Since you need to wash your hands more these days, now there's a site that'll put song lyrics to a hand-washing poster for you.

Oh, coronavirus. Sorry, Coronavirus-19. Or Corona-19. Or novel coronavirus. Or the mass hysteria gripping the world.

Whatever you call it, people are obsessed with hospital masks, toilet paper (why?), and washing their hands these days. While washing your hands is always a good thing, a little spritz of water doesn't do the trick.

Since health officials for decades have recommended washing your hands for 20-seconds (usually the time it takes to sing Happy Birthday to yourself twice), this led a U.K. teenager named William Gibson to create a website that generates song lyrics to accompany hand-washing posters by the U.K.'s National Health Service:

🎶 I made a little site in 24h that generates hand washing instructions accompanied by lyrics from a song of your choice instantly - check it out!

🔗 https://t.co/JKAQRYy5Yz pic.twitter.com/S1bDLyKt6C

— William (@neoncloth) March 8, 2020

Washyourlyrics.com simply asks for an artist's name and song title, and it'll populate the hand-washing poster with lyrics timed to the poster's instructions:

Obviously pic.twitter.com/VvGPwRlmvo

— Patrick Monahan (@pattymo) March 9, 2020

And it's not just song lyrics. Even Shakespeare's plays work out:

Forget singing in Happy Birthday twice: THIS is what you recite to tell you how long to wash your hands. H/t @ninjalampie pic.twitter.com/TjXMZCQbt2

— Reduced Shakespeare Company (@reduced) March 3, 2020

Sure, the Reduced Shakespeare Company could've picked a more lighthearted play than Macbeth. But if everyone is lathered up in hysteria, you might as well choose a play where nearly everyone dies.

It's called synergy, folks.

Like haikus? Like maps? There's a website that blends them both.

The creators at Satellite Studio created OpenStreetMap Haiku, a site that whips up a brand new haiku for every single address, neighborhood, town, etc. you place your cursor over.*

As the creative team explains in a blog post:

"Looking at every aspect of the surroundings of a point, we can generate a poem about any place in the world. The result is sometimes fun, often weird, most of the time pretty terrible. Also probably horrifying for haiku purists (sorry)."

Inspired by artist Naho Matsuda's EVERY THING EVERY TIME project, which used data points of one city to create short poems, the Satellite Studio team followed suit--albeit on a massive global scale.

The myriad of nearby data points from a selected spot include grocery stores, schools, bus stop locations, etc., to generate the haiku. They even include current weather and time of day, which leads to a potentially new haiku again and again for a selected spot.

Some randomly selected locations checked just now:

Boston, MA @ 28 State Street:
A bird in the tree,
Meet at Court Street, 1
The blurs of lifetimes


Paris, France @ 3 Avenue de l'Opera:
White paint on concrete
Quite chilly
Dear You


Tokyo, Japan @ JP Tower:
Commuting back home
A vacant lot
Warm air from the subway entrance


Checking local places I personally know, OpenStreetMap Haiku generated a variety of poems suggesting again and again that it was "a sad day."

Either the haiku generator is feeling down in the dumps or I need to reevaluate where I live.


*It works well in populated nations. But some random sparse locations, like Micronesia, weren't worth a haiku according to the map. Let's have a moment of silence for Micronesia then.

Only The Art: Paul Klee

Only The Art is where we take a break from the regular quirky posts and simply show a famed artist's work. No analysis, no dissection, no context. Consider it a five minute break from your day to enjoy a tiny museum brought to your computer screen.


Today:  Paul Klee (1879-1940)

"Red Ballon" (1922)

"Senecio" (1922)

"Walpurgis Night" (1935)

"A Young Lady's Adventure" (1922)

"Burdened Children" (1930)

"Hilterfingen" (1895)

"Flower Bed" (1913)

"Night Feast" (1921)

Once-banned literature used to create imitation Parthenon where books were once burned.

Argentinian artist Marta Minujin used over a 170 different banned book titles to create a full-sized recreation of the Greek Parthenon at the site where Nazi Germany once burned books.

