Movement

Duchamp probably saw Muybridge photographs. Muybridge got the idea from the frenchman E. J. Marey. It had become necessary to accurately depict movement through time. The assembly line was just around the corner. Already existed, in primitive form. Modern assembly line starts in the meat packing plants in Cincy,1870. Pigs on tracks. Even earlier, though hardly modern, was the biscuit bakery for the British Navy at Deptford, 1833. Having high speed internet and more than one computer really puts a spring in my step. Fairly sure the mend to the roof is good, similar weather conditions to when the new leak leaked and no leakage. Steady filling all three humidifiers, struggling to get the humidity up into the range to which we're committed. Not so important (it's always important) for the shows now, but the Mid-Western Modernism show specifies temp and moisture levels. I can tell, fairly closely, what the relative humidity is by how quickly my mopping evaporates. Often, in winter, first thing in the morning, when I first fill the units, I'll wet mop the floor with plain water, to give the level a boost. Side-tracked up to the roof, to watch the snow melt one last time before everything re-freezes. Then watching the re-freezing. A tongue or finger of water develops a skin, which stops movement, then things solidify. Watching anything, I'm amazed at the gaps in my knowledge, by the unanswered questions. Iron filings, for instance, and the interference of a magnet, becomes form and design. The language of phenomena. Seems anti-entropic. But I've read Maxwell and I know I'm wrong. Art, though, is not science, and Duchamp, breaks on through, to the other side. Movement depicted in a single frame. Not a simple parlor trick. Then too, modernism bows to the primitive, Braque and Picasso, visiting those caves, where the process of 'over-drawing', year after year, also depicts movement in a single frame. Vaucanson is an interesting dude, that duck was amazing; Jacquard and his loom. Their work adumbrates the punch card and computers. Count Rumford, a notorious Tory, and a genius, invented a stove that re-circulated hot gases from a wood stove, around the oven, before expelling them out the flue, for a soup kitchen he ran in Munich. An ingenious inventor, with his regulated cast iron plates, invented the modern oven. Also 'green', in that he saw no profit in wasting heat. I've always loved him, because his fireplace was such an improvement over the Franklin Stove. From arcane texts he developed an algorithm involving depth and width of fire and the size of the flue. Solving for three unknowns. Mostly it's poets that can do that, or pregnant mothers.