View allAll Photos Tagged TRANSMUTATION
Auric Goldfinger’s cousin Tony (see “Goldfinger” by Ian Fleming) discovered that by fiddling with Chinese “Havana” microwave technology he could transmute objects into gold.
The trick was how to monetize Midas Tech without flooding the market with gold and lowering its value. Finally he hit upon a scheme. He transmuted a series of figures (from mannequins to toy action figures) and is now looking to crowdfund his new company Midas Tech Mannequin & Trophy Works. Care to invest?
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For more AI-generated images with micro stories by me and other members of the Neural Narrative Collective: neural-narrative.blogspot.com/
Photo | Stable Diffusion | Photoshop
Notes from an exhibit in Venice in 2019.
The wallpaper room created by Nadia Myre to welcome visitors consists of three walls and a heart-shaped sculpture woven over with beads. Guided by a soundscape evoking a mythical origin story of the universe beginning with a single sound, the visitor enters a built environment that mixes European and Native elements around which mutually shared stories were variably passed on by American peoples and Europeans each in their own way. Contextual elements such as ships, sections of maps, and other culturally relevant icons displayed on Myre’s design walls furnish the background for the centre piece of her installation: a human heart covered with Murano beads. Presented in much the same way as a man-made object in a Renaissance cabinet of curiosity this three-dimensional piece is emblematic of the relationship that Venice has indirectly had with indigenous North Americans over the centuries. Beads are here a marker or difference and identity simultaneously. Europeans conquered with Venice beads the hearts and imagination of Native peoples who eagerly welcomed this new trade good since the early contact phases. Historically appreciated for their brilliance and versatility, indigenous women created artworks of accomplished skill and beauty. Myre’s glass-covered heart continues in a long-standing artistic tradition that poignantly reminds us of the centrality of women in shaping history. If, as proven by commercial records and economic history, Venetians saw the North American bead trade as a lucrative enterprise, it is equally true that indigenous women’s desire for this merchandise was the incentive for Venetians to produce more, and as a consequence, make more profits. Equally treated as both a commodity and a colonial tool, beads have historically been the means by which European imperial powers established diplomacy and trade with Native North Americans. Used as the soft arm of colonisation, beads are therefore not just trade items, but agents of historical change in a cross-cultural conversation that Myre here invites us to peruse and ponder over.
Myre calls upon deep mythologies and re-examines European claims to a ‘discovery’ of the New World. For Myre, the exhibit brings to mind an ordinary sound--a sort of zero-vibration, an uncontained note or utterance--that recalls the many creation myths wherein the world was formed around an unending aural reverberation. Calling on this notion of an unfettered, ever-expanding energy as a point of origin, Nadia Myre’s works in this exhibition juxtapose Native creation stories with European contact history. These works investigate the role that European print media, especially maps, played in imposing a new, colonial origin story on North America’s Indigenous peoples; one that was rooted in a Eurocentric narrative of discovery and ignored existing modes of self-determination and historical record. Jumping off from her practice’s continual interrogation of transcultural mutation, these works focus on critically reversing the gaze of the othering eye through remixing and Indigenizing symbols of control and production of knowledge that formed a legacy of European nation states as the centre of the world.
Depicted in Myre’s damask-patterned wallpaper is a woman falling through a dark, vast expanse to begin human life on earth. To the Haudenosaunee, Sky Woman signifies a matrilineal line of descent which traces the people of Turtle Island to North America. Cradled, framed, or entrapped by images of European ships and mapping motifs, Sky Woman continues her fall to earth, enduring amidst the impending colonial origin narrative of discovery. Here, Myre translates a typical floral damask motif into colonial and indigenous signifiers, whose forms reflect, repeat and oscillate between evocations of growth, nature, violence and destruction, forming a doubled narrative of struggle, resilience, and layered points of origin. Based on the decorative double-sided textile from the Middle East, damask, as a popular luxury wall covering in Renaissance Italy, resonates with thematics of mirroring, cultural transmutation, and power. Through her incorporation of an ornamental circular motif used in Giacomo Gastaldi’s 1556 Map to delineate Hochelaga (Montreal), Myre uses the decorative and narrative nature of this wallpaper to abstract devices of circumscription and colonial naming of territory in a move to reject settler cartographic and claiming practices towards a consciousness of Indigenous knowledge of land and history. Aptly positioned as the nucleus of the installation is a terracotta sculpture of a human heart--standing in for the hungry heart of capitalism, greed, empires and colonies--covered in an Anishinaabe floral pattern made with Venetian trade beads. Used as ballast in slave/trade ships, beads were an important economic currency and exchanged for both goods and services as well as people. As a call to indigenization--a return to a focus on the environment and relational ways of knowing--the wounded heart, blanketed with beads, reminds us to centre with respect and love on all our relations. As a haunting story of the start of the world from a zero-point that precedes humanity, life, and form alike, the soundscape in Myre’s installation is a representation of the mythic original sonic vibration--rethinking the ways beginnings are identified, inscribed, written, and read. Points of origin are chosen; they do not indicate an end to nothingness, but only an inability to read what previously existed. Engaging creation stories are powerful tools of self-determination, cultural definition, and expression of value.
"We two--how long we were fool'd!
Now transmuted, we swiftly escape, as Nature escapes;
We are Nature--long have we been absent, but now we return;
...
We are two resplendent suns--we it is who balance ourselves, orbic
and stellar--we are as two comets;
...
