acceptable limitations where Ben-Nun creates a new world of free spirit for women.

Mirit Ben-Nun is a mother of three and the grandmother of three grandchildren.

 

Mirela Tal

 

MicroWorld #22. The adventure continues.

 

The tenuous walls of the black hole slowly began to pulsate as if struggling to digest the large amounts of material from the supernova, its rotational momentum faltering as the massive intake proved too much for its delicate stability – it was beginning to collapse. Once again our heroes were running out of time as the door started to close on the only route back to their own galaxy.

 

Jerking backwards into their seats as the captain ordered maximum thrust, they braced themselves as the final moments ticked away and they sped towards the gaping black mouth. Suddenly the main engine cut out, overloaded by the excessive demands. In almost silence, save for the background hum of the computers and air supply pumps, they were now in free-fall towards the entrance of the looming abyss. Their destiny was now sealed. With no control over their speed and with only minor steering capability from the directional thrusters, the ship began to creak an groan as it began to stretch under the tremendous gravitational pull of the black hole.

 

Slowly they started to spiral towards the inner wall. It was imperative that that they stay on course down the central axis of the time tunnel for if any part of the vessel touched the surface of the black hole then the differential forces produced by the ever increasing drag would tear them apart. Their future now lay in the captain's ability to steer the craft using only its side thrusters.

 

The hull began to shake as they gathered momentum, sucked in by the massive gravity waves flowing into the black chasm. They were now drifting dangerously close to the side of the vortex as number three thruster failed to respond. Small drops of perspiration began to form on the captain's brow, illuminated red by the steady warning light of the failed servo-mechanism. Switching to manual override he strained at the controls in an attempt to pull the craft back on course. It was like watching an arm-wrestling contest between two equals, but with much higher stakes than a dented ego. Slowly the captain gained control, edging the craft back to the centre line.

 

They entered the black hole at the moment the stability of the rim line collapsed. From MicroWorld all to be seen was a strange pulse of light in the sky, hardly visible against the bright light of the remaining suns. Inside the tunnel the situation was very different indeed - a white hot ball of accelerating plasma was building up behind them. Unable to flee, they were at the mercy of the shock wave forcing them even faster through the narrow cylinder of time. Like puny surfers riding the 'big one' they approached the speed of light and the exit. The strain on their bodies was now too much and they all blacked out into unconsciousness to be ejected back into their own universe and galaxy in a fireball of hot dissipating gases.

 

Meanwhile, back on MicroWorld...

 

...to be continued.

 

For new readers the adventures in MicroWorld begin here or you can dip into any of the chapters in the MicroWorld set.

 

The image is a macro detail from a studio glass piece by British glass artist Peter Layton - one of his 'Shell Series' of 1986.

Build by Titans Creations for Legoland Malaysia May the 4th event.

Minifig scaled and measuring 110 cm by 85 cm , its bigger than the UCS Millennium Falcon.

Main objective of this build is to replicate the interior of the popular Millennium Falcon as accurate as possible with references to different online materials.

Features 24 LED , 7 which are programmed to pulsate at the rear thrusters for realism , and the rest spread among the corridor, hyperdrive and cockpit.

Took a total of 2 months to plan and build.

Thank you for viewing !

 

Do check us out on www.titanscreations.com

Build by Titans Creations for Legoland Malaysia May the 4th event.

Minifig scaled and measuring 110 cm by 85 cm , its bigger than the UCS Millennium Falcon.

Main objective of this build is to replicate the interior of the popular Millennium Falcon as accurate as possible with references to different online materials.

Features 24 LED , 7 which are programmed to pulsate at the rear thrusters for realism , and the rest spread among the corridor, hyperdrive and cockpit.

Took a total of 2 months to plan and build.

Thank you for viewing !

 

Do check us out on www.titanscreations.com

Taken in Times Square, NYC, New York.

  

title came from here.

  

I have decided to develop the project “Through the light” to show how is living in Palermo. The city despite the diverse mixture of cultures has retained most of its original identity. Art and history are some important elements of daily palermitan life. Walking in the evening in our historical centre, which is the heart of the city, you can see many areas that are colored by typical corner markets such as Ballarò, il Capo and Vucciria that represent the ancient city’s pulsating core, tied to the scents and traditions of this city. Past and present exist together and give a unique scenery in many interesting places. I tried to “open a window” on some degraded areas to redeem the image of a city, which needs to look for a way back into the sun.

 

experimenting with animating streamlines driven by a vector field. these streamlines pulsate in size and colour + the brightest areas of the animation represent the strongest part of the vector field.

A free Spirit

Mirit Ben-Nun was born in Beer- Sheva in 1966. Over the years she has presented in solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Israel and around the world.

When she was six, her father was killed in a car accident, leaving behind his wife and two daughters, Mirit and Dana.

Ben-Nun had difficulty concentrating on studies, which caused behavioral problems, and at the age of fourteen she dropped out of the education system and went to work. The colors and writing tools gave her a quiet private space and her own way of surviving. Creativity eased her tumultuous soul.

Until her early 30’s she worked as a telemarketer and for the next fourteen years she doodled and doodled. While talking to customers she filled thousands of pages with lines and dots that resembled hundreds of compressed eggs and seeds which she threw away.

In a large portion of each page she would pick a random word and would write it down over and over while concentrating on her hand movements.

Even then she noticed the rising of her need and obsession as she practiced the endless doodling and writing.

Ben-Nun testifies that the lack of artistic training to paint "correctly" freed her from adhering to the rules of painting and allowed her freedom and spirit of rebellion.

In 1998, she received a bunch of canvases and acrylic paints as a gift from her sister.

She brought the acrylic into her world of lines and dots; she went back to painting women and masks that appeared in her childhood paintings and flooded them with lines and dots without separating body and background.

This is also the moment when Ben-Nun began to refer to herself as a painter.

and when art became the center of her life.

The intense colors in Ben-Nun's paintings sweep the viewer into a sensual experience. The viewer traces the surge of dots and lines formed in packed layers of paint. The movement leads to a kind of female-male hormonal dance within the human body and to a communion with an artistic experience of instinct, passion, conceiving and birth.

Contributing to this experience is the wealth of characteristics reminiscent of tribal art. Ben-Nun merges these with a humorous and kicking contemporary Western Pop art. In the language of unique art, Ben-Nun creates an unconventional conversation between past and present cultures.

It is evident that the paintings emerge from a regenerated need and desire, a force that erupts from her soul, a subconscious survival instinct to which she cannot or does not want to resist.

Ben-Nun places women at the center stage where they are her work focus. The paintings obsessively deal with the existential experience of being a woman in the world. A few of the women's paintings carry feminist slogans stressing the women's struggle in society, a critique for being held to perfection and being required to perform as a model of "beauty, purity and motherhood". Feminism pulsates in Ben-Nun's psyche, through her diverse female images and the play between beauty and unsightliness; Ben-Nun assimilates the consciousness of feminine possibility, of not being "perfect", of being powerful, influential, and outside social norms. This mandates a departure from acceptable limitations where Ben-Nun creates a new world of free spirit for women.

Mirit Ben-Nun is a mother of three and the grandmother of three grandchildren.

 

Mirela Tal

 

Build by Titans Creations for Legoland Malaysia May the 4th event.

Minifig scaled and measuring 110 cm by 85 cm , its bigger than the UCS Millennium Falcon.

