The Wreck of Hope, a tribute by Guy Laramee

Canadian artist Guy Laramee has been making the rounds lately, his work titled The Great Wall garnering quite a lot of attention. But I’ve decided to take a look at one of his older project called The Wreck of Hope. Based on Casper David Friedrich’s tragic painting The Wreck of the Hope, Laramee’s piece takes on a contemporary, the painting being recreated inside of an oil barrel. Here’s his take:

On a first level, my 3D piece is an obvious comment about how actual is the Romantic position on the failure of civilization – how do we not only get Romanticism out of the closet of history, but how we still construct it. Each turn of modern history seems to provide evidence for the death of ideologies of progress, the ideologies of “hope”. Nowadays, it is petroleum and the destruction of ecosystems that is brought up as proof of the wreck. Indeed my piece could be foreseeing future wrecks, as the Korean are already building oil tankers to cross the now melting Artic Sea. So somehow, doing the piece was a way for me to question our obsession with innovation and the loss of our cultural roots. My personal way of linking myself back to a greater whole was to examine this need I had to reject the past, particularly artistic traditions.

You can read more about his piece by clicking here.

Bobby

An icy stream flows down Roombeek Street

Located in Enschede in the Netherlands, this “stream” is a part of a grand improvement to the Roombeek Street area, creating a civic space that people can enjoy. I really enjoyed the stream area, which during winter looks to me like broken up pieces of ice, the water below peaking around the pieces. It’s also beautiful looking in summer as well, I would totally be one of those kids that jumps across the rocks to get to the other side.

You can see more photos of this project over on Landezine.

Bobby

Watching ice melt can be rather exciting

36000 photos, 40 blocs of ice, 40 timelapses of 4 hours, 25 liters of water. That’s what went into the the making of the this video for Mimi Goese and Ben Neill’s song Cusp. Director Christophe Thockler has done a great job of turning the mundane act of ice melting into something engaging, perhaps even beautiful. It’s funny though, that as cool and exciting the video is, the making of video (see below) shows how rather mundane the process was, just a guy with his Canon 60D chilling in his backyard melting some ice with heat gun. But that’s also sort of the genius part of it all, that you can create such amazing work with just one person and a few simple (ok, expensive) tools.

Bobby

The bright northern lights of Iceland

The story goes that the early settlers of Iceland, wary of strangers coming to their beautiful lands, name it Iceland to dissuade people from visiting, while Greenland, a not so hospitable place, was named such to trick people into visiting. Whether this folk tale is true, it’s undeniable how beautiful Iceland really is. A lot of you really liked the video of Tokyo, so I think you’ll also be rather interested in this video shot by Enrique Pacheco. He does a magnificent job of shooting the wonderful landscapes of Iceland, but then one ups himself by shooting the fantastic northern lights which appear in the night sky. Makes you want to visit, huh?

Bobby

Ice From Other (Atmo)spheres

Of all the exciting places to find ice: a rural german church, a warming hut, a plastic bag, et cetera none are quite as exciting as finding ice somewhere other than earth. It’s exciting to sciencefolk because it points to water, which points to the potential to find extraterrestrial microorganisms. To date, ice has been found on our moon, other planets and other planets’ moons. One of these icely-endowded moons is Europa, which orbits Jupiter along with 63 other natural satellites.

What’s remarkable about Europa is its surface: it’s smooth compared to other moons, but distinguished by shallow cracks and fissures across its icy surface. And the ice makes Europa very bright; so bright that even though it’s over 400 MILLION MILES AWAY, it was first observed 400 years ago using a rudimentary telescope. The images below were taken by space probes with much fancier telescopes. The top image shows Europa’s natural color while the lower ones are colored to exaggerate Europa’s surface features. I think the lineae created by ice tectonics are oddly beautiful. Europa may not have fancy hydrocarbons like Enceladus has spewing out of its south pole, but it has an atmosphere and maybe even a liquid ocean hidden below is icy and rugged surface.

Alex