Thinking outside the box (please excuse the cliche phrase), Zuta Labs have introduced a miniature printer that rolls across sheets of paper, rather than pulling the paper through itself in the traditional manner. The designers are currently seeking $400,000 USD of funding through Kickstarter for the "Pocket Printer", which will be able to sync with computers, smartphones and tablets.
Jim Lansing shares the distinction with one other person of developing two loudspeaker systems that became movie industry standards. The other person was his collaborator, John Hilliard. The systems in question were the Shearer Horn and the A4/A2 Voice of the Theatre (VOTT).The VOTT represented nearly as great an improvement over the then state-of-the-art Shearer Horn as that speaker did over the previous Western Electric systems. However, its market impact was arguably greater. While Altec Lansing was already the preeminent manufacturer of movie loudspeakers, the Voice of the Theatre was singularly responsible for Altec Lansing’s rise to market dominance. That dominance would reach near monopolistic levels through the 1950′s and 1960′s until challenged by their greatest rival – JBL.Lansing Manufacturing Shearer Horn© Harman International, Courtesy Mark Gander and John EargleThe Shearer Horn had become the movie standard of the past decade. Virtually every loudspeaker manufacturer in the industry was offering a derivative of this basic concept, including Altec Lansing. Both Hilliard and Lansing, being the primary developers of that system, were in the best position to recognize areas for improvement. In 1944, they set about the task of documenting existing deficiencies and then developing a concept to address them.The principal deficiency identified by Lansing and Hilliard was referred to as a lack of presence. This was attributed to a number of factors. It included a dip in the mid-bass response between 250-500hz, radiation from the rear of the speaker system, phase discrepancies due to a long, folded horn path, and cabinet resonance.The primary solution to these problems lay in the design of a radically new bass horn enclosure. For the first time, a bass cabinet was developed that fully enclosed the drivers and eliminated rear radiation. The enclosure also front loaded the bass drivers in a direct, flared horn as opposed to the previous folded designs. This eliminated the mid-bass dip caused by dissipation of higher frequencies in the horn folds. However, the front horn was not large enough to propagate bass frequencies below 100hz. The ingenious solution was to port the cabinets to allow it to act as a bass reflex enclosure down to 50hz. Finally, the cabinet was comprehensively braced to maximize rigidity and minimize unwanted resonances. The enclosure was given the model number 210 and two systems were developed based on different configurations. The A4 utilized a single 210 with attached wing walls to reinforce the bass response. The A2 used 2-210′s, side-by-side, also with wings.Altec Lansing 515© Altec Lansing Technologies, Courtesy Scott PrattThe drive units in the VOTT were the brand new 288 compression driver and 515 bass driver. However, these units were more of an evolutionary development compared to the significant advance of the 210 bass horn. The 288 was actually a permanent magnet version of the field coil 287 with only a few refinements. The 515 bass driver was a legacy of the previous 604 duplex design. The need to mount a horn throat inside the cone’s voice coil resulted in the use of a 3″ diameter coil for the bass driver. This design was carried over into the new 515 woofer since the larger diameter brought a number of advantages in efficiency and power handling. This driver, along with the cone of the 604, were the first examples of 15″ drivers using flat-wire coils.Altec Lansing 288© Altec Lansing Technologies, Courtesy Scott PrattOverall, the most significant advance represented by these drivers was the first use of permanent Alnico V magnets in a theatre system. This greatly reduced operating costs and increased reliability. The drivers were also more efficient and had higher power ratings than equivalent field coil units. This allowed increased output with no increase in amplifier requirements.The final system met or exceeded all of the original design goals. The short, direct horn path allowed the high frequency driver to be mounted on the exact plane of the bass driver. Where the Shearer Horn had reduced phase discrepancies to 1 millisecond, the VOTT eliminated it entirely. The overall system efficiency was between 2-8db more efficient than the Shearer derivatives due to the new bass horn and more sensitive drivers. Bandwidth was extended at both extremes and, most importantly, the overall response was much more linear.The A4 and A2 versions of the VOTT were introduced in 1945 to much acclaim. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences immediately began tests of the new system that confirmed the sonic improvements. By 1955, the Academy adopted the VOTT as the industry standard for motion picture playback. The VOTT’s were to remain in production at Altec into the 1990′s.
