Reflections in a Golden Eye (novel)

Reflections in a Golden Eye is a 1941 novel by American author Carson McCullers.
It first appeared in "Harper's Bazaar" in 1940, serialized in the October–November issues. The book was published by Houghton Mifflin on February 14, 1941, to mostly poor reviews. The book was dedicated to the Swiss journalist, travel writer and novelist Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908–1942), whom McCullers had met and befriended in the summer of 1940 (after the book was finished).
It was adapted as a 1967 film of the same name, featuring Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando.
Conception.
McCullers wrote the book in 1939, originally using the title "Army Post". She said the story had germinated when, as an adolescent, she had first stepped into the alien territory of Fort Benning in Georgia. A more direct inspiration came from a chance remark which her husband Reeves (an ex-soldier) made to her about a voyeur who had been arrested at Fort Bragg; a young soldier had been caught peeping inside the married officers' quarters.
McCullers wrote the novel while in Fayetteville, North Carolina, near Fort Bragg. After two months of arduous writing, she finished her manuscript and put it away in a dresser. She later said of it:
I am so immersed in my characters that their motives are my own. When I write about a thief, I become one; when I write about Captain Penderton, I become a homosexual man. I become the characters I write about and I bless the Latin poet Terence who said 'Nothing human is alien to me.'
Plot summary.
The novel takes place at an army base in the U.S. state of Georgia. Private Ellgee Williams, a solitary man full of secrets and desires, has served for two years and is assigned to stable duty. After doing yard work at the home of Capt. Penderton, he sees the captain's wife nude and becomes obsessed with her.
Capt. Weldon Penderton and his wife Leonora, who grew up as an Army brat, have a fiery relationship, and she takes many lovers. Leonora's current lover, Major Morris Langdon, lives with his depressed wife Alison and her flamboyant houseboy Anacleto, near the Pendertons.
Capt. Penderton, as a closeted homosexual, realizes that he is physically attracted to Pvt. Williams, but remains unaware of the private's attraction to Leonora.
Reception and critical analysis.
After its publication in 1941, the novel caused some consternation in Columbus, Georgia and at Fort Benning, where people speculated about the source of McCullers' tale.
According to author Michael Bronski, McCullers tackled the topics of "homosexuality, sadism, voyeurism, and fetishism while exploring the boundaries of eroticism, outsider status and the fragility of normal in the novel."
Anthony Slide, another 21st-century scholar, considers "Reflections in a Golden Eye" to be one of only four well-known gay novels in the English language in the first half of the 20th century. The other three are Djuna Barnes' "Nightwood", Truman Capote's "Other Voices, Other Rooms", and Gore Vidal's "The City and the Pillar".
Adaptation.
A 1967 film adaptation of "Reflections in a Golden Eye" was directed by John Huston. It stars Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Julie Harris, Brian Keith and Robert Forster.


John C. Mula

John C. Mula (December 31, 1942 – February 25, 2018) was an American art director and production designer known for his work on television shows, including "Barney Miller", "Charles in Charge", and "Boy Meets World". In 1991, Mula won a Primetime Emmy Award for art direction for his work on the ABC and Jim Henson Productions comedic television series, "Dinosaurs".
Mula was born on December 31, 1942, in Brooklyn, New York. His career in television art director began on the set of the game show "The Joker's Wild" in 1972. Mula worked on the production of a variety of television game shows during the 1970s and 1980s, including "Family Feud", "Liar's Club", "Win, Lose or Draw", "Tic-Tac-Dough", "Break the Bank", and "Face the Music".
John Mula worked on the set design of the ABC police sitcom, "Barney Miller", for the series' first six seasons from 1975 to 1980. He then worked on "Charles in Charge" from 1984 until 1990 from seasons one through five, as well as its transition to syndication.
John C. Mula died on February 25, 2018, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at the age of 75 following a short illness. He was survived by his husband, Sergio, and two daughters, Joanna and Jodi.


Fanny Harlfinger-Zakucka

Fanny Harlfinger-Zakucka (1873-1954) was an Austrian painter, graphic artist and craftswoman.
Biography.
Harlfinger-Zakucka née Zakucka was born on May 26, 1873 in Mank. She studied at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She was married to the painter and both were active in the Vienna Secession. She was also a member of the "Vereinigung bildender Künstlerinnen Österreichs" (Austrian Association of Women Artists) and the Wiener Werkstätte. In 1926 she helped organize Wiener Frauenkunst (Viennese Women's Art).
Harlfinger-Zakucka died on September 19, 1954 in Vienna. Her work was included in the 2012 exhibit "Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900–2000" at the Museum of Modern Art. Her work was included in the 2019 exhibition "City Of Women: Female artists in Vienna from 1900 to 1938" at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere.


Java Naming and Directory Interface

The Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) is a Java API for a directory service that allows Java software clients to discover and look up data and resources (in the form of Java objects) via a name. Like all Java APIs that interface with host systems, JNDI is independent of the underlying implementation. Additionally, it specifies a service provider interface (SPI) that allows directory service implementations to be plugged into the framework. The information looked up via JNDI may be supplied by a server, a flat file, or a database; the choice is up to the implementation used.
Typical uses of JNDI include:
Background.
The Java RMI and Java EE APIs use the JNDI API to look up objects in a network.
The API provides:
The SPI portion allows support for practically any kind of naming or directory service, including:
Sun Microsystems first released the JNDI specification on March 10, 1997. , the current version is JNDI 1.2.
Basic lookup.
JNDI (Java Naming and Directory Interface) organizes its names into a hierarchy. A name can be any string such as "com.example.ejb.MyBean". A name can also be an object that implements the codice_1 interface; however a string is the most common way to name an object. A name is bound to an object in the directory by storing either the object or a reference to the object in the directory service identified by the name.
The JNDI API defines a context that specifies where to look for an object. The initial context is typically used as a starting point.
In the simplest case, an initial context must be created using the specific implementation and extra parameters required by the implementation. The initial context will be used to look up a name. The initial context is analogous to the root or top of a directory tree for a file system. Below is an example of creating an initial context:
Hashtable contextArgs = new Hashtable<String, String>();
// First you must specify the context factory.
// This is how you choose between jboss implementation
// vs. an implementation from Sun or other vendors.
contextArgs.put( Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY, "com.jndiprovider.TheirContextFactory" );
// The next argument is the URL specifying where the data store is:
contextArgs.put( Context.PROVIDER_URL, "jndiprovider-database" );
// (You may also have to provide security credentials)
// Next you create the initial context
Context myCurrentContext = new InitialContext(contextArgs);
A context is then used to look up previously bound names in that context. For example:
MyBean myBean = (MyBean) myCurrentContext.lookup("com.mydomain.MyBean");
Alternative to above code is as below:
The Context object can also be configured by adding jndi.properties file in classpath containing initial context factory class name and provider URL. The above code will be reduced as shown below:
//just need to create initial context object, it will try to read jndi.properties file from the classpath.
Context myCurrentContext = new InitialContext();
A context is then used to look up previously bound names in that context. For example:
MyBean myBean = (MyBean) myCurrentContext.lookup("com.mydomain.MyBean");
Searching.
Attributes may be attached to special entries called directories. Directories enable searching for objects by their associated attributes. Directories are a type of context; they restrict the name space much like a directory structure on a file system does.


