Researcher: Faint writing seen on Shroud of Turin

A Vatican researcher claims a nearly invisible text on the Shroud of Turin proves the authenticity of the artifact revered as Jesus’ burial cloth. The claim made in a new book by historian Barbara Frale drew immediate skepticism from some scientists, who maintain the shroud is a medieval forgery. Frale, a researcher at the Vatican archives, said Friday that she used computers to enhance images of faintly written words in Greek, Latin and Aramaic scattered across the shroud

A Vatican researcher has rekindled the age-old debate over the Shroud of Turin, saying that faint writing on the linen proves it was the burial cloth of Jesus.

Experts say the historian may be reading too much into the markings, and they stand by carbon-dating that points to the shroud being a medieval forgery.

Barbara Frale, a researcher at the Vatican archives, says in a new book that she used computer-enhanced images of the shroud to decipher faintly written words in Greek, Latin and Aramaic scattered across the cloth.

She asserts that the words include the name “(J)esu(s) Nazarene” — or Jesus of Nazareth — in Greek. That, she said, proves the text could not be of medieval origin because no Christian at the time, even a forger, would have mentioned Jesus without referring to his divinity. Failing to do so would risk being branded a heretic.

“Even someone intent on forging a relic would have had all the reasons to place the signs of divinity on this object,” Frale said Friday. “Had we found 'Christ' or the 'Son of God' we could have considered it a hoax, or a devotional inscription.”

The shroud bears the figure of a crucified man, complete with blood seeping from his hands and feet, and believers say Christ's image was recorded on the linen's fibers at the time of his resurrection.

The fragile artifact, owned by the Vatican, is kept locked in a protective chamber in a Turin cathedral and is rarely shown. Measuring 13 feet (four meters) long and three feet (one meter) wide, the shroud has suffered severe damage through the centuries, including from fire. ….

via Researcher: Faint writing seen on Shroud of Turin – Yahoo! News.

Maya “Painted Pyramid” Reveals 1st Murals of Daily Life

A series of unusual Maya wall murals, complete with hieroglyphic captions, are providing archaeologists with a priceless look at day-to-day life in the empire circa A.D. 620 to 700.

Previously known Maya murals all depict the ruling elite, victories in battle, or religious themes. (Explore a map of Maya ruins.)

But exterior walls on a “painted pyramid” buried for centuries in the Mexican jungle (pictured, a corner of the pyramid undergoing excavations) have shown Maya scholars something completely different.

The murals—discovered in 2004 at the Maya site of Calakmul—depict ordinary people enjoying much more casual pursuits, according to a new, detailed description of the wall art.

“There's really nothing like this in any of the [known] murals. These are totally unexpected,” said Maya expert Michael D. Coe, curator emeritus at Yale University's Peabody Museum of Natural History and editor of the new paper.

“This is everyday life with people who are not upper-crust Maya but rather people engaged in everyday activities.”

Maya Food and Fashion

The colorful artwork shows the clothing and jewelry worn by various social classes in Calakmul, one of the largest cities of the Classic Maya period, which lasted from A.D. 300 to 900. (Take a Maya quiz.)

During this era, Calakmul was likely the capital of the Kan (Snake) Kingdom, which held great sway over the Maya world.

The murals also depict common foodstuffs as well as people involved in food preparation and distribution, including a “salt person” and a “tobacco person,” as they are labeled in the hieroglyphs. (Related: “Ancient Farm Discovery Yields Clues to Maya Diet.”)

Other scenes depict corn products that were essential to the Maya diet: A woman distributes a platter of tamales to a crowd in one panel, while a man and woman in another scene serve maize gruel.

What's more, the Calakmul murals' exterior location surprised experts, since other murals were found secreted away inside pyramids.

“In other words, they were public,” Coe said of the Calakmul paintings. “They were to be seen by everybody.” Luckily for Maya scholars, the painted pyramid's long burial helped preserve the unusual artwork.

via Maya “Painted Pyramid” Reveals 1st Murals of Daily Life.

Top 20 forced perspective photos (photos)

Famous Paintings Reproduced In Coffee

I visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art this weekend.  For $20, the photography of Richard Avedon was interesting, and when I included getting to see a real Picasso and a real Salvador Dali painting up so close that I could see the brush strokes, definitely worth it.  Avedon photographed more famous people than you probably would have guessed.  I enjoyed seeing photos of the Beatles I had not seen before. And god, what the heck happened to Andy Warhol? Oh, wow. Now I know.

So, I’m in an “Art Mood” this weekend and found this interesting:

Karen Eland, a former coffee maker has recreated famous paintings using only coffee as ink. According to Gizmodo, she “one day decided to dip a paint brush into her coffee cup instead of nibbling on biscotti. By gradually building layers of espresso she’s able to create a range of tones and what must be the tastiest smelling paintings ever.”

Here are my favorites. More on Gizmodo.

The Inverted Time Machine

The inverted machine – Rechnender Raum (Calculating Space) is a light-weight sculpture, constructed from sticks, strings and little plumbs. At the same time it is a full functional logic exact neural network (*). Through its strict geometric and otherwise very filigree construction, the observer is able to track the whole processing logic from every viewpoint around the machine. This disclosure of the machines core is enforced by an uncommon distribution of its constructing elements: a nine angled architectural body forms a torus. In contrast to an ordinary alignment of a hidden logic and an outer user facing display its geometric basis is turned inside-out. The core of the machine, with all its computing elements, is shifted outwards on the surface, while the “display” which indicates the results of the tasks is displaced into the center of the system. Even though the tasks and their logic runs directly in front of the viewers eyes and even if one is long sinking into the interaction of the elements which is accompanied by a polyphonic but steady and reassuring buzz, it is not possible to follow the succession of the single conditions of the machine. On one hand by turning the machine inside-out its function is completly transparent, on the other hand a strict self-referentiality and ignorance to the viewer is realized. The machine turns away from the visitor and carries out its computations only for itself. Without depending on interaction or requesting it, it goes through its own states endlessly. The results of the computations are sent inwards -into its own center- they are not intended for the viewer. So an interesting paradox appears: while the machine opens up everything it closes it at the same time, as if it has a secret.

via ralf baecker | RECHNENDER RAUM.

Autistic artist Stephen Wiltshire is drawing New York City from memory

After just 20 minutes in a helicopter above the Manhattan skyline, autistic artist Stephen Wiltshire was ready to re-create a city that took hundreds of years to build.

Wiltshire is drawing a 20-foot panoramic view of New York – all from memory.

The 35-year-old artist’s autistic disorder affects his ability to interact with other people.

It has also given him a photographic memory – and a gift for putting it on paper.

“I just looked without drawing,” said Wiltshire as he explained how he is able to draw the skyline without referring back to a photograph of the city.

“Everything is like a TV show,” he said. “I have never drawn from a sketchbook.”

Wiltshire, a Londoner, is creating the image at the Pratt Institute of Art in Brooklyn, where the public can watch him work through Friday afternoon. New York is the last in a series of eight panoramas of major cities across the world, including Dubai and Tokyo.

“This city is very beautiful,” he said, as he drew the Big Apple from the Bronx to Staten Island.

“It has got skyscrapers …and the American people.”

Wiltshire began drawing as a child, when his teachers used art to help him learn.

“Stephen used his drawings to communicate with the world,” said his sister, Annette Wiltshire, 37. “He used his drawings to learn the alphabet.”

He has his own gallery in London, which his sister helps him run.

“He’s good at picking up on things the human eye normally wouldn’t,” she said. New Yorkers watched yesterday as Wiltshire furiously moved his pen across the paper.

“I could watch him all day,” said Karen Smith, 51, of Brooklyn, who works at the Pratt Institute.

“It almost makes me cry,” said her co-worker, Emma Legge, 39.

via Autistic artist Stephen Wiltshire is drawing New York City from memory.

Amazing! What difference allows his visual memory to store and recall so much compared to the rest of us?

The story behind the Web’s No. 1 video

A video that shows Stockholm subway riders abandoning the escalator to make music on a staircase turned into a piano keyboard is holding fast at the top of the Viral Video Chart, with more than 4.8 million views.

Its creator talked to The Star on Wednesday about how the whole project has brought out the kid in his creative team and astonished him at how radically it revolutionizes advertising.

Not to mention brought worldwide attention to Volkswagen’s Fun Theory, a campaign that uses their cars as a launching pad for a global competition to use fun to change people’s behaviour for the better.

Andrea Dahlqvist and his team at DDB Stockholm created the subway-piano stairs, as well as a “bottomless” whistling public wastecan and a recycling bin turned into an arcade as part of The Fun Theory. Conceived as a campaign to advertise the carmaker Volkswagen’s environmental roots, the videos are “an insight into human nature,” Dahlqvist said over the cacophony of his Stockholm office.

“Everyone has the choice of the escalator or the stairs, for example,” he said. “You know you should be taking the stairs, but it’s easier to take the other route. We played off that. If we make it a fun experience, a good experience, then people will do it.”

via The story behind the Web’s No. 1 video – thestar.com.

Mona Lisa’s smile a mystery no more

If you have been puzzled by Mona Lisa’s smile – how she’s radiant one moment and serious the next instant – then your worries are over. It happens because our eyes are sending mixed signals to the brain about her smile.

Different cells in the retina transmit different categories of information or “channels” to the brain. These channels encode data about an object’s size, clarity, brightness and location in the visual field.

“Sometimes one channel wins over the other, and you see the smile, sometimes others take over and you don’t see the smile,” says Luis Martinez Otero, a neuroscientist at Institute of Neuroscience in Alicante, Spain, who conducted the study along with Diego Alonso Pablos.

This isn’t the first time scientists have deconstructed Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece. In 2000, Margaret Livingstone, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School with a side interest in art history, showed that Mona Lisa’s smile is more apparent in peripheral visionMovie Camera than dead-centre, or foveal, vision. And in 2005, an American team suggested that random noise in the path from retina to visual cortex determines whether we see a smile or not. …

Eye gaze also affects how volunteers see the smile, Otero Martinez says. His team used software to track where in the painting 20 volunteers gazed while they rated whether or not Mona Lisa’s smile became more or less apparent.

With a minute to gaze at the painting, volunteers tended to focus on the left side of her mouth when judging her as smiling – further evidence that dead-centre vision picks out the smile. That can’t be the whole story, though, because when volunteers had only a fraction of a second to discern her smile, their eyes tended to focus on her left cheek, hinting that peripheral vision plays a role, too.

So did Leonardo intend to sow so much confusion in the brains of viewers, not to mention scientists? Absolutely, Otero Martinez contends. “He wrote in one of his notebooks that he was trying to paint dynamic expressions because that’s what he saw in the street.”

via Mona Lisa’s smile a mystery no more – life – 21 October 2009 – New Scientist.

Wolfman (2010) Trailer, never mind the creature, look at those sets!

The Great Wall of… what?

via – http://izismile.com