Sunday, March 25, 2012

My Kind of Amusement Park

(Above) Vintage postcard from Prehistoric Forest in better days. This card is available at CardCow.

(Above) Back of postcard.

(Above) A Woolly Mammoth at the long abandoned Prehistoric Forest in Irish Hills, Michigan. Image © Debra Jane Seltzer. Image from RoadsideArchitecture.

Image © Debra Jane Seltzer. Image from RoadsideArchitecture.

Image © Debra Jane Seltzer. Image from RoadsideArchitecture.




MY KIND OF AMUSEMENT PARK? CLOSED. ABANDONED. So where does an amusement park go when they go out of business? Well, a few of them have simply been fenced off and left to decay, perhaps hoping for a buyer—someone with dreams of reviving it to make, uh... millions. The now defunct Prehistoric Forest in Irish Hills, Michigan (first opened in 1963) is actually for sale—and you can buy this 8-acre sweetheart for just $584,000. Oh, there are approximately 100 fiberglass dinosaurs on the property, including an arcade, gift shop, a swimming pool in not so good shape and a... community shower (which makes me a bit uncomfortable).

NileGuide, the travel blog, showcases eight different amusement parks, all fenced off with plenty of “No Trespassing” signs around. But come on—that’s no way to see an abandoned theme park! Go ahead, be bold.

And be sure to check out the larger site RoadsideArchitecture.
It is chock full of good sites!

An AM repost from 6/30/10.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Envelope Found Art

(Above and below) This is my favorite. A 1926 envelope postmarked by an obsessive, insane postmaster, I am quite sure. Waa-haa-haaa-haa! Click on image for larger view.

(Above) Back of insane envelope.

(Above) Illustrated Centennial envelope, 1936.

(Above) 1898 envelope for Brunswick cigars. Kinda cool how the wavy postmark is almost like smoke wafting from the cigar.

(Above) Beautiful 1893 envelope for Diamond Creamery Butter.

(Above) German envelope to National Bank of Germany.

(Above) 1936 envelope, postmarked from Mason City, Iowa.


ENJOY THE GRAPHIC, VISUAL POWER AND BEAUTY OF THESE ENVELOPES, and have a great week.


An AM repost from 5/3/09.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

19th Century Japanese Pregnancy Dolls

(Above) 19th-century obstetric training doll - Wada Museum

(Above) “Dark-skinned” pregnant doll - Edo-Tokyo Museum

(Above) “Light-skinned” pregnant doll - Edo-Tokyo Museum

(Above) Wood carved fetus model set (circa 1877) - Toyota Collection

(Above) Baby doll - Edo-Tokyo Museum


IN THE 18TH AND 19TH CENTURY, SIDESHOW CARNIVALS known as
misemono were a popular form of entertainment for the sophisticated residents of Edo (present-day Tokyo). The sideshows featured a myriad of educational and entertaining attractions designed to evoke a sense of wonder and satisfy a deep curiosity for the mysteries of life. One popular attraction was the pregnant doll.

Although it is commonly believed that these dolls were created primarily to teach midwives how to deliver babies, evidence suggests they were also used for entertainment purposes.

For example, records from 1864 describe a popular show in Tokyo’s Asakusa entertainment district that educated audiences about the human body. The show featured a pregnant doll whose abdomen could be opened to reveal fetal models depicting the various stages of prenatal development.

Similarly, records of Japan’s first national industrial exhibition in 1877 indicate a Yamagata prefecture hospital doctor named Motoyoshi Hasegawa showed off an elaborate set of fetus models illustrating seven different stages of growth, from embryo to birth.

Although it is unclear whether the fetus model set pictured in the final image above is the same one Hasegawa showed in 1877, records suggest his model was a hit at the exhibition.

[Source: Geijutsu Shincho magazine, July 2001] via PinkTentacle.

An AM repost from 7/8/09.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Bye Bye Blackboard

(Above) Albert Einstein
Physicist
Einstein’s blackboard was used in a lecture in Oxford on May 16, 1931.

At that time Einstein’s theories of relativity were being combined with astronomical data to explain the shifts towards the red in the spectra of distant galaxies, which indicated that the universe was expanding. In his lecture Einstein outlined a fairly simple model to explain this apparent expansion. In the first line on the blackboard, D, the measure of expansion in the universe, is defined in terms of the expansion factor P. The expression for the density of matter in the universe, given by Ú in the third line, is derived from the field equations. The last four lines contain numerical data, giving values for density, radius and age of the universe, where ‘L. J’ stands for ‘Licht Jahr’ (light year) and ‘J’ for ‘Jahr’ (year). According to the last line, the age of the universe is about 10, or perhaps 100 billion years (the bracket indicates an alternative figure, not a product of two figures).

Einstein’s blackboard deals with some of the most fundamental questions in cosmology.


(Above) Cornelia Parker
Artist
Navigating a Cliff Edge in Darkness 2005
‘Written while blindfolded, using cliff chalk from Beachy Head, Sussex’

(Above) The Right Reverend Richard Harries
Bishop of Oxford

‘I had the privilege of chairing the House of Lords Select Committee on Stem Cell Research. Most of us were non-scientists, but with the aid of a very good scientific adviser we did I think grasp some of the fundamental principles involved. Cloning was one issue we had to discuss and both then and subsequently I have found these little drawings helpful both for myself and others to whom I am talking.’

(Above) Joanna MacGregor
Pianist

‘I wrote the music on this blackboard while I was giving a lecture about Bach’s Goldberg Variations at the Holywell Music Room on 22nd March this year, before performing them. I was trying to make a connection between Bach’s super-sensitivity to the contemporary styles around him – very very acute in this piece – and today’s musicians. There’s a lot of information in the Goldberg’s – structure, harmony, a ladder of canons – and coded information we can only guess at – myths, cosmological allegories, and a soulful journey. It all starts with the bass line.’

(Above) Sir Nicholas Grimshaw
President of the Royal Academy
‘Tension & Compression’


BLACKBOARDS ARE WIPED AFTER USE: they are meant for immediate communication, not for permanence. Even when are being used, their messages are continuously revised, erased and renewed. But when Einstein came to Oxford in 1931, he was already an international celebrity. After one of his lectures, a blackboard was preserved and has become a kind of relic. It is the most famous object in the Museum.

The exhibition in 2005 marked the centenary of the Special Theory of Relativity by inviting a number of well-known people in Britain to chalk on blackboards the same size as Einstein’s. All of the guest blackboards were prepared in the early months of 2005. The result was an exhibition about science, art, celebrity and nostalgia. The blackboard is fast disappearing from meetings, classes and lectures, hence the exhibition title: ‘Bye-Bye Blackboard’.

The exhibition was on display in the Special Exhibitions Gallery at the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford from April 16 to September 18, 2005.

I gained knowledge of this wonderful exhibition through Eric Baker’s posting of images January 26, 2009 through the Design Observer. The copy above is from that posting, © Museum of the History of Science, Oxford.

An AM repost from January 29, 2009

You might also like:

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...