Tag: history
869 – Cruickshank on Kew: The Garden That Changed the World (2009 Documentary)
As the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew prepare to celebrate their 250th anniversary, Dan Cruickshank unearths some of the surprising stories that shaped the famous gardens. His travels take him from the royal gardens to the corridors of power and the outposts of the Empire as he pieces together Kew’s story, uncovering tales of bravery, high adventure, passion and drama. (docuwiki)
867 – The Thinker’s Garden
The Thinker’s Garden
- “For what stronger pleasure is there with mankind…than the love of hearing and relating things strange and incredible? How wonderful a thing is the Love of wondering, and of raising Wonder!”
866
‘The country blooms – a garden, and a grave’, Oliver Goldsmith ‘The Deserted Village’.
Nick Groom – ‘Let’s discuss over country supper soon’ – Rural Realities and Rustic Representations
“The whole ambition of the picturesque was to rework the natural world into a ‘landscape’ – a word that came to England at the end of the sixteenth century
from the German, via the Dutch. Early English uses of ‘landskip’ are strongly cultural – the word is used to describe paintings,
particularly the backgrounds of paintings, and thereby any view that could conceivably be painted.”
“The picturesque encouraged the critical appreciation of nature as a spectacle. Observers of a scene – the word ‘scene’ itself reveals the implicit theatricality of viewing – became an audience, by turns appreciative or critical.
Hence natural landscapes became part of culture, and were understood, judged, and painted according to artistic conventions and aesthetic theories.
For a growing proportion of the increasingly urban population, initial encounters with natural landscapes would be through the medium of art: representations delivered either by pastoral poetry or in picturesque images.”
‘In grand scenes, even the peasant cannot be admitted, if he be employed in the low occupations of his profession: the spade, the scythe, and the rake are all excluded.’ What was allowed was pastoral idleness: the lazy cowherd resting on his pole . . . the peasant lolling on a rock’, an angler rather than a fisherman, and gypsies, banditti, and the occasional individual soldier in antique armour. The image of the countryside presented therefore looked very much in need of improvement – slack, inefficient, indigent, lawless, and archaic. Moreover, once ‘improved’ the landscape was likely to be as empty of agricultural labour as the picturesque depicted it since nearly all the peasantry would have been forced off the land.
865 – The Battle of Visby (2020 Video game)
timespace coordinates: small Scandinavian island, Gotland during the summer of 1361 / The battle of Visby
The story is told from a first-person perspective where the player takes roles of different characters experiencing the events that lead to the battle.
It is made in Unreal Engine by a one-man team.
The experience is about 1-2 hours long and focused on narrative storytelling.
0856 – Sorstalanság / Fateless (2005)
timespace coordinates: World War II Hungary / Auschwitz / Buchenwald
Fateless (Hungarian: Sorstalanság) is a Hungarian film directed by Lajos Koltai, released in 2005. It is based on the semi-autobiographical novel Fatelessness by the Nobel Prize-winner Imre Kertész, who also wrote the screenplay. It tells the story of a teenage boy who is sent to Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
The film’s music was composed by Ennio Morricone, and one of its songs was sung by Lisa Gerrard. The film is one of the most expensive movies ever produced in Hungary, with a cost of $12 million. (wiki)
0852 – Another World (1991 video game)
Another World, also known as Out of This World in North America and Outer World in Japan, is a 1991 cinematic platformer action-adventure game designed by Éric Chahi and published by Delphine Software. The game tells a story of Lester, a young scientist who, as a result of an experiment gone wrong, finds himself on a dangerous alien world where he is forced to fight for his survival.
Another World was developed by Chahi alone over a period of about two years, with only help with the soundtrack from Jean-François Freitas. Chahi developed his own game engine, completing all the game’s art and animations in vector form to reduce memory use, with some use of rotoscoping to help plan out character movements. Both narratively and gameplay-wise, he wanted the game to be told with little to no language or user-interface elements. The game was originally developed for the Amiga and Atari ST but has since been widely ported to other contemporary systems, including home and portable consoles and mobile devices. Chahi has since overseen release of various anniversary releases of the game.
Another World was innovative in its use of cinematic effects in both real-time and cutscenes, which earned the game praise among critics and commercial success. It also influenced a number of other video games and designers, inspiring such titles as Ico, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, and even Delphine’s later Flashback. (wiki)
TimeSpace Warps 