Champion‘s Guide

IMPORTANT WEBSITES – Study carefully!

 http://www.scholarscup.org/
 https://markw1965.wordpress.com/world-scholars-cup-2017/
 Art and Music
Art
Set I | Everyday Entanglement

● The Bus, 1929 by Frida Kahlo

This painting, The Bus, clearly shows Diego Rivera's influence on Frida Kahlo's political
attitudes. In this painting, a few people are sitting side by side on a wooden bench of a
rickety bus. They are representatives of different classes of Mexican society. From left to
right, there are a housewife holding her shopping basket, a blue-collar guy in his work
overall, a barefoot Indian mother who is feeding her baby, a little boy looking around, a
businessman holding his money bag and a young girl which might be Frida herself. In
this painting, Frida demonstrated her sympathy for the dispossessed. She painted the
Indian mother as Madonna-like and the blue-eyed gringo is a representation for the
capitalists.

This painting is also a depiction of the bus accident which happened in 1925 and changed
her life forever. "I suffered two grave accidents in my life," Frida Kahlo once said. "One
in which a streetcar knocked me down. . . . The other accident is Diego." Diego and
Frida's union was both carnal and comradely. The most powerful bond between the two
are their admiration for each other's art. Diego is the greatest artist to her and she called
him the "architect of life." To Diego, Frida was "a diamond in the midst of many inferior
jewels" and "the best painter of her epoch."

Diego's encouragement and critics of her art was essential to Frida Kahlo, and part of her
impetus to paint came from her desire to please him. She was, he said, a better artist than
he, and he loved to tell of Pablo Picasso's reaction to Frida's work. "Look at those eyes,"
Picasso is said to have written to Rivera, "neither you nor I are capable of anything like
it."
 ● My Parents David Hockney 1977

In this work, painted a year before

his father's death, Hockney's style has shifted towards a closer study of human
behaviour. His mother poses, attentive and graceful, while his father, who fidgeted
during sittings, was painted reading Aaron Scharf's book Art and Photography. A
book on Chardin draws
a parallel with intimate domestic scenes of the past, as do the volumes of Proust's
Remembrance of Things Past visible on the shelf. Piero della Francesca's Baptism of
Christ (now in the National Gallery;
see below) is reflected in the mirror, forming a triptych with the two figures.

●Nighthawks, 1942 by Edward Hopper

Nighthawks is a 1942 painting by Edward Hopper that portrays people sitting in a

downtown diner late at night. It is Hopper's most famous work and is one of the most
recognizable paintings in American art. Within months of its completion, it was sold to
the Art Institute of Chicago for $3,000, and has remained there ever since.

Starting shortly after their marriage in 1924, Edward Hopper and his wife, Josephine (Jo),
kept a journal in which he would, using a pencil, make a sketch-drawing of each of his
paintings, along with a precise description of certain technical details. Jo Hopper would
then add additional information in which the themes of the painting are, to some degree,
illuminated.

● Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA
Many artists have used randomness as a determining function in their work, with John
Cage's compositions being perhaps the most recognized application of this technique in
sound. Listening Post (2001-2), a seductive collaboration between statistician Mark
Hansen and artist-designer Ben Rubin, continues in this vein, aiming to provide a sonic
and visual environment through which the voice of the Web can express its contours
and complexity. But the piece marks a distinct turning-point within this tradition,
largely because technological advances in data-mining techniques have allowed Hansen
and Rubin to work with real-time information, and let it mostly speak for itself. At a
stroke Listening Post fulfils the promise of most Internet-based art, affecting a
simultaneous collapse and expansion of time and space with implications ranging from
notions of private and public space to individual thought and its role in group dynamics
- and it advances all of this within a form that finally allows net art to compete with the
more sensual pleasures we associate with sculpture.

Hansen and Rubin's collaboration began as a sound-based research project three years
ago, after they met at a conference for artists and researchers facilitated by the Brooklyn
Academy of Music (BAM) and Lucent Technologies, for whom Hansen works. (The
visual component of the piece was introduced after a presentation at The Kitchen in
New York.) An earlier version of Listening Piece was first presented at BAM in 2001
and, in an evolved form, at On the Boards in Seattle in late 2002 before coming to a
small, hot room on the Whitney's first floor. Hansen and Rubin have written a
programme that culls communication from chat rooms and other virtual spaces,
identifying the prevailing themes and topics of discussion, and funnelling them to a
concave, hanging grid of 231 small digital screens of the type usually found in cash
registers. They arranged six formal acts through which the chatter expresses itself
visually on the screens and aurally via eight male, British-tinged computer voices from
speakers installed around the room. The communications appear as either whole or
truncated phrases that include statements about nationality, age, gender, sexual
preference, religion, politics or everyday life. At particularly striking moments the text
washes rapidly across the screens in patterns akin to the topologies created by the
movement of wind across a wheat field (also evoked by the soundtrack) before clicking
to a legible halt. At one point, what begins with one phrase builds into a cacophonic
deluge of communication, suggesting a kind of horror vacui in the human psyche.
During another act the text bursts across the screens like a flock of birds alighting,
crawling in a Holzerian manner, like stock quotes. In this act the words move most
slowly across the middle of the grid, creating an illusion of perspectival depth. The very
form of Listening Post's curved proscenium adopts theatrical conventions, which are
reinforced by the location of benches and speakers that place visitors against the wall,
within its focus.

