Tetrachromatic 'Super Vision' May Help Some Women See 100 Million Colors, Neuroscientists Say
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04/15/11
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03/29/11
July 02, 2012
Remember hand shadows? Perhaps, the oldest art form known to man. Unfortunately, replaced by such creative killers as radio, television, the Internet and better lighting.
I used to be quite good at casting a head on the wall that either resembled a Newfoundland Dog, or Winston Churchill (sometimes with a pipe if I got lucky).
There’s little history on the subject, but it’s a good enough guess that cavemen had the necessary backlight and proper dark cave that their hands would cast shadows.
It was a small leap of faith to think… “Look, Ogsti, "You've made a “Big Lizard.” Either that, or there was an actual big lizard behind them.
We do know that an ancient Indian epic poem Ramayana, from the 4th Century B.C, a mere 24,000 lines, is written about the life of Rama, son to the king of Dasciadha, and presented in hand and shadow form.
In ancient China, puppeteers stretched donkey skin, dried sheepskin, many varieties of animal skin, on their hands. Scrunched them into all sorts of wondrous things. Then did their thing in front of a screen with the light passing through, and told stories, creating the first puppet shows.
Hand shadows reached their absolute zenith (such as it was) in the 19th Century, thanks to candlelight, the gas lamp and Henry Burcill.
Burcill's main claim to fame was, along with Sir Edwin Landseer, sculpting the four great lions in Trafalgar Square. What’s totally endearing about him is he wrote (I should say drew) the two classic books on the subject, “Hand Shadows” and “More Hand Shadows.”
First published in 1859 and 1860 (in two parts), they're simply books of pictures. No words. No page of text describing the history and variations of each pattern.
Might have wanted to keep a few secrets to himself.
However, Albert Almoznino, in a small 1964 classic, “The Art of Hand Shadows” spills all the beans.
He’ll tell you how to hold your hands in order to make a lumbering dinosaur, a pair of playing monkeys, an eagle that slowly takes flight and for his coup de gras, a cat that scratches itself, lashes its tail, and jumps towards the audience. Don't try this at home. (Yet.)
Hand shadows. From a simpler time. A fascinating unsung creative vestige of art that I think deserves a hand.
Maybe even yours.
Can you think of any lost art you'd like to retrieve? Or art you'd like to eliminate?
still thinking about today...
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03/22/11
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kerrylyn
04/11/11
Ahhh, the art of the jest. Yup, that has slowly been replaced by the 'snark',and,sadly, the form of pun, that was in fact irony,has also been left for being 'diss-ed' (a colloquialism for a put down)...these are the shadow puppets of sound...and now there is the ubiquitous you tubes on the hand phone (fill in the brand du jur)....but, you can upload a hand puppet show to you tube...hahahaha
RY..................can't sleep, good morning to you! You said anything I would have had to say if I had had anything to say............on the topic. Hope your day is splendiforous..............( just curious, do you get more refrigeration calls in the summer? I ask because when our AC went out our AC guy was working until 11:45 p.m. on jobs & he said that at 6:30 in the morning on Saturday he had people at his house begging him to come & fix their AC. That is the day he came to ours. We both professed our love to him...................)
everything.................duh!
I hope the link works. The lost art? "The search in research." I'll let y'all read it if you care to. Something about dusting off old manuscripts. I sure hope Mr. Peterman is on an extended adventure and not one that involves medication, doctors or hospitals.
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=420366&c=1
Smoke Ringology taught by dear old Uncle Ed. While strategically slumped in my outdoor hand painted Adirondack with a nice Dominican while the ceiling fan whirrs the atmosphere of my back deck imitating what I once observed in his old barber shop. I dreamily "wait for that mystery man to pay me for my time." Havana Daydreaming. The smoke just seems to disappear into the ethereal or so it seems this human once a month locomotive imitating smoke signal generating earthling.
Hi Roadie, Bebe, Paolos and TT! How hot is it now? We’ve just had the coldest June in 5 years, and we haven’t gone into deep winter yet. I hope I get invited to an Ozmas party!
On a visit to the old capital city of Yogyakarta in Indonesia, known as the centre of classical Javanese arts, I had the opportunity to sit through a performance of wayang kulit, showcasing the Ramayana, an ancient Sanskrit epic. To be honest, I got bored after some time and left…….I mean, it is an epic! In a wayang kulit, the shadow play involves puppets made of buffalo and goat hide and control rods made of bamboo.
In the local parlance, behind the scenes manoeuvrings, especially political ones are referred to as a wayang kulit. We also say that of colleagues who put on a show of working hard, especially when the boss is around.
