Archive for the ‘Space Planning’ Category

The Right Man

May 27, 2023

This drawing ®2037 by Torsten Slama
The Right Man (pencil, pastel on pink tone paper, A4)

This drawing, like any other drawing, perhaps needs no introductory or explanatory words. An association might be noted here: the depicted situation seems thematically linked to a surrealist distortion of a dinner scene in the Luis Buñuel film, “The Phantom of Liberty”. Social interaction at the dinner table is linked to waste disposal, which means defecating together, the act of eating is an isolated act, like in contemporary western civilization the act of going to the toilet, with special architectural arrangements guaranteeing privacy (the cell, the cubicle, an enclosed space, closet, Klosett). Depicted here is a man sized cubicle designed for the man to privately emanate his masculine sense of power or perhaps also secretly admire or masturbate his private part under the nice slab of marble designed for him to rest his big hands on (hand depiction inspired by a description of the hands of Hermann Göring, as manicured hairy paws, by the German author Carl Haensel in his book “Der Nürnberger Prozeß, Tagebuch eines Verteidigers”. The depicted person is not Hermann Göring though, but the largely forgotten German actor Paul Hartmann, an interesting name, like Paul Toughman.

The Three Strategies of Huang Shigong

August 8, 2022

Antitransgressive prevent strategy has three specific objectives: (1) respond to the ideological challenge of deviancy and systemic transgression and the threat we face from those who promote it, (2) prevent people from being drawn into boundary challenging behaviour and ensure they are given appropriate advice and support, (3) work with sectors and institutions where there are risks of radicalisation (hot spots, suburban abandoned areas, et al.)

This drawing ®2031 by Torsten Slama
The Three Strategies of Huang Shigong (Pencil, crayon, pastel, acrylics on paper, 65 x 50 cm)

Look at a brutalist office edifice with sustainable, architecturally integrated cooling and climatization scheme, dedicated to the established best practice of social work and the prevention of social disintegration by all forms of deviancy, including chronic fatigue syndrome.

See how the sculptures of three modes of transportation – (steam powered, bodily propulsion by legs, petrol based motorized solution) are forming an allegory of adaptability and the value of “getting out of the comfort zone”, to achieve better social results which will all eventually end in failure due to entropy which besets the universe and is totally against all human endeavours to create stable (“sustainable”) solutions. See also that the tricycle of the Dion et Bouton type is meant to be an immovable sculpture, bolted to the pavement, just as the Greek Riace bronze warrior is only a mass-market die-cast full scale model of one of two actual sculptures, found in 1972 in the sea near Riace, Calabria, of an actual and organic bearded warrior, and the Engine on the roof is also just a light-weight, plastic replica in slightly reduced scale. This is all architectural art of the Kunst am Bau variety, later added to the stark and elegant brick edifice which in its purer form served purer functions, supposedly.

Please note that this drawing is not only in actual execution, but also in reproduction of only middling quality. This reflects a remark by an actual social worker “social work is always and in all forms dedicated to failure”. In fact, even though in rough form, the drawing includes and merges all sorts of painterly and graphic techniques. If the artist was a Norman Rockwell this should mean that the work was supposed to shine in photographic reproduction, but this was achieved in this case, due to inferior photographic equipment and lack of photographic expertise on the photographer’s side.

Drawing and text © 2052 by Torsten Slama and the SHY Laboratory Group

The Meat Packing Plant

February 5, 2022

HBATK® Meat Packing Plant/The Secret Missile Silo, painting on board ©2037 by Torsten Slama, COD
Vize 4: Tajná raketová sila / Vision 4: Das geheime Raketensilo / Vision 4: The Secret Missile Silo,
2020 Öl auf Holz / oil on wood 70,2 x 60 cm / 27.6 x 23.6 inches

This 2020 painting harks back to several versions of the same motive, a 2006 drawing, another smaller 2009 drawing, a comparatively large painting from the same year and a later, 2012 re- or overpainting of that painting. It is based on a Heljan plastic model, the Heljan #673 N Scale Meat Packing Plant kit. While painting this iteration of the structure, one of the artist’s roughly four favorite and therefore recurring real world or model-type architectural structures, the artist was grappling with ocular clouding (encroaching blindness) and also with a newly developed (or degenerated) technique of mixing organic substances with oil paint and acrylics, applying the resulting mixture, uneven because of different solubility of its constituents, often in half dried states or different phases of coagulation, onto the canvas with brushes in varying states of distress, interspersing the emerging image with highlights of synthetic luminescent powders and pastes. In this painting the artist perhaps reached a pinnacle in the materialization of a certain style he envisioned – a style where the constant fight between the youthful wish for perfect execution and the cosmic truth of decay leads to its own results, where human mind control and the freedom of molecular motion and chemical interaction coexist, where the Jungian amateur pursuing personal narcissistic goals of alchemical omnipotency finds respite in the struggle between time-bound limitations of the human flesh with the desires of the mind and the phantasy of timelessness.*

*Timelessness of art, which Oskar Kokoschka found perfectly represented in Rembrandt’s “Self-Portrait at the Age of 63” at the National Gallery in London. While bemoaning the bombing of Dresden, visiting the National Gallery at the suggestion of his wife, he found back his inner peace at the contemplation of old skin, “like the skin of a dead chicken”, in the way in which Rembrandt understood to apply his own virtuosity in an inimitably masterful loose yet perfectly controlled application of paint, where molecular structure of the medium and chemical changes taking place in the process of drying and hardening, together with said virtuosity and sheer dexterity of application lead to a lasting and static depiction of a particular stage in a process which in the natural universe leads through life to death and complete disintegration in a matter of only a few years. **