We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again--we two
have;
We have voided all but freedom, and all but our own joy. "
These pieces are taken from Walt Whitman's larger poem entitled We Two-How Long We Were Fool'd
Once autumn and winter arrive, I find myself surprised everytime I find a flower. We stop taking them for granted as we do in the spring and summer. These roses although long past bloom still look like flowers. All this week I will show you some flowers in nature that aren't really flowers but make this cold season special.
SPONSORS LANDMARKS/EVENT LINKHERE
THIRST- Harnessed SSterlinghirt /Trouser Fatpack (Wear Me) COMPATIBLE WITH JAKE AND LEGACY AT MAIN STORE
GUWOPP DEMON ANIMESH AT MOM EVENT
KOKORO - DEATH + TRANSMUTATION AT MOM EVENT
A colourful Halloween Tribute for the 31st Oct 2024
The juxtaposition of dominant reds with intense blues and biting yellows is not merely a chromatic exercise but an intentional invocation of in depth physical dynamics.
The red, historically emblematic of revolutionary zeal, is here transmuted into an image of territorial encroachment, symbolizing the blood of land workers who toiled here in harsh conditions.
The compositional tension between this red and the contrasting yellow and blue functions as a visual dialectic, evoking the material conflicts of occupation and sovereignty that are as much corporeal as they are ideological.
There are many stories in native cultures about this illusive black bird. Shamans know the power of an unexpected piercing sound in altering consciousness. Ravens exercise this power, emitting a variety of sounds and can aid us in shifting our consciousness into various dimensional realms. This is one reason why the raven is known as a shape shifter with magical powers. Anyone with raven as a totem can expect continual changes and spiritual awakenings throughout their life.
Raven picks its students according to their accumulated wisdom. It flies into a persons life carrying the energy of magic and healing. If it decides to settle in and take up residence, it will stay as long as necessary to aid you in transmuting your karma then return you to the light. It will push, prod, and lead you into the discovery of your multidimensional self and reunite you with the secrets of the multidimensional universe. Those with this totem should remember to meet raven, not with fear, but rather with an appreciation for the teachings that it holds.
Below are the 3 stages it took to create the image. I also downloaded a Raven brush which I used in photoshop. I am playing around a lot, filling my time whilst still stuck in bed recovering. The finished picture reminds me of images out of a story book my Mum and Grandad use to read to me. Wish I could remember it's name.
Z\W\A\R\T\24 is a long project of Z\W\A\R\T magazine in this building:
“The abandoned building KKN24 is located on Buitenplaats Koningsweg a former military base in Arnhem, The Netherlands.
The building was a sleeping-quarter for soldiers, 4 in one room. 39 Rooms in the whole building. The building is waiting to be demolished, meanwhile it transforms back to nature. In october 2014 artist BiOP got permission to use the building for site-specific artworks. He invites several artists to transmute the building and their artwork, 24hours a day. [ ]
During Code Rood (Code Red) the art and the building can be visited (every last saturday).”
Source: Transmute24 Facebookpage
www.flickr.com/photos/transmute24/
follow the Z\W\A\R\T project on this blog, with many more photos: zwart24.tumblr.com/
z\w\a\r\t\24: a long term project of Z\W\A\R\T magazine in this building:
“The abandoned building KKN24 is located on Buitenplaats Koningsweg a former military base in Arnhem, The Netherlands.
The building was a sleeping-quarter for soldiers, 4 in one room. 39 Rooms in the whole building. The building is waiting to be demolished, meanwhile it transforms back to nature. In october 2014 artist BiOP got permission to use the building for site-specific artworks. He invites several artists to transmute the building and their artwork, 24hours a day. [ ]
During Code Rood ( Code Red) the art and the building can be visited (every last saturday).”
Source: Transmute24 Facebookpage
www.flickr.com/photos/transmute24/
follow the Z\W\A\R\T project on this blog, with many more photos: zwart24.tumblr.com/
Ja Rimpochevski (The Magister of Transmutation)
at Zuiderkerk, Amsterdam
The International exhibition “Art and Dolls” 8-9 april 2017
Notes from an exhibit in Venice in 2019.
The wallpaper room created by Nadia Myre to welcome visitors consists of three walls and a heart-shaped sculpture woven over with beads. Guided by a soundscape evoking a mythical origin story of the universe beginning with a single sound, the visitor enters a built environment that mixes European and Native elements around which mutually shared stories were variably passed on by American peoples and Europeans each in their own way. Contextual elements such as ships, sections of maps, and other culturally relevant icons displayed on Myre’s design walls furnish the background for the centre piece of her installation: a human heart covered with Murano beads. Presented in much the same way as a man-made object in a Renaissance cabinet of curiosity this three-dimensional piece is emblematic of the relationship that Venice has indirectly had with indigenous North Americans over the centuries. Beads are here a marker or difference and identity simultaneously. Europeans conquered with Venice beads the hearts and imagination of Native peoples who eagerly welcomed this new trade good since the early contact phases. Historically appreciated for their brilliance and versatility, indigenous women created artworks of accomplished skill and beauty. Myre’s glass-covered heart continues in a long-standing artistic tradition that poignantly reminds us of the centrality of women in shaping history. If, as proven by commercial records and economic history, Venetians saw the North American bead trade as a lucrative enterprise, it is equally true that indigenous women’s desire for this merchandise was the incentive for Venetians to produce more, and as a consequence, make more profits. Equally treated as both a commodity and a colonial tool, beads have historically been the means by which European imperial powers established diplomacy and trade with Native North Americans. Used as the soft arm of colonisation, beads are therefore not just trade items, but agents of historical change in a cross-cultural conversation that Myre here invites us to peruse and ponder over.
