Urban amplification attenuated through abstraction; or aspiration and performance in dream space and upon canvas, moreover having nothing to do with considerations of noumena and phenomena, which are rubbish concepts

Paul Klee - Dream City (1921)

Anodyne amusement for a bored nation looking for meaning in animated oddity, revisited again and again and again...

 

Bestiary of Philosophical Conceptions: #129 Altérité

Gabriel's Horn/Torricelli's Trumpet: structure or concept?

 

Infinite surface area but limited volume? Or an infinitely long shape with a finite volume or area? 

More importantly, are we discussing a structure or a concept?

Please click HERE.

Starring the Observer

Juxtaposition for political allegory, add your own labels...

"A Feasibility Study"

"A Feasibility Study"

The Outer Limits, Season 1 Episode 29, April 12, 1964

"The Luminoids need slaves, and they have chosen the planet off which their slaves will be abducted. Not too many at first, a neighborhood-full, perhaps. A neighborhood like mine... or yours."

Waking up one morning, the residents of a six-block section of Midgard Drive find themselves on another planet. They have become the subjects of a grotesque and sophisticated experiment... a feasibility study undertaken by a doomed alien race to test the Earthling's hardiness as potential slave labor. With mankind's fate in the balance, each person is forced to dig deep within themselves to uncover a coward... or a hero. Possibly one of the most humanitarian episodes of the series, "A Feasibility Study" succeeds as both a thinly-veiled anti-slavery message and as a vivid, poignant examination of the human spirit. The powerful ending (at first objected to by network censors) will forever haunt you with its lingering image.

 

Starring Sam Wanamaker, Phyllis Love, Joyce Van Patten and David Opatoshu.

Variations of the Jorge Luis Borges Esoteric Conundrum Plot Apparatus

Ritual Purification of the Temple

"Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God..."   

                                                                              -- 2 Corinthians 6:16

Vittorio Camardese

The Seashell and the Clergyman ( 1928)

A moment in cinema history.  Lively mages, curious motions, the unusual, foolishness... 

Appropriate contemporary soundtrack...

Little of Highbrow interest, but rare blossoms of inspiration might emerge.  Suit yourself.

Henryk Semiradsky - Christ and the Samaritan Woman

Henryk Semiradsky (1843-1902)

Universe (1960)

 

Canadian documentary presents a cosmic tour: from images to concepts to a believable passage through supposititious space.

Man Ray "The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows" (1916)

Symphonie pour un homme seul (composed 1949–1950)

Pierre Schaeffer & Pierre Henry: Orphée 53 (1953)

Highbrow history from (maybe) Cicero

"The evil was not in bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies and the excitement of the games which would serve to distract them from the other human hungers which bread and circuses can never appease."

But is this Cicero?  It might be a misattribution. According to Wikiquotes, the lines are from Ben Moreell, "Of Bread and Circuses", The Freeman, January 1956, pp. 29–32. The quotation is from the left column of p. 31 in the original publication. Moreell's piece makes no mention of Cicero, but opens with a correct attribution of the phrase "Bread and circuses" to Juvenal.  

You take a piece, you drink a piece...

'Wine Glass Chess Set' by Andre Breton and Nicolas Calas. A reproduction of a lost original (c.1944). 

It’s pretty.

Maurice Ravel - Bolero - Tratto da 'Allegro non troppo' di Bruno Bozzetto 1976

Work in Emanations Zen nominated for Pushcart Prize

Work appearing in Emanations Zen has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. 

The editors are sending a letter through the post with the details. I'll relate here when I learn who has been nominated.

This is the third time work from Emanations has been nominated.

Stay tuned.