The witty Android

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Michele

Working with Android phones a lot, I need to pay an hommage to the fabulous Asimov, the great author and professor of biochemistry who is best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books.

“The Oxford English Dictionary credits his science fiction for introducing the words positronic (an entirely fictional technology), psychohistory (which is also used for a different study on historical motivations) and robotics into the English language. Asimov coined the term robotics without suspecting that it might be an original word; at the time, he believed it was simply the natural analogue of words such as mechanics and hydraulics, but for robots.

Unlike his word psychohistory, the word robotics continues in mainstream technical use with Asimov’s original definition. Star Trek: The Next Generation featured androids with “positronic brains” giving Asimov full credit for “inventing” this fictional technology.”

He believed that his most enduring contributions would be his “Three Laws of Robotics” and the Foundation Series. His 3 laws of robotics are:

A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the first law.

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Some other interesting quotes by him:

“Creationists make it sound as though a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.”

I just found out via Mark that Ray Bradbury passed away today; his Fahrenheit 451 is still relevant after 60 years!

“Dalton’s records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.”

“I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.”

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.”

“It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.”

Watch him here with Bill Moyers.

A spatial odyssey in Paris

Posted on July 31, 2011 by Michele

I absolutely adore the work of Tapio Wirkkala, the Finnish glass designer I discovered a couple of weeks ago. Glass may be great as a medium but in the hands of this artist, it becomes magical…

We’ve all seen some of his designs like the Finlandia vodka bottles but he’s a poet when his work comes done to a less commercial level. I had a great time in the Decoratif Arts museum of Paris.

I had the advantage of a great view to Paris — check the Eiffel tower’s reflection in Wirkkala’s five Murano glass bottles’ window:

There were some funny glass (and wood) sculptures like Richard Meitner’s fish:

I was pleasantly surprised by the Czech artist, Libuše Niklová (1934–1981), a famous toy designer. From the 1950s to the 1980s, Niklová created toys like the inflatable animals and dolls (I had one clone of it in Tehran with a little bell in it!)

“She had the brilliant idea of using flexible pleated piping that squeals when pressed. The result was her “accordion” toys: a cat, dog, goat and lion that can be taken apart and reassembled like a construction game.”

Check out her toys links at the end of the post; you’ll have fun.

As long as I was with the funny stuff, Snoopy always makes me smile:

His creator, Charles Schulz, famously said:

“Yesterday I was a dog. Today I’m a dog. Tomorrow I’ll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There’s so little hope for advancement.”

I saw one of the first huge ad posters for The laughing cow or “La Vache Qui Rit” cheese:

The permanent collection of this museum has a rich array of chairs:

from Mies van der Rohe‘s Barcelona chair to Ron Arad’s folding one:

Olivier Mourgue designed his well-known classic Djinn chairs (1965) made famous by ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ by Stanley Kubrick. Stanley Kubrick created a futuristic rotating Hilton hotel in Space. In it, the Djinn chairs received their lasting moment of fame. Olivier Mourgue named the chairs ‘Djinn” which in Muslim legend, is a spirit often capable of assuming human or animal form and exercising supernatural influence over people (Genie in English):

Do you remember the beautiful scene of the Hilton Lobby in Space Odyssey?

I should stop before I make this post about Kubrick!

I also liked this statue of wood and nails by Janine Janet, made for a window of Balenciaga in Paris in 1959; It’s called the queen:

One of the best things about this underrated museum is its breathtaking views of Paris; I kept running from one window to the next!

I took all of these pictures with my android phone and this is the proof:

Last but not least, my favorite view from the building is this one looking down at Place des Pyamides:

the museum’s site here.

the cute toys here.

Tapio Wirkkala here.

Art paris 2011: a short walk from sublime to sordid

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Michele

Art Paris, a major event in the international Art scene took place last month in Paris and was everything from sublime…

…to sordid:

The following are the works that caught and kept my attention so let’s just start from the beginning; if you are lucky you get in the Grand Palais from the VIP entrance and not the main one (below) where you have to wait with the unwashed masses:

The huge glass dome is stunning on its own so imagine how spectacular it was over these amazing galleries.

The first booth had these curious works by Devorah Sperber:

Spools of tread stand for dabs of paint and the images that were hung upside down are only recognized when you see them through an optical device.

The colored thread spools make an abstract pattern that comes to focus when viewed through—in this case— a crystal ball; Cezanne’s still life (below) is recognizable when viewed through this clear acrylic sphere (above).