The theatrical effects of the piece stem equally, however, from the responsive, dramatic
soundscape that Hansen and Rubin have created beneath the spoken text. Appropriately,
the timbre and tone of their sounds give one the feeling of being inside a tiny
submarine, with the weight of an unspeakably vast ocean pushing in on the space where
one sits listening. In places this sonic landscape flips and expands to suggest a huge and
sonically wet room: one can imagine a billion droplets of sound overhead, engorging
and waiting to fall and be heard. The vocabulary Hansen and Rubin have created for
this score - which, unlike its behaviour, is not dependent on real information - evokes
the drama of our technological lives as we've come to understand them by way of
television advertising for computer systems and other devices. (Whether Hansen and
Rubin intend this connotation ironically or not seems to be beside the point.) The
achievement of Listening Post begs a fundamental question that has been nagging for
some time: from here on, how convincingly can art be made using virtual information,
in all its visual and physical impoverishment, without such seductive theatrics?

Visiting Listening Post immediately after the worldwide protests against the pending
American invasion of Iraq, it was startling to witness the appearance of a phrase such
as 'I am a Muslim and am afraid of nothing', which could have been intended as
stoicism or aggression. Here, in a room only blocks from where thousands of New
Yorkers had gathered as part of a global groundswell of dissent the day before, one
could be party to the same transcendent feeling of connection on a grand scale,
regardless of what one actually had in common with any of the voices materializing in
the installation. In this artwork the thrill is provided by the excitement of recognition,
the discovery of something legible or poignant in what could be a foreign and distant
utterance, or simply coming from the room next door. In a perfectly timed Foucaultian
twist Listening Post brought to the people a version of the knowledge the government
collects on a sublime scale - along with its attendant power, fear and pleasure.
Whether the piece ultimately serves more as assuaging entertainment than as
provocation is irrelevant to its evaluation, but a fascinating question nevertheless.

● The Oath of the Horatii

In the 7th century BC, the three Horatii brothers, chosen by the Romans to defy the
Curiatii, the champions of the town of Alba, are swearing to defeat their enemies or
die. As they receive their weapons from their father, the women of the family are
prostrate with suffering. This painting, a royal commission, was the manifesto for a
new style, neoclassicism. Both the architecture of the room and the poses of the
warriors are rigorously geometrical.
The Horatii and the Curiatii
In the 7th century BC, to put an end to the bloody war between Rome and Alba, both
cities designated champions: the former chose the Horatii, the latter the Curiatii. The two
families were linked by marriage. Jacques-Louis David depicts the Horatii swearing to
defeat their enemies or die for their country. On the right, the grief-stricken women of the
family already fear the worst: Sabina, the sister of the Curiatii and wife of the eldest of
the Horatii, and Camilla, the sister of the Horatii and betrothed to one of the Curiatii,
hang their heads in sorrow, while behind them, the mother of the Horatii hugs her
grandchildren.
A new moral painting
David chose this episode in Roman history for his first royal commission in 1784. A Prix
de Rome laureate in 1774 and a member of the Académie, he wanted to launch his public
career by creating a stir with a radically innovative picture. He forsook the amorous and
mythological subject matter of his first teacher, Boucher, for the Roman historians and
Corneille's classical play Horace (1640). David presents this episode as an example of
patriotism and stoicism. In this respect, he is close to philosophers of the Enlightenment
such as Diderot, who advocated the painting of moral subjects. David also wanted to give
his painting an orginal form. He sought to emulate the grand style of his 17th-century
forebears Poussin and Le Brun. David returned to Rome, where he could draw inspiration
from ancient art for this painting. He presented the finished canvas in his studio in Rome
in 1785, then at the Paris Salon later that year, on both occasions to acclaim.
The manifesto of neoclassicism
The Oath of the Horatii is the first masterpiece of a new style breaking with the rococo
style. The composition is broad and simple, with the life-size figures arranged in a frieze
in the foreground, as on Roman sarcophagi and Greek vases. The figures are separated by
large empty spaces in a stage-like area shown head-on. David emphasizes the room's
geometry. The harsh, slanting light gives the figures their relief, and their contrasting
characters are conveyed using different forms. He gives the men energetic bodies
constructed out of straight lines and dresses them in vivid colors, while the women are all
sinous curves and muted colors. The painting became the model throughout Europe for
the new style of painting later known as neoclassicism.

● Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi

Modern reconstruction, showing Tāmati Wāka Nene signing the Treaty in front of
James Busby, Captain William Hobson and other British officials and witnesses.
Some Māori signatories are assembled on the left.

