3.14 Pi Day – Really?

Today is Pi Day apparently. I have never really understood this for three reasons: (a) Pi is an irrational number and therefore is not 3.14 but rather 3.14159235… ad infinitum; (b) because of point (a) we were always taught to use 22/7 for the value of Pi at school in the days of mental mathematics; and (c) in the vast majority of the world where the date format is dd-mmm-yyyy not mm-dd-yy, the fractional number for Pi of 22/7 would be the 22nd day in July Therefore that would make much more sense to me to be Pi Day, but I guess pinning it to 14th of March just proves how much sway the US has in the world!

That being said, I looked to see if I had any pi-related imagery (or even pie-related, for comic effect) but as I didn’t I decided to use this one I took several years go which demonstrates the relationship between the radius of a circle and its circumference. If the length of the wire with the sparking basket is r then the circumference of the circle being traced is 2πr, although as you can see here it’s difficult to keep that thing spinning at a fixed distance from the camera!

~Richard

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SCOTUS ’24

Late one night, following the recent activities of the US Supreme Court (aka SCOTUS), and to some extent goaded by my watching of the recent John Oliver episode regarding the ethics of the Supreme Court, I was minded to create some SCOTUS-related art.

Referencing the official photograph of the current SCOTUS members I felt that a little iterative deconstruction would crystallize my mindset. I am pleased with the gloomy to ominous outcome of my digital manipulations and feel it illustrates a fractious, angular storm-cloud that sits and opines over the populace. However, that’s just my opinion, what do you think of the piece?

~Richard

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Reimagining Old Art

Several years ago, I would while away the late hours on the web looking for old artwork for inspiration, as a learning exercise and also to see if I could rework and give some a new life (if it was not copyrighted). An example of this is a digitally retouched and colored version of a woodcut by Bartholomaeus, Anglicus from 1486 AD.

This wonderful scene illustrates the artist’s perception on the various life stages of man, a subject that would later be depicted in William Shakespeare’s, As You Like It – Act II, Scene VII as the “seven ages of man.”

The original black and white lines of the image are clean and crisp, almost modern in their simplicity but I felt that adding simple coloring to the scene would make it pop a little. What do you think?

~Richard

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Las Setas de Sevilla

Seville is an ancient city, but nestled in the old quarter there is a remarkably bold, newer piece of architecture. Las Setas (the mushrooms) is a spectacularly large, organic, wooden structure which earns its name because it resembles several parasol mushrooms connected together. The sculpture is the largest wooden construction in the world, covering 3,500 cubic meters, and is lit up at night with multicolored lights and an accompanying sound show. There are walkways across the top which allow visitors to enjoy not only the building but also an aerial view of the city. At certain places on the roof visitors can even influence the pattern of the lights on the whole structure by interacting with a camera, although not many visitors know this!

Despite the colorful evening show, in reviewing the photographs I had taken on out trip to Seville I thought I would show one here which I processed into dark monochrome. To me it emphasizes the wonderful composite wooden structure which resembles the pores/gills seen on the underside of a mushroom. What do you think?

~ Richard

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The Apocalyptic Four

I’ve been a fan of abstract and surreal art and architecture for many years and I was fortunate to visit Barcelona a while ago and to spend a couple of days admiring several of the works of the great Antoni Gaudi. Some of his buildings are architectural derring do are just truly breathtaking in their audacity.

Recently I have started looking through the photographs that I had taken and started to upload a few to my art website reevephotos.com. Some of the photos I have left in their “natural state” while with others I have felt the urge to create new imagery.

One such image is that of the 4 ventilation chimneys atop the Casa Milà building, constructed between 1906 and 1912. These structures look out over Barcelona from an area of the rooftop known as the Garden of the Warriors.

Given the name and their obvious symbolism, I thought it only fit to also give them a short story too, only 3 sentences long:

They had dismounted and now stood together. Staring intently at the citadel. Was it with menace or indifference?

Let me know what you think of the imagery and/or the accompanying prose.

~Richard

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Vertigo Glitch

Glitch art typically refers to visual glitches, either in a still or moving image, made by either “capturing” an image of a glitch as it randomly happens, or more often by artists manipulating their digital files to produce these “pseudo-errors.”

In my case, this image was a totally natural phenomenon whilst walking along a street in Valencia in the summer of ’22. I hadn’t known I had taken this image until I uploaded the contents of my memory card to my laptop as part of my daily ritual. I was pleasantly surprised with this serendipitous imagery and accompanied it was a short, study-like caption, as is my wont… 

As the world spun, all the color drained from it too. What on earth was happening to him?

So, what do you think of the image? Have you any glitch art (either real, or perhaps contrived through image manipulation?) Let me know.

~Richard

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6 sentence story – Discombobulated

I had a little fun in GIMP today, loading up an image I had taken of an apartment block in the Old City in Montevideo, Uruguay last year and merging it with a desaturated copy slightly out of alignment to give a glitchy effect. I think this was a little inspired from last night’s viewing of the disconcerting TV series, Severance.

Anyhow. I also put together a micro story (six-sentence) to accompany the image, so please let me know what you think!

Despite shaking his head he still couldn’t focus. And the pill hadn’t helped. Where on earth was he? This trip had been particularly bad and now both his realities were out of alignment. He felt in his pocket. That’s odd, he thought, this isn’t my phone.

~Richard

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Groundhog Day Redux

Wow, it’s already February 2nd! Where on earth did January go? After the year end festivities, I always find the first month of the year to seeming only be two weeks long, but here we are again.

I have written about quaint tradition of Punxatawney Phil a few times before and it seems fitting to make reference to those posts here now: Groundhog Day and Memories, Haiku: Groundhog Day, and Haiku ~ Groundhog Day. Heck, even the last two had the same title, which is kind of ironic.

Anyhow, today’s Badger-based festivities, the 138th, resulted in Phil not seeing his shadow, so I guess we’re in for an early Spring (unless, that is, you look at his predictive record of 39%). That being said, our snowdrops aren’t out yet so we’ll have to make do with an image I took a few years ago.

Happy Groundhog Day!

Richard

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Escheresque

On our recent trip to Montevideo, Uruguay we stumbled across the weird and wonderful Castillo Pittamiglio, a brick building with a ships prow pointing rather conspicuously between two nondescript apartment buildings on La Rambla Mahatma Gandhi.

There’s plenty to see in this oddly constructed edifice, built by the eccentric (and wealthy) architect and alchemist Humberto Pittamiglio. The self-paced guided audio tour makes for an interesting hours or so wandering through the “universe of the alchemist” with its overt and often hidden symbology.

I hope to post a few more images as I process my photos form the trip but one that I particularly liked was taken form the outside balcony looking through to the courtyard. I was inspired to develop this as a monochrome image, based on the style of Man Ray’s solarization process. The resultant image reminded me even more of an M C Escher composition.

Image of stairways at Castillo Pittamiglio, Montevideo, Uruguay reminiscent of an M C Escher drawing

~ Richard

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6 sentence story – The Citadel

The sandstorm had been the last in a long set of challenges, but they had survived it. Now they were close to the Citadel. They had been away so long and through so many adventures. Barely a quarter of the expedition was returning. Would it be a warm welcome back home? They would soon find out what had happened during their absence.

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