Forking Paths

British maze designer Randoll Coate produced this tribute to Jorge Luis Borges — a labyrinth of hedges shaped like an open book and spelling out the author’s name. (The original maze is in the writer’s native Argentina; Coate donated the copy above to Borges’ foundation in Venice.)

“Five years before Borges died, I had a dream in which I heard that Borges had just died,” the designer recalled. “And I thought to myself, I must make sure that Borges is not memorialized with one of those terrible statues — a depiction of angels or something. He has to be honored with something truly Borgesian, in other words, a labyrinth. That’s when I began to design it and think about it and dream up a shape for it — an extraordinary labyrinth for a man with an extraordinary mind.”

(From Francesca Tatarella, Labyrinths & Mazes, 2016.)

11/29/2017 UPDATE: Coate’s design is more sophisticated than I’d realized — from reader Daniël Hoek:

“The maze also contains a tiger, a walking stick, a question mark, the initials MK of his wife, and two hourglasses that spell the number of years Borges lived (’86’). After some effort I think I found all of those (the tiger is very cool once you find it –– you need to rotate the plan as in the attached image)”:

“PS. Another interesting tidbit: the maze in ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’ has the feature that you can make it through by going left at every turn. Starting at the top entrance and discounting any forced turns, that is also true of this maze, although that is a boring route that takes you around the maze and not through the center.”

November 25, 2017November 29, 2017 | Art · Literature

Near and Far

Designed by Baroque architect Francesco Borromini in 1632, this gallery in Rome’s Palazzo Spada is a masterpiece of forced perspective — though it appears to be 37 meters long, in fact it’s only 8. The effect is produced by diminishing columns and a rising floor; the sculpture at the end, which Borromini contrived to appear life size, is only 60 centimeters high.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spada_02.jpg — Image: Wikimedia Commons

Ah

A famous artist once painted an angel with six toes.

‘Who ever saw an angel with six toes?’ people inquired.

‘Who ever saw one with less?’ was the counter-question.

— Life, June 12, 1890

November 17, 2017 | Art · Humor · Religion

Marine Warfare

Humans tend to abuse sea creatures, so digital artist Neil Mendoza gave them a way to fight back. As Smashie the fish swims around his aquatic habitat, he takes aim at the human habitat outside; the hammer drops periodically when a rotating cam releases it.

Mendoza created the project through Autodesk’s artist-in-residence program. You can build your own “fish hammer actuation device” with the instructions here.

November 13, 2017 | Art · Oddities · Technology

He Who Falls

French acrobat and dancer Yoann Bourgeois created Celui qui tombe for the 2014 International Dance Biennial of Lyon. He calls the six dancers “a mankind in miniature.”

“It’s clear that if you do it ‘your way’ rather than the group’s way, you imperil and unbalance the joint venture,” wrote Luke Jennings in a Guardian review. “But you also get freedom. Or do you?”

November 11, 2017January 9, 2018 | Art

Perspective

French artist Georges Rousse photographs anamorphic images in abandoned and derelict buildings.

When the scene above is viewed from the right vantage point, it looks like this:

This video shows him at work on a project in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, in 2013:

November 2, 2017 | Art

Another Perspective

All [J. Smith] ever paints are pastoral landscapes. But years after Smith’s Lake Placid is bought and exhibited by a very conservative museum, an art critic discovers that by tilting the painting 90 degrees, it can be seen as a painting of a devil embracing two nudes. The critic calls this aspect Ménage. The enraged artist protests that he had never intended to paint the lewd picture, that his painting is a realistic representation of Lake Placid and nothing more, and that the critic’s interpretation is illegitimate.

Is Ménage a work of art? If so, is it a work by Smith? Can Ménage be a better painting than Lake Placid (or vice versa)? Or is this painting neither Lake Placid nor Ménage? Would you, as the conservative curator, remove the painting?

— Eddy Zemach of Hebrew University, Jerusalem, posed in Margaret P. Battin et al., Puzzles About Art, 1989

October 30, 2017October 30, 2017 | Art

Priorities

“Once I saw a chimpanzee gaze at a particularly beautiful sunset for a full 15 minutes, watching the changing colors until it became so dark that he had to retire to the forest without stopping to pick a pawpaw for supper.” — Adriaan Kortlandt

October 27, 2017 | Art · Quotations · Science & Math

The Alphabet Building

Dutch architects MVRDV created a unique design for Amsterdam’s Alfabetgebouw, an office building for small and mid-size creative companies. On the building’s east side a series of dotted windows spell out the building’s street number, 52, and on the north side the shape of each window reflects the unit number of its tenant.

To make the alphabet fit on a 6 × 4 facade they had to omit two letters — but “the IQ is inside the building.”

October 10, 2017October 10, 2017 | Art · Language

Field Reports

Explorers of foreign countries can produce strikingly different maps — here’s Joseph Husson’s Map of a Woman’s Heart (1840):

And here’s D.W. Kellogg’s Map of the Open Country of a Woman’s Heart (circa 1833-1842):

Who’s right? Looks like the safest plan is to drop into the center by parachute.

October 3, 2017October 2, 2017 | Art · Society