Dendrons, Pisces and the Cosmos
April 29, 2008
This layered image 1440 x 900 at 300 dpi is one stage of the development of my next digitage entitled "Digitage Web2.0 Plus." It is an update on Logo Digitage ( http://snurl.com/25nqe ) in my Flickr album that was the basis for slideshare.net .ppt called Deconstructing Digitage: Web 2.0 as Organic Rhizomic Synapses which has had 1859 views since first uploading 8 months ago.
A comment from slideshare.net cofounder Amit Ranjanon ( http://snurl.com/266mt ) on the .ppt about the low resolution along with the need for .ppt default sizes for to increase shareability, led me to revisit the original .psd file and the .jpg components.
Each layer is being revisited and updated as I learn more about Adobe Photoshop tools and more about each of the component metaphorical images embedded in the many layers. At the same time I am learning more about the organic growth of Web 2.0 Plus (also called Web 3.0, etc). Aggregators and microblogging technologies like twitter http://snurl.com/25t6 have enhanced and simplified connectivity while confusing virtual cartographic projects to visualize the blogosphere as it grows exponentially. I learn from others and also by playing with new technological tools. I remain a bricoleuse, better able to find things in the virtual thrift stores that might come in handy one day. I don’t like to learn by following anymore than the basic instructions and the need-to-know-how things for reasons of security or time-efficiency.
This entry is posted on speechless.
Folksonomy for Flickr
View ocean.flynn’s map
Taken in a place with no name (See more photos or videos here)
This layered image 1440 x 900 at 300 dpi is one stage of the development of my next digitage entitled “Digitage Web2.0 Plus.” It is an update on Logo Digitage ( snurl.com/25nqe ) in my Flickr album that was the basis for slideshare.net .ppt called Deconstructing Digitage: Web 2.0 as Organic Rhizomic Synapses which has had 1859 views since first uploading 8 months ago.
A comment from slideshare.net cofounder Amit Ranjanon ( snurl.com/266mt ) on the .ppt about the low resolution along with the need for .ppt default sizes for to increase shareability, led me to revisit the original .psd file and the .jpg components.
Each layer is being revisited and updated as I learn more about Adobe Photoshop tools and more about each of the component metaphorical images embedded in the many layers. At the same time I am learning more about the organic growth of Web 2.0 Plus (also called Web 3.0, etc). Aggregators and microblogging technologies like twitter snurl.com/25t6 have enhanced and simplified connectivity while confusing virtual cartographic projects to visualize the blogosphere as it grows exponentially. I learn from others and also by playing with new technological tools. I remain a bricoleuse, better able to find things in the virtual thrift stores that might come in handy one day. I don’t like to learn by following anymore than the basic instructions and the need-to-know-how things for reasons of security or time-efficiency.
Flickr groups to which this image belongs: Art & Theory Nobs (Pool), Folksonomy (Pool); Digg It Flickr. Pool (Pool) [X]
Flickr folksonomy: folksonomy, flickr, digitage, creation, creativecommons, connectivity, blogging, adobephotoshop, 1440×900, microblogging, mindbrain, mind, neuralarchitectonics, neuroscience, portrait, powerpoint, powerpointbackground, presentation, raptureofthedeepinternet, reflexivity, rhizome, sharingpresentations, selfportrait, slides, slideshare, synapses, synapticgasp, tagclouds, tagging, taxonomy, technology, theoryinpictures, twitter, vastation, visualization, visualizations, web20, wordpresscom,
Earth Day in Calgary
April 20, 2008
“Just like spring time in Alberta Warm sunny days endless skies of blue Then without a warning Another winter storm comes raging through . . . ” http://www.lyrics007.com
The living room is exploding with tomato, thyme, parsley, chive, pansies, geranium, wheat plants, etc waiting for May 24th. As the snow falls I think of composters, rainbarrels, herb gardens . . .
Earth Day April 2009
The Calgary Horticulture Society is hosted an even 2009 at the Spruce Meadows, Calgary, AB with an entrance fee of $10. “This annual event brings together over 7,000 gardening and outdoor living enthusiasts for a trade fair complete with vendors, speakers from across Canada, and experts from the gardening community. From its start in the Hillhurst Community Centre with a few hundred guests, the Show has grown considerably each year.” Experts will be available to answer questions. They also host a Plant Share event on Saturday, May ?, 2009 from 9 a.m. to 12 Noon (Hours may be reduced if weather is poor) on the grassy field west of the Society office at 208 – 50 Ave. S.W.
