#1. the relationship between the two other interior angles is explored

[ananke-xiii]

If you've been following me for a while you're certainly aware that I openly despise love triangles in fiction because they're almost always executed in a way that's completely unappealing to my personal taste and, consequently, perceived by the audience in a way that's invariably flat and flavorless to me.

For instance in Supernatural, whether you like/ship them or not, there are two established love triangles: Dean/Benny/Cas and Dean/Crowley/Cas. In both cases the apex of the triangle is considered to be, as far as I've seen, Dean and this is one of the reasons why these two triangles are boring to me. The way I personally see it (and that makes love triangles more bearable to me) is to consider the perceived apex's favourite as the real, hidden apex. In these examples, then, the real apex is actually Cas.

The way I see it, love triangles can be interesting if ALL power dynamics are explored. In the case of Dean and Benny it's so clear that it's Dean who holds all the power in the relationship because Benny is written like Dean's ideal&perfect&amazing partner that does everything Dean wants and asks for. As far as Dean and Crowley are concerned, things are different because Crowley is, initially, a total predator and a scheming abuser towards Dean until they made him discover "the power of love" that supposedly erase all the harm that was done before. Eventually, then, Dean holds way more power than Crowley in their relationship and, from beloved Juliet the hellhound's stand-in, Dean becomes Crowley's master. Both Benny and Crowley, however, "lose" the battle without even starting it because they're positioned as perfect brother/partner and fun brother/father's figures, respectively, while Dean and Cas' relationship is interesting because Dean seems to be way more interested in a third type of relationship, aka that with his best friend.

The thing is that in both these scenarios the one who really holds all the power is Cas. He literally doesn't need to do or say anything and Dean would "choose" him anyway. And viceversa with Dean (in different cases than these ones, though, in Dean's case the "third wheel" in his relationship with Cas is Heaven which, admittedly, is much worse than what Cas has to face). The power dynamics between Dean and Cas is just much more interesting than the other two because it's like a seesaw, it's always about them even when other people are involved. They're each other's best friend and it's very, very difficult to compete with that because (and I think Supernatural did very well in this respect) "best friendship" is not "just" about support and love. There's also antagonism and eroticism and everything that a non-threatening, charming, desired relationship with the Other entails. It is indeed magnetic and it's at its best when it's described as a polarity unless, I think, the third or fourth party chiming in is "powerful" enough to destabilize the connection.

And this is precisely why I don't care for these love triangles. In Dean/Benny/Cas case it's just so obvious that the moment Cas would eventually come knocking on Dean's metaphorical door no ideal&perfect&amazing partner could compete. I could've been interested if they gave more space to Cas and Benny's relationship: give me jealousy or competition or curiosity even, whatever, but give me some spice. To me it wasn't spicy enough so the love triangle feels bland to me (the actors played very well, I'm not talking about perfomances here, I'm talking about what we actually get to see on the screen).

The Dean/Crowley/Cas is potentially veeeery good because Crowley and Cas have history and if they had showed a little bit of that the triangle could've been interesting to me. In other words, I guess what I'm saying is that I don't like these love triangles because there isn't enough Cas&third party-related dynamics in them and, the way I personally see it, he was the real, hidden apex in both cases. Things would've been just much more savoury to me if that was actually showed (I believe it was implicitly showed because Cas' appearance/disappearance in Dean's life is what starts/ends these triangles but, like, the whole point is that I needed more screentime with Cas and Benny and Cas and Crowley for the trope to be interesting. To me).

[calebmatthew1]

[Infographic]Unlocking The Secrets Of Triangles: How The Triangle Calculator Simplifies Complex Geometry

Introduction:

Geometry has always fascinated mathematicians and thinkers, as it unveils the intricate relationships and patterns that govern the world around us. Among the fundamental shapes, the triangle holds a special place due to its simplicity and versatility. Unlocking the secrets of triangles has been a pursuit of mathematicians for centuries, and with the advent of modern technology, tools like the Triangle Calculator have made it easier than ever to explore and understand the complexities of triangle geometry. In this infographic, we will delve into the significance of triangles, explore their properties, and demonstrate how the Triangle Calculator simplifies complex geometric calculations.

Section 1: The Power of Triangles

Triangles are the building blocks of geometry, serving as the foundation for more complex shapes and calculations.

Triangles possess unique properties, such as the sum of interior angles always equaling 180 degrees and the Pythagorean theorem, which states that in a right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.

Triangles also play a crucial role in trigonometry, as they provide the basis for trigonometric functions like sine, cosine, and tangent.

Section 2: Understanding Triangle Types and Properties

There are several types of triangles, including equilateral, isosceles, scalene, right, acute, and obtuse triangles, each with distinct properties.

Equilateral triangles have three congruent sides and angles, while isosceles triangles have two congruent sides and angles.

Scalene triangles have no congruent sides or angles.

Right triangles have one 90-degree angle, while acute triangles have three angles less than 90 degrees, and obtuse triangles have one angle greater than 90 degrees.

Section 3: Triangle Calculator: A Tool for Simplifying Complex Geometry

The Triangle Calculator is an invaluable tool that simplifies the process of solving various triangle-related problems.

It allows users to calculate missing angles and side lengths, determine area and perimeter, and explore relationships between triangle elements effortlessly.

By entering known values, the calculator can quickly provide accurate results, saving time and reducing the potential for human error.

Section 4: Practical Applications of the Triangle Calculator

The Triangle Calculator finds applications in various fields, including architecture, engineering, design, and physics.

Architects use it to calculate angles for roof slopes, determine dimensions for trusses, and ensure structural stability.

Engineers rely on the calculator to design bridges, analyze forces in trusses, and solve complex geometric problems in construction projects.

Designers utilize the calculator to create visually pleasing layouts, accurately measure proportions, and calculate angles for precise placement.

Physicists apply the Triangle Calculator to analyze vectors, calculate forces, and solve kinematic problems.

Conclusion:

Understanding the secrets of triangles is fundamental to exploring the wonders of geometry. The Triangle Calculator simplifies complex geometric calculations, allowing individuals in various fields to solve triangle-related problems efficiently. By harnessing the power of this tool, professionals and enthusiasts alike can unlock the secrets of triangles and uncover the beauty and precision of geometric relationships. Whether it is calculating missing angles or side lengths, determining areas and perimeters, or exploring advanced concepts in trigonometry, the Triangle Calculator is an indispensable resource in the realm of geometry.

[gemmasianpowellphotography]

Structure - Pre Production Research

02.05.2021

Top 10 examples of Architectural photography from various sources. 

Tom Manley

Tom Manley trained and worked as an architect for ten years before solely focusing on photography. Manley is based in Glasgow and works throughout the UK. Within the field of architectural photography he aims to capture the built environment alongside the social landscape and cultural fabric of different cities. The story of a building through its form, function, concept and place takes precedence. His background in architecture and fine art has helped develop his practice using the camera and written word to communicate the projects and ideas he presents to clients. Since first visiting Glasgow in 1999, Tom developed an interest in notions of regeneration and place identity which has become a consistent theme in his work, culminating in consultancy work on urban and cultural regeneration issues. He has worked with editorial publications such as A10 Magazine, Architects Journal and Urban Realm Magazine.

I like this image above shot by Tom. Light and perspective are important in this shot. The theme of blue is evident in the tones of the windows and the Rotunda building to the left of the image. Shot at blue hour and the artificial lighting is important in the shot. There is skill which the photographer has used to ensure the viewpoint is low and the night trails are evident on the road.  I like the shape of the lamp post and how its positioned in the frame pointing down onto the building advertised which is the Radisson Red Hotel. 

Jeanette Hägglund

Jeanette Hägglund is a photographer with experience across a range of fields, from advertising and portraits to fashion and products. She develops image banks and often creates image pictures to emphasize client products. Jeanette also photographs architecture, with a personal touch.

The viewpoint of the image is important and the elements of texture and lines. Shapes are created and the light is shining onto the buildings directly we can tell this through the darkness of the window frames. This image with its contrasting blue sky, orange tunnel and white building is very abstract. 

Quote - Elements - This is a minimalistic study of 118 Viviendas in Coslada. I was amazed by the bold orange color, the shapes and the strong industrial appearance.

Iwan Baan

Dutch photographer Iwan Baan is known primarily for images that narrate the life and interactions that occur within architecture. Born in 1975, Iwan grew up outside Amsterdam, studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and worked in publishing and documentary photography in New York and Europe.

Iwan Baan’s love for photography goes back to his twelfth birthday, when his Grandmother gave him his first camera.  After his studies in photography at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague, Baan followed his interest in documentary photography, before narrowing his focus to record the various ways in which individuals, communities and societies create, and interact within their built environment.

This image is of the Taichung Metropolitan Opera House. I love the elegance of the shot and its shape. It is very modern. There is a good quality of light but that is mainly at the centre of the image looking out. The position of the camera is important and it shows the scale. This is emphasised with the person with their back turned to the camera looking out over the buildings in the distance. It is shot from the interior and this only adds to its dramatic forms and curved textures. 

Edmund Sumner

Edmund is a highly regarded London based architectural photographer who has been collaborating with leading architects, publishers, editors and curators globally since 1998. Edmund shoots for architects Interior designers , design agencies developers contractors and engineers

In addition to his domestic photography, Edmund travels far and wide, equally comfortable working with emerging talent and mega studios globally. He is often to be found shooting in India, Japan, Mexico, the Middle East and the USA.

Where the light falls is important within this image. I am drawn to the subjects, both the person standing in the foreground and the other person in the background. Colour is also key with the contrast of the bright yellow and the darker green/grey. The timing of day would have played an important part to create this shot with planning. It is taken from a series of images as part of an online exhibition project during the pandemic which Edmund was involved in. Link below. 

https://www.archdaily.com/943622/architecture-photographer-edmund-sumner-takes-part-in-the-artist-support-pledge-initiative-with-chandigarh-images

Hufton + Crow

Hufton+Crow are dedicated to creating inspiring and striking photographs of contemporary interior and exterior architecture around the world.

As two experienced photographers with complementary skills and competitive characters they offer a unique service because they work as a team – either both simultaneously photographing one project, or by each providing input, critiques and direction of the others work. The outcome is a passionate attention to detail, the most creative approach possible and a reliable and professional service. Above all, it results in beautiful photographs that show buildings at their best – images that describe architecture within the built environment.

Hufton+Crow strive to create strong and lasting professional relationships, by listening and attending to their clients’ objectives first. The breadth of their client base and the longevity of these relationships proves the efficacy of this approach. They shoot digitally, believing that it is the format that can provide the most benefit to the client. They also provide professional re-touching and post-production as part of the service.

This image is of One Pear Place, London. I can see the light is coming in from behind the camera and just falling onto the building from the left hand side. There is a life sense in this image as it is taken from a wide angle and on the street from the opposing corner. I think it is important to shoot this one wide angle to show depth and scale. The people and cars/vans in the frame look much smaller and then the central white building is the focus and large to scale. 

https://architizer.com/projects/one-pear-place-1/

Tekla Evelina Severin

With Stockholm as her basecamp, her role and assignments shifts fluidly between working as an photographer, art director, interior architect, set designer, colourist, and trend forecaster all around the world.

Recently listed by Deezen as one of the top ten architectural photographers in the world. Her broad use of colours equals the variety in her client list; Vogue Brazil, NCS Colour Institute, IKEA, Sightunseen, Air France, Levi’s, Another Magazine, Institut Kunst Basel, Elle Interior UK and Matter Matters, amongst others. Did her first solo exhibition in Guatemala City and has now also been exhibited in Buenos Aires, Berlin, Madrid, Stockholm, Reykjavik and New York.

This image above is interior. It is taken an image and getting up close. The shape and colour are both key in this. The lines of the tiles and the curves of the sink/bathtub. The light is subtle coming in from a window to the left behind the camera with the shadows of the blinds. Timing would have been key as it looks like it is shot with early morning light. The colour is pastel which is soft and compliments the soft light. 

https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/10839/interior-architect-tekla-evelina-severin-has-a-way-with-colour

Fernando Guerra

Together with his brother, Sergio Guerra, who takes care of the business side, they founded the studio FG+SG in 1999. Fernando has been taking photographs since he was 16 years old.

They also constitute a publishing house: FG+SG Livros de Imagem. Their work is regularly published in several architecture magazines and monograph publications such as Casabella, A+U, Dwell, El Croquis, Icon and Domus.

Fernando works mainly to commission for architects. His clients include the most important Portuguese architects: Alvaro Siza, Goncalo Byrne, Manuel Salgado, Graca Dias, ARX Portugal, Promontorio Arquitectos, Aires Mateus among others, but the studio also seeks new practices with exciting new work.

The image above has a great essence of life. It is an abstract type of architectural shot and the use of artificial lighting and people are key. It would have taken a good plan and reese to shoot this in the evening/night when the sun was down. EPFL Quartier Nord, Switzerland was winner of the world architectural festival awards 2015. 

Kevin Saint Grey 

Kevin Saint Grey is a fine art photographer with a minimalist aesthetic style specialized in architecture, landscapes, and abstracts. Last year he received an Honorable Mention for "sentinel," "pyramid," and "imperfectly" in the Buildings - Non Pro category at the International Photography Awards.

It is very minimalist and abstract which I like. I like it is in black and white, this only emphasises the texture and shapes of the buildings. Viewpoint is key and symmetry. 

Lesley MacGregor

Quote - My photography stems from a love of modern art and architecture. Their minimalism, geometry, and luminance drive my interpretation of the world and the subjects I choose to photograph. I often return to themes of how our own perceptions and the ephemeral quality of our memories shape our view of the world.  My buildings and landscapes are seen through the lens of our unreliable memories, the distortions of time, and the idiosyncrasies of our mind. My goal is not to portray the world that is, but to create an alternate view that resonates with the viewer emotionally. This is the freedom of fine art photography: to leave the literal behind, to explore what is in the mind and the heart. Black and white photography provides many opportunities to translate the world to a minimal, geometric vision. However, some photographs demand colour to accent their essential lines. While my use of colour tends towards the desaturated and tonally minimal, it adds depth and emotion in a way different from black and white. These elements are enhanced in post-processing to further move from “what is” to what I see.

The shape and black and white adds a quality of depth and minimalist feel. I like where the light is falling on the building and the low angle viewpoint shooting the whole building with a clear edge around the frame. 

Keith Hunter

Keith has a degree in photography from Napier College, Edinburgh. His interest in Architectural Photography was nurtured during periods of work in his father’s architectural practice. Since setting up in business in 1988, Keith has specialised in photographing the very best of architectural and interior design in Scotland and beyond. He takes great pride in producing creative high quality images, with attention to detail and an understanding of the client’s needs.

I like the shape of the bus station. It is modern and you can see through the glass down the stance. Long exposure shot at dusk with dark skies and light trails from the bus. It is shot wide angle and artificial lighting is prominent. I don't think shooting at any other time of day would be stronger, it works really well exposed at this time of day adding to the dramatic tones and mood. 

[architectnews]

Campus CEA Paris-Saclay, Neuroscience Institute

Campus CEA Paris-Saclay Neuroscience Institute Building, Architect, Paris Design, Architecture Photos

Campus CEA Paris-Saclay, Neuroscience Institute, France

Paris Education Building Development, France design by Dietmar Feichtinger Architectes

16 Apr 2021

Campus CEA Paris-Saclay, Neuroscience Institute News

Design: Dietmar Feichtinger Architectes together with Celnikier & Grabli Architectes

Location: south of Paris, France

Photos © David Boureau

Campus CEA Paris-Saclay, Neuroscience Institute

A house for researchers and research The “Plateau de Paris-Saclay” is the upcoming major elite university campus in France. It is the French answer to American universities such as Columbia and Harvard. Situated twenty kilometers south of Paris an international center for technological research is being built on this campus. Over the long term, nearly three thousand billion euros have been earmarked for this purpose. (https://ift.tt/3eaW6QS) The CEA (Commissariat à l’énergie atomique) is a leading research institution in the fields of energy, environment technology and health. In 2013, it has announced an invited competition for a neuroscience institute for about 350 scientists and 40 students. 59 offices applied, and the winning project was designed by Dietmar Feichtinger Architectes, the lead team, together with Celnikier & Grabli Architectes. The building was delivered in March 2020.

