Electricians at the Sea Star Aquarium in Coburg, Germany were confounded by a series of mysterious blackouts affecting the aquarium of one Otto, an octopus. After staking it out one night they discovered that the cause was Otto himself who, seemingly annoyed by the 2000 watt spotlight above his tank, had figured out he could extinguish the offending light source by climbing onto the rim of his tank and squirting a jet of water in its direction.
This is not the first time the aquarium has had a problem with Otto, says Director Elfriede Kummer:
“Once we saw him juggling the hermit crabs in his tank, another time he threw stones against the glass damaging it. And from time to time he completely re-arranges his tank to make it suit his own taste better – much to the distress of his fellow tank inhabitants.”
Kummer supposes that the octopus is merely bored or perhaps attention starved although, considering his behavior, I’m inclined to theorize that Otto might have a little problem with the drink.
I hold certain, strange, Luddite beliefs, some of which I have written about here previously. Among them is the belief that mostly, photos are at their best when taken in black and white. The work of Anders Petersen just reinforces that belief.
Today, as most are no doubt aware, is Halloween — or Hallowe’en if you are a fan of unnecessary, European punctuation — a yearly occurrence when children roam the streets hoping to gorge themselves on obscene amounts of high fructose corn syrup, their stomachs roiling in protest, and women are encouraged to dress like hookers.
So, in commemoration, Ectomo presents the original, extended, profanity-laden version of “Windowlicker” by Aphex Twin, directed by Chris Cunningham; because few things are as terrifying as Richard David James’s face. Seriously, they should just make a mask out of it already and be done with it.
Dutch artist Fons Schiedon, has a show opening on November 6th and running through December 21st at Concrete Hermit in London called Revolution Deformation. The series of paintings features a character named Jesus — Not the Son of God — who had previously been known under the moniker of “Badboy Lensflare – The Albino in a Wheelchair”, operating as a cipher through which Schiedon explores “the subjects of transition, transformation and broken memory.” It makes for a series of haunting, nightmarish cartoons.
The very idea that a baby body requires different fluids than a full-grown corpse somehow arouses my fancy. The concepts of death and infancy are heavy on my mind these days, as my generation comes into power, as my father shakes his massive head and warns that gas and food prices will never go down again, that this is what he was warning us about since the fifties.
I think he prays that this isn’t the End of History. At some point, he says (or I remember him saying, admittedly different things), innovation and notable incidents will cease to occur or we will become inured to them, and history will stop. There will no longer be anything worth recording. Humanity will subside into limbo.
J. Peress’s 1 atmosphere diving suit — referred to as Tritonia or “Jim 1″, after Peress’s chief diver Jim Jarrett — preparing to explore the wreck of the RMS Lusitania in 1935.
In sheer defiance of the World Wide Web Consortium's will, Ectomo was designed using a non-web-standard font. Luckily, it is included in the excellent font pack released by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, which can be freely downloaded in Mac and PC formats here. Ectomo should still look fine without it, though.
Electricians at the Sea Star Aquarium in Coburg, Germany were confounded by a series of mysterious blackouts affecting the aquarium of one Otto, an octopus. After staking it out one night they discovered that the cause was Otto himself who, seemingly annoyed by the 2000 watt spotlight above his tank, had figured out he could extinguish the offending light source by climbing onto the rim of his tank and squirting a jet of water in its direction.