● Juana GEmbroidered Family Photos | Juana Gomez

 hilean artist Juana Gómez uses weaving and embroidery to explore themes of
genealogy, mythology and biology in her own female lineage

 Juana Gómez: Distaff is at Michael Hoppen Gallery, London, until 22 December

Juana Gómez‘s hand-embroidered photographic canvases combine the spheres of
scientific exploration with ancestral tradition. All photographs: © Juana Gómez. Courtesy
of Michael Hoppen Gallery/Isabel Croxatto Gallery


Weaving complex scientific and mythological patterns on to images of both her own and
her daughters‘ bodies, her work is interested in placing mankind within a broader context
of interconnectivity


Rather than seeing us as individuals, detached from one another and the world around us,
Gómez positions us as part of an ancient chain that goes back to the origin of life: a
combination of patterns, molecules and small organisms

Images of Gómez and her daughters populate the exhibition, along with the hands of four
generations of their female line
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

The word ‗distaff‘ defines both the matrilineal branch of a family, and also the ‗domestic
life‘, describing a tool that bears the same name used for manually spinning fleece

Both meanings are relevant to Gómez‘s work ... an art form customarily inherited through
the matriarchal line, spinning or weaving was traditionally passed from mother to
daughter


The embroidery encompassing their bodies creates a link between them that is both
physical and symbolic, telling of blood ties and the passing of time


Her daughters are embroidered with extraordinary labyrinths of nervous systems, silver
threaded organs, bacteria, and the symbols found on traditional Latin American textiles

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

Folklore and myth have an evident influence on the artist‘s iconography, as exemplified
in the tattooed crow on her hand, highlighted in black thread on one of the works in the
exhibition. Crows are representative in certain cultures of ancestral memories, are linked
to death, and were also known to possess the gift of vision


Unified in tissues and cells, by their heritage, by the air they breathe and the blood that
passes just a few millimetres below the skin, Gómez highlights the unseen elements that
unite generations. All words from Carolina Castro‘s curatorial text for the exhibition.
 Wynyard Station escalators | Chris Fox
 It is extraordinarily difficult to make people stop in busy train stations. A virtuoso
violinist can be playing a masterpiece on a $3.5m Stradivarius and most people
will be so intent on making their train they won‘t even slow down.
 So it says something about Wynyard Station‘s new artwork, Interloop, that people
stop in their tracks mid-rush hour to look at it.
 In 20 minutes either side of 9am on Tuesday, dozens of people slowed, stopped
and gazed up at the four entwined loops of old wooden escalator stairs hanging
above the concourse, curving over and under each other like a living scene from
Inception. Office workers and public servants snapped pictures for social media,
taking selfies with it or just staring: little islands of stillness in rivers of fast-
walking travellers.
 Ten-year-old Toby was entranced by it, grinning his head off as he craned his
neck; he and is mother knew the project manager, John Sung, who died several
months before the work was unveiled. Jessica and Nick, two 20-somethings on
their way to work in Barangaroo, were delighted the wooden stairs ―we used to
take to work‖ were reappropriated rather than thrown away.


 The wooden escalators were among only seven of their kind left in the world
when they were dismantled in 2016. Photograph: Amy Piddington

 In real life and online, Interloop has already proven to be a success – at least from
a PR point of view. On one level, that‘s unsurprising. The timber escalators that
comprise it are a part of bygone-Sydney folklore: the object of belated love other
relics such as the monorail and the Sirius building came in for, en route to
decommissioning. First installed in 1931, they were among only seven wooden
escalators left in the world when they were removed last year.
 From a health and safety perspective, an upgrade was overdue – they cause far
more injuries than modern aluminium and stainless steel escalators, particularly to
guide dogs, and pose more of a fire risk. But for the millions of people who used
them over their lifespan, Wynyard‘s wooden escalators retained a sentimental
value. They were a charming anachronism in a city too eager to bulldoze its own
history.
 The reaction may also stem from a collective relief that, for the first time in years,
central Sydney is beginning to look like something other than a bomb site.
Interloop was unveiled the same week as a swathe of the new-look pedestrianised
George Street, complete with light rail tracks, plant life and festively decorated
anti-terror bollards.

 First Sydney's stadiums, now Hordern Pavilion site slated for redevelopment
 People wander warily down the middle of the thoroughfare like they expect to be
told off, cautiously testing out the vibe in a space once hostile to all non-wheeled
forms of life.The gorgeous historic shopfronts so long overwhelmed by traffic –
The Block, The Strand, the old Nock & Kirby building – have their day in the sun
again.
 Even the benches are free of the metal armrests designed to stop homeless people
sleeping on them: a growing fixture in a city where hostile architecture has
steadily encroached on public spaces.
 But there is another story to tell here: the story of how, in a city where taxpayer-
funded artwork is one of the few things more despised than the public transport
authority, a taxpayer-funded artwork commissioned by the public transport
authority became a popular hit rather than the latest tabloid outrage.
 Decrying various public art projects as evidence of spend-happy elitist zeal is one
of the conservative establishment‘s favourite weapons in the endless culture war
against inner-city progressives. Broadcaster Alan Jones seemingly suggested
hanging City of Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore from the planned Cloud Arch
sculpture on George Street in 2016. Moore‘s proposed installation of a giant milk
crate in Belmore Park, meanwhile, was indefinitely deferred after a canny Daily
Telegraph subeditor labelled it ―a crate big waste of money‖.


