Play Dead

Eurasian brown bear

Gold and silver decorated matchlock pistol, Japan, 18th-19th century.

By Guy Lacroix

 At this point the alpha male was protecting his prey, fending off four wolves at the same time; his patience was wearing thin.

An amazing afternoon with the wolves.

Photographed at Parc Oméga, Montebello, Québec, Canada.

“The wolf tends to live in packs. Each pack is typically made up of an alpha pair (the dominant male and female) and their cubs, as well as offspring from previous years. Within the pack, there is a clear hierarchy that determines, among other things, which animals eat first. Generally, only the alpha pair mates, but every member of the pack helps raise the new pups. Lesser-ranked wolves are often designated “babysitters” while the rest of the pack is out hunting. Grey wolves usually mate for life.”

The Royal Canadian Geographical Society

burakdogansoysal

LJS 478 - [Astronomical anthology]

This manuscript is a collection of astronomical treatises: 

Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Bīrūnī’s Kitāb fī istīʻāb al-wujūh al-mumkina fī ṣanʻat al-asṭurlāb (On the construction of the astrolabe); 

two treatises on “crab and drum” astrolabes now attributed to the 10th-century astronomer Nasṭūlus (or Basṭūlus); 

a treatise on an instrument for finding the direction of Mecca; 

a treatise on the ecliptic; 

a treatise on the compass.

It was written in Persia or Anatolia, in A.H. 625 (1228 CE). 

Click here to read more about it, or here for the facsimile! 

Spain.

About the grotesque

On my last post I wrote about the limitations of photography, how the medium should be considered part of a more sofisticated machinery and how someone that does not care to understand they way such limitations impact their work could be taken for simples operators, enteties replazable by other human or machine.

Well something that came up to my mind was, what is art? and what is it about photography and art in general that separates it from a mechanical labor or task? well the thing about this questions is that are questions that don’t really have an answer, because they are what we can call “metaphysical questions”.

Metaphysical questions have the interesting quality that they don’t exist for an answer but rather to provoke and to drive, so when a photograph, song, painting or any piece of art provokes a reaction from you, it is important to remember that such reaction did not come from the object but the subject, in this case you!

So the grotesque or the happiness you feel before a work of art is yours, a reflection of your own mind, it takes into account different scales of interpretation like the type of person you are, whether you agree with the art work or not, the context under which you see such work, etc.

So if it makes you feel uncomfortable, remember that is your own disgust playing on the background, art and other metaphisical expresion seek to take something from deep inside and presented to you, making you question or react to such objects or ideas, as artists, that is what we strive to do, however the means under wich we pretend to achieve such task might change from person to person and from time to time.

Antione Le Grand’s “Historia Naturae”, published 1673 in London. Le Grande (1629-1699) was a Franciscan friar and philosopher.