Technology and well-being “It was a challenge to ensure constantly controlled conditions for scientific research,” explains architect Dietmar Feichtinger “and at the same time to create spatial qualities including natural daylight, fresh air and a relationship with the surroundings. We managed to fulfil both aspects with equal priority”. The required areas – research, laboratories, offices, foyer, and auditoriums – are subject to various access restrictions, which result from the coherent organization itself. Three incised and accessible inner courtyards and transparent bridges create work and laboratory spaces lit by daylight, as well as the informal communication areas essential for modern research.

Distorted perception Surrounded by trees, the Institute of Neurosciences is close to the CEA’s atomic research, which will create synergies. “We wanted to preserve the trees in order to fit the auditorium into the landscape of the campus park and at the same time create a public space” explains Dietmar Feichtinger. The low, triangular-shaped entrance rises to the south of the four-story cubic building, which is 95 meters long and 50 meters wide. It frames a forecourt with a water basin, which follows the axes of the neighboring research buildings. The roof of the entrance building tapers slightly upwards. Its underside, made of polished stainless steel, reflects the environment in a seemingly distorted perspective. Depending on the angle of view and daylight, it appears different. The changing perception accompanies the path to the entrance of the institute. It is located between the auditorium and the foyer. The polished stainless steel is reflected in the reception area, a single flight of stairs leads to the gallery on the first floor. Eight meters of room height, corner glazing and oak parquet flooring create a welcoming foyer that also provides access to the auditorium and seminar rooms. This is the Institute’s calling card and its interface with the public: events can be organized in this space, which extends to the forecourt through wide opening glass doors.

The central part for research A facade of concrete panels and narrow glass slits surrounds the research area behind it. The functioning of neurons is studied on living organisms such as fish. These are kept in aquariums under constant conditions (water temperature, light). This applies to all laboratories with animals. The architects have concentrated these strictly regulated areas, with their high technical requirements, on the ground floor and the basement.

They form the core of the institute: a schematic circuit of the corridors with aquariums, enclosures, and laboratories. Perfect details, coordinated with material and function, characterize the work of Feichtinger Architectes. They were indispensable for this building. The white, seamless machine room for neurological research seems almost abstract – a separate technical floor was incorporated for its operation. A loading area at the back is used for the delivery of animal feed, living organisms and waste collect. Spatial requirements are constantly changing: a supporting structure made of reinforced concrete allows the various entities to be reprogrammed as required.

An optimal workplace and research space About 350 scientists work on the upper levels. Open rooms with plenty of daylight, beautiful views and generous circulation areas invite for exchange and create optimal working conditions. Informal communication is the basis for scientific innovation. Three inner courtyards with greenery and sun terraces serve as open controlled outdoor spaces. This is where people like to spend time and meet each other. These courtyards also provide natural light for the offices and laboratories in the depth of the building.

Low window parapets of 70 cm enforce the natural light. Open installations run along the exposed concrete ceiling. The offices are equipped with wood fiber based soundproofing panels on the ceiling, welcoming light grey rubber floors. The walls on the corridor side are partially made of glass. This creates a friendly and transparent atmosphere. Here too, flexibility is maximized. “We can transform offices into laboratories and laboratories into offices,” says Feichtinger. The grid, load-bearing access cores and lightweight construction walls make this possible.

The three levels are clearly structured: Along the horizontal window stripes of the facade made of metal panels towards the courtyards and opal glass panels towards the outside, the offices and laboratories are aligned along a bright central corridor, from which two further corridors run at right angles. These corridors are connected by glass walkways to the offices and laboratories opposite.

“The building is very efficient,” says Feichtinger. “The walkways create short connecting paths.” The interwoven wings with the footbridges divide the open interior space into three courtyards. Approximately 15 meters wide and 24 meters long, they move diagonally through the volume of the building, slightly offset from each other.

Thus, they respond to the different depths of the office areas, create individual locations, and allow to explore the building via the open spaces. “People who are researching here should meet each other – that’s why we have attractive outdoor patios, where you can also work of course”, says Dietmar Feichtinger. The access areas are very attractively designed. Through the glazed walkway you can see the yards, the wide staircases and the galleries. “You’re not necessarily supposed to wait for the lift, you’re invited to walk up the stairs.”

As Dietmar Feichtinger stated: “Ensuring constantly controlled conditions for scientific research was a technical challenge. We also wanted to create spatial qualities such as natural daylight, fresh air, and a relation to the surrounding. We fulfill both aspects with equal priority”.

Campus CEA Paris-Saclay, Neuroscience Institute – Building Information

Project: Projekt Campus CEA Paris-Saclay | Neuroscience Institute Address: CEA Saclay, R.D 306, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Client/Address: CEA – Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives Bat 530, PC n° 98, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France

Architect: Dietmar Feichtinger Architectes Architect Dipl.-Ing. Dietmar Feichtinger, mandataire, lead 80 rue Edouard Vaillant, 93100 MONTREUIL

Celnikier et Grabli Architectes, Architectes Cotraitants, associated architect 1 boulevard de Ménilmontant, 75011 PARIS

Engineers Bet Statik INGEROP, BET

Contractors Entreprise (Groupement) Baugesellschaft ML1 : Leon Grosse ML2 : Castel Alu ML3 : Ridoret ML4 : Engie Axima ML5 : TTI Lot6 : Euro-ascenseurs Lot7 : Gema Lot8 : Hytec Lot9 : Dagard Lot10 : Delagrave Lot11 : Matachana

Site area: Campus Paris-Saclay – territoire de Paris-Saclay

Floor area: SU: 19 046,78 m² SP: 16 653 m²

Built-up area: Emprise au sol de l’opération: 6480 m² Surface Parking : 1464 m² Surface Parvis : 3741.1 m²

Time Schedule

Competition: 27 01 2014 Start of planning: 06 2014 Start of construction: 04 2016 Completion: 03 2020

Building costs: 34 395 000 €

Main elements of the programme: Multi-species terrestrial and aquatic animal houses, conventional level, A2 and EOPS Research centres dedicated to the study of behaviour, development, evolution and modelling Scientific platforms linked to external teams Teaching and communication centre

Photography © David Boureau

Dietmar Feichtinger Architectes

Campus CEA Paris-Saclay, Neuroscience Institute images / information received 160421 from Dietmar Feichtinger Architectes

Location: Paris, France

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Comments / photos for the Campus CEA Paris-Saclay, Neuroscience Institute – New South Paris Education Architecture page welcome

Website: Dietmar Feichtinger Architectes

The post Campus CEA Paris-Saclay, Neuroscience Institute appeared first on e-architect.

[oosteven-universe]

Vampirella versus Purgatori #1

Vampirella versus Purgatori #1 Dynamite Entertainment 2021 Written by Ray Fawkes Illustrated by Álvaro Sarraseca Coloured by Slavatore Aiala Lettered by Tom Napolitano The unholy alliance you prayed would never happen! For countless generations, the fight between good and evil has been fought, as much behind the scenes as in plain view. Unbeknownst to the world at large, one force has stood as a safeguard against the potential triumph of evil and the unleashing of the apocalypse: The 36. Now, someone is after them, a creature of evil known as Purgatori, and the only thing standing in her way is Vampirella. So with all of existence hanging in the balance, what could possibly bring these two enemies to join forces? Hint: Whatever it is, it must be really bad. The moment this was announced I was terribly excited for this.  I’ve been a fan of Purgatori since her debut and I have to say that a crossover with Vampirella is a dream come true.  I will say one thing surprised me more than any other and that’s Vampirella being Lilith’s daughter because in all honesty I would’ve expected that to be reversed.  Regardless I have the utmost respect for Ray so now I’m anxious to see where he’s going to take this.  Already we are seeing something happen here that I cannot wait to see explored further and of course it all starts with a celebration, a birthday and boy oh boy. I am enjoying the way that this is being told.  The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented beautifully.  Just the way that we are introduced to the players and how we learn just who is who and what’s going to be happening it has this amazing feel to it.  The character development is interesting and while Lilith is new to me the others feel familiar and fresh & new at the same time.  I’m excited to see the sassy quips and comebacks out of these women as they navigate the story as they act and react to the circumstances and situations they encounter.  Plus the outright attempts at manipulation and misdirection being utilised is rendered with aplomb. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages you can feel yourself building a connection to the story which to me is rather quite impressive. I am enjoying how this is structured and how the layers within the story take shape and grow as the intrigue and interest factors expand exponentially through them.  The way that we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow is absolutely delightful. The interiors here are absolutely gorgeous!  The linework that we see and how it’s varying weights and varying techniques that are being utilised to create this wondrous detail work captures the imagination of the reader.  I really wish we’d see more and better backgrounds being utilised throughout as they really enhance the story, the mood, the tone and the feel of it.  The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a talented eye for storytelling.  The colour work is beautifully rendered.  How we see the various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is rather quite impressive. Dynamite is very quietly putting out some top notch quality books like this one right here.  The story is complex and interesting full of those moments that make you stop stare and your mind is engaged by what it’s seen.  With an infinite number of possibilities regarding these two women and the kind of relationship they can have would rival Vampirella’s with Red Sonja and to say and think that shows the true talent and skill of these fine folks.

[bookwyrmshoard]

Star Trek Discovery — Episode 1 and 2 review

I watched the first 2 episodes of Star Trek: Discovery last night, with mixed feelings. I loved the main character, loved Michelle Yeoh’s character, really disliked a species redesign, and was taken aback by how short the episodes are (and how frequent the ads are.) But as a diehard Star Trek fan, I plan to keep watching; we subscribed to CBS All Access just for this show.

Spoiler alert: If you haven’t seen the show yet, there is at least one spoiler below, specifically in discussing the species redesign I mentioned above. I tried not to give away any major plot points. The inclusion of this species was discussed in any number of places before the show aired. But if you haven’t been paying attention to the pre-launch buzz, the mere mention of the species in question could suggest what happens in the first two episodes. I can’t avoid discussing it in my review, because it comprises a significant part of my reaction to the show so far.

Proceed at your own risk.

Sonequa Martin-Green is supurb as Michael Burnham, a human raised on Vulcan, who is First Officer on the Shenzou as the series opens. As a child, Michael survived a Klingon terror attack, and became a ward of Sarek (Spock’s father), receiving a Vulcan education and attending the Vulcan Science Academy—the first human to do so. I hope her relationship with Sarek, seen thus far mainly through flashbacks, will be explored further. That backstory makes her a really interesting character, one who, like Spock, embodies the internal conflict between emotion and reason. I’m really looking forward to seeing the character developed further, but she’s already an appealingly complex, conflicted, three-dimensional person from the moment she appears onscreen, thanks to a stellar performance by Martin-Green that is unquestionably the highlight of the show so far. Her Burnham is intensely focused, fiercely curious, and highly intelligent; she uses logic as a tool, but her emotions are visible under the cool exterior.

Michelle Yeoh is also terrific in the first two episodes. She’s listed as a guest star, not a regular, which is a pity, as I really like her character, a soldier/diplomat who captains the Shenzhou. Yeoh’s Captain Georgiou is confident in command, her authority and coolheaded competence as clear in her facial and body language as her integrity and wry sense of humor. There’s obviously a deep affection between Georgiou and her protege and first officer, but it is tested in these two episodes.

The writing so far varies between “all right” and “very good.” I enjoyed the dialogue between Michael and Commander Georgiou, but was less impressed with the Klingons’ dialogue (more on that below.) The storyline held my attention throughout, with good pacing and plenty of tension, both within and between the characters, and in terms of events. Pre-show press indicates that the series will be much less episodic than previous series have been; the main story arc will play out over the 15 episodes of Season 1, essentially as a serial. It’s also less of an ensemble show than previous Trek series, at least so far; the focus is clearly on Michael Burnham.

Based on the first two episodes, it appears that the show is going more in the direction of moral ambivalence and intercrew conflict, like the later seasons of Deep Space 9 (DS9) and much of Voyager,  than the optimism and moral certitude that characterize most of the original series (TOS) and Star Trek: Next Generation (STNG.) Showrunner Aaron Harberts described Star Trek: Discovery as “dystopian” on the After Trek show that aired following the first episode. That doesn’t surprise me, particularly in light of the current sociopolitical climate both nationally and internationally. Still, I hope that the show will retain at least some of the optimism of Roddenberry’s original vision, which is in short supply in the real world these days. I think we need the reminder that a world which embraces diversity is not only desirable but possible, when people—and peoples—deal with one another with respect. From an interview Martin-Green gave, it seems that the show does express something of that vision as well as the difficulty of reaching it:

“Discovery,” she says, is about “war, the greatest conflict of all, but it’s also about  profound questions of ‘Who am I,’ ‘who are you,’ ‘how do I relate to you?’  How do we live with each other? How do we make acculturation a two-way exchange rather than me dominating you or you dominating me?”

In “Discovery,” she says “we are aspiring to a utopia, but we haven’t reached perfection yet. Yet we are trying [but] you are going to see us try and fail and try again and fail again.”   (source: Newsday)

The show’s visual effects are as good as we have come to expect from science fiction shows and movies, which is to say very good to excellent. The directors and cinematographers have clearly borrowed from the J.J. Abrams playbook when it comes to camera angles and lens flares. (Thanks to my husband for that observation, and put it in the “ok” category from my perspective, as it’s not necessarily a style I embrace.) They’ve also made an interesting and potentially controversial choice for the opening credits, eschewing the usual Star Trek space shots and replacing them with a CGI sequence that is far more about design than the wonders of space. The opening credits music includes brief nods to the original score, which is a nice touch. However, overall the opening credits lack the excitement of the corresponding sequences of TOS, STNG, and DS9.

CBS All Access is a two-tier streaming channel, with ads at the lower rate. The episode length and structure have clearly been tailored to accommodate the ads… and there are a lot of them. If I had to guess (I didn’t time it precisely), there’s about 37 to 40 minutes of actual show, including the credits, versus about 20 minutes of ads. That’s noticeably less showtime than those of us who grew up watching TOS or STNG or DS9 expect from a Star Trek show, and I was a little taken aback by how short the episodes felt.

My biggest hesitation about the show so far is the physical redesign of the Klingons, which is… well, I really don’t care for it. They’ve added so many facial prosthetics that the actors’ expressions are largely masked. (They’ve also made the Klingons bald.) It’s poor design from the acting standpoint. More to the point, it was totally unnecessary.

In 1987, Star Trek fans were taken aback by the craniofacial redesign of Klingons that occurred with the launch of STNG, but they accepted it fairly quickly. That appearance remained fairly constant throughout the four shows (STNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise) and movies made during the same years. It is now not only widely accepted but canon, with hundreds of hours of footage behind it. I think a lot of fans are going to be dismayed this arbitrary reimagining of Klingon physiognomy, particularly since it diminishes the characters’ emotional affect (or at least the actors’ ability to portray their emotions.) It remains to be seen whether longterm fans will accept the new design.

