Happy Friday! Ready for a roundup of good links?
This is my weekly cabinet of curiosities, a roundup of articles, art, and internet ephemera that I've enjoyed recently. This week: shipwrecks, electrical mushrooms, computer art, and more...! ⚓⚡ 🍄 👾
#TGIF #Friday #Links #Roundup #GoodLinks #CabinetOfCuriosities
1) The shipwreck of the 1495 medieval Danish warship Gribshunden turned out to have incredibly well-preserved plant remains, including expensive spices like saffron, peppercorns, ginger, and almond.
It's a “substantially complete royal medieval pantry” and is "[one of] the most fabulous discoveries of spices in any archaeological context, on land or sea"
View the paper here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0281010
#Medieval #Gribshunden #Shipwreck #Archaeology #MaritimeArchaeology #Viking #Vikings #Histodons
Maritime archaeological investigations of the wreck of the medieval warship Gribshunden (1495), flagship of King Hans of Denmark and Norway, have revealed diverse artifacts including exotic spices imported from far distant origins: saffron, ginger, clove, peppercorns, and almond. The special circumstances of the vessel’s last voyage add unique context to the assemblage. Gribshunden and an accompanying squadron conveyed the king, courtiers, noblemen, and soldiers from Copenhagen to a political summit in Kalmar, Sweden. At that conference, Hans expected the Swedish Council to elect him king of Sweden, and thereby fulfill his ambition to reunify the Nordic region under a single crown. To achieve this, Hans assembled in his fleet and particularly aboard his flagship the people and elite cultural signifiers that would convince the Swedish delegation to accept his rule. Along the way, the ships anchored near Ronneby, Blekinge. Written sources record that an explosion and fire caused Gribshunden to sink off Stora Ekön (Great Oak Island). Exotic spices were status markers among the aristocracy in Scandinavia and around the Baltic Sea during the Middle Ages (1050–1550 CE). Until the Gribshunden finds, these extravagances have rarely or never been represented archaeologically. Evidence of their use and consumption in medieval Scandinavia has been limited to sparse written references. We present here the botanical remains from the Gribshunden shipwreck and compare them to previous archaeobotanical finds from the medieval Baltic region. These opulent status symbols traveled with a medieval king en route to a major historical event. The combination of textual and archaeological evidence allows a novel analytical view of the social environment in which these luxurious foods were consumed.
2) This in-depth article by Amy Goodchild on the development of early computer art (plus electronic, kinetic and mechanical art), focusing on the 1950s and 60s
https://www.amygoodchild.com/blog/computer-art-50s-and-60s
Images: Oscillon 40 (1960), Ben F. Laposky / Interruptions (1969), Vera Molnar / Painted slides from Proxima Centauri (1968), Lillian Schwartz / Random Dances (1964 - 1968), Jeanne Beaman at Cybernetic Serendipity
#ComputerArt #GenerativeArt #KineticArt #Dance #Retro #EarlyComputers
3) So in love with the art of France/Malta-based illustrator Karine Rougier
4) Researchers at Tohoku University attached electrodes to mushrooms to track their electrical signal transfers after rain ⚡ 🍄
More interesting research on mycelial networks! Plus, it's lab confirmation of what mushroom hunters already know about how lightning affects fungi growth
Press release: http://www.tohoku.ac.jp/en/press/mushrooms_and_their_postrain_electrical_conversations.html
5) Having a great time wandering around @touloutoumou's Museum of Screens, a virtual museum about web games. What a lovely, strange pocket of the internet
It's open from 7am-10pm (every day except one day chosen at random each year)
Laura E. Hall
Liz Alfos
Tim Hutchings