The Calgary Earth Day events will be held from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m, Saturday, April 25, 2009 at the TELUS World of Science, (701 11 Street SW). The event will be hosted by environmental groups from Calgary and across Alberta, and will feature fun and educational environmentally-themed games for the whole family. While the workshops and green activities are free with regular admission to the World of Science. These local environmental groups, businesses and projects will present their green projects:REAP, City of Calgary Waste and Recycling Services, Alberta Conservation Team, Cerebral Palsy Association in Alberta, Claudia’s Choices, Community Natural Foods, Students from Tanbridge Academy, Alberta Institute for Wildlife Conservation, Scouts Canada A .pdf list of Earth Day Celebration Workshops and Activities in Calgary 2009.
In contrast to the grey skies and high moisture of Vancouver Island’s unique ecosystem, Calgary’s sunny blue skies and dry summers provide different gardening challenges. I’ve become very interested by xeriscape gardening principles which include choosing low-maintenance and drought-resistant plants like stonecrops, sage, goldenrod, yucca and shrub roses. See Calgary Zoo and Botanical Gardens.
Hares
With so many green areas in Calgary has a lot of wildlife such as the wooded areas of Fish Creek Provincial Park along Fish Creek, Sandy Beach Park, Weaselhead, Griffith Woods Natural Areas, Bowness Park, Edworthy Park and along the shores of the Bow and Elbow riversbut they ares along the Bow River., Calgary has a lot of wildlife in the city including huge Snowshoe Hares with voracious appetites. Various gardeners have suggested cayenne pepper. I’ve also been told to try orange peels .
Ground cover
Ground cover, such as rocks, wood chips (cedar chips) conserves moisture in the soil and protects it against effects of weathering while reducing the growth of weeds.
Mulching
Mulching “is one of the best ways to conserve water. It also reduces erosion and discourages weeds. Spread grass clippings or other mulch materials around the base of plants and shrubs. Applying organic matter (such as ground bark, animal manure, softwood sawdust, peat moss, leaves and wood or vegetable products) to soil increases its ability to hold water, and improves nutrient content.”
Geotextiles . . .
Landmaster, a weed control fabric is sold in rolls (3′ x 50′) that last five years. The fabric lets water and air through to the vegetable and/or floral plants but prevents weeds from growing. Weeds should be cleared from the planting area before laying the fabric which can be fit around existing plants or cut with X-shapes to place new plants through fabric. The fabric should be covered with 3″ – 4″ of mulch. Large or medium bark nuggets are recommended since weeds may grow through finer mulch.
Low-maintenance alpine plants suit rock gardens.
Lawns are high maintenance and thirsty.
Rain Barrels
The Clean Calgary Association: Environmental Education, Products and Services, are having a Rain Barrel Sale in partnership with the City of Calgary on
Rain Barrel Description:
The rain barrels are 45-gallon, food-grade plastic barrels fitted with two taps and a screened hole for a downspout.
More choices of rainbarrels . . .
Rainbarrels, composters and many other environmentally friendly products are available all year round at
The EcoStore
809 4th Avenue SW
tel: 230-1443 ext 222
Wed, Fri, Sat 10-4 pm
Use large recycled containers from restaurants, usually used for bulk supplies of tomato paste, etc.
Composter
“Composting helps reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by reducing the number of trips trucks must make to the landfill as well as the amount of methane released by our landfills (See here for more info).”
“Nourish your lawn and garden with a thin layer of well-decomposed compost and rely less on chemical fertilizers.You can make your own compost for free. Compost helps the soil hold moisture so plants need less water, and provides a slow-release source of nutrients for plants.”
Worm composter:
The “two types of earthworm best suited to worm composting are the redworms: Eisenia foetida (commonly known as red wiggler, brandling, or manure worm) and Lumbricus rubellus They are often found in aged manure and compost heaps. Dew-worms (large size worms found in soil and compost) are not likely to survive.” For detailed information on worm composting visit this site.