Klingon speech has lost some of its expressiveness as well. The lead Klingon, T’Kuvma, sounds like he’s having difficulty enunciating clearly due to poorly-fitting false teeth (and perhaps he is—see my comment on prosthetics, above.) Furthermore, the Klingons speak exclusively in Klingon (with subtitles) when speaking among themselves. This could totally work if it were handled well, but I didn’t feel it was. The Klingons, particularly T’Kuvma, sound stilted to me, speaking in gutteral barks with less emotional range than I expect: it sounds more like rote memorization than the fluency of a native tongue. I’ll grant you that there is a decided harshness and gutteral quality to canon Klingon speech, with words often delivered like blows, but previous shows made it seem more organic, more a part of the speech pattern. Perhaps fluency and expressiveness will come as the actors grow more accustomed to speaking Klingon.

The Wikipedia article on the show has this to say about the redesign: “The show also heavily features the Klingon species, with the intent of exploring the central conflict from both perspectives. The Klingons were redesigned for the series, with influence from their previous appearances, the original inspirations for the species, and the novel The Final Reflection, as well as research on biology and evolution.”  I don’t see any inspiration from TOS in the new Klingon craniofacial structure, but the current look is at least somewhat influenced by the head ridges of the STNG/DS9-era Klingons. Sets and weapon design show more influence: the designers appear to have drawn heavily on “existing” Klingon weapons and interior design, but put their own stamp on them. I actually thought the Klingon sets and weapons looked interesting and Klingon-like. It’s the characters’ physical appearance and (so far) limited emotional range that I’m unhappy with.  Despite what I’ve read about why the showrunners and designers chose the new look (Wikipedia; scroll down to “Klingons”), I still think there was no need to redesign Klingon physiology in order to deal with this period in Starfleet history, when the redesign departs significantly from canon, and  detracts from the actors’ ability to bring the richness of individuality and expression to the characters.

But I look forward to seeing how the show “[explores] the central conflict from both perspectives.” I hope that in doing so, the will explore the Klingon culture beyond its glorification of violence and warfare, for although that is certainly part of the Klingon ethos, it is not the whole of it by any means. And I hope that in the show’s depictions of the 24 Klingon houses, which (according to various sources) espouse differing ideologies and to some extent hail from different cultures, they will connect with and build upon the Klingon culture(s) we’ve already seen in STNG and DS9 in particular.

There is more than enough good material in Star Trek: Discovery to outweigh my dismay over a single aspect and keep me watching for now. Honestly, Martin-Green’s portrayal of Michael Burnham would be enough all on its own. The show’s writing and visuals are also strong enough to hold my interest. And I’m really looking forward to seeing Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy) as a Starfleet captain in future episodes, and to seeing the Discovery crew in all its promised diversity and complex relationships. I just wish the Klingons, as they have appeared so far, didn’t leave me feeling a bit betrayed as a fan. And I wish the episodes were about 10 minutes longer.

I’m willing to give it time. After all, STNG took several seasons to really hit its stride, when it relaunched the franchise back in 1987.  I hope my fellow fans—and CBS—are also willing to to be patient. Discovery has made a good start on the whole. If they can keep it up and build on the Star Trek legacy in ways that stay true to the original vision, I’ll be a very happy fan.

Rating (so far): 3.75 stars out of 5.

Review mirrored from The Bookwyrm’s Hoard blog.

[impracticaldemon]

Mirafreed Week 2017 Fanfiction Ch.3—First Steps: Beyond Kisses

Story ~ First Steps and Beyond Prompts: Day 5—Lipstick; Day 6—Children

Words: ~ 5000 (Chapter 3) | AO3 | Fanfiction.net | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Summary:  This story takes place between the Battle for Fairy Tail and the Oracion Seis Arc, as timelines permit. Chapter 3 follows Freed’s proposal for the two of them to find a home together and the difficulties of two complicated mages trying to forge an intimate relationship.  Angst, relationship development, sexy fluff (and a certain amount of frustration). 

Rated: T+ for Chapters 1 & 2, M for Chapter 3 (to be safe); Chapter 4 will be M

Chapter 3: Beyond Kisses

[I]—Tea and Kisses

As expected, the gossip mill churned with great fervour when it became known that Mirajane and Freed were actively looking for an apartment together. Eventually, there was even a small article about it in the Sorcerer's Weekly, featuring pictures of Mirajane dressed in everything from a skimpy bikini to a floor-length ball gown. The only picture of Freed was from the fashion show in which he'd involuntarily participated, and while he looked elegant enough, the editor seemed to have deliberately chosen the one shot where the angle made his slight smile look more like a leer.

"Well, maybe that was the only photo that the show organizers would allow them to publish," said Mirajane, as they read the article together at their regular date for morning tea. Her voice was light, and she even sounded amused, but Freed knew his lady too well. The over-tight grip on her mug and the angry gleam in her blue eyes was more indicative of her mood.

"Perhaps," Freed agreed. "But we both doubt it, so why pretend? The door is closed and I promise not to repeat anything you have to say about the magazine's editors beyond these four walls."

Mirajane gave him a fond smile, the dangerous spark fading from her eyes.

"I've learned to keep my temper… and sometimes it's easier to keep it if I don't let go of it even in private. For one thing, getting angry around Elfman always sets him off, which seldom works out well. He's very protective, as you may have noticed. But somehow when you tell me to get angry and say exactly what I'm thinking, I no longer feel especially angry."

"That's too bad," Freed commented. "You are not only lovely when you're angry, but also very witty—in a scathing, flay-your-opponent-alive kind of way. By the way, I see that you've finally found a lipstick that is dark enough to match those roses Droy created for you. The colour suits you very well."

He picked up the small cake that she had set down in her annoyance at seeing the photos, broke off a piece, and fed it to her. It was a deliberately sensual—rather than romantic—gesture, and he was pleased to see that Mira's eyes focussed on the way that he licked the crumbs from his fingertips afterward, instead of returning to the magazine.

"You're trying to seduce me, aren't you?" she said softly, the moment she had swallowed the bit of cake.

Freed picked up her hand and traced the line of the vein on her wrist with his thumb.

"Yes, I told you that I would—try, that is."

"You also said you'd be patient." She met his eyes as though to challenge his lack of patience, but her slight shiver when his fingers continued to stroke the soft skin just below her palm detracted somewhat from her protest.

Her green-haired lover—in the more old-fashioned sense of the word, at least for now—smiled in a way that made her bite her lower lip. Somehow, they had gone from discussing an annoying piece of unwanted publicity to… this.

"I said that I can be patient," Freed told her, his thumb still tracing those oddly electric patterns on her inner wrist. "And if I thought that I was bothering you now—in a negative way—then I would be patient. Moreover, I have been patient."

Mirajane was always both irritated and captivated by the way that Freed could make her feel young and rather inexperienced at times like these. In fact, she was young—barely into her early twenties, although she managed to maintain an appearance of wisdom and maturity that fooled even those who knew better—and she was inexperienced in terms of serious relationships. As a teenager she'd been wild and decidedly dangerous to those around her; after her sister had died, she'd reformed into a sexy but untouchable sister-mother figure to the majority of the guild and perhaps Magnolia as a whole.

"I did agree to look for a place together," she ventured, trying vainly to ignore her flushed cheeks and the warmth she could feel spreading outward from where Freed was touching her. "And we'd only been seeing each other for three months at the time!"

"Yes, and I am very happy about that. However, I have come to the conclusion that we are both too domestic—and likely too particular—to find what we want in the apartments and smaller places that we've been looking at."

"What do you mean?"

Before answering the question, Freed leaned forward and pressed his lips against Mira's. It began as a simple kiss, but her lips had already been slightly parted and he took ruthless advantage of that to explore her mouth with his tongue, so that the kiss quickly became deeper and oddly more intense than in the past. Freed's hand slid further up Mira's arm and she felt the strange electric feeling travel with it, as if there were more than mere finger-tips and nerve-endings involved. A few minutes passed, and then Freed felt Mira start to tense. Without being in any way abrupt, he gently ended the kiss and slowly leaned back, folding his hands together so as to resist any further temptation. For now.

"Thank you," Freed said quietly.

Mirajane didn't respond at first. She was staring down at the table as though fascinated by the well-polished wood. Then she shook her head and looked up. Her whole face felt warm and was probably red.

"That was… different. Why?"

"Power—I think. You don't entirely believe me, but I have done my best to… mute things a little. While we got used to each other. I suppose that magic calls to magic—we can both sense spell energy after all—and ours is somewhat aligned. The effect is becoming more pronounced as we become more comfortable together; I don't know why. I noticed it a couple of months ago."

"I didn't."

"I can't fully explain it. I suggest that I am more open to you than you are to me—which is only reasonable in the circumstances. I have hurt you and your family."

"Then I still need to move past the past—so to speak." Mira did not look wholly convinced. After all, she was the one who had originally convinced Freed that his actions on Laxus' behalf had not destroyed their relationship as friends and guild mates.

"Mira…" Freed hesitated. He didn't want to lose her. Reluctantly, he tried to put into words the idea that had come to him over the past few weeks. "You've let me become close to you. Now you've agreed to live with me—if we can find the right place. But I feel as though I'm fighting a constant, silent battle. You really don't like to acknowledge your demon powers, and I won't let you forget them."

"I thought we already talked about that." Mirajane shifted uncomfortably.

"We did. But you are going out with me despite how you feel, not because you are comfortable with your powers. I believe you'll get there—you are already less anxious—but until you can tell yourself that's it's alright and you won't hurt anyone by mistake, you're going to… hold back with me."

Once again, Mira fidgeted. She was intelligent and capable of honest self-analysis; Freed's argument had some merit.

"What does this have to do with getting an apartment?"

Freed had to resist the urge to pace.

"As I said before, oddly enough, demon powers or not, we're both rather domestic creatures." He smiled wryly. "Evergreen and Bickslow are both far more exotic beings than I am, when it comes to creating a space that is a home—not to mention knowing how to cook or tidy. And if you tell me that Elfman has a desire to create gourmet meals then I'll believe you, but I'd be surprised. Or does he have a flair for interior design of which I was unaware?"

That drew a reluctant smile from Mirajane. She nodded in agreement with Freed's assessment.

"In comparison to our families," Freed continued, "you and I secretly want a rather traditional place, with an excellent kitchen, room to entertain, enough space for both guests and our own interests…"

Mirajane laughed out loud. "And a garden and a koi pond?"

"And a fenced yard for the children."

Mira turned noticeably pink again. "It's a little too soon to talk about that," she said in a low voice.

"I agree. That or even the rest of it, maybe, but I think the image is there in our heads already and that's why the apartments and so on aren't satisfying to look at." Freed tilted his head at her. "Since I seem to be pressing my luck anyway, I will complete my analysis. I think you are conflicted: the idea of throwing yourself whole-heartedly into creating your own home and family makes you want more than a utilitarian place to live; however, the idea of being closely involved with me on a day-to-day basis still scares you."

"I'm not afraid of you, Freed!"

"I know." Freed sighed. "I don't think that fear of me—in the obvious sense—is the problem. Either way, I apologize for upsetting you. Besides, I may be completely wrong, and we just haven't found the right place yet."

He rose, took one of Mirajane's hands back, and bowed.

"Freed…" For some reason, Mirajane felt her irritation with the man dissolve again. The strength in his hands and the way that he somehow conveyed both restrained power and the desire for intimacy almost made her shiver again.

"I have reason to believe that Elfman will be out this evening," said Freed in a light tone. "Although it is incredibly presumptuous to invite myself over, may I join you for dinner this evening? If you think that the guild can do without you for an hour or two?"

"I wish Elf wasn't so fascinated by Evergreen," Mirajane replied rather petulantly. When Freed remained silent, she added: "Yes, I'd be happy make dinner for you this evening, even though it is a strange request from a person as consistently polite as you are. I'll find somebody to look after things here."

"Thank you, Mira. I'll see you later, then."

[II]—Intimate Discussions

Freed surveyed the Strauss family home with a slightly sardonic expression. Mirajane and her siblings had been in Magnolia since she was thirteen, during which time they had lived for the most part at the guildhall. The house was fairly new; or more precisely, they hadn't had it for long. Mirajane had bought it about a year ago, when earnings from her modelling jobs had begun to add up. It wasn't especially large, but it was located in what realtors referred to as a "desirable location": an older neighbourhood close to the center of town with full-grown trees and more space between houses than could be found anywhere else. There was a small but pretty garden, and the yard was fenced, although there was no koi pond.

Smiling at the pond idea, Freed walked up the short flight of stairs to the front door, which opened at his approach. Mirajane was wearing a short summer dress in some kind of soft material, and her feet were bare. Freed was pleased that he'd judged correctly: he'd left his usual coat and boots at home in favour of black trousers and a wine-coloured vest over a white dress shirt with the collar unbuttoned and the cuffs loosely folded up. He was gratified to see Mira's eyes widen with surprised approval.

"Come in, Freed… And you needn't look so smug; I freely admit that I like your outfit."

"That isn't going to stop me from looking smug, Mira," her guest replied, kissing her cheek and taking his shoes off inside the door. "After all, I get to have dinner—alone—with you, and you like the clothes I chose for the evening. What man wouldn't feel smug?"

"A more polite man might conceal his smugness," Mirajane suggested, her blue eyes twinkling a little.

"Alas, it isn't exactly politeness I have in mind this evening." Freed pulled his hostess against him in a tight embrace and kissed her firmly on the lips.

"Or food?" Mirajane said with a slight gasp a minute or two later.

"Food would be very welcome," Freed demurred. "I merely wanted to advise you of my intentions ahead of time, so that there was no misunderstanding."

"You didn't even bring flowers or, or anything!"

"True. I invited myself to dinner and brought no gifts. That way, you can't accuse me of trying to bribe you or make you feel guilty or indebted."

Mirajane smacked him lightly on the upper arm and tried to look affronted. "I assure you that I don't feel either guilty or indebted when a dinner guest brings me a small gift or a bottle of wine or something of that kind."

"Ah, but you still have my flowers," Freed pointed out.

"Yes, and although they continue to look lovely—I assume you put some kind of arcane runes on them—I think it's time for new ones! Or are you short of money?"

Mirajane immediately reddened and looked flustered, since she knew that Freed had been working hard to repay the guild and the town of Magnolia for the repairs necessary to both after the battle for Fairy Tail. Freed ignored her consternation, however.

"I am not short of money. Since I denied myself the pleasure of your company for over three months, and have remained busy in the—almost—four months that we've been seeing each other, I am entirely free of debt and then some. However,"—he spoke over Mirajane's attempt to apologize for her question—"I do intend to buy you new flowers, just as soon as we decide on a home together. In the meantime, the original roses serve to remind you of our discussion on the matter."

Mirajane stopped trying to cut in. Instead, she frowned slightly, and tried to shift away so that she could look up at him. When his arms didn't move, and proved as yielding as steel bars, the best she could do was resist the desire to snuggle in closer. It was annoyingly difficult not to.

"I don't need the reminder," she told him at last.

"Excellent. Then let's talk about it over dinner, shall we?"

"You're still trying to get me into bed, aren't you?"

"Yes. I believe that came up during the same discussion. But in perfect seriousness, if you want me to desist, you just need to ask."

Mirajane huffed, but didn't say anything more, so Freed let go of her and followed her into the kitchen. The food smelled wonderful, and it was clear that dessert was baking in the oven.

"I was going to suggest that we eat in here," Mirajane said, "but it's a little warm, I'm afraid. Not that either of us seems to mind the heat much. At least, I don't, and I assume you don't since you normally wear a coat on all occasions."

Freed regarded the good-sized kitchen with its comfortable eating area. It was appropriate to the suggestion he wanted to make over dinner.

"I can create a slightly cooler area that won't be affected by the heat from the cooking, if you don't mind setting the table."

"Showing off?" Mirajane teased.

