The Rainshader protects people from the elements while watching major sporting events – crucially it doesn’t blow inside out, poke passers-by in the eye or drip on neighbours’ shoulders in crowds. Its cut-away front, based on the design of a motor cycle helmet, lets people see the action while allowing the umbrella to sit low over the head so it doesn’t block the view of those behind.
Nelson is probably about right, not sure about Shakespeare though. Marie Antoinette, above, however doesn’t differ too greatly from Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film depiction of the ill-fated French queen.
Flat earth society takes readings from the stylus of topographic radar, cuts them into vinyl and then plays them back with a stylus. Phonographic hills-and-dales grow into the Alps, Andes, Himalayas, Grand Canyon, Great Steppe, Great Rift Valley, Great Outback and the Lesser Antilles. Where Enrico Caruso and Nellie Melba once sang one hears the Baja Peninsula, Antarctic Peninsula, and the bathymetric pauses of the Red Sea and Baffin Bay. Peaks and valleys, spikes and wells, spires and troughs, aspirations and depressions, all have their gradations in mythical and actual landscapes.
With people offering reviews of the prisons they spent time in, it can’t be said we’re short of advice and information when deciding where to make a hotel, restaurant, or whatever, booking. But how impartial, and accurate, are the write-ups published on online review websites anyway?
This flowchart then should help you decide what level of credence to assign to these reviews.
Spacesuit design through the… space age. The final suit, the sleek Bio-Suit, as designed by Dava Newman, looks far easier to wear and work in than some of the earlier versions, but I wonder how robust, how radiation resistant, and what have you, it would be.
Chess has been with us since the sixth century, yet the format of the game that we’re most familiar with has only been around since 1849, with the advent of the Staunton chess set.
According to the most widely told origin story, the Staunton set was designed by architect Nathan Cook, who looked at a variety of popular chess sets and distilled their common traits while also, more importantly, looking at the city around him. Victorian London’s Neoclassical architecture had been influenced by a renewed interest in the ruins of ancient Greece and Rome, which captured the popular imagination after the rediscovery of Pompeii in the 18th century. The work of architects like Christopher Wren, William Chambers, John Soane, and many others inspired the column-like, tripartite division of king, queen, and bishop. A row of Staunton pawns evokes Italianate balustrades enclosing of stairways and balconies.
London based artist and designer Nazareno Crea has taken 45 classic paintings, such as the “Mona Lisa”, and applied the retouching techniques that many photos today are subject to, including this 1800 painting titled “Madame Récamier”, by French Neoclassical artist Jacques-Louis David… retouched above, original below.
