A research of imaginary landscapes
in Sound & Vision by Machinefabriek
and Lesley Moore.
Based on the book Krãsainãs Pasakas (1973) by Imants Ziedonis.
Narrated by Sahand Sahebdivani.
Curated by Anthropologists in Art.
A research of imaginary landscapes
in Sound & Vision by Machinefabriek
and Lesley Moore.
Based on the book Krãsainãs Pasakas (1973) by Imants Ziedonis.
Narrated by Sahand Sahebdivani.
Curated by Anthropologists in Art.
Thoughts, concepts, theories, poems and lyrics on colour.
The Rainbow Snake was one of the Dreamtime creatures who had shaped the earth. In the beginning the earth was flat, a vast barren plain. As the Rainbow Snake wound his way across the land, the movement of his body heaped up the mountains and dug troughs for the rivers. With each new thrust of his huge multi-coloured body, a landform was created. He was the biggest of the Dreamtime Beings. At last, tired with the effort of shaping the earth, he crawled into a waterhole to be cooled and soothed and then sank out of sight.
(source: www.dreamtime.auz.net)
Posted: May 7th
'Non sine sole iris' ('No rainbow without the sun').
Genesis 9:12-17
And God said about colour: "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the
clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth."
Posted: May 7th
Henryk Berlewi (Warschau, 1894 – 1967) was a Polish painter and designer. In the 20's he get influenced by avant gadre artists as Van Doesburg and El Lissitzky. Later he created more optical art, a style of visual art that makes use of optical illusions.
Posted: May 6th.
"Plastic expression in architecture is inconceivable without colour. Colour and light complete one another. Without colour, architecture is expressionless, blind."
by Theo van Doesburg, 'Farben im Raum und Zeit', De Stijl, 1928. No.87-89, pp 26-36.
Theo van Doesburg (1883 – 1931) was a Dutch artist, practicing in painting, writing, poetry and architecture. He is best known as the founder and leader of De Stijl.
Color vision is the capacity of an organism or machine to distinguish objects based on thewavelengths (or frequencies) of the light they reflect, emit, or transmit. The nervous system derives color by comparing the responses to light from the several types of cone photoreceptorsin the eye. These cone photoreceptors are sensitive to different portions of the visible spectrum. For humans, the visible spectrum ranges approximately from 380 to 740 nm, and there are normally three types of cones.
(source: wikipedia)
Everything in the world must have colour. the whole of nature is colourful, and even the grey of dust, of soot, even the darkest, most melancholy places always have some kind of colour - for where there is light, there has to be colour. It is simply man's task to give shape to this phenomenon, like all other things, and soon as he does so even the darkest places reflect something of the sun. Since everything has its colour, everything people do must be done with colour.
Bruno Taut (1880 - 1938). Bruno was a prolific German architect, urban planner and author.
Text above from: 'Wiedergeburt der Farbe', lecture at the Erste Deutsche Farbentag, Hamburg (DE) 1925.
Posted: May 4th.
Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.
The Critic as Artist by Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900).
The Critic as Artist is an essay containing the most extensive statements of Oscar Wildes aesthetic philosophy. It is a dialogue in two parts, by far the longest one included in his collection of essays titled Intentions published in May 1891.
(source: online-literature.com/wilde/1305)
Posted: May 3rd.
The world is not black and white. More like black and grey - Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world.
Posted: May 3rd.
Posted: May 2nd.
'Tis the voice of the Lobster: I heard him declare
"You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.
"As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose
Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.
When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark,
And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark;
But, when the tide rises and sharks are around,
His voice has a timid and tremulous sound.
I passed by his garden, and marked, with one eye,
How the Owl and the Panther were sharing a pie:
The Panther took pie-crust, and gravy, and meat,
While the Owl had the dish as its share of the treat.
When the pie was all finished, the Owl, as a boon,
Was kindly permitted to pocket the spoon;
While the Panther received knife and fork with a growl,
And concluded the banquet by --- *
Tis the Voice of the Lobster is a poem by Lewis Carroll that appears in Chapter 10 of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. As recited by Alice to the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon, the first stanza describes a vain and stylish lobster who pretends not to fear sharks, but is in fact terrified by them. In the second stanza, an owl naively attempts to share a meat pie with a greedy panther. Although the poem's final line is left incomplete, the owl's unhappy fate is evident to the reader. (source: wikipedia)
Madonna Surrounded by Seraphim and Cherubim (1452)
By Jean Fouquet (1420-1480)
One half of the Diptychon of Melun
The blue entities represent the cherubim, probably by their association with the element of wind
The red entities represent the seraphim, the angels love, with fire as the natural element associated with them.
Jean (or Jehan) Fouquet (1420–1481) was a preeminent French painter of the 15th century, a master of both panel painting and manuscript illumination, and the apparent inventor of the portrait miniature. He was the first French artist to travel to Italy and experience at first hand the Italian Early Renaissance. (source: wikipedia)
The Red Barn Murder was a notorious murder committed in Suffolk, England, in 1827. A young woman, Maria Marten, was shot dead by her lover, William Corder. The two had arranged to meet at the Red Barn, a local landmark, before eloping to Ipswich. Maria was never heard from again. Corder fled the scene and although he sent Marten's family letters claiming she was in good health, her body was later discovered buried in the barn.
When Dante spoke of the Seraphim, the colour that "glows" was the pure orange vermilion known as red.
Durante degli Alighieri (1265 – 1321), commonly known as Dante, was a major Italian poet of the Middle Ages. In his Divine Comedy, originally called Commedia and later called Divina by Boccaccio, Dante speaks about a series of concentric spheres surrounding the earth. Dante describes a journey through the spheres from hell to paradise. In the 9th sphere the Seraphim is described as an multi winged angel of love.
Posted: May 1st
Blue in the Face is a 1995 comedy directed by Wayne Wang and Paul Auster.
Blue in the Face was filmed over a five-day period as a follow-up to Wang's 1995 movie Smoke. During production of Smoke, Keitel and the others ad-libbed scenes in-character between takes and a sequel was made using this improvised material.
It stars Harvey Keitel, Victor Argo, Giancarlo Esposito, Roseanne Barr, Michael J. Fox, Lou Reed, Mel Gorham, Jim Jarmusch and Malik Yoba.
Posted April 29th.
Posted: April 29th.
"I’ve broken the blue boundary of colour limits, come out into the white; comrade-pilots swim in this infinity".
Kazimir Severinovitsj Malevitsj, (Kiev, 23 februari 1878 - Leningrad, 15 mei 1935)
Russian painter and art theoretican, born in Ukraine of ethnic Polish parents. He was a pioneer of geometric abstrct art and the originator of the Avant-garde Suprematist movement.
Posted April 29th.

The two flags of Libya:
1- The national flag, instituted by Gadaffi after the 'Green Revolution' in 1977.
2- The original national flag of Libya, since independence in 1951. The flag is nowadays used by the revolutionairs and protesters against the regime of Gadaffi.
Posted April 28th.
Posted: April 28th.
In the whole world there is only one national flag with only one colour and no design in it. It is the national flag of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamarhiya, also known as just Libya. The flag is plain green.
Source: http://www.africa.com/afripedia
Posted: April 27th.
Posted: April 27th.
In the course of my work I’ve eliminated one colour after another, what has remained is grey, grey, grey! Giacometti
Posted: April 27th.
Posted: April 26th.
There is no specific word for brown in Japanese; rather, they use descriptions like: ‘tea-colour’ or ‘fallen leaf’
Posted: April 26th.
Posted April 25th.
Posted April 24th.