Content Catnip

Signs Of The Times in The Simpsons

Everyone’s favourite yellow-bodied people in The Simpsons inhabit a world of biting satire and strange congruences to our 3D world.

J.J. Jones is the creator of the underground Tumblr blog Signs of Springfield. He has collected stills of billboards and signs in Simpsons episodes and posted these onto his Tumblr blog.

These blink-and-you’ll-miss-it signs reveal the timeless and witty sense of humour of Simpsons creators. Almost subliminal, these messages definitely deserve their place in internet history.

Read more at Signs of Springfield and The Creators Project

Phoenix Rising: How Clothes Transform Women Inside

As the world of fast fashion attests – fashion is important. However cost and consumerism are besides the point.

Although the dominant narrative suggests that we women should buy more, consume more in order to be fashionable – it’s rather a state of being and artful expression.

Clothes can make the woman and have a transformative power that can imbue a woman with power, presence, femininity, freedom, elegance, subversiveness.

More than simply sartorial expressions, clothes are can reflect the power lying latent within the soul. Click on image for video

Courtesy of Nowness

On sartorially creepy women who check out other women

Click on image for the video

Courtesy of Nowness

Why is it more satisfying to have a woman admiring your clothes rather than a man? Could it be because women understand aesthetics and beauty in a much more refined way than (straight) men do, as (straight) men are always informed by their desire of women. Perhaps it’s because other women admire beauty in a much more well-rounded way that encompasses spirit and joie de vivre as much as sex appeal?

Book of Hours: Washington Mathews at Lauds

The Festival of Floating Lanterns in Thailand

It was the wind that gave them life.

It was the wind that comes out of our mouths now

that gives us life.

When this ceases to blow, we die.

In the skin of our fingers we can see the

trail of the wind.

It shows us where the wind blew when

our ancestors were created.

–Washington Mathews, Surgeon and Ethnographer.

American (19th Century).

Welcome to a Gothic Imaginary City That’s Flint Black, Neon and Rainy

This Gothic and Imaginary London is Flint Black, Neon and Rainy

Pete Amachree is a talented British digital painter who created this magnificent and gothic cityscapes of imaginary cities. A big shout out goes to Imaginary Cities who tipped me off about this extraordinary artist and to Pete Amachree himself for creating these gems.

According to his DeviantArt profile, Pete is inspired by photographer Man Ray and Victorian Romantic painting. Although the neon signs and rainy reflective streets are reminiscent of a street scape in Blade Runner. Strangely though he’s done and said nothing in the past 2 years online which is a bit odd.

His art is reminiscent of the lonely life of neon art found in London after dark which I profiled before; along with abandoned monuments of the Soviet Era which have become relics of long-lost halcyon days.

The mood of the art reminds of me the same mood of an evocative pre-WWII novel by Patrick Hamilton – Hang Over Square which charts the movements of some hopeless characters as they oscillate between loneliness and heartbreak in London’s seedy pubs after dark and with the war looming ominously over them. Read more

[@Oniropolis The dark cities of British artist Pete Amachree.] pic.twitter.com/vqAaMHOe8Q

— El hombre de tweed (@Elhombredetweed) September 3, 2015

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Björk Deconstructs a Television in 1988

The impish and magical Björk talks about the analogue wonders of TV in 1988. In her typical bewitching and charming way she manages to lull me into strange sort of melodious half-sleep.

What she is actually saying is quite profound, about us being the audience to a medium so absolute it orders us to leave behind our critical faculties. Yet because her voice is so sweet I find myself listening to the timbre of her voice rather than what she’s actually saying.

See more on Nowness

Read more about Robot Love and the music of Björk

Book of Hours: Po Chü-i at Compline

At night, in my dream, I stoutly climbed the mountain.

Going out alone with my staff of holly-wood.

A thousand crags, a thousand valleys –

In my dream journey none were unexplored

And all the while my feet never grew tired

And my step was as strong as in my younger days.

Can it be that when the mind travels backward

The body also returns to its old state?

And can it be, as between body and soul,

That the body may languish, while the soul is still strong?

Soul and body – both are vanities:

Dream and waking – both alike unreal.

In the day my feet are palsied and tottering;

In the night my feet go striding over the hills.

As day and night are divided into equal parts –

Between the two I get as much as I lose.

Po Chü-i, Poet and Government official.

Chinese (772-846 A.D)

If you look deeply enough…this internet k-hole will look back at you

For kids of the 70’s and 80’s, the internet was nothing but a sparkle in Tim Berners-Lee’s eyes. This meant that every bad mullet, heavy kohl eyeliner and patched denim jacket, wood panelled wall and piece of bamboo furniture could be forgiven…until now.

About five years ago the Internet K-hole was born. It unveiled an anonymous reel of young people’s faces. Young people in the peachy pink of youth getting up to antics were never intended to be shared online. It’s a stratosphere of youth culture and reckless abandon that post-internet generations of kids can no longer get away with. In a way it’s a portal into a time where you could be and learn as an analogue youth.

A word of caution, before you visit there is full nudity, porn and occasionally drug use in these pages. It’s a curated journey into the far reaches of nefarious youth culture in the days before the internet.

If the internet had a fully functioning Delorian with Michael J.Fox at it’s helm, this is what he might find (that is if he were to capture his 1985 world before he stepped into the time machine).

The past only becomes the past when we look back on it.

It’s a world of the past stereotypes and their spin offs like new romantics, goths, punks, mods, geeks and jocks and messy weekends where analogue photos of inebriated moments have found their way online.

To see your younger, drunker yourself staring back out of the internet k-hole would be a terrifying prospect indeed.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The strange streetscapes in a Tokyo without ads

Nicolas Damiens is a French Graphic Designer who has worked for the past eight years in agencies all over the world. This collection of gifs that he made highlights an unkowable world without ads. It’s undoubtedly more peaceful and slightly unnerving, something is definitely missing from this picture.

Source: Nicholas Damiens

Does ambient advertising subtract or add soul to a city?

In my opinion, ads take away from a place because they are essentially white noise and irrelevant messaging that crowd out the more quiet messages given off by the skyline or a treelined street or a park. They clog up places with bullshit. Although they once were the done thing, billboard advertising is dying art and marketers need to be savvy with digital platforms in order to reach their audience.

Source: Nicholas Damiens

Billboards are part of our world, but for how long?

Grassroots movements in busy cities like São Paulo, Chennai. Tehran, Paris and NYC have sprung up and are calling for a ban on outdoor advertising, which could be music to our senses in the future. Read more on The Guardian.

Source: Nicholas Damiens

Book of Hours: Deshimaru at Vespers

Seven suspenseful and unforgettable historical novels

You must concentrate upon and concentrate yourself wholly to each day. As though fire were raging in your hair.

– Deshimaru, Zen Master.

Interactive History Like You’ve Never Seen It Before

Histography is a visually stunning interactive online timeline that spans across 14 billion years of history, from the Big Bang to 2015.

Taking data from Wikipedia, the site updates automatically and orders events using an algorithm. It’s like Wikipedia just with more engaging and interactive audiovisual specs and beautiful typography.

The interface allows for users to view between decades to millions of years. It’s a unique way to meander through the course of history. Users can look a groups of similar or linked events across time or view a sequential series of events over hundreds to millions of years at a time. Wars, architecture, inventions and evolutionary events are all included in the portal.It’s an epic journey rendered into an easy-to-use and compelling infographic.

Read more about the Histography creator MATAN STAUBER by visting his site. He created this as a final project at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design.