Pedestrians test out a finished section of George Street, Sydney where the NSW government
is building a light railway network. Photograph: Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images

 More broadly, Australia‘s relationship with public art can best be described as
agnostic. Channeling the conservative outrage of the 1970s, when prime minister
Gough Whitlam spent hard-earned taxpayer dollars on a bunch of squiggles called
Blue Poles, Liberal senator James Paterson last year called on the beloved artwork
to be sold off for the sake of the national debt. From Canberra‘s Skywhale to
 Melbourne‘s unfortunately nicknamed Yellow Peril to King Cross‘s infamous
Stones Against the Sky, better known as ―poo on sticks‖, public art commissioned
by government bureaucracy has a habit of becoming a citywide punchline.

 'I feel on the verge of extinction': the battle for Sydney's Waterloo
 But according to architect Chris Fox, who won a Transport for NSW design
competition for the space at Wynyard, and has been working on Interloop since
January, the agency had no hesitation about the work, despite the ―very
complicated‖ logistical, legal and safety compliance challenges it presented.
 ―It was pretty bold for Transport to do. I put this very ambitious project forward
and they just got right behind it,‖ he says. ―It was such a complex project, to make
this thing hang there as though it were floating.‖
 Given the agency‘s desperate need for a PR boost, going for broke on Interloop
must have seemed worth the gamble. Controversial train timetable changes, plans
to privatise bus services in the inner west and accusations that private contractors
building the Sydney Metro Northwest are exploiting workers have done little to
dispel the agency‘s lingering nickname, CityFail.



 Interloop hangs above Wynyard ‗as though it were floating‘. Photograph: Amy
Piddington

 In a city where the government‘s highest fiscal priority is knocking down two
football stadiums and building them again; where old-age pensioners in public
housing face uncertainty about where they‘ll live out the rest of their years, as
their homes are flogged to developers; and where public enjoyment in any
capacity is stiflingly policed, Interloop cuts against the grain. It will not drive up
local house prices to ever more horrendous levels. It was not gifted to the city by a
property plutocrat in exchange for a slice of prime public land. Along with George
Street‘s upgrade, it was built with the people in mind, and it stands out because so
little else does.

● Gemelli (Twins) | Alighiero Boetti

Set II | Beyond Space and Time

● The 15th-Century Monk Who Crowdsourced a Map of the World

Detail from Fra Mauro's map, a work of unprecedented thoroughness and

accuracy. PUBLIC DOMAIN

2,126

If you had landed in Venice during the mid-15th century, you might have been accosted
by a monk with a prominent nose and baggy, smurf-like hat. Ignoring your exhaustion
and atrocious body odor after a long sea journey, he would have dragged you to a nearby
tavern and cross-examined you about your travels. What was the weather like? What kind
of precious gems were mined? What animals did you encounter, and how many heads did
they have?
The monk was Fra Mauro, a 15th-century version of Google Earth. Famous for his
cartographic skills, he had been commissioned by King Alfonso of Portugal to produce a
map of the world.
 Earth
according to Fra Mauro. PUBLIC DOMAIN

The Portuguese were eager explorers and wealthy clients, and in the days before satellite
imagery, Venice was a cartographers‘ heaven. Arab traders and world explorers passed
through the port, giving Fra Mauro an incomparable source of gossip and tall tales about
the world. The fall of Constantinople, occurring a few years before the map was finished,
would also have provided a rich source of well-traveled refugees, presumably willing to
swap their stories for some bread or beer.
Crowdsourcing a map had never been easier, and Fra Mauro took full advantage. He
interrogated these travelers with an inquisitiveness verging on belligerence, cross-
checking their tales against the extensive library in his monastery in the Venice lagoon.
He used their information to draw the map itself and pepper it with almost 3,000
annotations.

Some of the thousands of annotations on the map. PUBLIC DOMAIN

Fra Mauro loved a good story, and his map is packed with pictures of amber, rubies,
pearls, diamonds, manna, and ―other notable things‖. He was also fascinated by exotic
animals and practices. Seven-headed serpents roam the province of Malabar in India,
troglodytes run wild in East Africa, and the Barents Sea near Norway harbors fish that
can ―puncture the ships with a spike they have on their backs‖.

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More exotic treasures include a lake on an island in the Indian Ocean that can turn iron
into gold. In the accompanying annotation, Fra Mauro hastily explained that he didn‘t
believe a word of this story, and included it ―just to do justice to the testimony of many
people.‖ Given that he repeated this particular tale in three different places and drew a
spectacular gold lake in the middle of the Andaman Islands for good measure, his
skepticism seems ambiguous to say the least.