Mily Balakirev

Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev (; 2 January 1837  – ) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor known today primarily for his work promoting musical nationalism and his encouragement of more famous Russian composers, notably Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. He began his career as a pivotal figure, extending the fusion of traditional folk music and experimental classical music practices begun by composer Mikhail Glinka. In the process, Balakirev developed musical patterns that could express overt nationalistic feeling. After a nervous breakdown and consequent sabbatical, he returned to classical music but did not wield the same level of influence as before.
In conjunction with critic and fellow nationalist Vladimir Stasov, in the late 1850s and early 1860s, Balakirev brought together the composers now known as The Five (a.k.a., The Mighty Handful)the others were Alexander Borodin, César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. For several years, Balakirev was the only professional musician of the group; the others were amateurs limited in musical education. He imparted to them his musical beliefs, which continued to underlie their thinking long after he left the group in 1871, and encouraged their compositional efforts. While his methods could be dictatorial, the results of his influence were several works which established these composers' reputations individually and as a group. He performed a similar function for Tchaikovsky at two points in the latter's careerin 1868–69 with the fantasy-overture "Romeo and Juliet" and in 1882–85 with the "Manfred" Symphony.
As a composer, Balakirev finished major works many years after he had started them; he began his First Symphony in 1864 but completed it in 1897. The exception to this was his oriental fantasy "Islamey" for solo piano, which he composed quickly and remains popular among virtuosos. Often, the musical ideas normally associated with Rimsky-Korsakov or Borodin originated in Balakirev's compositions, which Balakirev played at informal gatherings of The Five. However, his slow pace in completing works for the public deprived him of credit for his inventiveness, and pieces that would have enjoyed success had they been completed in the 1860s and 1870s made a much smaller impact.
Life.
Early years.
Balakirev was born in Nizhny Novgorod into a noble Russian family. His father, Alexey Konstantinovich Balakirev (1809—1869), was a titular councillor who belonged to the ancient dynasty founded by Ivan Vasilievich Balakirev, a Moscow boyar and voivode who led Russian army against the Khanate of Kazan during the 1544 expedition (Alexey's branch traced its history to Andrei Simonovich Balakirev who took part in the 1618 Siege of Moscow and was granted lands in Nizhny Novgorod). The legend of supposed Tatar ancestor who was baptized and took part in the Battle of Kulikovo as Dmitry Donskoy's personal khorunzhyi that circulated among fellow composers was made up by Balakirev and doesn't find any proof.
Mily's mother was Elizaveta Ivanovna Balakireva (née Yasherova). The noble title was first granted to her father Ivan Vasilievich Yasherov who went a long way from a collegiate registrar to a State Councillor. The name Mily (either from Russian "miliy" — "nice", or from Greek "Milos" — island of the same name) was a traditional male name in her family. She gave piano lessons to her son since the age of four, and when he turned ten she took him to Moscow during the summer holidays for a course of ten piano lessons with Alexander Dubuque. She died in 1847 from smallpox.
Balakirev studied at the Nizhny Novgorod gymnasium. After his mother's death, he was transferred to the Nizhny Novgorod Noble Institute of Alexander II where he studied from 1849 to 1853. Balakirev's musical talents did not remain unnoticed, as he soon found a patron in Alexander Ulybyshev (Oulibicheff). Ulybyshev was considered the leading musical figure and patron in Nizhny Novgorod; he owned a vast musical library and was the author of a biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and other books on Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven.
Balakirev's musical education was placed in the hands of the pianist Karl Eisrach, who also arranged the regular musical evenings at the Ulybyshev estate. Through Eisrach, Balakirev was given opportunities to read, play and listen to music and was exposed to the music of Frédéric Chopin and Mikhail Glinka. Eisrach and Ulybyshev also allowed Balakirev to rehearse the count's private orchestra in rehearsals of orchestral and choral works. Eventually, Balakirev, still aged only 14, led a performance of Mozart's "Requiem". At 15, he was allowed to lead rehearsals of Beethoven's First and Eighth Symphonies. His earliest surviving compositions date from the same year—the first movement of a septet for flute, clarinet, piano and strings and a "Grande Fantasie on Russian Folksongs" for piano and orchestra. The first movement of an octet for piano, flute, oboe, horn, violin, viola, cello, and double bass dates from 1855 survives.
Balakirev left the Alexandrovsky Institute in 1853 and entered the University of Kazan as a mathematics student, along with his friend P.D. Boborikin, who later became a novelist. He was soon noted in local society as a pianist and was able to supplement his limited finances by taking pupils. His holidays were spent either at Nizhny Novgorod or on the Ulybyshev country estate at Lukino, where he played numerous Beethoven sonatas to help his patron with his book on the composer. Works from this period include a piano fantasy based on themes from Glinka's opera "A Life for the Tsar", an attempt at a string quartet, three songs which would eventually be published in 1908 and the opening movement (the only one completed) of his First Piano Concerto.
After Balakirev completed his courses in the late autumn of 1855, Ulybyshev took him to Saint Petersburg, where he met Glinka. While Glinka considered Balakirev's compositional technique defective (there were as yet no music textbooks in Russian and Balakirev's German was barely adequate), he thought highly of his talent, encouraging him to take up music as a career. Their acquaintance was marked by discussions, by Glinka passing several Spanish musical themes to Balakirev, and with Glinka entrusting the young man with the musical education of his four-year-old niece. Balakirev made his debut in a university concert in February 1856, playing the completed movement from his First Piano Concerto. This was followed a month later with a concert of his piano and chamber compositions. In 1858, he played the solo part in Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto before the Tsar. In 1859, he had 12 songs published. Nevertheless, he was still in extreme poverty, supporting himself mainly by giving piano lessons (sometimes nine a day) and by playing at "soirées" given by the aristocracy.
The Five.
The deaths of Glinka in 1857 and Ulybyshev the following year left Balakirev without influential supporters. Nevertheless, his time with Glinka had sparked a passion for Russian nationalism within Balakirev, leading him to adopt the stance that Russia should have its own distinct school of music, free from Southern and Western European influences. He had also started meeting other important figures who would abet him in this goal in 1856, including César Cui, Alexander Serov, the Stasov brothers and Alexander Dargomyzhsky. He now gathered around him composers with similar ideals, whom he promised to train according to his own principles. These included Modest Mussorgsky in 1858, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in November 1861 and Alexander Borodin in November or December 1862. Together with Cui, these men were described by noted critic Vladimir Stasov as "a mighty handful" (, "Moguchaya kuchka"), but they eventually became better known in English simply as The Five.
As an instructor and influence of magnetic personality, Balakirev inspired his comrades to improbable heights of musical creativity. However, he vehemently opposed academic training, considering it a threat to the musical imagination. It was better in his view to begin composing right away and learn through that act of creation. This line of reasoning could be argued as a rationalization to his own lack of technical training. He had been trained as a pianist and had to discover his own way to becoming a composer. Rimsky-Korsakov eventually realized as much, but nevertheless wrote:
Balakirev, who had never had any systematic course in harmony and counterpoint and had not even superficially applied himself to them, evidently thought such studies quite unnecessary... An excellent pianist, a superior sight reader of music, a splendid improviser, endowed by nature with a sense of correct harmony and part-writing, he possessed a technique partly native and partly acquired through a vast musical erudition, with the help of an extraordinarily keen and retentive memory, which means so much in steering a critical course in musical literature. Then, too, he was a marvelous critic, especially a "technical" critic. He instantly felt every technical imperfection or error, he grasped a defect in form at once.
Balakirev had the musical experience that the others in The Five lacked, and he instructed them much as he instructed himself—by an empirical approach, learning how other composers solved various problems by sifting through their scores and seeing how they addressed those challenges. While this approach may have been helpful for Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov writes, it was not so helpful for individuals completely different in nature from Balakirev or who matured as composers "at different intervals and in a different manner".
Balakirev's eventual undoing was his demand that his students' musical tastes coincide exactly with his own, with the slightest deviation prohibited. Whenever one of them played one of his own compositions for Balakirev, Balakirev would seat himself at the piano and show, through improvisation, how he felt the composition should be changed. Passages in other people's works came out sounding like his music, not their own. By the late 1860s, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov stopped accepting what they now considered his high-handed meddling with their work, and Stasov began to distance himself from Balakirev. The other members of The Five also became interested in writing opera, a genre Balakirev did not consider highly, after the success of Alexander Serov's opera "Judith" in 1863, and gravitated toward Alexander Dargomyzhsky as a mentor in this field.
Saint Petersburg Conservatory and Free School of Music.
The formation of The Five paralleled the early years of Tsar Alexander II, a time of innovation and reform in the political and social climate in Russia. The Russian Musical Society (RMS) and the musical conservatories in St. Petersburg and Moscow were all established at this time. While these institutions had powerful champions in Anton Rubinstein and Nikolai Rubinstein, others feared the influence of German instructors and musical precepts into Russian classical music. Balakirev's sympathies and closest contacts were in the latter camp, and he frequently made derogatory comments about the German "routine" which, he believed, came at the expense of the composer's originality.
Balakirev was outspoken in his opposition to Anton Rubinstein's efforts. This opposition was partly ideological and partly personal. Anton Rubinstein was at that time the only Russian able to live on his art, while Balakirev had to live on income from piano lessons and recitals played in the salons of the aristocracy. At stake was a viable career in music as artistic director of the Russian Musical Society. Balakirev attacked Rubinstein for his conservative musical tastes, especially for his leaning on German masters such as Mendelssohn and Beethoven, and for his insistence on professional musical training. Balakirev's followers were similarly outspoken. Mussorgsky, for instance, called the Saint Petersburg Conservatory a place where Rubinstein and Nikolai Zaremba, who taught music theory there, dressed "in professional, antimusical togas, first pollute their students' minds, then seal them with various abominations." There was also a petty, personal side to Balakirev's attacks. Rubinstein had written an article in 1855 that was critical of Glinka. Glinka had taken the article badly, and Balakirev likewise took Rubinstein's criticism personally. Moreover, Rubinstein was of German and Jewish descent, and Balakirev's comments were at times anti-Semitic and xenophobic.