Using over 100,000 copies of those banned books--along with plastic and some steel--Minujin built the art installation in the city of Kassel, where the Nazis burned 2,000 books as part of their "Campaign Against the un-German Spirit" in 1933. At the time, mainly books by Jewish authors and individuals against fascism were lit ablaze.

Marta Minujin is clearly more productive than you or I am.

According to Metro UK, Minujin asked students at the Kassel University to comb over books to find titles that have been banned all-time. The students brought forth works that included the likes of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter collection, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

This Parthenon stuff is old hat for Minujin, though. She created a similar banned book Parthenon structure in 1983 in her native Argentina after the military dictatorship fell.



photo: EPA/Filip Singer
photo: Boris Roessler/AFP/Getty

Are you really addicted to a specific poet? Take them to work with you.

Jonesing for a little Robert Frost or Maya Angelou during the weekdays, but find yourself going through withdrawals and the shakes while at work? Good news! You can take them to work with you.

Oh, hello, T. S. Elephant. #TakeYourPoetToWorkDay #PoetToWorkDay @tspoetry pic.twitter.com/PkZ8PmZZhG

— WC Literary House (@WCLiteraryHouse) July 20, 2016

An organization called Tweetspeak Poetry sponsors various poetry "holidays" throughout a given year, all in an effort to make poetry more approachable to today's modern sensibilities. Picture your mom gussying up cauliflower when you were a kid all in hopes you might digest more of it. Same thing.

The third Wednesday of every July is Take Your Poet to Work Day. This year that would be July 19th. As the sponsors, Tweetspeak Poetry has a downloadable coloring book of famous poets ranging from American (Dickinson, Hughes, Whitman, etc.) to international (Akhmatova, Neruda, Issa, etc.).

Happy #TakeYourPoettoWorkDay Forget yours @ home? Stop by the 2nd fl. & make a new one :) @tspoetry #poettowork pic.twitter.com/hT3xQEuqZF

— CSCC Library (@CSCC_Library) July 20, 2016

After coloring in your favorite poet, you're supposed to cut out the drawing and adhere it to a Popsicle stick and--voila!--you take them to work with you. Not only do you get to color, you have a semi-valid excuse to scarf down a half-dozen Popsicles all of a sudden.

Tweetspeak also recommends leaving coloring book sheets in the lunch room, all in hopes that lazy coworker of yours might actually show some initiative and color in their own favorite poet, too.

I snuck a #poettowork today @KCLibrary #AnnaAkhmatova pic.twitter.com/Z3fc8tj3Yz

— KaiteStover (@MarianLiberryan) July 20, 2016

Polish off another half-dozen Popsicles and tell yourself you're just doing it to be selfless and help others who need a stick.

You're so generous!!

Wooden book requires you to solve complex puzzles before you can turn the page.

Made of laser-cut wood, the Codex Silenda is a five page book telling the short story of Leonardo Da Vinci's apprentice in the master's workshop.

While such a brief book, the real interest isn't so much a gripping narrative. The book's appeal is that it refuses to let you turn one of the five wooden pages until you decipher an intricate and complex moving puzzle. And this isn't your grandma's Rubik's Cube either.

Created by Brady Whitney, an industrial designer--who began a Kickstarter drive that was almost immediately funded--the initial goal was to sell 500 books, each handmade. The books sold out rapidly. Whitney hopes to create more since the demand is high.

As for how the book's plot works with the puzzles themselves, Whitney tells the site Dornob, "[I]n the story the Codex acts as a trap set by Da Vinci to capture any would be spies/snoopy apprentices in order to protect his work. The only way to escape is to solve each of the puzzles before the master returns from his trip."

Well, Leonardo's going to kill me then, because there's not a chance I'm solving any of these puzzles.



photos: Codex Silenda

91-year old museum visitor fills in crossword puzzle that's actually a piece of modern art.

The wave of criminal shenanigans by elderly people has hit the museum world.

Case in point: An elderly 91-year old German woman recently visiting Nuremberg’s Neues Museum saw a blank crossword puzzle on a wall, beside it which had a sign saying "Insert words."

Maybe it was age talking or a stunning susceptibility to do as signs command, but the 91-year old threw caution to the wind and proceeded to fill in the crossword puzzle with an abundance of words. The small problem was that the crossword puzzle was actually modern artist Arthur Köpcke's 1977 creation "Reading work-piece," valued at everyday affordable price of $90,000.

"The lady told us she had taken the notes as an invitation to complete the crossword," a police spokesman said, according to The Telegraph. True. You can't deny the allure of a good crossword puzzle invitation. It's like Tinder for the elderly.

The Telegaph also added, "If the museum didn’t want people to follow the artist’s instructions, they should put up a sign to make that clear, she told police."

Grade-A sass from a 91-year old grandma who gives no you-know-whats at this point. She's thisclose to doodling all over Picasso's Guernica any day now.

Over 1,200 Columbia University students aren't fans of modernist art, but big supporters of crisp lawns.

Henry Moore was a famed English-born sculptor. Maybe you're not well-versed in famous 20th century sculptors because you have an active social life outside the realm of scultping or don't dabble in multimillion dollar lawn art.

But Moore's sculptures are found around the world. How "around the world" are we talking?

Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Piazza San Marco, Prato, Italy
Toronto City Hall, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Kenwood House Grounds, London, England
Jardine House, Central, Hong Kong
Zürichhorn, Zürich-Seefeld, Switzerland
Queen Elizabeth Park, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Bouwcentrum, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Germany
--and on--
--and on--
--countless international locations--
And the list continues on around the world until you eventually include:
Columbia University, New York City, New York, USA

And what would be the point of stating how worldly accepted Moore's work is?

Over 1,200 students have signed a petition published in the school's newspaper arguing against the placement of Moore's Reclining Figure (1969-70) in front of the school's library simply because they think it's ugly. Thank goodness, too, because in a world of chaos, violence, and injustice, I'd hate to see so many people get behind something trivial.

The petition is passionate in its plea (my thoughts/sarcasm in parentheses):

As both inheritors and wards (ooh, they went big time and dropped a "wards" in there) of our beautiful campus ('beautiful'--funny word to use when you're arguing against art), we object to this desecration of our home. ('Desecrate' means a violation of something nearly sacred, like knocking over tombstones. In other words, Columbia is old and forgotten?) Whatever its artistic merits (said with a dismissive hand wave/finger snap), the sculpture in front of Butler Library will disrupt an otherwise crisp, geometric, and symmetrical landscape. ('Crisp' should only reference salads and January mornings.) Further, Moore’s modernist figure clashes with the neoclassical aesthetic instantly recognizable to generations of Columbians. (My long-deceased great-great-great-great grandfather will never recognize the place now.) It will also rob the the community of some of the few precious square yards of grass open to the public. (Yes, come gather, all of New York City, on yards on grass.)

The snow is hiding all the yards of crispness!!

The petition won't hold. Moore's Reclining Figure already has a base constructed outside of Butler Library and is soon to be set, ready to assault the tender sensibilities of Columbia's huddled, frightened masses.

This is Columbia University, not Canada. Toronto's City Hall might slum it with a Moore sculpture and amuse that hoi polloi, but they elected a mayor high on crack after all. Columbia students would suggest that explains Toronto's choice in art.



photos: Columbia and Wiki Commons

A man piles books up across NYC to empty his bookshelves.

Listen up if you're looking to declutter your home. It's possible to artistically arrange your unwanted property throughout a major city, have it find a home, and not be considered a litterer.

Shaheryar Malik, an art director from London living in New York City, decided to lighten the load of his home library by placing about forty books in eight individual stacks throughout Manhattan and have his friend take a single picture to document the moment. Then he walked away unsure what would happen.

According to The Guardian, each book included Malik's email address and directions to contact him wherever the book ended up. Malik says that he's received over sixty emails from thirty countries, including recently from a woman in Holland saying she read one of his books and left it on a local subway there to pass it on.

It all started when Malik was crossing the Brooklyn Bridge and decided to take a ubiquitous selfie. Instead, an idea occurred, as he tells The Guardian: "Then I stopped and thought: 'Instead of taking the picture that has been taken millions of times, I’m going to share something different with the world.'"

.

The book titles include Physics for You and The Decision Book: 50 Models for Strategic Thinking.

Mailk never said he was going to share literary books with the world.

Just something different.

And it's fun.




photos: Dani Yim

Vincent van Gogh didn't have a dominant blue period so much as maybe more a blue fling with green undertones.

Brett Kebold is a data analyst who enjoys finding representations of life all amongst us, and decided to utilize his skill at data analytics for a dive into art.

Specifically, Kebold took a look at 900+ paintings of Vincent van Gogh and plotted the dominant color that appears in each painting (using more technological skill than I can ever figure out) and placed them in line over a ten year period. What we get is this:

The Dutch master clearly skewed toward darker hues earlier in his work, with a dominant blue stripe appearing around 1883 that springs into a transition of lighter shades. A look at his life doesn't suggest any particular rhyme or reason if we go with the simplistic route of automatically assuming colors equate mood. (Looking at you, Picasso.) His first major work, The Potato Eaters, which is bleak and dark, doesn't appear until 1885. Likewise, Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette, equally grim (or grimly comedic), only arrives after 1885 as well, both during van Gogh's transition away from brighter colors once again. (1885 is also when van Gogh's father unexpectedly died of a heart attack. Correlation or coincidence? No one can tell.)

Van Gogh's most famous work, The Starry Night, the one you recognize from museum shops, countless dorm rooms, and endless doctor offices, wasn't completed until 1889, around van Gogh's last darkest painting--and personal--period.

Contrary to the habitual belief that colors equate mood in art, we learn that van Gogh never veered wildly into any one dominant color, unlike many artists. He utilized all throughout his painfully brief time as a painter, suggesting his skill wasn't bound by colors or process or design, but simply by circumstance, by beliefs, and by his life.





Plot points and more can be found at Brettrics.com, as well as his Tableu Public page.

A photograph of a potato might be the 15th most expensive picture ever.

The photo of a relatively circular, slightly dusty potato with the subtlest of root matter left on it sold for $1.08 million in a private sale.

Titled Potato #345 by Irish visual artist Kevin Abosch, the spud was chosen as the subject for specific reasons. "I see commonalities between humans and potatoes that speak to our relationship as individuals within a collective species," says Abosch.

Damn right. Have you ever seen a bunch of shoestring fries boiling in a vat of oil at McDonald's? If you blink, you might swear you saw middle America sweating it out on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. Potatoes are us!

Abosch isn't done waxing deep thoughts though. "Generally, the life of a harvested potato is violent and taken for granted. I use the potato as a proxy for the ontological study of the human experience," he says.

He's speaking to my soul. The next time I look in a mirror and see myself as dusty and round, it's not because I'm overweight and didn't bathe--it's because I'm just a proxy for a potato.




Photo: Kevin Abosch

2,500 people got tattoos to write out the entirety of 'Alice in Wonderland.'

Temporary tattoos, though. It sounds a lot more dedicated when you think 2,500 people are all lined up outside some shady, back alley joint named The Stinky Ink just waiting for a fragment sentence to be forever etched onto their body.

But it's all a promotion from a company called Lithographs, which was looking to advertise their new line of--yes--temporary tattoos. It's like when you were six years old and got some temporary ink of a turtle or narwhal while at some birthday party, except more literary.

Lithographs started a Kickstarter campaign to raise $7,500 to fund the stunt, where 2,500 people who signed up were paid $1 and mailed a temporary tattoo with a fragment of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Contributor's were then asked to send back a photo of the fragment plastered somewhere on their body. And, of course, people got creative, or just made sure we knew they needed a proper manicure.

As a side note, professional hand modeling pays anywhere from $300 a day to thousands per hour. And you don't even need to be literate.



photos: Lithographs

Japanese teenager is more talented than us, has messy room.

A seventeen-year old Japanese high school student who goes by the name Mozu has released a random collection of photos that, at first glance, look like random slices of Japanese life. A messy bedroom, for instance:

That wannabe Swiffer in the corner probably hasn't been touched in a few years.

Except all this is fake. No, you're not tripping on some e.coli from Chipotle.

It's all a 1/6 scale model of his bedroom.

He has an array of photos showing his absurd skill on his Twitter account, where you, too, can be humbled at your own lack of artistic talent.

At least we all can admit the similarity in that we all lived in a pig sty as a teenager.

Boston Public Library 'Special Collections' has something truly special, if only they could find it. Now they might be able to.

Earlier this year, in the Special Collections section at the Boston Public Library, they had a little problem. Someone misplaced works by Rembrandt and famed German artist Albrecht Dürer, valued at roughly $650,000. Except you don't really know that at first, do you? It's not like misplacing the car keys or the television remote.

A scandal broke out, leading to the firings of two leading figures at the library. But as misplaced things are tend to be, the art was found nearby, roughly eighty feet away from where they should have been in a massive warehouse. This small oversight has led the entire collection to be inventoried for the first time in the library's history.

Led by Simmons College professor Dr. Martha Mahard and a team of stud----wait, wait, wait----the library never got around to this before now??? It's been a bastion of Boston for 167 years, and no one paused to say, "Hey, Joe, at some point, let's keep track of where Emily Dickinson's poems are or where those Winslow Homer prints might be, okay?"

According to Fox25 in Boston (which has a video of all that excitable behind the scenes inventory action), Mahard is delightfully happy at the process.

"We keep hitting things that we didn’t expect," Mahard said. "The kinds of things where we open a box. You think it’s going to be 20 prints and it’s 150 that aren’t in mattes."

((((head in hands))))

College librarian stole $17 million in paintings--replaced them with his own fakes.

Somehow this story flew under the radar in America.

A college librarian in China stole $17 million in paintings, 143 in total, over the course of nearly a decade, while replacing the works with his own forgeries. Xiao Yuan told a Chinese court he had a perfectly good reason for all this: Everyone was doing it.

As the New York Post reports:
________________

[Xiao] told the court in his defense that the practice appeared to be rampant and the handling of such paintings was not secure. He said he noticed fakes already hanging in the gallery on his first day on the job. Later, after he replaced some of the remaining masters with his own fakes, he was surprised when he noticed his fake paintings were being substituted with even more fakes.

“I realized someone else had replaced my paintings with their own because I could clearly discern that their works were terribly bad,” Xiao, 57, told Guangzhou People’s Intermediate Court.
__________________

Pssh. If you're going to create forgeries, Xiao doesn't want you lumping his good name with bad knockoffs. He's a criminal, but not a monster!

All Nobel Prize winners get an abstract painting with their award?

Along with a large pile of cash, medals to wear around their necks, a framed certificate, a black tie dinner with over 1,000 of Sweden's nearest and dearest, and bragging rights that they can lord over everyone in their field--all Nobel Prize winners in every category receive a painting. The art, commissioned by the Nobel committee, is supposed to be inspired by the theme of the winner's work, as NPR explains.

Artists have about one week to get their color selections to a calligrapher, who writes up the certificate in matching colors. Final paintings are submitted by mid-November, before the December dinner.

Of course, the artists all have priorities. Watercolorist Hasse Karlsson, one of the artists used by the Nobel committee, pays close attention to the announcements, mainly because time is tight. And all those announcements that say, "Three doctors from such-and-such country won the Nobel Prize in Medicine today," is not what Karlsson wants to hear. He's on a clock.

"So if they are going to be three, then it will be stressful. So I hope they will be one or two this time," Karlsson tells NPR.

Well, with that kind of attitude, Karlsson isn't going to win a Nobel any time soon. He'll always make a painting, but never receive one.

That is if they awarded a Nobel Prize in art. They don't.

Semantics.



photos: Nobel Foundation

Can a child understand Surrealism? Eric Carle thinks so.

Eric Carle is 86-years old, has published over 70 books, and claims his latest children's book, The Nonsense Book, will be his last. But the author and illustrator of such timeless classics such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Grouchy Ladybug, and the illustrator of other books like Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, wants to teach children one final thing before he calls it a day: Surrealism.

Yes. The artistic form. Think: Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Joan Miró.

Surrealism isn't terribly difficult to understand, although some adults struggle to grasp the concept. Children, maybe with broader imaginations, find Surrealism to be an art they can embrace though. As Carle tells the Wall Street Journal, "Children can handle this, and they laugh." One of the tenants of Surrealism is that it intends to split reality and dreams--in essence, a juxtaposition, usually on absurd levels.

Which explains why The Nonsense Book has illustrations of a child inside a kangaroo's pouch, a bird in a fish tank and a fish in a bird cage, and a rabbit magician pulling a child out of a hat.

Carle's love of art was born during his years living in Nazi Germany as a child and his formative years growing up, all while most art was being censored.

After moving back to the United States, and after pursuing his dream to be an illustrator, and after creating The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and after that book alone sold over 40 million copies, and after a lifetime of teaching children through dozens and dozens of adventures from the text and illustrations he created, and after becoming one of the handful of all-time greats--after all of that, things still inspire him to create.

So, will this really be Eric Carle's last book?

As his editor, Ann Beneduce told the Journal, "He will say his whole life’s work is finished," but that some time passes, her phone will ring, and "He’ll say 'I have an idea I’d like to run by you.' And, there’s the start of another book."

Let's hope that happens. Again and again and again...



Illustrations: Eric Carle, via WSJ

MIT student builds Boston's MBTA system map entirely out of LED lights.

Most helpful Lite-Brite ever.











Two things:
1. Not for nothing, but if you enlarge the photo and look at the shelving unit, it seems our boy here is an Old Spice kind of guy. Or Captain Morgan just by his wannabe pose.

2. Everyone knows the Blue Line is the worst to ride.




photo: Joanne Rathe, Boston Globe

It's "delicious": Margaret Atwood just wrote a book, but you won't be able to read it for a hundred years.

Are you a Margaret Atwood fan? Are you at least 1-year old? Odds are you'll never read at least one book she's written.

Atwood--winner of the Man Booker Prize (and probably a Nobel Prize some year)--is the first author to sign up for The Future Library project, an endeavor created by Scottish artist Katie Paterson which aims to have 100 authors write books that will be sealed away, unread, until the year 2114.

Further adding a level of complexity to it all, Paterson just planted 1,000 trees in the Norwegian town of Nordmarka, just outside Oslo, which will spend the next century growing--before being felled--and used to create the paper on which the 100 books by 100 authors will be printed on and, hopefully, read by someone, anyone.

Atwood takes great glee in being a part of the whole project, telling The Guardian, "What a pleasure [...] You don't have to be around for the part when if it's a good review the publisher takes credit for it and if it's a bad review it's all your fault. And why would I believe them anyway?"

All works created for the project, including Atwood's, will be placed in a special room planned to open in 2018 at the Deichmanske public library in Oslo. The books will be on display for attendees to view, but not to read. A printing press will be included in the room, to be used in case printing presses cease to exist by 2114.

But Atwood really won't give a hint at what she wrote? "Wild horses would not drag it out of me," she tells The Guardian. "It's part of the contract you can't tell anybody what you're writing. I'm finding it very delicious, because I get to say to people like you [the Guardian], I'm not telling."

But she does offer one nugget of information. "I will say that I've bought some special archival paper, which will not decay in its sealed box over 100 years."




photo: Bjørvika Utviklingay, via The Guardian

Saturday Morning PSA of The Week: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles know pot.

Saturday mornings are known for two things: Saturday morning cartoons and Saturday morning public service announcements.

Today's PSAs are all information and no imagination--but yesteryear's? Those were full of drama, plot lines, and cameos from B-grade celebrities, all wedged into one minute or less of absolute fantasticness. Consider this a trip back in time to when PSAs were sometimes worth watching more than the cartoon.

This week's PSA: The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and...turkeys?

Random thoughts and questions:
1.)  Chicken dances is how Tony Montana used to mock the feds, too.
2.)  A pizza? So Michelangelo is a pothead?
3.)  'Turkey'? Zing!
4.)  Did the dealer offer drugs or blending tortillons? This all might just be a horrible, horrible misunderstanding.