Main objective of this build is to replicate the interior of the popular Millennium Falcon as accurate as possible with references to different online materials.

Features 24 LED , 7 which are programmed to pulsate at the rear thrusters for realism , and the rest spread among the corridor, hyperdrive and cockpit.

Took a total of 2 months to plan and build.

Thank you for viewing !

 

Do check us out on www.titanscreations.com

9.4.09

The flight arrived on time; and the twelve hours while on board passed quickly and without incident. To be sure, the quality of the Cathay Pacific service was exemplary once again.

 

Heathrow reminds me of Newark International. The décor comes straight out of the sterile 80's and is less an eyesore than an insipid background to the rhythm of human activity, such hustle and bustle, at the fore. There certainly are faces from all races present, creating a rich mosaic of humanity which is refreshing if not completely revitalizing after swimming for so long in a sea of Chinese faces in Hong Kong.

 

Internet access is sealed in England, it seems. Nothing is free; everything is egregiously monetized from the wireless hotspots down to the desktop terminals. I guess Hong Kong has spoiled me with its abundant, free access to the information superhighway.

  

11.4.09

Despite staying in a room with five other backpackers, I have been sleeping well. The mattress and pillow are firm; my earplugs keep the noise out; and the sleeping quarters are as dark as a cave when the lights are out, and only as bright as, perhaps, a dreary rainy day when on. All in all, St. Paul's is a excellent place to stay for the gregarious, adventurous, and penurious city explorer - couchsurfing may be a tenable alternative; I'll test for next time.

 

Yesterday Connie and I gorged ourselves at the borough market where there were all sorts of delectable, savory victuals. There was definitely a European flavor to the food fair: simmering sausages were to be found everywhere; and much as the meat was plentiful, and genuine, so were the dairy delicacies, in the form of myriad rounds of cheese, stacked high behind checkered tabletops. Of course, we washed these tasty morsels down with copious amounts of alcohol that flowed from cups as though amber waterfalls. For the first time I tried mulled wine, which tasted like warm, rancid fruit punch - the ideal tonic for a drizzling London day, I suppose. We later killed the afternoon at the pub, shooting the breeze while imbibing several diminutive half-pints in the process. Getting smashed at four in the afternoon doesn't seem like such a bad thing anymore, especially when you are having fun in the company of friends; I can more appreciate why the English do it so much!

 

Earlier in the day, we visited the Tate Modern. Its turbine room lived up to its prominent billing what with a giant spider, complete with bulbous egg sac, anchoring the retrospective exhibit. The permanent galleries, too, were a delight upon which to feast one's eyes. Picasso, Warhol and Pollock ruled the chambers of the upper floors with the products of their lithe wrists; and I ended up becoming a huge fan of cubism, while developing a disdain for abstract art and its vacuous images, which, I feel, are devoid of both motivation and emotion.

 

My first trip yesterday morning was to Emirates Stadium, home of the Arsenal Gunners. It towers imperiously over the surrounding neighborhood; yet for all its majesty, the place sure was quiet! Business did pick up later, however, once the armory shop opened, and dozens of fans descended on it like bees to a hive. I, too, swooped in on a gift-buying mission, and wound up purchasing a book for Godfrey, a scarf for a student, and a jersey - on sale, of course - for good measure.

 

I'm sitting in the Westminster Abbey Museum now, resting my weary legs and burdened back. So far, I've been verily impressed with what I've seen, such a confluence of splendor and history before me that it would require days to absorb it all, when regretfully I can spare only a few hours. My favorite part of the abbey is the poets corner where no less a literary luminary than Samuel Johnson rests in peace - his bust confirms his homely presence, which was so vividly captured in his biography.

 

For lunch I had a steak and ale pie, served with mash, taken alongside a Guinness, extra cold - 2 degrees centigrade colder, the bartender explained. It went down well, like all the other delicious meals I've had in England; and no doubt by now I have grown accustomed to inebriation at half past two. Besides, Liverpool were playing inspired football against Blackburn; and my lunch was complete.

 

Having had my fill of football, I decided to skip my ticket scalping endeavor at Stamford Bridge and instead wandered over to the British Museum to inspect their extensive collections. Along the way, my eye caught a theater, its doors wide open and admitting customers. With much rapidity, I subsequently checked the show times, saw that a performance was set to begin, and at last rushed to the box office to purchase a discounted ticket - if you call a 40 pound ticket a deal, that is. That's how I grabbed a seat to watch Hairspray in the West End.

 

The show was worth forty pounds. The music was addictive; and the stage design and effects were not so much kitschy as delightfully stimulating - the pulsating background lights were at once scintillating and penetrating. The actors as well were vivacious, oozing charisma while they danced and delivered lines dripping in humor. Hairspray is a quality production and most definitely recommended.

  

12.4.09

At breakfast I sat across from a man who asked me to which country Hong Kong had been returned - China or Japan. That was pretty funny. Then he started spitting on my food as he spoke, completely oblivious to my breakfast becoming the receptacle in which the fruit of his inner churl was being placed. I guess I understand the convention nowadays of covering one's mouth whilst speaking and masticating at the same time!

 

We actually conversed on London life in general, and I praised London for its racial integration, the act of which is a prodigious leap of faith for any society, trying to be inclusive, accepting all sorts of people. It wasn't as though the Brits were trying in vain to be all things to all men, using Spanish with the visitors from Spain, German with the Germans and, even, Hindi with the Indians, regardless of whether or not Hindi was their native language; not even considering the absurd idea of encouraging the international adoption of their language; thereby completely keeping English in English hands and allowing its proud polyglots to "practice" their languages. Indeed, the attempt of the Londoners to avail themselves of the rich mosaic of ethnic knowledge, and to seek a common understanding with a ubiquitous English accent is an exemplar, and the bedrock for any world city.

 

I celebrated Jesus' resurrection at the St. Andrew's Street Church in Cambridge. The parishioners of this Baptist church were warm and affable, and I met several of them, including one visiting (Halliday) linguistics scholar from Zhongshan university in Guangzhou, who in fact had visited my tiny City University of Hong Kong in 2003. The service itself was more traditional and the believers fewer in number than the "progressive" services at any of the charismatic, evangelical churches in HK; yet that's what makes this part of the body of Christ unique; besides, the message was as brief as a powerpoint slide, and informative no less; the power word which spoke into my life being a question from John 21:22 - what is that to you?

 

Big trees; exquisite lawns; and old, pointy colleges; that's Cambridge in a nutshell. Sitting here, sipping on a half-pint of Woodforde's Wherry, I've had a leisurely, if not languorous, day so far; my sole duty consisting of walking around while absorbing the verdant environment as though a sponge, camera in tow.

 

I am back at the sublime beer, savoring a pint of Sharp's DoomBar before my fish and chips arrive; the drinking age is 18, but anyone whose visage even hints of youthful brilliance is likely to get carded these days, the bartender told me. The youth drinking culture here is almost as twisted as the university drinking culture in America.

 

My stay in Cambridge, relaxing and desultory as it may be, is about to end after this late lunch. I an not sure if there is anything left to see, save for the American graveyard which rests an impossible two miles away. I have had a wonderful time in this town; and am thankful for the access into its living history - the residents here must demonstrate remarkable patience and tolerance what with so many tourists ambling on the streets, peering - and photographing - into every nook and cranny.

