“This plastic pink flamingo, an enduring item of kitsch Americana, is as much a phenomenon as it is an everyday garden ornament,” writes Linda Laban, introducing the BBC’s history of the Ig Nobel Prize-winning plastic pink flamingo. The 1996 Ig Nobel Prize for art was awarded to Don Featherstone, for his ornamentally evolutionary invention, the […]
Tag: art
The semiotics of lamppost stickers in Birmingham (new study)
“This article set out to examine the role of stickers in urban semiotic landscapes by focusing on their spatial distribution, agency, and linguistic practices involved in their design and production, function and discursive distribution. The analysis of 1191 signs recorded on Digbeth, a street in central Birmingham, UK, has revealed that stickers form the predominant […]
Why Is This Painting Not More Famous?
This painting of George Washington with a horse’s ass is not as widely known and celebrated as other portraits of George Washington painted by the same painter, Gilbert Stuart. The painting hangs on a wall in Faneuil Hall in Boston, Massachusetts. A copy hangs on a wall in Mechanics Hall, Worcester, Massachusetts. Perhaps other copies […]
Becoming with sheep (art project)
Danish artist and researcher Charlotte Grumm explores (amongst other things) the constitutive relationship between subjectivity and materiality and the mattering and un-mattering of reality. With this in mind, the artist relates what she did in 2015 as part of this exploration : “I, Danish artist Charlotte Grum, connected myself to a sheep for 5 weeks […]
Bees also like (paintings of) sunflowers (study)
“Flower colours have evolved over 100 million years to address the colour vision of their bee pollinators.” With this in mind, investigators Professor Lars Chittka and Julian Walker of Queen Mary College, University of London, decided to investigate whether bees might also be attracted to paintings of flowers – for example (a copy of) Van Gogh’s […]
Blu-Tack® for researchers
Blu-Tack®, say its manufacturers, is designed to hang posters, hold many ordinary household objects in place and temporarily stop leaks around the house. Since its launch c. 1969 researchers across the globe have found a plethora of alternative and imaginative applications for the substance, many of which have been carefully documented in the academic literature […]
Preferred Women’s Waist-to-Hip Ratio (Variation over the Last 2,500 Years)
Researchers Jeanne Bovet, [left] and Michel Raymond [right] of the Institute of the Evolutionary Sciences department, University of Montpellier, France, have been examining pictures of Playboy models and winners of several Miss pageants from 1920 to 2014. They point out that : “The ratio between the body circumference at the waist and the hips (or […]
An Iconography of Carrots
Authors John Stolarczyk and Jules Janick present their assessment of Carrot History and Iconography in the scholarly journal Chronica Horticulturae© (volume 51 – Number 2; June 2011). A great deal of further information can be found at John Stolarczyk’s World Carrot Museum which has a section devoted to Carrots Depicted in the Fine Arts. More […]
Enter the Robot Topiarist (new patent)
You might assume that since the occupation of ‘topiarist’ goes back nearly 2000 years (Pliny the Younger 62-100AD was a keen topiarist) it might well go on for another 2000. And it might – but nonetheless, as with many other occupations, professional topiarists might be well advised to keep an eye on new technological developments. […]
Copyright in Outer Space
“In due course we may see the presence of thousands of human beings in Space. What copyright law will they take with them, and how will it be exercised and administered?” – asks extraterrestrial copyright specialist Adrian Sterling, who is a Professorial Fellow at Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute, University of London. “It appears […]