**This anecdote is repeated here not to glorify the artist’s own desires of creating such an effect, but to humble it, as the above painting is not only a very serious effort, but also a typical example of Schlawinertum, as a surrogate to virtuosity and diligence, in contemporary art. It might be even that some hypothetical onlooker would only see the jejune and the would-be where in the eyes of the creator there is at least a glimmer or echo of the inner truth they sought, approached in baby steps which are much too short to reach their goal even within the whole lifetime of a person so encumbered by their own deviant desire for a sorrow-free life, which so often leads in truth to an inordinate accumulation of inner sorrows, often seen and belittled as minor by others, as they are sorrows of the imagination. While someone like Dostojewski, who knew exactly the interaction of sorrows of the imagination and the true sorrow of, for example, hemorrhoids, which so often result from sins of the mind, was so perfectly cognisant of the fact that nobody is entitled to define or judge the difference between imaginary or true sorrow, as their is none in degrees of pain they inflict.

Drawing and text © 2057 by Torsten Slama and the C.O.D

Food for the Gods

September 27, 2020
Converted Chemical Laboratory with Storage Facility / Experimental Prize Pig Setting 30 x 60 cm / 11,8 x 23,6 inches, oil on canvas (prefabricated, "Stylex"), 2020
Converted Chemical Laboratory with Storage Facility / Experimental Prize Pig Setting 30 x 60 cm / 11,8 x 23,6 inches, oil on canvas (prefabricated, “Stylex”), 2020

A painting, unusually tall (like modern cell phone), yet making up for tallness in smallness. Chinese inspired, in particular by the painter Shitao, the style being of course only a travesty of sumi-e, for the conversion into badly managed oil paints. Also, the painting ground in this case is industry-prefabricated and pre-primed canvas on stretcher, not paper scroll, hand mounted in fabric for either hanging in a museal context or storing in rolled form, stacked in shelves, to be perused by fellow art lovers, like books. However, the difficulties of endeavoring transformation and westernization by using oil paints on canvas make for intriguing results in terms of plastic surface effects (not well observable in photographic reproduction). A detail view shows better what is meant:

Observe how pencil line replaces insufficiently controlled brush strokes, creating not only optically observable lines, but also tiny grooves in the toothpaste-white of the supposedly tiled cladding of the storage building.

Please see also this post from 2009, with a design originally called “Bion Fermenter on the Eleventh Moon”, here moderately titled “Proposal for a Bion Conerter“.

© Torsten Slama and The Animal Welfare Society (Pig Dept.)

The Carl Grossberg (The Rift)

April 4, 2018

The Carl Grossberg and rocky landscape with Grossberg motif (by Torsten Slama)

The Carl Grossberg, 48 x 36,5 cm, mixed media on yellow tone paper

A detailed, if slightly crammed drawing with the theme of what our world would and could have looked like if energy independence, chemical independence, transportation independence and true man-nature metabolism had been the goal of industrialization. The drawing could also be an illustration to a treatise on “The Rift” (in the universal metabolism of nature), as described by Karl Marx. Not that the artist is deeply informed on the subject. In fact, any assumption of true literacy in any genre is categorically refuted (in accordance with the law of humbleness and common sense). Embedded in the rocky landscape background are several stylized coal liquefaction plants or chemical factories, tubes and pipelines, and one motif from a painting by Carl Grossberg (Fabriklandschaft im Schnee, 1923). Of course there is no snow here, as in fact the yellow color of the cardboard on which the scene was drawn evokes impressions of a slightly murky,  warm climate (perhaps of the inner earth) with sunlight filtering through a crack in the rocky ceiling, further muted by an emission-saturated atmosphere.  The drawing consists of several layers of pencil, colored pencil, washes of acrylics and different reflective and metallic pigments on a base of human spittle (which are in fact all but invisible.  Note that the “inner earth / Hollow Earth” theme has all sorts of connotations, historical science fiction ones as well as the psychoanalytical/gynacocratic/chthonic idea of earth as a womb. It seems in any case appropriate to annex a quote by Bernard Herrmann, wherein he describes his ideas about scoring the Filme “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (1959), since that film features landscapes not unlike the one depicted above: “I decided to evoke the mood and feeling of inner Earth by using only instruments played in low registers. Eliminating all strings, I utilized an orchestra of woodwinds and brass, with a large percussion section and many harps. But the truly unique feature of this score is the inclusion of five organs, one large Cathedral and four electronic. These organs were used in many adroit ways to suggest ascent and descent, as well as the mystery of Atlantis.” Drawing and words (except for italicized words by Bernard Herrmann) by Torsten Slama>

House for Quasi Phantom Regions

November 28, 2016

Country House with Hip Roof B8090 by Torsten Slama 2016

Country House with Hip Roof B 8090
(Oils on canvas on wood, 50,3 x 62,8cm)

This house is for the lover of open country, but with no need for the flora and fauna usually associated with it. It is a house for the Frommian necrophiliac. This country lies on the surface of a planet roughly the size of Earth, but much heavier and with a very thick, almost water-like foggy atmosphere. Consequently the ground resembles the deep sea floor on Earth. A hint of some form of vegetation, either aquatic or coniferous can be surmised or easily dismissed in the milky background. Tastefully arranged on the premises are one replicated Silurian nautilus shell, various simplified crystal sculptures made of polymethylmethacrylate coated with transparent SiO2 thin films in hues of yellow, pink, and green, and several geometric primitives of synthetic plaster. The house itself is the sparsely ornamented, simplified version of a terranean postmodern country house catering for the aspiring single person or couple in the lower medium affluent income range and has the catalog number B 8090. It is especially suited for the writer of semi-popular fantasy novels. Note that it comes without garage, as such is not necessary on a planet without any destinations to travel to. The windows, though ostensibly made of some glass-like material, are either covered from the inside with blue boards, or the whole house might be filled with some blue tinted medium or nutritive solution. The inside of the house might be dark, artificially illuminated, or not existing. The owner or owners of the house might be immaterial, but still in need of spiritual nourishment, provided by the large space crystal floating in the dense, soup-like sky. This atmospheric painting © 2021 by Torsten Slama and the Fantasy Society

Haus am Horn – A System House for the Modern Couple

April 7, 2016

Muche, Gropius, Meyer, Haus am Horn, 1923, Bauhaus, Drawing from 2016, this drawing ©2017 by Torsten Slama

Georg Muche, Haus am Horn, 1923
(A3; 42×29,7cm)

This house, a monument to the phallic guilt complex of modern patriarchal architecture, lives in a place of rich historical meaning for a certain variety of people. The hypothetical new owners, formers employees of the local financial institute which co-financed the costly renovation and restoration of this model building for the system family, exerting their ownership rights and overriding certain restrictive laws concerning historical hallmark structures, tried to add to the concept by painting the building a strange variety of pink, and placing a gaily painted totem pole of western American red cedar in the style of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest coast of North America on the premises. A nice wooden smell wafts through the area which is repellent to the common clothes moth, tineola bisselliella.

Looking at photographs of the original edifice, one is befallen by a baffling mixture of internal reactions. The masculinity of the design coexists with a maternal womb-like character achieved. The legend of the immortal uterus turned into stone. A 1923 drawing by Farkas Molnár, entitled “Georg and El Muche and the Haus am Horn” reveals a certain hetero-erotic dream aspect of the original concept. Before the erection (sic!) of the building, the land served as a vegetable garden for the local school for architects. Look at this 2016 drawing. Discern the different symbolic items distributed over the picture. A pole, a hose, a ball, a wall, a building. Generic vegetation. A Mark 1 inoculator floating in the sky above the chimney.Atmospheric rendering © 2021 by Torsten Slama and the International Wedding Ring

Haus Ziegler, Lepsiusstraße 112, Berlin-Steglitz

January 30, 2016

Haus Ziegler, Lepsiusstr 112, Berlin-Steglitz, with 1936 Opel Olympia, Architect Hugo Häring, 1936, this drawing ©2017 by Torsten Slama

Hugo Häring, Haus Ziegler, Lepsiusstr, with 1936 Opel Olympia
(A3; 42×29,7cm)

Colour correctness of this image can only be approximate. Possible peachy hues befit the intended atmosphere. This building can still be found at the address Lepsiusstraße 112 in Berlin Steglitz. This rendering depicts it surrounded by vegetation not typical for this region. The rest of the setting is fairly accurate, though partly guesswork. The German car in the foreground is of exactly the same date as the portrayed edifice. While the building is starkly modernist and, indeed, conceptual, the car is a slightly Germanized and downsized version of a Ford car. Picture the building as an old and also moderately neglected farm house in Vermont, picture the car as a Ford, and try and consider the person inside the house. This person is not the engineer Fritz Ziegler, but a different kind of character. After having unsuccessfully tried to stay of a beleaguerment by local aliens which are indeed not aliens but a kind of native sort of aliens (or, “Old Ones”), the original Ziegler was transferred to a metal cylinder while the actual person inside the house is not really a person but one of those said aliens, who has taken the place of Ziegler. You enter that place, expecting to find Ziegler, wanting to discuss his predicament. He, it, she (the impostor), is sitting in an armchair, has a buzzy voice, doesn’t move the lips while talking almost inaudibly, and occasionally nods to lend the mask it is wearing  a semblance of liveliness. Also, a pair of gloves are needed to hide the claw-like appendices. The legs are altogether useless, since their chitinous character makes them awkward and noisy as tools of propulsion on the medium of a wooden floor. It is good that there is a car in front of that house. If you are able to operate it, you might be able to flee this place. Some people might consider that angle in the house’s front as the most telling of its evil modernist hallmarks. In truth, it can be easily imagined that that angle, once you have gotten used to it, endears you to this place. What with that special kind of decorative and frost-resistant facade, the clinkers arranged in an order called the “Prüß-Verband”.Atmospheric rendering © 2021 by Torsten Slama and the International Pro Brick Society

Natural Gas Generator for the Eurasian Market

November 9, 2015

Natural Gas Generator painted by Torsten Slama

Waukescha Natural Gas Generator for the Eastern European Region and Asia (45x34cm, oil, spirulina, and glitter pigments on canvas mounted on wood)

