Sevastopol and its famous chestnut trees.

Al-Jazari was a prominent Arab polymath.

Al-Jazari created a programmable drum machine with pegs (cams) that bump into little levers that operated the percussion. The drummer could be made to play different rhythms and different drum patterns if the pegs were moved around. According to Charles B. Fowler, the automata were a “robot band” which performed “more than fifty facial and body actions during each musical selection.”

The elephant clock was described by Al-Jazari in 1206 is notable for several innovations. It was the first clock in which an automaton reacted after certain intervals of time (in this case, a humanoid robot striking the cymbal and a mechanical robotic bird chirping) and the first water clock to accurately record the passage of the temporal hours to match the uneven length of days throughout the year.

A beautiful armillary sphere.

Archaeopteryx is the earliest and most primitive bird known.

Anchors

Prince Zaleski, an exiled Russian nobleman, inhabits a half-ruined abbey in Wales, where he spends most of his time smoking cannabis and opium, reading from his library of medieval books, or admiring his collection of rare curios dating from ancient antiquity. His retirement from the world is occasionally interrupted by his friend Shiel, who comes to seek Zaleski’s help in solving mysteries that have baffled the greatest minds in Britain.

Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye

Bernd Kuchenbeiser

Danish ballet master, August Bournonville

BMW 2002

The new Raf Simons website.

A true artist.

Squash

The best representation of narrative folding.

Boots: Ann Demeulemeester

Coat: BLESS

Blazer: Helmut Lang

Jeans: Acne

Belt: Carol Christian Poell

Jersey: Rick Owens

Wallet: Comme des Garcons

The unmoved mover is a philosophical concept described by Aristotle as the first cause that sets the universe into motion. As is implicit in the name, the “unmoved mover” is not moved by any prior action. In his book Metaphysics, Aristotle describes the unmoved mover as being perfectly beautiful, indivisible, and contemplating only the perfect contemplation: itself contemplating.

Veduta

View of Delft

Ancient Rome

Modern Rome

Marlene Dumas

Rineke Dijkstra

As much as Rineke Dijkstra is one of the best for what she does (awkward teenagers), when we see her side-by-side with the utter profundity of Marlene Dumas, she appears to be simply talking about petty problems. Mostly, this is because Dijkstra only captures her subjects as victims of their own vanity (and society’s), whereas Dumas’ subjects are infinitely more complex – because it puts menace and exploitation in one image, not an easy cocktail to take for free-thinking liberals.

Andrei Tarkovsky – Elements of Cinema. Just the cover is mind blowing.

The Little Red Schoolbook is a book written by two Danish schoolteachers. The book encourages young people to question societal norms and instructs them in how to do this. Out of 200 pages, it includes 20 pages on sex and 30 on drugs, including alcohol and tobacco.

Hussein Chalayan’s 2009 spring/summer collection. Old, but classic nonetheless. Where J.G. Ballard’s Crash is cerebral and pop art and John Chamberlain’s automobile usage is corny, Hussein Chalayan manages to make something so sexy and graceful, as if burning hot metal was draped on the model’s body. SICK.

Tomcat Murr is a loveable, self-taught animal who has written his own autobiography. But a printer’s error causes his story to be accidentally mixed and spliced with a book about the composer Johannes Kreisler. As the two versions break off and alternate at dramatic moments, two wildly different characters emerge from the confusion – Murr, the confident scholar, lover, carouser and brawler, and the moody, hypochondriac genius Kreisler.

Bunraku is a form of traditional Japanese puppet theater, dating back to the 17th century.

Susan Hiller

The unfuckwithable Marlene Dumas.

Peter Doig. One of the absolute best painters working today.

Jitka Hanzlová. My new favorite photographer.

Anne Katrine Dolven. My new favorite artist.

Czeslaw Slania. One of the world’s most prolific postage stamp and banknote engravers.

Grantland Rice was an early 20th century American sportswriter known for his elegant prose.

The riders were some of the best paid and most respected athletes during the golden era of sports…the Jazz Age. Jazz bands and song pluggers performed in the infield as the bookies plied their trade. The finest sports writers of the day spun tales of heroes and villains. The riders raced for big money and big endorsements. MORE

A look from Alexander Wang’s pre-fall 2010 collection.

More study of the teenage body. Western Lights is a documentary “hosted” by a ship full of boys roughly ten to sixteen years of age. Follow them as they journey across the world in search of information about Christopher Columbus, make stops at and have adventures in places such as the Canary Island, Venezuela and Guatemala.

The Genesis Children.

A priest  gathers together a group of boys, both American and European, and takes them to a beach on the Mediterranean Sea. There he has plans to stage a play based on the biblical book of Genesis. Throughout the movie, the boys in question are frequently entirely nude and are shown frolicking in the surf, building shelters, driving a van and climbing up cliffs.

Kay Pollak’s film from 1980.