Links and write-ups about beautiful things from around the web!
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Slot Machines Are Indeed a Software Chimera the
[Slot machines] are indeed a software chimera, the tail of a serpent attached to the head of a lion. It combines business graphics with the Internet, cinematic memory, remote-control systems – and banking, franchise capitalism at your fingertips. Norman M. Klein, in The Electronic Baroque: 1955-2050. From The Vatican to Vegas, 2004 p341.
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Museums Would Map the Transition Toward This New
Museums would map the transition toward this new Baroque, like the new Guggenheims in Las Vegas, as part of a franchise that has stopped growing in the U.S. Museums were also under the gun. Very likely, shows will look more like Baroque wunderkammers than they used to. They will overlap and sprawl more, like browsers and search engines. The pressures to make shows monumentalize the new power relations will be intense, an often under shrinking curatorial budges, with signature buildings outside, like the Electronic Baroque: gaudy outside, conservative at its core. Norman M. Klein, in The Electronic Baroque: 1955-2050. From The Vatican to Vegas, 2004 p338.
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The Shuftan process
An early film special effect using a partly-silvered mirror to reflect and superimpose miniatures or other off-camera devices.
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Button Given out at the 1939 Worlds Fairs
Button given out at the 1939 World’s Fair’s Futurama exhibit. I want one of these. (Photo lifted from Flickr user mmatins)
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Cinéorama
The original IMAX experience, circa 1900.
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Panoramic painting
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In 1903 the Specialty Watch Company Helios Built
In 1903, the specialty watch company Helios built a trial run of miniature Boilerplates. The master of the hoax, an expert on Victorian automata, Paul Guinan, “tried” to “rebuild” one of these. The head resembles gas masks that soldiers wore in World War I, but as ornamental brass. The chest is as tubular as a Franklin stove, but gleaming with Baroque detail. Its knobby limbs were fully articulated , like an armature for special effect stop-motion seventy years later, or a thing in The City of Lost Children. […] For over a century, thousands of boilerplates have come down to us. They wait patiently. Patience has always been a virtue of the boilerplate; and of all hoaxes, including the Wizard of Oz himself. Norman M. Klein, in Building the Unexpected. From The Vatican to Vegas, 2004 p179.
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L’Aéronaute, the journal of the Société Française de navigation aerieene
Published from around 1868-1911, L’Aéronaute was a chronicle of early air flight in France.
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Gothic Revivals Polish Decay Until It Turns
[…] Gothic revivals polish decay, until it turns into special effects. Ultimately, they retrofit the haunted house until it looks as if no one has moved in yet. Norman M. Klein, in Building the Unexpected. From The Vatican to Vegas, 2004 p159-160.
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Gurney Was Still Haunted by the Baroque Search for
Gurney was still haunted by the Baroque search for a perfect vacuum, by the study of the phlogiston, as part of the philosophy of nature. So, like a mad Jesuit, he built a piano that played glowing bottles filled with burning hydrogen. Norman M. Klein, in Building the Unexpected. From The Vatican to Vegas, 2004 p150