 

13.4.09

There are no rubbish bins, yet I've seen on the streets many mixed race couples in which the men tend to be white - the women also belonging to a light colored ethnicity, usually some sort of Asian; as well saw some black dudes and Indian dudes with white chicks.

 

People here hold doors, even at the entrance to the toilet. Sometimes it appears as though they are going out on a limb, just waiting for the one who will take the responsibility for the door from them, at which point I rush out to relieve them of such a fortuitous burden.

 

I visited the British Museum this morning. The two hours I spent there did neither myself nor the exhibits any justice because there really is too much to survey, enough captivating stuff to last an entire day, I think. The bottomless well of artifacts from antiquity, drawing from sources as diverse as Korea, and Mesopotamia, is a credit to the British empire, without whose looting most of this amazing booty would be unavailable for our purview; better, I think, for these priceless treasures to be open to all in the grandest supermarket of history than away from human eyes, and worst yet, in the hands of unscrupulous collectors or in the rubbish bin, possibly.

 

Irene and I took in the ballet Giselle at The Royal Opera House in the afternoon. The building is a plush marvel, and a testament to this city's love for the arts. The ballet itself was satisfying, the first half being superior to the second, in which the nimble dancers demonstrated their phenomenal dexterity in, of all places, a graveyard covered in a cloak of smoke and darkness. I admit, their dance of the dead, in such a gloomy necropolis, did strike me as, strange.

 

Two amicable ladies from Kent convinced me to visit their hometown tomorrow, where, they told me, the authentic, "working" Leeds Castle and the mighty interesting home of Charles Darwin await.

 

I'm nursing a pint of Green King Ruddles and wondering about the profusion of British ales and lagers; the British have done a great deed for the world by creating an interminable line of low-alcohol session beers that can be enjoyed at breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner; and their disservice is this: besides this inexhaustible supply of cheap beer ensnaring my inner alcoholic, I feel myself putting on my freshman fifteen, almost ten years after the fact; I am going to have to run a bit harder back in Hong Kong if I want to burn all this malty fuel off.

 

Irene suggested I stop by the National Art Gallery since we were in the area; and it was an hour well spent. The gallery currently presents a special exhibit on Picasso, the non-ticketed section of which features several seductive renderings, including David spying on Bathsheba - repeated in clever variants - and parodies of other masters' works. Furthermore, the main gallery houses two fabulous portraits by Joshua Reynolds, who happens to be favorite of mine, he in life being a close friend of Samuel Johnson - I passed by Boswells, where its namesake first met Johnson, on my way to the opera house.

 

14.4.09

I prayed last night, and went through my list, lifting everyone on it up to the Lord. That felt good; that God is alive now, and ever present in my life and in the lives of my brothers and sisters.

 

Doubtless, then, I have felt quite wistful, as though a specter in the land of the living, being in a place where religious fervor, it seems, is a thing of the past, a trifling for many, to be hidden away in the opaque corners of centuries-old cathedrals that are more expensive tourist destinations than liberating homes of worship these days. Indeed, I have yet to see anyone pray, outside of the Easter service which I attended in Cambridge - for such an ecstatic moment in verily a grand church, would you believe that it was only attended by at most three dozen spirited ones. The people of England, and Europe in general, have, it is my hope, only locked away the Word, relegating it to the quiet vault of their hearts. May it be taken out in the sudden pause before mealtimes and in the still crisp mornings and cool, silent nights. There is still hope for a revival in this place, for faith to rise like that splendid sun every morning. God would love to rescue them, to deliver them in this day, it is certain.

 

I wonder what Londoners think, if anything at all, about their police state which, like a vine in the shadows, has taken root in all corners of daily life, from the terrorist notifications in the underground, which implore Londoners to report all things suspicious, to the pair of dogs which eagerly stroll through Euston. What makes this all the more incredible is the fact that even the United States, the indomitable nemesis of the fledgling, rebel order, doesn't dare bombard its citizens with such fear mongering these days, especially with Obama in office; maybe we've grown wise in these past few years to the dubious returns of surrendering civil liberties to the state, of having our bags checked everywhere - London Eye; Hairspray; and The Royal Opera House check bags in London while the museums do not; somehow, that doesn't add up for me.

 

I'm in a majestic bookshop on New Street in Birmingham, and certainly to confirm my suspicions, there are just as many books on the death of Christianity in Britain as there are books which attempt to murder Christianity everywhere. I did find, however, a nice biography on John Wesley by Roy Hattersley and The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. I may pick up the former.

 

Lunch with Sally was pleasant and mirthful. We dined at a French restaurant nearby New Street - yes, Birmingham is a cultural capitol! Sally and I both tried their omelette, while her boyfriend had the fish, without chips. Conversation was light, the levity was there and so was our reminiscing about those fleeting moments during our first year in Hong Kong; it is amazing how friendships can resume so suddenly with a smile. On their recommendation, I am on my way to Warwick Castle - they also suggested that I visit Cadbury World, but they cannot take on additional visitors at the moment, the tourist office staff informed me, much to my disappointment!

 

Visiting Warwick Castle really made for a great day out. The castle, parts of which were established by William the Conquerer in 1068, is as much a kitschy tourist trap as a meticulous preservation of history, at times a sillier version of Ocean Park while at others a dignified dedication to a most glorious, inexorably English past. The castle caters to all visitors; and not surprisingly, that which delighted all audiences was a giant trebuchet siege engine, which for the five p.m. performance hurled a fireball high and far into the air - fantastic! Taliban beware!

 

15.4.09

I'm leaving on a jet plane this evening; don't know when I'll be back in England again. I'll miss this quirky, yet endearing place; and that I shall miss Irene and Tom who so generously welcomed me into their home, fed me, and suffered my use of their toilet and shower goes without saying. I'm grateful for God's many blessings on this trip.

 

On the itinerary today is a trip to John Wesley's home, followed by a visit to the Imperial War Museum. Already this morning I picked up a tube of Oilatum, a week late perhaps, which Teri recommended I use to treat this obstinate, dermal weakness of mine - I'm happy to report that my skin has stopped crying.

 

John Wesley's home is alive and well. Services are still held in the chapel everyday; and its crypt, so far from being a cellar for the dead, is a bright, spacious museum in which all things Wesley are on display - I never realized how much of an iconic figure he became in England; at the height of this idol frenzy, ironic in itself, he must have been as popular as the Beatles were at their apex. The house itself is a multi-story edifice with narrow, precipitous staircases and spacious rooms decorated in an 18th century fashion.

 

I found Samuel Johnson's house within a maze of red brick hidden alongside Fleet Street. To be in the home of the man who wrote the English dictionary, and whose indefatigable love for obscure words became the inspiration for my own lexical obsession, this, by far, is the climax of my visit to England! The best certainly has been saved for last.

 

There are a multitude of portraits hanging around the house like ornaments on a tree. Every likeness has its own story, meticulously retold on the crib sheets in each room. Celebrities abound, including David Garrick and Sir Joshua Reynolds, who painted several of the finer images in the house. I have developed a particular affinity for Oliver Goldsmith, of whom Boswell writes, "His person was short, his countenance coarse and vulgar, his deportment that of a scholar awkwardly affecting the easy gentleman. It appears as though I, too, could use a more flattering description of myself!

 

I regretfully couldn't stop to try the curry in England; I guess the CityU canteen's take on the dish will have to do. I did, however, have the opportune task of flirting with the cute Cathay Pacific counter staff who checked me in. She was gorgeous in red, light powder on her cheeks, with real diamond earrings, she said; and her small, delicate face, commanded by a posh British accent rendered her positively irresistible, electrifying. Not only did she grant me an aisle seat but she had the gumption to return my fawning with zest; she must be a pro at this by now.

