You can see and listen to more of their work here: HavenFilms
Joel Simon — Evolving Floor Plans
Evolving Floor Plans is an experimental research project exploring speculative, optimized floor plan layouts. The rooms and expected flow of people are given to a genetic algorithm which attempts to optimize the layout to minimize walking time, the use of hallways, etc. The creative goal is to approach floor plan design solely from the perspective of optimization and without regard for convention, constructability, etc. The research goal is to see how a combination of explicit, implicit and emergent methods allow floor plans of high complexity to evolve. The floorplan is ‘grown’ from its genetic encoding using indirect methods such as graph contraction and emergent ones such as growing hallways using an ant-colony inspired algorithm….
The results were biological in appearance, intriguing in character and wildly irrational in practice.
Raven Speaks
Raven Speaks — Acrylic on Canvas — 8×8 inches
Newest piece, if you get my newsletter, you saw this Saturday. You can buy it here.
Raven Tree Totem
Did this back in February, but it’s been packed away, since then. A Raven totem on a dead, but standing tree, basically it was symbolizing my (still) holey spine, and ribs, with the Raven as a symbol of luck and revival. If you subscribed to my newsletter you would have seen this already. You can do that by clicking here or use the form on the right side of the page.
I love crows
Just a video of some crows playing.
Brain Crack
Don’t get addicted to the Brain Crack. Get it out.
Tom Sawyer
Today in history, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was copyrighted by Mark Twain.
I haven’t read this since I was a kid, but a lot of it stuck with me.
This is part of my People Who Made America Great series.
The novel has elements of humor, satire and social criticism; features that later made Mark Twain one of the most important authors of American literature. Mark Twain describes some autobiographical events in the book. The novel is set around Twain’s actual boyhood home of Hannibal, near St. Louis, and many of the places in it are real and today support a tourist industry as a result.
New Jon Spencer Solo Album
Thanks to Katie Skelly for posting her artwork for his new album, and making me aware of it. Always good to hear new Jon Spencer. Here’s an article with a track list and tour dates (with the Melvins), unfortunately not coming close to Maine.
And a video of the first track off of the album:
Steve Ditko RIP
I didn’t know Steve Ditko. I only met him through the pages of Spider-man, Dr. Strange, Hawk and Dove. In later years he developed Shade the Changing Man, and squirrel Girl for the big companies. His other characters include Mr. A, the Question, and many more.
He became a recluse and declined interviews in the 80sI think, and worked mostly on his own B&W comics.
He was found dead in his apartment on June 29th, and may have been dead for 2 days according to the police.
Here’s one from one of his Mr. A comics, and a tribute I did as a portrait of a friend.
Paul Klee’s Oil Transfer method
Paul Klee (1789-1940) was an German artist who was affiliated with the Bauhaus, Expressionistic, and Surrealist movements. Here’s some interesting pieces on his oil transfer method of turning a drawing into a painting.
First a YouTube video:
and a well illustrated blog post on the technique:
Paul Klee’s oil-transfer drawings
and one of his 9000 paintings:
