Sound of music … circa 3400 BC

[Image source: Global Arab Network]

Usually when one thinks of or talks about archaeological discovery the ideas that often come to mind are tombs, graves, foundations of houses, grain houses and temples, roads built, rituals written and pottery shards broken. How many times does one think of musical compositions or instructions for assembling and playing an instrument? Very rarely if not not at all.

In Syria, a musical scholar has done something unusual. Ziad Ajjan has composed eight poetry and musical pieces from the musical archaeological cuneiform tablet known as “Hymn of Supplication”. This tablet dating back to 1400 BC was discovered in the ancient town of Ugarit, about 260 kilometers north of Damascus, in the early 20th century. The article reporting this rare act of musical composition tells us,

The tablet contains a complete hymn, both words and music, in addition to detailed performance instructions for a singer accompanied by a harpist as well as instructions on how to tune the harp.

I was not sure if and where I could find the audios of this music tracks. So I Googled “Syria ugarit music” and lo and behold! I actually found something similar but even more interesting. Looks like composer Malek Jandali has beaten Ziad Ajjan to it (assuming that Ajjan’s composition is a 2010 feat). He has released an album in 2009 named Echoes from Ugarit which consists of 8 tracks based on the oldest music notation in the world which was discovered in Ugarit dating back to 3400 B.C. I listened to a couple of samples of Malek’s compositions. The fact that they were played on a piano with accompaniment of other modern instruments known to us made them sound not-so-mysterious as I had hoped music about 5400 years ago would sound. But may be if I could listen to these notes on the original instruments that played it or in the voice of original singers that sang it I might have a different experience. Hhmmm … time machine, anyone?

Changent Paul Young

Guest post generously contributed by Changent Paul Young of Craft Village, UK, a Fair Trade Company that has started a unique project in Kenya. It has helped the locals increase their income significantly by selling hand-carved, fabulously crafted statues of various popular Simpsons characters!

Craft Village UK – a member of The World Fair Trade Organisation- have developed an acclaimed, income generating, animation inspired product series.

We launched our Kenyan ‘Simpsons Statues’ in February 2009 after 3 years of development working directly with stone carvers in Kenya. Our unique mix of Fair Trade and animation-art has received great reviews; from CNN, The BBC, The United Nations Development Programme, Sir Bob Geldof, Matt Groening and many happy customers!

Our debut stone product series is hand carved in Tabaka. Like many parts of Kenya, Tabaka suffers high levels of poverty and limited access to basic human needs: clean water; health care; education, sanitation, etc. By harnessing The Simpsons popularity, we are creating vital income for the area. This is trade, not handouts. We provide great products and service at a fair price!

This exciting collection has strong appeal to two specific markets; the growing Fair Trade market, and the massive ‘Simpsons’ collector’s market, -worldwide 60 million people watch The Simpsons each week. If we can sell just 1 statue to 0.01% of regular Simpsons viewers -it will provide 10 years work for our artisans!

Developing such a unique project has been a challenge, with many obstacles and false starts along the way. From product development issues, to obtaining a 20th Century Fox license, to packaging and branding problems, we have met each challenge with competence and confidence, and feel very excited about the impact Craft Village can achieve in Kenya, and elsewhere…

Our unique product concept is transferable to many animation and film properties. To date I have met with Licensor’s for Star Wars, Nickelodeon, Aardman Animations and 4Kids Entertainment, all have expressed interest in working with Craft Village to develop fair trade memorabilia for their brands.

It is Craft Village’s goal to become a genuine innovator within Fair Trade, and attract a new audience to the Fair Trade movement with our contemporary cartoon-inspired statues. We are proud to supply Simpsons’ fans with high quality animation art whilst simultaneously having a positive impact on many families in rural Kenya.

We recently launched our new website http://www.craftvillageuk.com which includes a retail platform and lots of images and videos of our producers in Kenya. All enquiries welcome! Contact Paul Young on paul@craftvillageuk.com

TED Tuesday: Exposing invisible

Nick Veasey shows outsized X-ray images that reveal the otherworldly inner workings of familiar objects — from the geometry of a wildflower to the anatomy of a Boeing 747. Producing these photos is dangerous and painstaking, but the reward is a superpower: looking at what the human eye can’t see.

Recycle craft: RetroGrandma Audrey

Guest post generously contributed by Audrey, amazingly talented recycle craftswoman and owner of the RetroGrandma and A blast from the past Etsy stores.