Xeriscaping
Xeriscape gardening principles include choosing low-maintenance and drought-resistant plants like stonecrops, sage, goldenrod, yucca and shrub roses See Calgary Zoo and Botanical Gardens.
“Choose labour-saving plants such as those that are drought tolerant and pest resistant. There will be less need to control pests, which eliminates the need for pesticides that might affect your health, harm other living things and find their way into local streams. And you will use less water.”
Plant waterwise plants. “By reducing lawn area or by incorporating drought-tolerant plants that need less water, gardeners can help conserve water during hot, dry summer months. Small leaves, fat leaves, grey leaves, and fuzzy leaves are all indicators of drought-hardy plants.” See here for more info.
Native plants
Ornamental Grasses
Ecoscaping
“Natural yard care (or “ecoscaping”) is about working with nature to create a yard that is attractive and easy to maintain with a minimum of resources. Consider transforming a high-maintenance lawn into an inviting, drought-tolerant landscape that will become an inspiration for the neighbourhood and an important part of its biodiversity.”
Middle ground gardening
Lawns
“Types of grasses in most Calgary lawns are actually cold season varieties which is why they require so much water and maintenance.” Gerald Vander Pyl for the Calgary Herald.
“Leave grass clippings on the lawn after you mow instead of raking and bagging them. This is also known as “grasscycling.”You save time, and the nutrients in the clippings provide organic matter and from 15 to 40 per cent of your lawn’s nitrogen needs.”
Favourites
Kalanchoe blossfeldiana is valued for its unusual foliage. Flowers can be cut to remain fresh for as long as eight weeks. Popular varieties of the kalanchoe are the “Calypso,” “Bonanza,” and “Garnet.” Kalanchoe is both a house-plant and gardening favorite since it requires very little care in order to thrive. Kalanchoe plants are attractive in a basket with ivy and curly willows.
Courtesy Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder
Common Name: kalanchoe
Zone: 10 to 12
Plant Type: Herbaceous perennial
Family: Crassulaceae
Native Range: Madagascar
Height: 0.5 to 1.5 feet
Spread: 0.5 to 1.5 feet
Bloom Time: Seasonal bloomer
Bloom Color: Scarlet, pink, salmon or yellow
Sun: Full sun to part shade
Water: Dry to medium
Maintenance: Low
Butterflies
Birds along the Bow River in Calgary in April: Bald Eagle, Northern Flicker, White-throated Sparrow, Black-billed Magpie, Black-capped Chickadee, Rock Pigeon, Mallard, Canada Goose, Herring Gull, House Sparrow, Franklin’s Gull (small, black-headed) is very common in the prairies.
Birds in Fish Creek park . . .
Worms
Water
An expert gardener suggested that a very small, inexpensive (?) container could be installed with minimal change to a garden even on a rental property or where ownership is temporary. (It can be dug up when you leave if the next owner does not like it). Koy are relatively inexpensive (easy to replace), quite hardy and work hard to keep ponds clean of insects. Her neighbourhood cats don’t bother them. Water plants are expensive but even one adds to the pond’s appeal.
Potentially Problematic Plants
Avoid introducing plants described as “seeds freely.” List of Calgary “weeds.”
Web 2.0+ as Organic Rhizomic Synapses
April 13, 2008
Web 2.0 as Organic Rhizomic Synapses: Deconstructing Digitage is the theme of a PowerPoint Presentation uploaded to slideshare.
I am updating the PowerPoint Presentation (2006, last updated 2007-06-16) “Deconstructing Digitage: Web 2.0 as Organic Rhizomic Synapses” with higher resolution background images (1440 x 900 at 300 dpi). This presentation was one of the last blogosphere projects I worked on before leaving Cowichan Bay.
I am not reorganizing folders to update this presentation “Web 2.0 as Organic Rhizomic Synapses” with this higher resolution to include the next generation of blogosphere tools, aggregators, lifestreaming, etc. I want to increase the use of hypertext in the PowerPoint to more adequately reflect the connectivity of these open source tools.
