Tessera

Referring to 35mm film projection in a darkened art gallery as a "high court" seems to mistake prestige for authority. It's corrupt to think of a court as defined by prestige! Art isn't one! But if you appeal to apparatus theory, I guess it's OK to assert that it makes the material weightier. (2017)

Emma Moore: We also discussed the image you wanted to produce, one that could not easily circulate or be manipulated online. As you mentioned earlier, the work could only be presented within a very controlled environment. Could you say more about why you chose to shoot the film on 35mm?

Luke Willis Thompson: I think the primary reason had to do with a connection between Diamond’s video, made in a moment of trauma, and the physicality of analogue film. In both instances, what is recorded becomes the only possible image. It never felt like I had the right to take a digital HD camera and record endless amounts of footage, as it always felt like a privilege to create Diamond’s portrait.

There’s a depth and brilliance to the medium of 35mm film that can evoke an emotional response, even in its most abstracted capturing of shadow and light. It would be easy to say it is the contrast of Diamond’s video, because it differs so dramatically in terms of pacing, resolution, and picture clarity, not to mention film grain versus pixilation. But mostly, in order to show up the consequence of Diamond’s video I wanted to work in cinema’s most canonical form; its high court.

DSL Cardwell discussing two phases of the steam engine: the early days, where easy generation of high pressure steam from heat was a blessing, and the later theoretical realisation that this was a "positive disadvantage" when trying to make an efficient heat engine. archive.org/details/from...

We can, in fact, assert that without an appreciation of Carnot's dictum the history of the heat-engine must be unintelligible. The tremendous expansion [about 1,800-fold on vaporisation], or the great increase in pressure, which follows the conversion of water into steam meant quite simply that here was a working substance which could generate a usable amount of power without, at the same time, making unreasonable demands on the skills of engineers and metallurgists. The fact that, between the times of Newcomen and Woolf, the process was thermodynamically ‘inefficient’ was unimportant, indeed meaningless, for there was no yardstick, economic or scientific, against which its economy could be measured.

After Carnot's analysis the virtue of steam as a working substance – the easy generation of high and therefore immediately usable pressures – was seen to be a drawback in that it made it much more difficult to exploit the full temperature range available. Everything that has happened since 1824 has confirmed Carnot's judgement, and we must therefore divide the history of the heat-engine into two very distinct periods: before and after Carnot.

I read this while browsing in a bookshop. It's one way of writing about old trains, but it sent me straight to Google and thence to www.railcar.co.uk/technology/h...

My feet, prone to be cold on modern, air-conditioned trains, are nice and warm, thanks to hot air emerging from a mysterious (to me) silvery duct next to my left boot. At Loughborough Central Station I alight from the train alongside the guard, who's about seventeen, and his vintage BR uniform, possibly bought last year at the swapmeet I've just attended, is too big for him. I decide to probe the mystery of the silver duct, reasoning that this will be a win-win. I’ll increase my railway knowledge – and I do always feel I ought to be learning things on the preserved lines, perhaps to atone for the sheer pleasure I get from simply sitting on old trains – and the kid will presumably be pleased to enlighten me. ‘How is the heat generated?’ I ask. ‘It's not steam heat, is it?'

‘Oh, it's electric heating, I think,’ he says, and he heads off to the buffet, but he's checked by the driver of the DMU, who has stepped onto the platform. The drivers on preserved lines tend to be in their sixties or seventies – seventy-five is the cut off – but this driver is a long-haired, scruffy-yet-capable-looking bloke perhaps in his forties.

‘A word,’ he says beckoning the kid. ‘These trains are not electrically heated.’ He then gives the kid a short lecture about how ‘red diesel’ is atomised in a cylinder, the resulting hot air being pushed by a fan into the heating ducts. The lecture concluded, the boy hurries off, slightly embarrassed.

I feel a bit guilty: the boy’s a volunteer, so it’s not as if he'd failed to do his job, but the preserved lines are two things: tourist attractions and living museums, and some of the volunteers are more curatorial than others. At least, I assume the driver’s a volunteer, but some of the preserved railways do employ drivers, and so perhaps professional pride had prompted this one to correct the kid.

Theo Honohan @theohonohan.bsky.social · 2d ago

You're telling me that for an ideal gas, the increase in entropy is calculated just by multiplying the fractional increase in volume by the fractional increase in temperature, to find the fractional increase in the size of the state space? But logs are used to turn this into an addition? Is that it?