The pro-Conservatory followers publicly called The Five "amateurs"—a justified charge, as Balakirev was the only professional musician of the group. To counteract these criticisms and to aid in the creation of a distinctly "Russian" school of music, Balakirev and Gavriil Lomakin, a local choirmaster, founded the Free School of Music () in 1862. Like the RMS, the Free School offered concerts as well as education. Unlike the RMS, the Free School offered music education at no charge to students. The school also emphasized singing, especially choral singing, to meet the demands of the Russian Orthodox Church. Lomakin was appointed director, with Balakirev serving as his assistant. To raise funds for the school, Balakirev conducted orchestral concerts between 1862 and 1867, while Lomakin conducted choral ones. These concerts offered less conservative programming musically than the RMS concerts. They included the music of Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Glinka and Alexander Dargomyzhsky, and the first works of The Five.
Mature works and Prague visit.
Balakirev spent the summer of 1862 in the Caucasus, mainly in Essentuki, and was impressed enough by the region to return there the following year and in 1868. He noted down folk tunes from that region and from Georgia and Iran; these tunes would play an important part in his musical development. One of the first compositions to show this influence was his setting of Alexander Pushkin's "Georgian song", while a quasi-oriental style appeared in other songs. In 1864, Balakirev considered writing an opera based on the folk legend of the Firebird (a subject upon which Igor Stravinsky would later base his ballet "The Firebird"), but abandoned the project due to the lack of a suitable libretto. He completed his Second Overture on Russian Themes that same year (1864), which was performed that April at a Free School concert and published in 1869 as a "musical picture" with the title "1000 Years".
In 1866, Balakirev's "Collection of Russian Folksongs" were published. These arrangements showed great insight into the rhythm, harmony and types of song, although the key signatures and elaborate textures of the piano accompaniments were not as idiomatic. He also started a Symphony in C major, of which he completed much of the first movement, scherzo and finale by 1866. Even at this point, however, Balakirev had trouble finishing large works; the symphony would not be finished until decades later. He began a second piano concerto in the summer of 1861, with a slow movement thematically connected with a requiem that occupied him at the same time. He did not finish the opening movement until the following year, then set aside the work for 50 years. He suffered from periods of acute depression, longed for death and thought about destroying all his manuscripts. He was still able to complete some works quickly. He began the original version of "Islamey" in August 1869, finishing it a month later. Nikolai Rubinstein premiered the "oriental fantasy," which Balakirev considered a sketch for his symphonic poem "Tamara", that December.
Balakirev also intermittently spent time editing Glinka's works for publication, on behalf of the composer's sister, Lyudmilla Shestakova. At her behest, he travelled to Prague in 1866 to arrange the production of Glinka's operas there. This project was delayed due to the Austro-Prussian War until the following year. The Prague production of "A Life for the Tsar" under the direction of Bedřich Smetana reportedly horrified Balakirev, with Balakirev taking issue with the musical tempos, the casting of various roles, and the costumes—"[i]t was as though Smetana was trying to turn the whole piece into a farce." "[F]ive weeks of quarrels, intrigues by Smetana and his party, and intensive rehearsals" followed, with Balakirev attending every rehearsal. Balakirev suspected Smetana and others were influenced by pro-Polish elements of the Czech press, which labeled the production a "Tsarist intrigue" paid for by the Russian government. He had difficulties with the production of "Ruslan and Lyudmila" under his direction, with the Czechs initially refusing to pay for the cost of copying the orchestral parts, and the piano reduction of the score, from which Balakirev was conducting rehearsals, mysteriously disappearing. Biographer Mikhail Tsetlin (aka Mikhail Zetlin) writes, "It is hard to say, nowadays, whether Balakirev's suspicions were fully justified or whether they were partly due to his own high-strung disposition." Regardless, though "A Life for the Tsar" and "Ruslan and Lyudmila" were successes, Balakirev's lack of tact and despotic nature created considerable ill feelings between him and others involved. Afterwards, he and Smetana no longer spoke to each other.
During this visit, Balakirev sketched and partly orchestrated an Overture on Czech Themes; this work would be performed at a May 1867 Free School concert given in honor of Slav visitors to the All-Russian Ethnographical Exhibition in Moscow. This was the concert for which, in his review, Vladimir Stasov coined the phrase "Moguchaya kuchka" ("Mighty Handful") to describe The Five.
Balakirev encouraged Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin to complete their first symphonies, whose premieres he conducted in December 1865 and January 1869 respectively. He also conducted the first performance of Mussorgsky's "The Destruction of Sennacherib" in March 1867 and the Polonaise from "Boris Godunov" in April 1872.
Waning influence and friendship with Tchaikovsky.
When Anton Rubinstein relinquished directorship of the RMS concerts in 1867, Balakirev was suggested to replace him. The conservative patron for the RMS, Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, agreed—provided Nikolai Zaremba, who had taken over for Rubinstein at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory was also appointed, along with a distinguished foreign composer. The choice of Berlioz as foreign conductor was widely lauded, but Balakirev's appointment was seen less enthusiastically. Balakirev's uncompromising nature caused tension at the RMS, and his preference for modern repertoire earned him the enmity of Elena Pavlovna. In 1869, she informed him that his services were no longer required.
The week after Balakirev's dismissal, an impassioned article in his defense appeared in "The Contemporary Chronicle". The author was Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Balakirev had conducted Tchaikovsky's symphonic poem "Fatum" and the "Characteristic Dances" from his opera "The Voyevoda" at the RMS, and "Fatum" had been dedicated to Balakirev. The appearance of Tchaikovsky's article may have been calculated, as he knew Elena Pavlovna was due in Moscow, where he lived, the day the article was to appear. He sent two notes to Balakirev; the first alerted him to Elena Pavlovna's planned presence in Moscow, and the second thanked Balakirev for criticisms he had made about "Fatum" just after conducting it. Balakirev's immediate response was positive and enthusiastic.
This exchange of letters grew into a friendship and a creative collaboration over the next two years, with Balakirev helping Tchaikovsky produce his first masterpiece, the fantasy-overture "Romeo and Juliet". After "Romeo and Juliet", the two men drifted apart as Balakirev took a sabbatical from the music world. In 1880, Balakirev received a copy of the final version of the score of "Romeo" from Tchaikovsky, care of the music publisher Besel. Delighted Tchaikovsky had not forgotten him, he replied with an invitation for Tchaikovsky to visit him in Saint Petersburg. In the same letter, he forwarded the programme for a symphony, based on Lord Byron's poem "Manfred", which Balakirev was convinced Tchaikovsky "would handle wonderfully well." This programme had originally been penned by Stasov for Hector Berlioz. Tchaikovsky initially refused, but two years later changed his mind, partly due to Balakirev's continued prodding over the project. The "Manfred" Symphony, finished in 1885, became the largest, most complex work Tchaikovsky had written to that point. As with "Romeo and Juliet" and "Fatum", Tchaikovsky dedicated the "Manfred" Symphony to Balakirev.
When Lomakin resigned as director of the Free Music School in February 1868, Balakirev took his place there. Once he had left the RMS, he concentrated on building attendance for concerts of the Free Music School. He decided to recruit popular soloists and found Nikolai Rubinstein ready to help. Elena Pavlovna was furious. She decided to raise the social level of the RMS concerts by attending them personally with her court. This rivalry caused financial difficulties for both concert societies as RMS membership declined and the Free Music School continued to suffer from chronic money troubles. Soon the Free Music School could not pay Balakirev and had to cut its 1870–71 series short. The RMS then scored the "coup de grâce" of assigning its programming to Mikhaíl Azanchevsky, who also took over as director of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1871. Azanchevsky was more progressively-minded musically than his predecessors, a staunch believer in contemporary music on the whole and Russian contemporary music in particular. For the opening concert of the RMS 1871–72 season, he had conductor Eduard Nápravník present the first public performances of Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet" and the polonaise from Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov". This implicit recognition of Balakirev's ideas made his own concerts seem unnecessary and redundant. Balakirev then hoped that a solo recital in his hometown of Nizhny Novgorod in September 1870 would restore his reputation and prove profitable. Neither happened—he played to an empty house, and the profits of the recital amounted to 11 rubles. Added to these professional troubles were the death of his father in June 1869, and the financial responsibility for his younger sisters resulting from it.
Breakdown and return to music.
In the spring of 1871, rumors circulated that Balakirev had suffered a nervous breakdown. Friends who visited him found no trace of his former self; in place of his former vivacity, energy and drive, they found him silent, withdrawn and lethargic. Borodin wrote to Rimsky-Korsakov that he wondered whether Balakirev's condition was little better than insanity. He was especially concerned about Balakirev's coolness toward musical matters, and hoped he would not follow the example of author Nikolai Gogol and destroy his manuscripts. He took a five-year break from music, and withdrew from his musical friends, but did not destroy his manuscripts; instead he stacked them neatly in one corner of his house. In his mental state, he neglected to give up his post as director of the Free Music School, and the directors of the school were at a loss as to what to do. He finally resigned in 1874 and was replaced by Rimsky-Korsakov. Nikolai Rubinstein offered him a professorship at the Moscow Conservatory but he refused, stating that his musical knowledge was basically empirical and that he did not have enough knowledge of music theory to take on such a position. Financial distress forced Balakirev to become a railway clerk on the Warsaw railroad line in July 1872.
In 1876, Balakirev slowly began reemerging into the music world, but without the intensity of his former years. Stasov wrote Rimsky-Korsakov in July that Balakirev was busy composing his symphonic poem "Tamara" but still did not wish to see any of his old musical circle, "for there would be talks about music, which he would not have under any circumstances. Nevertheless, he inquires about everything with interest..." Balakirev also began sending individuals to Rimsky-Korsakov for private lessons in music theory. This paved the way for Rimsky-Korsakov to make occasional visits to Balakirev. By the autumn, these visits had become frequent. Also, Lyudmilla Shestarova asked him to edit Glinka's works for publication, in consort with Anatoly Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov.
In 1881, Balakirev was offered the directorship of the Moscow Conservatory, along with the conductorship of the Moscow branch of the Russian Musical Society. Perhaps keeping in mind his experience with the Saint Petersburg branch of the Russian Musical Society years earlier, he declined the position. Instead, he resumed the directorship of the Free School of Music. In 1882, he finished "Tamara" and revised his "symphonic picture" "1,000 Years" two years later, retitling it "Rus". In 1883, he was appointed director of the Imperial Chapel; Rimsky-Korsakov eventually became his assistant. He held this post until 1895, when he took his final retirement and composed in earnest. Between 1895 and 1910 he completed two symphonies, a piano sonata and two movements of his Second Piano Concerto, along with republishing his collection of folk-song arrangements.
While Balakirev resumed musical Tuesday gatherings at his home by the 1880s, it was music patron Mitrofan Belyayev who became a fixture of the Russian classical music scene at this time. Some composers, including Alexander Glazunov and Rimsky-Korsakov, initially attended these meetings. However, Balakirev's modest gatherings eventually proved no match for Belyayev's lavish Friday gatherings, nor could he compete with the commissions, prizes and performances that Belyayev offered. Balakirev did not take advantage of Belyayev's services in these areas, as he felt that they promoted inferior music, and lowered the quality of Russian music. Musicologist Richard Taruskin asserts that another reason Balakirev did not participate with the Belyayev circle was that he was not comfortable participating in a group at which he was not at its center. The exception to this was Balakirev's collection of folk songs, to which Belyayev bought the rights after the death of the songs' initial publisher. Otherwise, Balakirev remained without a publisher until 1899, when he met the Saint Petersburg music publisher J.H. Zimmermann. It was through Zimmermann's efforts that Balakirev prepared several works for publication, including his two symphonies.
