illustrations

Illustration

·      Anime

In the western design culture the term anime was more used to describe Japanese stylised animation, as anime became more popular western culture began to incorporate some of the Japanese type styles in their designs examples of this was animated series the Batman, Batman beyond, spiderman unlimited.

The influence of anime on western culture mostly started in the 1980’s. Transformers can be seen as a poor example which was inspired by mecha anime.

More and more western and Japanese animation companies started collaborating as the popularity of anime increased thus animatrix was created.  Marvel animation and Toei animation are good examples of these collaboration as they created the Dungeons and dragons series.

·      Manga

At first Manga did not really exist in the west except through imports. But in 1998 cartoon network started showing one of the first manga shows called Dragonball Z.

In 2001 magazines started showing more adult type anime for example BLEACH and Death note.

·      Otaku

A third theory sheds some light on the history of why and how the Japanese fans called themselves "otaku".

Takashi Murakami, the famous otaku/pop artist, cites his friend Toshio Okada, one of the world's leading experts on otaku culture, in explaining where the usage of "otaku" came from. Okada, Murakami says, links "otaku" to Shoji Kawamori and Haruhiko Mikimoto, the creators of Super Dimensional Fortress Macross (1982), at Studio Nue. Kawamori and Mikimoto were students at Keio University when they started working on Macross.

Keio is known as one of the more upstanding and relatively upper-class institutes of learning in Japan. In tune with their somewhat aristocratic surroundings, Kawamori and Mikimoto used the classical, refined second-person form of address, "otaku", in preference to "anata," the usual form of address. Fans of the studio's work began using the term to show respect toward Studio Nue's creators, and it entered common use among the fans who gathered at comic markets, fanzine meetings, and all-night line parties before anime movie releases. (Murakami 2001)

Tomohiro Machiyama (2004) suggests that the use of “otaku” as a form of address amongst anime fans was mimicked from the Macross anime directly. Machiyama says that the main character, Hikaru Ichijoe, frequently uses the extra-polite “otaku” when talking to other characters.

I recently heard Toshio Okada lecture at MIT, and he discussed this subject further. According to Okada, at science fiction conventions, otaku from various places (i.e. anime clubs from different schools) would meet each other. Out of respect for each other's clubs, they would refer to each other using "otaku", the extra polite form of address.

Even though Akio Nakamori would write about the otaku-zoku in a less than positive light, many otaku began using the label for themselves in proud defiance and half-joking self-deprecation. Otaku no Video (1991) provides an excellent example of sincere otaku pride combined with otaku making fun of themselves.

Art movement Surrealism

Mysterious objects in paintings are objects that still look the same just in a weird way. René Magritte’s painting "Not to be Reproduced" is an example of a painting with mysterious objects. There are two reflections in a mirror the person and the book. The book's reflection is correct, but the person's reflection is of the back of his head instead of his face.

Rene Magrittes painting "Son of Man" is another example of a surrealist painting with mysterious objects. There is a guy stiff with an apple on his face.

Salvador Dali did not paint dreamlike paintings all the time. He also painted optical illusions. He painted "Apparition of face, and fruit dish on a beach". It has one optical illusion that looks like a fruit dish but could also look like a face and a lady sitting down. There is also a mountain that looks like a dog.

 

From reading this section you now know many interesting facts about surrealism. You also know how surrealist artists changed objects into optical illusions, mysterious objects, and familiar objects that have been oddly changed optical illusions.

Surrealism shared much of the anti-rationalism of Dada, the movement out of which it grew. However, Breton, who was a part of the Dada group, wanted to form a movement in which artists could unite to protest war by accessing subconscious thoughts. The original Parisian Surrealists organized group activities as a reprieve from violent political situations and to address the unease they felt about the world's uncertainties. Surrealists were interested in exposing the complex and repressed inner worlds of sexuality, desire, and violence, and interest in these topics fostered transgressive behavior. Many of the artists underwent psychoanalysis to study and uproot their latent feelings and behaviors as a cure for what they believed to be the constraining and repressed codes and morals of society.