"No, just being practical."

A short time later, they were eating Mira's wonderful dinner in perfect comfort, only the tiniest distortion indicating the location of Freed's magic. Soft music accompanied dinner, issuing from a shimmering lacrima crystal that was itself a piece of art.

"Alright Freed, you've managed to get things more or less the way you want them, I suspect, so what is it that you want to discuss?" Mirajane fixed her guest with a wary gaze.

Freed finished his mouthful of food without haste.

"I think that we should live here," he said simply. "You have already chosen this place, and I like it very much, so why not?"

Mirajane looked startled and then upset.

"But… Elf lives here and I'm not going to tell him to leave! You can't expect me to!"

Freed nodded his understanding.

"Of course I don't expect you to tell him to leave, but have you considered how he feels? I know you are very close, but he may appreciate his own freedom, you know. Especially if he has his own, ah, interests to pursue. It should have occurred to me sooner, but he's the one who should have an apartment, not us. I can assure you that Evergreen is not in a hurry to settle down."

"Thank goodness," muttered Mirajane.

Freed ignored the interpolation.

"More wine?"

"No thank you!" Then Mirajane discovered that her glass was empty, and with a sense of capitulation, she handed it to Freed. "Alright… That is, yes please."

He filled the glass in silence, along with his own.

"If Elfman dislikes the idea—if he would rather stay here—then I'll come up with something else," he promised, once Mirajane had sipped at her wine.

"I… suspect that won't be necessary," she admitted. "He was as resistant as he could be when I bought the place—which isn't saying much, but I know I overrode his preference to stay at the guildhall. And if I present it to him as something that I want, so that any money I give him up front is just a small thing compared to the rent I'd otherwise have to pay…"

"I'm still surprised you went looking at apartments with me, given that you had this lovely house," Freed told her.

She grinned at him. "You caught me at a weak emotional moment—it had been a trying day."

"Of course."

"And I liked your idea of living together."

"In concept or in reality?"

"Both. I promise."

"Then you will consider my idea?"

"I'll speak to Elfman about it tomorrow. He said he'd likely be home late tonight."

"He will be." Freed spoke with some certainty. Evergreen might not be wholly reconciled to the idea of her team leader being involved with "Little Miss Perfect" (her words, of course), but she was fond enough of Freed—and loyal enough—not to stand in his way. Besides, she liked to torment Elfman without having to admit to herself that she wanted to spend time with him.

"I see." Mirajane frowned, but forbore to cast further aspersions on the Raijinshū's capricious female team member.

She cleared the dinner dishes and took dessert out of the oven to cool. Freed watched her patiently as she made coffee for herself and tea for him, understanding her need for space and occupation while she mulled things over. She liked his idea, he thought. And if they wanted a bigger place someday—since the house only had three bedrooms—they could worry about it then. He knew Mirajane very well, and she would want children sooner rather than later.

Meanwhile, he had more immediate hopes and dreams, but he had already pushed the limits of acceptable behaviour. He allowed himself to be guided into the cosy living room, and sipped his tea while Mirajane described her most recent modelling assignment, and the sleazy photographer who had needed reminding that she was a Fairy Tail mage. Freed smiled appreciatively at the end result, but added the photographer's name to a short mental list of people with whom to have pointed discussions.

"I only have half your attention!" Mirajane protested at that point.

"You have my full attention," replied Freed with perfect truth.

He rose from the armchair to which he'd been directed and set down his plate and cup. His long green hair had been tied back into a low ponytail but his bangs still fell around his face—and over his right eye—as usual. Mirajane caught her breath and then hurried to stand up. Every now and then, she found herself partially mesmerized by how he looked and it was annoying that it seemed to be happening more often lately. She had expected the effect to lessen as she got to know him better. It gave her insight into the effect that she had on others, since his style of beauty was not unlike her own, but that didn't help her to feel less shallow—or less vulnerable.

"You're leaving already?" she asked, puzzled and relieved and disappointed.

"You are holding me at a distance. I am trying my utmost to become closer to you. It isn't an ideal situation. As you reminded me, I promised to be patient."

"But…" Mirajane frowned. Every way she looked at it, he was correct. She was holding him at a distance even though she wanted to be with him. It did suggest that she was afraid. She didn't like—the realization finally crystallized—she truly didn't like not being in control of how she felt.

Despite his best intentions, Freed couldn't resist the somehow woebegone expression on Mirajane's lovely face. She looked bewildered and he had some idea why. He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her forehead.

"You'll sort it out. The thing is… I don't really want to seduce you. I don't even want to find out if that's possible. I want to hold you, and touch your skin, and make love to you—because that's what we both want. Shared love, shared responsibility, shared vulnerability. For people with power I think it generally comes down to that."

He could tell that the words made sense to her. Her slim hands reached up to brush the hair out of his face and he reflexively closed his eyes. His right eye was… troubling… to look at. When she leaned into him, arms now around his neck to balance herself, he let go of her shoulders and allowed his hands to rest lightly on her hips. He was surprised when she kissed his neck rather his lips, but kept his eyes closed, enjoying the sensation.

"Stay for a bit longer, please. I'm sure that your patience hasn't entirely run out, has it?"

"No—ah, no, it hasn't run out. Yes, if you want me to stay I will."

They sat on the couch after that, or rather, Freed sat on the couch and pulled Mirajane onto his lap. He put his arms around her but otherwise left her to choose what to do next. She continued to kiss his neck, and then his ears and finally what she could she see of his shoulders. Somehow he managed to stay still throughout, although he could hear his heart hammering in his chest. He felt his whole body tense when her fingers unbuttoned his vest and most of his shirt, but other than shifting to accommodate reactions that he couldn't possibly help, he didn't move.

His eyes were closed, partly to give his lover a strange semblance of privacy, partly because he thought that if he could see then his control might slip beyond recall. Soft hands traced the muscles and bones of his chest and warm lips trailed along his left collarbone. Unlike Mirajane, he had no difficulty at all in feeling the quasi-electrical sensation of magical power rising along his skin. When surprisingly sharp teeth marked his shoulder he gasped out loud and then gently took Mira's face between his hands.

"That… Wait." He pressed his forehead against hers in an attempt to recover enough breath—and wits—to speak coherently. Her hands remained pressed against his ribs, but she didn't move. Finally, he opened his eyes and smiled ruefully at her. "Well."

"I know I didn't hurt you," Mirajane told him, expression torn between concern and amusement. Her cheeks were flushed, but mostly she appeared to be smug.

"No, not at all." The rapidly darkening bruise on his left shoulder might suggest otherwise, but Freed felt no pain. At least, not there; elsewhere, his clothing was very much too tight and he was distinctly uncomfortable.

"I never really realized that people could blush with their whole bodies," Mirajane mused thoughtfully.

"Mmm. More blood in the capillaries. Shows up more if you have fair skin, too."

"You have nice skin."

"Thank you. So do you."

"You should know, since you've seen most of it; I've modelled all sorts of swimsuits. You, on the other hand, are almost always overdressed." Mirajane's tone was teasing, but Freed could also hear the warring emotions underneath: desire and fear, although the fear was much less pronounced than it had been.

"I find myself overdressed right now, but I suppose that's not the same."

The flush on her cheeks darkened and she looked away. "… No, not quite the same."

"Have you concluded that you can wrap me around your little finger with a few well-placed kisses?" Freed asked, turning her face back toward his.

"Not exactly," Mirajane responded slowly, meeting his eyes—which was saying something, since he could tell that both were visible. "But I'll admit that you've somehow managed to convince me that we should have our own home."

"I thought I'd already convinced you of that?"

"Yes… in a general way. But now I realize that we need our own place because we really need more privacy."

"Ah."

"Not that I didn't already understand that we need more privacy but—look, can you just drop this?"

"Sure."

"And stop looking so smug!"

Freed raised an eyebrow.

"The woman I'm in love with is sitting in my lap and just half undressed me. It's difficult not to feel a least a little smug. Besides, that is very much the pot calling the kettle black, wouldn't you say?"

"My pots are all steel-coloured."

"So's my kettle." Suddenly Freed blinked and looked alarmed. "… Mira…!"

With characteristic stubbornness—at least, Erza would have called it that, if nobody else—Mirajane had twisted so that she was kneeling across Freed's legs, her white hair concealing her face as she used lips and teeth to put a second, matching bruise on Freed's right shoulder. The slight hoarseness in his voice didn't escape her sharp ears, and she was pleased with the effect. Suddenly strong hands grasped her upper arms and pulled her upright, so that they were facing each other again.

"This isn't a game," Freed told her flatly. "Or at least, not one that we can safely play right now. Do you understand? I want you to touch me because you want to: not to establish dominance, not because you're afraid, not because you have something to prove."

There was a long, long silence after that.

"I understand," Mirajane said eventually, very quietly.

"I'm sorry if I startled you," Freed immediately apologized. He had already relaxed his grip on her arms.

"Why is this so complicated? Honestly, it's not like this in the books."

"Those would be the books with the half-naked men and women on the covers?"

Mirajane giggled, suddenly sounding a lot more like herself. Freed relaxed a little.

"Yes… Erza and Cana get them—okay, and I do too—and we trade them around. Cana always gets the more explicit ones, and well… there's not much of a plot…"

Fairy Tail's fair-haired girl (so to speak) smirked and reddened again, but without being especially embarrassed. Freed, on the other hand, clapped his hands over his ears.

"I don't want to know about it. Not if it involves Erza. Otherwise I'll say the wrong thing at the wrong time and who knows what will happen."

"Oh? More afraid of her than of me?"

"Yes: you actually care about me and I'd like to think that you would hesitate to damage me too severely if I accidentally embarrassed you."

Mirajane rolled her eyes, and then smiled.

"I care quite a lot, to be honest. So I guess you have a point." She hesitated, then added: "It may take a little while for me to sort things out with Elf and make sure it's okay. He'll grumble a lot about me living with you, even though he's kind of got his head around things more, now."

"I think you'll find him fairly tractable at the present time. He, ah, doesn't have much of a leg to stand on, you know, from a moralistic point of view."

"… I'd rather not think about that, but I suppose it's true. All I was going to say, though, is that if we wait to have this place entirely to ourselves then it could be a few days or a few weeks."

"True," Freed said neutrally.

"And the man I love is sitting here partly-undressed and rather dishevelled and it seems a shame to waste the opportunity."

"Really?" The man in question could feel his heart beat accelerate again, as Mirajane began to run a hand gently down his neck and along his collarbone. Her other hand was working on the last two buttons of his shirt, which she had liberated from his trousers.

"Yes. I don't get to see you dishevelled very often, Freed. It's rather disturbingly attractive."

"Probably because you know that it's only with you."

"That could be true." Mirajane finally managed to undo the last of the shirt buttons, and she paused to admire her handiwork before running both hands along Freed's flat stomach and up across his ribs. "Or maybe I'm just infatuated."

"I don't think it's infatuation. Lust maybe. Love and lust together aren't a bad thing, you know."

"I'm relieved to hear it. There are a lot of conflicting messages out there, though. So I might still get a little anxious from time to time…"

"I can live with that," Freed said. "I never expected things to be simple. I just wanted a chance to resolve the complications."

He shifted his legs onto the couch and settled himself more comfortably against the soft armrest. Then he pulled Mira down against his chest and ran his hands down her back and over her hips, brushing his fingertips across the tops of her bare legs. When that seemed to be acceptable, he brought his hands back to her face and smiled.

"So it's okay to tell me to stop, right?"

"I know. I'm not a child."

"I am in no way treating you like a child," Freed pointed out.

Mirajane kissed him, lightly at first and then more emphatically. "True," she said, once they were both rather out of breath.

"The only other thing I was going to add," murmured Freed, "is that unless you do tell me to stop sooner rather than later, I would prefer to go somewhere with a door."

"Just in case of jealous lovers, brothers, that kind of thing?"

"No. For that kind of thing, I recommend magic wards. For a basic sense of privacy, a door is sufficient."

Mirajane laughed and managed to snuggle closer. "Let's just stay here for a bit, okay? Then we'll see."

[To be continued… in Chapter 4]

Note:  Reviews and comments (even short ones) would be much appreciated. I enjoyed writing this chapter, which sets the stage for the next (and concluding) chapter. Unfortunately, I was unable to put everything together in as short a time as I'd hoped (i.e., during Mirafreed Week itself).

[dorcasrempel]

Making a remarkable material even better

In recent decades, the search for high-performance thermal insulation for buildings has prompted manufacturers to turn to aerogels. Invented in the 1930s, these remarkable materials are translucent, ultraporous, lighter than a marshmallow, strong enough to support a brick, and an unparalleled barrier to heat flow, making them ideal for keeping heat inside on a cold winter day and outside when summer temperatures soar.

Five years ago, researchers led by Evelyn Wang, a professor and head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Gang Chen, the Carl Richard Soderberg Professor in Power Engineering, set out to add one more property to that list. They aimed to make a silica aerogel that was truly transparent.

“We started out trying to realize an optically transparent, thermally insulating aerogel for solar thermal systems,” says Wang. Incorporated into a solar thermal collector, a slab of aerogel would allow sunshine to come in unimpeded but prevent heat from coming back out — a key problem in today’s systems. And if the transparent aerogel were sufficiently clear, it could be incorporated into windows, where it would act as a good heat barrier but still allow occupants to see out.

When the researchers started their work, even the best aerogels weren’t up to those tasks. “People had known for decades that aerogels are a good thermal insulator, but they hadn’t been able to make them very optically transparent,” says Lin Zhao PhD ’19 of mechanical engineering. “So in our work, we’ve been trying to understand exactly why they’re not very transparent, and then how we can improve their transparency.”

Aerogels: opportunities and challenges

The remarkable properties of a silica aerogel are the result of its nanoscale structure. To visualize that structure, think of holding a pile of small, clear particles in your hand. Imagine that the particles touch one another and slightly stick together, leaving gaps between them that are filled with air. Similarly, in a silica aerogel, clear, loosely connected, nanoscale silica particles form a three-dimensional solid network within an overall structure that is mostly air. Because of all that air, a silica aerogel has an extremely low density — in fact, one of the lowest densities of any known bulk material — yet it’s solid and structurally strong, though brittle.

If a silica aerogel is made of transparent particles and air, why isn’t it transparent? Because the light that enters doesn’t all pass straight through. It is diverted whenever it encounters an interface between a solid particle and the air surrounding it. Figure 1 illustrates the process. When light enters the aerogel, some is absorbed inside it. Some — called direct transmittance — travels straight through. And some is redirected along the way by those interfaces. It can be scattered many times and in any direction, ultimately exiting the aerogel at an angle. If it exits from the surface through which it entered, it is called diffuse reflectance; if it exits from the other side, it is called diffuse transmittance.

To make an aerogel for a solar thermal system, the researchers needed to maximize the total transmittance: the direct plus the diffuse components. And to make an aerogel for a window, they needed to maximize the total transmittance and simultaneously minimize the fraction of the total that is diffuse light. “Minimizing the diffuse light is critical because it’ll make the window look cloudy,” says Zhao. “Our eyes are very sensitive to any imperfection in a transparent material.”

Developing a model

The sizes of the nanoparticles and the pores between them have a direct impact on the fate of light passing through an aerogel. But figuring out that interaction by trial and error would require synthesizing and characterizing too many samples to be practical. “People haven’t been able to systematically understand the relationship between the structure and the performance,” says Zhao. “So we needed to develop a model that would connect the two.”

To begin, Zhao turned to the radiative transport equation, which describes mathematically how the propagation of light (radiation) through a medium is affected by absorption and scattering. It is generally used for calculating the transfer of light through the atmospheres of Earth and other planets. As far as Wang knows, it has not been fully explored for the aerogel problem.