Unlike his earlier days, when he played works in progress at gatherings of The Five, Balakirev composed in isolation. He was aware that younger composers now considered his compositional style old-fashioned. Except initially for Glazunov, whom he brought to Rimsky-Korsakov as a prodigy, and his later acolyte Sergei Lyapunov, Balakirev was ignored by the younger generation of Russian composers.
Balakirev died on 29 May 1910 and was interred in Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in Saint Petersburg.
Personal life.
Balakirev apparently never married nor had any children since none are mentioned in biographical sources. In his earlier days he was politically liberal, a freethinker and an atheist; for a while, he considered writing an opera based on Chernishevsky's nihilistic novel "What is to Be Done?". For a while in the late 1860s he frequented a soothsayer to learn his fate with the Russian Musical Society. Rimsky-Korsakov wrote of these sessions, "Balakirev, who did not believe in God, became a believer in the Devil. The Devil brought it about that subsequently he came to believe in God too ... [T]he soothsaying ... cast a terror upon him".
Following his breakdown, Balakirev sought solace in the strictest sect of Russian Orthodoxy, dating his conversion to the anniversary of his mother's death in March 1871. The exact circumstances of that conversion are unknown, as no letters or diaries of his from this period have survived. Rimsky-Korsakov relates some of Balakirev's extremes in behavior at this point—how he had "given up eating meat, and ate fish, but ... only those which had died, never the killed variety"; how he would remove his hat and quickly cross himself whenever he passed by a church; and how his compassion for animals reached the point that whenever an insect was found in a room, he would carefully catch it and release it from a window, saying, "Go thee, deary, in the Lord, go!" Balakirev lived as a recluse in a house filled with dogs, cats and religious icons. The exception to this reclusiveness was the musical Tuesday evenings he held after his return to music in the 1870s and 80s. He also became a political reactionary and "xenophobic Slavophile who wrote hymns in honor of the dowager empress and other members of the royal family."
Rimsky-Korsakov mentions that some of Balakirev's character traits were present before his conversion but became intensified afterward. This was true of his general intolerance of viewpoints other than his own, but especially so with his anti-Semitism. His attacks on Anton Rubinstein in the 1860s became petty and anti-Semitic, and Jews were not admitted to the Free School during his earlier directorship. However, it was after his conversion that he suspected everyone he disliked to be of Jewish origin, and that he hated the Jews in general because they had crucified Christ. He became belligerent in his religious conversations with friends, insistent that they cross themselves and attend church with him. "All this medley of Christian meekness, backbiting, fondness for beasts, misanthropy, artistic interests, and a triviality worthy of an old maid from a hospice, all these struck everyone who saw him in those days", Rimsky-Korsakov wrote, adding that these traits intensified further in subsequent years.
Music.
Balakirev became important in the history of Russian music through both his works and his leadership. More so than Glinka, he helped set the course for Russian orchestral music and Russian lyrical song during the second half of the 19th century. While he learned from Glinka certain methods of treating Russian folk song instrumentally, a bright, transparent orchestral technique (something he also learned from the works of Hector Berlioz) and many elements of his basic style, he developed and expanded upon what he had learned, fusing it satisfactorily with then-advanced Romantic compositional techniques.
Unfortunately, the protracted composition of several works robbed Balakirev of the credit for their inventiveness. Pieces which could have won success had they been completed in the 1860s and 70s made a much smaller impact when they were introduced much later in the composer's life. This was because they had been overtaken stylistically by the accomplishments of younger composers, and because some of their compositional devices were appropriated by other members of The Five—the most notable example of the latter is Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade", which was influenced by Balakirev's symphonic poem "Tamara". Another consequence was a tendency to overwork details, which robbed these pieces of freshness and inspiration, making them seem "overdone".
Despite the protracted composition period, there was no discernible difference, especially in the two symphonies, between the sections completed in the 1860s and those written much later. Zetlin asserts that while there was no diminution of Balakirev's creative talent, the reason for this lack of disparity was because Balakirev "had ceased to evolve" as an artist; he remained creatively at the point he had reached in the 1860s, "and his newest works seemed thus merely an echo of the past."
Influences.
Perhaps because Balakirev's initial musical experience was as a pianist, composers for his own instrument influenced the repertory and style of his compositions. He wrote in all the genres cultivated by Frédéric Chopin except the Ballade, cultivating a comparable charm. The other keyboard composer who influenced Balakirev was Franz Liszt, apparent in "Islamey" as well as in his transcriptions of works by other composers and the symphonic poem "Tamara".
Balakirev's affinity with Glinka's music becomes most apparent in his handling of folk material. However, Balakirev advances on Glinka's technique of using "variations with changing backgrounds," reconciling the compositional practices of classical music with the idiomatic treatment of folk song, employing motivic fragmentation, counterpoint and a structure exploiting key relationships.
Between his two Overtures on Russian Themes, Balakirev became involved with folk song collecting and arranging. This work alerted him to the frequency of the Dorian mode, the tendency for many melodies to swing between the major key and its relative minor on its flat seventh key, and the tendency to accentuate notes not consistent with dominant harmony. These characteristics were reflected in Balakirev's handling of Russian folk song.
Since the musical views of The Five tended to be anti-German, it is easy to forget that Balakirev was actually well-grounded in German symphonic style—all the more impressive when it is remembered that Balakirev was essentially self-taught as a composer. His "King Lear" overture, written when he was 22, is not a symphonic poem in the vein of Liszt but actually more along the lines of Beethoven's concert overtures, relying more on the dramatic qualities of sonata form than on extramusical content.
Russian style: The Overtures.
With his First Overture on Russian Themes, Balakirev focused on writing symphonic works with Russian character. He chose his themes from folk song collections available at the time he composed the piece, taking Glinka's "Kamarinskaya" as a model in taking a slow song for the introduction, then for the fast section choosing two songs compatible in structure with the ostinato pattern of the "Kamarinskaya" dance song. Balakirev's use of two songs in this section was an important departure from the model, as it allowed him to link the symphonic process of symphonic form with Glinka's variations on an ostinato pattern, and in contrasting them treat the songs symphonically instead of merely decoratively.
The Second Overture on Russian Themes shows an increased sophistication as Balakirev utilizes Beethoven's technique of deriving short motifs from longer themes so that those motifs can be combined into a convincing contrapuntal fabric. As such it can stand on its own as an example of abstract motivic-thematic composition, yet since it uses folk songs in doing so, it can also be looked upon as making a statement about nationality. In this overture he shows how folk songs could be given symphonic dimensions while paying particular attention to the element of "protyazhnaya" or melismatically elaborated lyric song. This type of song is characterized by extreme rhythmic flexibility, asymmetrical phrase structure and tonal ambiguity. Incorporating these elements meant employing the tonal instability of folk song in larger structures by relying on tonal indeterminacy. The structure of this overture departs from the classic tonal relationships of tonic and dominant, coming close to the tonal experiments of Liszt and Robert Schumann.
Like his contemporaries in The Five, Balakirev believed in the importance of program music—music written to fulfill a program inspired by a portrait, poem, story or other non-musical source. Unlike his compatriots, the musical form always came first for Balakirev, not the extramusical source, and his technique continued to reflect the Germanic symphonic approach. Nevertheless, Balakirev's overtures played a crucial role in the emergence of Russian symphonic music in that they introduced the musical style now considered "Russian." His style was adapted by his compatriots and others to the point of becoming a national characteristic. The opening of Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov" bears a close resemblance to the first theme of Balakirev's Second Overture, while Borodin's "In the Steppes of Central Asia" begins with a dominant pedal extending over 90 bars in the upper register of the violins, a device Balakirev used in his First Overture. The opening of Tchaikovsky's "Little Russian" Symphony in its original form also shows Balakirev's influence.
Progressive development: First Symphony.
Balakirev began his First Symphony after completing the Second Overture but cut work short to concentrate on the Overture on Czech Themes, recommencing on the symphony only 30 years later and not finishing it until 1897. Letters from Balakirev to Stasov and Cui indicate that the first movement was two-thirds completed and the final movement sketched out, though he would supply a new theme for the finale many years later. While he was waiting until the finale to incorporate folk material, he was anxious to incorporate a new Russian element, somewhat religious in nature, into the opening movement. The symphonic design for this movement is highly unusual. The slow introduction announces the motif on which the allegro vivo is based. While the allegro vivo is a three part structure, it differs from sonata form in having an exposition, a second exposition and a development instead of the usual order of exposition-development-recapitulation. This means that after the actual exposition, the thematic material is developed in two places, with the second exposition actually being an elaboration of the first. Formally, the process is one of progressive development, divided into three stages of increasing complexity. If this was how Balakirev had actually planned the movement in 1864, it would predate the late symphonies of Jean Sibelius in utilizing this compositional principle.
Orientalism: "Tamara".
Balakirev also further cultivated the orientalism of Glinka's opera "Ruslan and Lyudmila", making it a more consistent style. It appears in the "Georgian Song" of 1861, "Islamey" and "Tamara". This style comprises two parts: a languorous vein of slow, sinuous melody with ornamentation and slow-moving harmonic progressions, contrasted with a more ecstatic vein marked by a perpetuum mobile at a fast tempo and rapid melodic contours over a slower-moving harmonic changes. This style on one hand evoked the mystery of the distant, exotic east with which Russia did not have direct contact, and on the other hand could also be used to refer to recently colonized areas of the Russian Empire.
"Tamara" is considered by some to be Balakirev's greatest work as well as a touchstone of orientalism. Originally he intended to write a "lezginka" modeled after Glinka. However, he was inspired by the poetry of Mikhail Lermontov about the seductress Tamara, who waylays travelers in her tower at the gorge of Daryal and allows them to savor a night of sensual delights before killing them and flinging their bodies into the River Terek. Balakirev evokes both the poem's setting of the mountains and gorges of the Caucasus and the angelic and demonically seductive power of the title character. The narrative employs a wide musical range, with the composer supplying great subtlety within a satisfying structure.


