December 20, 2010
Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, ‘Metropolis’ is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism. The most expensive silent film ever made, it cost approximately 5 million Reichsmark. The film was written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou in 1924, and published a novelization in 1926. Lang was influenced by the Soviet science fiction film ‘Aelita’ by Yakov Protazanov (1924), which was an adaptation of a novel by Alexei Tolstoy. The plot of ‘Aelita’ included a revolution taking place on the planet Mars. However, Metropolis advocates non-violent cooperation rather than the Marxist ideal of ‘class struggle.’
‘Metropolis’ was cut substantially after its German premiere, and much footage was lost over the passage of successive decades. There have been several efforts to restore it, as well as discoveries of previously lost footage. In 2008, a copy of the film 30 minutes longer than any other known surviving was located in Argentina. After a long period of restoration in Germany, the film was shown publicly for the first time simultaneously at Berlin and Frankfurt on February 12, 2010.
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December 19, 2010
Paprika is a 2006 Japanese animated science fiction film, based on Yasutaka Tsutsui’s 1993 novel of the same name, about a research psychologist who uses a device that permits therapists to help patients by entering their dreams. The film was directed by the late Satoshi Kon, animated by Madhouse Studios, and produced and distributed by Sony Pictures Entertainment. The film’s music was composed by Susumu Hirasawa, who also composed the soundtrack for Kon’s award-winning film, Millennium Actress, and equally lauded television series, Paranoia Agent. The soundtrack is significant for being the first film to use a Vocaloid (a singing synthesizer) for various tracks.
The protagonist of the film is, Atsuko, a psychiatrist who uses advanced technology to study the human mind. She has developed a machine that will allow her to enter the dreams of her patients and study their psyches from the inside. Atsuko also does double duty as Paprika, a high-tech detective who uses this new innovation to find out the truth about what the people she’s trailing really think. However, Atsuko falls victim to a thief who steals the one-of-a-kind machine, and Paprika sets out to find it as a wave of psychological instability tears through the city.
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December 19, 2010
The New Yorker cover (March 29, 1976) ‘View of the World from 9th Avenue,’ has come to represent Manhattan’s telescoped interpretation of the country beyond the Hudson River. The cartoon showed the supposedly limited mental geography of Manhattanites. The image shows Manhattan’s 9th Avenue, 10th Avenue, and the Hudson River (appropriately labeled), while the top half depicts the rest of the world. The rest of the United States is drawn as a square, with a thin brown strip along the Hudson representing New Jersey, the names of five cities (Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Las Vegas, Kansas City, and Chicago) and three states (Texas, Utah, and Nebraska) are scattered among a few rocks for the U.S. beyond New Jersey.
The Pacific Ocean, perhaps twice as wide again as the Hudson, separates the U.S. from three flattened land masses labeled China, Japan, and Russia. The illustration, depicting New Yorkers’ self-image, inspired many similar works, including the poster for the 1984 film Moscow on the Hudson; that movie poster led to a lawsuit, Steinberg v. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., 663 F. Supp. 706 (S.D.N.Y. 1987), which held that Columbia Pictures violated the copyright that Steinberg held on his work. Another homage was created for the cover of The Economist newspaper’s March 21–27, 2009 issue entitled ‘How China sees the world.’
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December 19, 2010
The word calavera, Spanish for ‘skull,’ can refer to a number of cultural phenomena associated with the Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead and the Roman Catholic holiday All Souls Day. Calaveras de azúcar (‘sugar skulls’) are used to adorn altars and can be eaten. Calaveras are poems, written for the Day of the Dead but intended to humorously criticize the living. Calavera can refer to any artistic representations of skulls, such as the lithographs of José Guadalupe Posada.
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December 19, 2010
Captain Harlock is a fictional character created by manga artist Leiji Matsumoto. Harlock is the archetypical romantic hero, a space pirate with an individualist philosophy of life. He is as noble as he is taciturn and rebellious; he stoically fights against totalitarian regimes, whether they be earthborn or alien.
The character was introduced in Adventures of a Honeybee (1953), but did not debut as a lead character until 1978’s Space Pirate Captain Harlock. Since then, he has appeared in numerous animated TV series and films, the latest of which re-imagines him as an Iron Cross fighter pilot and a gunslinger in the American Old West.