Myre calls upon deep mythologies and re-examines European claims to a ‘discovery’ of the New World. For Myre, the exhibit brings to mind an ordinary sound--a sort of zero-vibration, an uncontained note or utterance--that recalls the many creation myths wherein the world was formed around an unending aural reverberation. Calling on this notion of an unfettered, ever-expanding energy as a point of origin, Nadia Myre’s works in this exhibition juxtapose Native creation stories with European contact history. These works investigate the role that European print media, especially maps, played in imposing a new, colonial origin story on North America’s Indigenous peoples; one that was rooted in a Eurocentric narrative of discovery and ignored existing modes of self-determination and historical record. Jumping off from her practice’s continual interrogation of transcultural mutation, these works focus on critically reversing the gaze of the othering eye through remixing and Indigenizing symbols of control and production of knowledge that formed a legacy of European nation states as the centre of the world.
Depicted in Myre’s damask-patterned wallpaper is a woman falling through a dark, vast expanse to begin human life on earth. To the Haudenosaunee, Sky Woman signifies a matrilineal line of descent which traces the people of Turtle Island to North America. Cradled, framed, or entrapped by images of European ships and mapping motifs, Sky Woman continues her fall to earth, enduring amidst the impending colonial origin narrative of discovery. Here, Myre translates a typical floral damask motif into colonial and indigenous signifiers, whose forms reflect, repeat and oscillate between evocations of growth, nature, violence and destruction, forming a doubled narrative of struggle, resilience, and layered points of origin. Based on the decorative double-sided textile from the Middle East, damask, as a popular luxury wall covering in Renaissance Italy, resonates with thematics of mirroring, cultural transmutation, and power. Through her incorporation of an ornamental circular motif used in Giacomo Gastaldi’s 1556 Map to delineate Hochelaga (Montreal), Myre uses the decorative and narrative nature of this wallpaper to abstract devices of circumscription and colonial naming of territory in a move to reject settler cartographic and claiming practices towards a consciousness of Indigenous knowledge of land and history. Aptly positioned as the nucleus of the installation is a terracotta sculpture of a human heart--standing in for the hungry heart of capitalism, greed, empires and colonies--covered in an Anishinaabe floral pattern made with Venetian trade beads. Used as ballast in slave/trade ships, beads were an important economic currency and exchanged for both goods and services as well as people. As a call to indigenization--a return to a focus on the environment and relational ways of knowing--the wounded heart, blanketed with beads, reminds us to centre with respect and love on all our relations. As a haunting story of the start of the world from a zero-point that precedes humanity, life, and form alike, the soundscape in Myre’s installation is a representation of the mythic original sonic vibration--rethinking the ways beginnings are identified, inscribed, written, and read. Points of origin are chosen; they do not indicate an end to nothingness, but only an inability to read what previously existed. Engaging creation stories are powerful tools of self-determination, cultural definition, and expression of value.
Parte de la serie "transmutación". 2022
En la primera ("Un camino largo"), quiero transmitir un largo camino dedicado a la recolección de cargas emocionales, de responsabilidades; de sueños, creencias e ideas impuestas por nosotros mismos o por alguien más que en un punto de ese camino nos hacen sentir cansados y perdidos.
Lo que conlleva al dolor y pérdida de todo nuestro mundo, que genera el replanteamiento de vida y existencia. Representado en la fotografía "Mundo en llamas".
Luego, en "Catarsis", represento la dificultad y lucha que genera el proceso de fortalecimiento y redefinición del ser personal y de ese nuevo mundo indispensable para sobrevivir. Este proceso es largo pero por ahí leí una frase que decía “la libertad y el vuelo sólo son posibles después de la lucha por salir del capullo”…
En "Un nuevo comienzo" última foto de la serie, represento la finalización del proceso, o el nuevo comienzo donde se afronta y se continúa el camino fortalecidos, libres, ligeros y con una visión de uno mismo diferente.
Caterpillars are very fast eaters; they spend their time eating or resting before they resume their eating again. Soon this caterpillar will transmute to a beautiful swallowtail butterfly.
I like this area a lot. Paths that lead to it aren't very obvious nor readily inviting. And there's a reason: fallen trees, in various stages of decay, bar the passage; soggy, muddy ground sucks your boots in where rivulets run down to feed the main stream at the bottom of the vale; tall grasses mask the terrain, especially in summer, exacting extra caution in picking one's way... But the reward is an unusual exhilaration derived from being immersed in nature, in its small and huge forms, in its continuous transmutation. You almost feel unseen eyes watching your steps with unfathomable patience, moored in experience against which your own seems like an infant's barely out of the mother's womb.
A macro photo of a Brown Zircon Crystal from Madagascar.
Zircon Crystals and the age of Earth:
Zircon Crystals in a Nutshell - the simplified story of Zircon Crystals.
How tiny Zircon Crystals - Zirconium silicate (ZrSiO4) helped determine the age of Earth (at approximately 4.5 Billion years since the crust cooled) with Radiometric U-Pb (Uranium-Lead) dating.