Sam Lewis (game designer)

Sam Lewis is an American designer of board games and former line developer of the "Renegade Legion" line in FASA Corporation. He was also president of FASA for a time.
Background.
He holds an MBA in economics from Northwestern University, which he obtained in 1983.
In 1983, he was credited as the designers of Mayfair Games' "Dragonriders of Pern" licensed game after a novel by Anne McCaffrey.
After Jordan Weisman founded the company which would become Virtual World Entertainment, Sam Lewis became president of FASA. By 1994, "Renegade Legion" had been dropped, and when Paul Lidberg - president of Crunchy Frog Enterprises - approached FASA about a wider "Battletech" license, Lewis talked Lidberg into picking up "Renegade Legion" instead.
For FASA, he created the individual combat game "Battletroops" in their "Battletech" game universe, and is credited for the adaption thereof under the name "DMZ" in the "Shadowrun" universe. Apart from that, he was responsible for the "RL" game line and their setting until FASA ended the line in 1995 and licensed the game world to Crunchy Frog Enterprises.
Afterwards, he did lead GameStorm, a service of Kesmai Corporation. Other works since then include production work for EA.com and design work for Sony Online Entertainment's Star Wars lines. He has also worked for Cartoon Network as lead game designer on the game FusionFall. Currently he is a senior game designer for ZeniMax Media


Waveshaper (musician)

Tom Andersson (born 26 September 1984), known professionally as Waveshaper, is a Swedish electronic musician specialising in synthwave. Inspired by artists like Jean-Michel Jarre, Kraftwerk and Daft Punk, as well as 80s movie soundtracks, his music is retrofuturistic and is composed with a variety of hardware synthesizers, including the ARP 2600, Roland Jupiter-4, and Korg MS-20. He released his debut album "Tracks To The Future" on the label Lunar Boogie in 2013, and the EP "Sounds That Kill" on Telefuture Records in 2014. In 2015, he released the four-track vinyl record "Solar Drifter" on the Swedish synthwave label Rad Rush Records.
Andersson also featured in the 2019 documentary film The Rise of the Synths which explored the origins and growth of the Synthwave genre, appearing alongside various other composers from the scene, including Carpenter Brut who also starred in and narrated the film.


Lual Mayen


Apache OpenWebBeans

OpenWebBeans is an open source, embeddable and lightweight CDI Container, released under the Apache License 2.0. OpenWebBeans is an ASL-licensed implementation of Context and Dependency Injection for Java EE Platform Specification which is defined by JSR-299, JSR-346, and JSR-365. OpenWebBeans has been integrated with Java EE application servers such as Geronimo and Apache TomEE.
History.
OpenWebBeans was founded by Gurkan Erdogdu in October 2008. It is one of implementation of the Context and Dependency Injection specification. The incubator proposal can be found here. It was graduated in December 2009 to become a top level ASF project.


Abi Ferrin

Abi Ferrin is a fashion designer based out of Dallas, Texas.
Biography.
Ferrin spent her childhood in Wyoming, and eventually majored in government and broadcast journalism. Inspired by her major, Abi moved to Washington D.C. to pursue a career along the lines of her collegiate studies. Disillusioned with the political environment and career opportunities in Washington D.C., she resolved instead, to follow her dream into the fashion industry and moved to California landing in Hollywood. An avid sewer since a young age, and with little money after her move, she began designing and making clothes of her own design. Her gamble paid off, and she was discovered at an industry party. This led to her big break, designing clothing for the show "Extra", where she broke into the Hollywood scene with several "new looks." Eventually Abi tired of the fickle fashion industry of the Hollywood scene, and despite incurring $50,000 in debt, again took a gamble, this time by relocating to Dallas in 2006.
Accomplishments.
Abi Ferrin was named "Texas’ Next Top Designer" by Stanley Korshak in 2007. Along with the title came $25,000 to start her company, a loft in downtown Dallas and a business grant to start her business in Dallas. Since 2007 Abi Ferrin has been well known in the Dallas fashion scene and the business has continued to grow each year. In 2009, Abi Ferrin the company has grown 25%, and even in the times of economic downturn the company continues to grow each year. Her clothing is sold in Nordstrom and boutique stores nationwide as well as online.
Abi Ferrin’s designs have been seen in many editorials including D Fashion, London Financial Times, Inmag.com, Papercity, and Dallas Morning News. Many celebrities have also been seen wearing Abi’s fashions, including Perry Reeves, Molly Sims, Erykah Badu, Claudia Jordan, Carrie Underwood and Paris Hilton. In 2010, Abi Ferrin appeared in Elle Magazine’s Spring Ready to Wear line. After appearing at the 2010 Spring Fashion Week in New York. In 2011 Abi Ferrin was chosen to design the clothing for the 10th Annual Off the Fields Players Wives Fashion Show. Abi’s designs were worn on the runway by many NFL wives, both past and present.
Freedom Project.
Abi lives and works by her motto," “Fashion with Freedom and Purpose”", Abi Ferrin incorporates handmade buttons into each of her designs, buys them at fair market value, and donates an additional 600% of the asking price to an organization in Nepal for women rescued from the sex trade. These buttons are handmade by the women who are rescued from the sex trade, and are given work at a place in Nepal called Guardian Vision Handcrafts. Abi Ferrin says that she feels as if these “custom made adornments” will “give women a feeling of authenticity, while each button holds a greater value”. Abi Ferrin is also teaming up with her sister Kelly, who has worked as a humanitarian for her whole career, and is getting involved with the organization Vision Trust, to expand their involvement in global organizations.
October 2009.


Karnataka State Film Award for Best Art Direction

Karnataka State Film Award for Art Direction is a state film award of the Indian state of Karnataka given during the annual Karnataka State Film Awards. The award honors Kannada language films.
Award winners.
The following is a complete list of award winners and the name of the films for which they won.


More (magazine)

More was a women's lifestyle magazine published 10 times a year by the Meredith Corporation with a rate base of 1.3 million and a circulation of 1.8 million. A Canadian version was published under license by Transcontinental from 2007 to 2012.
History and profile.
The magazine was started in 1997 and the first issue appeared in September 1998.
"More" also produces the "More Magazine"/"Fitness Magazine" Women's Half-Marathon, a NYC event in partnership with the New York Road Runners, "Escape with "More"" at the Miraval Arizona Resort and Spa and the "Fierce and Fabulous Girls Night Out" event series. In 2010 "More" introduced the annual "More" Beauty Search Contest, which women over 30 can enter for the chance to win cash prizes and be featured in the magazine. In 2013, "More" launched ""More" Uncorked", a new wine club in partnership with Women of the Vine that delivers wines made by artisan women winemakers of California.
In February 2010, "More" was updated with a new logo and tagline: "For Women of Style and Substance".
In February 2016, the Meredith Corporation announced that "More" would cease publication with the April 2016 issue.


Ridykeulous

Ridykeulous is a curatorial initiative founded by artists Nicole Eisenman and A.L. Steiner. The project encourages exhibitions of queer and feminist art.
History.
Founded in 2005, Ridykeulous mounts exhibitions and events primarily concerned with queer and feminist art, using humor to critique the art world as well as culture at large.
Collaborators include A.K. Burns, Aaron Johnson, Anna Sew Hoy, Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, Cody Critcheloe/SSION, Cyrus Saint Amand Poliakoff, Dana Schutz, Dawn Frasch, Dawn Kasper, Dawn Mellor, Dean Daderko, Eve Fowler, Math Bass, Robinson Fastwurms, Leidy Churchman, Ulrike Muller, Zackary Drucker, Suzanne Wright, Kathe Burkhart, Christian Lemerz, K8 Hardy, Lara Schnitger, Ashley Reid, Lindsay Brant, Lisa Sanditz, Daphne FItzpatrick, Lisi Raskin, Catherine Lord, Keith Boadwee, Ellen Lesperance & Jeanine Oleson, Carrie Moyer, Adam Rolston, Nicola Tyson, Melissa Logan/Chicks on Speed, Daniel Bozhkov, Rachel Harrison, Amy Sillman, L.M. Childs, Claude Wampler, Miranda Lichtenstein, Kathy Acker, Abe Ajay, Mike Albo, Artists Poster Committee (Frazier Dougherty, Jon Hendricks, Irving Petlin), Kathe Burkhart, Nao Bustamante, Jibz Cameron, Leidy Churchman, Dennis Cooper, Tracey Emin, Daniel Feinberg, Louise Fishman, Glen Fogel, Hollis Frampton, Simon Fujiwara, Gary Gissler, Guerilla Art Action Group (G.A.A.G.), Harmony Hammond, Kathleen Hanna and Toby Vail, I.U.D., Donald Judd, Zoe Leonard, Ali Liebegott, Lucy Lippard, Bernadette Mayer, Allyson Mitchell & Deirdre Logue, Eileen Myles, Chuck Nanney, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Laura Parnes, Adrian Piper, William Powhida, Ad Reinhardt, Carolee Schneemann, Nancy Spero, Kara Walker, and David Wojnarowicz.