 

I saw her again as she was pulling double-duty, collecting tickets prior to boarding. She remembered my quest for curry; and in the fog of infatuation, where nary a man has been made, I fumbled my words like the sloppy kid who has had too much punch. I am just an amateur, alas, an "Oliver Goldsmith" with the ladies - I got no game - booyah!

 

Some final, consequential bits: because of the chavs, Burberry no longer sells those fashionable baseball caps; because of the IRA, rubbish bins are no longer a commodity on the streets of London, and as a result, the streets and the Underground of the city are a soiled mess; and because of other terrorists from distant, more arid lands, going through a Western airport has taken on the tedium of perfunctory procedure that doesn't make me feel any safer from my invisible enemies.

 

At last, I saw so many Indians working at Heathrow that I could have easily mistaken the place for Mumbai. Their presence surprised me because their portion of the general population surely must be less than their portion of Heathrow staff, indicating some mysterious hiring bias. Regardless, they do a superb job with cursory airport checks, and in general are absurdly funny and witty when not tactless.

 

That's all for England!

Every sunset and sunrise is different and offers unexpected surprises. This one is no exception. Interesting how the intense glow on the horizon pulsates as the sun sets. Note moon as the scene darkens.

Build by Titans Creations for Legoland Malaysia May the 4th event.

Minifig scaled and measuring 110 cm by 85 cm , its bigger than the UCS Millennium Falcon.

Main objective of this build is to replicate the interior of the popular Millennium Falcon as accurate as possible with references to different online materials.

Features 24 LED , 7 which are programmed to pulsate at the rear thrusters for realism , and the rest spread among the corridor, hyperdrive and cockpit.

Took a total of 2 months to plan and build.

Thank you for viewing !

 

Do check us out on www.titanscreations.com

Poem.

 

Golden Cherry,

Yellow Larch.

Orange Birch.

Bronze Ferns.

Upright, bottle-green Spruce.

Stately, cone-laden, Scots Pine.

Bushes of Gorse and Broom.

Rock-faces.

Hills.

Mosses.

Algae.

Fungi.

And a mist “melting” into an Autumnal sky.

Forests can be sterile,

too uniform.

Not here.

A lavish, richly painted canvas.

Atmospheric.

With an ambience of pulsating,

multi-coloured, vibrant life.

 

The Mursi people of Ethiopia’s Omo Valley have been called “one of the most fascinating tribes in Africa.”

 

We’d only been in the village just over two hours, and it was still mid-morning. But the sun was high: pulsating light and radiating heat. Following the men to the cattle pens made for a nice diversion, even though I felt anticipatory dread over what was to come.

 

First, a cow who hasn’t been bled recently must be caught and restrained. Then the bowman palpates an artery on the cows neck for piercing. The spurting fresh blood is caught in a gourd before the hole in the neck is plugged and the blood is drunk by the participants.

 

The cattle must be used to this treatment – once let loose, they are unfazed.

 

For the story, please visit: www.ursulasweeklywanders.com/culture/men-of-the-mursi-mor...

Build by Titans Creations for Legoland Malaysia May the 4th event.

Minifig scaled and measuring 110 cm by 85 cm , its bigger than the UCS Millennium Falcon.

Main objective of this build is to replicate the interior of the popular Millennium Falcon as accurate as possible with references to different online materials.

Features 24 LED , 7 which are programmed to pulsate at the rear thrusters for realism , and the rest spread among the corridor, hyperdrive and cockpit.

Took a total of 2 months to plan and build.

Thank you for viewing !

 

Do check us out on www.titanscreations.com

Balmoral Hotel Clock Tower on Princes Street - Edinburgh, Scotland.

 

The Balmoral Hotel is a luxury hotel located in the heart of Edinburgh, with an address of 1 Princes Street - the city's pulsating shopping district. It was once known as the North British Hotel until the late 1980's. It is known for its majestic 195-feet clock tower set 3 minutes fast. On my research about Edinburgh, I found this one interesting fact about the Balmoral Hotel:

 

"In February 2007 it was confirmed that author J. K. Rowling finished the last book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at this hotel. Rowling left a signed statement written on a marble bust of Hermes in her room saying; "JK Rowling finished writing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in this room (652) on 11th Jan 2007."

  

Camera/Lens: Nikon D700; 70-200mm f/2.8;

Exposure: 30 sec.; Aperture: f/16; ISO: 200; Focal Length: 150mm;

Copyright 2010 - Yen Baet - All Rights Reserved.

Do not use any of my images without permission.

 

Starling (Sturnus vulgaris). During the winter months, the numbers of Starlings present within Britain and Ireland are swelled by the arrival of individuals from breeding populations located elsewhere within Europe. The numbers arriving vary from one winter to the next and are influenced by weather conditions on the Continent. Wintering Starlings roost communally and vast flocks may congregate at favoured sites, typically performing amazing aerobatic displays (known as ‘murmurations’) before dropping into the roost, which may be a reedbed, a group of conifers or a human structure, such as a pier. With many thousands of birds using a roost there is the potential for nuisance, their droppings fouling the ground beneath and around the chosen site.

 

These vast flocks have more humble beginnings, with small flocks of Starlings coming together as dusk approaches. Gradually, as more and more birds join the gathering, a huge pulsating flock is formed. As the light begins to fade so part of the flock will plunge down towards the chosen roost, almost as if testing its nerve to see who will be the first bird to drop into the roost itself. The birds have good reason to be nervous; these large gatherings attract the attentions of predators like Peregrine and Sparrowhawk. Photo by Nick Dobbs, Bournemouth, Throop Mill 09-03-21

A free Spirit

Mirit Ben-Nun was born in Beer- Sheva in 1966. Over the years she has presented in solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Israel and around the world.

When she was six, her father was killed in a car accident, leaving behind his wife and two daughters, Mirit and Dana.

Ben-Nun had difficulty concentrating on studies, which caused behavioral problems, and at the age of fourteen she dropped out of the education system and went to work. The colors and writing tools gave her a quiet private space and her own way of surviving. Creativity eased her tumultuous soul.

Until her early 30’s she worked as a telemarketer and for the next fourteen years she doodled and doodled. While talking to customers she filled thousands of pages with lines and dots that resembled hundreds of compressed eggs and seeds which she threw away.

In a large portion of each page she would pick a random word and would write it down over and over while concentrating on her hand movements.

Even then she noticed the rising of her need and obsession as she practiced the endless doodling and writing.

Ben-Nun testifies that the lack of artistic training to paint "correctly" freed her from adhering to the rules of painting and allowed her freedom and spirit of rebellion.

In 1998, she received a bunch of canvases and acrylic paints as a gift from her sister.

She brought the acrylic into her world of lines and dots; she went back to painting women and masks that appeared in her childhood paintings and flooded them with lines and dots without separating body and background.

This is also the moment when Ben-Nun began to refer to herself as a painter.

and when art became the center of her life.

The intense colors in Ben-Nun's paintings sweep the viewer into a sensual experience. The viewer traces the surge of dots and lines formed in packed layers of paint. The movement leads to a kind of female-male hormonal dance within the human body and to a communion with an artistic experience of instinct, passion, conceiving and birth.

