Temple of the Court of the Game @courtofthegame - Tumblr Blog

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Morning arose - a recent study of a cactus I walk by regularly in our neighborhood. Available.

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as the snake sheds her skin 🐍🩸

c0mm i did of Dafni and Eirini, from M G Katsibouri's upcoming book!

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'Saturn' by Mitchell (1970)

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The artist's full name is Horace Mitchell! I just learned a lot more about him in a fascinating article that came out today - How a Houston company got its art on the walls of stoners across America.

Here's the section that talks about this artist and poster:

Horace Mitchell was an undergraduate student at Rice University in 1968. Though he was studying physics, he was an amateur artist who loved science fiction novels and comic books. After reading about the Houston Blacklight in a local paper, Mitchell went to downtown Houston, sketchbook in tow. He sold his sketches to Jones, which would become the basis of four posters the company would publish: "The Trip," "Hassles," "Saturn" and "Chess." Mitchell was inspired by the work of the legendary Marvel Comics artists Jim Steranko and Jack Kirby, whose covers depicted towering characters set against psychedelic space-age landscapes.

"I had always sketched and drawn even as a kid," Mitchell remembered. "I got this bug that I would try to draw some big things."

The posters that went to market are different from what Mitchell drew. Some were resized, and colors were changed to be trippier under a black light. But for Mitchell, it was an exercise in representing abstract emotions and thoughts—ideas like space and time, optimism about the future—in accessible ways.

"It was sort of groundbreaking, the kinds of things they put in the posters that then wound up hanging in students' rooms because they represented ideas that really resonated with the students," Mitchell said.

That experience would serve him well in a much different role. After he finished his master's and PhD, Mitchell went on to work at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, running the agency's Scientific Visualization Studio in 1991, making hundreds of videos explaining everything from Mars' magnetic fields to hurricane animations. His work has been on news channels around the nation and even appeared in Leonardo DiCaprio's 2016 documentary Before the Flood. But he has always seen his work for the Houston Blacklight as the foundation of his career.

"I always had a joke: people would ask, 'Well, are you a real artist?' And I'll say, yes, I am. I'm published, but only because of those four things that got printed," Mitchell joked.

Here's the full collection of Houston Blacklight posters, from University of Houton's digital collections.

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“There is no other home”, Soviet poster, 1986.

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"The Kiss of the Sphinx" created by German sculptor Christian Behrens around 1880.

Hannes Vogel. Der Lichthof, 1984

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Deep Blue vs Kaspawrov

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Japan's Ainu people have their own history, languages and culture. But, as the victims of colonialism, assimilation and discrimination, much

As a young boy in school, Masaki Sashima would be dragged out of his classroom and beaten by his fellow students.

Masaki, now 72, was different to the other kids.

He was Ainu, an Indigenous people from the country's northern regions, most notably the large island of Hokkaido.

"During recess, the hallway door would open, and several guys would yell at me to come out," he said.

"I clung to my desk in the classroom and kept quiet.

"Everyone would surround me and beat me."

Japan has long portrayed itself as culturally and ethnically homogenous, something that some have even argued is a key to its success as a nation.

More than 98 per cent of Japanese people are descendants of the Yamato people.

But the Ainu are distinct, with their own history, languages, and culture.

But, as the victims of colonialism, assimilation, and discrimination, much of that identity has been lost.

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An Ainu woman named Chiri Yukie wrote down some of her people's oral traditions into Japanese because, as a child, her people were being displaced by Japanese settlers in Hokkaido. Her language was disappearing, so she (ironically) saw translating the stories into Japanese as a way to preserve them. She died at age 19.

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Some of the objects from the Ainu exhibition at Japan House in London this year, showcasing traditional Ainu skills and culture. There is a campaign to get Ainu recognised as an official language, at least in Hokkaido, and small steps are happening, for example, bilingual bus stops. It reminds me of the struggle for Welsh to be revived after suppression for centuries.

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second image ID: the cover of The Song The Owl God Sang: The collected Ainu legends of Chiri Yukie, Translated into English by Benjamin Peterson. end ID

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Also, this is a good short ~25 minute documentary that shows Ainu people fighting to recover their ancestral bones and bodies from Hokkaido University that's worth a watch.