Posts Tagged ‘lithography’
“Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of the imagination”*…
Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher on the importance of interdisciplinarity and creativity in science…
The hypothesis-testing mode of science, which François Jacob called “day science,” operates within the confines of a particular scientific field. As highly specialized experts, we confidently and safely follow the protocols of our paradigms and research programs . But there is another side of science, which Jacob called “night science”: the much less structured process by which new ideas arise and questions and hypotheses are generated. While day science is compartmentalized, night science is truly interdisciplinary. You may bring an answer from your home field to another discipline, or conversely, venturing into another field may let you discover a route towards answering a research question in your
main discipline. To be most creative, we may be best off cultivating interests in many areas, much like Renaissance thinkers such as Leonardo da Vinci or Galileo Galilei. But this creativity-enhancing interdisciplinarity comes at a price we may call “expert’s dilemma”: with your loss of status as a highly focused expert comes a loss of credibility, making it harder to get your work accepted by your peers. To resolve the dilemma, we must find our own balance between disciplinary day science expertise and interdisciplinary night science creativity…
Eminently worth reading in full: “Renaissance minds in 21st century science,” from @ItaiYanai and @MartinJLercher.
See also: “Night Science“
And for more: see their project’s home page and listen to their podcast.
Apposite: “8 lessons on lifelong learning from an astrophysicist,” from Ethan Siegel.
* John Dewey
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As we find a balance, we might send easily-reproducible birthday greetings to a man who was moved by necessity to cross disciplinary boundaries, Alois Senefelder; he was born on this date in 1771. A playwright and actor, was having trouble getting his plays printed; he needed a less expensive and more efficient printing alternative to relief printed hand set type or etched plates. So he invented the technique we call lithography– the biggest revolution in the printing industry since Gutenberg’s movable type.
The principle is simple: oil-based printing ink and water repel each other. The image is drawn on a stone (Bavarian limestone for Senefelder) with greasy crayon, after which the stone is soaked in water, which is absorbed into the part of the stone not covered in greasy paint. The ink is rolled onto the stone. The image areas of the stone accept ink and undrawn areas reject it. Finally, a piece of paper is pressed onto the stone, and the ink transfers onto the paper from the stone.
Senefelder called the technique “stone printing” or “chemical printing,” but the French name “lithography” became more widely adopted. Today photo lithography is used to print magazines and books, but the original process of drawing by hand on litho stones still exists in the fine art world.
“Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.”*…
The remarkable tale of the Louvre’s successful efforts to protect its treasures from Nazi looting…
… With due respect to the Monuments Men (and unsung Monuments Women), before the Allies arrived to rescue many of Europe’s priceless works of art, French civil servants, students, and workmen did it themselves, saving most of the Louvre’s entire collection. The hero of the story, Jacques Jaujard, director of France’s National Museums, has gone down in history as “the man who saved the Louvre” — also the title of an award-winning French documentary (see trailer below). Mental Floss provides context for Jaujard’s heroism:
After Germany annexed Austria in March of 1938, Jaujard… lost whatever small hope he had that war might be avoided. He knew Britain’s policy of appeasement wasn’t going to keep the Nazi wolf from the door, and an invasion of France was sure to bring destruction of cultural treasures via bombings, looting, and wholesale theft. So, together with the Louvre’s curator of paintings René Huyghe, Jaujard crafted a secret plan to evacuate almost all of the Louvre’s art, which included 3600 paintings alone.
On the day Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Nonaggression Pact, August 25, 1939, Jaujard closed the Louvre for “repairs” for three days while staff, “students from the École du Louvre, and workers from the Grands Magazines du Louvre department store took paintings out of their frames… and moved statues and other objects from their displays with wooden crates.”
The statues included the three ton Winged Nike of Samothrace (see a photo of its move here), the Egyptian Old Kingdom Seated Scribe, and the Venus de Milo. All of these, like the other works of art, would be moved to chateaus in the countryside for safe keeping. On August 28, “hundreds of trucks organized into convoys carried 1000 crates of ancient and 268 crates of paintings and more” into the Loire Valley.