Handmade items have a soul and enrich our lives in a way that mass-produced items simply can’t. Even though I have a professional life and career I value, I love my creative side even more. Crafting for me is not only a hobby, but it’s my relaxation time. My mind is never still. I’m always thinking of what I can recycle and create next.

I’ve been crafting since I was very young. My mother was an amazing crafter and I just followed her great talent. I made most of my gifts and sewed most of my children’s clothing. Now I create unique items and sell them online. Enjoy the slideshow below to see some of the items I create.

I’ve had an ebay store since 2003 with all my collectibles. But then I heard about Etsy “All Things Handmade”. So I decided to open up a shop with just a few of my handmade items in 2007. Etsy is such a friendly community of sellers and buyers.

My husband is a collector of records and it so it all started with the abundance of vinyl in our house and I decided to melt a few to make some bowls, which are quite popular. Then I came up with a pattern to make a handbag out of the covers. I didn’t want to use rivets (that so many use) to cover the great artwork, so I created my own pattern of sewing vinyl around the covers. The handbags are very strong and durable, yet very soft and light. My daughter uses hers as a grocery handbag and carries a lot of weight in it and it’s still holding up very well.

From there I found that books can also be made into handbags. They are much more complicated to make than the record purses, but I never get tired of making them. Extra time is taken to choose the right material and accessories to match each book. Each one is so unique and one-of-a kind. I’m addicted to making these handbags. My most popular handbags sold are the Nancy Drew books. Watch heads turn as you walk down the street with one of these whimsical handbags! You’ll be sure to get noticed!

I have expanded in creating variety unique items by recycling books and records. I make record containers, clocks, and earring holders. From books I create hollow security safes, wallets, and desk clocks. Be sure to spark conversation with any one of these items! They all make such unique gifts. Great for the “hard to buy for” person! One feedback I received from a customer who purchased one of my book handbags was “My mother said this was the best gift she has ever received”. Hearing these comments makes me feel so good inside.

I never thought my hobby would turn out to be a business. Sales grew and I do many custom orders also. Favourite books have been mailed to me to create handbags. I had a magazine cover once mailed to me and I made a handbag from it. The customer’s friend was on the front page of the cover and she thought this would make a unique gift for her. I’ve done wholesale orders for some retailers also. I have customers from all over the world.

Good photos are a must when listing an item. This took some time for me to perfect. You need a good camera, good lighting and then a program to edit each photo. I made it to the Front Page of Etsy on 4 different occasions since I opened up shop. It’s an honor to get chosen for the Front Page, so I was extremely thrilled!

I decided to name myself RetroGrandma because I love the retro era and I’m a grandma of 6 beautiful grandchildren. My family means the world to me. I’m a full time Administrative Assistant at an elementary school, which I’ve worked at for 25 years now. I have four online shops where I sell my items. My husband and I love to seek out treasures at flea markets, garage sales and thrift shops. I also have a vintage shop on etsy – A BLAST FROM THE PAST! Here we share our treasures with the world – toys, games, kitchenware, decorative collectibles, lamps, clocks, & clothing.

I’m a busy RetroGrandma! But I wouldn’t have it any other way as I can never sit idle.

TED Tuesday: Tiding up art

Ursus Wehrli shares his vision for a cleaner, more organized, tidier form of art — by deconstructing the paintings of modern masters into their component pieces, sorted by color and size.

Recyle craft: Fat Bottom Bags

Guest post generously contributed by Recycle crafter Christi Spangler of FatBottomBags.com (Facebook, Twitter).

Hi everyone!  First off, I’m so honored to be guest posting today on Watchful Eyes Thoughtful Mind. Thanks for the invite Radiance! 

My name is Christi Spangler and I’m an evironmentally concious recycle crafter and founder of FatBottomBags.com a plastic bag recycling project.

FatBottomBags.com was born from my dream of a better world and my desire to find a way to repurpose those problematic plastic carrier bags. My goal was to find some way to utilize this wasted resource while raising awareness about the importance of recycling and the harm that these bags and other plastic debris is doing to our environment. 

A few years ago I began making these reusable bags from “disposables” and selling them locally.  After talking with many other concerned people in my area, I was encouraged to bring the message and these great bags to the internet in order to reach out globally.  So here I am!

I quickly recycled through all of the bags I had collected on my own, so I put the call out to friends, family and other locals to gather up and recycle the plastic bags they might have stashed in drawers and closets.  Now I’m up to 23 families for whom I recycle on a regular basis.  In addition to the locals, I’ve started a couple of recycling exchanges online.  Through the website, I’m collecting colored plastic bags and mesh produce bags for recycling too! 