Denys Fisher

Denys Fisher (11 May 1918 – 17 September 2002) was an English engineer who invented the spirograph toy and created the company Denys Fisher Toys.
He left Leeds University to join the family firm, Kingfisher (Lubrication) Ltd. In 1960 he left the firm to set up his own company, Denys Fisher Engineering, in Leeds. In 1961 the company won a contract with NATO to supply springs and precision components for its 20 mm cannon. Between 1962 and 1964 he developed various drawing machines from Meccano pieces, eventually producing a prototype Spirograph. Patented in 16 countries, it went on sale in Schofields department store in Leeds in 1965. A year later, Fisher licensed Spirograph to Kenner Products in the United States. In 1967 Spirograph was chosen as the UK Toy of the Year.
Denys Fisher Toys, which also produced other toys and board games, was sold to Palitoy in 1970 and it was subsequently bought by Hasbro. Through the 1980s and 1990s Fisher continued to work with Hasbro in developing new toys and refining Spirograph.
Toys and games.
Denys Fisher Toys produced the following toys and games:


Ruangrupa

Ruangrupa, stylised as ruangrupa and abbreviated as ruru, is a contemporary art collective based in Jakarta, Indonesia. Founded in 2000 by a group of 7 artists, ruangrupa provided a platform in South Jakarta for organising exhibitions, events, and festivals, also conducting publishing services, workshops, and research.
ruangrupa functions as a non-profit organisation that supports contemporary art within the urban and cultural contexts of Indonesia and beyond, often involving artists and practitioners from other disciplines such as the social sciences, politics, and technology. The collective also supports the development of video art through research, documentation, and their biennial video art festival, OK Video, first held in July 2003.
As a collective, they are co-directing documenta fifteen, taking place 2022 in Kassel, Germany; notably the first Asian group and the first art collective to curate the large-scale international exhibition. While collective has no fixed number of members, ten of the group’s core members will engage in the directorship role, including director Ade Darmawan, Ajeng Nurul Aini, Daniella Fitria Praptono, Farid Rakun, Indra Ameng, Iswanto Hartono, Julia Sarisetiati, Mirwan Andan, Narpati Awangga, and Reza Afisina.
History.
Origins.
Loosely translated from Bahasa Indonesia to mean "a space for art" or "a space form", ruangrupa was founded in 2000 by artists seeking to create much-needed space where artists could work intensively with an emphasis on critical analysis, rather than production. Established two years after the fall of the authoritarian Suharto regime, the collective notably emerged at a moment of newfound freedom for Indonesia. ruangrupa is also a part of the Ford Foundation and Arts Collaboratory organisation network, receiving financial support from these networks.
Since its founding, ruangrupa has changed its format and organisational structure twice. In 2015, ruangrupa developed the cultural platform Gudang Sarinah Ekosistem (GSE) together with a number of art collectives in Jakarta, an interdisciplinary space seeking to support creatives, communities, and institutions. The platform takes its name from Gudang Sarinah, their new headquarters located in Pancoran, South Jakarta. In 2018, together with two other Jakarta-based art collectives, Serrum and Grafis Huru Hara, ruangrupa initiated GUDSKUL: Contemporary Art Collective and Ecosystem Studies, a public learning space.
documenta fifteen.
In 2019, it was announced that ruangrupa would serve as artistic director for documenta fifteen collectively, the first time an Asian group or an art collective would curate the large-scale, international exhibition. The curatorial concept ruangrupa prepared for documenta fifteen centres upon the notion of "lumbung", a rice barn that stores the communally-produced common resource of rice for future use. documenta fifteen is thus conceived a collective resource pot, operating under the logics of the commons to mend today's injuries that are rooted in colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy; echoing the original intent of Documenta, an event launched to heal European war wounds. The curatorial approach is based on an international network of localised, community-based art organisations.


Rogue Stormers

Rogue Stormers (originally "DieselStörmers") is a fantasy action game, initially developed by Spellbound Entertainment. It was revealed at the Game Developers Conference 2010, in San Francisco under the project name "Ravensdale", and it has been in development since 2007.
In 2012, Spellbound Entertainment went into administration, emerging as Black Forest Games. They have since planned on continuing the development under the name "DieselStörmers" until the developer changed the name to "Rogue Stormers" in 2015.
History.
The game has been in development since April 2013, but the concept already existed in 2008, before Spellbound received the rights for '. It was shelved at the time so that the team could focus its attention and resources on Arcania. After the successful release of ', Black Forest Games turned its attention back to "Ravensdale" and decided to fund the project via Kickstarter. In 2013, crowdfunding for the game was cancelled. In 2014 the game was renamed to "DieselStörmers", and the team started a second Kickstarter campaign which was successful.
The game was released on Steam Early Access on July 17, 2014.
Due to a successful trademark lawsuit by Diesel S.p.A., who owns the trademark "Diesel" in relation to video games, Black Forest Games is required to drop the title "DieselStörmers".
It was announced on October 17, 2015 that Black Forest Games changed the name "DieselStörmers" to "Rogue Stormers" after Diesel S.p.A. successfully opposed Black Forest Games’ trademark registration of "DieselStörmers".
Gameplay.
"Rogue Stormers" is a multiplayer platformer focused on a cooperative style of gameplay. Players team up with their friends, fighting hordes of orcs and goblins with customizable weapons. As a reward for completing missions, the players receive crafting materials and gun parts, which can be assembled to fit their personal playstyle (e.g. affecting stats like range or rate of fire, bullet patterns like "shotgun" or "cannon", or additional effects (rebounding shots, piercing shots, incendiary ammunition etc.). The game supports online- and local co-op, as well as single-player.


Mou boots

Mou is a footwear company founded in 2002 in London by Shelley Tichborne.
Overview.
Mou creates hand-crafted footwear in natural fibres. Actor Evan Peters, Emma Roberts, Idris Elba, Debra Messing, Priyanka Chopra, Chloe Sevigny and Sarah Jessica Parker were in the news while purchasing Mou boots. The Daily Telegraph reported that Penélope Cruz was dressed up for the Arctic wearing sheepskin boots from Mou and said she loved them. As per the article posted in Huffpost, Gwyneth Paltrow recommended Mou's Antelope Cowboy winter boots.
According to a report published by Market Research Place titled "Place Global UGG Boots Market Research Report 2019" the demand for such type of boots is expected to show significant growth in the coming years and focuses on the following brands UGG, YellowEarth, JumboUGG, CozySteps, EMU, MOU, Shepherd's Life, JUYI, Yijiabao, EVER, Aukoala, ICCASU, KOALABI, Luxe, LOVE, Blue Mountains, Belle.


Mike Follin

The Revd. Michael Stuart Follin was a computer game programmer until the late 1990s. Among other companies, he worked at Software Creations and, while there, worked on ZX Spectrum. The titles included highly rated arcade conversions of "Bubble Bobble" and "Ghouls 'n Ghosts", as well as the innovative "The Sentinel", one of the first games on the Spectrum to feature true 3D graphics. The music for these games was often written by his brother Tim Follin.
In "CRASH" issue 59, Follin cited "Knight Lore", "Codename MAT" and "Pentagram" as video game classics, with Jonathan Smith as his favorite programmer. Follin's Spectrum conversion of "The Sentinel" was considered by fellow programmers as one of the top five classic games on that platform.
After sixteen years in the computer games industry, Follin left the industry to train as a priest in the Church of England. He was subsequently ordained at Liverpool Cathedral, and as of 2010 is the vicar at St Peter's, a small Anglican church in Maghull, Merseyside. He married his wife, Lynn Follin, in 1994.


Tiger-head shoes

Tiger-head shoes () are an example of traditional Chinese folk handicraft used as footwear for children. Their name comes from the toe cap, which looks like the head of a tiger. In the North of China, people also call them cat-head shoes. In Chinese culture, tigers are regarded as auspicious; people embroider the head and the upper of the shoes with tiger or tiger-head patterns, in the hope that their children will become as robust and dynamic as tigers. Also, the vivid image of tiger-head pattern was thought to expel evil spirits to protect their children from diseases and disasters. It is a complicated work to make tiger-head shoes, there are many delicate stitch work such as embroidery, or weaving simply on the head of the shoes. The vamp (upper part of the shoe) is mainly colored in red and yellow, and residents usually use thick lines to draw the outline of the mouth, eyebrow, nose and the eyes of the tiger to express its power in an exaggerated way.
Legends.
The origins of tiger-head shoes are unknown, but there are several folk legends about them. Tiger-head shoes are marked by the practice of exorcising evil spirits.
The following is one of the legends:
Long long ago, there was a lady who has clever hands and good sense. She was very gifted in embroidery, so that her child was always well dressed. One night, a monster came to the village and caught all the children there except her son. From then people began to realize that the shoes the child wearing were decorated with a tiger’s head at the front which scared the monster, thus leaving the child safe. Therefore, people began to imitate this practice.
Region distribution.
Tiger-head shoes are popular in North China, especially in Hebei, Henan, Shanxi, Shandong, Shanxi provinces. Different areas have formed different ways of making tiger-head shoes. In the southern part of Hebei province, the embroidery type is most well-known.
Culture.
In Chinese culture, the tiger is seen as sturdy and mighty with the title of “king of the beasts”. Thus, when it is mentioned, people will naturally feel a sense of power and fright. As a result, the expressions concerning tiger, such as the tiger's roar (Chinese: 虎啸, Pinyin: huxiao), its frightful appearance (Chinese: 虎威, Pinyin: huwei), and the phrase "vigorous as a tiger" (Chinese: 虎虎有生气, Pinyin: huhuyoushengqi) came into being, along with worship of the creature.
When a child is growing up, he would come across a series of accidents or even calamities caused by nature or society. These accidents and calamities need to be conquered, so that the child can grow up healthily. Therefore, he is expected to become burly, dignified, and vigorous like a tiger, and possess all the inner qualities of a tiger as well. One major embodiment of this hope is to embroider the patterns of a tiger's heads on shoe toes and uppers.
In other words, tiger or tiger-head patterns are used to exorcise evil spirits and accelerate the "tigerous temperament" of a child.