Both scattering and absorption can reduce the amount of light transmitted through an aerogel, and light can be scattered multiple times. To account for those effects, the model decouples the two phenomena and quantifies them separately — and for each wavelength of light.

Based on the sizes of the silica particles and the density of the sample (an indicator of total pore volume), the model calculates light intensity within an aerogel layer by determining its absorption and scattering behavior using predictions from electromagnetic theory. Using those results, it calculates how much of the incoming light passes directly through the sample and how much of it is scattered along the way and comes out diffuse.

The next task was to validate the model by comparing its theoretical predictions with experimental results.

Synthesizing aerogels

Working in parallel, graduate student Elise Strobach of mechanical engineering had been learning how best to synthe­size aerogel samples — both to guide development of the model and ultimately to validate it. In the process, she produced new insights on how to synthesize an aerogel with a specific desired structure.

Her procedure starts with a common form of silicon called silane, which chemically reacts with water to form an aerogel. During that reaction, tiny nucleation sites occur where particles begin to form. How fast they build up determines the end structure. To control the reaction, she adds a catalyst, ammonia. By carefully selecting the ammonia-to-silane ratio, she gets the silica particles to grow quickly at first and then abruptly stop growing when the precursor materials are gone — a means of producing particles that are small and uniform. She also adds a solvent, methanol, to dilute the mixture and control the density of the nucleation sites, thus the pores between the particles.

The reaction between the silane and water forms a gel containing a solid nanostructure with interior pores filled with the solvent. To dry the wet gel, Strobach needs to get the solvent out of the pores and replace it with air — without crushing the delicate structure. She puts the aerogel into the pressure chamber of a critical point dryer and floods liquid CO2 into the chamber. The liquid CO2 flushes out the solvent and takes its place inside the pores. She then slowly raises the temperature and pressure inside the chamber until the liquid CO2 transforms to its supercritical state, where the liquid and gas phases can no longer be differentiated. Slowly venting the chamber releases the CO2 and leaves the aerogel behind, now filled with air. She then subjects the sample to 24 hours of annealing — a standard heat-treatment process — which slightly reduces scatter without sacrificing the strong thermal insulating behavior. Even with the 24 hours of annealing, her novel procedure shortens the required aerogel synthesis time from several weeks to less than four days.

Validating and using the model

To validate the model, Strobach fabricated samples with carefully controlled thicknesses, densities, and pore and particle sizes — as determined by small-angle X-ray scattering — and used a standard spectrophotometer to measure the total and diffuse transmittance.

The data confirmed that, based on measured physical properties of an aerogel sample, the model could calculate total transmittance of light as well as a measure of clarity called haze, defined as the fraction of total transmittance that is made up of diffuse light.

The exercise confirmed simplifying assumptions made by Zhao in developing the model. Also, it showed that the radiative properties are independent of sample geometry, so his model can simulate light transport in aerogels of any shape. And it can be applied not just to aerogels, but to any porous materials.

Wang notes what she considers the most important insight from the modeling and experimental results: “Overall, we determined that the key to getting high transparency and minimal haze — without reducing thermal insulating capability — is to have particles and pores that are really small and uniform in size,” she says.

One analysis demonstrates the change in behavior that can come with a small change in particle size. Many applications call for using a thicker piece of transparent aerogel to better block heat transfer. But increasing thickness may decrease transparency. As long as particle size is small, increasing thickness to achieve greater thermal insulation will not significantly decrease total transmittance or increase haze.

Comparing aerogels from MIT and elsewhere

How much difference does their approach make? “Our aerogels are more transparent than glass because they don’t reflect — they don’t have that glare spot where the glass catches the light and reflects to you,” says Strobach.

To Lin, a main contribution of their work is the development of general guidelines for material design, as demonstrated by Figure 4 in the slideshow above. Aided by such a “design map,” users can tailor an aerogel for a particular application. Based on the contour plots, they can determine the combinations of controllable aerogel properties — namely, density and particle size — needed to achieve a targeted haze and transmittance outcome for many applications.

Aerogels in solar thermal collectors

The researchers have already demonstrated the value of their new aerogels for solar thermal energy conversion systems, which convert sunlight into thermal energy by absorbing radiation and transforming it into heat. Current solar thermal systems can produce thermal energy at so-called intermediate temperatures — between 120 and 220 degrees Celsius — which can be used for water and space heating, steam generation, industrial processes, and more. Indeed, in 2016, U.S. consumption of thermal energy exceeded the total electricity generation from all renewable sources.

However, state-of-the-art solar thermal systems rely on expensive optical systems to concentrate the incoming sunlight, specially designed surfaces to absorb radiation and retain heat, and costly and difficult-to-maintain vacuum enclosures to keep that heat from escaping. To date, the costs of those components have limited market adoption.

Zhao and his colleagues thought that using a transparent aerogel layer might solve those problems. Placed above the absorber, it could let through incident solar radiation and then prevent the heat from escaping. So it would essentially replicate the natural greenhouse effect that’s causing global warming — but to an extreme degree, on a small scale, and with a positive outcome.

To try it out, the researchers designed an aerogel-based solar thermal receiver. The device consists of a nearly “blackbody” absorber (a thin copper sheet coated with black paint that absorbs all radiant energy that falls on it), and above it a stack of optimized, low-scattering silica aerogel blocks, which efficiently transmit sunlight and suppress conduction, convection, and radiation heat losses simultaneously. The nanostructure of the aerogel is tailored to maximize its optical trans­parency while maintaining its ultralow thermal conductivity. With the aerogel present, there is no need for expensive optics, surfaces, or vacuum enclosures.

After extensive laboratory tests of the device, the researchers decided to test it “in the field” — in this case, on the roof of an MIT building. On a sunny day in winter, they set up their device, fixing the receiver toward the south and tilted 60 degrees from horizontal to maximize solar exposure. They then monitored its performance between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Despite the cold ambient temperature (less than 1 C) and the presence of clouds in the afternoon, the temperature of the absorber started increasing right away and eventually stabilized above 220 C.

To Zhao, the performance already demonstrated by the artificial greenhouse effect opens up what he calls “an exciting pathway to the promotion of solar thermal energy utilization.” Already, he and his colleagues have demonstrated that it can convert water to steam that is greater than 120 C. In collaboration with researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, they are now exploring possible process steam applications in India and performing field tests of a low-cost, completely passive solar autoclave for sterilizing medical equipment in rural communities.

Windows and more

Strobach has been pursuing another promising application for the transparent aerogel — in windows. “In trying to make more transparent aerogels, we hit a regime in our fabrication process where we could make things smaller, but it didn’t result in a significant change in the transparency,” she says. “But it did make a significant change in the clarity,” a key feature for a window.

The availability of an affordable, thermally insulating window would have several impacts, says Strobach. Every winter, windows in the United States lose enough energy to power over 50 million homes. That wasted energy costs the economy more than $32 billion a year and generates about 350 million tons of CO2 — more than is emitted by 76 million cars. Consumers can choose high-efficiency triple-pane windows, but they’re so expensive that they’re not widely used.

Analyses by Strobach and her colleagues showed that replacing the air gap in a conventional double-pane window with an aerogel pane could be the answer. The result could be a double-pane window that is 40 percent more insulating than traditional ones and 85 percent as insulating as today’s triple-pane windows — at less than half the price. Better still, the technology could be adopted quickly. The aerogel pane is designed to fit within the current two-pane manufacturing process that’s ubiquitous across the industry, so it could be manufactured at low cost on existing production lines with only minor changes.

Guided by Zhao’s model, the researchers are continuing to improve the performance of their aerogels, with a special focus on increasing clarity while maintaining transparency and thermal insulation. In addition, they are considering other traditional low-cost systems that would — like the solar thermal and window technologies — benefit from sliding in an optimized aerogel to create a high-performance heat barrier that lets in abundant sunlight.

This research was supported by the Full-Spectrum Optimized Conversion and Utilization of Sunlight program of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy; the Solid-State Solar Thermal Energy Conversion Center, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences; and the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design. Elise Strobach received funding from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Lin Zhao PhD ’19 is now an optics design engineer at 3M in St. Paul, Minnesota. 

This article appears in the Autumn 2019 issue of Energy Futures, the magazine of the MIT Energy Initiative. 

Making a remarkable material even better syndicated from https://osmowaterfilters.blogspot.com/

[idunazccarlynqp79insurance-blog]

Mercedes Benz G63 AMG Cheap Insurance

Mercedes Benz G63 AMG Cheap Insurance

Mercedes Benz G63 AMG Cheap Insurance

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[claudiabde]

Term - Construction drawing

What is a construction drawing? Why are they important in design? Who uses them in practice and why? What are the types of drawings used an why?

Construction drawing is the general term used for drawings that form part of the production information that is incorporated into tender documentation and then the contract documents for the construction works. This means they have legal significance and form part of the agreement between the employer and the contractor.

The main purpose of construction drawings is to provide a graphic representation of what is to be built. Construction drawings should be concise and coordinated to avoid, wherever possible, ambiguity and confusion. Delays and misunderstandings can be minimised by properly coordinating the drawings. For more information, see Document control.

Specifications will detail the materials, standards, techniques, and so on required to carry out the works. Construction drawings provide the graphical representation, indicating the arrangement of components, detailing, dimensions and so on. They may sometimes contain some of the information set out in specifications, but this should be avoided if possible, by referring to specifications rather than duplicating information. Where there is crossover, care must be taken to ensure proper co-ordination so there is no confusion. If there is disparity between the two, the specifications will tend to take precedence over the drawings.

Construction drawings are generally drawn to scale, either in an elevation, plan or section view. They adopt a set of standard architectural hatchings and symbols that allow anyone familiar with them to decipher and interpret them.

A complete set of construction drawings tends to comprise floor plans, elevations, sections and detail drawings, that together provide a complete representation of the building. On many projects, each major trade will have separate trade drawings, e.g. electrical, plumbing and so on.

Construction drawings may be prepared by hand, but it is more common for them to be prepared using computer aided design (CAD) (or computer aided drafting) software.

More recently, the use of Building Information Modelling (software) has allowed the creation of a 1:1 virtual construction model (VCM), containing information allowing all objects in the model to be manufactured, installed or constructed.

Types of drawings for building design

Many different types of drawing can be used during the process of designing and constructing buildings. Some of the more commonly-used types of drawing are listed below, with links to articles providing further information.

1 As-built drawings and record drawings

2 Assembly drawings

3 Block plan

4 Component drawings

5 Concept drawings/sketches

6 Construction drawings/working drawings

7 Design drawings

8 Detail drawings

9 Elevations

10 Floor plans

11 Engineering drawing

12 Location drawings/general arrangement drawings

13 Installation drawings

14 Location plan

15 Perspective

16 Scale drawing

17 Section drawings

18 Shop drawings

19 Site plans

20 Technical drawings

As-built drawings and record drawings

On building projects it is common for changes to be made during construction because of circumstances that emerge on site. As a result, it is common for as-built drawings to be prepared, either during the construction process or when construction is complete, to reflect what has actually been built.

The contractor will generally mark up changes to the ‘final construction issue’ drawings on-site using red ink, and these can then be used by the consultant team to create record drawingsshowing the completed project.

For more information see: As-built drawings and record drawings.

Assembly drawings

Assembly drawings can be used to represent items that consist of more than one component. They show how the components fit together and may include, orthogonal plans, sections and elevations, or three-dimensional views, showing the assembled components, or an exploded view showing the relationship between the components and how they fit together.

For more information see: Assembly drawing and Exploded view.

Block plan

Block plans usually show the siting of a project in relation to Ordnance Survey Maps. Conventions are used to depict boundaries, roads and other details. Depending on the size of the project, recommended scales are:

1 : 2500

1 : 1250

1 : 500

For more information, see Block plan.

Component drawings

Generally, components are ‘self-contained’ and sourced from a single supplier, typically the complete unit provided by that supplier rather than its constituent parts. Component drawingsprovide detailed information about the individual units. They may be drawn at large scales such as; 1:10, 1:5, 1:2, 1:1, and so on. They may include information such as componentdimensions, construction, tolerances, and so on.

For more information see: Component drawing.

Concept drawings

sketches

Concept drawings or sketches are drawings, often freehand, that are used as a quick and simple way of exploring initial ideas for designs. They are not intended to be accurate or definitive, merely a way of investigating and communicating design principles and aesthetic concepts.

For more information see: Concept drawing.

Construction drawings

working drawings

Working drawings or construction drawings provide dimensioned, graphical information that can be used; by a contractor to construct the works, or by suppliers to fabricate components of the works or to assemble or install components. Along with specifications and bills of quantitiesor schedules of work, they form a part of the 'production information', that is prepared by designers and passed to the construction team to enable a project to be constructed.

For more information see: Construction drawing and working drawing

Design drawings

Design drawings are used to develop and communicate ideas about a developing design. In the early stages they might simply demonstrate to the client the ability of a particular design team to undertake the design. They may then be used to develop and communicating the brief, investigate potential sites and assess options, develop the approved idea into a coherent and co-ordinated design, and so on.

For more information see: Design drawings.

Detail drawings

Detail drawings provide a detailed description of the geometric form of a part of an object such as a building, bridge, tunnel, machine, plant, and so on. They tend to be large-scale drawingsthat show in detail parts that may be included in less detail on general arrangement drawings.

For more information see: Detail drawing.

Elevations

The term ‘elevation’ refers to an orthographic projection of the exterior (or sometimes the interior) faces of a building, that is a two-dimensional drawing of the building’s façades. As buildings are rarely simple rectangular shapes in plan, an elevation drawing is a first angle projection that shows all parts of the building as seen from a particular direction with the perspective flattened. Generally, elevations are produced for four directional views, for example, north, south, east, west.

For more information see: Elevations.

Floor plans

Floor plans are a form of orthographic projection that can be used to show the layout of rooms within buildings, as seen from above. They may be prepared as part of the design process, or to provide instructions for construction, often associated with other drawings, schedules, and specifications.

For more information see: Floor plan.

Engineering drawing

An engineering drawing is a type of technical drawing used to define the requirements for engineering products or components. Typically, the purpose of an engineering drawing is to clearly and accurately capture all geometric features of a product or component so that a manufacturer or engineer can produce the required item.

For more information see: Engineering drawing.

Location drawings

general arrangement drawings

General arrangement drawings (GA’s, sometimes referred to as location drawings) present the overall composition of an object such as a building. Depending on the complexity of the building, this is likely to require a number of different projections, such as plans, sections and elevations, and may be spread across several different drawings.

For more information see: General arrangement drawing.

Installation drawings

Installation drawings present the information needed by trades to install part of the works. This may be particularly important for complex installations such as plant rooms, data centres, ventilation systems, underfloor heating, and so on.

For more information see: Installation drawing.

Location plan

A location plan is a supporting document that may be required by a planning authority as part of a planning application. A location plan provides an illustration of the proposed development in its surrounding context.

For more information, see Location plan.

Perspective

Perspective drawing is a technique for depicting 3-dimensional volumes and spatial relationships based on the eye level and vanishing point (or points) of the viewer. It can give a realistic impression of what a volume or space will look like in reality.

Constructing perspective drawings of buildings is extremely complicated, but has been much simplified recently by the development of computer aided design (CAD), building information modelling (BIM) and other forms of computer generated imagery (CGI).

To find out more about perspective, see: The origins of perspective.

Scale drawing

Scale drawing is a generic term used to describe any drawing that illustrates items at less than (or more than) their actual size. This is generally necessary where the items is so large or small that it is not useful or convenient to draw it at its actual size.

For more information see: Scale drawing.