To modern eyes, the monsters, lakes of honey-wine, and cannibals suggest credulity. In
fact, however, the annotations on the map are full of doubt and skepticism. In both India
and Africa, Fra Mauro gives no credence to the wild tales of ―human and animal
monsters,‖ noting that none of the travelers with whom he spoke could confirm the
stories. ―I leave research in the matter,‖ he concluded sarcastically, ―to those who are
curious about such things.‖

Fra Mauro‘s depiction of Africa. PUBLIC DOMAIN

Fra Mauro was also exceptional in his rejection of religious and classical authority.
Europe was not a haven of religious tolerance at the time; the Spanish inquisition started
just 20 years after the map was completed. Mapmakers, consequently, focused on
keeping the Church happy rather than worrying about minor geographic details. Medieval
maps showed the location of Noah‘s Ark, discussed the depravity of pagans, and
illustrated the hideous giants Gog and Magog, lurking in the far North and eagerly
awaiting the apocalypse. Fra Mauro, by contrast, took a rigidly empirical approach. The
Garden of Eden was relegated to a sidebox, not shown in a real geographic location. He
sternly noted that the tradition that the Gog and Magog lived in the Caucasus Mountains
―is certainly and clearly mistaken and cannot be upheld in any way,‖ since plenty of
people lived in and traveled to the mountains, and they would have noticed any
monstrous giants living nearby.

Adam and Eve made an appearance on the bottom-right corner of the map. PUBLIC
DOMAIN
Fra Mauro also criticized various classical authorities. Like a cheeky schoolchild—or a
commentator on an online forum—Fra Mauro prefaced his criticism by saying that he
didn‘t want to seem contrary but couldn‘t help it that everyone else was wrong. Ptolemy
got the size of Persia wrong, mislabeled Sri Lanka, and didn‘t realize that you could sail
all the way around Africa. Regarding the circumference of the Earth, Fra Mauro cited a
couple of expert opinions and concluded dismissively that ―they are not of much
authenticity, since they have not been tested.‖ His robust skepticism marked a transition
away from medieval traditions towards the intellectual excitement of the Renaissance.

As a result, Fra Mauro‘s map was the most accurate ever made at the time. It wasn‘t just
his piercingly accurate national stereotypes; the Norwegians were ―strong and robust,‖
while the Scottish were ―of easy morals.‖ He was the first to depict Japan as an island,
and the first European to show that you could sail all the way around Africa. The latter
finding drew on reports from unfortunate traders blown by a storm ‗round South Africa,
learning that it was circumnavigable and liberally endowed with 60-foot birds, capable of
picking up elephants. Through depicting the riches, navigation routes, and people around
the world, Fra Mauro didn‘t just describe terrain, but played a part in encouraging further
exploration and analysis, leading up to the famous Age of Exploration and the discovery
of the Americas.
Ships at sea on the map. PUBLIC DOMAIN

Modern interest in Fra Mauro‘s map was sparked by Placido Zurla, a monk at the same
monastery, who published a lengthy study in 1806. Since then, it‘s been widely
recognized that Fra Mauro was way ahead of his time for his accurate geographical
knowledge, willingness to challenge authority, and emphasis on empirical observation.

The map is accurate enough to guide researchers to as-yet undiscovered archaeological

sites. For example, Fra Mauro‘s contacts in the Ethiopian Church allowed him to map
medieval Ethiopia in surprising detail. He accurately portrayed a number of geographical
features; the Awash River, mountain ranges surrounding Addis Ababa, and the Ziquala
mountain and monastery (which is still there, 500 years later). Alongside geographical
features, Fra Mauro plotted ancient cities that for centuries scholars assumed never
existed. This assumption is challenged by archaeologists today, who have found
unmistakable signs of past habitation in the sites that Fra Mauro indicated. Although no
excavation has started, obsidian shards and pottery pieces litter the landscape, and small
walls, old grindstones, and worn foundations are visible under moss and bushes.
If he were alive today, Fra Mauro would probably be disappointed to know that lakes of
gold and wine existed just in the imagination of the travelers he interviewed. He would,
however, be happy to know that his map is proving more accurate than skeptical
cartographers gave it credit for, and that it still acts as a starting point for research and
discovery.

● MIT’s Memory Matrix Installation: Preserving Culture in Digital Perpetuity

The Memory Matrix installation at night, in front of MIT‘s Wiesner Building.

Courtesy Azra Aksamija, original photo of MediaLab by Steve Mann

Azra Aksamija is no stranger to the fragile nature of national identity. Born in Bosnia, a
country torn apart by a genocide that resulted in the slaughter of more than 100,000
people, about 80,000 of whom were Bosnian Muslims, she is all too aware how
destruction rewrites history by physically erasing the evidence of a culture. In the case of
Bosnia, the targeted destruction of places and objects was an attempt to replace a long
history of coexistence with a far more oppositional, imaginary past.