Darby McDevitt

Darby Christopher McDevitt is an American game developer and writer, best known for his work on the "Assassin's Creed" series.
With a diverse professional profile spanning more than a decade, he has worked as a writer, film maker, musician, and game designer. As an employee of Ubisoft, McDevitt has been the script writer for both the story and dialogue in ', ', ' and "Assassin's Creed Unity", as well as was the lead writer for ' and "". In 2014, Darby was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for his work on "Black Flag". Darby is also recognized as a spokesperson for Ubisoft in regards to the "Assassin's Creed" franchise.
In March 2021, Darby left Ubisoft.
Video Gameography.
As Narrative Director:
As Lead Writer:
As Writer and Designer:
As Producer and Writer:
Other Notable Works.
Music Videos:
Narrative and Documentary Films:
Music:
Sneaky Thieves
Autographic
Articles:


Skillet Lickers

The Skillet Lickers were an old-time band from Georgia, United States.
When Gid Tanner teamed up with blind guitarist Riley Puckett and signed to Columbia in 1924, they created the label's earliest so-called "hillbilly" recording. Gid Tanner formed The Skillet Lickers in 1926. The first line-up was Gid Tanner, Riley Puckett, Clayton McMichen and Fate Norris. Between 1926 and 1931 they recorded 88 sides for Columbia. Eighty-two of these were commercially issued. Later members were Lowe Stokes, Bert Layne, Hoke Rice, Arthur Tanner and Hoyt "Slim" Bryant. Their best-selling single was "Down Yonder", a hillbilly breakdown, in 1934 on RCA Victor. They disbanded in 1931, but reformed for occasional recordings after a couple of years with a changing line-up. "Back Up and Push" was another well-known recording. The Skillet Lickers, together with fellow North Georgians Fiddlin' John Carson and the Georgia Yellow Hammers, made Atlanta and North Georgia an early center of old-time string band music, especially the hard-driving fiddle-based style employed by each of these performers.
Individual members.
Clayton McMichen (1900–1970) was the lead fiddler. He was known as "Mac". At the age of 11 he learned to play the fiddle from his uncle and father. Two years later, in 1913, his family moved to Atlanta, Georgia where Mac made his living as an automobile mechanic. In 1918 he formed a band called "The Hometown Boys" consisting of himself and Charles Whitten on fiddles, Boss Hawkins and Mike Whitten on guitars and Ezra "Ted" Hawkins on mandolin. The Hometown Boys made their first radio debut on September 18, 1922. In 1931, he performed with the "Georgia Wildcats" on their first recording session for Columbia Records. He was National Fiddling Champion from 1934 to 1949. Mac made his last recordings in 1945, although he continued to perform until 1955 when he retired. His most notable composition was "Peach Pickin' Time in Georgia", later recorded by Jimmie Rodgers in 1932. By the time the folk revival was under way in the late 1950s, his irritation with being asked to play old-fashioned material was unconcealed. At the Newport Festival he spoke out on stage of his disdain for the Skillet Lickers. However, the recordings he made with that band are the only ones of his in print. In the early 1930s the band occasionally toured without Gid Tanner, and without Puckett, with McMichen in charge instead. On these occasions Bert Layne would black-up for on stage comedy.
Fate Norris, (Singleton Lafayette Norris) of Dalton, Georgia played the banjo, and harmonica. He lived in Resaca, Georgia. He had previously performed as a one-man band and had made a device with strings and levers which he played with his feet. Together Fate and Gid did blackface comedy. Norris made some recordings under his own name and was only occasionally a member of the band. By 1931 he appears to have disappeared from the line-up, to be replaced by Gid on banjo. He later died on stage in Subligna, Georgia on November 11, 1944.
Lowe Stokes (Marcus Lowell Stokes 1898-1983), who played the fiddle, was born in Elijay, Georgia. A superb fiddler, considered McMichen's equal and one of the finest recorded fiddlers of the time, he won many fiddle championships in the region. Stokes lost his right hand to a shotgun blast in the late 1920s, in the midst of the Skillet Lickers' popularity. He eventually began fiddling again using a prosthetic attachment to hold his bow, and he can be heard playing on some later Skillet Licker records in this manner (for example, on "Broken Down Gambler"). Later, Stokes moved to Chouteau, Oklahoma where he died.
Bert Layne (fiddle), brother-in-law of McMichen, played occasionally. His fiddle had a lower sound than Tanner or McMichen, but the combination of three fiddles marks out the group from almost everyone else at the time. On the group's later records, the three-fiddle lineup was usually composed of McMichen, Layne, and Lowe Stokes, playing tightly in unison or in harmony, while Gid Tanner switched to banjo. Arthur Tanner (brother of Gid) played banjo and guitar.
Riley Puckett recorded solo for Victor and Decca in the 1930s and early 1940s. He also belonged to a trio called "Bert Layne and his Mountaineers". After 1931 the group occasionally consisted of Riley Puckett on guitar, Gordon Tanner on fiddle, Edward "Ted" Hawkins on mandolin and even record producer Dan Hornsby on vocals. There are recordings by a group called the "Arthur Tanner and the Cornshuckers" which may have contained Gid Tanner.
Unfortunately the virtuosity of Puckett tended to pull in a different direction from that of Mac. Their best recordings were probably their last ones, from 1931. The band recorded in two long recording sessions per year, from 1926 to 1931. Few members of the group were full-time professional musicians. Clayton McMichen was an auto mechanic. McMichen was a welder. Tanner was a chicken farmer. Riley Puckett toured as a musician with his own tent show. His technical virtuosity marks him out as one of the best guitarists of the 1920s and early 1930s.
Legacy.
While many bands are celebrated for their innovations, the Skillet Lickers are celebrated for embracing a style that was already out-of-fashion by the time they started. Had it not been for their playing of homely folk songs with a hard-driving fiddle section, contemporary audiences would hardly know how this kind of music sounded. They played many instrumentals, ballads, pop songs and comedy sketches, such as "A Corn Licker Still in Georgia". This was a set of 14 sketches with a running gag that people in authority wanted to stamp out illegal stills and after-hours fiddle-playing, but secretly wanted to drink the liquor, and hear the tunes. They even depicted a real-life minister of the church drinking the moonshine in a sketch. The New Lost City Ramblers, a revival old-time group from the early 1960s, were clearly fans of the Skillet Lickers. Gid's son Gordon Tanner went on to lead a group called the "Junior Skillet Lickers". Gid's grandson led "Skillet Lickers II".
Discography.
78s:
Postwar recordings:
Reissued material also appears on:
Anthologies:


Romeo Model Checker

Roméo is an integrated tool environment for modeling, validation and verification of real-time systems modeled as time Petri Nets or stopwatch Petri Nets, extended with parameters.
The tool has been developed by the Real-Time Systems group at IRCCyN lab (École centrale de Nantes, University of Nantes, CNRS) in Nantes, France.


Anett Futatabi

 is a side scrolling, beat-em-up video game developed and published by Wolf Team for the Mega CD hardware add-on for the Mega Drive. It is the final in a trilogy of games that also includes "Earnest Evans" and "El Viento". The game was released only in Japan in 1993.
Gameplay.
Unlike the first and second entries, which are 2D platform video games, "Annet Futatabi" is a side-scrolling beat-em-up that deeply resembles Sega's "Golden Axe" and "Bare Knuckle" franchises. However, like the previous installments, the story is told through cutscenes between each brief multi-scrolling level, which includes a boss character, who appears out of thin air, usually wielding a weapon.
The protagonist Annet's magic has five levels, is regulated by a power meter, and regenerates automatically. As her power meter increases, the higher her magical attacks become. The levels range from wind, earth, water, fire and death. Wind is the lower level, while death is the highest level. However, magic cannot be used against the bosses. In addition to magic, Annet wields a sword, rather than bladed boomerangs. There are not any other weapons or power-ups included in the game, other than health restoration items.
Plot.
Set in the same fictional universe as "Earnest Evans" and "El Viento", the story takes place two years after "El Viento", and concludes the story of Annet and Earnest. Zigfried's true motives are finally revealed as well. Being rescued from a certain sacrifice by father figure Earnest Evans, Annet travels across Europe and encounters a local sect that wants her special pendant. After an attempted ambush in the sect's castle, she barely escapes, and begins another quest to protect the world from destruction.
Reception.
The game was received poorly, with the difficulty and graphics highlighted as the main criticisms. However, the cutscenes' graphics were praised. Writing for "Hardcore Gaming 101", Kurt Kalata criticized the game design and difficulty, saying, "Most of the end level monstrosities have pretty braindead attack patterns, but they’re so strong that it’s hard to attack them efficiently [...] The extreme level of challenge is clearly to mask the fact that there just isn’t much game here." Kalata also criticized the graphics, saying, "The in-game graphics are pretty average. Although Annet looks much cooler here than she did in "El Viento", the rest of the visuals are run of the mill and forgettable." He praised the cutscenes, saying "Anyone with a fetish for the 16-bit, low color, ’90s style anime artwork that proliferated on the Mega CD and PC Engine will love this." Ken Horowitz of "Sega-16" compared the game unfavorably to "Streets of Rage", saying, "Playing more like "Streets of Rage" than "El Viento", Anet Futatabi comes off as the bastard child of two genres – a part of both, yet truly belonging to neither." He also praised the cutscenes, saying "There are also plenty of beautiful cut scenes to gander at between each [stage]", but criticized the non-cutscene graphics, calling them "bland".