MyAdobePhotoshop subfolder >> PSD.4.PPT to include .psd images developed for eventual use as .ppt background images but their fully functioning layering capacity intact (ie not flattened for .jpg). The final flattened images will be in my >> MyDigitalImages >> “Theme” >> PPT.theme.title Taxanomy, (particularly of my digital images that are constantly being used in thematic digitages) is more of an art than a science for me as overlapping layers make folders, subfolders and filenames almost impossible to manage, store and recover. Sometimes I use Picassa’s visual timeline feature to locate the newest versions of images. The challenge with each new data management technical tool is the processing of years of previous data collections in new systems. It is not unlike the challenge encountered by the embodied brain with its complex rhizomic synapses when confronted with new or unfamiliar paradigms and perspectives.
I am no longer sure that Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Web 4.0 will be the most relevant taxonomy for categorizing technical tools that emerge from virtual laboratory test tubes at an astonishing high speed. For now I am just using Web 2.0+.
wikipedia.org
thinkfree
Flickr.com raw or enhanced in AdobePhotoShop >> flickrvision
Picassa
AdobePhotoShop
youtube >> Canon digital camera raw
google videos >> Canon digital camera raw
wordpress.com
Google docs
del.icio.us vs EndNote
citeulike
blist.com
digg.com
.rss
igoogle.com
slideshare.net
twitter.com
tinyurls.com
snurl.com
Search Engines
google.com
yahoo.com
Customized
Customized Google Search
Swicki
Zotero vs EndNote: 2006 – 2008
April 11, 2008
There was a conflict between firefox and therefore zotero on the PC (Vista?) setup I began using in 2007 and continue to use. With the crashes, clean-up and switch I was forced back to Internet Explorer and “lost” the zotero library I had been slowing building. Since then I haven’t taken the risk of switching back to Firefox and I miss many of its features.
My Endnote librairies remained intact as I had backed them up in multiple spaces both virtual and really real.
Since the crashes, clean-up and switch, I have been drawn back to Endnote as the safety deposit box of my webliographies and bibliographies.
I am not comfortable being so dependent on a product I cannot update (since I am no longer affiliated with the academic institutions that provided me with access and or licensed software)
But EndNote is reliable, robust and ready-to-use. It is really like FoxPro’s dynamic query searching (relational query by example?) capacity.
It lets me break the rules a little so I can use it to keep track of glossaries, timelines, biographies using their titles fields, etc in unconventional ways. It generates useful data such as my timelines in .html format. It lets me share my bibliographies seamlessly on my blogs.It’s a bit like owning a very old Volvo (my licensed EndNote software dates from c. 2002-3? and will not support the http://www.myendnoteweb.com Alex so kindly recommended) that is ultra solid and dependable when I know I really cannot afford the repairs. Except that so much of my data is softwere dependent and there is always that concern that I might lose access to my own research as I did with FoxPro, ToolBook and Olympus. (Files no longer open because I am missing licensed upgrades). This was my motivation for experimenting with open source.
My original speechless page (2006-12-13) speechless >> web 2.0 >> Zotero vs EndNote has been attracting the most visits of all my posts lately so I have decided to update it as this post entitled “Zotero vs EndNote: 2006 – 2008″.
I would be really interested in Alex Liberzon’s experiences with www.myendnoteweb.com, www.CiteULike.org and LaTeX. See Zotero vs EndNote post (2007-01-23) has been finding out about . Says: January 23, 2007 at 7:52 pm e
Like Farrel Buchinsky (2007-02-17) I am looking forward to a seamless interface between Google docs, open source word processors and Zotero, Connotea or even Endnote (?) where citations and bibliographies will be automatically generated. My wish list/to-do-list continues to include a library database using Zotero that has compatibilities with free source like Google docs that worked like EndNote and the big name proprietorial software (BNPS) I became dependent on.
Since working with Google docs I have enjoyed the fact the my PC does not crash as it used to with the BNPS. But I still haven’t taken the time to learn how to integrate zotero with Google docs (or grant applications and manuscripts). Once I do I will post it. I use my own blog more as a How-did-I-do-that? not as a How-you-should-do-it?. There are better sites for the latter. I am a bricoleuse.