This painting, as subtly alluring in its pallette as in the choice of special and unusual pigments, cannot be adequately represented in photography (even when captured with a sensor especially suited to register finest colour nuances without sacrificing exactitude and focus). In fact, even the human eye is a sensor too coarse and surface-bound to understand that painting in this case is not only the coating or covering of a surface with paints of appropriate consistency and opacitiy in a way which concentrates too much on the where and too little on the when, but the loving and time consuming application of a multitude of layers of different degrees of opaqueness or transparency. The ultimate goal is not recognizable or symbolic representation, but the creation of an image with depth, in which even the first insecure tracings and irregular activities of a tentative and searching brush are still detectable under a potentially limitless number of successively applied layers, each adding its own share of happy accidents. The resulting depth is never a strictly two-dimensional and optical phenomenon. The true painting of value always has unique and custom made surface characteristics. The author of this painting is indebted to the teachings of the late Bob Ross, but chose to go the way of stretching production time instead of compressing it. By doing so, he could circumvent the adverse effects of a rushed production, namely that the perceived overall quality of the product suffers under a glance more scrutinizing and resting than fleeting and cursory. This painting is intended to satisfy on the happy accident level as well as on the level of more method-result based western observation systems striving for overall recognizability, structure, and order.

More content related thoughts about the desirability of finding interdependent grid solutions for the application of small unit solutions to medium scale energy requirements over unified and in most regards more hazardous, if theoretically and practically more efficient, large scale energy production solutions, will not be amplified upon here. This space is dedicated to the discussion of technical merits of the painting, not of the depicted object and the ideas it represents.Atmospheric rendering © 2021 by Torsten Slama and the International Interdependent Energy Grid Board

World Wide Instrumentation Centre with 1912 Packard Landaulet

March 9, 2013

World Wide Instrumentation Centre for the Betterment of Mankind According to Tellurian Principles © 2021 by The Instrumentalists, Dr. Hecate Ecdysone, Torsten Slama

World Wide Instrumentation Centre with 1912 Packard Landaulet
(A3, mixed media, © 2013 by The Instrumentalists)

After the great unification of all continents into one supercontinent Eufricasia-Panamerica, the need for a coordinated world wide interactive system of communication and production is stated and instigated by the Instrumentalists. The whole world joins in multilingual agreement, and thus a Centre for World Wide Instrumentation is set up in Tripolitania, formerly district of Libya. a medium-grade metropolitan area located nearly exactly in the geographical centre of Eufricasia-Panamerica.

If vagueness, ambiguity and symbolism are reactionary forces bringing unrest, totalitarianism, and war, World Wide Instrumentation, with the totally concise and logical flow of goods, services, and communication it provides, will pave the way to a bright future of love and happiness. The dangers of a chronically crisis-ridden world economy or the inadvertent cross breeding of all sorts of squirrels into a race of super squirrels can be easily averted by the world wide employment of completely standardized instruments of measurement, production, transportation, and communication. A universal currency will soon be followed by a universal language for communication between people, animals, and machines: POYUTL, a language consisting of three consonants and three vowels, 21 syllables, and thus, using the well known formula of Newton, a total of 210 two-syllable words, which can express about everything. Thus, according to Tellurian principles, one Tellurian deity, OUY-PYTOLU, will come into being, a sentient and conscious superorganism, composed of all people, animals, and things on the surface of the earth and under.© 2021 by Hecate Herma Ecdysone, The Instrumentalists, Torsten Slama Historical Society

Bungalow for the Magician

November 18, 2012

A retreat for the Magician

Bungalow for the Magician, 42×27,9cm (DIN A3),
pencil and coloured pencil on paper

A temporary country home for the Magician. The Magician specializes in making people vanish. His spells are potent only in that way. In all other ways he is a very unassuming, normal type of person. Working his spells draws on his overall spiritual energy, leaves him exhausted. Lacking any formal education, he has to rely on his spells to sustain him economically. He saves enough money through appearances in hotels and at festivities in small-town multi-purpose centres during the holiday season or through engagements on cruise ships to be able to afford a simple country retreat for his free time. The cellarless and easily relocatable building features a miniature pool and fitness related equipments to allow him to replenish lost energies through careful, peaceful training in solitude, meditating on a wild nomadic tellurian future. Other items related to spirituality (the stylized magician’s hat as protective cover for very delicate saplings), and sexuality (the orgonic sea-shell) are also part of the basic lay-out.

The house is available in similar form for all people interested in country retreats in wooded regions off the coastal areas, where lot prices are affordable and bird sounds and occasional appearances of badgers, ferrets, or racoons delight the well-honed biophile sensitivities of the gentleman tramp.© 2021 by Herma Ecdysone, Kurt Schessmanweil, Torsten Slama

19th Century Farmhouse Revival Unit

September 24, 2012

Drawing of a 19th century farm house in Furtwangen, Schönenbach/Schwarzwald with modern sculpture made from gold plated square tubing in the foreground.

Black Forest House with (51) Pegasi B Square Tubing Sculpture
297x420mm, pencil, coloured pencil, copper leaf

Drawing of a  synthetic housing unit in the 19th century farmhouse revival style, located in Furtwangen, Schönenbach/Schwarzwald, with a mid-sized modernist sculpture in the foreground. The building hides its stilted construction under a deceptively massive outer hull made from  shingle and plaster, replicated in hard foam.

The modernist sculpture in the foreground, made from gold-plated square tubing, as used for vent shafts in extrasolar habitats, stays in harmonic contact with the floating space crystal and its recharging unit, thus establishing a meaningful connection between heaven and earth. The harmonies created are those of the rainbow and in a strictly diatonic minor (aeolian) scale. However, an important component of forbidden bulk second-harmonic generation is inseparable from the surface contribution in all practical experimental situations.

