HOTARU Firefly Dreams at Sea
September 25, 2011: Chocolate Museum Sarotti Moor Figures Mayan Clay Dancer Sculptures The history of chocolate began in Central and South America around 1100 BC where it was worshipped as a source of power, health, and divinity. The first documented usage of the cocoa bean dates to the time of the Olmecs. The beans were ground into a powder and mixed with spices to create a frothy, bitter drink. The chocolate beverages served as sacred offerings to Mayan and Aztec gods. In Mayan religion, the gods of death behead two immortal twins. The head of one is hung from the branch of a cocoa tree, but his magical force allows him to mate with a woman who bears two gods, who together defeat the gods of death and become the sun and the moon. Machine at work making chocolate pieces Chocolates at the Museum shop I shall collect plants and animals, investigate and analyse the heat, the elasticity and the magnetic and electrical concentration of the atmosphere, determine geographical lengths and breadths, measure mountains - but none of this is the true purpose of my travels. My actual, only aim is this - to investigate the interconnection and intermingling of all natural forces, the influence of decreased nature on living plant and animal creation. Alexander von Humboldt Alexander von Humboldt travelled to America between 1799 and 1804 as an explorer, and not as a conquistador. "His expedition is considered the first purely scientific exploration in the intellectual history of Europe. His idea was the concept of a 'cosmos', an all-encompassing, holisitc description of the earth. Humboldt was convinced that all earthly structures interact in a single organism. Everything is interconnected, and everything has an effect. He is considered the founder of modern ecology and transdisciplinary thought, and as the mentor of a global, respectful and peaceful co-operation between all the earth's inhabitants." September 17, 2011: Soviet Childhood I was due to get my Lenin badge at the start of the second semester, but by then the Soviet Union was gone and with it the Communist symbols, heroes and ideals. Like many Soviet children, I lost sight of my future. My teachers were equally confused, no longer knowing what to teach. Even my family's favorite vacation spot was suddenly in a foreign land. I could never imagine then that the rules I thought of as unbreakable would dissolve one by one over the next 20 years.The Associated Press It is art that makes life... makes interest, makes importance, . . . and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.Henry James This story, the paintings of Pyotr Kotov, and photographs of Soviet children have sparked my inspiration today, and I hope to begin a digital painting on the innocence of childhood or disintegrated empires or the monumental in the everyday before classes begin! I hope I can complete it over the next two weeks. I will document the process here. September 16, 2011: Buckminster Fuller Exhibit Hermann Maier Neustadt inspired by Fuller Glass balloon cluster installation Jedes Jetzt ist das Jetzt einer bestimmten Erkennbarkeit. Every moment in time is a moment of particular perceptibility.Walter Benjamin August 29, 2011: Schloss Linderhof, Bavaria As for the inexplicable turmoil... what would we be without it, Monica? How would the mettle of our souls be honed without passion? Never forget the etymological origin of that beautiful and telling word. "Passion" derives from "patior," which in Latin means "to suffer." Suffering, experience, pain, are both the denotations as well as the conduit to living... to life itself... Authentic self-recognition always arrives in navigating the unknown, whether the charted landscape is inner and allegorical or outer and literal. I am wishing you love, luck, and joy through it all.Sabrina Sadique August 29, 2011: House en route to Schloss Linderhof August 27, 2011: Rothenburg, Hotel Markusturm August 27, 2011: Rothenburg, in the supermarket August 27, 2011: Rothenburg, Hotel Reichsküchenmeister << NEWER		Monica is an aspiring architect, current student, painter, artist, residing for a year in Germany. Here she collates her photos with evocative quotes she encounters. I tell you: one must have still chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourself. Friedrich Nietzsche They rode out on the high prarie and slowed the horeses to a walk and the stars swarmed around them out of the blackness. They heard somewhere in that tenentless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was. They rode out on the round dias of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it. And which carried them and bore them up into the swarming stars so they rode, not under them, but among them. And they rode at once both jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric. Like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing. Cormac McCarthy Archives: 2011: September Themes: art architecture photography theory philosophy ecology innovation imagination