I would like to really use My EndNote Web as Alex Leberzon suggested but this service is only available for EndNote 10 licensed users. I’m EndNote 8. I have also started to investigate Cite-U-Like but I am discouraged by its academic criteria-based exclusivity. (I’m not even sure it accepts New York Times and Wall Street Journal articles? Concepts of authority (who can be a knower?) need to be re-examined in the era of Web 2.0+.) I still prefer deli.ci.ous. I have not been able to update my MySwickis and my Customized Google Search as much as I would like as these are invaluable resources for focused research.
Testing COinS Generator:
(Žižek, Slavoj. 2004. Organs without Bodies: on Deleuze and Consequences. New York/London. Routledge)
Bindenstrich-Ethik: Hyphen-Ethics
April 10, 2008
Barbara Krueger’s (1983) “We Won’t Play Nature to your Culture” somehow comes to mind when reading Žižek on nature/culture. During breaks I would walk through empty rooms to discover changes curators had made in their spaces. I was a teenager when I began to feel at home in the silent, often light-filled buildings that held public art collections. I was annoyed by, resented, then was intrigued by, read about, studied, spent time with pieces that came to be my favourites. Visual artists were deeply informed about and experimenting with emerging, complex theories, cultural studies, political philosophy . . . academics did their best to avoid them until it became impossible to do so.
Reading Slavoj Žižek’s Organs without Bodies is a lot like my non-linear NGC meanderings in the 1990s. His writing provokes me but there is enough brilliance there that makes me keep his book in the reading stand beside my monitor, opened at different pages on different days. He is not a lazy thinker. Each page is like a hypertext reader indexing a myriad of artists, philosophers, scientists and entrepreneurs. He discusses Hawkins, Hegel, Heidegger and Hitchcock with equal comfort because he has actually ‘read’ and analysed’ their work.
I was drawn to his chapter section on hyphen-ethics more because of the probing, unsettling questions it raises than because of his conclusions. It will be one of those recurring themes that will be part of my own lifelong teaching, learning and research.
|
“What is false with todays discussion concerning the ethical consequences of biogenetics is that it is rapidly turning into what Germans call Bindenstrich-Ethik, the ethics of the hyphen – technology-ethics, environment-ethics, and so on. This ethics does have a role to play, a role homologous to that of the provisional ethic Descartes mentions at the beginning of his Discourse on Method: when we engage on a new path, full of dangers and shattering new insights, we need to stick to old established rules as a practical guide for our daily lives, although we are well aware that the new insights will compel us to provide a fresh foundation for our entire ethical edifice (in Descartes case, this new foundation was provided by Kant, in his ethics of subjective autonomy). Today, we are in the same predicament: the provisional ethics cannot replace the need for a thorough reflection of the emerging New (Žižek 2004:123).” “In short, what gets lost here, in this hyphen-ethics, is simply ethics as such. The problem is not that universal ethics gets dissolved in particular topics but, on the contrary, that particular scientific breakthroughs are directly confronted with the old humanist “values” (say, how biogenetics affects our sense of dignity and autonomy). This, then, is the choice we are confronting today: either we choose the typically postmodern stance of reticence (let’s not go to the end, let’s keep a proper distance toward the scientific Thing so that this Thing will not draw us into a black hole, destroying all our moral and human notions), or we dare to “tarry with the negative (das Verweilen beim Negativen),” that is, we dare to fully examine the consequences of scientific modernity with the wager that “our Mind is a genome” will also function as an infinite judgment (Žižek 2004:123-4).” “The main consequence of the scientific breakthrough in biogenetics is the end of nature. Once we know the rules of its construction, natural organisms are transformed into objects amenable to manipulation. Nature, human and inhuman, is thus “desubstantialized,” deprived of its impenetrable density, of what Heidegger called “earth.” Biogenetics, with its reduction of the human psyche itself to an object of technological manipulation, is therefore effectively a kind of empirical instantiation of what Heidegger perceived as the “danger” inherent to modern technology. Crucial here is the interdepedence of man and nature: by reducing man to just another object whose properties can be manipulated, what we lose is not (only) humanity but nature itself. In this sense, Francis Fukuyama is right. Humanity itself relies on some notion of “human nature” as what we inherited and was simply given to us, the impenetrable dimension in/of ourselves into which we are born/thrown. The paradox is thus that there is man only insofar as there is inhuman nature (Heidegger’s “earth”). (Žižek 2004:124).” |
Notes
Slavoj Žižek is a dialectical-materialist philosopher and psychoanalyst. He also co-directs the International Centre for Humanities at Birkbeck College. The Parallax View appeared last year.