As an architectural historian and an artist—Aksamija is currently a professor at MIT—

she grapples with the physical manifestations of particular ideas or identities. Her latest
work of art, the Memory Matrix, on display at MIT until May 7, commemorates
monuments across the globe that have been destroyed by conflict.

The project, open to participation by the public, emphasizes both individual self-
expression as well as collective memory. The exhibit consists of more than 20,000 little,
green plexiglass tiles, laser cut with smal images of lost monuments, chosen by people
around the world. They include everything from a German synagogue destroyed in WWII
to a tree in the Amazonian forest that represents indigenous knowledge. Each ―pixel‖
hangs from a chain-link fence. The fence, which represents borders, is supported by
scaffolding, which provides both structural support and symbolizes the monument‘s
―constant state of restoring, rebuilding, and repairing.‖

Seen from afar, the pixels recreate the iconic image of the Palmyra Arch of Triumph,
destroyed by ISIS in May of 2015. ―For the Memory Matrix, it was about global
heritage,‖ says Aksamija. The fragments bring different cultures and civilizations into
conversation with each other—a 2,000-year-old symbol of transcultural exchange.

Each tile is also stamped with a bitcoin address that only the user of the pixel has control
over. The bitcoin database is open to everyone, but protected from any tampering. This
allows the owner to encode the pixel with a theoretically indestructible message: ―I have
been at this monument. I‘ve seen it in this time and day and this location. I testify that
this monument existed.‖ Even when the Matrix itself is gone, the pieces that comprise
this digital Palmyra Arch will still be preserved in perpetual, indestructible
cyberspace. This component of memory matrix is part of a larger research effort by A.
collaborator Dietmar Offenhuber to explore ―cryptographic heritage.‖
o Hemlock Hospice | David Buckley Borden & Aaron Ellison
o
o ―Wayfinding Barrier, No. 2,‖ installation at Harvard Forest, 2 x 3.5 x 4 feet, wood,
acrylic paint, vinyl, hardware, aluminum tape, and recycled ant nests and
specimen box) 2017. Collaborators: David Buckley Borden, Jack Byers, Dr. Aaron
Ellison, and Salua Rivero.
o ―Fast Forward Futures,‖ installation at Harvard Forest, 4 x 8 x 26 feet, wood,
acrylic paint, and assorted hardware, 2017. Collaborators: David Buckley Borden,
Jack Byers, Dr. Aaron Ellison, Salvador Jiménez-Flores, and Salua Rivero.
o ―Sixth Extinction Flag,‖ installation at Harvard Forest, 5 x 5 feet, canvas, thread,
nylon rope, and grommets, 2017. Collaborators: Jackie Barry, David Buckley
Borden, and Dr. Aaron Ellison. Photography by Salua Rivero.
o ―Hemlock Memorial Shed,‖ installation at Harvard Forest, 8 x 8 x 9 feet, wood,
acrylic paint, and assorted hardware, 2017. Collaborators: David Buckley Borden,
Dr. Aaron Ellison, and Lisa Q Ward.
o ―Black Armband Ecology,‖ installation at Harvard Forest, 8 x 5 feet, canvas,
thread, and nylon rope, 2017. Collaborators: Jackie Barry, David Buckley Borden,
and Aaron Ellison. Photography by Aaron Ellison.

o
o ―Exchange Tree,‖ installation at Harvard Forest, 8 x 10 x 12.5 feet, wood and
acrylic paint, 2017. Collaborators: David Buckley Borden, Dr. Aaron Ellison,
Salvador Jiménez-Flores, and Salua Rivero.
o
o ―Insect Landing,‖ installation at Harvard Forest, 4 x 6 x 6 feet, wood, and acrylic
paint, 2017. Collaborators: David Buckley Borden, Dr. Aaron Ellison, Salvador
Jiménez-Flores, CC McGregor, Patrick Moore, Salua Rivero, and Lisa Q Ward.
o
o ―Double Assault,‖ installation at Harvard Forest, dimensions variable, acrylic
paint, wood, vintage buzzsaws, and assorted hardware, 2017. Collaborators:
David Buckley, Jack Byers, Dr. Aaron Ellison, and Salua Rivero.

o Relativity | M.C. Escher

Relativity is a lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in December
1953.

It depicts a world in which the normal laws of gravity do not apply. The architectural
structure seems to be the centre of an idyllic community, with most of its inhabitants
casually going about their ordinary business, such as dining. There are windows and
doorways leading to park-like outdoor settings. All of the figures are dressed in identical
attire and have featureless bulb-shaped heads. Identical characters such as these can be
found in many other Escher works.

In the world of Relativity, there are three sources of gravity, each being orthogonal to the
two others. Each inhabitant lives in one of the gravity wells, where normal physical laws
apply. There are sixteen characters, spread between each gravity source, six in one and
five each in the other two. The apparent confusion of the lithograph print comes from the
fact that the three gravity sources are depicted in the same space.