Contributing to this experience is the wealth of characteristics reminiscent of tribal art. Ben-Nun merges these with a humorous and kicking contemporary Western Pop art. In the language of unique art, Ben-Nun creates an unconventional conversation between past and present cultures.

It is evident that the paintings emerge from a regenerated need and desire, a force that erupts from her soul, a subconscious survival instinct to which she cannot or does not want to resist.

Ben-Nun places women at the center stage where they are her work focus. The paintings obsessively deal with the existential experience of being a woman in the world. A few of the women's paintings carry feminist slogans stressing the women's struggle in society, a critique for being held to perfection and being required to perform as a model of "beauty, purity and motherhood". Feminism pulsates in Ben-Nun's psyche, through her diverse female images and the play between beauty and unsightliness; Ben-Nun assimilates the consciousness of feminine possibility, of not being "perfect", of being powerful, influential, and outside social norms. This mandates a departure from acceptable limitations where Ben-Nun creates a new world of free spirit for women.

Mirit Ben-Nun is a mother of three and the grandmother of three grandchildren.

 

Mirela Tal

 

We hit Yosemite in the middle of an unusual Fall storm -- followed by its gradual clearing from the valley the perfect conditions that occur perhaps 20 times a year at most. Usually it is dry as granite, but Yosemite Falls (you can see upper and lower Yosemite Falls here) were plump with a pulsating roar that filled our cabin. That and the fall leaves coming off the poplars and oaks had the valley painted in oils.

 

A few words on Yosemite falls - At 739 meters (2,420 feet) its the 7th largest waterfall in the world, with an upper falls that drops 436 meters (1,430 feet). The lower falls are higher than Niagara Falls. They are usually dry this time of year, and some even climb thie sheer face for the thrill -- extremely dangerous because one thunderstorm above can restart the falls -- as it did this weekend -- with disastrous consequences. Frankly it is beautiful and a thrill to have nearby and the huge conveniently placed meadow opposite it make it a photographer's dream.

A free Spirit

Mirit Ben-Nun was born in Beer- Sheva in 1966. Over the years she has presented in solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Israel and around the world.

When she was six, her father was killed in a car accident, leaving behind his wife and two daughters, Mirit and Dana.

Ben-Nun had difficulty concentrating on studies, which caused behavioral problems, and at the age of fourteen she dropped out of the education system and went to work. The colors and writing tools gave her a quiet private space and her own way of surviving. Creativity eased her tumultuous soul.

Until her early 30’s she worked as a telemarketer and for the next fourteen years she doodled and doodled. While talking to customers she filled thousands of pages with lines and dots that resembled hundreds of compressed eggs and seeds which she threw away.

In a large portion of each page she would pick a random word and would write it down over and over while concentrating on her hand movements.

Even then she noticed the rising of her need and obsession as she practiced the endless doodling and writing.

Ben-Nun testifies that the lack of artistic training to paint "correctly" freed her from adhering to the rules of painting and allowed her freedom and spirit of rebellion.

In 1998, she received a bunch of canvases and acrylic paints as a gift from her sister.

She brought the acrylic into her world of lines and dots; she went back to painting women and masks that appeared in her childhood paintings and flooded them with lines and dots without separating body and background.

This is also the moment when Ben-Nun began to refer to herself as a painter.

and when art became the center of her life.

The intense colors in Ben-Nun's paintings sweep the viewer into a sensual experience. The viewer traces the surge of dots and lines formed in packed layers of paint. The movement leads to a kind of female-male hormonal dance within the human body and to a communion with an artistic experience of instinct, passion, conceiving and birth.

Contributing to this experience is the wealth of characteristics reminiscent of tribal art. Ben-Nun merges these with a humorous and kicking contemporary Western Pop art. In the language of unique art, Ben-Nun creates an unconventional conversation between past and present cultures.

It is evident that the paintings emerge from a regenerated need and desire, a force that erupts from her soul, a subconscious survival instinct to which she cannot or does not want to resist.

Ben-Nun places women at the center stage where they are her work focus. The paintings obsessively deal with the existential experience of being a woman in the world. A few of the women's paintings carry feminist slogans stressing the women's struggle in society, a critique for being held to perfection and being required to perform as a model of "beauty, purity and motherhood". Feminism pulsates in Ben-Nun's psyche, through her diverse female images and the play between beauty and unsightliness; Ben-Nun assimilates the consciousness of feminine possibility, of not being "perfect", of being powerful, influential, and outside social norms. This mandates a departure from acceptable limitations where Ben-Nun creates a new world of free spirit for women.

Mirit Ben-Nun is a mother of three and the grandmother of three grandchildren.

 

Mirela Tal

 

A free Spirit

Mirit Ben-Nun was born in Beer- Sheva in 1966. Over the years she has presented in solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Israel and around the world.

When she was six, her father was killed in a car accident, leaving behind his wife and two daughters, Mirit and Dana.

Ben-Nun had difficulty concentrating on studies, which caused behavioral problems, and at the age of fourteen she dropped out of the education system and went to work. The colors and writing tools gave her a quiet private space and her own way of surviving. Creativity eased her tumultuous soul.

Until her early 30’s she worked as a telemarketer and for the next fourteen years she doodled and doodled. While talking to customers she filled thousands of pages with lines and dots that resembled hundreds of compressed eggs and seeds which she threw away.

In a large portion of each page she would pick a random word and would write it down over and over while concentrating on her hand movements.

Even then she noticed the rising of her need and obsession as she practiced the endless doodling and writing.

Ben-Nun testifies that the lack of artistic training to paint "correctly" freed her from adhering to the rules of painting and allowed her freedom and spirit of rebellion.

In 1998, she received a bunch of canvases and acrylic paints as a gift from her sister.

She brought the acrylic into her world of lines and dots; she went back to painting women and masks that appeared in her childhood paintings and flooded them with lines and dots without separating body and background.

This is also the moment when Ben-Nun began to refer to herself as a painter.

and when art became the center of her life.

The intense colors in Ben-Nun's paintings sweep the viewer into a sensual experience. The viewer traces the surge of dots and lines formed in packed layers of paint. The movement leads to a kind of female-male hormonal dance within the human body and to a communion with an artistic experience of instinct, passion, conceiving and birth.

Contributing to this experience is the wealth of characteristics reminiscent of tribal art. Ben-Nun merges these with a humorous and kicking contemporary Western Pop art. In the language of unique art, Ben-Nun creates an unconventional conversation between past and present cultures.

It is evident that the paintings emerge from a regenerated need and desire, a force that erupts from her soul, a subconscious survival instinct to which she cannot or does not want to resist.

Ben-Nun places women at the center stage where they are her work focus. The paintings obsessively deal with the existential experience of being a woman in the world. A few of the women's paintings carry feminist slogans stressing the women's struggle in society, a critique for being held to perfection and being required to perform as a model of "beauty, purity and motherhood". Feminism pulsates in Ben-Nun's psyche, through her diverse female images and the play between beauty and unsightliness; Ben-Nun assimilates the consciousness of feminine possibility, of not being "perfect", of being powerful, influential, and outside social norms. This mandates a departure from acceptable limitations where Ben-Nun creates a new world of free spirit for women.

Mirit Ben-Nun is a mother of three and the grandmother of three grandchildren.

 

Mirela Tal

 

Inspired by the Swedish Wasteland. Come enjoy some time off from the pulsating life, enjoy the lake activities like fishing, boat , pedalo or canoe; go for a walk by the river, or relax and listen to the frogs singing :) Turn the sounds on!