Zircon Crystals trap Uranium Atoms in its crystal structure and naturally repels Lead. Once the crystal structure is formed, nothing is able to get out. Over time the isotopes of Uranium starts to transmutate into other elements in what is referred to as a decay chain. An Uranium Atom first transmutates to a Thorium Atom (which takes a few billion years). Thorium is far more unstable, and in less than a month it turns into Protactinium. Within a minute Protactinium atoms transmute again, and so on. At the end of the chain, the Uranium atoms finally decay into the stable element Lead (Pb), and will then remain Lead forever. As the decay rate and times of the transmutation are constant in the Universe, it is possible to calculate the age of the crystal with Radiometric dating. As Zircon Crystals are tough, it is the oldest geological time-capsules that survived in Earth's dynamic crust since it cooled. As nothing can get in or out of the Zircon Crystal structure, it is the most accurate way of geological dating. By comparing the dating of Zircon silicate crystals on Earth, from Moon samples and visiting Meteorites, Scientists have been able to calculate that Earth is 4.54 billion years old. The error margin is 50 million years, which is small considering the time-scale.
The spin-off from trying to date the Earth, was that the Scientist Clair Patterson discovered the high amount of toxic Lead in the environment, due to the use of Lead-based fuel, paint, etc. The body needs metals like Iron in the blood to transfer Oxygen through the body. The body assumes that Lead is a good metal, but Lead not only destroys cells, but blocks the signals of Neuroreceptors in the Brain (leading to madness). After a lifetime of persistence, Clair Patterson eventually won the case and the widespread use of Lead in everyday products were banned (which is why we now use unleaded fuel).
More interesting reading:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_lead_dating
earthsky.org/earth/this-zircon-crystal-is-the-oldest-piec...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_chain
Thank you to my best friend Sumarie for giving me this time-capsule of Earth and our Solar System's geological history. It is a gift of significance from someone special, that knows what I value.
Photo usage and Copyright:
Medium-resolution photograph licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Terms (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). For High-resolution Royalty Free (RF) licensing, contact me via my site: Contact.
Martin
-
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Today is my birthday so I want to show my personal project which I worked from time to time just for fun. This is work in process and will be developed much more.
70cm tall, Ladoll Premix mixed with Darwi Roc.
Magister of Transformations (Transmutations)
All photo by Alexey Geets
=====
The Ghost Festival, also known as the Hungry Ghost Festival, or Yu Lan is a traditional Chinese festival and holiday celebrated by Chinese in many countries. In the Chinese calendar (a lunisolar calendar), the Ghost Festival is on the 15th night of the seventh month (14th in southern China).
In Chinese tradition, the fifteenth day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar is called Ghost Day and the seventh month in general is regarded as the Ghost Month (鬼月), in which ghosts and spirits, including those of the deceased ancestors, come out from the lower realm.
Distinct from both the Qingming Festival (in spring) and Chung Yeung Festival (in autumn) in which living descendants pay homage to their deceased ancestors, on Ghost Day, the deceased are believed to visit the living.
On the fifteenth day the realms of Heaven and Hell and the realm of the living are open and both Taoists and Buddhists would perform rituals to transmute and absolve the sufferings of the deceased. Intrinsic to the Ghost Month is ancestor worship, where traditionally the filial piety of descendants extends to their ancestors even after their deaths.
Activities during the month would include preparing ritualistic food offerings, burning incense, and burning joss paper, a papier-mâché form of material items such as clothes, gold and other fine goods for the visiting spirits of the ancestors
=====
Follow my rediscovery of the Hungry Ghosts "Yu Lan" Festival here:
七月盂蘭 Mid Summer Ghost Story
For my past visits to the Hungry Ghosts "Yu Lan" Festival here:
Hungry Ghosts "Yu Lan" Festival
More Chinese Temples images here:
Caves & Temples
=====
2022
Esta fotografía es parte de una miniserie titulada “transmutación”, compuesta por cuatro fotografías.
En ésta, quiero transmitir un largo camino dedicado a la recolección de cargas emocionales, de responsabilidades; de sueños, creencias e ideas impuestas por nosotros mismos o por alguien más que en un punto de ese camino nos hacen sentir cansados y perdidos.
Lo que conlleva al dolor y pérdida de todo nuestro mundo, que genera el replanteamiento de vida y existencia. Representado en la fotografía "Mundo en llamas".
Luego, en la fotografía tres, represento la dificultad y lucha que genera el proceso de fortalecimiento y redefinición del ser personal y de ese nuevo mundo indispensable para sobrevivir. Este proceso es largo pero por ahí leí una frase que decía “la libertad y el vuelo sólo son posibles después de la lucha por salir del capullo”…
En mi última fotografía represento la finalización del proceso, o el nuevo comienzo donde se afronta y se continúa el camino fortalecidos, libres, ligeros y con una visión de uno mismo diferente.
This photograph is part of a mini-series entitled “transmutation”, made up of four photographs.
In the first, I want to convey a long path dedicated to collecting emotional burdens, responsibilities; of dreams, beliefs and ideas imposed by ourselves or by someone else that at some point along the way make us feel tired and lost.
Which leads to the pain and loss of our entire world, which generates the rethinking of life and existence. Represented in photograph two.
Then, in photograph three, I represent the difficulty and struggle generated by the process of strengthening and redefinition of the personal being and of that new world that is essential to survive. This process is long but there I read a phrase that said "freedom and flight are only possible after the struggle to get out of the cocoon"...
In my last photograph I represent the end of the process, or the new beginning where the path is faced and continued strengthened, free, light and with a different vision of oneself.
Unlike the Grand Lantern which stood right at the center, shinning its guardian over the whole ceremony; by the corner, a waxed-paper lantern is seen hanging high up from a bamboo.
