punctuating the science life with arts
Get flash to fully experience Pearltrees
With Amazon slowly taking over the publishing world and bookstores closing left and right, things can sometimes seem a little grim for the brick and mortar booksellers of the world. After all, why would anyone leave the comfort of their couch to buy a book when with just a click of a button, they could have it delivered to their door? Well, here’s why: bookstores so beautiful they’re worth getting out of the house (or the country) to visit whether you need a new hardcover or not. We can’t overestimate the importance of bookstores — they’re community centers, places to browse and discover, and monuments to literature all at once — so we’ve put together a list of the most beautiful bookstores in the world, from Belgium to Japan to Slovakia. Just so you know now, all you bookstore fiends: neither the Strand nor Powell’s is on this list. They’re both great bookstores, of course, but not particularly pretty (at least in our minds), and thus disqualified.
The 20 Most Beautiful Bookstores in the World
Writing office for National Geographic's "Explorer in Residence" - Boing Boing
Writing in Washington Life , Karin Tanabe describes the remarkable writing office designed by Travis Price architects for Wade Davis, National Geographic's "Explorer in Residence." It's one of the most beautiful rooms I've ever seen, the apotheosis of writing-caves. “Travis did a studio on M Street in Georgetown for me,” Davis says, noting that in his current home, zoning prohibited a detached building. While many need light-filled rooms for inspiration, he wanted to avoid large windows opening onto a residential neighborhood and sought a cave-like atmosphere to disappear into his work. Subtle light was brought in by other means when the architect built a dome above his client’s desk (which Price describes as similar to the rotunda of the oracle’s temple at Delphi) and filled it with the books he uses the most. Davis whimsically calls the space his “Navajo kiva of knowledge.”
One was a Bulgarian stowaway who became the love of an English literary giant; the second was a gentleman art dealer who once had an affair with the opium-addicted Jean Cocteau; and the third was an aristocratic music critic who inherited one of Britain's largest houses. Together they created a remarkable art collection about to be seen in public for the first time. The Radev collection, containing works by artists including Amedeo Modigliani, Graham Sutherland and Alfred Wallis, can from this weekend be viewed online.
Radev collection: tale of three art lovers to be told in new touring exhibition | Art and design | The Guardian
Comme nous l'avait laissé entendre Bernard Lenoir lui-même lors de la Black Session #330 de Dark Dark Dark , il s'agira de la dernière du genre.
The Divine Comedy : Les Black Sessions, c'est fini - Magicrpm : Artistes indie-pop-rock
I'm interested in science - this wonderful observation system - and I'm always amazed when people aren't.
CultureLab: Sculpting shapes that don't exist
Bjork's latest album, Biophilia comes in the form of several apps, but they're only accessible on iOS devices.
Bjork trusts pirates to take 'Biophilia' cross-platform (Wired UK)
Political street art in Tahrir Square during the Egyptian uprising in February 2011.
'This is freedom' – visual art and the Egyptian uprising | Art and design | The Guardian
I remember it as a rat-infested dump. Water dripped down walls.
Sir George Gilbert Scott, the unsung hero of British architecture | Simon Jenkins | Comment is free | The Guardian
A t a glance, a painting by Jackson Pollock can look deceptively accidental: just a quick flick of color on a canvas. A quantitative analysis of Pollock’s streams, drips, and coils by Harvard mathematician L. Mahadevan and collaborators at Boston College reveals, however, that the artist had to be slow — he had to be deliberate — to exploit fluid dynamics in the way that he did. The finding, published in Physics Today , represents a rare collision involving mathematics, physics, and art history, providing new insight into the artist’s method and techniques, as well as his appreciation for the beauty of natural phenomena. “Our article is mainly an invitation to think about some aspects of art from a scientific perspective,” said Mahadevan, who is the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and a professor of organismic and evolutionary biology and of physics. Crossovers between art and science are nothing new.