Without the optical device, you are just looking at thousands of colored tread spools—1470 of them in this case!

The most surprising to me was Van Eyck’s masterpiece, The Virgin of Chancellor Rolin:

The whole image below is recognizable in the little ball above. Magic made of 5272 spools of thread.

On the lighter side of the spectrum, Mister Spock was patiently waiting for me in this work called “Mirror Universe”; like the artist herself, I too remember the 1967 Star Trek episode “Mirror, Mirror” in which a transporter mishap switches the crew of the Enterprise with their evil counterparts, trapping them in a “savage parallel universe.”

That image could be seen through a hemispherical mirror:

I loved the work of the super talented Dutch Artist, Pieke Bergmans:

Liquid light bulbs or “Light Blubs” as she calls them are hand blown bulbs presented attached to pendant and desk lamps or resting on old office furniture.

I met the artist, Aurore Vermue, posing with the spectacular pin and button artwork of Ran Hwang,

in front of the fabulous Kashya Hildebrand gallery:

A nice discovery for me was the work of Katayoun Rouhi; she uses Persian calligraphy in her perspectives; I particularly liked this painting with the little girl in a forest of poetry:

I was the only one bending to be able to read the writings that were all upside down:

Nick Gentry’s portraits made of floppy disks were interesting in their own way:

I had forgotten these disks, superseded by other storage media in only a few years…

These beautiful objects by Winus Lee Yee Mei were called “a group of boobs”:

it was hard not to touch!

The show took a turn for the whimsical with Mauro Perucchetti: from the three little pigs to giant pills and all in Swarovski crystal, resin and arylic,

I liked his “gay” superheroes:

These little child-figures covered with brightly dyed hanji-made scales in yellow and silver are the work of Sun Rae Kim who created these bodiless suits after her daughter, Tscho-Young; they were so cute:

The mind blowing opposite was Jan Fabre’s insect covered sculptures; the Belgian Fabre is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, sculptor, playwright and stage designer. I Just found out that he likes these jewel scarabs because of his great grandfather who’s been a famous entomologist. Yeap, these are beetles people!

The other Belgian great was Wim Delvoye and his persian carpet clad real stuffed pig. This sold for 180,000 euros and I am sure the buyer wasn’t an Iranian!

On a more serene note, Gonkar Gyatso, the Tibetan artist, had “Buddha in modern Times”. You could spend an hour exploring little stories embedded in the image:

I liked the straightforward “Paris Block” by Ralph Fleck; I discovered his site and loved his “figures”.

Persian artists being a hot commodity, Kambiz Sabri was the other Iranian artist showing his sculptures like this funny “pillow”:

So to recap, I went from Philippe Pasqua‘s gory skulls (which by the way I love),

to the sublime Kim Kyung Soo’s “the full moon story”:

Her photos were truly arresting; pure poetry…

And in all this, Albert Watson’s David Bowie was sleeping:

I am very happy I got to know some of these artists’ works; take the time to discover them for yourself. The post has all their links.

Paper, Paper, Paper: a sartorial tour de force

Posted on August 3, 2010 by Michele

I saw this fascinating exhibition the other day in Bellerive Museum, Paper Fashion:

I love paper and have worked with it for years so it was very interesting to see clothes made entirely of paper by young virtuosos and well known designers:

Stephen Hann recycles couture in his “comic fan” creation below:

This jacket took newspapers to another dimension:

This is PAPER people!

In an ad from 1960s, the International Paper Company is asking how long will the paper bikinis last…

Fancypants anyone?

Paper clothes were used for PR purposes, to spread news, or to promote politicians and their campaign. Here you see Nixon’s and Eugene McCarthy:

Robert Kennedy and Romney (the father of the 2009 presidential candidate, Mitt Romney):

“In 1966, Scott Paper Company invented the paper dress, intended as a marketing and publicity tool. For one dollar, women could buy the dress and also receive coupons for Scott paper products.”

A brief fad for paper dresses swept through America from 1966 to 1969. The ultimate gift to the lazy, adventurous youth!

There is a 40 year difference between the dress on the left (in blue) and the one made for the exhibition (in orange):

I was blown away by these intricately cut and folded hairpieces for Chanel by Japanese hair stylist Katsuya Kamo. He used 2 packs of plain white 11×17 copier paper!

