Author Archives: Chompsky

Stitched Panorama

Alien flora? Well that depends on where you’re from. To wit:

Found on the Canary Island of Tenerife in the Teide National Park, red tajinastes are flowering plants that grow to a height of up to 3 metres. Among the rocks of the volcanic terrain, tajinastes bloom in spring and early summer and then die after a week or so as their seeds mature. A species known as Echium wildpretii, the terrestrial life forms were individually lit by flashlight during the wide-angle exposures.

(Image: Daniel Lopez (El Cielo de Canarias)

apod


A curious loop by Chinese born Chicago based artist Yuge Zhou featuring a a collage of hundreds of video clips shot in the subway stations in New York. To wit:

The movement of the commuters in the outer rings suggests the repetitive cycle of life and urban theatricality and texture. The inner-most ring includes people sitting on the bench waiting; the central drummers act as the controller of the movement, inspired by the concept of the Four-faced Buddha in Chinese folk religion. For the installation, the video is projected onto the gallery floor and mapped onto a cube with relief in the middle of the projection area. The installation invites audiences to sit on the central cube as Voyeur-gods, to observe the anonymous characters in the projected urban labyrinth.

Now for yeh.

curiousbrain

A colourful composite of three bright nebulae in the constellation of Sagittarius –  recorded last last year from Teide National Park in Tenerife. To wit:

18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula just left of centre, and colourful M20 on the top left. The third emission region includes NGC 6559 and can be found to the right of M8. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant. Over a hundred light-years across, the expansive M8 is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20’s popular moniker is the Trifid. Glowing hydrogen gas creates the dominant red colour of the emission nebulae. In striking contrast, blue hues in the Trifid are due to dust reflected starlight. Recently formed bright blue stars are visible nearby. 

(Image: Emilio Rivero Padilla)

apod

Of course astronauts landed on the moon, silly, but that’s not to say there’s no fun to be had imagining the whole thing was faked on a sound stage by Stanley Kubrick back in 1969.

Which is what French director Fabrice Mathieu does here with an elegant mashup of Apollo 11 prelaunch footage, Kubrick interviews and film clips.

Seriously though…

Belief in Moon Landing Hoax Conspiracy Could Spread as Memory of Apollo Recedes (Space.com)

awesomer

‘Murmuration (Landscape)’ by Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang: 10,000 porcelain birds suspended from the ceiling of Australia’s National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.

Designed as a companion piece to a display of warrior figures from the Terracotta Army also on display at the gallery, the flock – each bird smudged with gunpowder – is arranged to create a 3D impression of a calligraphic drawing of Mount Li, where the tomb of the ancient warriors was located.

colossal