Section drawings

A section drawing shows a view of a structure as though it had been sliced in half or cut along another imaginary plane. This can be useful as it gives a view through the spaces and surrounding structures (typically across a vertical plane) that can reveal the relationships between the different parts of the buildings that might not be apparent on plan drawings.

For more information see: Section drawings.

Shop drawings

Shop drawings might be prepared by contractors, subcontractors, suppliers, manufacturers or fabricators. They generally relate to pre-fabricated components, showing how they should be manufactured or installed. They take design intent drawings and specifications prepared by the project design team and develop them to show in detail how the component will actually be manufactured, fabricated, assembled or installed.

For more information see: Shop drawing

Site plans

A site plan is a large-scale drawing that shows the full extent of the site for an existing or proposed development. Site plans, along with location plans, may be necessary for planning applications. In most cases, site plans will be drawn up following a series of desk studies and site investigations.

For more information see: Site plan.

Technical drawings

The term ‘technical drawing’ has a very broad meaning, referring to any drawing that conveys the way that something functions or how it is constructed. Technical drawings are intended to convey one specific meaning, as opposed to artistic drawings which are expressive and may be interpreted in a number of ways. Most drawings prepared during the design and construction of buildings might be considered to be technical drawings.

(source: https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Types_of_drawings_for_building_design)

[amif2017]

JAYNE PARKER

A.L. Rees

_____________________________

"In my work I try to see and understand what the body can do… Inanimate objects can also be the body."

"I like the physicality of film and its precision; I like the sense of space within the frame… Filmmaking allows me to make connections between seemingly unconnected images or events. There is a strong element of performance in all my work."

By the time she went to the Slade (1980-2) for her postgraduate degree she had, in these early films, begun to explore some unique aspects of the film medium, such as its framing of the subject in space and its potential for the shaping of time. The film she completed at the Slade, I Dish (1982), retained and expanded this direct and photogenic style, in which ordinary actions are also enigmas. The sparse events in the film - such as cooking and eating a fish - are shown 'out of sequence'. The two protagonists are divided in film space but linked by editing, so that the viewer connects them imaginatively even though they never appear together in the same shot. Finally, a naked young woman in a rock pool sifts stones and hooks, at the very edge of the frame that contains her.

The images in the films were both literal and metaphoric, depicting exact events but also creating physical and personal associations for the viewer. Ideas are evoked in images rather than words (as the puns in the film titles may suggest, in their play with the ambiguity of language). This was to characterise much of her later work, although she also made a long 'talkie' video with her mother called Almost Out(1984), whose title and theme suggest birth and beginnings. Here, the naked mother is filmed and questioned by the daughter in a TV studio, surrounded by monitors, while the daughter is similarly filmed and questioned by an unseen cameraman (her former tutor and mentor at Canterbury, Pierre Attala Lapierre). The search for identity borders on transgression in this striking video, whose documentary rawness is equally shown as mediated within a formal structure that reveals its own artifice.

With the exception of En Route (1986) - 'a video about transition and trying to find the right track' (JP) - she then returned to 16mm film for a series of short, intense films that make up a trilogy; (K. 1989, The Pool, 1991, Cold Jazz, 1993). Each contains acts and objects that evoke the fluids and forms of the body. Stark and literalist black-and-white cinematography depicts in K. the knitting of a garment from guts that seem to have been disgorged by the naked performer. Blood splashes from the naked protagonist's nose in The Pool and drips down her torso as she stands in an empty swimming pool. A graphic dance sequence with a male partner leads to the graceful movement of a fish in an aquarium, and to a final scene of release in which the performer swims in a pool now full of water. Cold Jazz contrasts an older woman slowly coaxing a tune from a saxophone while a younger woman cracks oysters to drink their juice and 'removes small stones from her body, washed there by the sea' (JP).

In these 'chamber' works Jayne Parker plays the central role in front of the camera, working with a small team on camera and sound (including Belinda Parsons, Anna Campion, Patrick Duval, Peter Scoones), and with Pat Fogarty as associate producer until her untimely death in 1999. The films also included the dancer Donald MacLeary (The Pool) and the jazz musician Kathy Stobart (Cold Jazz). The intense themes and imaging of the 'trilogy' were expanded along with other collaborations in the longer and more cyclic film Crystal Aquarium (1995). Evoking music hall stunts as well as contemporary art, this film includes a drummer, a swimmer and an ice-skater. Jayne Parker herself performs underwater tricks and is the subject of a muted drama, seen in fragments, in which she visits a room and finally sits on a bed that has been set alight. Although the performers are never seen together, 'they are inextricably bound up by their actions' (JP).

The implied narrative of Crystal Aquarium, which follows a series of shorter films in which protagonists hover on the verge of action and gesture towards freedom, is similarly about performance achieved over doubt and risk. These themes are evoked as visual concepts or signs. The drummer frowns in sharp-etched close-up as she thinks and listens, the skater digs her heels in ice, the swimmer's body creates abstract space, and Parker defeats gravity to eat and drink underwater, as in a circus act. At the same time, the room sequences which punctuate these events, repeated from different angles and focal planes, assert a literal figure of 'the interior', in which melting ice, empty space and unexplained fires are disturbing and perhaps melancholic emblems.

Her next two projects were commissioned for TV as dance films. While some of her earlier films were shown on television after they were completed, The Reunion (1997) and The Whirlpool (1997) were conceived for broadcasting. In The Reunion, Donald MacLeary and Lynn Seymour dance an imagined aftermath (choreographed by Ian Spink) to their roles as young and doomed lovers in the 1966 ballet 'The Invitation'. Here, the ageing body and the theme of time are paramount. Shot in the as yet unrefurbished Hackney Empire, the film is framed by an objective placement of the viewer in the theatre, before the camera enters the imaginary field of the dance. The Whirlpool, a 'dance spectacle' (JP), is a short lyric psychodrama in which a swimmer is lured into danger by the magic of light and water.

Further collaborations emerged from these projects, with Lynn Seymour in The Reprise, 2000, and with Katharina Wolpe, the pianist seen in The Whirlpool. A stunning result was Thinking Twice (1997), in which Katharina Wolpe plays three pieces for piano by her father, the composer Stefan Wolpe (1902-1972), the first of which is called "Piece of Embittered Music", (from the Zemach Suite). The sardonic title is characteristic of this experimental, argumentative and influential musician. In parallel with the stripped and spartan music, and its fierce intensity, Parker strips the rich colour sequences of her TV films down to black and white in deep tones. In its lucid editing of piano keys in motion, and especially in close up shots of the pianist's hands and face, Parker "attempts to reflect the rigour of the music" (JP). Although she is a highly subjective filmmaker in her personal themes, and in linking ideas that are embodied in the physical world,Thinking Twice seems to draw out her classicism in its formal shaping of visual concepts.

Wolpe's music evokes directly the world of radical modernism in which he spent his life as an itinerant avant-garde composer and refugee, in Europe, Palestine and the USA between and after the two world wars. Along with John Cage he was a formative figure in the rise of the 'New York School' of composers in the 1950s and 1960s. In a series of short films made with the cellist Anton Lukoszevieze, Parker took further the filming of post-serial music based on this legacy.

Up to this point, her films had occasionally used music as a fragment of the montage ensemble. The early I Cat, for example, includes bursts of a mediaeval French song and Inuit imitations of animal noises. Parker herself plays the cello in En Route, as one of that film's performative actions. Later, the composer Max Eastley contributed a subtle soundtrack to the aquarium section of The Pool, although the 'natural' sounds in that film - such as the sound of moving bodies in the dance scene and of water in the swimming pool - are also semi-musical counterpoints to the image.

More recently however, in short works from 2000 to the present day, Parker has focussed directly on this relationship of music and film. The cello makes up a second body within the films. In Foxfire Eins, by Helmut Oehring, the cello is plucked and struck by both hands to play the abrupt and percussive score. Another contemporary composer, Volker Heyn, requires the cellist to play with two bows - one on the underside of the strings - for Blues in B-Flat. "The film opens in a music repair shop and we see the interior of the cello - the space where music resonates" (JP).

In Projection 1, by Morton Feldman, the graphic lines of the cello and strings, crossed by the moving bow, "mirror the graphic score from which this piece is played" (JP). The piece is played twice, seemingly without a break. In an illuminating essay on music and Jayne Parker for the catalogue 'Filmworks 79-00' (Spacex 2000), the painter Joan Key wrote that "Parker's films use slight dislocations of angle and viewpoint, like a cubist painting, to open up performance's continuity to speculation." This is thematized by a sequence in which the close-up bow cuts a diagonal line across an empty screen, in a dialogue between vision, motion, flatness, space, sound and picture.

Repetition is differently treated in 59 1/2 Seconds, by John Cage. Parker shot and edited several versions of this one-minute composition, and in projection they can be cut together in different orders. Because they repeat the music, and compel repeated viewings, these two films are more easily shown in gallery installation, as they were for screenings in 2000/1 at Spacex (Exeter), John Hansard Gallery (Southampton) and the Aldeburgh Festival, as part of a comprehensive tour of Parker's exhibition Foxfire Eins.

The most recent film in this series returns to Stefan Wolpe, with Stationary Music (2005), featuring his Sonata 1 of 1925, again played by his daughter Katharina. This is a strong and spiky but intricate and 'formal' piano work, as the title indicates. A flat wall panel behind the pianist's concentrated face, and stark angles of construction throughout, seem to echo the bauhaus-cubist culture that stands behind the music, just as inserted shots of a magnolia bud and a flowering branch subtly insist on the organic element in abstract sound and imaging.

As with the earlier music films, the continuous flow of sound is shown in related visual fragments built around the gesture and movement of the performer. The film performance appears uninterrupted, but is in fact the product of many shots taken with a single camera, so that the rhythms and counterpoint of the editing also imply or point to the film's construction as a process in time. In their purity and intensity, these highly figurative films are both portraits and lyric abstractions.

Jayne Parker's films, videos, photographs and installations reveal a central core of concerns that are explored in many ways. Her hallmark is the focussed gaze of the camera on the body and its actions, combined with editing that draws out inner rhythms from the shot to mould an unfamiliar sense of time. A running theme is the making of art and the production of selfhood, mirrored in the performance itself and in the formal shape of the film. By embracing such nonverbal arts as music and dance, meaning in the films is produced - and questioned - by the clash or fusion of images seen from changing viewpoints and angles.

Quotations from Spacex Gallery, Jayne Parker; Filmworks 79-00, Exeter, 2000.

A.L. Rees, Jayne Parker, January 2005.

First published by LUX.

Full Essay

[amif2017old-blog]

JAYNE PARKER

A.L. Rees

_____________________________

"In my work I try to see and understand what the body can do… Inanimate objects can also be the body."

"I like the physicality of film and its precision; I like the sense of space within the frame… Filmmaking allows me to make connections between seemingly unconnected images or events. There is a strong element of performance in all my work."

By the time she went to the Slade (1980-2) for her postgraduate degree she had, in these early films, begun to explore some unique aspects of the film medium, such as its framing of the subject in space and its potential for the shaping of time. The film she completed at the Slade, I Dish (1982), retained and expanded this direct and photogenic style, in which ordinary actions are also enigmas. The sparse events in the film - such as cooking and eating a fish - are shown 'out of sequence'. The two protagonists are divided in film space but linked by editing, so that the viewer connects them imaginatively even though they never appear together in the same shot. Finally, a naked young woman in a rock pool sifts stones and hooks, at the very edge of the frame that contains her.

The images in the films were both literal and metaphoric, depicting exact events but also creating physical and personal associations for the viewer. Ideas are evoked in images rather than words (as the puns in the film titles may suggest, in their play with the ambiguity of language). This was to characterise much of her later work, although she also made a long 'talkie' video with her mother called Almost Out(1984), whose title and theme suggest birth and beginnings. Here, the naked mother is filmed and questioned by the daughter in a TV studio, surrounded by monitors, while the daughter is similarly filmed and questioned by an unseen cameraman (her former tutor and mentor at Canterbury, Pierre Attala Lapierre). The search for identity borders on transgression in this striking video, whose documentary rawness is equally shown as mediated within a formal structure that reveals its own artifice.

With the exception of En Route (1986) - 'a video about transition and trying to find the right track' (JP) - she then returned to 16mm film for a series of short, intense films that make up a trilogy; (K. 1989, The Pool, 1991, Cold Jazz, 1993). Each contains acts and objects that evoke the fluids and forms of the body. Stark and literalist black-and-white cinematography depicts in K. the knitting of a garment from guts that seem to have been disgorged by the naked performer. Blood splashes from the naked protagonist's nose in The Pool and drips down her torso as she stands in an empty swimming pool. A graphic dance sequence with a male partner leads to the graceful movement of a fish in an aquarium, and to a final scene of release in which the performer swims in a pool now full of water. Cold Jazz contrasts an older woman slowly coaxing a tune from a saxophone while a younger woman cracks oysters to drink their juice and 'removes small stones from her body, washed there by the sea' (JP).

In these 'chamber' works Jayne Parker plays the central role in front of the camera, working with a small team on camera and sound (including Belinda Parsons, Anna Campion, Patrick Duval, Peter Scoones), and with Pat Fogarty as associate producer until her untimely death in 1999. The films also included the dancer Donald MacLeary (The Pool) and the jazz musician Kathy Stobart (Cold Jazz). The intense themes and imaging of the 'trilogy' were expanded along with other collaborations in the longer and more cyclic film Crystal Aquarium (1995). Evoking music hall stunts as well as contemporary art, this film includes a drummer, a swimmer and an ice-skater. Jayne Parker herself performs underwater tricks and is the subject of a muted drama, seen in fragments, in which she visits a room and finally sits on a bed that has been set alight. Although the performers are never seen together, 'they are inextricably bound up by their actions' (JP).

The implied narrative of Crystal Aquarium, which follows a series of shorter films in which protagonists hover on the verge of action and gesture towards freedom, is similarly about performance achieved over doubt and risk. These themes are evoked as visual concepts or signs. The drummer frowns in sharp-etched close-up as she thinks and listens, the skater digs her heels in ice, the swimmer's body creates abstract space, and Parker defeats gravity to eat and drink underwater, as in a circus act. At the same time, the room sequences which punctuate these events, repeated from different angles and focal planes, assert a literal figure of 'the interior', in which melting ice, empty space and unexplained fires are disturbing and perhaps melancholic emblems.

Her next two projects were commissioned for TV as dance films. While some of her earlier films were shown on television after they were completed, The Reunion (1997) and The Whirlpool (1997) were conceived for broadcasting. In The Reunion, Donald MacLeary and Lynn Seymour dance an imagined aftermath (choreographed by Ian Spink) to their roles as young and doomed lovers in the 1966 ballet 'The Invitation'. Here, the ageing body and the theme of time are paramount. Shot in the as yet unrefurbished Hackney Empire, the film is framed by an objective placement of the viewer in the theatre, before the camera enters the imaginary field of the dance. The Whirlpool, a 'dance spectacle' (JP), is a short lyric psychodrama in which a swimmer is lured into danger by the magic of light and water.

Further collaborations emerged from these projects, with Lynn Seymour in The Reprise, 2000, and with Katharina Wolpe, the pianist seen in The Whirlpool. A stunning result was Thinking Twice (1997), in which Katharina Wolpe plays three pieces for piano by her father, the composer Stefan Wolpe (1902-1972), the first of which is called "Piece of Embittered Music", (from the Zemach Suite). The sardonic title is characteristic of this experimental, argumentative and influential musician. In parallel with the stripped and spartan music, and its fierce intensity, Parker strips the rich colour sequences of her TV films down to black and white in deep tones. In its lucid editing of piano keys in motion, and especially in close up shots of the pianist's hands and face, Parker "attempts to reflect the rigour of the music" (JP). Although she is a highly subjective filmmaker in her personal themes, and in linking ideas that are embodied in the physical world,Thinking Twice seems to draw out her classicism in its formal shaping of visual concepts.

