Art – Page 6 – Montessori Muddle

Life in Four Domains

journal.pone.0015530.g005 — The four domains of life, according to Boyer et al. (2010).

This wonderful, impressionistic image shows representatives of the three domains of life and large viruses, the proposed fourth.

This figure represents the living species in the four small pictures according to the current classification of organisms: eukaryotes (represented by yellow cell), bacteria (represented by green cell), Archaea (represented by blue cell) and viruses (represented by magenta colored Mimivirus).

— Boyer et al. (2010): Boyer M, Madoui M-A, Gimenez G, La Scola B, Raoult D (2010) Phylogenetic and Phyletic Studies of Informational Genes in Genomes Highlight Existence of a 4th Domain of Life Including Giant Viruses. PLoS ONE 5(12): e15530. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0015530

Carl Zimmer has an excellent piece in Discover Magazine that summarizes the research, and sets out the new tree of life. Particularly important, is the fact that viruses can transfer genes with each other. The other domains tend to mix their genes during reproduction.

POV-Ray: 3d rendering

Giles Tran’s amazing rendering of glasses on the counter inspired me to check through my own POV-Ray generated library. Nothing nearly as good, but some of it is still might be useful.

Axial_tilt — Demonstrating the axial tilt of the Earth, this image shows the Earth at the northern hemisphere's summer solstice.

120px-ElipticN_000_2xAplaneClose — Rotating Earth at the northern hemisphere's winter solstice.

You build 3d models in POV-Ray and then export 2d images from whichever point of view you want, so once you have the model set up you can easily change the perspective or even move objects to create animations.

POV-Ray does not have any useful sort of user interface; you’re usually creating your models with computer code. It can therefore be challenging to use, and, as with any 3d programming language, a bit of geometry, trigonometry and algebra are needed.

However, the final results can be impressive. I’m continually amazed each year by the quality of the work added to their Hall of Fame.

For much easier, quicker and not so sophisticated 3d results, I use VPython, which is also a great way to learn programming that outputs 3d images.

Still life

800px-Glasses_800_edit — Image by Gilles Tran.

What makes art? Frank Wilson points out that:

art … never simply transcribes what is “out there,” but selects certain details and arranges them into a harmony that transfigures them.
— Frank Wilson (2010) in “Still life and the alchemy of art“.

We might see arrangements like the stuff sitting on the counter every day, but the image/photography/painting becomes art when the collection is view from a specific perspective that transforms them and highlights details.

Aside from its obvious beauty, what really intrigues me about this picture is where it was taken: In the living room of the Menchers’ apartment, just a few feet from where I was standing. I would never have guessed.

When Eric told me that, I turned and looked, and could see where the vase and the other objects had been placed. But the setting was altogether different from the picture. The living room is a perfectly nice and neat space, and I had just been sitting there, but when I looked at it again there was absolutely nothing about it that would have brought to mind that photo.

Such is the alchemy of art.
— Frank Wilson (2010) in “Still life and the alchemy of art“.

Note: The image at the top of this post is computer generated Gilles Tran, using the free, open-source, 3D rendering program POV-Ray. I’ve played around with POV-Ray and it can be a bit tricky, but you can do interesting things.

Dinner and a Show

At the end of each year, the Middle School puts on Dinner and a Show. As has become traditional, the students performed a play for the Show, and, for dinner, this year they did a Mediterranean themed meal: lasagna, baklava and some sort of cherry drink. The overwhelming feedback from the not necessarily impartial audience, of family members and faculty, seems to be that food and performance were quite a success. And, I have to say, the same applies from my point of view as well. The students did a great job putting everything together and pulling off the performance.

We usually work on Dinner and a Show for the entire second cycle. The first five weeks revolve around choosing the play, learning lines, and planning the meal. Our director, for the second year running, Ms. Jessica Parker, did a wonderful job with the adaptation, staging and working with the kids.

I was extremely lucky this year that I had two students who were really interested in the project. One, an eight grader, had been planning on taking charge since last year. The other, a seventh grader, really wanted to do the food. What was really nice was that, most of the time, they were the ones pushing me to get stuff done.

I’d ask questions like, “Have you started on the playbill yet?”

“Yes,” they’d reply, with exaggerated patience, “We’re still waiting for you to help with the images.”

The sixth week of the cycle, our immersion week, was dedicated entirely to the event; lots of practicing and food preparation. That’s when the students really shone. We had some help making the baklava (thanks Dr. Jen), but the next day, which was spent assembling two (and eventually three) types of lasagna, I only had a couple queries about what to use to boil water for the pasta (an electrical skillet works fairly well).

Everyone had a part in the play, but were also involved in setting things up. Apart from the cooks, there were separate crews for lighting and the backdrops. Once the crews got going, I spent most of my time staying out of the way. While I’d so like to jump in and help with everything, this is the way I think the middle school should work. I count this week as a really good one.

Artistic satellite views of the Earth

usgs-roof-world — The Tibetian Plateau. Image from the satellite Landsat 5 via the Eros Image Gallery.

For the geography nerds, but perhaps also for those with an appreciation of the natural beauty of the world. The US Geological Survey has a series of satellite pictures chosen just for their sheer beauty.

The Landsat satellites that take these pictures usually photograph in more than just the human-visible color spectrum. For many geologic and environmental purposes, different infra-red wavelengths are often better for seeing details on the Earth’s surface. The USGS has a nice primer on the Landsat program. Many of the color images posted here were reconstructed from different color bands.

yukon-delta — Yukon delta. Image from Landsat 7: Earth as Art 3 collection.

The resulting images can be exceptionally beautiful and somewhat surreal. I like that there is an abstract surface beauty, divorced from the content, meaning and understanding that a closer analysis of the images yields to the eye of the trained observer: delicate swirls of algae might be signs of eutrophication to a biologist; dendritic deltas tell the geologist about sediment load, offshore currents and mass balance.

algae-bloom — Phytoplankton bloom around the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea is reminiscent of Van Gogh's Starry Night. Image from Landsat 7.

Saudade

Saudade:
Pronunciation: (from Forvo)
Definition: Portuguese – One of the most beautiful of all words, translatable or not, this word “refers to the feeling of longing for something or someone that you love and which is lost.” Fado music, a type of mournful singing, relates to saudade. (from Jason Wire at MatadorNetwork)

The beauty of the words in Jason Wire’s list, “20 Awesomely Untranslatable Words from Around the World” is that they express somewhat complex emotional concepts.

Last week I had to explain the English word, nostalgia. Its meaning was a little difficult to convey because, when you think about it, to feel nostalgic you need to have had a certain amount of self-reflection. Self-reflection is typically not a strong point of early adolescence, which is why we have Personal World every day.

Then I came across Jason Wire’s list, and there are some wonderful words on there, but the one that resonates right now is the Portuguese “saudade”. I like how it is subtly different from nostalgia, but I also like that there is an entire genre of music, fado, that embodies the word.

NPR has a great review of fado artist, Ana Moura:

Also, in looking up the pronunciation of the word I came across the Forvo website. It has recordings of people saying words from around the world, so you can hear the sounds of words from native speakers. I chose the one in this post, a female Portuguese voice (), because it seems to capture the poignant emotion of the word quite well.