#German #silent cinema of the Twenties.

A #day as a #symphony: this is the core idea behind the movie "Symphony of a Great City", dedicated to Berlin in 1927. The same year as the masterpiece "Metropolis".

The movie starts with fast images from a train approaching Berlin, then there are sequences representing the awakening city, the industrial production, lunch pause, frenetic activity and trains, metro transportations, and finally ending with concerts and fireworks.

#Technology and #mechanisms are a great inspiration. Less evident is the #Expressionism reference, which more characterised "Metropolis" and "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (1920). Another source of inspiration is the abstraction of Oskar Fischinger's animations.

#Montage is ingenious. It can remind one of Russian cinema of "Battleship Potemkin" (1925), and the audio-visual associations in the French "Ballet Mécanique" (1924). The latter, with the music by Georges #Antheil, who later collaborated with the German actress and scientist Hedy #Lamarr to invent the frequency-hopping spread spectrum.

Interestingly, the orchestral piece "The Iron Foundry" by Mosolov dates to 1927, and it is also inspired by mechanisms and industry. Inspiration that, in turn, dates back to Italian #futurism, but "The Art of Noises" by Luigi Russolo was published in 1913, before WWI.

(Vorabend, dann. Stadtlichter hinter einem Vorhang aus Schnee. Verkehr brandet durch den Matsch. Spiel heimkehrender Vögel. Passanten, Wartende, vereinzeltes Kopfnicken. Fixpunkte. Stationärer Orbit.)

#outerworld #concrete city #mechanisms #the winter and the lights

💮 Compact LET Arrays for Origami-Based Mechanisms

https://www.mdpi.com/2218-6581/15/1/1

#robotics #mechanical #technology #mechanisms #machines #origami #actuators #folding

RE: https://mastodon.social/@jpecol/115813250468325824

A very interesting #study on #mechanisms that can prevent #selfinhibition in #clonal #plantgrowth via interconnected modules (#ramets). To circumvent competition between neighboring branches for limited space, plants can utilize #minorobstacles such as stones or debris leading to the necessary spatial #separation. The authors compare this mechanism with obstacles used by humans to enhance #pedestrianflow.

This text by Stefan F. Wirth, Berlin, January 1, 2026

Abolish the Wages System: Reclaiming Life from the Logic of Capital

https://classautonomy.info/abolish-the-wages-system-reclaiming-life-from-the-logic-of-capital/

In a world characterized by the obscene accumulation of wealth by the few and the grinding precarity of the many, this slogan is not merely a relic of the past. It is a call to confront the deep structure of modern exploitation: the domination of labor by capital, of human life by the wage…

#OrganizeAgainst #Slavery #Exploitation #Mechanisms #Control #Workers #Extraction #Surplus #Capitalists

Hackaday: 3D Printed “Book” Demonstrates Mechanical Actions. “A book of mechanical actions is a wondrous thing — mechanically inclined children have lost collective decades pouring over them over the generations. What could possibly be better? Why, if the mechanisms in the book were present, and moved! That’s exactly what [AxelMadeIt] produced for a recent video.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/09/27/hackaday-3d-printed-book-demonstrates-mechanical-actions/