Wolpe's music evokes directly the world of radical modernism in which he spent his life as an itinerant avant-garde composer and refugee, in Europe, Palestine and the USA between and after the two world wars. Along with John Cage he was a formative figure in the rise of the 'New York School' of composers in the 1950s and 1960s. In a series of short films made with the cellist Anton Lukoszevieze, Parker took further the filming of post-serial music based on this legacy.

Up to this point, her films had occasionally used music as a fragment of the montage ensemble. The early I Cat, for example, includes bursts of a mediaeval French song and Inuit imitations of animal noises. Parker herself plays the cello in En Route, as one of that film's performative actions. Later, the composer Max Eastley contributed a subtle soundtrack to the aquarium section of The Pool, although the 'natural' sounds in that film - such as the sound of moving bodies in the dance scene and of water in the swimming pool - are also semi-musical counterpoints to the image.

More recently however, in short works from 2000 to the present day, Parker has focussed directly on this relationship of music and film. The cello makes up a second body within the films. In Foxfire Eins, by Helmut Oehring, the cello is plucked and struck by both hands to play the abrupt and percussive score. Another contemporary composer, Volker Heyn, requires the cellist to play with two bows - one on the underside of the strings - for Blues in B-Flat. "The film opens in a music repair shop and we see the interior of the cello - the space where music resonates" (JP).

In Projection 1, by Morton Feldman, the graphic lines of the cello and strings, crossed by the moving bow, "mirror the graphic score from which this piece is played" (JP). The piece is played twice, seemingly without a break. In an illuminating essay on music and Jayne Parker for the catalogue 'Filmworks 79-00' (Spacex 2000), the painter Joan Key wrote that "Parker's films use slight dislocations of angle and viewpoint, like a cubist painting, to open up performance's continuity to speculation." This is thematized by a sequence in which the close-up bow cuts a diagonal line across an empty screen, in a dialogue between vision, motion, flatness, space, sound and picture.

Repetition is differently treated in 59 1/2 Seconds, by John Cage. Parker shot and edited several versions of this one-minute composition, and in projection they can be cut together in different orders. Because they repeat the music, and compel repeated viewings, these two films are more easily shown in gallery installation, as they were for screenings in 2000/1 at Spacex (Exeter), John Hansard Gallery (Southampton) and the Aldeburgh Festival, as part of a comprehensive tour of Parker's exhibition Foxfire Eins.

The most recent film in this series returns to Stefan Wolpe, with Stationary Music (2005), featuring his Sonata 1 of 1925, again played by his daughter Katharina. This is a strong and spiky but intricate and 'formal' piano work, as the title indicates. A flat wall panel behind the pianist's concentrated face, and stark angles of construction throughout, seem to echo the bauhaus-cubist culture that stands behind the music, just as inserted shots of a magnolia bud and a flowering branch subtly insist on the organic element in abstract sound and imaging.

As with the earlier music films, the continuous flow of sound is shown in related visual fragments built around the gesture and movement of the performer. The film performance appears uninterrupted, but is in fact the product of many shots taken with a single camera, so that the rhythms and counterpoint of the editing also imply or point to the film's construction as a process in time. In their purity and intensity, these highly figurative films are both portraits and lyric abstractions.

Jayne Parker's films, videos, photographs and installations reveal a central core of concerns that are explored in many ways. Her hallmark is the focussed gaze of the camera on the body and its actions, combined with editing that draws out inner rhythms from the shot to mould an unfamiliar sense of time. A running theme is the making of art and the production of selfhood, mirrored in the performance itself and in the formal shape of the film. By embracing such nonverbal arts as music and dance, meaning in the films is produced - and questioned - by the clash or fusion of images seen from changing viewpoints and angles.

Quotations from Spacex Gallery, Jayne Parker; Filmworks 79-00, Exeter, 2000.

A.L. Rees, Jayne Parker, January 2005.

First published by LUX.

Full Essay

[calebmatthew1]

[Infographic]Unlocking The Secrets Of Triangles: How The Triangle Calculator Simplifies Complex Geometry

Introduction:

Geometry has always fascinated mathematicians and thinkers, as it unveils the intricate relationships and patterns that govern the world around us. Among the fundamental shapes, the triangle holds a special place due to its simplicity and versatility. Unlocking the secrets of triangles has been a pursuit of mathematicians for centuries, and with the advent of modern technology, tools like the Triangle Calculator have made it easier than ever to explore and understand the complexities of triangle geometry. In this infographic, we will delve into the significance of triangles, explore their properties, and demonstrate how the Triangle Calculator simplifies complex geometric calculations.

Section 1: The Power of Triangles

Triangles are the building blocks of geometry, serving as the foundation for more complex shapes and calculations.

Triangles possess unique properties, such as the sum of interior angles always equaling 180 degrees and the Pythagorean theorem, which states that in a right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.

Triangles also play a crucial role in trigonometry, as they provide the basis for trigonometric functions like sine, cosine, and tangent.

Section 2: Understanding Triangle Types and Properties

There are several types of triangles, including equilateral, isosceles, scalene, right, acute, and obtuse triangles, each with distinct properties.

Equilateral triangles have three congruent sides and angles, while isosceles triangles have two congruent sides and angles.

Scalene triangles have no congruent sides or angles.

Right triangles have one 90-degree angle, while acute triangles have three angles less than 90 degrees, and obtuse triangles have one angle greater than 90 degrees.

Section 3: Triangle Calculator: A Tool for Simplifying Complex Geometry

The Triangle Calculator is an invaluable tool that simplifies the process of solving various triangle-related problems.

It allows users to calculate missing angles and side lengths, determine area and perimeter, and explore relationships between triangle elements effortlessly.

By entering known values, the calculator can quickly provide accurate results, saving time and reducing the potential for human error.

Section 4: Practical Applications of the Triangle Calculator

The Triangle Calculator finds applications in various fields, including architecture, engineering, design, and physics.

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Designers utilize the calculator to create visually pleasing layouts, accurately measure proportions, and calculate angles for precise placement.

Physicists apply the Triangle Calculator to analyze vectors, calculate forces, and solve kinematic problems.

Conclusion:

Understanding the secrets of triangles is fundamental to exploring the wonders of geometry. The Triangle Calculator simplifies complex geometric calculations, allowing individuals in various fields to solve triangle-related problems efficiently. By harnessing the power of this tool, professionals and enthusiasts alike can unlock the secrets of triangles and uncover the beauty and precision of geometric relationships. Whether it is calculating missing angles or side lengths, determining areas and perimeters, or exploring advanced concepts in trigonometry, the Triangle Calculator is an indispensable resource in the realm of geometry.

[s0022093asfilm-blog]

Evaluation

What were the aims of your artifact?

In my brief i stated that “…I  will create a two minute film sequence that is influenced by and based on aspects of my textual analysis and my planning. I am thinking of doing a stylised drama sequence…these films use the macro concept of representation and feature a mother figure protagonist. This is something I will try to replicate in my own short film.” I wanted to create a short film the was a representation of women, specifically mothers. I was interested in the contrasting ways the mothers and mother-son relationships were portrayed in my TA films. From my textual analysis I hoped to be able to work out the techniques that Kent and Abrahamson used to create the effects they did in their films. I wanted to understand why the films had such a powerful effect on the spectator and such an important and relatable core by looking into the theory behind the choices that were made on how the film was hot and edited. By looking into thees theories I hoped to find out why the mother-child relationship was such a touching and intense one by analysing Freud and hopefully understanding why my TA films worked I could have that influence my artifact. I also wanted to understand more about how these films represented their female  mother characters, to see what they did well, what may have been misjudged and consider the authorship of this representation and its bias.   I wanted to emulate how they use the dark context to create meaning to the relationship, the claustrophobic nature of the single mother-child relationship. What also was important to me was that I showed how both mother and son relied on each other emotionally. The power of this was shown in ‘Room’ by them both being trapped in this tiny space yet each others minds create a new world for the other to explore. The mother benefited from being around her son and watching develop as much as he relied on her to make his bland life full of colour. However, in ‘The Babadook’ it shows the strain that this intensity of relationship can put on both mother and child. So in my artifact I really wanted to try show what it is like when all the love is there but the relationship is at breaking point.

What codes and conventions identified in the TA were used in your film?

In my textual analysis essay I explored the techniques within cinematography, mise-en-scene, sound and editing that were used in ‘Room’ and ‘The Babadook’  to create the representations of women and specifically their mother-child relationships. I then used this analysis of these techniques used to create meaning in my film to create the intended interior meaning in my own film.

Genre

I used my TA essay to explore the use of genre and iconography to create meaning in the films I studied and then replicate it in my own short films. For example in my Textual analysis essay I discussed German expressionist style cinematography in ‘The Babadook’. This chiaroscuro lighting reflects the disturbed nature of the scene. The films colour palette is a tonal range and the use of dark interior of the car and the high-key light from outside creates a disturbing contrast and adds to the distortion of the sequence. Chiaroscuro puts focus on Samuel, and heightens his emotional tension, and the emotional tension of the scene.

As you can see in this still from my short film,I used these techniques to try create similar results. I wanted to depict my child as dark and cold, sos i used a blue-grey tonal pallet like in ‘The Babadook’. I also shot a MCU off the protagonist wearing black, from a side angles with the lights off and this created a contrasting chiaroscuro lighting by using the TV screen as a single light source. This worked as it created dark and looming shadows and created the effect I wanted.

Another example of genre is also used in ‘Room’ as I discussed in my essay is the classic horror iconography of children. Children are disconcerting as they elicit a primal fear of protection in everyone. Freud talked about the complicated process in which an individual becomes a member of society by the repression of many elements of sexuality and defining themselves in relation to a social order. Since Jack has never had contact with any other human being besides his mother he has no concept of social order or anything about people or the world and this gives the spectator a sense of protection and fear.

I also used the imagery of a child to create that primal sense of protection and fear, which is a powerful tool of the psychological horror. I used the innocent looking child as a contrast to the older protagonist, this can be used create sympathy for the older character. It can also be used to put a protective fear in the spectator as we see the child turning darker as he gets older. I also used a non-conventional looking child as ‘Jack’ has his long hair in ‘Room’ and that makes him look slightly unique and different. My protagonist has bright red hair which is also unique.

Cinematography

I used my TA essay to explore the use of cinematography to create meaning in the films I studied and then replicate it in my own short films. For example in my Textual analysis essay I discussed an aspect of cinematography in the sequence from ‘Room’ is the use of the camera tracking Jack as he does his exercise in room by running from wall to wall. This use of camera movement shows the audience how Ma makes room seem spacious to Jack. She creates a whole world inside that room for Jack to give him as normal life as possible and shelter him from and darkness in her life. As the camera pans horizontally our attention travels with the shot and the room feels open, we see how Ma makes the space seem open to Jack. This links to the macro concept of representation because we see how the mother figure is so important and instrumental in a child’s life. Ma is in the background of the shot in deep depth of field, but always visible as she is in focus. This represents how Ma is the strong important figure in Jack’s life and always there for him even when he doesn’t realise. 

I used this technique in my film as I also wanted to symbolise how the power of a positive mother figure created a lot of freedom in childhood as the child’s life revolves around the mother. I used similar horizontal, moving shots to create this sense of space. However, I also broke the 4-fourth-wall by getting the protagonist to look into the camera as if it was his mother playing with him. I felt this strengthened the connection between the mother and child even more.

Editing

I used my TA essay to explore the use of editing to create meaning in the films I studied and then replicate it in my own short films. For example in my Textual analysis essay I discussed the use of montage editing.

A large part of the sequence is a montage of Ma and Jack doing a ritual of tasks, we see them marking Jacks height on a chart, moving furniture away to exercise, then doing exercises. The use of montage editing cuts down the time used to explain the narrative, implying to us that these are dull daily tasks to them and a norm of their lives. It shows the spectators how Ma puts fun and life into every daily task, even though they’re locked in this tiny desolate space. 

I also used a montage editing technique because I wanted to show the atmosphere and feeling of this day as a symbol of his childhood and his childhood relationship with his mother, and a montage technique made me able to create the feeling in a short amount of time. This chronological, simple montage puts the spectator in a false sense of security, so when the climax of the film builds and it becomes dark and surreal the contrast is more powerful.

Sound

I used my TA essay to explore the use of sound to create meaning in the films I studied and then replicate it in my own short films. For example in my Textual analysis essay I discussed the use of sound in my TA films.

In my TA essay I stated: “The first significant aspect of sound in the sequence from ‘Room’ is when the light and uplifting score fades in to what was just ambient sound. We observe this juxtaposition between Ma and Jack again through the sound. Freud prompted expressionism in film and this lead to ways of thinking about how film communicates meaning. The sound in this sequence shows how sound shows the audience how the two characters feel. A stark quietness and just minimal ambient sound because Ma’s life is full of pain and trauma and she has to emotionally disconnect herself from everything but her child to cope. Whereas the light, playful and mesmerizing score is how Jack sees the world. This shows the importance of the mother figure, because even though jack lives in a horrific situation, Ma has created a safe haven for him to grow and be a normal happy child.”

(Here you can hear the use of Jack’s light-hearted motif in ‘Room’)

I thought the using a light and playful score as an almost sound motif for the child was very effective in ‘Room’ so I tried to replicate this in my film. I directed my score composer to write something light-hearted and playful which could contrast he intense and dark sound track later. Ergo, I gt a piece composed on acoustic guitar that was playful and wistful, to show the positivity of childhood and desperation to get that back.

(Here you can hear the score that was composed  for my film, the extract of the score composed for my film begins at 1:10 )

And on sound in ‘The Babadook’ I said: “This is contrasting to an aspect of sound in the sequence from ‘The Babadook’, as here Kent uses strong building score that intensifies through the sequence, keeping the verisimilitude. The score uses harsh sounds fading in over the sequence to intensify the action and build up the tension through the scene alongside the performances.”

(Here you can hear the use of the intense building score in ‘The Babadook’)

I also wanted to use this technique used in ‘The Babadook’ by having a intensifying soundtrack. I wanted to use this in the climax and second half of my film to build the tension. It also helped aid the narrative as mid-way through the film the tense moves to present and I used the lighting, voice-over  and imagery to depict the building darkness and tension and I wanted to use the sound to this effect as well. So I used the tracl ‘Exit Music For a Film’ by Radiohead because of it’s intense building climax and layered it with other sounds in the edit to intensify the effects.

(The song ‘Exit Music For a Film’ by Radiohead)

(Images of the sounds that I layered over in the edit)

Mise-en-scene

I used my TA essay to explore the use of mise-en-scene to create meaning in the films I studied and then replicate it in my own short films. For example in my Textual analysis essay I discussed the colour palette and the set.

Additionally, we also see how Ma has created this environment through the set and props and costume in the scene. Room has brown walls and a grey floor colours associated with darkness and loneliness to represent the situation they’ve been put in, but Ma has filled it with colours with connotations of joy and hope, with a vibrant yellow chair, a blue wardrobe, a yellow flower on the wall and her and Jack clothed in blue and her in pink. This symbolises how Ma takes the dreadful situation she and Jack are in and fills it with as much love and joy as she can because she loves her child and wants to surround it with happiness and hope as she can.

I found the use of color to depict interior meaning in ‘Room’ was really effective so I used this technique in my short film. For the childhood day out sequences I use very tonal blues and grays, the natural light and dark costume were a premonition of the darkness to come in the protagonist's life. Contrasting to this, in the surreal and metaphorical scenes with the cutting up of the teddy bear I used harsh warm yellow lighting. This warm lighting was symbolic because usually warm lighting is meant to depict warmth and softness, however I used it to put the audience into a false sense of security. The warm light and teddy bear are symbols are positivity and childhood, however I juxtaposed this with the imagery of the bear being cut up and the light being unnatural and harsh.