This lantern is called the Light of Summon, day and night, sending invitation to the spiritual "good brothers" from far to join this salvation ceremony, the higher it hangs, the further it will summon and relatively, more oblation materials are to be prepared. Therefore, the scale of the ceremony can be seen through the height of this lantern.
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** Origin and facts of the Hungry Ghost Festival:
The Ghost Festival, also known as the Hungry Ghost Festival, or Yu Lan is a traditional Chinese festival and holiday celebrated by Chinese in many countries. In the Chinese calendar (a lunisolar calendar), the Ghost Festival is on the 15th night of the seventh month (14th in southern China).
In Chinese tradition, the fifteenth day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar is called Ghost Day and the seventh month in general is regarded as the Ghost Month (鬼月), in which ghosts and spirits, including those of the deceased ancestors, come out from the lower realm.
Distinct from both the Qingming Festival (in spring) and Chung Yeung Festival (in autumn) in which living descendants pay homage to their deceased ancestors, on Ghost Day, the deceased are believed to visit the living.
On the fifteenth day the realms of Heaven and Hell and the realm of the living are open and both Taoists and Buddhists would perform rituals to transmute and absolve the sufferings of the deceased. Intrinsic to the Ghost Month is ancestor worship, where traditionally the filial piety of descendants extends to their ancestors even after their deaths.
Activities during the month would include preparing ritualistic food offerings, burning incense, and burning joss paper, a papier-mâché form of material items such as clothes, gold and other fine goods for the visiting spirits of the ancestors
=====
More images of the Hungry Ghosts "Yu Lan" Festival here:
Hungry Ghosts "Yu Lan" Festival
More Chinese Temples images here:
=====
Photo shot with Nikon D600 + AF-S NIikkor 50mm f/1.8G
Edited with Photoshop CS5
=====
BEAUTIFUL LIMITED EDITION ART PRINTS AVAILABLE on
bumbleandbramble.blogspot.com/
5.5' x 6' x 3'
110k - 130k pieces
Black, white, dark and light bluish gray, clear trans and black trans colors used.
No foreign materials (wood, glue, paint or otherwise) were used – this is pure Lego. No Lego piece have been altered (painted, cut or otherwise).
Photo retouching used only for adding contrast and color correction & background.
Approx 600 hours to build
Third in my series of Abandoned Houses
(also, my third moc)
Special Thanks
To my wife, Stephanie, for her support and generous patience
The afol/moc community for design inspiration and techniques to make this possible.
To view my site and more closeups/the making of: Snap
----------
The third installment of this abandoned house series continues its textural exploration of decay with a Victorian home engulfed in mud. The mud travels through the first floor, tears down a front wall and oozes over the porch side, taking with it household contents of convenience. This detail opens the piece up, allowing the eye to travel the surface of the house and then back through the porch, into a room and back out to survey the piles of garbage. The play on depth here is something I enjoy as one has a glimpse of the activity behind this architectural scrim.
The house, itself, was chosen due to the repeating angled roofs that reach up high. This gives the architectural mass a certain rhythm that I found appealing. Also, abstractly, this echos the gothic representation of cathedrals – with their many spires – reaching upward to the heavens. While this is not a religious piece, there is a certain contemplation that I find in it.
On that note, of particular interest to me in this work is the notion of broken trust and faith. Foundations give way. Permanence transmutes into fragility. Our safe havens betray us.
For me, this piece speaks to the inherent unpredictability of those things which we call our foundation. Like a little dollhouse, a seemingly secure home is plucked up and set on a new path. This charming home, lovingly embellished with ornamental fancy was no match for nature. The fancy embellishments serve as a reminder of our earlier focus on the material world, while the aftermath removes us from that focus. The piece offers no answers or necessarily any hope, but rather points to life's fragility.
Strong foundations are the essence of safe havens. These foundations can be physical foundations (an orderly home, for instance), ideological foundations (religion and politics), financial foundations (steady income and solid investments), social foundations (emotional ties to others) and so on. Our well-being is pinned on these safe havens that we hold on to as a place to fall back in times of stress and trouble. Amidst the chaos of environments we cannot control – whether physical, financial, social or mental – the house is one of the ultimate icons representing a safe haven. It is the final retreat and escape of the day where we can let go of the external pressures (or at least some of them) that grip us during the day. Here, in the home, with the world locked behind a door, we control what will be our guest and what will not.
However, this and other safe havens betray. The door can be kicked in at the blink of an eye and our foundation instantly dissolves. Local events of recent – catastrophic earthquakes, tsunami, nuclear radiation leaks, record fires, floods and tornadoes – all presented real devastation to many personal safe havens. Graft and corruption in media, government, financial sectors and businesses betray a sense of social order that provides for us a mental, moral safe haven. Untouchable international crime organizations silently hack large databases of personal information with crushing effect to individuals' financial safe haven. Financial institutions and the people within unapologetically bring the world to its knees through reckless, greedy practices. Religious safe havens (whether "Christian" or otherwise) are assaulted from within as certain fundamentalists carve out their own scriptural interpretations of hate toward others. A democratic superpower representing life, liberty and happiness denies personal rights and institutes a policy of indefinite personal torture and the threat of it. And so it goes. All the planning, effort and unbreakable trust we put in our foundations – whatever form they take – can falter without warning.
Such it is. Life events that kick at our door or we witness through others temporarily blasts the scrim open, revealing – like the hole in this model's wall – the fragility of our own foundations and, perhaps for a moment, a sense of gratitude for those foundations left standing and greater clarity as to which safe havens are truly important to our well-being.
