ecopolis

Pascal Cotte announced at a press conference Wednesday that he has found definitive proof that when Leonardo da Vinci painted the original portrait he included “Mona Lisa’s” lashes and brows.

Pascale Cotte engineer and founder of Lumiere Technology, largely contributed to the knowledge of the Mona Lisa thanks to the multispectral digitization of the famous painting. The hidden knowledge of the true colors was revealed by multispectrally scanning the painting in thirteen channels – from Ultra Violet to Infra Red. Then the spectral response curve of the varnish in each pixel was isolated and subtracted from the digital file to virtually reveal the surface of the painting when it had freshly exited Leonardo da Vinci’s workshop.

Cotte examined the world’s most famous painting using a high-definition camera of his own design. The device scanned a 240-million pixel image using 13 light spectrums, including ultra-violet and infrared. The resulting ultra-high resolution photograph of 150,000 dots per inch yielded a reproduction of the “Mona Lisa’s” face magnified 24 times. And there Cotte found the evidence he sought : A single brushstroke of a single hair above the left brow.

Jerry Lee Lewis Mona Lisa

http://www.jerryleelewis.com/site.php

For Stelarc it is no longer meaningful to see the body as a site for the psyche or the social, but rather as a structure to be monitored and modified – the body not as a subject but as an object – NOT AN OBJECT OF DESIRE BUT AS AN OBJECT FOR DESIGNING. As an object, the body can be amplified and accelerated, attaining planetary escape velocity. It becomes a post-evolutionary projectile, departing and diversifying in form and function.

THE EXTRA EAR (OR AN EAR ON AN ARM)

What characterises all the projects and performances is the notion of the prosthetic. The prosthesis seen not as a sign of lack, but as a symptom of excess. Rather than replacing a missing or malfunctioning part of the body, these interfaces and devices augment or amplify the body’s form and functions. The THIRD HAND (technology attached), the STOMACH SCULPTURE (technology inserted) and EXOSKELETON (technology extending) are different approaches to prosthetic augmentation. The EXTRA EAR is a soft prosthesis, constructed not out of hard materials and technologies, but out of soft tissue and flexible cartilage. And disconnected from the face, the EAR ON AN ARM could be guided and pointed in different directions…

Constructing the Extra Ear involves a number of procedures, over approximately 8-10 months. Techniques from Cosmetic, Re-constructive and Orthopedic surgery are necessary. But the problem is that it goes beyond mere Cosmetic Surgery. It is not simply about the modifying or the adjusting of existing anatomical features (now sanctioned in our society), but rather what’s perceived as the more monstrous pursuit of constructing an additional feature that conjures up either some congenital defect, an extreme body modification or even perhaps a radical genetic intervention.

Imagine an ear that cannot hear but emits sounds. With an implanted sound chip and a proximity sensor it would speak to anyone who would get close to it. (Or if no-one got close it would whisper sweet nothings to the other ear anyway). Also, connected to a modem and a wearable computer it could broadcast RealAudio sounds to augment the local sounds that the actual ears hear. The EXTRA EAR becomes a kind of Internet antenna that telematically and acoustically scales up one of the body’s senses. But these functional possibilities are not what justifies or authenticates the project. It would be interesting even without any utilitarian use. Why construct an ear? The ear is a beautiful and complex structure. In acupuncture, the ear is the site for the stimulation of body organs. The ear not only hears, but is also the organ of balance. To have an extra ear points to more than mere visual and anatomical excess…

Images and Text Excerpts from http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/

Audiem is a non-visual web experience. It is inspired by online usability studies and the fact that our culture is so dependent on sight. It is designed primarily for people who are not visually impaired, to let them experience a linear audio interface without the distraction of visual content. It also provides podcasts of life without sight. Listen to them and focus on the background noises you would normally tune out. They are what the visually-impaired rely on to experience the world, sounds that most of us discard. We ignore nearly everything we hear and, apart from music, there are few sounds that we consciously focus on.

Vivienne Isabel Swire born in Glossopdale, Derbyshire, on 8 April 1941, always enjoyed cutting a dash. As a teenager in the 1950s, she customised her school uniform to emulate the fashionable pencil skirt and made many of her own clothes, including a long, fitted ‘New Look’ dress made of sleeveless shifts, with a single seam and darts, from exactly one yard of fabric. Ecology and independence remain central to Westwood’s character. She has lived in south London for many years, cycles everywhere.

Using culture as a way of making trouble

Vivienne Westwood met Malcolm McLaren in 1965, and their son Joseph Ferdinand Corré was born in 1966. Their working relationship, which lasted from 1970 until 1983, launched Punk. Vivienne recalled : I felt there were so many doors to open, and he had the key to all of them. Plus, he had a political attitude and I needed to align myself.

McLaren was infact obsessed with fashion and music and saw them as inseparable parts of a Rock ‘n’ Roll outlaw spirit. Rejecting the dominant hippie look, in 1971, McLaren opened a shop called Let It Rock, and shifted to another fashion minority.

McLaren renamed it Sex and he scrawled above the door ‘Craft must have clothes but Truth loves to go naked’. The interior was sprayed with pornographic graffiti, hung with rubber curtains and stocked with sex and fetish wear.