This is similar to the performance in the sequence from ‘The Babadook’, as here the setting of the scene is created by how the mother is portrays her fear of her own child. Freud also talked about how repression produces the unconscious and leads to ways in which communication is often not about the obvious, surface ideas but about deeper stranger things. This is what happened to the mother, because she suffered such grief with the loss of her husband she repressed that pain to be able to function in society and look after her son. However, this repression manifests her grief into the monster of ‘The Babadook’. She takes out her fear and grief on her son as his rational, childlike fear and belief in monsters catalyses her pent-up emotion. She becomes afraid of her own child.

The psychological manipulation of making a child ‘evil’ or scary is very effective as children are seen as innocent, vulnerable and loving as part of our human nature, so to depict them as the opposite taps into a very base human fear. In my film I didn't want to show actual violence towards a child, but I still wanted to show the mental pain the protagonist is feeling. To do this I pulled into a ECU of the child’s eyes and ten when the camera pulls out again it is the teddy bears eyes. This highlights to the audience consciously or sub-consciously that the bear is a metaphor for the child and the symbol of his childhood. I chose to do this with a teddy bear as it has universally recognizable connotations with child and childhood.

How were the planning materials used in the construction of the artifact?

Shot list

I feel the shot list was really vital part of planning because it was so influential on the actual shots of my film as I followed it quite religiously. This is important as I didn’t have long to shoot and I had to make the most of my time and resources to create what I wanted, and having a good shot list meant I could create the film I wanted. As you can see by the examples below, my shot list and final film are very similar and this highlights how valuable the shot list was as it keep my film on it’s narrative path. 

Shot 1:

Shot 5:

Shot 10:

Shot 15:

Shot 20:

Shot 25:

Shot 30:

Shot 34:

Genre

For my TA essay I focused on the macro-concept of representation but in my blog post on genre I explored the genres of drama and horror and drama-horrors to explore the conventions and iconography these films have to I could recognise it in my TA films and emulate it or use it as inspiration for my own short film. One piece of genre research I did was watching Other films that are in the psychological horror genre so I could look into iconography and convention. This is the list of films I watched to do this and there are clear links between these films and my own film.

Another section of the genre research I did was this presentation about genre iconography. The links between the iconography I explored and the imagery used in my film are very clear. (https://prezi.com/oi2eq6erexqt/edit/#1_13696309)

Looking into iconography was really important in the creation of my films as it heavily influenced my use of symbols and imagery. To explore genre and iconography I created a presentation on it and subsequently the symbols I explored were all used in my short film. I used this research to influence my choices and it meant my film had a clear genre link, with symbols that have wide-spread connotations helping further my imagery and narrative.

The use of colour as a symbol/metaphor in horror films is so prevalent that I had to emulate this. The use of red blue and green were all very effective in other films as show in my research and as you can clearly tell this influenced my film as I incorporated it into my imagery.

Blood is a very well known and widely understood image as it is part of every human being. It is linked to the base fear of deaths and blood is what keeps us alive and links us together. I knew I wanted to use some bloody imagery in my film as it clearly highlighted the horror genre and dark nature. I used this blood imagery in contrast with the teddy bear for a disconcerting juxtaposition.

Corridors are a lesser noticed feature in horror films, but when looked for they are very frequent. The claustrophobic element to them alongside their metaphorical connotation with journeys makes them a perfect horror symbol. I wanted to use a corridor shot in my film to emulate these effects. I chose to use the corridor at the Guild Hall in Hull as it’s small lights ad dark tall corridor were very eery.

Lighting in Horror films is massively important as it builds up atmosphere and can turn a seemingly harmless image into something dark and frightening by the use of manipulative lighting. I decided to use the lighting to enhance my film so I used low level lighting and darkness in the scenes with the older protagonist to depict him as darker and dangerous in comparison to the child. I used the neon noir style reds, blues and greens which have connotations with horror films. I used these colours to create a chiaroscuro type effect used in german expressionism in the horror genre.

The use of bears and children’s dolls in horror films is so effective because of their connotation with children. They are out of control of their on destiny and symbolise family and childhood and regret . All these themes fit my narrative so I decided to use a bear as a metaphor for the protagonist’s mental state and his childhood innocence. The innocence of the teddy bear juxtaposed to the bloody shots of it being hacked up are disturbing and represent how the loss of the protagonist’s innocence and him letting his childhood and his purity go.

Children as a symbol in horror films are very powerful as they represent a voiceless almost-human and and reflect social anxieties of growing old, protection of children and the future. I decided to use the childhood memories in my films because of the dark contrast they created to the violent imagery. 

Weapons and knives are an obvious but powerful symbol in horror films. They create that primal fear of danger and let the spectator know that someone is going to get hurt. The image of knives, weapons and dangerous objects brings tensions to a scene and is a universally understood symbol of danger. In my film I used the image of the knife covered in blood next to the bear in the flashing shots and I also used the scissors cutting up the bear in the sustained shots. These dark images contrasted the teddy bear and child and brought a new level of darkness and tension to the scene in conjunction with this.

How successful was the artefact in achieving the aims?

In reflection, I wish that I could have been more ahead on my planning because I had quite a short amount of time to shoot and edit my film so I had been doing a lot of in-depth planning and had time off. So, if I did my planning again I would do my planning earlier so I would have had time to re-shoot and do more edits. I feel like if I had organised my time better and gotten more out of my planning. As I have discussed, the planning was very beneficial to the creation of my final product so if I had better time management I could’ve benefited more. I wish I had done re-shoots and edits because I feel like my film does not have a clear enough narrative, I think the edit is not as succinct as it could and should be. I also would have liked to have done another edit where I stripped the sound and started from scratch with my original sound content and re-mixed it all. I felt the sound and voiceover gave a good atmosphere but was unclear and messy and with another clean edit I could created a clearer meaning with it. The film kept the style and narrative that I planned, however in the edit I feel my film really came together and the chronology of my film did change to reflect flashback/forwards which were not planned but in the edit made more narrative and visual sense. I feel like my TA essay did achieve it’s aims as I really explored the representation of mother figures in the two films and how the interior meaning was created through the cinematography, sound, editing and mise-en-scene. I feel like my essay really explored the subject and used theory to have critical perspectives on the representation in the films i studied. I feel like my film did achieve what I wanted as it was my first time making a film and I wanted to explore my themes and personal style and I think my final artefact is a good reflection of my focal films and personal developing style. I feel the audience got what I wanted to put across because as seen from my audience feedback, I feel like people really got the atmosphere that I wanted to put across. I was concerned about the narrative as I wanted to create a film with a loose narrative and surreal imagery that was almost nightmarish and felt more post-modern. However, people seemed to gauge the feelings and meaning I wanted to portray and enjoy it seen in these comments. But I also feel that the sound complications and it’s messy outcomes did effect the atmosphere and meaning of my film and I think it at some points distracted from the verisimilitude so I think meaning would’ve been clearer if my sound was. 

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700 words statement for Assessment Task 2

Research topic: Art and design often explore relationships between humans and non-humans, the environment and ecology. How can contemporary art and design propose new possibilities for imagining the ‘human’ and the environment?

Concept: to provide people one environmental place to live. The whole construction is without windows and the materials built up with this architecture is glass and others. Those kinds of transparent materials can allow the light go through them directly. As Tanizaki stated that “The quality that we call beauty, however, must always grow from the realities of life, and our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows towards beauty’s ends.”[1] Therefore, I was focused on the light control with this building. My model’s two functions are living and viewing which can also set under the sea. It is an architecture in new patterns. House is not only the living area but also a viewing point. What’s more, it is more environmental and green.

Outlines: Initially, the first inspiration is from the egg. As we all know, egg shell has unique biology function: it allows the chicken to trade air with the outside world. I am going to design one architecture which adopts the principle called ‘animal bionics’. Through the experiment of making model, I found that it was hard to express. Then, I decided to follow the shape of the egg. My model is more likely to one sphere. I used the transparent material such as acetate. Because acetate is hard and with little thickness, it is difficult to curve to a smooth surface. After that, I decided to remix the principle of the Water Cube which is located in Beijing. The success of the Water Cube is using the entire square site to fit all the desired facilities. There would be many examples of this in nature, from living cells to mineral crystals.[2] Thus, they used the Weaire Phelan foam. As Philip said that, “The bubbles of the roof and walls make up no ordinary foam. To the casual glance the network looks rather random and disorderly. But there is deep symmetry to it, for its ‘unit cell’ — the fundamental repeating element — consists of eight polyhedral cells. Six have 14 faces, the other two have 12, and these are comprised of regular hexagons and irregular pentagons with differing side lengths and angles.”[3] According to the texture’s marshalling sequence on the Water Cube, I picked several equilateral triangles to done the smooth surface. Finally, to express my idea completely, I used the software Sketchup to finish my final model’s preliminary sketch.

Characteristic: this design is based on environment, science and technology. The topic asks us to provide new possibilities for imagining the ‘human’ and the environment. My idea surrounds ‘future architecture’ to progress. In the future, there are no windows and lighting in the room because the material built up with the building is transparent and the light can go through those materials. “Lighting design calls for consideration of the amount of functional light present, the energy expended, as well as the aesthetic impact supplied by the lighting system. Some buildings, like warehouses and office buildings, are primarily concerned with saving money through the energy efficiency of the lighting system.”[4] Not only has those materials save the power source and money, but they have also kept the suitable interior temperature. According to the reading, many books mention the importance of illumination in architecture. As Loe, David argued that “I aspect of art in illumination wherein consideration of architecture with a fundamental element of illumination is useful for its exploration… I add that independent lighting designer has integrated illumination into their designs.”[5]With the development of technology, people pay more attention to the importance of the environment. When the postmodern is coming, my model’s value will express. In the modern time, most of the buildings are built up with solid materials like plaster, concrete, wood or anything else. In the future, more and more ‘transparent house’ will occur. This style of construction is what I want to achieve.

[1] Tanizaki J,1977, In praise of shadows, Random House, Japan

[2] https://architectureau.com/articles/practice-23/

[3] Philip B, 2007, Science in culture: Beijing bubbles, Vol.448(7151), p.256

[4] "LED Warehouse Lighting". Modern. place. Retrieved 2017-06-01.

[5]D Loe, Lighting Research & Technology. Aug2013, Vol. 45 Issue 4, p400-400. 1p.

Bibliography:

1.       D Loe, Lighting Research & Technology. Aug2013, Vol. 45 Issue 4, p400-400. 1p.

2.       https://architectureau.com/articles/practice-23/

3.       “LED Warehouse Lighting". Modern. place. Retrieved 2017-06-01.

4.       Philip B, 2007, Science in culture: Beijing bubbles, Vol.448(7151), p.256

5.       Tanizaki J,1977, In praise of shadows, Random House, Japan

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Hyperallergic: In Praise of Shadow, Color, and Light

Xuan Chen, “Light Threads (Set 2) #3” (2017), mixed media on aluminum, 18 x 24 x 2 inches (all images courtesy George Adams Gallery, © the artist)

Xuan Chen lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Florence Miller Pierce (1918 – 2007) lived for many years. I doubt that Chen, who is in her early thirties, met Pierce, but she shares something with the latter’s interest in light, especially as embodied in the resin pieces that Pierce began making around 1969. Pierce was associated with the Transcendental Painting Group, which was started by Raymond Johnson and Emil Bisttram.

Others in the group included Alice Pelton and Dane Rudhyar. The group’s aim was “to carry painting beyond the appearance of the physical world, through new expressions of space, color, light and design.” Whereas the members of this group had a spiritual bent (not to be associated with the more theatrical Light and Space movement, which originated in Southern California in the late 1960s, and includes artists such as James Turrell and Robert Irwin), it seems to me that Chen’s interest in light, shadow, and color connects her to both groups.

The reason I bring this up is because the gallery press release states that Chen’s Light Space Intimacy series was “inspired by the Light and Space movement.’ While I have no doubt that this is true, it also occurred to me while looking at the exhibition, Xuan Chen at George Adams Gallery (July 13 – August 18, 2018), that Pierce may have also been an inspiration because, unlike Turrell and Irwin, who are known for their large installations, Pierce was a painter, which is what Chen is. The other thing that occurred to me was that being inspired by Turrell and Irwin is a challenge because — unless you have deep pockets or serious investors — you cannot afford to work on their scale. Chen exercises her control through scale and use of paint and materials, such as wood and thread. She is less theatrical than her inspirations.

Installation view of “Xuan Chen” (2017), George Adams Gallery)

Chen, who was born and raised in China, came to America to study at the University of California, Berkeley, where she  earned her PhD in material sciences and engineering in 2008. During her years at Berkeley, she also developed an interest in painting and took classes in the art department. After graduating from Berkeley, she got an MFA in painting at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, in 2011. This is Chen’s first solo show in New York and definitely an exhibition to go see.

In her Light Space Intimacy series, Chen makes small constructed paintings, often with a cutout in the center. The artist describes the works as:

[…] iPad-sized wall-sculptures [which] devise an intimate connection between the physical light, space, color and the viewer. Using various media such as embroidery thread, fluorescent paint or color transparencies, I create layered sculptures painted from digitally constructed images.

While the artist goes on to say that she wants the viewer to “examine  [her work] from different angles like exploring a newly acquired digital device,” I felt that  her art has more staying power than the most beautifully designed electronic gadget.

Xuan Chen, “Screens #27” (2014), oil and acrylic on panel, 9 x 11 x 1 inches (© the artist)

Chen paints on all sides of her objects, including the backs. Her vocabulary is geometric — planes and bands of solid color. At one point, I was reminded of the colored Plexiglas sheets you buy on Canal Street, because her angled planes seemed semi-transparent, as if light were passing through — an interesting illusion. Depending on the color and saturation, Chen can  project a faint glow of color on the part of the wall that is visible through the cutout. Because a strip of shadow on the left is dark charcoal, while the one on the right side is pale gray, I began to wonder whether she had painted the shadow, even though I was sure she had not.

Chen uses solid bands and planes of color, which include  saturated and fluorescent hues. The interplay between the wall and the frame-like construction is one starting point for looking. I found myself peering into the cutout to see the relationship between the color and the nearly imperceptible reflection (That peering in is what connects Chen to Turrell).

Chen embraces solid color and tenuous shadow, making both part of the viewer’s experience. Her palette of turquoises, greens, lavenders, bright reds, and yellows reminds me of Key West, Florida, and Los Angeles bungalows — that intense cheeriness.

Xuan Chen, “Light Threads (Set 2) #3” (2017), mixed media on aluminum, 18 x 24 x 2 inches (© the artist)

In recent, larger works, done on aluminum, Chen has added rows of colored thread. In the age of globalism and instant connections, often through digital devices, we forget that light is specific to geographic locales — that the light and space of the American Southwest is not the same as the light and space of  Nebraska or Minnesota. All of this has seeped into Chen’s abstract constructions, her use of color, and her sensitivity to the barely seen, the whisper of a shadow on a white wall.

Chen’s invitation to examine her work, its interior spaces, connects her to David Goerk, an artist deserving of more attention, and a two-person show would enlarge our understanding of painted constructions. Given that Chen tends to work in series, as well as address particular movements, such as the Light and Space movement, Op Art, and Color Field painting, I am curious to see where she goes next.

Xuan Chen continues at George Adams Gallery (531 West 26th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan) through August 18.

The post In Praise of Shadow, Color, and Light appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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