Included in that haul of treasures was the Mona Lisa, placed in a custom case, cushioned with velvet. Where other works received labels of yellow, green, and red dots according to their level of importance, the Mona Lisa was marked with three red dots — the only work to receive such high priority. It was transported by ambulance, gently strapped to a stretcher. After leaving the museum, the painting would be moved five times, “including to Loire Valley castles and a quiet abbey.” The Nazis would loot much of what was left in the Louvre, and force it to re-open in 1940 with most of its galleries starkly empty. But the Mona Lisa — at the top of Hitler’s list of artworks to expropriate — remained safe, as did many thousands more artworks Jaujard believed were the “heritage of all humanity”…
How France Hid the Mona Lisa & Other Louvre Masterpieces During World War II, from @openculture.
* George Bernard Shaw
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As we say thanks for safekeeping, we might send Romantic birthday greetings to a painter whose works were among those saved by the Louvre; he was born on this date in 1798. Breaking with the neoclassical tendencies of contemporaries (like his rival Ingres), Delacroix took his inspiration from Reubens and the Venetian Renaissance, emerging from the outset of his career as a leader of the French Romantic movement. Together with Ingres, Delacroix is considered one of the last old Masters of painting, and one of the few who was ever photographed (see below).
Also a fine lithographer, Delacroix illustrated various works of Shakespeare, Walter Scott, and Goethe.
“I think that I shall never see / A billboard lovely as a tree. / Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, / I’ll never see a tree at all.”*…
Billboards date back (at least) to Egyptian dynastic times. They’ve become a staple of modern advertising– and like the rest of that field, are being redefined by technology…
As a concept, billboards are simple. They’re just a big board conveying a message. But their use requires a purpose and before the Industrial Revolution, only governments and rulers really had a need to communicate with large groups. Then Jared Bell had a need of his own.
The explosion of commerce in the 19th century resulting from the steam engine and other innovations created much of our modern world. But it was the invention of lithography in the 1790s by Alous Senefelder allowing for the mass production of printed color flyers and posters that allowed for modern billboards. Jared Bell was an event promoter in 1830s New York seeking to drum up business for the Ringling Brothers Circus. And that’s the story of how Jared Bell became the father of billboards…
In any case, the idea quickly caught on… by 1900, “a standardized billboard structure was established in America,” allowing for national advertising campaigns from newly emergent national brands like Coca-Cola and Kellogg. And with the popularity of the automobile along with the reshaping of cities to suit roads, billboards became a staple of modern life in many countries or wherever market share was up for grabs.
…
The future is digital, in all fields but especially with advertising. Static billboards that need to be replaced by hand are giving way to digital displays that can be updated remotely. In some instances, this also allows for some pretty nifty interactive content.
Smartphone apps are letting consumers directly participate with digital billboards, as seen in campaigns from Audi and American Eagle. A British Airways campaign from 2013 called “Look Up” used a massive video screen in London’s Piccadilly Circus to feature an ad with a child following real flights that passed overhead…
Advertisers are now placing big bets on digital alternatives with one research group expecting a 7.5 percent compound annual growth in the market until 2028. Currently, the digital signage market is worth more than $20 billion. With digital billboards representing just 4 percent of the outdoor advertising market, it will be quite a will before they have anywhere near the ubiquity of traditional options.
Advertisers focusing on billboards are especially bullish on digital technology because of increased competition for attention and consumer awareness. One advertising firm framed the issue almost like an existential crisis, “Today’s consumers are much smarter and well informed than they were 30 years ago; therefore, merely repeating a message to the average individual is not a viable strategy for return on investment. In 2021, along with a great website design, Google SEO, and content creation, advertisers will need to incorporate technology and customer preference in their advertising models to keep the spirit of advertising alive.”
Like any good salespeople, this increased competition isn’t a problem but an opportunity to incorporate digital billboards into advertising campaigns because “experts also believe that out-of-home advertising is making a comeback because consumers are getting tired of the constant bombardment of advertisements on their phones.”…
The evolution– and the future– of the billboard, an object that very much tends to keep pace with the times: “Billboard Empire,” From Andrew Egan in @readtedium.
* Ogden Nash
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As we obey, we might recall that on this date in 1982 the #1 song in the U.S. was “Don’t You Want Me,” by The Human League (and “the second British Invasion”was underway).
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