Welcome to a new film series from The Modern House: Modern Makers. Over the next few months, we’ll be taking you inside the studios of a creative bunch of makers who produce modern, beautiful pieces for the home. Expect to hear from a ceramicist, weaver and, for the first instalment, glassblower Jochen Holz. Watch Jochen at work and hear him reflect on inspiration, technique and the fragility of glass.
Tag Archives: Profiles
Theorectical Physics: The ‘Constructor Theory’ Of Oxford’s Chiara Marletto
“Declaring something impossible leads to more things being possible,” writes the physicist Chiara Marletto. “Bizarre as it may seem, it is commonplace in quantum physics.”
Chiara Marletto is trying to build a master theory — a set of ideas so fundamental that all other theories would spring from it. Her first step: Invoke the impossible.
Constructor Theory is a new approach to formulating fundamental laws in physics. Instead of describing the world in terms of trajectories, initial conditions and dynamical laws, in constructor theory laws are about which physical transformations are possible and which are impossible, and why. This powerful switch has the potential to bring all sorts of interesting fields, currently regarded as inherently approximative, into fundamental physics. These include the theories of information, knowledge, thermodynamics, and life.
Read more about Marletto and David Deutsch’s constructor theory at Quanta Magazine: https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-to…
Artist Profiles: French Painter Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721)
Director Colin B. Bailey takes a close look at three drawings by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721), considered some of the finest drawings in the Morgan’s collection: Seated Young Woman (ca. 1716), Young Woman Wearing a Chemise (ca. 1718), and Two Studies of the Head and Shoulders of a Little Girl.
Profiles: Dutch Painter Vincent Van Gogh (Video)
Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch post-impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life.
Views: Lives Of The Super-Rich In Congo, Africa
Many millionaires live in the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the world’s poorest countries. This film depicts some of those who have made fortunes amid the chaos, including musicians, mining bosses, entrepreneurs and preachers. The DRC is rich in raw materials, but only a few profit from its natural resources.
While 60% of Congo’s inhabitants live on less than $1.25 per day, businessmen, artists, former rebel leaders and evangelists are reaping the rewards of economic growth. In the capital, Kinshasa, these new rich live in safe and luxurious enclaves, while children toil in coltan mines in the eastern part of the country. Fally Ipupa has made his money with music.
Others rely on their business acumen, like Patricia Nzolantima, who founded a taxi company and aims to give more opportunities to women. With 3,000 mine workers, Cooperamma is the largest employer in North Kivu, in the east of the DRC. Managing director Robert Seninga says his coltan mines are extremely well-run, yet safety standards are poor. Coltan, a globally coveted mineral, is used in cell phones and other devices. It’s both a blessing and a curse for the Congo. It makes some rich, but for others it means death. The region still suffers from ethnic and factional conflicts, with money from illegal coltan smuggling financing new violence. It’s a vicious cycle.
Art: ‘Hurricane Paintings’ Of Chinese-French Painter Zao Wou-Ki (1921 – 2013)
Zao Wou-Ki was a Chinese-French painter. He was a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Zao Wou-Ki graduated from the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, where he studied under Fang Ganmin and Wu Dayu.
Master artist Zao Wou-Ki was one of the titans of Chinese art in the post- war period. His energetic painting ‘13.02.62’, offered in our upcoming auction Beyond Legends: Modern Art Evening Sale (18 April | Hong Kong), is from the artist’s powerful ‘Hurricane Period’ when he arrived at the pinnacle of his career. Discover how Zao perfectly fused Eastern culture with Western modernism, bringing dynamic inspiration to this work.
Science Research: What Is The ‘Berkeley Lab’ (Video)
The Lawrence Lab? The Berkeley Lab? Lawrence Livermore Berkeley Lab? Luther Burbank Laboratory? Berkeley Countrywide Laboratory? Nope. Not quite. We’re Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, or Berkeley Lab for short. But we do understand the confusion — it’s hard to remember names, especially when so many sound alike! So we jammed 90 years of history into less than 3 minutes to help you get it right.
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, commonly referred to as Berkeley Lab, is a United States national laboratory that conducts scientific research on behalf of the Department of Energy. Located in the hills of Berkeley, California, the lab overlooks the campus of the University of California, Berkeley.
Inside Views: Ali MacGraw & Ryan O’Neal On The Filming Of “Love Story”
Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz interviews the stars of the classic tearjerker, “Love Story,” to talk about the making of an unlikely box office blockbuster, and asks: What does “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” really mean?
Video Profile: How Danny Meyer Built ‘Shake Shack’
It’s hard to think of a bigger restaurant success story over the last decade than Shake Shack. The high-end burger chain began as a hot dog cart in 2001 in New York City’s Madison Square Park by famed restaurateur Danny Meyer. The menu was handwritten written by Meyer on a single sheet of paper in about 10 minutes and is about 85 percent the same today.
But there’s so much more to this story. Like for three years after 9/11 that hot dog cart paid the bills at the crown jewel of Meyer’s restaurant empire, Eleven Madison Park. Or how he wasted over a million developing a line of French fries only to throw them away out of pure pride. If Danny Meyer is the heart and soul of Shake Shack, its longtime CEO Randy Garutti is the engine that powers it. Here’s how they built Shake Shack.
Arts Profile: ‘Cairde – Irish Riverdance Group’ (Video)
Cairde is a dance group that exemplifies Irish dance. As early as several thousand years ago the druids – high priests of the Celts – were said to have performed ritual group dances accompanied with music. This is possibly the root of the folk dances that later developed in Ireland to become part of the island’s cultural heritage. However, Cairde take a less traditional approach to Irish dance, aiming to give it a fresh image. These young men from Ireland have already received millions of clicks on their TikTok dance videos.
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