Pourquoi les aubergines s’appellent-elles “eggplant” (plante oeuf) en anglais? La fin du mystère.
What I’d have given to be the tabloid reporter earwigging Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich’s phone calls over the last few hours. The Spotify naysayers have long been waving the flag for artist’s rights in an age where the creator appears to be the last wheel in a cog of over-consumption and Silicon Valley homogenisation. Yorke’s pay-what-you-want model for In Rainbows may have been conceived as a two-fingered salute to the powers that be, but it certainly added weight to cynics’ counter-arguments to his and Godrich’s. Enter the Wu-Tang.
Now, Samsung’s decision to shell out $5 million on leaking Jay-Z’s latest disappointment may have had some influence on the Shaolin shadow-boxers, but I’d throw down the gauntlet to any big-money ad-men, Oxford activists or über-geek tech-startup who could come up with a sales model this bold, this grandiose, this fucking ART. Over 20 years since the Staten Island Killa Beez changed the face of ripped the face off hip-hop for good, Robert ‘RZA’ Fitzgerald Diggs and his boys have done it again. Picture this: one hand-engraved nickel-silver box, housed “beneath the shadow of the Atlas Mountains” (according to Forbes, who got the scoop on this – yes, Forbes, grand enough for ya?), containing one single copy of an album six years in the making.
ONE single copy. Sitting within that immoderate packaging, handcrafted by British-Moroccan artist Yahya (the Moroccan connection coming via RZA protégé, and album producer Cilvaringz), The Wu – Once Upon A Time In Shaolin… will be the first major album to NOT be commercially released to the public. RZA and Cilvaringz’s world-first private music service – The Carmen Clandestine Experience, presented by EZCLZIV – portrays all those perverse ancient-world hallmarks that the Wu brought to the table back in 1993 (“this is like somebody having the scepter of an Egyptian king” says RZA of owning the single copy), but with added Renaissance swagger. Set to tour the world with airport-security-level listening booths and under Tutankhamun-level lock and key (Tate Modern is mooted as a venue), the single copy will eventually be sold off to the highest bidder. Corporate. Label. Individual. Or KLF-esque art collective intent on revelling in the ephemeral armed with hammer and chisel? Who knows. Who cares? All that matters is that, two decades on, Wu-Tang have gone and rewritten the rulebook all over again. The artist is king, long live the artist.
Atlas Mountains
Photo © Michel Gagnon
Packaging photography, © EZCLZIV
The post Number One Album appeared first on We Heart; Lifestyle & Design Magazine.
Elaine Cameron-Weir latest work, titled Venus Anadyomene, 2014,consists of five similar pieces, each made a giant clam shell edged with neon tubing, and high-fire ceramic vessel each filled with olive oil, wick, flame, sand, mica, frankincense, benzoin, myrrh, brass. Each piece, suspended from the gallery by a brass rod, while the incense slowly burns.
Varying ideas of birth and bringing to life are present in the works, from the title (meaning ‘Venus Rising from the Sea’, a story of the Greek Goddess Aphrodite’s birth (and a famous work by Titian). The title of the work references both art history and god creation, as do the shells, which bring to mind Botticelli’s masterpiece of the Roman Goddess Venus (and one of the most recognizable and imitated paintings ever created). Meanwhile, the scent element in the gallery space of burning frankincense and myrrh recall the Christian nativity story and the birth of Jesus Christ, echoing the gifts brought by the Three Wisemen. Present throughout Cameron-Weir’s work are ideas of how symbolism is omnipresent to ideas of myth-making.
Elaine Cameron-Weir’s Venus Anadyomene, 2014 is currnetly on view now through April 6th at Ramiken Crucible in New York City.
The post Elaine Cameron-Weir’s Glowing, Symbolic ‘Venus Anadyomene’ appeared first on Beautiful/Decay Artist & Design.
This startling series of portraits by Pieter Hugo caught my eye this morning. ‘There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends’ depicts the photographer and his friends from South Africa who’s skin pigment has been digitally manipulated so they appear heavily marked by blemishes and sun damage.
via IAAH
