Velato

The esoteric programming language Velato uses music as its source code. The first note of a composition establishes a “command root” note, and the intervals that follow specify instructions. The command root can be changed between statements, and the notes that make up a chord can be interpreted in a specified order, so there’s some latitude to help a composition sound “musical.” This program produces the output “Hello, World”:

https://esolangs.org/wiki/File:Velato_HelloWorld.gif

Here’s what that sounds like:

A few other musical languages: Fugue, VenetianScript, Yet Another Musical Esolang.

| Art · Technology

Constraint

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Animaux_sauvages_-_ll._de_Jean_Matet_-_btv1b10573583s_(11_of_12).jpg

Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe.

— G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908

| Art · Literature · Quotations

Navel Warfare

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Andrea_schiavone_(o_ambito_di),_cacciata_dal_paradiso_terrestre,_1540-60_ca.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Another mistake there may be in the Picture of our first Parents, who after the manner of their posterity are both delineated with a Navel. … Which notwithstanding cannot be allowed, … that in the first and most accomplished piece, the Creator affected superfluities, or ordained parts without use or office.

… Now the Navel being a part, not precedent, but subsequent unto generation, nativity or parturition, it cannot be well imagined at the creation or extraordinary formation of Adam, who immediately issued from the Artifice of God; nor also that of Eve, who was not solemnly begotten, but suddenly framed, and anomalously proceeded from Adam.

— Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, 1646

| Art · Religion

Nowhere

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ZendiaProblem-callimahos-1960.jpg

This is charming somehow: a detailed portrait of a place that doesn’t exist. During the Cold War, U.S Army cryptologist Lambros D. Callimahos devised a “Republic of Zendia” to use in a wargame for codebreakers simulating the invasion of Cuba. (Callimahos’ maps of the Zendian province of Loreno are below; click to enlarge.)

The Zendia map now hangs on the wall of the library at the National Cryptologic Museum. The “Zendian problem,” in which cryptanalysts students were asked to interpret intercepted Zendian radio messages, formed part of an advanced course that Callimahos taught to NSA cryptanalysts in the 1950s. Graduates of the course were admitted to the “Dundee Society,” named for an empty marmalade jar in which Callimahos kept his pencils.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Central_Part_of_The_Province_of_Loreno.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Northern_Part_of_The_Province_of_Loreno.jpg

08/02/2025 UPDATE: Apparently they speak Esperanto in Zendia, or at least their cartographers do. “Respubliko” is Esperanto for “Republic,” “Bovinsulo” and “Kaprinsulo” are “Cow-Island” and “Goat-Island”, and so on. (Thanks, Ed and David.)

| Art · Puzzles

The Mahler Hammer

The last movement of Mahler’s sixth symphony calls for the sound of a hammer, which the composer indicated should be “brief and mighty, but dull in resonance and with a non-metallic character (like the fall of an axe).” (The two blows represent the death of Mahler’s daughter Maria and the diagnosis of his heart condition.)

Because no recognized instrument exists to fulfill this function, symphonies have had to devise their own solutions, often striking a wooden box or bass drum with a mallet or sledgehammer. Houston Symphony percussionist Brian Del Signore built a 22-pound custom hammer and a wooden box to receive the blow.

| Art · Technology