"The course of his growth as a photographer can be traced in the metamorphosis his sense of certain colors has undergone. One of these is a swimming-pool green, a color which can take on at dusk the luminescence of a radium dial glowing in a darkened room." www.artforum.com/events/max-k...

More that one person seems to think that the word "inquisition" here refers to prosecuting practitioners of the dark arts. But Bacon's sentence continues, and he makes clear that he is all for the scientific Production of Cold. archive.org/details/sylv...

The producing of Cold, is a thing very worthy the Inquisition, both for use and disclosure of causes. For Heat and Cold are Nature's two hands, whereby she chiefly worketh; and Heat we have in readiness, in respect of the fire: But for Cold, we must stay till it cometh, or seek it in deep Caves, or high Mountains; and when all is done, we cannot obtain it in any great
degree: For Furnaces of Fire are far hotter than a Summer's Sun, but Vaults or Hills are not much colder than a Winter's Frost.

The "grueling" craft of chain making by hand seems to be pretty dead heritagecrafts.org.uk/craft/chain-...

This video claims Landbrotshólar is a lava flow from 1793. I tried to learn more; it appears to date back to an eruption in the 930s. The artist angrily spits out an spurious date (a catastrophic eruption did occur in 1783). Do locals talk about it too much for her? www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJvp...

'Solitude was really necessary for me in relationship to what was around me' | Roni Horn

YouTube video by Steidl

youtube.com

Jane Drew, Higher Secondary School, Sector 23, Chandigarh, 1956. RIBA photo

Three children are seen climbing a modular patterned screen around the door in the lobby of a modernist building. Black-and-white photo.

"Cooking something delicious is really more satisfactory than painting pictures or throwing pots. … Food has the tact to disappear, leaving the room and opportunity for masterpieces to come." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Gr...

"A knot is a potentially permanent overlay of threads pulled tight enough that the space has been eliminated and the thread intertwines with itself. One of Albers’ main interests was in restoring the space around the thread-lines so that the eye could follow the pathways of the strands."

“To me books are more than just objects.” This is a weird, inverted way of expressing the opposite: that respecting a book's objecthood, rather than its function as a vehicle for content, is what booklovers stand for: "To me the objects are more than just books". www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

"(O)ne thing sculpture is quite simply not allowed to be, if it has any pretensions to the mainstream, or any claim to historical necessity, is soft." jessesartspace.wordpress.com/2017/02/13/m...

Roni Horn Mother, Wonder (No. 14), 2019/2025 i8.is/exhibitions/...

"i8 Gallery is pleased to present Roni Horn: Mother, Wonder, a solo exhibition of new work by Roni Horn, on view from 22 May until 12 July 2025. The show, Horn's sixth solo presentation at i8 Gallery, debuts a photographic series of Landbrot, an area in southern Iceland known for its mossy, undulating landscape.

Featuring portraits of pseudocraters, a volcanic form created as lava flows through wetlands, Horn's photographic compositions couple the rolling hills, emphasising an anthropomorphisation of the terrain. The acts of pairing and doubling, often used by Horn in her work, invite deeper consideration from the viewer and underscore the surreality and indeterminacy of the hills."

Tricia Lockwood@tricialockwood.bsky.social · 4d ago

This is the egg equivalent of the eyes of 🥹

oh my god this #Egg??

most perfect egg ever in my lemongrass chicken takeaway

Protagonist of my 1984-style dystopia is Brigid Designator

"Futurist cuisine notably rejected pasta, believing it to cause lassitude, pessimism and lack of passion." Fighting talk. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futuris...

Castle Rising, Norfolk

Evelyn Dunbar The Conservatory at the Cedars lissllewellyn.com/product/the-...

Pale, detailed painting of a small conservatory or greenhouse.

madoken.jp/en/series/15...

'The meaning "purporting to be a superior choice to what is in general use" was current by 1970 (earliest reference is to the media)' This is surprising and hardly a neutral description. Is it a bit sneery? www.etymonline.com/word/alterna...

"No rehang at Tate, even before its 2000 bifurcation into (the not mutually exclusive) Britain and Modern, has been without controversy." Critiques of this on a postcard, please. Is the technical jargon "mutually exclusive" being used correctly? Did Tate consist of a single museum until 2000?

19th century conservatory at Flintham Hall theaccidentalpreservationist.com/2019/07/05/a...

Painting by David de las Heras, who seems to usually paint sort-of Vladimir Tretchikoff figures www.daviddelasheras.net/en