How a Book is Made, Circa 1947

2011 is barely underway and it’s already been a tumultuous year for the evolution of publishing. As entire industries struggle to plot the future of the book, we find it important to take a step back and take a look at its past. An 8-bit unicorn tipped us off to the priceless 1947 documentary Making Books — a joint effort of Encyclopedia Britannica Films and the Library of Congress that will make you gasp and wince and gasp again as it opens its treasure chest of retro technology, matter-of-factly industrialism and unwitting vintage sexism. (Alnd cue in omnibus of short films about obsolete occupations.)

This man is an author. He writes stories. He has just finished writing a story. He thinks many people will like to read it. So, he must have this story made into a book. Let’s see how the book is made.”

While we aren’t ones to romanticize the wonders of yore, there’s something to be said for the kind of craftsmanship that we lose, or at the very least dramatically alter, as we substitute the digital page for the printed one. We also have to wonder about the lens of delightful quaintness with which tomorrow’s historians and media scholars will tell the story of, say, designing for the iPad reading experience.

via Dead SULs

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Mathematics and The Myth of Light Geometry

What Soviet science has to do with German Expressionism and the logic of intuition.

We love the convergence of mathematics and the visual arts. (Previously: Robin Moore’s string math portraits; Vi Hart’s Flatland on a Möbius strip; Kevin van Aelst’s food visualizations of scientific concepts.) Today, we turn to Mathematical Impressions — the incredible illustrations of Soviet mathematician Anatolii Fomenko, exploring the intersection of mathematics and the myth of light geometry.

Since the 1970s, Fomenko has produced more than 280 illustrations, 84 of which — 61 black-and-white and 23 color — are collected in this remarkable anthology. Alongside the images are Fomenko’s original captions, illuminating both the inspiration for the artwork and the historical subtexts for it.

One can consider these images to be photographs of a strange, powerful, and fantastic mathematical world—one that exists, regardless of how we perceive it, according to its own special laws.” ~ Anatolii Fomenko

Originally published 21 years ago, Mathematical Impressions is an incredible intersection of logic and intuition, part Escher, part German Expressionism, part something else entirely.

via But Does It Float

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Alfred Hitchcock on the “Fright Complex”

What The Little Red Riding Hood has to do with the art and science of suspense cinema.

Last month, we looked at The Power of Nightmares — a provocative BBC miniseries exploring fear manipulation in political propaganda. Today, we turn a different lens on the same subject: Exploiting human fear for entertainment value.

In May of 1964, BBC’s Huw Weldon interviewed iconic film director Alfred Hitchcock for the TV program Monitor. Brilliantly insightful and ever-so-subtly condescending as ever, the great filmmaker shares priceless insights on the social psychology of fear, the gender balance of film audiences, and ratio of intuition vs. calculation in American and English cinema.

It’s all based on Red Riding Hood, you see. Nothing has changed since Red Riding Hood. So what [audiences] are frightened of today is exactly the same thing they were frightened of yesterday. Because this…shall we call it ‘fright complex’…is rooted in every individual.” ~ Alfred Hitchcock

The assembly of pieces of film to create fright is the essential part of my job, just as much would a painter, by putting certain colors together, create evil on canvas.” ~ Alfred Hitchcock

[A good cry] is the satisfaction of temporary pain. And that’s the same thing when people endure the agonies of a suspense film — when it’s all over, they’re relieved.” ~ Alfred Hitchcock

For more of the iconic director, we highly recommend Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection — an ambitious collection of 14 digitally remastered Hitchcock gems, accompanied by fascinating documentaries, featurettes, commentary and a collectible book, and encased in stunningly designed velvet packaging.

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