So far at FatBottomBags.com our efforts have kept over 5000 (and counting) plastic bags from becoming part of the problem in our wastestream.  And that’s just what I’ve recycled from my kitchen table!  In addition, I’m encouraging others to take an active role in recycling too!  I’ve shared my secret with a  DIY video to make your own mesh sided FatBottomBag and I’m blogging about other ways you can make a difference too!  

I love recycling and I love to make a difference in the world.  What I started as a simple closet cleaning has grown into a recycling phenomenon!  Proving my favorite quote, “When we all do our small part, we can (and do) change the BIG picture!”

***Learn more about plastic bags harming the marine environment through these sources:

Disturbing video of whale dying from ingesting plastic bags:

Read about the 7 sperm whales that died in Foggia, Italy from
ingesting plastic bags.

Turtle eating plastic debris:

9 types of intelligence

[Image source]

When we talk about someone intelligent, we usually mean it in a way that the person has done well in studies, academics or some such intellectual faculty. Would you call someone who has great sense of direction and never needs a GPS, intelligent? Would you call someone with a great ear for music and composition, intelligent? Or how about a hiker with incredible stamina? I’m sure most of you would go, “What? No! These things have got nothing to do with intelligence.” Well, think again.

Melissa Breyer writes in Care2‘s ‘Healthy and green living’ section about 9 types of intelligence. Dr. Howard Gardner is the Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He has developed the theory of multiple intelligences, going beyond the IQ test to discover the many ways humans are smart. He identified intelligent abilities including language, music, spatial reference, kinesthesia, naturalistic, and possibly existential intelligence.

Once you read this article and Dr. Gardner’s theory (and may be even more depending on how interested you get) I am sure you’re way of judging someone as ‘not intelligent’ will change. I also think knowing that we possess different kind of intelligences which are not necessarily reflected on our marksheets is important. So many people would realise that they have at least one, if not more, kind of intelligence in them. You would think yourself much more worthy than you did till now. And more importantly, I hope, you will stop making your kids slog insane hours to get that A grade in academic subjects. And would appriciate their A grade in sports equally.

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TED Tuesday: Origami using maths

Robert Lang is a pioneer of the newest kind of origami — using math and engineering principles to fold mind-blowingly intricate designs that are beautiful and, sometimes, very useful.

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• 10 Amazingly Geeky Origami Models (neatorama.com)

TED Tuesday: Art that looks back at you

Golan Levin, an artist and engineer, uses modern tools — robotics, new software, cognitive research — to make artworks that surprise and delight. Watch as sounds become shapes, bodies create paintings, and a curious eye looks back at the curious viewer.

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• The Intersection of Art and Technology (takepart.com)

Sci-tech goes arty

I have written quite a few posts before which showcase the merger of science/technology and art. The endeavours have ranged from fascinating micro-photography to Frizions to high-speed captures of shattering objects. Today I’m sharing with you one more spectacular example of science/technology and artistic inspiration combining. The source of this art-work is the ‘Glowing animals: Pictures of Beasts Shining for Science’ photogallery.

How does it glow?

Multiple colors of fluorescent protein, introduced into its DNA (2008)

What can we learn?

One of the team of scientists that won a 2008 Nobel Prize for green fluorescent protein—Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Y. Tsien–couldn’t resist showing off their creation a bit. From Tsien’s lab comes this artful plate with selectively swabbed fluorescent bacteria. The discovery of green fluorescent protein by Shimomura in 1956 was the result of crushing countless jellyfish. After publishing his findings in 1962, Shimomura studied GFP in detail and realized that no extra fuel was needed to make it glow–other glowing substances need chemical additives to shine. GFP, by contrast, just needed to be exposed to ultraviolet light.Chalfie, the third of the GFP Nobel winners, realized the maintenance-free protein could be used to literally watch how creatures work. He proved with the intestinal bacterium E.
coli that GFP alone–with no fuel–glowed, and promptly started putting it into roundworms.Roger Tsien kicked it up a notch by reengineering GFP to be cyan, blue, and yellow. Yet more colors were found in fluorescent coral. He remixed these materials into glowing proteins such as “mPlum,” “mStrawberry,” and “mOrange.”Though their inventions may have revolutionized the fields of medicine, biology, and chemistry, the fluorescent proteins also have creative applications, as shown above. Fluorescent proteins have also been used in the name of art to make sculptures out of glowing beakers and live glowing rabbits.
— Photograph courtesy UC San Diego via AP

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