All I have for you today is a collection of this and that, so here we are.
Stamp collecting has crashed due to the high-information era — the “dark matter” of unknown, undocumented, or unsorted collections is coming to light due to the internet marketplace, and there’s a lot more of the midlist than anyone thought. It’s a completely different phenomenon to the Beanie Baby effect, which is the artificial expectation of later scarcity.
Ritual litter is a serious problem. When you’re a 2nd century century Roman leaving a model penis as a hopeful votive offering to Sulis Minerva, it’s an archaeological deposit, but when I do it it’s “pollution” and “an eyesore”. Love locks are the other ritual offering that’s causing a lot of problems, of course.
Some beautiful Korean paper clothing — paper is always in my wheelhouse, and this is gorgeous work. I’m reminded of Diana Scherer’s InterWoven work with roots.
This coin is beautiful, but fundamentally weird. After some fairly exhaustive research, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Iceni just could not draw horses. Google “iceni silver unit” for more examples!
James Wong on gardening conventions and what’s considered ‘right’. When I was well enough to keep an allotment, I once spent half an hour being gently scolded by a committee member — I thought at first because I wasn’t doing enough, but it turned out it was because I was doing it Wrong by keeping a thriving collection of shrubs and herbs and shade trees rather than a flat patch of fence-to-fence bare earth with seasonal crop after seasonal crop. “It just doesn’t look like an allotment.”
Cheap and simple camouflage, done at and adapted to the point of use. I’ve done similar things in the theatre.
Using an actual honeycomb is a logical extension of lost wax casting, I suppose.
Fumiaki Goto has designed a new rice-based polymer that can then be fermented into sake at the end of its life.
Reflectance transformation imaging gives us a new way to look at manuscripts. This makes me think about photography in landscape archaeology as well — a lot of discoveries have only been made because we looked at things from unusual angles. This process not only makes the digital object a more faithful edition of the analogue manuscript original, but makes it more object-like in itself — gives it an interactive dimensionality — rather than a static picture. UI-wise the RTI object is a really good way of stacking information into the same amount of screen real estate whilst still providing intuitive navigational affordances.
I wonder whether there’s a market for visitor-controlled lighting drones in galleries? We’d have to develop a whole new API, but (speaking as an ex-lighting designer, well used to standing on a stage and waving the lights about) the gestural interaction language already exists. Being issued with a whole halo of miniature spotlight drones to go with the audio tour would be interesting.
