Francois Morellet

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Francois Morellet, Sphere – trames,  1962 Collection Maximilian & Agathe Weishaupt, Munich

There is a very similar sculpture to this in The Moderns at IMMA though that one is suspended at eye-level.

Momo and Francis Alys

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Above is a video by a graffiti artist named Momo about writing a  tag the width of  Manhattan by dripping paint from a can attached to the back of his bike. The tag was done in2006 but went unnoticed for several years and has recently been featured in this piece in the NY Times.

The video below is called The Leak and was made by Francis Alys in Paris in 2006. This video and others by Francis Alys are available to view or download and share under a creative commons license from his website http://francisalys.com/public.html

"These videos can be downloaded and shared with others as long as the authorship is credited and there is a link back to the website of the author. These videos cannot be altered in any way or used for commercial purpose."

Guillermo Kuitca

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I've mentioned Guillermo Kuitca a number of times on this blog before and here are a couple of videos I've come across today. The first is Kuitca's piece Stage Fright which is described on Youtube as "animation for Kuitca's Show at Gallery Met at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York. 2007". The piece relates to the artist's series of "drawings" involving inkjet prints of coloured theatre seating plans being dipped in water of varying temperatures.  The second is the first of a three part conversation between Kuitca and the curator Douglas Dreishpoon Albright at Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo NY. The other two parts can be found on this youtube profile.

Who You Are

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Who You Are was a performance by Chris Goode which took place inside Mirislov Balka's installation How It Is in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. The piece uses spoken word and recroded sounds and can be downloaded as a podcast.

Here is a direct link to the mp3

Chris Goode will be performing in The Author at the Project Arts Centre during the Dublin Theatre Festival. His Blog can be found here.

Ant Death Spiral

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First described in army ants by Schneirla (1944). A circle of army ants, each one following the ant in front, becomes locked into a circular mill. They will continue to circle each other until they all die. How crazy is that? Sometimes they escape, though. Beebe (1921) described a circular mill he witnessed in Guyana. It measured 1200 feet in circumference and had a 2.5 hour circuit time per ant. The mill persisted for two days, "with ever increasing numbers of dead bodies littering the route as exhaustion took its toll, but eventually a few workers straggled from the trail thus breaking the cycle, and the raid marched off into the forest."

The above quote is from a post on a blog called The Ant Room. More info here

Documentary About 8th Century Book Found in a Bog

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Treasure from the Bog is an RTE documentary about the Faddan More Psalter. The book is described as:

a fragmented illuminated vellum manuscript encased in an unusual leather binding, a book of psalms dating back to the late eighth century. This unprecedented find, the first manuscript to be found in a water-logged state in a bog, posed unique and profound difficulties for the Conservation Department at the National Museum.

The image above is a screen grab from the documentary showing scraps of words recovered form the book. Larger sections of the book were also recovered including full pages and the cover which was lined with the only piece of papyrus ever discovered in Ireland.