Webliography and Bibliography
Žižek, Slavoj. 2004. “Against hyphen-ethics.” Organs without Bodies: on Deleuze and Consequences. New York/London: Routledge. pp. 123-132.
Titles >> Subtitles: Organs without Bodies >> on Deleuze and Consequences >> Consequences >> Science >> Cognitivism with Freud, Autopoiesis, Memes, Memes Everywhere, Against Hyphen-Ethics, Cognitive Closure?, “Little Jolts of Enjoyment”,
folksonomy: cultural studies, theory, philosophy, Deleuze, globalization, democracy, democratization, war on terror, Joan Copjec, biogenetics, hyphen-ethics, capitalism, Richard Dawkins, Jacques Derrida, Daniel Dennett, ethics, Ethical turn, Habermas, Kant, Laclau, Levinas, Lacan, Varela, religion, Pascal, Spinoza, The Quite American, Hegel, Heidegger, Massumi, Fukuyama, liberal democracy, Self, personhood, ethics, mind/brain, mind body, psychoanalysis, nature/culture, technology, mind and consciousness,
More by Slavoj Žižek:
Žižek, Slavoj. 2003. “Bring me my Philips Mental Jacket: Slavoj Žižek welcomes the prospect of biogenetic intervention.” London Review of Books. 25:10. May.
Žižek, Slavoj. 1999. “Attempts to Escape the Logic of Capitalism.” Review of Vaclav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts by John Keane.” London Review of Books. 21:21. October 28.
Žižek, Slavoj. 1999. ‘You May!’ London Review of Books. 21:6. 18 March.
Bildung:
April 8, 2008
In 2004 just before I became totally lost in my cybernarcosis, cyberdeliria, enraptured by the deep internet I played with the digital image of the foremost German Romantic landscape painter David Casper Friedrich’s (1774-1840) Wanderer Overlooking the Sea of Fog (1818 ) His anti-classical work was part of a new synthesis of art, philosophy, and science focusing on the natural world which seemed somehow embued with the spiritual experiences of life. Friedrich’s timeless depiction of a wanderer looking out over a sea of fog evokes the journey of life towards higher more difficult summits. I enjoy the irony that the man depicted in his original image was a mere warden, not a world traveller. David Casper Friedrich gained the admiration of the poet Goethe, “the initiator of the tradition of the Bildungsroman, the novel of formation” (more). “In Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship the protagonist undergoes a journey of Bildung, or self-realization” (more).
| “With interventions into man’s genetic inheritance, the domination over nature reverts into an act of taking-control-over-oneself, which changes our generic-ethical self-understanding and can disturb the necessary conditions for an autonomous way of life and universalistic understanding of morals (Jantschek 2001 cited by Habermas cited in Žižek 125).” |
- Bildung is the painful struggle to form/educate one’s natural dispositions through which an individual develops his/her moral identity.
- Žižek summarized Habermas’ concern with biogenetics argued that biogenetics threaten a vital concept of moral identity formation based on the painful lifelong struggle (Bildung) to realize one’s innate potential while educating one’s natural dispositions. Direct biogenetic interventions render the notion of such an education meaningless. Also, at an intersubjective level
tag cloud: biogenetics,
Webliography and Bibliography
- Habermas, Jurgens. Lecture. Marburg.
- Jantschek, Thorsten. 2001. “Ein ausgezehrter Hase.” Die Zeit. July 5.
- Žižek, Slavoj. 2004. “Against hyphen-ethics.” Organs without Bodies: on Deleuze and Consequences. New York/London: Routledge. pp. 123-132.
Slow World: Light Changing on Growing Plants
April 7, 2008
Slow World Background 1440 x 900 res: 300One bud is slowly opening into an apple blossom on a cut branch in a large blue glass vase. I had clipped them in March so I could insert the fast-foward spring green into the acrylic painting I am working on in my living room.
The urgent need to nurture the slow world is heightened after reading the NYT article on the health risk to bloggers who race against time.