– Mike
--------
Much thanks to all for the enthusiastic comments!! They are greatly appreciated :)
A great deal of credit goes to the afol community for sharing their wonderful mocs and tips all of which has served to inspire me.
You can stay updated on any new works or showings at my facebook art page:
Notes from an exhibit in Venice in 2019.
The wallpaper room created by Nadia Myre to welcome visitors consists of three walls and a heart-shaped sculpture woven over with beads. Guided by a soundscape evoking a mythical origin story of the universe beginning with a single sound, the visitor enters a built environment that mixes European and Native elements around which mutually shared stories were variably passed on by American peoples and Europeans each in their own way. Contextual elements such as ships, sections of maps, and other culturally relevant icons displayed on Myre’s design walls furnish the background for the centre piece of her installation: a human heart covered with Murano beads. Presented in much the same way as a man-made object in a Renaissance cabinet of curiosity this three-dimensional piece is emblematic of the relationship that Venice has indirectly had with indigenous North Americans over the centuries. Beads are here a marker or difference and identity simultaneously. Europeans conquered with Venice beads the hearts and imagination of Native peoples who eagerly welcomed this new trade good since the early contact phases. Historically appreciated for their brilliance and versatility, indigenous women created artworks of accomplished skill and beauty. Myre’s glass-covered heart continues in a long-standing artistic tradition that poignantly reminds us of the centrality of women in shaping history. If, as proven by commercial records and economic history, Venetians saw the North American bead trade as a lucrative enterprise, it is equally true that indigenous women’s desire for this merchandise was the incentive for Venetians to produce more, and as a consequence, make more profits. Equally treated as both a commodity and a colonial tool, beads have historically been the means by which European imperial powers established diplomacy and trade with Native North Americans. Used as the soft arm of colonisation, beads are therefore not just trade items, but agents of historical change in a cross-cultural conversation that Myre here invites us to peruse and ponder over.
Myre calls upon deep mythologies and re-examines European claims to a ‘discovery’ of the New World. For Myre, the exhibit brings to mind an ordinary sound--a sort of zero-vibration, an uncontained note or utterance--that recalls the many creation myths wherein the world was formed around an unending aural reverberation. Calling on this notion of an unfettered, ever-expanding energy as a point of origin, Nadia Myre’s works in this exhibition juxtapose Native creation stories with European contact history. These works investigate the role that European print media, especially maps, played in imposing a new, colonial origin story on North America’s Indigenous peoples; one that was rooted in a Eurocentric narrative of discovery and ignored existing modes of self-determination and historical record. Jumping off from her practice’s continual interrogation of transcultural mutation, these works focus on critically reversing the gaze of the othering eye through remixing and Indigenizing symbols of control and production of knowledge that formed a legacy of European nation states as the centre of the world.
Depicted in Myre’s damask-patterned wallpaper is a woman falling through a dark, vast expanse to begin human life on earth. To the Haudenosaunee, Sky Woman signifies a matrilineal line of descent which traces the people of Turtle Island to North America. Cradled, framed, or entrapped by images of European ships and mapping motifs, Sky Woman continues her fall to earth, enduring amidst the impending colonial origin narrative of discovery. Here, Myre translates a typical floral damask motif into colonial and indigenous signifiers, whose forms reflect, repeat and oscillate between evocations of growth, nature, violence and destruction, forming a doubled narrative of struggle, resilience, and layered points of origin. Based on the decorative double-sided textile from the Middle East, damask, as a popular luxury wall covering in Renaissance Italy, resonates with thematics of mirroring, cultural transmutation, and power. Through her incorporation of an ornamental circular motif used in Giacomo Gastaldi’s 1556 Map to delineate Hochelaga (Montreal), Myre uses the decorative and narrative nature of this wallpaper to abstract devices of circumscription and colonial naming of territory in a move to reject settler cartographic and claiming practices towards a consciousness of Indigenous knowledge of land and history. Aptly positioned as the nucleus of the installation is a terracotta sculpture of a human heart--standing in for the hungry heart of capitalism, greed, empires and colonies--covered in an Anishinaabe floral pattern made with Venetian trade beads. Used as ballast in slave/trade ships, beads were an important economic currency and exchanged for both goods and services as well as people. As a call to indigenization--a return to a focus on the environment and relational ways of knowing--the wounded heart, blanketed with beads, reminds us to centre with respect and love on all our relations. As a haunting story of the start of the world from a zero-point that precedes humanity, life, and form alike, the soundscape in Myre’s installation is a representation of the mythic original sonic vibration--rethinking the ways beginnings are identified, inscribed, written, and read. Points of origin are chosen; they do not indicate an end to nothingness, but only an inability to read what previously existed. Engaging creation stories are powerful tools of self-determination, cultural definition, and expression of value.
An empty book, placed on a wet floor in the leaking building -
slowly, the pages will be covered with the language of water and mud
part of X LES VIES ABSENTES X
30 april 2016
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z\w\a\r\t\24: a long term project of Z\W\A\R\T magazine in this building:
“The abandoned building KKN24 is located on Buitenplaats Koningsweg a former military base in Arnhem, The Netherlands.
The building was a sleeping-quarter for soldiers, 4 in one room. 39 Rooms in the whole building. The building is waiting to be demolished, meanwhile it transforms back to nature. In october 2014 artist BiOP got permission to use the building for site-specific artworks. He invites several artists to transmute the building and their artwork, 24hours a day. [ ]
During Code Rood ( Code Red) the art and the building can be visited (every last saturday).”