Another creative genius of the show was Jum Nakao, the Brazilian Japanese designer. His “Sewing the Invisible” show was on the display and I couldn’t take my eyes off the monitor! I spent a long time on his great site. It is a spellbinding collection of paper Haute Couture:

Just noticed that both above wizards are Japanese: Master Origami makers!

Here is a little explanation for the word sartorial; let’s see if you can guess who is the sartorial queen of all times to me from the picture below:

That’s all folks! See Isabelle de Borchgrave’s magnificent creations here.

Take a look at Jum Nakao’s defilé here.

Chanel’s fabulous whites here.

To see a way better alternative to paper go here.

Paul Erdos, the wandering dervish

Posted on April 27, 2010 by Michele

It’s 1999 and I am reading in a special issue of Time magazine about the geniuses of the second millennium: Einstein, Einstein, Einstein and finally a short article about this “mad looking” guy and W O W…I discovered a wandering dervish, a nomadic mathematician: Paul Erdos!

Both his parents were high school mathematics teachers. Erdos (pronounced AIR-dosh) was as generous as he was brilliant with his ideas—never hoarding them and always sharing them with whoever was ready to give him a place to stay and work with him on the joyous and collaborative activity of mathematics: he would show up at their doorstep and say:” My Mind is Open!”

And this is how the myth of the Erdos Number or the “collaborative distance” between an author and Erdos was created: Erdos himself is assigned Erdos number 0. Mathematicians who have written papers with Erdos (511 by 2007) receive Erdos number 1. Writing a paper with someone having Erdos Number 1 earns the author Erdos Number 2, etc…
I made this image of the name of the 8,162 people with the Erdos Number of 2:

Addicted to coffee and amphetamines he was most of the time, super alert, achingly lucid. He wrote papers with more than 500 people, the optimum” intellectual promiscuity”…

Finding that “property is nuisance,” Erdos had no home, no car, no checks to write and no income taxes to pay; a mathematical pilgrim with no home and no job: the real wandering dervish who founded the field of discrete mathematics, which is the foundation of computer science. “In the years before the Internet, there was Paul Erdos.”

To check out the funny side of the ‘collaborative distance” visit xkcd.com:

Here are some funny quotes by Erdos:

“Finally I’m becoming stupider no more…”

“God may not play dice with the universe, but something strange is going on with the prime numbers.”

“There are three signs of senility. The first sign is that a man forgets his theorems. The second sign is that he forgets to zip up. The third sign is that he forgets to zip down.”

To see Erdos tell a funny joke go here

To see parts of N is a number, a documentary about him by George Paul Csicsery, go here

Today is my blog’s third anniversary!

The Iranian presidential election will decide the future of the Middle East

Posted on June 7, 2009 by Michele

Who knew that Hossein will be such a popular name in the world? Everywhere I turn, there is a Hossein (Hussain) waiting for me: Hussein Obama, Mir Hossein Mousavi, Hussain (Usain) Bolt, etc…

The Iranian presidential elections will be held on June 12th and the future of the Middle East is depending on the outcome. The reformist, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is the only serious contender against Ahmadinejad; It’s funny that an architect/painter can be a threat to the incumbent president of the islamic republic of Iran. In my native country, thorns have roses…

I made the above images on a bout of “latent nationalism” while reading about how these elections can alter the future of the region—from Morocco to Lahore. I had time to appreciate Obama’s eloquent (and super pragmatic) speech in Cairo but Iranians didn’t—they were too busy with their own explosive presidential debates!

It’s hard to get excited about any of the four candidates (the two other candidates are basically collecting votes for Mousavi) who are all deeply connected to the islamic republic. Ready for an American embassy opening in Tehran by next year?

How strange that we, Persian women, have to be happy about Mousavi pulling a Michelle Obama by bringing his wife, Zahra Rahnavard (an artist and political scientist) to his side on political rallies! Just shoot me but I have to be content that this lady is wearing a “liberal” scarf under her chador…

This reminds me of this image of Iran in a chador (the face of this woman is the map of Iran) and the beautiful poem by Parvin Etesami:

She wrote it in 1935 lamenting the life of Iranian women before Reza Shah did away (sometimes by force) with their chadors (1928) and opened the schools’ doors to them. Etesami and the Shah must be spinning in their graves…

New York Times has some cool pictures like this one from my favorite Iranian photographer, Newsha Tavakolian.

