Geek Destinations

youwannaknowaboutme:

I have to build this room in my future home

bookshelfporn:

Hérodote Lyon, Bouquiniste Lyon, France

Photo by Paolo Emilio

Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces.

http://www.googleartproject.com/

liquidnight:

Interior of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County “Old Main” Building, photographer unknown, 1874.

In 1874 the Public Library of Cincinnati took possession of a small building intended to be an opera house. According to John Fleishman, “the parcel at 629 Vine Street was transformed in two stages into a library building that startled America with its cutting edge design. Its vast Main Hall featured five tiers of cast-iron book alcoves that could house over 200,000 volumes.”

[From Ohio Memory via { feuilleton }]

kateoplis:

Something like 20,000 years ago, a rock slide sealed up the entrance to a large cave set into a limestone cliff above the Ardèche River in southern France. No human being entered it again until 1994, when a trio of explorers wedged themselves through a tiny aperture and made one of the most extraordinary discoveries of cultural history: Chambers upon chambers of spectacular prehistoric art, both figurative and abstract, including images of many extinct species of Ice Age animals. You and I will never see any of this, except with the help of Werner Herzog’s strange, flawed and mesmerizing 3-D film Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday night.

Let me go over that again briefly: Yes, Werner Herzog has made a movie in 3-D that’s largely set inside a cave full of Stone Age art. His producer, Erik Nelson — who is a friend and an occasional Salon contributor — says that Herzog is the first director of the new 3-D wave to use the technology for good, not for evil. Secondly, yes, the art is beautiful, even stunningly accomplished, and these images are breathtaking — unlike anything you’ve seen before or will see again. And thirdly, yes, Cave of Forgotten Dreams will become a classic drug movie almost immediately, although the experience is mind-altering enough without any augmentation.

What’s now known as the Chauvet Cave (after Jean-Marie Chauvet, leader of the exploring party) was promptly seized and sealed by the French government; more people have visited the summit of Everest since 1994 than have seen the interior of the cave. Much of the struggle for Herzog and Nelson was getting in there in the first place. Beyond the 400 or so Paleolithic cave paintings in pristine condition, and the important artifacts and fossils (cave-bear skulls! cave-bear scratches!), Chauvet has far-reaching implications for the study of cultural prehistory and the birth of human consciousness. These paintings are roughly twice as old as any other known examples of pictorial art. (The earliest of them may go back 33,000 years.) They’re as close as we can come, at least for now, to the dawn of art.

— Salon

bookshelfporn:

Ghibli Museum, Japan