Cognitive Labs

Piracy goes back way before Captain Kidd and Davy Jones' locker - in fact, Julius Caesar once battled pirates in the Meditteranean, then cleared his swimming pool of the same motley crew.

Labels: caesar, jones, locker, lorenzi, mayor, pirates

Portraiture of some of history's outstanding creatives is undergoing a renaissance. Just a couple of weeks ago, a depiction of Leonardo's actual visage was found in Italy.


New portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci




Then on Monday, a painting (above) believed to be Shakespeare's image was revealed. In contrast, the familiar image of Shakespeare from every hardcover compendium of his plays usually preceding the boring preamble of dry criticism by one literary don or another, may not in fact be his actual likeness but a kind of caricature.

Today, the first performance venue where the bard's work was displayed is being acknowledged, not the globe, just yet, taking a cue from Rosella Lorenzi at Discovery.

BBC report.

Labels: bard, davinci, lorenzi, portraiture, shakespeare, venue

It is, according to accoustic scientists in a Discovery piece by Rosella Lorenzi. Admittedly, that's much better than a heavy metal riff with a tiny miniature of the Druidic wonder as in This is Spinal Tap.

Apparently, it was designed so that a fast rhythym of up to 160 beats per minute could be sustained and amplified by drum players combined with the repetitive echoes from the slabs of stone, approximating the redline speed of the human heart under vigorous exercise. Research is now showing that megaliths perfectly reflect ambient sound. Keep that in mind for your landscape architecture plans. As such, it may have played a role in shamanic tradition.

The researchers' work strongly suggests that the monument's builders knew how to direct the movement of sound. Indeed, the stones at Stonehenge amplify higher-frequency sounds, such as the human voice, while lower-frequency sounds such as drums pass around the stones and can be heard for some distance.

The effect would have been a "dynamic multisensory experience."

Labels: lorenzi, rave, rosella, stonehenge