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December 19, 2010
‘Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem’ is a 2003 feature-length Japanese animated musical film set to French duo, Daft Punk’s second studio album, ‘Discovery.’ The film depicts the abduction and rescue of an interstellar pop band. The film was produced by Daft Punk and Toei Animation, under the supervision of famed managa and anime artist, Leiji Matsumoto. The film has no dialogue and minimal sound effects. Daft Punk’s concept for the project involved the merging of science fiction with entertainment industry culture and was further developed with their collaborator Cédric Hervet.
All three brought the album and the completed story to Tokyo in the hope of creating the film with their childhood hero, Leiji Matsumoto. Many elements common to Matsumoto’s stories, such as a romanticism of noble sacrifice and remembrance of fallen friends, appear in ‘Interstella 5555.’ Daft Punk revealed in an interview that ‘Captain Harlock’ was a great influence on them in their childhood. They also stated, ‘The music we have been making must have been influenced at some point by the shows we were watching when we were little kids.’
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December 17, 2010
The hobo nickel is a sculptural art form involving the creative modification of small-denomination coins, essentially resulting in miniature bas reliefs. The nickel, because of its size, thickness, and relative softness, was a favored coin for this purpose. Due to its low cost and portability, this medium was particularly popular among hobos, hence the name. Common hobo nickels sell for $5 or $10, and rarer or more desirable coins sell for hundreds of dollars.
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December 17, 2010
Love Tokens are custom engraved coins given as a gift. They were especially popular in the 1750s in the United States. They are made by machine-smoothing a coin (usually silver) on one or both sides, then engraving it with initials, monograms, names, scenes, etc., often with an ornate border. They can be mounted on pins or incorporated into bracelets and necklaces. The love token fad faded out in the early 20th century; love tokens engraved on buffalo nickels are quite rare and prized by collectors of ‘hobo nickels’ (altered coins).
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December 16, 2010
An amplified cactus is a cactus plant used as a musical instrument. It harnesses the acoustic properties of a cactus (preferably a Denmoza or Geohintonia), by applying contact microphones and amplifying their projection and tone. The effect is somewhat ethereal: Vivien Schweitzer of The New York Times reports ‘Jason Treuting played an amplified cactus, running his hand over the plant’s unfriendly spikes to produce an alluring sound like a babbling brook.’
The amplified cactus is a medium rarely written for, even in the contemporary music genre. John Cage, perhaps one of the most recognizable names in the contemporary music genre, composed Child of Tree (1975) and Branches (1976) for what he described as ‘amplified plant materials.’ Cage was a large proponent of chance music and felt that the organic nature of music without man-made instruments was very strong and influential. Another of the most famous pieces for amplified cactus is called Degrees of Separation ‘Grandchild of Tree’ by Paul Rudy which received mention at the Bourges International Competition for Electroacoustic Music in 2000.
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December 16, 2010
In mathematics, the Klein bottle is a geometrical object, named after the German mathematician Felix Klein. He described it in 1882, and named it Klein’sche Fläche (Klein surface). Like the Möbius strip, it only has one surface. Mathematicians call this a non-orientable surface. Klein bottles only exist in four-dimensional space, but a model of a Klein bottle can be made in 3D.
This model is different from the original because at some point the shape touches itself. In 3D, part of the shape is ‘inside’ the rest. Because the surface is non-orientable, there is no ‘inside’ or ‘outside.’ This means that if a liquid were filled ‘in the bottle,’ it would run down its surface. This may not be true for the 3D models of the bottle.
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December 16, 2010
Many mathematicians derive aesthetic pleasure from their work, and from mathematics in general. They express this pleasure by describing mathematics as beautiful. Sometimes mathematicians describe mathematics as an art form or, at a minimum, as a creative activity. Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős expressed his views on the ineffability of mathematics when he said, ‘Why are numbers beautiful? It’s like asking why is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony beautiful. If you don’t see why, someone can’t tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren’t beautiful, nothing is.’
Comparisons are often made with music and poetry. British mathematician Bertrand Russell expressed his sense of mathematical beauty in these words: ‘Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.’
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December 16, 2010
The Möbius strip [mo-bee-uhs] is a surface with only one side and only one edge. It can be made using a strip of paper by gluing the two ends together with a half-twist. The twisting is possible in two directions; so there are two different (mirror-image) Möbius strips.
The Möbius strip was discovered independently by the German mathematicians August Ferdinand Möbius and Johann Benedict Listing in 1858. The Mobius strip is known for its unusual properties. A bug crawling along the center line of the loop would go around twice before coming back to its starting point. Cutting along the center line of the loop creates one longer band, not two.
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