Source: Transmute24 Facebookpage
www.flickr.com/photos/transmute24/
follow the Z\W\A\R\T project on this blog, with many more photos: zwart24.tumblr.com/
Fire Dragon_Draig-teine
Transmutation, Mastery, Energy
"Draig-teine brings vitality, enthusiasm, courage and a remarkable ability to overcome obstacles and find the energy necessary to face life's problems."
Drago di Fuoco_Draig-teine
Trasmutazione, Maestria, Energia
"Draig-teine porta vitalità, entusiasmo, coraggio e una notevole capacità di superare gli ostacoli e di trovare l'energia necessaria per affrontare i problemi della vita."
Testo tratto da L'oracolo dei Druidi. Lavorare con gli Animali Sacri della Tradizione Celtica. Text taken from The Oracle of the Druids. Working with the Sacred Animals of the Celtic Tradition.
www.edizionilpuntodincontro.it/libri/l-oracolo-dei-druidi...
Bing Image Creator
[...] Work is the open sesame of every portal, the great equalizer in the world, the true philosopher's stone which transmutes all the base metal of humanity into gold [...]
-- Quote by William Osler (Canadian Physician, 1849-1919)
Nikon D200, Samyang 8mm, f/3.5, 8mm - f/8 - 1/1000s - HDR 5xp +2/-2EV
Rome, Italy (February, 2016)
The official state bird of Florida is the mockingbird. Northern Mockingbirds have extraordinary vocal abilities. They can sing up to 200 songs, including the songs of other birds, insect and amphibian sounds, even an occasional mechanical noise. The northern mockingbird is also the state bird of Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi.
Mockingbirds are a group of New World passerine birds from the Mimidae family. They are best known for the habit of some species mimicking the songs of other birds and the sounds of insects and amphibians, often loudly and in rapid succession. There are about 17 species in three genera. These do not appear to form a monophyletic lineage: Mimus and Nesomimus are quite closely related; their closest living relatives appear to be some thrashers, such as the Sage Thrasher. Melanotis is more distinct; it seems to represent a very ancient basal lineage of Mimidae.
When the survey voyage of HMS Beagle visited the Galápagos Islands in September to October 1835, the naturalist Charles Darwin noticed that the mockingbirds Mimus thenca differed from island to island, and were closely allied in appearance to mockingbirds on the South American mainland. Nearly a year later when writing up his notes on the return voyage he speculated that this, together with what he had been told about Galápagos tortoises, could undermine the doctrine of stability of species. This was his first recorded expression of his doubts about species being immutable which led to him being convinced about the transmutation of species and hence evolution.
Northern Mockingbird, Mimus polyglottos
Biscayne Park FL
Tau Lewis’ hands-on process of making is committed to healing personal and collective traumas, especially in relation to histories and lived experiences within the African diaspora. In Symphony, reclaimed clothing and fabrics have been repurposed into an expressive portrait of a “mutable being devoid of gender, that can transmute into blossoms”. A clairvoyant spirit connecting geographies, souls and time, both earthly and ancestral, Symphony has eyes formed of seashells and arms welcoming in an open embrace. Reflecting on non-gendered motherhood and gardens as sources of knowledge and growth, the work envisions a world of radical care, self-reservation and resilience in which joy, freedom and triumphant love are nurtured and shared. --- --- --- canadianart.ca/features/tau-lewis-groundations/
With light, glass, and silicon, the contemporary alchemist contemplates the transmutation of base materials into gold.
My favourite from the weekend.
We Two-How Long We Were Fool'd
WE two--how long we were fool'd!
Now transmuted, we swiftly escape, as Nature escapes;
We are Nature--long have we been absent, but now we return;
We become plants, leaves, foliage, roots, bark;
We are bedded in the ground--we are rocks;
We are oaks--we grow in the openings side by side;
We browse--we are two among the wild herds, spontaneous as any;
We are two fishes swimming in the sea together;
We are what the locust blossoms are--we drop scent around the lanes,
mornings and evenings;
We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals; 10
We are two predatory hawks--we soar above, and look down;
We are two resplendent suns--we it is who balance ourselves, orbic
and stellar--we are as two comets;
We prowl fang'd and four-footed in the woods--we spring on prey;
We are two clouds, forenoons and afternoons, driving overhead;
We are seas mingling--we are two of those cheerful waves, rolling
over each other, and interwetting each other;
We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious,
impervious:
We are snow, rain, cold, darkness--we are each product and influence
of the globe;
We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again--we two
have;
We have voided all but freedom, and all but our own joy.
Walt Whitman
A Turaga of Plantlife, as twisted in spirit as in body. After a mishap with a Mask of Elemental Transmutation that resulted in much of Kensigh's body becoming wood and bark, he was forced to retire as a Toa and take up residence in a small Bo-Matoran trading settlement as their Turaga. Time has only added to his bitterness. He now wears a noble Mask of Paralysis that has been mostly fused with his plant-like body.
Turaga Onewa was cool and all (he actually passed Onuku as the third most popular MOC in my gallery), but I wanted to do something a bit more original with Rey's cloth, and I just really, really like Umarak's mask. I'm just having so much fun with all these new 2016 parts.