 

Visit this location at Luanes Spring World -Romantic sim & :LW: Poses main store in Second Life

LC Verse Spider-Girl

Issue #15 "Passenger"

 

The screaming and gunfire gets louder as I swing my way towards the chaos, a mech about six foot tall is wielding an oversized machine gun firing his rounds wildly into the buildings nearby. I notice he's not shooting at the civilians and no police have arrived at the scene, perhaps they have a late response time? Landing behind the mech I get a better look at its thick plated armour on top of that is a large shield strapped to it's hand for overkill. I clear my throat then speak, "All that armour won't protect you." The mech swivels around alarmingly fast despite its size, glaring down at me through its visor. "Well it's about time you showed your face, murderer!" The mechs voice booms whilst it charges at me with its shield leaning forward I see its pointed metallic horn in the shape of a Rhinos. I flip high over the Rhino mech seeing it crash into a parked car which crumples upon impact. "I didn't mean to kill, The Lizard it was an accident." I protest seeing Rhino turn around blasting his turret, bullets riddle into the street near me whilst I sprint quickly behind a nearby car. The car is shredded by the bullets like it was made out of paper and I grimace combat rolling away. "His wife said you broke his neck with one punch, doesn't seem like an accident!" Rhino roars raising his shield upwards charging at me, he's faster than I expected and slams hard into my chest sending me flying across the road. Quickly getting to my feet quickly I grit my teeth angrily, "I don't have to justify my actions to you, scumbag!" Rhino lets out a deep growl lumbering towards me and I run at him drawing back a fist. My suit fuels the power which gushes through my veins whilst Rhino tanks his way towards me aiming his horn downward but I skid across the ground under his shield spraying my webbing at his visor. He comes to a halt dropping his gun and shield trying to pry my webbing from his face with his oversized fingers, he turns to me crying out in frustration. "Let me help you with that!" I say running towards him slamming my fist against his visor, I don't notice the force of my punch as my fist travels through his visor smashing through his face coming out the back of Rhinos head.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

 

I gasp in horror yanking back my fist staring at the gaping whole in the armour, peering inside squeamishly I notice there's no pilot. Electricity sparks violently from within the armour gathering in the air, it manifests into a transparent figure radiating bright blue energy. "Agh my suit!" A distorted tone hisses angrily, my eyes widen seeing the electric form hover in the air, It raises its hands and sparks fly from its fingertips crackling. "S.H.I.E.L.D gave me that armour, you're going to pay for it!" He cackles blasting volts of lightning at me, the electricity strikes my body sending needles all over it. I shriek in pain collapsing to the ground withering in pain until he stops. He laughs looking down at me twitch uncontrollably, my suit seems to pulsate off my body, tentacles lashing out in pain from my back like its screaming. I breathe heavily slowly getting to my feet only to feel another blast of electricity course through my body, I begin to convulse screaming in agony shutting my eyes tightly waiting for it to stop. The torture abruptly comes to a halt then I hear him speak, "Electro to Nick Fury, package is secure the suit is off." My body feels soaked in warm liquid and I begin to think it's blood then open my eyes, a black puddle of my suit surrounds me, gently rippling as the remainder of it drips down from my fingertips. Looking down at the leftover droplets of my suit trickle down I hear footsteps approach, a firm tone breaks the silence, "Good work, Electro. We have her now it's time for S.H.I.E.L.D to take her in."

An abstract painting animated and brought to a pulsating life

Absent Sophia

 

Poetry ceases without you

Ache embraces a pounding heart

Caged behind a glass door

 

A grieving liturgy waits

Silence roars on empty ears

Confined a passion thrashes

 

Lyrics fail to chant in your absence

Throbbing veins pulsate against flesh

Imprisoned in white bones

-rc

A free Spirit

Mirit Ben-Nun was born in Beer- Sheva in 1966. Over the years she has presented in solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Israel and around the world.

When she was six, her father was killed in a car accident, leaving behind his wife and two daughters, Mirit and Dana.

Ben-Nun had difficulty concentrating on studies, which caused behavioral problems, and at the age of fourteen she dropped out of the education system and went to work. The colors and writing tools gave her a quiet private space and her own way of surviving. Creativity eased her tumultuous soul.

Until her early 30’s she worked as a telemarketer and for the next fourteen years she doodled and doodled. While talking to customers she filled thousands of pages with lines and dots that resembled hundreds of compressed eggs and seeds which she threw away.

In a large portion of each page she would pick a random word and would write it down over and over while concentrating on her hand movements.

Even then she noticed the rising of her need and obsession as she practiced the endless doodling and writing.

Ben-Nun testifies that the lack of artistic training to paint "correctly" freed her from adhering to the rules of painting and allowed her freedom and spirit of rebellion.

In 1998, she received a bunch of canvases and acrylic paints as a gift from her sister.

She brought the acrylic into her world of lines and dots; she went back to painting women and masks that appeared in her childhood paintings and flooded them with lines and dots without separating body and background.

This is also the moment when Ben-Nun began to refer to herself as a painter.

and when art became the center of her life.

The intense colors in Ben-Nun's paintings sweep the viewer into a sensual experience. The viewer traces the surge of dots and lines formed in packed layers of paint. The movement leads to a kind of female-male hormonal dance within the human body and to a communion with an artistic experience of instinct, passion, conceiving and birth.

Contributing to this experience is the wealth of characteristics reminiscent of tribal art. Ben-Nun merges these with a humorous and kicking contemporary Western Pop art. In the language of unique art, Ben-Nun creates an unconventional conversation between past and present cultures.

It is evident that the paintings emerge from a regenerated need and desire, a force that erupts from her soul, a subconscious survival instinct to which she cannot or does not want to resist.

Ben-Nun places women at the center stage where they are her work focus. The paintings obsessively deal with the existential experience of being a woman in the world. A few of the women's paintings carry feminist slogans stressing the women's struggle in society, a critique for being held to perfection and being required to perform as a model of "beauty, purity and motherhood". Feminism pulsates in Ben-Nun's psyche, through her diverse female images and the play between beauty and unsightliness; Ben-Nun assimilates the consciousness of feminine possibility, of not being "perfect", of being powerful, influential, and outside social norms. This mandates a departure from acceptable limitations where Ben-Nun creates a new world of free spirit for women.

Mirit Ben-Nun is a mother of three and the grandmother of three grandchildren.

 

Woke up in the middle of the night and decided to take the trash out. The sky was cloud- covered, not a single star to be seen. The street was empty and I felt a slight longing for something I couldn’t put my finger on so I switch on the computer, make of cup of ginger tea and play with some art. Cued on my listening list is a video by Shoshana Zuboff, author of “Surveillance Capitalism”. I take a deep breath in and began to loosen up and let myself go on another artistic voyage.