I just found out that this dude, Mousavi, has “Khameneh” at the end of his last name—yet another unfortunate KH for all of you non-persians. To see the funny side of it click here.

NBC’s Ann Curry took these pictures to show the divide:

Yesterday, I attended a lecture by Mohsen Kadivar (aka the critical cleric) at UCLA that didn’t alter my view about religion; even the progressive mullahs (the picture is Dr. Kadivar in his full mojtahed regalia and “sans”) can only whitewash the problems of mixing religion with the state.

Hezbollah just lost the Lebanese parliamentary elections—the West is breathing a sigh of relief.

Related and Suggested Posts and Resources:

a short CNN clip about the Iranian Michelle Obama here.
the New York Times article here.
Parvin Etesami here.
to read her poem in Persian in its entirety here.
Iranian Elections here.
Zahra Rahnavard here.
Mir-Hossein Mousavi go here.
Struggles of Iranian women, check out Rakhshan Bani Etemad’s clips here.
Parviz Tanavoli’s (the great Iranian sculptor who taught Ms. Rahnavard) interview with Ann Curry here.

p.s. I did the calligraphy on the first image using one of my favorite poems by Hamid Mosadegh.

updated on 6/13/09:

There’s been unrest since yesterday in Iran after the results of the presidential elections were made public: Ahmadinejad won with over 62% of the votes. I am amazed at the arrogance of this regime; the images seen on BBC, CNN and NY Times remind me of Iran i left in 1978/79.

Beautiful naked bodies

Posted on May 12, 2008 by Michele

I saw these naked bodies last week in the science museum. I’ve been trying to see this exhibition for a long time. Gunther von Hagens‘ lifetime work is awe inspiring to say the least.

It’s all about real human bodies preserved through Plastination. It takes more than 1500 hours of work to transform a corps into a plastinate – the near perfect representation of a once living human body. It’s interesting to see how each body has it own unique features, even on the inside.

We usually forget that beneath even the most beautiful bodys’ skin lies a skeleton, muscles, several feet of intestines and lots of other goodies!

This whole experience reminded me of a great rainy day last year when I visited the small Dupuytren museum in the school of medicine in Paris. Just look at the skull of this man hit by a rifle stick in 1807 – he died after two days.

And if you are (unlike me) into mythology, you may enjoy seeing a real Kyklōps (cyclops). After being exposed to all of the above, I listened today to my favorite podcast about the history of Brain.

I am not all flowers and poetry after all, am I?

To see more of the beautiful Joey House go to my post sex, sex, sex here.

added on September 15th 2009:

I have thousands of visitors to this post; can somebody please let me know, who/what is sending you here aside the hunt for beautiful naked bodies?

Claude Verlinde and Jacques Poirier, mirage makers.

Posted on April 27, 2008 by Michele

Claude Verlinde and Jacques Poirier are two underrepresented French painters. They are both master illusionists/image makers/mirage makers.

I fell in love with the above painting when I first got introduced to Verlinde’s work in Paris. We all know hollow people, lacking in real value, sincerity, or substance – we have all met shallow people lacking in depth of thought, or feeling. In Persian we call them “hollow drums”: noisy but empty.

Thanks to the internet we can know of something without really knowing about it. We used to have to read, to see, to hear something in order to be able to talk about it but not anymore folks! everybody’s an expert.

I’ve been wanting to talk about V.S. Naipaul for the longest time. Every time that somebody tries to eat up my life/time, I remember the writer’s fabulous statement reported on BBC: “my life is too short, I can’t listen to banality”.

Staying with the trompe l’oeil of Verlinde and Poirier, take a look at this very clever ad:

You can see the rest of these very funny ads here.

Today is my blog’s first anniversary! If you like what you see, please subscribe.

Vasa Mihich

Posted on October 6, 2007 by Michele

I went to Vasa’s studio a couple of years ago and fell in love with his exquisite sculptures. His work is awe-inspiring in its simplicity, vivid colors and elegant lines.

Claude Verlinde, the illusionist

Posted on September 27, 2007 by Michele

I got to know the work of this great artist in 1998 in paris at the Michelle Boulet gallery. I just found out that Verlinde has been very active in the past few years. I loved this piece of one of his paintings which reminded me of Jean Ferrat‘s song, l’Amour est cerise.

Michele Roohani

“Life is short, art is long, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgment difficult.”

Category Archives: esoteric