The structure has seven stairways, and each stairway can be used by people who belong
to two different gravity sources. This creates interesting phenomena, such as in the top
stairway, where two inhabitants use the same stairway in the same direction and on the
same side, but each using a different face of each step; thus, one descends the stairway as
the other climbs it, even while moving in the same direction nearly side-by-side. In the
other stairways, inhabitants are depicted as climbing the stairways upside-down, but
based on their own gravity source, they are climbing normally.

Each of the three parks belongs to one of the gravity wells. All but one of the doors seem
to lead to basements below the parks. Though physically possible, such basements are
certainly unusual and add to the surreal effect of the picture.

This is one of Escher‘s most popular works and has been used in a variety of ways.

Set III | When Worlds Collide

o Girl with a Pierced Eardrum | Banksy

o Magdalene's Niece | Cesar Santos

o Emoji Nation, Part 3 | Nastya Pitchek
o Things From Space | Mark Bryan
o

o 'The Wedding'

o
o 'The Collectors'

o
o 'The Collectors', detail
o
o 'Kittybot'

o
o 'The Ride'

o
o 'Monkeybot'
o
o 'Robot Rescue'

o
o 'Punchbot'

o
o 'Last of the Merlot'
o
o 'The Plein Air Incident'

o
o 'The Visitor'

o
o 'The Visitor', detail
o
o 'Last of the Clowns'

o
o 'Last of the Luchadors'

o
o 'Hello Kitty'

o
o 'Mona and the Metal Men'

o
o 'Big Baby Abduction'

o
o 'Stone City Incident'

o
o 'Last of the Shiraz'

o
o 'The Metal Man'

o
o 'Plein Air Incident #2'

o
o Village Church with Flying Saucer

o
o 'Monkey Mandates'

o
o 'Robot Girl'
o
o 'Robot Girl #2'

o
o 'Space Monkey'

o
o 'The Eyeball Kid'

o
o 'The End of the Clowns'
o
o 'Prime Directives'

o Royal Ontario Museum | Daniel Libeskind

o History is a never ending cycle of events, and as we move forward creating more
history and expanding our knowledge, we discover more artifacts and conditions
that should be documented and showcased in galleries and exhibitions. Instead of
constructing new museums in which to hold these conditions, the Royal Ontario
Museum in Toronto, Canada decided to expand to better accommodate more
history within its walls. Designed by Studio Daniel Libeskind, the extension is
known as the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal and was officially opened in June of 2007.
With this extension the museum gained 100,000 square feet of new exhibition
space, a new entrance and lobby, a street level retail shop, and three new
restaurants. Studio Daniel Libeskind also renovated ten galleries in the existing
historical building as part of this project.
o

o Courtesy of Studio Daniel Libeskind

o The Michael Lee-Chin Crystal derives its name from the building‘s five
intersecting volumes, which are reminiscent of crystals. Two of these crystals
dedicated for gallery space intersect to create the void known as the Spirit House.
The Spirit House consists of a large atrium rising from below ground level to the
fourth floor and is broken up by bridges crossing it at various levels. This space is
mainly intended to be a space of reflections for the visitors and providing a break
from the exhibitions.
o

o Courtesy of Studio Daniel Libeskind

o One of the crystals contains what is known as the Stair of Wonders which is
dedicated to vertical circulation but also features exhibition vitrines at the
landings, and the fifth crystal houses a restaurant. The building was made using a
steel structure with aluminum cladding and glass windows. Although the exterior
is chaotic, the intersection of spaces made by the crystal like form creates a variety
of atriums at different levels of the museum offering a wide variety of unique
views into galleries and to the progressing world outside.
o

o Courtesy of Studio Daniel Libeskind

o The new addition for the Royal Ontario Museum appears to dominate the historic
existing building. Studio Daniel Libeskind obviously had no problem forcing their
new modern architecture onto the traditional brick building of the original
museum, doing nothing to create a more graceful transition from one form to
another. Even though it appears as though not much attention and consideration
was paid in regards to the existing structure, one large atrium, known as the Gloria
Hyacinth Chen Court, which separates the new construction from the heritage
building, provides a nearly complete view of the restored heritage façades.
o EnTWINe
d|
 o The British colonial legacy is closely examined and dissected through art in Tate‘s
new exhibition Artist and Empire this Winter. Amongst the many artefacts and art
works the contemporary artists the Singh Twins feature their piece ‗enTWINed‘.
Shrewd political commentators, the twins, who ask to be referred to as The Singh
Twins rather than by their individual names, seek to redress the balance of colonial
history. They wish to show that the reality of colonialism and its legacy is not
simply black and white and nor does it exist as one undisputed narrative. Their art
reminds us that while we in the West claim an awareness of the oppressions and
horrors of colonialism, we continue to dominate all discourse surrounding it.
o The Singh Twins show a remarkable even-handedness. Whilst they show the
oppressive nature of colonial rule, they are keen to celebrate the mingling and
assimilation of Indian and British culture. In a manner that is reminiscent of
Grayson Perry‘s own assimilation of personal and collective histories, the twins
mix figures from their lives with historical figures. Their art, which largely depicts
Indo-British scenes, is painted in the style of Indian Miniatures- a clever means of
showing how indistinguishable the two cultures have become. As Indo-British
artists from Liverpool themselves, their work is defiantly representative of both
cultures: it is both authentically Liverpudlian in its football matches and scenes on
the Mersey, whilst honouring its Indian roots in family scenes and tributes to
historical Indian figures. With their paintings they ask: why should we have to
choose one side?