Freshly washed linen hanging from a line demonstrates a keen sense of order and cleanliness, balanced with enough taste and humanity to appreciate the beautiful artefacts created by faux decaying plaster and mock age-old brick work exposed which lend the house’s beautifully crafted outer coating its unique charm.© 2023 by Herma Ecdysone, Torsten Slama, Manfred Gorre, International Publications World Wide

City Church “Böblingen”

May 22, 2012

A city church for medium sized towns located beyond metropolitan regions in Europe

City Church “Böblingen”, 297x420mm, pencil, coloured pencil, gold leaf

Concept sketch for a city church. Spiritual energy levels in Central European cities and municipalities are in rapid decline. This development is not limited to European soil, but a worldwide problem. Decline in spiritual energy levels can be easily linked to the decline of criminal energy levels. Smoking bans, optimized street illumination schemes, and safety measures of all kinds make the reliance on spiritual energy to prevent hazardous accidents superfluous.

Certain measures can be taken to raise spiritual energy levels. Worship centres afford an opportunity to practice humility and are therefore the means of choice to raise spiritual energy levels.

This design is especially suited for medium-sized towns located beyond metropolitan regions in Europe. The architecture is unobtrusive, with a light touch of Wilhelmian moodiness. The building has a compact form factor, can easily be prefabricated in great quantities from lightweight plastics (e.g. NALDENE™ by Thermo Fisher Scientific) and anchored where needed. Crystal spawning rocks scattered in the area create an esoteric mood, openness for revelations. Floating above is a cheap, nuclear powered energizer unit in the process of charging a small space crystal.© 2023 by Herma Ecdysone, Torsten Slama, Manfred Gorre, International Publications World Wide

Black Forest House with Mossi Figure

May 18, 2012

Lamassu/Shedu House "Janus" with ancestral figure of the Mossi tribe (Drawing by Torsten Slama)

Black Forest house “Janus” with Mossi ancestral figure (42×29,7cm, 2011)

A home for the pattern recognition therapist and his family in a mildly crystal-spawning setting, characterized by its gently rolling layer of powdery soil. The place is ideal as a retreat for the Lunar type who wants to escape the Solar world.

Two openings in the basement are permanently accessible to ensure a smooth functioning of the household machinery. The therapist and his wife, who works as a lawyer specialized in copyright infringement and such, and is out during the day, share a bedroom suite and an annexed two sink bathroom under the roof. The children’s quarters, with separate entrance, are located in the back of the first floor. The therapist  his office in the frontal, thatched-roofed, lobe of the first floor. The office is soothingly illuminated through two large multi-colored windows. The entrance for patients is blocked by a large-scale replica of an ancestral figure of the Mossi tribe during sessions. The statue moves only when a secret slot is fed with a magnet card, of which only two copies exist, one for the master, one for the mistress.

The above-described family arrangement is fictional only. In truth the whole house is uninhabited and serves as a giant demonstration of the Jungian model of the human mind, complete with subconscious, atavistic mind, everyday consciousness (Real-I), and the lofty attic (Ideal-I), all separated into Anima- and Animus-dominated parts by a roof which, for reasons opaque to the modern, after-the-fact observer, is divided into a thatched and a shingled section. © 2017 Torsten Slama and International Publications Organisation World Wide

House “Djibi” for the Friend of all Animals

February 9, 2012

House "Djibi", painting by Torsten Slama, only authorized photographic reproduction

House “Djibi” for the Friend of all Animals. (Oil on canvas-covered panel w/ aluminium coated ornamental frame, 40×53 cm)

House “Djibi” is named after the cat-novel by Felix Salten. Some cats, a dog, and other animals are living and dying and killing each other in the house of an elderly school teacher and his wife. The teacher is grappling with a mild identity crisis, being undecided whether he is too soft of heart, and wishing himself to be stern and unrelenting, before deciding that he is, indeed, a soft sort of man.

Before being assigned its final title, the painting had a working title referring to August Derleth’s house-centered novel “The Lurker at the Threshold”.

The painting tries to look rather encrusted as opposed to smooth. The clouds are trying to look like clouds painted by Walter Leistikow. Flake White Hue and Transparent White were heavily used. Some areas do look like details from Cuthbert Hamilton Ellis’ paintings: rough and unfinished impasto effects prevail in an otherwhise naturalistic but unacademic style.

This is the photographic reproduction authorized by the painter. There exists another photograph of this painting, discernible by ghastly colours and flat lighting, made by a careless professional with a good camera. True appreciation for a given subject in many cases is much better than indifferent technique and superior technology.

See also these verses from “Sophia Trenton: A Moral Poem” (Phi Beta Cappa Poem at Stanford University, June 19, 1920) by Leonard Bacon, as quoted in Donald Knuth’s “The TeXBook”:

Technique! The very word is like the shriek
Of outraged Art. It is the idiot name
Given to eff ort by those who are too weak,
Too weary, or too dull to play the game.

© 2017 Torsten Slama and International Publications Organisation World Wide

House “Borstel” with Floating Icosahedra

August 8, 2011

Half-Timbered, Thatched Roofed House near the River Stör with Group of Icosahedrons (297 x 420 mm)

Half-timbered brick house, typical of the marshy regions along the banks of the Stör river. The Stör is an artificial, straight, canal-like river with lovingly detailed riverbank flora, allowing for rich biodiversity, right tributary of the Isabgol, greatest river on the northern hemisphere of the planet Schüssler, which orbits around the sun Arsenum Jodatum in a minor galaxy.