Sex was intimidating and it attracted an extraordinary clientele, with voyeurs and prostitutes mixing with proto-Punk King’s Road shoppers. Jordan, the shop assistant, wore rubber clothes, a beehive hairstyle and theatrical make-up.

The Punkature Era

Soon Westwood’s horizons opened and expanded. As McLaren put it: We want to get out of this island mentality, and relate ourselves to those taboos and magical things we believe we have lost.They designed new collections based on ethnic and primitive looks culled from National Geographic magazine while their second collection Savage (S/S 1982) combined Native American patterns with leather frock coats. Third came Nostalgia of Mud (A/W 1982), with its huge tattered skirts and sheepskin jackets in muddy colours. In March 1982, McLaren and Westwood opened a second shop. It was called Nostalgia of Mud . The interior was styled like an archaeological dig. McLaren and Westwood began to conjure up darker spirits and found a magical, esoteric sign language in the work of the New York graffiti artist Keith Haring.

Punkature (S/S 1983) still had a raw feeling and an emphasis on pre-washed and over-printed natural fabrics. It played on the words ‘punk’ and ‘couture’, and carried images from Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner.

The Witches collection was the final collaboration between McLaren and Westwood:

By 1984 Westwood had moved to Italy with her new business partner, Carlo d’Amario. The Hypnos collection featured sleek garments made out of synthetic sports fabric in fluorescent pinks and greens. They were fastened with rubber phallus buttons. This was followed by Clint Eastwood, a collection that hankered after the wide open spaces seen in Western films: It included garments smothered in Italian company logos and Day-Glo patches inspired by Tokyo’s neon signs.

The Harris Tweed collection celebrated Westwood’s love affair with traditional English clothing and also her growing obsession with royalty. It was named after the woollen fabric hand-woven in the Western Isles of Scotland. The word clann in Gaelic means children of the family. A Clan Tartan is the regular sett (pattern) of the clan or family. The identification of clans with tartan patterns became a dogma of great success: all the recognised clans had their tartans, be they Highland or Lowland. Using a mix of different tartans, Westwood ensembles exploits the rich depth, colour and diversity of the traditional checked pattern. Let’s camouflage.

Many of the garments – the twinsets made by the long-established firm of Smedley, the ‘Stature of Liberty’ corsets, the tailored ‘Savile’ jackets – became Westwood classics and her most recognisable trademarks. Romantic and historically accurate, the corsets are also surprisingly practical. Stretch fabrics allow ease of movement, and removable sleeves convert a daytime garment to evening wear. Once a symbol of constraint, corsets are now an expression of female sexuality and empowerment.

Frans Hals corset, 1992-3, “Vivienne Westwood”, Victoria and Albert Museum

With Britain Must Go Pagan, Westwood combined traditional British themes with classical and pagan elements. Classical drapery was paired with tweed, Smedley underwear was overprinted with pornographic images from ancient Greece. This strange mix reflected the inherent camouflage in her work, its respect for tradition and culture alongside a love of parody and sexual liberty. With the Mini-Crini collection she has devised a ‘mini-crini’ that combined the tutu with an abbreviated form of the Victorian crinoline. References to literature and high art pervaded Westwood’s work. She spent many hours in the Wallace Collection in London studying the 18th-century French art collected by Lord Hertford. In shows she began to use statuesque models dressed in sumptuous costumes and poised on 10-inch platform shoes, as if on a pedestal. The idea was that they had just stepped out of a portrait. Fashion is Camouflaging Environment.

Harlequin from Vivienne Westwood’s “Voyage to Cythera Autumn / Winter 1989-90″ collection “Vivienne Westwood”, Victoria and Albert Museum

VIVIENNE WESTWOOD – V&A Retrospective, Palazzo Reale, Milan.

Launched in the 2004 at the London Victoria & Albert Museum, the exhibition is the largest display the museum ever dedicated to a British designer. The Retrospective features designs selected from both the V&A’s collections and Vivienne Westwood’s personal archive.

The newest version of Google Earth includes a flight simulator. Though simple in comparison to full-blown simulators, Google Earth’s is fun and addictive. To get started, press Ctrl+Alt+A for the initial dialog (on OS X, Command+Option+A). Then choose your plane (F16 or SR22) and initial airport. Joysticks are supported; it has even been reported that force feedback works.

The officials say that in the recent New York blast asbestos was not found in air after blast, instead a lot of trendy pink gas-masked cop appeared. Officials say the mask are pink because you can see them better into the darkness.

Via New York Times

In Sarajevo two armed men entered a bank, and as they’re disguised as Muslim women in burqas they stole $40,000, as declaed by Bosnian police said on Tuesday.
It was a Union bank branch in the capital and they entered wearing head-to-toe black dresses and veils typical of women adhering to the orthodox Islamic code, but hidden there’re guns…
“Everything happened in a moment. Two persons in black niqabs (burqas) came into the bank. I thought they were ladies,” the Sarajevo daily Oslobodjenje quoted bank customer Mehmedalija Komarac as saying.

Source Reuters

Digit is a live performance, created by Julien Maire, that makes you think about the magic side of technology: here all the technology is wisely hidden. I saw it at Sonar 2007 and it was amazing. A writer sits at a table writing the script of a film. Simply by sliding his finger over a blank piece of paper, printed text appears under his index finger. A performance about the proccess of creation of a script writer, that creates the story directly from his fingers.