 

Since 1978, Shoshana has been studying the dawn of the “Digital Age”which was going to usher in a golden time of global collaborations to solve great world challenges like disease and hunger. Now 43 years later, she published a book to warn us to reclaim the liberties taken by those who have hijacked the digital domain and who mine insane amounts of data from an unsuspecting user base. She says that F.Book, for example, extracts 3 trillion bits of information and spits out 6 million human behavioral predictions per second. (My image takes on this idea of separating: The metal bars, the surveillance camera, the projected image and the artist protagonist who sings and dreams and holds on the beauty of her own created thought world.) Shoshana says that these human predictions are bought and sold like wheat or oil or minerals and companies compete to have access to the most accurate outcomes of these behavioral forecasts. This is the most lucrative and substantial real-estate of the modern age. We are not the customer, we are simply a resource…being fed into algorithims which are then studied and sold back to us in the form of everything from political leanings to personalized selections of consumer goods and lifestyle choices. She says that facial recognition technology can now even detect fear and there is a sound device that can pick up your surroundings so a targeted ad can be sent to you in a vulnerable moment and be designed in such a way that you give in.

 

I think of this invasive siphoning as a kind of instrumental colonialism confiscating our private thoughts and feelings in order to take ownership of them. Roshana urges us to keep asking three key questions: Who is in the Know? Who decides who will be in the Know? Who decides who decides who will be in the Know? (Two hands represent this chasm …) The increasing divisiveness in the climate, health, technology and religious debates seems to support this idea. (The projected image on a laptop appears. What is real and what is not real?) She ends the talk on a hopeful note saying that even the industrial revolution had to hammer out human rights issues and this is the time to bring the digital frontier into the so called “house of democracy”. She said that cyberspace is only made of data, capital, machines and people. She emphasizes that these are unprecedented times and we need to be vigilent. We need to keep asking questions.

 

It’s almost noon now as I lean back and stretch. My heart scans the artwork as the images dance, rearrange in a new ways to interpret the interconnectedness of thoughts and things; the maco and micro worlds are always in synch. Vibrational differences give the illusion of separation while the giving and taking hands are the polarities that move and shake this existence with masculine and feminine givng and receiving aspects. The musician reclaims her songs and pulsates with rhythms through endless wave form patterns. When we remember who we are, we can take charge again. We make better choices. We are not the bystander but pioneer new visions with the perspective that the digital world offers new tools of collaboration and engagement with cutting edge of possibilities. In this refiguring, there is joy, freedom and deep reverence. We take care of ourselves, each other and the earth because we know we are all part of a great Love Story. We all write the story together.

 

“Though free to think and act, we are held together like stars in the firmament with ties unseperable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them. We are all one.”

 

-Nikola Tesla

 

Here is the video this writing refers to:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vm2i4OlW3sM (Shoshana starts 8 minutes in…)

   

IC 5076, also known as vdB 137, is a reflection nebula located in the constellation Cygnus, about 2° north of the North America Nebula. It is situated at an estimated distance of 1750 parsecs (approximately 5700 light-years) and is part of the same galactic region as the Cygnus X nebular complex. Nearby, the open cluster NGC 6910 can be observed a few arcminutes to the south.

 

This nebula is associated with the star HD 199478, a blue supergiant of spectral class B8Iae. The star exhibits strong emission lines, characteristic of Be stars, and is classified as a pulsating variable under the designation V2140 Cygni. Its apparent magnitude is 5.73, with brightness variations of about 0.1 magnitude.

 

To capture this image, a Planewave CDK17 telescope (432mm) was used, paired with a FLI Kepler 4040 CMOS camera and Astronomik Deep-Sky LRGB filters. A total of 45 frames, amounting to 4.2 hours of exposure, were stacked. Post-processing techniques were applied to adjust contrast and levels, bringing out subtle details such as the background nebula.

 

TARGET DETAILS

RA 20h 55m 31.4s

DEC +47° 24' 18.9"

SIZE 41.8 x 41.8 arcmin

PIXEL SCALE 0.493 arcsec/pixel

ORIENTATION Up is 2.1 degrees E of N

CONSTELLATION Cygnus

 

Captured April 2024

Total integration time of 4.2 hours.

 

Technical Details

Data acquisition: Roboscope

Processing: Nicolas ROLLAND

Location: Apollo 11 Observatory, Badajoz, Extremadura, Spain

L: 15*300s

R: 15*300s

G: 15*300s

B: 15*300s

Optics: Planewave CDK17 @ F/6.8

Mount: Planewave L-500 Fork Mount

CCD: FLI Kepler 4040fi CMOS

Astrodon 50mm sqr LRGB

Click for story and time-lapse video

 

Pulsating aurora on the morning of October 30, 2013 | Fairbanks, Alaska.

  

Recently, I sat at the edge of a lake feeling melancholic. I looked down to see three rocks buried in the sand. Borrowing some chalk and markers from a nearby group of girls, I felt inspired to draw and then further explore this experience in my notebook.

 

Contemplating the first rock:

 

This is the rock of the personal story. The pressure cooker rock that shapes our sense of self and identity and then forces us to look deeper into who we are and where we come from. As we look beyond our stories and try to make sense of who we are and why we are here, we often feel overwhelmed by the vast range of pain and isolation. We realize the ridiculous ways we have measured ourselves in our own circumstances and the many ways we believe that we are merely that which we think, that which we possess or that which we believe. We often experience the fear of missing out. We constantly weigh and measure ourselves and others in an effort to reveal our feelings of worthiness or lack thereof. We often lose our sense of Infinity and our relationship to the limitless part of ourselves out of fear that life has no ultimate meaning and therefore our individual lives have no higher purpose.

  

Contemplating the second rock:

 

This is the Rock of the Universal Heart. All stories pour out of this Rock. It is the rock of unending Love and abundance. This is the great Rock of Ages which beheld us even before we slipped into our mother’s womb. Rock is rock. This is the Stone that stretches our imagination beyond the rigid thinking mind and reminds us that Infinity cannot be measured or defined. In our deepest moments of connection and compassion we feel the resonance of this rock. In our deepest pain, we reach for this “You” and so many have heard the small still voice within that answers. It is the rock of hope and possibility. It is the eternal song that we feel and hear in our deepest longings to know who we are and where we are going. It is the resonance that pulsates the message : “Love never faileth” to fill us with strength and faith.

  

Contemplating the third rock:

 

This is the rock of Light and Wisdom. This rock is the bridge between the first two rocks. This is the radiance of the sun which pulsates in everything seen and unseen. It is the uncovering and discovering of true Self. It is the Path, the Teacher, the Vessel, the Transmission of energy between all things. This rock raises the vibration of the world for all those who seek, ask, believe and find. This rock is the force of life which animates, directs and creates out of itself. It is the blueprint for the orchard waiting in the seed of an apple. It is the hope fulfilled when the life etched on the first rock enters into the unfolding of its own story and it is also the soothing of the ache to return to Source. It is the great messenger shining through, in and on and through all of Creation and is That which knows no shadow.

  

While working on this posting, I was listening to a musical version of a mantra that my Teacher had taught to us years ago and it seems to be a perfect pairing for this post:

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kg4ZgUakNY

 

and if you are feeling stressed out, play this one at the same time and you will feel so much better:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x9uy1qBUfA

 

Full post here: theastroenthusiast.com/first-pulsar-image-processing/

 

You can find all details at the astrobin post here: www.astrobin.com/zzoau6/

Credits: Tim Schaeffer, Carl Björk, William Ostling

 

The first-ever color image of the pulsar wind nebula around pulsar PSR B1951+32

At the core of this intricate scene lies PSR B1951+32, a pulsar surrounded by a pulsar wind nebula (PWN). This PWN, visible in a stunning array of colors, takes its place as the centerpiece of this image, capturing the imagination and serving as the first-ever color image of its kind in visible light. It pulsates with life, its energetic emissions shaping the surrounding space and illuminating the cosmic tapestry.