The freely floating group of eikosahedral cages of Sigma-2, commonly called icosahedrons, is part of a scattered cloud of platonic solids which was created to protect vital parts of the planet’s surface from the deadly rays of its sun, thus enabling terraforming to render them habitable.

The illustrated house is the dwelling place for a pattern designer. The nearby willows, overall humidity, gurgling river sounds, create an inspirational atmosphere for the artist dealing in intricate interlocking form-processes.
© 2017 Torsten Slama and International Publications Organisation World Wide

Thatched Half-Timbered Brick House (Frisian Style) with Newtonian Prism

June 11, 2011

Thatched, half-timbered brick house Frisian style with Newtonian Anti Goethe Prism

Thatched, half-timbered brick house in the Frisian style, with Newtonian prism, fully synthetic, located in Uurd II

This country home in the Frisian style offers shelter for progressive democrats of the protestant northern variety (deep sunk eyes, long nose, pallor of skin) with a taste for the traditional. The pattern designer living in this house enjoys her Bünting tea with rock candy and cream.

The house features a conventional Space Crystal accompanied by a free-moving prism made of a special ultra-clear aluminium compound, commemorating Newton’s discovery of the fraction of light and his victory over Germany’s Goethe with his idealistic notions about the distribution and nature of colours. The house itself is made of hardened plastic foam blocks in the style of bricks and framework. It is lightweight yet offers superb thermal insulation.

The two trees on the left are of a very rare succulent variety first described by the eminent space plant historian Rick Skrebus: Arborum Astrolobum Uitewaal-Darling.
*
The crystals in the foreground are of the urobilin-coloured variety. Urobilins are the breakdown products of the bile pigment bilirubin. Bilirubin is itself a breakdown product of the heme part of hemoglobin from worn-out red blood cells. Alchemists believed them to be a special transmutation of gold. © 2017 Torsten Slama and International Publications Organisation World Wide 
See also the dedicated site for Low Density Settlement Units for Space People© 2017 Torsten Slama and International Publications Organisation World Wide

Non-Aristotelian high-speed Passenger Train

April 29, 2011

Non-Aristotelian Passenger Train after Gustav Reder (A3, pencil and coloured pencil on paper)

This Non-Aristotelian Passenger Train, connecting two subterranean cities on the Planet Gorre, can be seen here racing at full speed through the very hot desert Daphetid, whose sulphuretted carbon sands catalyze a photochemical conversion of atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia by sunlight.  Days on the Planet Gorre last for 376 Earth-hours, and at midday this desert becomes so hot that spontaneous gestation of Salamanders (Caudata and Urodela) occurs.

The Train is modelled after an Edwardian original, but is based on a completely different kind of technology. Whereas the original depends on fossil fuels as a propellant, this engine uses completely different concepts of power generation, based on Alfred Korzybski’s findings as laid out in his General Semantics, E-Prime. It forms an inseparable bond with two elongated Space Crystals, one working as a regular pumping lemma, the second one as the much more powerful Ogden’s lemma, providing extra energy when particularly hot areas have to be crossed at extra high-speed. The above design copyright (c) 2017 by Torsten Slama and International Pictorial Publications Organization World Wide

Cross Fell House

April 18, 2011

Cross Fell House, Drawing by Torsten Slama

“Cross Fell House” , Low Density Settlement Unit Designs for Space People‎ (Pencil and colored pencil on paper, A4, 2011)

Cross Fell House is the recreation of a municipal building standing at Crossfell, Bracknell Forest, near Mill Pond, Bracknell, United Kingdom.

 This Design based on the building in its original condition, as featured in the 1972 film The Offence by Sidney Lumet. © 2017 Torsten Slama and International Publications Organisation World Wide

House "Brussels"

April 12, 2011

House "Brussels" with Space Crystal and Charging Unit

This is a not too modest habitat for the well-to-do space traveller seeking a quiet and well secluded retirement haven. This scene shows the all-nourishing space crystal being replenished with essential polarized light with an s-like plane of incidence. This s-polarized light (s meaning senkrecht or, alternatively, sigma) is the light class of choice for a maintenance factor which is slightly deeper than broad, which means it is best suited for a person with deep-set eyes and a melancholic character with a tendency toward brooding, an educational type, tinged by Slavic characteristics, which can be considered representative of a special, slightly narrow-minded but noble humanity.

The joy in speculation and disputation, the tendency toward brooding and meditation, the craving for distances which can never be reached, that plunging into depths which can never be fathomed are more apparent here than a strong sense of reality, an openness to new ideas, or delight in humor and satire.

For more information, please visit the special site for Low Density Settlement Units for Space People The above design copyright (c) 2017 by Torsten Slama and International Pictorial Publications Organization World Wide

Experimental Moon Unit

January 30, 2011

Experimental Moon Unit, drawing by Torsten Slama

Experimental Moon Unit Design (Pencil and coloured pencil on paper, A4) (c) 2017 by International Publications Organisation World Wide

This housing unit for a family of four is designed to withstand extremes of temperature, dry rot, low gravity conditions, and is shielded against cosmic rays. It can be implanted with or without basement into any sufficiently dry surface, and is superbly coated to remain in good cosmetic condition even after years of use. Its lightweight construction allows for assembly from small parts in situ, yet the resulting form seems sturdy and solid. It therefore fulfills the psychological demands of its occupants for it to be protective, sheltering, and sufficiently shielded from the outside.