Set IV | Caught Up in the Knots

o House of Thorns | Alice Maher
 o Inflatable Bag Animals | Joshua Allen Harris

Green Art Installations: Air Bear and Other Inflatable Bag Art

When you live and work in a city over a long period of time, it‘s sometimes possible to
get so accustomed to seeing a mild amount of litter on the streets that you barely notice it
after awhile. But what if one day the street litter suddenly came to life and began to move
on its own right in front of you? That‘s part of the genius of Joshua Allen Harris‗s
inflatable bag animals, which is the subject of the next post in my green art installation
series.
Around 2008, Harris decided to create a small polar bear sculpture out of white plastic
grocery bags and attached the bear to a subway grating in New York. When the sculpture
is at rest, it looks like an ordinary piece of trash on the grating. But as as the subway
passes by, it pushes air up through the grating, animating the bear in a pretty life-like
way:
It‘s best to see a video of the bear so that you can see how it works. Harris has posted an
excellent video of Air Bear on his home page if you‘d like to check it out. He also later
did a video with Sesame Street of a similar sculpture that I‘m rather partial to:
Harris eventually forgot about the bear until someone took a video/picture of it and
posted it on the Internet. People started gushing about the bear statue and it quickly went
viral on the web. The overwhelming attention the bear received inspired Harris to make
several more more inflatable bag animals and place them throughout New York.
Here‘s a few of my favorites (although there‘s plenty more interesting ones besides these
on his website):
Again, it‘s best to see these sculptures in animation, so I‘d recommend checking
out Harris‘s website to watch some of the videos about them. I‘d also recommend
watching a video interview with Harris posted by the New York Magazine.
There are a number of reasons why I‘m intrigued by Harris‘s artwork. One reason is that
his artwork has an element of surprise and drama. As Harris says: ―Part of the magic is
that it looks like trash on the street and then it becomes animated and comes to life.‖ As I
mentioned earlier, sometimes it‘s easy to get used to seeing litter to the point where we
stop thinking about it. But Harris‘s inflatable bag animals cause us to take notice of trash
bags and think about them in a different way. For me, it makes me reflect on how our
trash in some ways has a life of its own. (Literally, in this case!) Even though I might
throw a plastic grocery bag away, it doesn‘t mean it no longer exists. It will continue to
exist and have an impact on the environmentover the long-term whether I realize it or not.
Using humor and whimsy, Harris‘s artwork makes us notice the litter in our environment
that is otherwise invisible and taken for granted as ―somebody else‘s job to clean up.‖
Another thing I find intriguing about Harris‘s sculptures is that they can sometimes evoke
an emotional response. On one level, I recognize that these sculptures are non-living
objects made out of plastic trash bags or grocery bags. But on another level, I find that I
respond emotionally to the creatures as though they were alive. Some people have
commented that watching the sculptures deflate makes them feel sad, as though the
sculpture is dying. This is especially poignant with the polar bear sculptures. Polar bears
are often a visible symbol of the effects of climate change. Perhaps it‘s no coincidence
that the use of the subway (i.e. public transportation) is what brings these polar bears
back to life?
Lastly, what I like about these sculptures is that it makes us think differently about
cityscapes. In an interview with New York Magazine, Harris said: ―The part that is
exciting is [that the] city decides how it‘s going to animate the sculpture.‖ Harris‘s
artwork reminds me that a city is an ecosystem too. I often erroneously think of cities as
existing independently of the environment, as being somehow separate or removed from
nature. But the truth is that cities are a kind of unique, human-created ecosystem with
many of the same characteristics of natural ecosystems. They, too, depend on the
interaction of living and non-living processes to sustain life and support the cycling of
goods such as food, air, and fresh water. I wonder if I don‘t always think of cities as
being ecosystems because I don‘t see large animals roaming about them. What‘s cool
about the inflatable bag animals is that they come to life and even begin to interact with
unsuspecting pedestrians or cars in humorous ways. Watching humans interact with these
faux city animals gives me pause and makes me think more about the city as a kind of
unique environment in its own right.
At any rate, these whimsical sculptures are quite simply awe-inspiring feats of
engineering in and of themselves. I wish that we had an underground subway system here
in Utah because I think it would be fun to try making a few inflatable bag monsters of my
own. Seriously cool!

o Alexander Cuts Gordian Knot | Jean Simon Berthélemy

o Countdown | Wenqing Yan
o
o Periscope | Pawel Kuczynski