Did we have this topic recently? I think so, or maybe it's another shadow on the wall of my memory.
Has/did something happened to Mr Peterman?
I was at my company's end-of-financial-year dinner on Saturday when the office administrator suddenly collapsed, but not before I saw one side of her mouth drooping , and just answering "no" when I asked , "Anne, are you alright?"
She came to in a quick minute but couldn't remember a thing. We are sure she had a mini stroke and have insisted she goes for a check up
SHADOWS, ALL KINDS, EVERYWHERE. ALLOWS US TO KNOW THE YIN AND YANG OF THINGS BRINING US INTO HARMONY.HOPE ALL IS WELL WITH EVERYONE.
How about the lost art of "Cloud Gazing"? You remember, Laying down on the grass, looking up, and seeing different shapes in the clouds..the fun part was trying to get another person to see the same shape that you did. Hummm, my Grandaughter is here for a few days....maybe I'll try it with her if I can get her to stop texting for 5 minutes!
Spring F~ Hope you colleague is OK.
Morning everyone.
Hand shadow characters were a big deal when my daughter was just a little girl. Never got the ventriloquism down to a science, but she never was too critical, as we animated our bedtime stories to include hand puppet shows. Now it seems that youngsters are grafted to their "smart phones," tablets, computer screens. How do we ever expect to stimulate growth of new synapses in our brains if we never cultivate new ideas?
Spring Fragrance, perhaps Mr. Peterman had some sort of an illness, or maybe he just got tired of being tired, burned out. It happens to all of us, but the recycled classic postings are just fine. I'm thinking he's entitled to his privacy.....YOU, however, may be thinking he needs a hand puppet show, perfect cure for the blues.
Morning all... hope any of you in this heat wave we're having are staying cool... Not too bad here, but the humidity has been low, so that helps.
Anyone have any big plans for the 4th of July (with our extra second of course)?
Bebe- yes to your refrigeration question; kitchens are hotter this time of year,so equipment runs longer,and breaks more often,and the consequences of higher cooler temperature are,well, some days I put parsely into a breather mask to tone down the smell of ,er,strong Oh Dears.....
RY when I start to whine to myself about the weather conditions today I am going to think of you and the places you have to go, and I am going to be SOOO glad I am not in a resturant kitchen in front of a hot stove and I will begin to chill, in more ways than one. RY you are a hero!
Nothing big on the fourth, just a few friends oved for a happy hour. We have one every month. Some beer,alittle wine and mixes drinks with appetizers, this time of year we are out on the deck and enjoy a little lite jazz and the evening coming on.Hope everyone is able yo escape the heat and have a most pleasant day.
I remember a hand trick my dear ole Dad used to use on his young, impressionable children. It involved pulling on his finger. You'd have thought it was the 4th of July year round.
Good morning everyone. I'm enjoying my oatmeal with banana and yogurt and it is going to be another hot, dry day in SE Wisconsin. My dad traveled a lot in his career and we would all sit and watch the slides he had taken on his trips to South America, Eurpope, wherever. The highlight was the hand puppet shows the 5 of us would do while he was setting up the slides: the screen just had the blank white light on it with 5 pairs of hands attempting to be birds, faces, etc.
I'm with you, Paolos, in that I loved research at the Library of Congress in D. C. For a paper I wrote on the British Dreadnot I had a special pass to go crawling among the files racks pulling records of Parliament in the very early 1900s. Last time I was there--rather recently--I didn't know how to begin to get information because you can no longer just order books and have them deliverd to your desk or get one of those wonderful passes and d your own digging. And indead there is a certain art in doing good research.
Yep, Hazel, the topic starts out very familiar, but I think the ending question is different.
It's Dreadnaut. Sorry.
Art to eliminate? Yes, the art of cellphone texting and yakking in public! The art of bluetoothing while walking around the grocery store with a thingie in your ear and talking loudly enough to annoy everyone within 3 aisles! Yakking on the cell phones out in a doctor's waiting room or restaurant so everyone else has to listen. A couple or family at a meal and all with noses into their electronic devices instead of speaking to one another!! Eliminate those bad manners!
Art to preserve? The art of talking to the neighbors who walk by on your street. Simply going out to water a flower when you see the couple who walk their dog go by, or the man who has the black lab that chases the tennis ball. Make yourself available out there and ask the folks how they are doing, and just chat with them.
Another art to preserve -- Entertaining the grandkids with things around the house. Put them to organizing the Tupperware, old photos, or alphabetizing the books on the shelf. Show them how to make string art (Jacob's Ladder, cup and saucer, etc.) or to fold a sheet of paper to make a box or really good airplane. Take them into the kitchen and let them stir up cookies. Get them off the phone, Ipods, TV, GameBoys, etc. and into a good book.