The special static properties of the Moon Unit render it unsuited for planets with gravity higher than 0.3 g, therefore, despite its low price, it is not to be used as a basic family unit for settlements on the planets Earth, Venus, or even Mars, but extremely well suited for the planets Mercury and Pluto, the Moon of the Earth, Phobos and Deimos of Mars, or the moons of Jupiter or most of Saturn’s moons, and the 13 moons of Neptune.    Experimental Moon Unit Design (c) 2017 Torsten Slama and International Publications World Wide

Low Density Settlement Unit Designs for Space People

January 26, 2011

Modern Bungalow - Night Ocean House (A4, pencil and coloured pencil on paper)

In the year 2072, thanks to the invention of the Schessmanweil Field Generator, interstellar travel at the speed of light and above will finally be possible. Due to several unforeseen consequences of the theories of  special and general relativity (especially after the introduction of non-Aristotelian Logic and non-Euclidian Geometry)  at speeds faster than light, resulting in a very wide margin of uncertainty about the behaviour of time during those travels, the return of a small percentage of early interstellar travellers can be awaited as of the year 2013.

The above design is part of a project for a secure living environment for those space people, where they can live peacefully, yet conveniently accessible to the information seeking scientific community.

Further design examples in a growing collection can be found here.  (c) 2017 by Torsten Slama and International Publications Organisation World Wide

Early Model Space Crystal Inductor

January 25, 2011

Speculative Rendering of a Space Crystal Inductor hovering low over the Surface of the Moon Psychopompos

Space Crystal Inductor hovering low over the Surface of the Moon Psychopompos

This speculative scene depicts an early model Space Crystal Inductor (SCI), hovering low over the surface of the moon Psychopompos which revolves in a large orbit around Pneuma, an unclassified planet of an unlisted star in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The medium-sized gaseous planet Pneuma can be seen in ascent, along with its second moon Klops IX. The SCI is fitted with an embedded crystal of high density, uni-polarized and small-scale. On Psychopompos it hopes to find infinitesimal lodes of rhombohedral methylin-3 crystals which it is to inseminate through its novel Ka-Band TE 21 second-harmonic gyro-TWT amplifier beam, thus catalysing an advanced crystalline growth, resulting in at least one new Space Crystal, which will then commence to levitate by means of its self-generated magnet field, to be guided by the SCI to its new home-planet, where it will be docked to a Human Settlement Unit (HSU), which it will guard and provide with energy on all wavelengths.  Copyright (c) 2017 by Torsten Slama and International Publications Organisation World Wide

Space Crystal Relay Station Schessmanweil with Ascending Maintenance Drone

January 5, 2011

Raumkristall Relaisstation / Space Crystal Relay Station. Drawing by Torsten Slama

Space Crystal Relay Station Schessmanweil with Ascending Maintenance Drone (pencil, colored pencil, gold leaf, 21×29,7cm, 2010)

This is one of thirteen design proposals for the experimental settlement Neutopia-Schessmanweil, a home for members of the Tellurian section of the Schessmanweil religion. The illustration above is a vital part of the colony’s service section, located in its northern part, Schessmanweil; a relay station which functions as a receiver for the sun worshipping rays of free-floating space crystals, modulate the frequencies around the n-spectrum to change them into tellurian energy particles, amplify them, and create a tellurian power dome around the settlement. The receiving unit itself is fairly innocuos, a standard model four-pronged poyutl, but needs constant maintenance and re-calibration of its vibration rate. This is done automatically and without human interference by the fully computerized maintenance drone also depicted. In the background some red brick private houses in the hills for the well-to-do lay priests.

If you are interested in seeing more designs for the planetary colony Neutopia-Schessmanweil, kindly redirect to the dedicated page “Neutopia Pläne”.(c) 2017 by Torsten Slama and Gottstein Strohkopp

HBATEC Meat Factory (Oorth)

August 26, 2010

HBATEC Meat Factory (Oorth)

A pictorial representation of a more modern meat factory on a planet in the Oorth Cloud. The dark sand surface of this planet turns it into a very efficient accumulator of the orgone-type energy its star emanates. The whole planet thus turns into a giant SAPA-bion breeder. The SAPA-bions are retrieved by means of special underground attractor devices and used as the raw material for meat generation. This factory is a gigantic scale recreation of its smaller sister plant, the original HBATEC Meat Factory, a former secret missile silo in Uurd. It will soon make this much smaller plant, which produces comparatively impure meat, obsolete, and is able to produce healthy, anti-cancerogenic, and highly nutritious synthetic meat for entire galaxies. This design © 2017 Torsten Slama and International Publications Organisation World Wide

A Free Gift of the Schessmanweil Powers

August 13, 2010

In this way the open-airiness
Might have stirr’d the settled
To the dispatche of all,
For each half-slept or askant
State would have deceast as the
Recipient of a free gift from the
Schessmanweil Powers

