Conquering the Mountains

I made this card for a direct swap with medusa242, who wrote in her postcrossing profile that she likes pigeons. The background is from a Danish translation of Mountain Conquest by Eric Shipton: Bjergenes erobring 1967.

The pigeons are drawn by Claus Bering and I got them from a Danish elementary school book: 

Naturhistoriebog for 4. skoleår 1963

What is the fourth dimension?

Last month I was in Montréal, Canada, where I visited Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (MAC)

The retrospective of Québécois artist Edmund Alleyn was a nice discovery. One of the things I like about his work, is the feeling of captured or frozen time. 

So, inspired by Edmund Alleyn and stuff I've found in books, here are some slices of frozen time. 

Edmund Alleyn, Sans titre ca. 1976.

Great blog post about the exhibition

Edmund Alleyn, L'Heure Fixe 1980. 

Edmund Alleyn's site

An unidentified American athlete jumping through time

from a book by the Danish Press-Photographers Association 50 år i Øjet(1962)

X-ray images of a horse jumping over a fence. Might be by Muybridge, but I'm not sure.

I found it in the Danish translation of L'homme et l'animal by Jacques Boudet: Mennesket, dyrenes herre (1967)

Francisco De Goya - Folly of Little Bulls (ca. 1819-1823) 

Printed in Mennesket, dyrenes herre (1967)

Some stamps from my not-so-mint collection.

A page from the absolutely genius From Hell (2006)

Written by Alan Moore and drawn by Eddie Campbell 

... And a bit more From Hell. Featuring James Hinton talking about the strange theories of his son Charles Howard Hinton, who did publish an article in 1880 called What is the fourth dimension? in which he does a very good job of imagining and describing a dimension beyond our own.

Charles Howard Hinton also coined the word Tesseract, and this image is of a tesseract passing though our mundane three dimensions. Originally from a Dutch book called Nothing ALL: Inzicht in de Vierde Dimensie(1953), I found it in this great blog, which also has a lot on C.H. Hinton

Drawing a tesseract backwards in a mirror is not easy!

He's explaining the dimensions - good stuff about 3:00 - 5:00

And finally, a recommendation: When you are done with From Hell, pick up Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, to get unstuck in time with Billy Pilgrim, and learn that "so it goes"

Verdensbilleder

The Danish word "verdensbillede" is best translated as "world view", but literally means "world picture". 
Here, I have collected various world pictures from old books.

How Homer imagined the world ca. 900 B.C. 

Illustrated by Björn Landström in his book Vägen till Indien(1964)

The Ptolemaic geocentric system was the typical world view in the middle ages. The outermost circle is the Firmament, and beyond that is the "crystal heaven" which is the home of God and "the elected ones". 

Cannot find the origins of this Danish illustration, but it is reprinted in Astronomi i billeder(1972)

Kepler's view of the world and the heavens. Also geocentric, but with the added complexity, that each sphere fits with one of the Platonic solids. Resulting in a harmony of the spheres. 

Image originally from Kepler's Mysterium Cosmographicum(1596). This reprinting from Astronomi i billeder(1972)

The expanding unverse - each white dot represents millions of galaxies.

Illustration by Antonio Petrucceli from Life's The World We Live In, Danish translation and print: Vor Underfulde Verden(1957)

The globe in full darkness. As unreal as the very first picture in this post, but much more realistic.

From Det Bedstes Store Verdensatlas(1966), which is some sort of Danish adaptation of a Reader's Digest Atlas.

The structure of a universe. Based on a simulation of the universe evolving from the big bang. The area shown in the picture is about 4 billion light years on each side, and each tiny dot of light is a galaxy. 

From Himlen set fra Jorden(2007)

Books referenced in this post. all from the local second hand shops.