  

PSR B1951+32: The pulsar at the center of this composition, surrounded by its pulsar wind nebula, emits powerful beams of radiation as it rapidly rotates. These emissions influence the surrounding space and provide a unique backdrop to the cosmic scene.

 

This image is a testament to the boundless beauty and diversity that our universe holds, inviting us to explore the mysteries of the cosmos and the intricate stories written in the stars, with OU-7, OU-8, and the PWN of PSR B1951+32 adding their brilliance to this cosmic kaleidoscope.

  

Website: theastroenthusiast.com/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/the_astronomy_enthusiast/

  

A free Spirit

Mirit Ben-Nun was born in Beer- Sheva in 1966. Over the years she has presented in solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Israel and around the world.

When she was six, her father was killed in a car accident, leaving behind his wife and two daughters, Mirit and Dana.

Ben-Nun had difficulty concentrating on studies, which caused behavioral problems, and at the age of fourteen she dropped out of the education system and went to work. The colors and writing tools gave her a quiet private space and her own way of surviving. Creativity eased her tumultuous soul.

Until her early 30’s she worked as a telemarketer and for the next fourteen years she doodled and doodled. While talking to customers she filled thousands of pages with lines and dots that resembled hundreds of compressed eggs and seeds which she threw away.

In a large portion of each page she would pick a random word and would write it down over and over while concentrating on her hand movements.

Even then she noticed the rising of her need and obsession as she practiced the endless doodling and writing.

Ben-Nun testifies that the lack of artistic training to paint "correctly" freed her from adhering to the rules of painting and allowed her freedom and spirit of rebellion.

In 1998, she received a bunch of canvases and acrylic paints as a gift from her sister.

She brought the acrylic into her world of lines and dots; she went back to painting women and masks that appeared in her childhood paintings and flooded them with lines and dots without separating body and background.

This is also the moment when Ben-Nun began to refer to herself as a painter.

and when art became the center of her life.

The intense colors in Ben-Nun's paintings sweep the viewer into a sensual experience. The viewer traces the surge of dots and lines formed in packed layers of paint. The movement leads to a kind of female-male hormonal dance within the human body and to a communion with an artistic experience of instinct, passion, conceiving and birth.

Contributing to this experience is the wealth of characteristics reminiscent of tribal art. Ben-Nun merges these with a humorous and kicking contemporary Western Pop art. In the language of unique art, Ben-Nun creates an unconventional conversation between past and present cultures.

It is evident that the paintings emerge from a regenerated need and desire, a force that erupts from her soul, a subconscious survival instinct to which she cannot or does not want to resist.

Ben-Nun places women at the center stage where they are her work focus. The paintings obsessively deal with the existential experience of being a woman in the world. A few of the women's paintings carry feminist slogans stressing the women's struggle in society, a critique for being held to perfection and being required to perform as a model of "beauty, purity and motherhood". Feminism pulsates in Ben-Nun's psyche, through her diverse female images and the play between beauty and unsightliness; Ben-Nun assimilates the consciousness of feminine possibility, of not being "perfect", of being powerful, influential, and outside social norms. This mandates a departure from acceptable limitations where Ben-Nun creates a new world of free spirit for women.

Mirit Ben-Nun is a mother of three and the grandmother of three grandchildren.

 

Mirela Tal

 

Special order vacuum suit - it pulsates as well !

Abraham "Bram" Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912) was an Irish author, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel, Dracula. During his lifetime, he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, which Irving owned.

 

Arise! Awake! A mist descends upon the city streets. Sounds pulsate beneath our feet. The sky shudders as Macnas spirits are unleashed by Twilight.

 

Come out and celebrate with Danu, Goddess of the Divine and Dark: brutal and beautiful, warrior and mother, hallowed and holy, she protects and provokes, takes flight and goes underground.

 

Mummers and drummers follow and seek. Demons and angels love and loathe, the dead dance and the living transform. Men become gods, fools become Kings, souls are sanctified, reptiles are rarefied and the city streets transform as the journey unfolds.

 

Bram Stoker Festival are delighted to once again welcome Macnas to Dublin for a city-wide procession to launch the city into Samhain [Halloween].

The lazily winding spiral arms of the spectacular galaxy NGC 976 fill the frame of this image from the Hubble Space Telescope. This spiral galaxy lies around 150 million light-years from the Milky Way in the constellation Aries. Despite its tranquil appearance, NGC 976 has played host to one of the most violent astronomical phenomena known — a supernova explosion. These cataclysmically violent events take place at the end of the lives of massive stars, and can outshine entire galaxies for a short period.

 

While supernovae mark the deaths of massive stars, they are also responsible for the creation of heavy elements that are incorporated into later generations of stars and planets. Supernovae are also a useful aid for astronomers who measure the distances to faraway galaxies. The amount of energy thrown out into space by supernova explosions is very uniform, allowing astronomers to estimate their distances from how bright they appear to be when viewed from Earth. This image comes from a large collection of Hubble observations of nearby galaxies which host supernovae as well as a pulsating class of stars known as Cepheid variables. Both Cepheids and supernovae are used to measure astronomical distances, and galaxies containing both objects provide useful natural laboratories where the two methods can be calibrated against one another.

 

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Jones, A. Riess et al.

 

For more information, visit: esahubble.org/images/potw2202a/

 

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Donut chose her name because she knows how good she tastes! Donut is petite with soft curves that feel so nice to touch. Her easy ass can take cock day and night as the small cum rocket between her thighs pulsates in pleasure. Donut throbs as the tip of the bare cock rubs against her sensitive prostrate. Fireworks of bliss erupt and precum drips from the foreskin of Donut's stick. See Donut hold her ankles to her shoulders and barebacked to a clear cum orgasm.

www.ladyboygold.com/flickr

Having just missed the most active burst of aurora last night, I opted to try and catch some pulsating forms during the break up phase of the display.

 

Time-lapse composed of around 260 10 second exposures taken with a Canon 6d, Canon 50mm lens, f2.8 ISO3200, 10 second exposures.

Detroit Metro Airport- Who would have thought that you would get off a plane and walk through a psychedelic tunnel with a light show to pulsating music at the Detroit Airport. Sure made the trip a lot more enjoyable! Straight out of the camera.

 

My first shot to reach 1,000 views! Thank you!

NASA video release May 23, 2011

 

To view a still image from this video go here: www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/5751899256/in/photostream/

 

Less than a century ago, the bright arc of our Milky Way was thought to contain all the stars in the universe. But, astronomers were perplexed by a cigar-shaped object in the autumn sky called the Andromeda nebula. Some astronomers thought it was another galaxy like our Milky Way. It too had a flattened-disk shape. But how far away was it? In the early 1920s, astronomer Edwin Hubble photographed the nebula in detail. He found a pulsating star hidden deep in one of its spiral arms. Edwin Hubble used it to calculate the distance to the Andromeda nebula. This showed it was far beyond our Milky Way. Andromeda in fact was really a separate galaxy. The Hubble Space Telescope has recently observed the star as a tribute to the landmark discovery.

 

To read more go to: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/star-v1.html

 

Video Credit: NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay, G. Bacon, and M. Estacion (STScI)

 

Image Credit: A. Mellinger (Central Michigan University), T. Rector (University of Alaska, Anchorage), Digitized Sky Survey (DSS), STScI/AURA, Palomar/Caltech, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

  

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.

 

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