I would like to retrieve the lost art of Family Dinner. Manners being taught at home. Not self mutilating with tattoos and piercings unless one is a sailor who has gone around Cape Horn. Not to have to have a "Fine Jar" to prevent employees from using f@#k or s@#t around or actually to customers. I would very much like to retreive the art of Snail Mail. To thnk there are generations now who do not know the joy of receiving a handwritten letter with the thoughts and heart of a friend.
I am now finished venting.. Thank you very much. I shall now revert to my uptodate cool self to the rest of the world who do not enjoy the privileges of this enlightened Village.
To Mr. P , Chris the Webmaster and other Peterpeople, hope you are enjoying some well desevved R&R (of course we expect Mr. P to be gallivanting around the world).
I like to think these are favorite topiocs, and not the fill by a "substitute" untill our "regular" teacher comes back....now, onto a more pressing question..cold soups that refresh the soul, as well as the pallet...and sorbets, to cleanse those , too
2nd the motion, ChefDeb, and include the art of delightful conversation! The art of smiling, even a grin with a twinkle of the eye type if "eye" character art...,...Art of getting down to finishing... my contemplating artwork...art paintings/sewing/books/and thingermajigs..that need artist attention..I buying a new camera after reviewing the"eye' photo contest...photofabulous...art!
My art is my epiphyllum. And it's that time of year again. Blooming starts tonight for the oxypetalum.
Mooseloop, I agree with you, but are we not glued also to our computers, well some are some not. I loved your ideas getting the kids to be creative. Something I miss is GRACE, people do not know what it is or how to be gracious to one another. I think your ideas are perfect.
ChefDeb, is it true that you put black pepper in something you are cooking AFTER it is cooked so you won't have a burnt pepper taste? Making Speghetti sause today.
No. That would be true of fresh basil, but black pepper is one of those seasonings like salt that in fact are better developed in layers. For example, if your recipe calls for you to saute onions it would be appropriate to add salt and pepper to them. Then as you add your other ingredients, again. Finally when all is finished a final taste for seasoning adjustment. Just be circumspect in how much you add each time (usually not more than 1/2 tsp.or 7 or 8 grindings.)
Yum, spaghetti.
Magicangel - Fair criticism about us being on the PC, but in my case, not when the kids or grandkids are here. Since they live an hour away and only visit occasionally, email is one way of sharing funny animal pictures, cute stories, and keeping in touch with them. BUT... when they are HERE, we make things, DO things, walk outside or go to the pool, and do not ignore them to log on to email or the Eye Village.
For that reason, there are sometimes days and weeks when I am not putting my 2 cents in on this page. I'd advise folks to do likewise, and I think we do in this august group... Only ride the Sepia Train when we are not slighting our families.
I like the family dinner idea as well. My husband and I are just a family of 2, but we always share dinner together. One of my sisters has a family of 3; herself, her son, and her husband. She has unpleasant memories about our family dinners growing up and vowed not to make her son go through that. So, everyone just ate when and where they wanted. Her husband worked odd hours, her son had his schedule, and she just ate whenever she felt like it. I always thought it was very strange, but she saw no problem with it--they were happy. Her son is grown now--as a matter of fact, he's in culinary school. He's turned out just fine in spite of not having grown up with the traditional family dinner. Perhaps he'll open a family-style restaurant someday!
Hand Shadows ....... Sorta like how the government works .......
Mooseloop, I'm with you on the grandchildren things. Mine are still very young, 5 and 1. But when they come over the TV stays off except for special occasions when we all choose to watch a movie together. I have bookshelves filled with childrens books at all levels. They know that grandmama is only too willing to read a book at any time. I have been teaching my granddaughter tongue twistwers. Now there is a lost art. She loves them. We have a safe backyard and she has learned how to go out and do nothing, and allow herself to get lost in watching an ant crawl over blades of grass. Remember doing that on hot summer days when you were young. Smilesforever, she knows the wonderful art of cloud watching. I am trying to teach her how to make a whistle with a blade of grass. Her baby brother will learn these things from her and me. All I do is reach back in my memory for a summer day when i went outside with nothing in paticular planned and try to remember something I did.
Ivan - You said it!! Government hand shadows! Lots of that going on over in the Dept. of Justice (is that some kind of oxymoron? Justice with injustice rampant?)...
Also at CNN last time I looked...and maybe some in the FLOTUS's vacation budget where the kids and grandma are listed as "employees."
It's just too d*@n bad when we see hand shadows in our very own US Gov't!
