Yesterday’s early morning sprinkle of snow in Dublin.
(Thanks Colum Cronin)
Author Archives: Chompsky
A short film by Brett Novak featuring the balletic old-school skills of Brazilian longboarders Sara Watanabe, Ana Maria Suzano, Beatriz Gavelak, and Teresa Madeline.
Well worth going full screen for.
A computer generated paean to the legendary Mercedes Benz 300SL Gullwing by João Elias, performed on, and above, a virtual Bonneville salt flats.
https://vimeo.com/493007374
The 2016 original (in case you missed it) and recently released second instalment of Fabrice Mathieu’s Hitchcock/Lucas mashup – the Cary Grant star vehicle that should have been but – for spacial and temporal reasons – never was.
You’ll recall his excellent pisstake of moon landing denial conspiracies ‘Moon Shining’.
The Past
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A Blender Animation short directed by Hjalti Hjalmarsson in which the background scenery of what appears to be a side scrolling game turns out to be recollections of the tragic past life of the protagonist as she sprints through the ‘stages’, turbo-boosted by shots of caffeine
Behold: the curiously striped dunes of the Kunowsky crater – part of an image captured recently by the Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter’s HiRISE Camera.
But why do they look like that? No one knows. To wit:
Many Martian dunes are known to be covered unevenly with carbon dioxide (dry ice) frost, creating patterns of light and dark areas. Carbon dioxide doesn’t melt, but sublimates, turning directly into a gas. Carbon dioxide is also a greenhouse material even as a solid, so it can trap heat under the ice and sublimate from the bottom up, causing geyser-like eruptions. During Martian spring, these eruptions can cause a pattern of dark defrosting spots, where the darker sand is exposed. The featured image, though, was taken during Martian autumn, when the weather is getting colder – making these stripes particularly puzzling. One hypothesis is that they are caused by cracks in the ice that form from weaker eruptions or thermal stress as part of the day-night cycle, but research continues. Watching these dunes and others through more Martian seasons may give us more clues to solve this mystery.
(Image: HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. Arizona), NASA; Processing: Włodek Głażewski; Text: Alex R. Howe (NASA/USRA, Reader’s History of SciFi Podcast)
The abstract pixellated landscapes of UK-based artist Jason Anderson – oil paint on linen – impasto mosaics suggesting city skylines and swooping interchanges. Of his dynamic, evocative style he sez:
I relish the often frantic nature of mixing and arranging the paint in thick impressionistic daubs and submitting to a process that creates its own detail and form. This forces me to be bold and decisive; it also produces a kaleidoscope of shape and tone (reminiscent of stained-glass) which portrays the ever-present movement and energy found in nature.
Grand job.
More of his work here.
A vintage style monochrome stop-motion short by Belgian director Soetkin Verstegen who describes it as a “miniature cinema inside an ice cube”, inspired by the true story of a century-old box of negatives found preserved in the ice of Antarctica.
You’ll see.