If I understand correctly, these are ceramic bowls floating in a pool of water, possibly in a cave because it’s echo-y, and the clinking sound is them bumping into one another. Like wind chimes, but … water chimes?
yo, i saw this in person over the summer! it’s an art installation!
the piece is called clinamen v.2, created by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot and included as a part of the Soundtracks exhibit in the moma - i saw it in san fran, and this photo is from a showing in new york:
the exhibit is a large shallow pool filled with white ceramic bowls in varying sizes. the bowls are pushed around the pool by a gentle current, and the sound created as they hit each other is somewhere between a wind chime and a haunted bell.
i sat there for a solid ten minutes just watching the bowls move around while listening to the sounds they made. it was absolutely hypnotic…
Soundtracks runs in the san fran moma until january 1st 2018, and i absolutely recommend going if you can. many of the exhibits play with sound in 3D spaces, and there are some truly wild contraptions on display.
vikings made their woman handle the finances because they thought math is witchcraft
During a military campaign, Vlad the Impaler, the basis for Dracula, once pulled his troops out of a major engagement in a valley at dusk so that the sun was in their enemies’ eyes. Once they were over the hill, they set loose a bunch of rabid bats who flew away from the sun (towards the enemy) and attacked them, leading to significant infection in their ranks, and Vlad’s eventual victory. Because of how the bats appeared from where Vlad’s soldiers appeared to be at dusk, myth stated that the soldiers turned into bats at night, which is where the “Dracula can change into a bat” thing came from.
raphael, the renaissance painter, literally fucked himself to death
during the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan Ibrahim I had 280 of his concubines drowned in the ocean after ONE of them slept with another man.
The earths carbon levels fell by 700 million tons because Genghis Khan killed so many people
King James (the one known for revising the Bible) liked to watch women give birth. That’s where the “tradition” of women laying on their backs to give birth comes from.
Previous to that it was common for women to have chairs with holes in them and straw underneath, so they could sit on this special chair and let gravity help with the birthing process.
Spicy foods were thought to increase libido and cause children to masturbate. To prevent kids from touching themselves at night, a man named Kellogg invented the blandest combination of cereals, marketed it at kids, and called it Corn Flakes
At the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War, a small group of Union soldiers had run out of ammo against a large group of the Confederate Army. In a panic, the Union soldiers sprinted at them, screaming, with only bayonets drawn. The entire Confederate Army that was present turned and ran away in fear, not knowing that they had literally no ammunition.
When the Roman Emperor Caligula went to invade Britain he stood on the coast of Gaul with his army and suddenly declared war on Neptune, God of the Sea. He had his men collect sea shells from the shore as “spoils from the Ocean”.
Oh and he appointed his horse to the senate.
During the Austro-Prussian war of 1868, Liechtenstein sent over an army of 80 people, but ended up coming back with 81 people because they befriended a guy on the other side.
People refused to send art and sculptures to be displayed at the Chicago World’s Fair because of Chicago’s history with fire. They had to fireproof the Fine Arts building to get people to agree to loan them their art. A year after the fair closed most of the grounds were destroyed by fire but the Fine Arts building survived. It’s now the Museum of Science and Industry.
The carbon emissions thing from Ghenghis Khan is not the whole story. He also planted trees wherever he conquered land because he liked trees and thought they were important. He conquered enough to make an impact on the global climate.
Radu III, brother of Vlad III( Vlad the Impaler) nearly killed Mehmed II, the future Sultan of the Ottoman’s, after Mehmed invited him up to his chambers. Radu, seemingly unaware that the offer was sexual in nature, was startled when Mehmed embraced and then tried to kiss him. Radu stabbed the prince in the leg, then ran and hid in a tree. They later became lovers, and maintained a relationship for the rest of their lives
Just googled the last one because holy shit that’s magnificent and seemed to good to be true, but not only did it actually happen, but I also learned that radu was known as “radu the beautiful”
After the Battle of Shiloh in the American Civil War wounded soldiers were going back to camp when they noticed their wounds were glowing. They called it Angel’s Glow and it was dismissed for many years until someone realized that there was a a bacteria in the area called
Photorhabdus luminescens which, like the name suggests, glows. The human body is usually too warm for the bacteria to grow, but in the cold temperatures on exposed wounds the bacteria was able to breed and make the soldiers glow.
One time a pope (Pope Stephen VI) exhumed the previous pope’s (Pope Formosus) corpse, and put it on trial for blasphemy in full papal regalia—after which point he was convicted because he didn’t speak up in his own defense. They cut off three fingers of his right hand and tossed him into the Tiber, where he was found by some Roman fishermen. When they brought the corpse inside, they saw the frescoes of their house come to life, and reports of these miracles turned a mob against Stephen. They found him and dragged him to prison, where he was strangled 3 weeks later.