TT ~
Your mention of smoke rings got me to remembering and I may have mentioned this before: a very tall, thin, big boned Scandanavian man pulled up in one of those tiny Chevy panel trucks and asked to take photos of pipe smoke as it came through the front porch screens.
He had a hell of a lot of gear but got set up quickly and went to work.
It was, in fact, fascinating to see the digital images of thick smoke temporarily cubed by the screen wire on his laptop but when I asked if he would e-mail some of them to me he leaned back as offended as if I had asked for pictures of his naked children: "Certainly... not!"
Taken aback by the audacity of the request, he was careless about picking up all of the bubble wrap and wire bundlers in the yard, tossing them in the shrubs when he thought I wasn't looking.
He had got all of his cameras, lights, cables and tripods stowed in the back of the vehicle when he was overtaken by some kind of abdominal cramping and came back… doubled over: "I need to use your bathroom… now."
It was possible to imagine scenarios with dynamics such that I would sprint upstairs and ask the Beauty to hop out of the tub and make the bathroom available in an emergency.
This, was not one of them.
If this isn't all smoke and mirrors,.............then I'm really worried.
And sir, that ungrateful cad can now learn how to Prarie Dog.
Stoney ~ As always, a great story. The photographer's
request is reminiscent of Claude Monet's request that the station master fire
up the steam engines so that the Painter Monet could paint the belching smoke. I am not one to question the veracity of your
story. I would never doubt you in any
fashion, at any time. But if TMBWITW is upstairs
bathing, why would you be on the porch smoking a pipe? Who, pray tell, would be there to scrub her back?
A response is neither expected nor…well, let’s leave it at
that.
CHEFDEB, thanks, its great to get advice from someone who KNOWS. I will add my peoper during the cooking process from now on. Speghetti was great, Italian salad, crusty bread and vino. Mooseloop, you are so balanced, I love that. You really are so good at teaching kids the right thing. They must have so much fun with you. Lovebirdmom, watching an aunt craw on a leaf, what a beautiful thing. Getting close to how nature works with kids; this shoud be something schools add to their program.
Hazel : again, I'm late to the party, but I agree with you, we did have this topic just a short while ago. So when I saw it this morning, I figured we were having website problems, I didn't stop in because I'd nothing to say about hand shadows then, nor do I now. I waa never good at making them. And they quickly bored me. I see we're past shadows now anyhow, and right int he middle of a glass of wine and a plate of spaghetti. Sounds good. Eat and be merry for tomorrow you will sweat it all off, just by breathing. hhhhot. And the corn I'm told is darn close to being worth nothing, a lost crop. We haven't had rain literally in weeks here in this little band of Wisconsin, the southeast. and HAZEL, i'm going to have to put off my burn session because as you said, it's so dry out there, too dry for a safe burn - i'm worried about fireworks and my idiot neighbor who honest to god is a pyromaniac, she loves fires, sets them in the woods on a windy day -- she's a danger, she really is. I'm going to have to sit outside with a hose while she ignores the no burn notice, and tries to set fire to the entire town. Tomorrow I'm shredding stuff HAZEL - not nearly as soul satisfying as burning, but it will do for now.
It was more than a case of ungraciousness overcoming midwestern samaritanism… I didn't think he was going to make it.
P ~
I always respond for the post-bath body cream application… I get the back.
Park4 ~
We got torrential rain but not much cooling off.
Just a note of history, after talking to a horse racer class of 1949, he said,"nobody wanted to live in soot and smoked filled towns in Pennsylvania...it was bad...stinkin steel mills..no blue sky..so polluted..grey orange skies.... and dirty, water was dirty...most of us livin here did not want to come back.to southwestern Pennsylvania after the war....I moved on up to the mouth of the Mississipi...:" I asked what kind of car did your parents drive...every family had a chevy...cheverolette....now, you couldnt get parts for your family car so the parents went to work by way of the trolly...electric car...and the teenagers drove the cars....they rigged them..and had time to tinker them...but back then..our parents didn't drive to work....everyone had a chevy...back then...."
Now that we all have had lots of time to muse about Inspector Morse's first name Endeavour, I publicly give thumbs up to the prequel & the squeamish Detective Constable as I wait for Inspector Lewis. This is good stuff unlike young Mr. Morse's comment "didn't take."
Tommy T ~
I did see and enjoy it.
Watched it again this morning online and could, if I wished, see it again at ten thirty.
It was well done.
I love the performing arts....ballet, symphony, plays---all a dying breed. Most do not consider performance an art and, therefore, do not support it. For shame! And yet pop art and Lady Gaga become infamous. What's wrong with us?