-Anonymous

HBATEC Meat Factory

June 15, 2010

HBATEC Meat Factory (Uurd); formerly The Secret Missile Silo

This factory for the fully automatized production of synthetic meat, owned by the HBATEC corporation, is housed in a former secret missile silo. The residual background radiation in the area stimulates the growth of artificial meat cells, renders the use of antibiotics to prevent bacterial infections unnecessary, and ensures a certain degree of privacy to the undertaking. Artificial meat is not considered desirable, but soon will play a vital role in the global diet plan. The Chinese-Turkish HBATEC corporation recognizes global needs before they become public desires. HBATEC is also one of the chief suppliers of the highly specialized biotechnological transistors employed in mood organs all over the galaxy. This meat factory is located in the approximate center of Uurd, a vast desert on the planet Wolf XII in the Draco Cloud. Its nearest distribution centers with spaceports are Gorre at the southernmost tip of the desert, and Daphetid, located in the foothills of a mountainous region to the north.  Copyright (c) 2017 by Torsten Slama and A. U. Thor

Teleportational Gateway on the Planet Uurd

March 30, 2010

The Win-Win Multi-Dimensional Gateway, Planet Uurd, Schessmanweil-Neutopia

The following text is a mildly revised excerpt from “The Manual: Teleportation by Means of the Kind Light and the Diagram of a 4-Dimensional Object.” by Gottstein Strohkopp, P. U. Blisher, Ginnungagab, 2017
[…]
4. The above image is a 2-dimensional depiction of a 4-dimensional object. This object is related to a cube in the same way in which a cube is related to a square. We call this object a “Qube”.
5. Concentrate on the image above. Try to see the inherent plasticity of the depicted object. It should gradually begin to appear like a floating, 3-dimensional object, detaching itself from the background.
6. Concentrate more, try to see the regularity of the object. Try to discern one side, of which it has 32 identical ones in total. Concentrate on that side and declare it the side nearest to you. This is your referential plane.
7. Concentrate on the fact that this plane is connected to one plane which mirrors it and is at the same time projected onto three dimensions: a cube. In connection with your referential plane, you now see a “Qube”.
8. Superimpose the idea of the place you want to visit onto the referential plane of the Qube. Make it into a mental, 3-dimensional model of that place. Connect it now to the mirror plane, and project it onto the fourth dimension.
9. Now be extremely careful. Focus your awareness, regulate your depth-perception, contract your field of vision. You should not be able to discern the monitor in front of you, nor any part of your actual surroundings, but only the 4-dimensional image of the place you are going to visit.
10. Concentrate on this image, stop all other thought processes, fall asleep.
Note: once you start this process of teleportation, it is inadvisable to suddenly interrupt it at any point. Sudden interruption at any point will lead to undesirable effects, ranging from mild disorientation to the complete unhinging of all mental faculties, resulting either in temporary catatonia or symptoms similar to those exhibited by patients suffering from Huntinton-Chorea (Veitstanz).
11. You should now awake at your destination. You can move there freely, and return at will by mentally stimulating your sympathetic awareness center.
Note: this does not induce a “dreamlike” state. You will not experience flashbacks, disconcerting locational jumps, or other disturbing phenomena common to dreams. You will actually visit the desired place, you will be able to walk about and even interact with objects. This ability to interact will cease whenever another person comes into perception range. This includes being watched by video devices etc. You will be invisible to others and will not be able to move, you will be in fact locked in position, as long as any other person will be able to perceive you, be it on the auditory, olfactory, or visual level. Therefore you will not be detected. You can either wait in that locked state until the person leaves perceptive range, or return by the method described above.
Copyright (c) 2017 by Torsten Slama and Gottstein Strohkopp

The Herbert-Bayer-Memorial Power Plant

March 3, 2010

The Quasi-Euclidean Boibel-Loth

After two regional blackouts in 2017, The Western Systems Coordinating Instrumentality (WSCI) will institute guidelines to verify that, for grid connected generators, the stated data represents accurate information that could reliably be used in the dynamic modeling of the system. It will be of vital importance for the future of world-wide energy reliability to archive and catalogue all experiences with the applications of WSCI’s test guidelines to mid size units built and commissioned by independent power producers.

The above-illustrated “Quasi-Euclidean Boibel-Loth” is a novel design which addresses concerns with the excitation and voltage control systems and their limitations. It is an example of a generation unit connected at the end of a long line, and demonstrates variances associated with testing and operating under extreme conditions. The concerns and issues observed are of importance to IPPs beyond the WSCI’s system as many other reliability councils are adopting rules similar to those established by WSCI.

Space-Crystal for Sun-Worshippers

January 20, 2010

Essay on Interplanetary Communication: Thoughts in Space. Space Art by Torsten Slama

Essay on Interplanetary Communication: Thoughts in Space. A Speculative Rendition.

This artificially bred space crystal, ten times more dense than an ordinary diamond, yet super-lightweight, is installed in the center of an impassable desert on the remote planet Elorg and converts solar light rays into mental energy which can be transferred to human minds and induce heliocentrism, or sun worshipping,  a quasi-religious, symbolistic mental attitude which is instrumental in creating or maintaining hierarchical, evolving, essentially unstable societies.

The atomic grid of this crystal is dense, but very loose, so that the carbon molecules are oscillating in a random pattern, and the optical properties of the crystal are that of a non-linear amplifier. The complex-refractive-index spectra with an anomalous dispersion around a J-aggregate absorption band are randomly changing, thus ever new, hypnotic patterns are being produced. The golden four-pronged poyutl in the foreground samples the light patterns and serves as a converter from optical to mental wavelengths. The resulting encephalographic patterns are sent to a relay station, which broadcasts the mind-patterns over entire galaxies. This is an experimental installation. The crystal is held suspended in mid-air by photon energy.     Copyright (c) 2017 by Torsten Slama and Gottstein Strohkopp