Culture Making Articles items tagged genesis

Not a garden, but a city

2025-01-02T22:53:00Z

Revelation 21:2 is the last thing a careful reader of Genesis 1–11 would expect: in the remade world, the center of God’s creative delight is not a Garden, but a City. And a city is, by definition, a place where culture reaches critical mass—a place where culture eclipses the natural world as the most important feature we must make something of. Somehow the city, the embodiment of concentrated human culture, has been transformed from the site of sin and judgment to the ultimate expression of grace, a gift coming “down out of heaven from God.”

—Culture Making, p.122

Jacob’s Dream (detail), by José de Ribera

2025-01-02T22:53:00Z

Nate
: ?Madrid's Museo del Prado has made ultra-zoomable "gigapixel" scans of fourteen of their masterpeaces, including Velazquez's Las Meninas, Goya's Third of May, and Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, available through the Google Earth application. In truth it seems like a bit of clunky way to gain access (open Google Earth, zoom in on Madrid, find the museum), but once you're in you can zoom and pan across every crack and brushstroke. I loved this close-up of José de Ribera's surprisingly naturalistic 1639 depiction of Jacob's dream at Bethel, in which he saw the angels of God ascending and descending on what I always pictured as a sort of celestial shopping-mall escalator. But here we only see the face in repose.?

Jacob's Dream (detail), by José de Ribera, oil on canvas, Museo Nacional del Prado, :: via The Guardian

Fig Leaf Wardrobe, by Tord Boontje

2025-01-02T22:53:00Z

Nate
: ?Here's a witty if not-super-practical Dutch furniture designer's play on the first post-Fall human cultural product. In this case it's the fig tree's own nakedness that's being covered up.?

Fig Leaf Wardrobe, by Tord Boontje for Meta, Copper, enamel, bronze, and hand-dyed silk :: via MoCo Loco

The Rosetta Disk

2025-01-02T22:53:00Z

Nate
: ?Concieved as a modern-day Rosetta Stone, the Rosetta Disk aims to preserve linguistic knowledge for the long-term future, well after DVD and even paper may decay. This side contains the teaser: “Languages of the World: This is an archive of over 1,500 human languages assembled in the year 02008 C.E. Magnify 1,000 times to find over 13,000 pages of language documentation.” The chosen text for the microengraved parallel translations: the book of Genesis.?

photo from "Very Long-Term Backup," by Kevin Kelly, The Long Now Blog, 20 August 2008