The Surrealists generated creative works that exposed the artists' inner minds in bizarre, symbolic ways in order to uncover anxieties and to treat them analytically through visual means. The Surrealists depicted dream imagery and archetypal symbols derived from their unconsciousness. The collage aesthetic was significant to the Surrealists, as they believed it tapped into the subconscious by creating unlikely juxtapositions using imagery garnered from popular culture. The Surrealists employed collage in every medium including film.

Rise and Decline of Surrealism

Though Surrealism originated in France, strains of it can be identified in art throughout the world. Particularly in the 1930s and 1940s, many artists were swept into its orbit as increasing political upheaval and a second global war encouraged fears that human civilization was in a state of crisis and collapse. The emigration of many Surrealists to the US during WWII spread their ideas further. However, following the war, the group's ideas were challenged by the rise of Existentialism. And in the arts, the Abstract Expressionists usurped their dominance by pioneering new techniques for representing the unconscious. Breton became increasingly interested in revolutionary political activism as the movement's primary goal. The result was the dispersal of the original movement into smaller factions of artists. The Bretonians, such as Robert Matta, believed that art was inherently political. Others, like Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, and Dorothea Tanning, remained in America to separate from Breton. Salvador Dalí, likewise, retreated to Spain, believing in the centrality of the individual in art.

Further Developments:

Abstract Expressionism

In 1936, the Museum of Modern Art in New York staged an exhibition entitled Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, and many American artists were powerfully impressed by it. Some, such as Jackson Pollock, began to experiment with automatism, and with imagery which seemed to derive from the unconscious - experiments which would later lead to his 'drip' paintings. Robert Motherwell, similarly, is said to have been "stuck between the two worlds" of abstraction and automatism.


http://www.theartstory.org/movement-surrealism.htm

World war 2 Atomic Bomb

August  2^nd 1939 just before the outbreak of world war ll a letter written by Professor Einstein was sent to the American president by the name of Franklin D. Roosevelt, this letter contained information about the on goings in Nazi Germany. The Nazis were trying to purify U-235 which could be used to build an atomic bomb.

Since the letter was sent the Americans were working on they’re own atom bomb, they called it project Manhattan. Over a time period of six (1993-1945 ) years project Manhattan cost about 2 billion dollars.

A massive enrichment laboratory/plant was constructed at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. H.C. Urey, along with his associates and colleagues at Columbia University, devised a system that worked on the principle of gaseous diffusion. Following this process, Ernest O. Lawrence (inventor of the Cyclotron) at the University of California in Berkeley implemented a process involving magnetic separation of the two isotopes.

Following the first two processes, a gas centrifuge was used to further separate the lighter U-235 from the heavier non-fissionable U-238 by their mass. Once all of these procedures had been completed, all that was needed to be done was to put to test the entire concept behind atomic fission.

J. Robert Oppenheimer was the key force behind the Manhattan Project. He literally ran the show and saw to it that all of the great minds working on this project made their brainstorms work. He was amongst those who oversaw the entire project from its conception to its completion.

Finally the day came when all at Los Alamos would find out whether or not The Gadget (code-named as such during its development) was either going to be the colossal dud of the century or perhaps end the war. It all came down to a fateful morning of midsummer, 1945.

As many know, atomic bombs have been used only twice in warfare. The first and foremost blast site of the atomic bomb is Hiroshima. A Uranium bomb (which weighed in at over 4 & 1/2 tons) nicknamed "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima August 6th, 1945. The Aioi Bridge, one of 81 bridges connecting the seven-branched delta of the Ota River, was the aiming point of the bomb. Ground Zero was set at 1,980 feet. At 0815 hours, the bomb was dropped from the Enola Gay. It missed by only 800 feet. At 0816 hours, in the flash of an instant, 66,000 people were killed and 69,000 people were injured by a 10 kiloton atomic explosion.

Reference/Source: Outlaw Labs

By Vishwas Purohit