“Powers of Ten takes us on an adventure in magnitudes. Starting at a picnic by the lakeside in Chicago, this famous film transports us to the outer edges of the universe.

Every ten seconds we view the starting point from ten times farther out until our own galaxy is visible only a s a speck of light among many others.

Returning to Earth with breathtaking speed, we move inward- into the hand of the sleeping picnicker- with ten times more magnification every ten seconds.

Our journey ends inside a proton of a carbon atom within a DNA molecule in a white blood cell.”

POWERS OF TEN © 1977 EAMES OFFICE LLC
www.eamesoffice.com http://powersof10.com/

Dr. Yoshiro Nakamatsu [above] holds the world record for inventions – over 3,000 in total – including the floppy disk, the karaoke machine, the taxi meter, the CD, the DVD and the digital watch.

He claims that many of his best ideas come underwater, at the moment half a second before death due to oxygen deprivation, and between midnight and 4am – what he calls ‘the golden time’ – after which he gets four hours sleep – he says any more than 6 hours sleep a night leads to decreased brainpower.

“Underwater there is no oxygen, therefore, just before death, 0.5 seconds before death, I can suddenly create new invention, because of lack of oxygen – brain condition is completely different from normal condition… Brain becomes completely different power and creates completely different new idea. Under the water suddenly comes from another world, different idea comes”

[I'm quoting verbatim, so as not to misquote]

In order to write down his ideas in the moment just after he has had them, he has also invented a notepad which can be used underwater.

He also doesn’t seem too hot on brainstorming for the purposes of invention:

“Completely alone is very important – you know this so-called exchanging ideas several people discussing this, mean nothing to create new invention. Invention submit to only one person… every discussion is waste of time”

As for his motives for inventing:

“I’m not doing invention for make money, my special invention is love. By my invention, every people in the world will become happy – that is my love to them”

As heard on ‘Jon Ronson on Being Alone‘, radio program on BBC Radio 4.

Dr. E. J. Marey – Chronographic image of a man in black clothes with a white stripe on the side walking past a black wall. 1884. From ‘Uit De Geschiedenis van De Fotografie’ p.132

Having read and been visually inspired by J. G. Ballard’s description of ‘Marey’s Chronograms’ (shouldn’t that be ‘Chronographs’?) in ‘The Atrocity Exhibition’, I assumed that this was a clever Ballardian concept.

A couple of weeks ago, leafing through a flea market find ‘Uit De Geschiedenis van De Fotografie’ [From the History of Photography], I was surprised to to see an actual Chronograph made by Étienne-Jules Marey.

Dr. E. J. Marey – Chronographic image of movement phases of flexible reed. 1884 (The man is probably Marey). From ‘Uit De Geschiedenis van De Fotografie’ p.133

I was aware of Eadweard Muybridge and his motion photography, but had never heard or seen anything by Marey, who’s work pre-dated Muybridge.

From Muybridge’s wikipedia entry:

“Recent scholarship has pointed to the influence of Étienne Jules de Marey on Muybridge’s later work. Muybridge visited Marey’s studio in France and saw Marey’s stop-motion studies before returning to the U.S. to further his own work in the same area.

From ‘The Atrocity Exhibition’ – Marey’s Chronograms

Dr. Nathan passed the illustration across his desk to Margaret Travis. ‘Marey’s Chronograms are multiple-exposure photographs in which the element of time is visible – the walking human figure, for example, is represented as a series of dune-like lumps.’

Dr Nathan accepted a cigarette from Catherine Austin, who had sauntered forward from the incubator at the rear of the office. Ignoring her quizzical eye, he continued, ‘Your husband’s brilliant feat was to reverse the process.

Using a series of photographs of the most commonplace objects – this office, let us say, a panorama of New York skyscrapers, the naked body of a woman, the face of a catatonic patient – he treated them a if they already were chronograms and extracted the element of time.’

Dr Nathan lit his cigarette with care. ‘The results were extraordinary. A very different world was revealed. The familiar surroundings of our lives, even our smallest gestures, were seen to have totally altered meanings. As for the reclining figure of a film star, or this hospital…’

J.G. Ballard – The Atrocity Exhibition p.6

From the notes, p16:

‘An Individual is a four-dimensional object of greatly elongated form; in ordinary language we say that he has considerable extension in time and insignificant extension in space.’ Eddington, Space, Time and Gravitation

A bird shat directly onto me as I was cycling along. I heard a wet thwap, and looked down to find this. Looked quite nice, I thought.

More birdshit designs here & here

There are lots of other examples of the same single perspective theme, often with circles, on his website.

This reminded me of a few other examples of this; firstly Esther Stocker, which I saw recently on But Does It Float:

And this video for Etienne De Crecy’s “Le patron est devenu fou!” from the excellent (and none more ‘French Touch’) album Super Discount:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And this, which is I think the first example of it I saw, from David Carson’s book 2nd sight:

02-06-10: just found another nice one:

from / via here.

22-11-10: and some more, from a photographer called Georges Rousse:

via here, here, here & here.

An early inspiration for me.
Seen last year at the Warhol film exhibition at the SMCS.

Raster man vibrations, yeah.

illustration from hans von gersdorff’s book ‘feldtb?ch der wundartzney: newlich getruckt und gebessert’,
1529, nicked from designboom.

Nice “overview of the evolution of anatomical knowledge and the visual documentation that has inspired physicians and public alike”, over at designboom.

Richard Wilson – Turning The Place Over.

“Turning the Place Over consists of an 8 metres diameter ovoid cut from the façade of a building and made to oscillate in three dimensions. The revolving façade rests on a specially designed giant rotator, usually used in the shipping and nuclear industries, and acts as a huge opening and closing ‘window’, offering recurrent glimpses of the interior during its constant cycle during daylight hours.

The ovoid section of facade is then mounted on a central spindle, aligned on a specific angle to the building. When at rest, the ovoid section of facade would fit flush into the rest of the building. The angled spindle is, however, placed on a set of powerful motorised industrial rollers and wil rotate. As it rotates, the facade not only becomes completely inverted, but will also oscillate into the building and out into the street, revealing the interior of the building and only being flush with the building at one point during its rotation.

This astonishing feat of engineering will stun audiences on many levels. Disturbing and disorientating from a distance, from close-up passers-by have a thrilling experience as the building rotates above them.”

Description from here.

After searching around, it turns out he also made the amazing piece 20:50 – a room half filled with sump oil which you can walk into, which was at the Saatchi Gallery.

The Saatchi Collection, London © Courtesy the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London
Photo: Edward Woodman

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk
Photograph: Linda Nylind

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk

Good article from the artist’s perspective here

And also ‘Slice of Reality’: