Olive Cotton
Olive Cotton (11 July 1911 – 27
September 2003) was a pioneering Australian modernist female photographer of
the 1930s and 1940s working in Sydney. Given a Kodak No.0 Box Brownie camera at
the age of 11, Cotton with the help of her father made the home laundry into a
darkroom "with the enlarger plugged into the ironing light"
Here Cotton processed film and
printed her first black and white images. While on holidays with her family at
Newport Beach in 1924, Cotton met Max Dupain and they became friends, sharing a
passion for photography. The photograph "She-oaks" (1928) was taken
at Bungan Beach headland in this period.
Self Portrait with Jean Laurraine, Photo by Olive Cotton, 1939.
She exhibited her first
photograph, "Dusk", at the New South Wales Photographic Society’s
Interstate Exhibition of 1932. She exhibited quite frequently; her photography
was personal in feeling with an appreciation of certain qualities of light in
the surroundings.
Tea cup ballet (1935) was
photographed in the studio after Cotton had bought some inexpensive china from
Woolworth's to replace the old chipped studio crockery. In it she used a
technique of back of the lighting to cast bold shadows towards the viewer to
express a dance theme between the shapes of the tea cups, their saucers and
their shadows. It was exhibited locally at the time and in the London Salon of
Photography in 1935. It has become Cotton's signature image and was
acknowledged on a stamp commemorating 150 years of photography in Australia in
1991.
I wonder where this will lead the planet in the future.............
Experiment confirms 50-year-old
theory describing how an alien civilization could exploit a black hole
by University of Glasgow
A 50-year-old theory that began
as speculation about how an alien civilization could use a black hole to
generate energy has been experimentally verified for the first time in a
Glasgow research lab.
In 1969, British physicist Roger
Penrose suggested that energy could be generated by lowering an object into the
black hole's ergosphere—the outer layer of the black hole's event horizon,
where an object would have to move faster than the speed of light in order to
remain still.
Penrose predicted that the object
would acquire a negative energy in this unusual area of space. By dropping the
object and splitting it in two so that one half falls into the black hole while
the other is recovered, the recoil action would measure a loss of negative
energy—effectively, the recovered half would gain energy extracted from the
black hole's rotation. The scale of the engineering challenge the process would
require is so great, however, that Penrose suggested only a very advanced,
perhaps alien, civilisation would be equal to the task.
Two years later, another
physicist named Yakov Zel'dovich suggested the theory could be tested with a
more practical, earthbound experiment. He proposed that "twisted"
light waves, hitting the surface of a rotating metal cylinder turning at just the
right speed, would end up being reflected with additional energy extracted from
the cylinder's rotation thanks to a quirk of the rotational doppler effect.
But Zel'dovich's idea has
remained solely in the realm of theory since 1971 because, for the experiment
to work, his proposed metal cylinder would need to rotate at least a billion
times a second—another insurmountable challenge for the current limits of human
engineering.
Now, researchers from the
University of Glasgow's School of Physics and Astronomy have finally found a
way to experimentally demonstrate the effect that Penrose and Zel'dovich
proposed by twisting sound instead of light—a much lower frequency source, and
thus much more practical to demonstrate in the lab.
In a new paper published today in
Nature Physics, the team describe how they built a system which uses small ring
of speakers to create a twist in the sound waves analogous to the twist in the
light waves proposed by Zel'dovich.
Those twisted sound waves were
directed towards a rotating sound absorber made from a foam disc. A set of
microphones behind the disc picked up the sound from the speakers as it passed
through the disc, which steadily increased the speed of its spin.
What the team were looking to
hear in order to know that Penrose and Zel'dovich's theories were correct was a
distinctive change in the frequency and amplitude of the sound waves as they
traveled through the disc, caused by that quirk of the doppler effect.
Marion Cromb, a Ph.D. student in
the University's School of Physics and Astronomy, is the paper's lead author.
Marion said: "The linear version of the doppler effect is familiar to most
people as the phenomenon that occurs as the pitch of an ambulance siren appears
to rise as it approaches the listener but drops as it heads away. It appears to
rise because the sound waves are reaching the listener more frequently as the
ambulance nears, then less frequently as it passes.
"The rotational doppler
effect is similar, but the effect is confined to a circular space. The twisted
sound waves change their pitch when measured from the point of view of the
rotating surface. If the surface rotates fast enough then the sound frequency
can do something very strange—it can go from a positive frequency to a negative
one, and in doing so steal some energy from the rotation of the surface."
As the speed of the spinning disc
increases during the researchers' experiment, the pitch of the sound from the
speakers drops until it becomes too low to hear. Then, the pitch rises back up
again until it reaches its previous pitch—but louder, with amplitude of up to
30% greater than the original sound coming from the speakers.
Marion added: "What we heard
during our experiment was extraordinary. What's happening is that the frequency
of the sound waves is being doppler-shifted to zero as the spin speed
increases. When the sound starts back up again, it's because the waves have
been shifted from a positive frequency to a negative frequency. Those
negative-frequency waves are capable of taking some of the energy from the
spinning foam disc, becoming louder in the process—just as Zel'dovich proposed
in 1971."
Professor Daniele Faccio, also of
the University of Glasgow's School of Physics and Astronomy, is a co-author on
the paper. Prof Faccio added: "We're thrilled to have been able to
experimentally verify some extremely odd physics a half-century after the theory
was first proposed. It's strange to think that we've been able to confirm a
half-century-old theory with cosmic origins here in our lab in the west of
Scotland, but we think it will open up a lot of new avenues of scientific
exploration. We're keen to see how we can investigate the effect on different
sources such as electromagnetic waves in the near future."
The research team's paper, titled
"Amplification of waves from a rotating body," is published in Nature
Physics.
Antoinette Sibley,
Dame Antoinette Sibley, DBE (born
27 February 1939) is a British prima ballerina. She joined the Royal Ballet
from the Royal Ballet School in 1956 and became a soloist in 1960. In retirement she became President of the
Royal Academy of Dance in 1991, and guest coach at the Royal Ballet (1991) and
Governor, Royal Ballet Board (2000)
Gatsby's people
Photographs of Edith Cummings and Tommy Hitchcock, the two
real-life individuals on whom Fitzgerald partly based his characters of Jordan
Baker and Tom Buchanan.
Edith Cummings was a U.S.
golf champion whom Fitzgerald met through Ginevra King, his first great love
who was a schoolmate of Edith’s at Westover, a preparatory boarding school in
Connecticut. Edith is shown here with her golfing trophy
after winning the 1923 U.S. Women’s Amateur Tournament.
Tommy Hitchcock was a pilot in the famous Lafayette Escadrille
during World War I, and became an investment banker after the war. He was recognized as the best U.S. polo player
of his generation. Fitzgerald knew Hitchcock on Long Island when he and
Zelda lived there in 1922-24.
Beethoven deafness
So if Beethoven was completely
deaf, how did he compose?
"For the last three years my
hearing has grown steadily weaker..." - so wrote Beethoven, aged 30, in a
letter to a friend.
the most important musician since Mozart. By
his mid-20s, he had studied with Haydn and was celebrated as a brilliant,
virtuoso pianist.
By the time he turned 30 he had
composed a couple of piano concertos, six string quartets, and his first
symphony. Everything was looking pretty good for the guy, with the prospect of
a long, successful career ahead.
Then, he started to notice a
buzzing sound in his ears - and everything was about to change.
How old was Beethoven when he
started going deaf?
Around the age of 26, Beethoven
began to hear buzzing and ringing in his ears. In 1800, aged 30, he wrote from
Vienna to a childhood friend - by then working as a doctor in Bonn - saying
that he had been suffering for some time:
"For the last three years my
hearing has grown steadily weaker. I can give you some idea of this peculiar
deafness when I must tell you that in the theatre I have to get very close to
the orchestra to understand the performers, and that from a distance I do not
hear the high notes of the instruments and the singers’ voices… Sometimes too I
hardly hear people who speak softly. The sound I can hear it is true, but not
the words. And yet if anyone shouts I can’t bear it."
Beethoven tried to keep news of
the problem secret from those closest to him. He feared his career would be
ruined if anyone realised.
"For two years I have
avoided almost all social gatherings because it is impossible for me to say to
people 'I am deaf'," he wrote. "If I belonged to any other profession
it would be easier, but in my profession it is a frightful state."
Once Beethoven was out for a
country ramble with fellow composer Ferdinand Ries, and while walking they saw
a shepherd playing a pipe. Beethoven would have seen from Ries's face that
there was beautiful music playing, but he couldn't hear it. It's said that
Beethoven was never the same again after this incident, because he had
confronted his deafness for the first time.
Beethoven could apparently still
hear some speech and music until 1812. But by the age of 44, he was almost
totally deaf and unable to hear voices or so many of the sounds of his beloved
countryside. It must have been devastating for him.
Why did Beethoven go deaf?
The exact cause of his hearing
loss is unknown. Theories range from syphilis to lead poisoning, typhus, or
possibly even his habit of plunging his head into cold water to keep himself
awake.
At one point he claimed he had
suffered a fit of rage in 1798 when someone interrupted him at work. Having
fallen over, he said, he got up to find himself deaf. At other times he blamed
it on gastrointestinal problems.
"The cause of this must be
the condition of my belly which as you know has always been wretched and has
been getting worse," he wrote, "since I am always troubled with
diarrhoea, which causes extraordinary weakness."
An autopsy carried out after he
died found he had a distended inner ear, which developed lesions over time.
Here's Beethoven's famous
Symphony No.5, written in 1804. Its famous opening motif is often referred to
as 'fate knocking at the door'; the cruel hearing loss that he feared would
afflict him for the rest of his life.
If he couldn't hear, how did he
write music?
Beethoven had heard and played
music for the first three decades of his life, so he knew how instruments and
voices sounded and how they worked together. His deafness was a slow
deterioration, rather than a sudden loss of hearing, so he could always imagine
in his mind what his compositions would sound like.
Beethoven's housekeepers
remembered that, as his hearing got worse, he would sit at the piano, put a
pencil in his mouth, touching the other end of it to the soundboard of the
instrument, to feel the vibration of the note.
Did Beethoven's deafness change
his music?
Yes. In his early works, when
Beethoven could hear the full range of frequencies, he made use of higher notes
in his compositions. As his hearing
failed, he began to use the lower notes that he could hear more clearly. Works
including the Moonlight Sonata, his only opera Fidelio and six symphonies were
written during this period. The high notes returned to his compositions towards
the end of his life which suggests he was hearing the works take shape in his
imagination.
Here's Beethoven's Große Fuge,
Op. 133, written by the deaf Beethoven in 1826, formed entirely of those sounds
of his imagination.
Beethoven Grosse Fugue Op.133
Australian Chamber Orchestra
Did Beethoven continue to
perform?
He did. But he ended up wrecking
pianos by banging on them so hard in order to hear the notes.
After watching Beethoven in a
rehearsal in 1814 for the Archduke Trio, the composer Louis Spohr said:
"In forte passages the poor deaf man pounded on the keys until the strings
jangled, and in piano he played so softly that whole groups of notes were
omitted, so that the music was unintelligible unless one could look into the
pianoforte part. I was deeply saddened at so hard a fate."
When it came to the premiere of
his massive Ninth Symphony, Beethoven insisted on conducting. The orchestra
hired another conductor, Michael Umlauf to stand alongside the composer. Umlauf
told the performers to follow him and ignore Beethoven's directions.
The symphony received rapturous
applause which Beethoven could not hear. Legend has it that the young contralto
Carolina Unger approached the maestro and turned him around to face the
audience, to see the ovation.
Realizing this is half the battle of life.
“I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”
― William Ernest Henley
Great sentence
“Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My
elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything
else.” Oscar Wilde, The Picture of
Dorian Gray
“Unseen in the background, Fate
was quietly slipping lead into the boxing-glove.” ― P.G. Wodehouse, Very Good,
Jeeves!
I wish I wrote that paragraph
“Looking into his eyes, you
seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he
had calmly confronted through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the
most part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of sounds.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale
Dominique Khalfouni
Dominique Khalfouni is a French
ballet dancer formally with the Paris Opera Ballet and a principal of the
Ballet National de Marseille, she is now a ballet teacher.
"A Primer of the Daily Round" by Howard Nemerov
A Primer of the Daily Round
A peels an apple, while B kneels to God,
C telephones to D, who has a hand
On E’s knee, F coughs, G turns up the sod
For H’s grave, I do not understand
But J is bringing one clay pigeon down
While K brings down a nightstick on L’s head,
And M takes mustard, N drives to town,
O goes to bed with P, and Q drops dead,
R lies to S, but happens to be heard
By T, who tells U not to fire V
For having to give W the word
That X is now deceiving Y with Z,
Who happens, just now to remember A
Peeling an apple somewhere far away.
Howard Nemerov's "A Primer
of the Daily Round"
Linda Sue Grimes more
Howard Nemerov's "A Primer
of the Daily Round" uses the alphabet to make a generalized statement
about what might be happening in the world of humanity in any given time frame.
The speaker personifies each letter of the alphabet, giving each human
qualities and the capability to act. All of the activities are ones that people
actually do, in fact, perform in the daily round.
"A Primer of the Daily
Round" is an English sonnet, also known as Shakespearean or Elizabethen,
with the traditional form of three quatrains and a couplet, with the rime
scheme, ABABCDCDEFEFGG.
(Please note: The spelling,
"rhyme," was introduced into English by Dr. Samuel Johnson through an
etymological error. For my explanation for using only the original form, please
see "Rime vs Rhyme: An Unfortunate Error.")
The remarkable story of Beethoven’s ‘Choral’ Symphony No. 9 and the ‘Ode to Joy’
By the time Beethoven's Symphony
No. 9, with its huge 'Ode to Joy' climax, was premiered on 7 May 1824, the
composer was profoundly deaf.
Ludwig van Beethoven’s
revolutionary Ninth Symphony is, without question, one of the greatest works in
classical repertoire.
“The Ninth is the culmination of
Beethoven’s genius,” says Classic FM composer and Beethoven expert, John
Suchet. “He uses solo voices in a
symphony for the first time, setting the words of Schiller’s poem An die
Freude. It is the longest and most complex of all his symphonies, which we may
regard it as the pinnacle of his achievement, because it is his last symphony –
but he was working on his Tenth when he died.”
For almost 200 years, the famous
hymnal theme to this symphony’s finale – the ‘Ode to Joy’ – has symbolized
hope, unity and fellowship – across borders and through conflicts.
Beethoven’s ‘Choral’ is arguably
the greatest symphony ever composed: the summit of his achievements, a
masterful musical celebration of the human race and a massive work that makes
all who hear it feel better about life. And yet, Beethoven himself never
actually heard it.
The man who had done more than
anyone before him to change the way we hear music had become one for whom
sounds could no longer exist – and the bitter irony of this was not lost on
him.
Despite his deteriorating
hearing, though, Beethoven persevered with writing this mammoth symphony.
Encouraged, no doubt, by his status as the composer of the moment, he penned a
colossal work. But, when Beethoven conducted its premiere, he was famously
unaware of the rapturous response his ninth symphony received. It took one of
the musicians to alert him to the cheering audience – and that was only at the
end of the second movement.
What are the lyrics to ‘Ode to
Joy’?
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 is famous
for its setting of Friedrich Schiller’s poem ‘Ode to Joy’ – a text the composer
had been fascinated with for over twenty years. Here’s just a short passage
below.
Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder
Was die Mode streng geteilt;
Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.
Which translates into English as:
Joy, bright spark of divinity,
Daughter of Elysium,
Fire-inspired we tread
Within thy sanctuary.
Thy magic power re-unites
All that custom has divided,
All men become brothers,
Under the sway of thy gentle
wings.
Triumphant words that perfectly
match the power and scale of Beethoven’s immortal music.
How did the ‘Ode to Joy’ become
the EU Anthem?
Since 1985, Beethoven’s ‘Ode to
Joy’ has been the melody used to symbolize the European Union. Although there are no words in the official
anthem, the poem ‘Ode to Joy’ expresses Schiller’s vision of the human race
becoming brothers – a vision Beethoven shared. It was first adopted by the
Council of Europe in 1972, before EU leaders took it on just over a decade
later. On the EU’s official website, it says: “In the universal language of
music, this anthem expresses the European ideals of freedom, peace and
solidarity.”
Cupid and Psyche
The Tale
of Cupid and Psyche
Psyche's quest to win back
Cupid's love when it is lost to her first appears in The Golden Ass of Lucius
Apuleius in the 2nd century AD. Psyche is a princess so beautiful that the
goddess Venus becomes jealous. In revenge, she instructs her son Cupid to make
her fall in love with a hideous monster; but instead he falls in love with her
himself.
He becomes her unseen husband,
visiting her only at night. Psyche disobeys his orders not to attempt to look
at him, and in doing so she loses him. In her search for him she undertakes a
series of cruel and difficult tasks set by Venus in the hope of winning him
back. Cupid can eventually no longer bear to witness her suffering or to be
apart from her and pleads their cause to the gods. Psyche becomes an immortal
and the lovers are married in heaven.
The origins of the story are
obscure. It could have been adapted from a folk-tale or have its roots in
ancient myth. It is a story of great charm, a fact which has been reflected in
the numerous re-tellings since Apuleius's time.
Many writers have interpreted it
as an allegory, with Cupid representing Love and Psyche the Soul. It was
particularly popular with Renaissance audiences, when poetical, dramatic and
musical versions proliferated alongside the many visual representations of the
tale. In the 19th century, it notably inspired an ode by John Keats, a prose
version by Walter Pater and a long poetical work by William Morris, illustrated
by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Today, Cupid and Psyche still symbolize everlasting
love - as can be seen by the numerous images of them that appear on Valentine's
cards.
Edward Sheriff Curtis
