Fed by Birds

I was invited to contribute to Paul Ramsay's Consemble sound/mail art project, which, as he points out, is doing its own bit to automate the creative process - leaving composers free to do the sort of things they do best. His site also pointed me towards the amazing Zadar Sea Organ, an installation in Croatia that uses stone stairs on a seaside promenade as the pipes of an organ which is played by the waves. You can hear it in action here.

It seems that San Francisco and Blackpool also have sea organs, although I can't find any recordings online - some comments suggest the San Francisco one may have become clogged up with sand and crabs. Quickly, San Franciscans - buckets and spades to the rescue!

Posted by at 3:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

We should be travelling around with our personal hot-air balloons and amphibian bicycles by now, according to these futuristic 1900 trade cards. Also going on underwater trams:

and finding new uses for Roentgen rays - not sure what they would be, apparently peeping at safecrackers:

Via Weekend Stubble.

Posted by at 8:58 PM | Permalink

I think we've all had enough stripper memoirs and ironic domestic goddess stuff now, thanks, so please can everyone go and have a look at the Women's Library's splendid collection of rousing suffragette banners, for a reminder that our grandmothers were made of sterner stuff.

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As you may have noticed, Fed by Birds campaigns tirelessly to automate the creative process, leaving writers free to spend more time on what they do best. For instance, this online mesostic generator will work out acrostic poems using found text so you don't have to.

I took the traditional self-centred route to test such a thing, and the results seem quite satisfactory:

Back to the chaise longue! Just in time for that substantial 1pm brandy.

Posted by at 12:25 PM | Permalink

A piece by David Attenborough on the radio the other day was the first I'd heard of the Vogelkop bowerbird in Papua New Guinea. This amazing bird creates a lawn of moss in front of its already impressive nest, and lays out objects on it to attract females. These vary from bird to bird - piles of red leaves, beetles' wings or deer droppings covered with fungi with a bluish sheen (the last apparently highly successful). They endlessly rearrange every bit of fungus or berry for the perfect display.

The females shop around and choose their mate on the basis of the best bower. As Attenborough explained, if you want a chance of filming it mating, you first have to decide which is the best nest to stake out. Luckily, the Vogelkop and humans turn out to have surprisingly similar aesthetic tastes.

You can hear more about filming the Vogelkop here, in an episode of Nature which also features its weird vocal duels.

Posted by at 5:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This short film showing a fly doing juggling tricks with dumbbells, corks and another fly was made by pioneering filmmaker Percy Smith. By the end it's sitting in a tiny chair to do its routine. It does seem possible the fly is, er, glued on, although Smith claimed none of the creatures he filmed were any the worse for the experience.

Speechification has a post on a great radio documentary about Smith, as well as a link to another of his films, the Birth of a Flower.

Posted by at 3:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)