Holomorphic forms on blue teapot
April 5, 2008
I was first introduced to the work of Xianfeng David Gu’s mesmerizing Escher-like visualizations of Computational Conformal Geometry on the jacket design of Spiro, George G. Spiro’s inspiring publication entitled Poincare’s Prize: The Hundred-Year Quest to Solve One of Math’s Greatest Puzzles (2007). It was his visualization of holomorphic (differentials) forms on the surface of a teapot that immediately caught my attention. (I had borrowed the book from the public library because of my fascination with Perelman’s story). 
My interest in surface reflections hidden in larger paintings developed into renditions of the reflections, particularly on spherical surfaces, encouraged in part by M. C. Escher’s iconic self-portrait.
In 1999 I began a series entitled Blue teapot where I emphasized the white visual noise/pattern on the highly reflective sephrical surface of a shiny (blue) sphere. Intuitively using laws of perspective I sought the diverse and elusive vanishing points of the spaces behind me, above me and below me as well as the more obvious space defined by Renaissance linear perspective in front of me. I was conscious of the inability of the author/artist/subject to eliminate the presence of the embodied self from the centre of these spheres.
I’ve incorporated this into different paintings since then sometimes creating a self-reflexive miniaturized mise-en-abyme effect.
Webliography and Bibliography
Gu, Xianfeng David. 2006. “Riemann Uniformization using Ricci Flow Method.” www.cise.ufl.edu/~gu/tutorial/Ricci_Report.pdf
Gu, Xianfeng David. 2006. “Computational Conformal Geometry Lecture Notes: Topology, Differential Geometry, Complex Analysis” http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~gu/tutorial/ComputationalConformalGeometry.pdf
Gu, Xianfeng David. 2006. “Isothermal Coordinates.” in PowerPoint “Computational Conformal Geometry Lecture Notes: Topology, Differential Geometry, Complex Analysis” http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~gu/tutorial/ComputationalConformalGeometry.pdf
Gu, Xianfeng David. 2006. “Figure 19: Holomorphic 1-forms on surfaces.” in PowerPoint “Computational Conformal Geometry Lecture Notes: Topology, Differential Geometry, Complex Analysis” http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~gu/tutorial/ComputationalConformalGeometry.pdf
Spiro, George G. 2007. Poincare’s Prize: The Hundred-Year Quest to Solve One of Math’s Greatest Puzzles. New York: Dutton/Penguin.
Water Drops on Rose Petals: Strong Molecular Cohesion
April 3, 2008
The strong Coulomb force or intermolecular attraction between water molecules in water drops due to the polarity of hydrogen’s tetrahedral configuration, is an excellent example of cohesion between like molecules. When refering to unlike molecules the term is adhesion.
Thank you wiki for the info and Melanie for the rose.
“Image of the layer on the term “cohesion” is from the Visual Thesaurus, Copyright ©1998-2008 Thinkmap, Inc. All rights reserved.” And such attribution, when clicked should also link back to the Site.
The resolution of this PowerPoint slide is set at W:1440 pixels x H:900 pixels which is the slowest speed and highest fidelity that the author can set under the Slide Show settings >> Set Up Show >> Slide Show Resolution. The background image of the PowerPoint program screen was frozen in Adobe Photoshop and saved as a .jpg at a resolution of 300 dpi (pixels per inch), 3.71 M, and a Document size of W12.19 cm x H7.62 cm.
Update:
I was unsure of Visual Thesaurus’ Terms of Use for the visualizations of terms generated by their software, so I filled in their on-line form in some detail. Two hours later I received a phone call from them! When I explained that the image was to be used on my personal blogs including Flickr and WordPress and that they might be incorporated into a presentation at the Association for Baha’i Studies annual conference which is on Social Cohesion, the representative immediately agreed that there was no problem with using it in this way! I was impressed with the rapidity of the response.
Since I am experimenting with free open source material I cannot purchase their user-pay products but I can certainly recommend the minimalist, elegant and functional design of their visualizations and recommend that those who can investigate both MindMap and Visual Thesaurus as technologies.
folksonomy: connectivity, twitter, slideshare, speechless, flickr, PowerPoint, AdobePhotoshop, image:resolution, Creative Commons, design, social cohesion, Visual Thesaurus, mind maps,