Farfalla_La Danzatrice della Trasmutazione
"La Farfalla è connessa ai poteri creativi della mente, all'ispirazione e al mondo delle idee: quando quest'animale incrocia il nostro cammino, sorge in noi un'intuizione nuova. Le Farfalle bianche sono inoltre messaggere dell'amore degli angeli custodi e delle energie angeliche: ci fanno sentire la vicinanza delle persone a noi care che non ci sono più, donandoci una sensazione di bellezza e serenità."
Butterfly_The Dancer of Transmutation
"The Butterfly is connected to the creative powers of the mind, to inspiration and to the world of ideas: when this animal crosses our path, a new intuition arises in us. White butterflies are also messengers of the love of guardian angels and of angelic energies: they make us feel the closeness of the people dear to us who are no longer here, giving us a feeling of beauty and serenity."
I testi citati sono di Federica Zizzari, tratti da "Animali Guida" ed. Vivida. The texts cited are by Federica Zizzari, taken from "Animali Guida" ed. Vivida.
Bing Image Creator
Created for SOTN Geometric Shapes challenge.
1 image courtesy of PD.
All other elements, purchased.
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© All rights reserved. This image may not be copied, reproduced, distributed, republished, downloaded, displayed, posted or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying & recording without my written permission. Thanks.
~ Thank you for visiting my photostream, for the invites, faves, awards and kind words. It's all much appreciated. ~
Volpe_L'Astuzia
"La Volpe è intelligente, intuitiva, strategica, resiliente, indipendente, è veloce nel pensare e nell'agire, accoglie l'imprevisto con apertura, gioca con l'inaspettato, si rende invisibile a chi la intralcia e si fa beffe delle avversità. Ci dona una medicina molto preziosa che trasmuta la lamentela in forza creativa."
Fox_The Cunning
"The Fox is intelligent, intuitive, strategic, resilient, independent, is quick to think and act, welcomes the unexpected with openness, plays with the unexpected, makes herself invisible to those who get in her way and mocks adversity. It gives us a very precious medicine that transmutes complaint into creative force."
I testi citati sono di Federica Zizzari, tratti da "Animali Guida" ed. Vivida. The texts cited are by Federica Zizzari, taken from "Animali Guida" ed. Vivida.
Bing Image Creator
Demre (Myra), 50 km (31 miles east of Kaş and 80 km (50 miles) southwest of Çıralı (map), is the town where Santa Claus (Noel Baba in Turkish) first brought joy.
Actually, it was St Nicholas, a 4th-century Bishop of Myra, who lived and worked here, and who was later transmuted into the jolly Christmas elf called Sinterklaas in Holland (and similar names in other European countries), and later Santa Claus in North America.
Santa Claus (St Nicholas) Museum
An 11th-century church in Demre, now the Santa Claus Museum (Noel Baba Müzesi), once held his earthly remains, but in 1087 most of his bones were taken by force to Bari in Italy, and the remainder taken to Venice in 1100. (Churches were built in both cities to preserve the purloined relics. In 2009 the Turkish government demanded the return of the relics to Demre.)
Nicholas was born in nearby Patara, became a priest, rose to the rank of bishop, and did much of his good work here in the Roman town then called Myra, a name derived from myrrh.
Legend has it that he'd drop small bags of gold coins down the chimneys of houses with poor girls who were old enough to marry, but had no dowry. Another story says he'd leave gold coins in the shoes of the poor who put them out for him. Sanctified for his good works, he became the patron saint of virgins, sailors, children, pawnbrokers and Holy Russia.
Chrysopoeia: the transmutation of an object into gold.
Could I have done something more interesting with the composition? Yes.
Could I have edited this better? Yes.
Did I take this photo two days ago? Yes. It counts. It exhibits my mood well. I have too much going on to take a photo today.
But I'm having an awful day.
It all leads back to this day.
I thought it might all go away. I actually thought to myself this morning that things were going surprisingly well. Ugh, I try not to be superstitious but LOOK AT THE DATE.
I think I'm just going to go watch Twilight with a nice hot drink and try not to think about it all.
Today I found two people who'd ripped photos of mine. A little irritating. I'm not the uniquest flickrer but if you're going to rip off an idea so blatantly it wouldn't hurt to add a credit. Ugh. Just adds to my slightly irritable mood today.
Part of the Greek myths series
38/365
love [me] tender, a film by mary bogdan
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge6stQVsOOw
This series of intimate self-portraits has been a long time coming... it was my sister who was the "pretty one", the "thin one"... I grew up in her shadow... I was her little sister... never able to be mom's "favorite"... These are painful thoughts, years of feeling self-loathing... today I took these photos of myself with love & forgiveness, & thoughts of "I am beautiful"... chubby, but beautiful...
My heritage was my sense of myself as a "fat person"... not quite worthy of beauty & love. Feeling deep pains as I write this... but today is the day I fight back & say "It's OK to be fat"... It's beautiful if you feel beautiful inside, if you are loved deeply by a wonderful man & if you love yourself enough to forgive yourself for being "fat"...
I think these photos of myself are full of love & beauty... that's how I feel about [ME]... today.
SleepyOwl says: Oh, yes, the depth of the music layering really complements the depth of your personal revelatory journeying... You are so generous, Mary, to invite us to witness this transmutation of sorrow and painful memories. The video felt like an exorcism viewed through a kaleidoscope with its richness of shapes and colors, and at other moments there was the simple purity of free-fall flight -- into healing... I played the video a bunch of times -- first with the sound only, then with only the images, then integrated. Then on the fourth viewing I was struck with the message of the universality and the complexity and the power and the joy of human sensuality.