macabre collections

[asakiyume]

Somewhere in the archives of the Bibliotèque nationale de France is this collection of ever-blooming sound-flowers.



(Photo by Joseph Redon, originally posted on Twitter, and sent to me by Wakanomori)

And in the tower Great St. Mary's Church, in Cambridge, England, someone has stashed a collection of hangman's nooses! Or so it seems, but actually those are the bell pulls, for ringing the church bells. Still. Who knows what nefarious things may have happened in the tower while the bells were being rung?



(This photo courtesy of Wakanomori, who was there for a conference recently and climbed the tower.)

Comments

[cmcmck]

Our local church has such a set of pulls and a full peal of bells.

[asakiyume]

It must sound lovely!

[osprey_archer]

Oh, I love those sound-flowers. I don't think I've ever seen phonographs with such lovely horns before.

[asakiyume]

I certainly never have! I like that the people who designed them thought of how to make them beautiful. And it's kind of weird to think that this was a particular form of attractive item that disappeared when phonographs with horns disappeared.

[amaebi]

Seeing those flowers that emit sound, I am trying to imagine sounds that emit images. So far, I can only conceive the images being made within minds.

[asakiyume]

Sounds that emit images--sort of like (to take something pedestrian) electrocardiograms, or seismographs. But those are not as full and beautiful as sound-created images could be, I'm thinking.

[amaebi]

Oh, I like that! Though it's a bit of a pity that translation equipment should be required.

The other sort of thing I was vaguely thinking of was persons/creatures whose sensoria had wavelengths that are sound to us, be light to them. (And presumably their music-wavelengths would be our vibrations, and maybe our sight-wavelengths would be impalpable to them.) But that wouldn't render the visions of the tunes accessible to us, in itself.

[wayfaringwordhack]

Lovely sound flowers and I totally thought nooses, too! :P

[asakiyume]

When Waka first showed me the picture I was horrified--then he explained!