Line of sight (video games)

Line of sight, sometimes written line-of-sight or abbreviated to LoS, is the visibility (that is, who can see what) on the playing field in wargames and some role-playing games (RPGs). Many abilities can only be used on entities within a character's line of sight.
In some games, miniature figures are used to determine line of sight. Many wargames use counters to represent units and determine line of sight. A common technique is to hold a length of thread between two counters. If the thread, held straight, doesn't encounter any obstacles, the line of sight is valid.
The first computer game to implement line of sight graphics was "Dungeon", which was played on a PDP-10 mainframe computer (1975).
Examples.
A tank behind a tall hill would not be able to see an enemy tank on the other side of the hill. Therefore, the first tank does not have a line of sight to the enemy tank. Conversely, a squad of soldiers atop the hill may be able to see both tanks, though the tanks may not be able to see them (since the tank's upward line of sight is limited).
In an RPG, players may not see doors, objects or monsters located around the corner in a dungeon.
Line of sight is crucial to many types of video games, including, but not limited to, first-person shooters, strategy games, stealth games, and role-playing video games. In simplistic games with a top-down perspective, such as roguelikes, Bresenham's line algorithm can be used to determine line of sight. In first person games such as battlefield and flight simulators an implicit min/max kd-tree may be used to efficiently evaluate terrain line of sight queries.
In some live action role-playing games, such as NERO International, the line of sight is used as the duration for some spells and abilities. For example, a "paralyze" spell only lasts as long as the target remains within line of sight of the spell's caster.
On the other hand, line of sight can be used offensively, like luring a player behind a pillar in order to set a trap - his teammate, being out of line of sight, won't be able to help out until he gets in LoS, which in turn takes time. This time is usually the key moment to strike and go for a kill, if said player falls in said trap.
One algorithm for calculating 2-dimensional line of sight is given in the StraightEdge project.


Charles D. Hall

Charles D. Hall (April 20, 1888 – April 8, 1970) was a British-American art director and production designer. He is perhaps best remembered for his tenure at Universal Pictures, where he began his career during the silent era. He was art director for many of Universal's most famous productions of the 1920s and '30's: "The Phantom of the Opera" (1925), "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930), the original Bela Lugosi "Dracula" (1931), the original "Magnificent Obsession" (1935), and the 1936 "My Man Godfrey" among them, as well as eleven films directed by James Whale, including the original Boris Karloff "Frankenstein" (1931), "The Invisible Man" (1933), "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935), and the 1936 film version of "Show Boat". Hall also worked on the 1929 part-talkie film version of "Show Boat", directed by Harry A. Pollard.
Hall left Universal in the late 1930s and went to United Artists, where he worked for producer Hal Roach on such films as "Topper Takes a Trip", the first of the two sequels to 1937's "Topper". He then worked for a time on mostly B-films.
Hall later moved into working in television. He ended his career as art director for the pioneering 1955 TV series "Medic".
Hall bought a house from John Wayne in which he lived until his death. From the late 1950s–1960s, Hall was known for his watercolor paintings.
He was nominated for two Academy Awards, but neither nomination was for one of his famous films. They were for the films "Captain Fury" and "Merrily We Live".


Joseph Dillon Ford

Joseph Dillon Ford (born February 6, 1952 in Americus, Georgia, US, died March 8, 2017) was an American composer and author.
He held undergraduate degrees in music and graduate degrees in both musicology and landscape architecture. Although he focused on keyboard performance during his college years, Ford completed his training at Harvard as a Variell Scholar specializing in historical musicology. He studied twentieth-century composers and compositional techniques with Ivan Tcherepnin, the works of Bach and Handel with Christoph Wolff, Dowland and the English lutenists with John Ward, and the music of medieval Aquitaine with David Hughes.
His major works include three symphonies, a piano concerto, several harpsichord concertos and sonatas, choral music, and a large quantity of chamber and solo works for the piano and other instruments. Although most of his oeuvre is tonal—often very traditionally so, he also produced non-tonal work using both acoustic and electronic media, and developed synthetic chromatic dialects amenable to both idioms.
Keenly interested in emergent music and telecommunications technologies and the rich potential they offer for international creative collaborations, he also conceived and brought to fruition numerous large-scale projects in which his interdisciplinary artistic background proved to be an especially useful asset. These include the world's largest sound sculpture, an ongoing Web-based work that commemorates the monumental "Standing Buddhas of Bamiyan" demolished by the Taliban in 2001; the "Westron Wynde" Project (begun in 2004), for which composers in the US, Canada, and the UK each contributed music for James J. Pellerite (former principal flutist of the Philadelphia Orchestra); the Delian Suites Nos. 1 through 5 (2005–09), each exploring various tonal idioms (No. 4 in cooperation with the Colloque Fou de Basson, Conservatoire Gabriel Fauré, Angoulême); Nu Mu [sic!] Unlimited (2006–09), the world's first virtual new music festival; and Ye New Music Fayre (2008–09), a seminal event featuring new music composed in traditional tonal and modal styles.
Ford was the founder of the Delian Society, whose efforts to reinvigorate tonal music attracted many composers and performers on six continents and drew attention to the accomplishments of other outstanding artists.
He resided in Gainesville, Florida until his death.
Published works.
Joseph Dillon Ford published online "Orpheus in the Twenty-first Century: Historicism and the Art-Music Renascence" (2003), a multimedia e-book on music aesthetics; "Chromatic One: A New Technique for Instrumental Speech" (2003), a monograph detailing an innovative art form fusing music and spoken language; he also published numerous articles, poems, and short works of fiction including Selected Poems (1990) and Collected Musical Works (1992).
References.
Biographical reference books:


Philippe Keyaerts

Philippe Keyaerts is a Belgian designer of German-style board games. His two first published games are "Vinci" and "Evo". Those two games use the mechanism of allowing the players to spend victory points to improve the characteristics of their play. He also invented "Space Blast", a small space battle game. Philippe Keyaerts is best known as the designer of "Small World", a 2009 fantasy-themed board game based upon a remake of "Vinci".
Keyaerts is also active in the organisation of board game conventions in Belgium.


3Steps

3Steps (pronounced: ) is a German-based contemporary artist collective between the twins Kai Harald Krieger and Uwe Harald Krieger (born March 15, 1980) and Joachim Pitt (born December 8, 1980).
The works of 3Steps have developed from mural art, graffiti art and street art. The spray can is the central media of 3Steps. The collective paints huge images on facades and murals, as well as several kinds of paintable media in the studio. Bright colors and the reflection of a modern society express the intention of the three friends.
In November 2014 3Steps received the “Kultur- und Kreativpilot Deutschland” (Cultural and Creative pilot of Germany) award by the Federal Republic of Germany. 3Steps lives and works in the University town of Giessen, central Germany.
Development.
3Steps was founded in fall 1998. The style of the collective quickly developed from the classic “New York Style Writing” graffiti and high art graffiti to artistic short stories on large-scale murals. The work of 3Steps can be found around the entire globe, from Giessen and Wetzlar via Munich and Berlin to London, Milan, Venice, L.A. and New York.
After completing their university studies with diploma and award-winning PhD, the three friends founded their studio and art space in Giessen in 2012. Since then they devote themselves to new content driven topics and projects. In the studio 3Steps produces fine art paintings, editions and exclusive products.
Works.
Today's style of 3Steps includes influences of street art, style writing, photorealism, printmaking and pop art. In their current works 3Steps reflects today’s life, characterized by varying environments from reality, fiction, media and fantasy.
The imagery of 3Steps is telling short stories and modern fairy tales. Most of the collective stories based on iconic figures and moments of daily life. 3Steps turns everyday commodities and historic items into modern art. Nature faces urban culture and sunken cities. The works are colorful imageries in which aesthetics and glamor melt with urban culture and adventure.
The body of work of 3Steps contains large scale mural art, street art, paintings on wood and canvas, photographs, screenprints as well as sculptures and installation art. Most of the mixed media paintings consist of a collage of newspapers, magazines, photographs, stencil works, spray paint, acrylic, resin and screen printing on wood and canvas.
River Tales.
3Steps is initiator and curator of the international urban art festival River Tales (in German: Flussgeschichten). The goal of the repeatedly funded project is the redevelopment of city, countryside and river by urban mural art and street art. Since 2012 the project grows through the participation of numerous international artists (e.g. Loomit, Dome, Alexander Becherer, 3Steps, Macs and Etnik).


Ron Norsworthy

Ron Norsworthy is an American visual artist and designer. He was the CEO and founder of the design firm The Norsworthy Fund as well as creator of N Home, a line of bedding and home accessories. Additionally, he is responsible for design projects, including music videos, sets, interiors, and events. His work was shown at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Biography.
Norsworthy was born in South Bend, Indiana.
Norsworthy's interdisciplinary practice is a fusion of fine art, video and multiple design disciplines. A graduate of Princeton University, he began his career working as a designer for the architect Michael Graves. He was the CEO and founder of the multi-disciplinary design firm The Norsworthy Fund (2005-2010) as well as creator of N Home, a line of bedding and home accessories developed in partnership with television shopping channel QVC (UK), which he presented on the channel from 2011-2014.
His interest in the role of architecture in entertainment and pop culture led him to explore art direction and production design. He is responsible for numerous design projects, including many music videos, sets, interiors, and events.
Norsworthy was production designer for a music videos and televised performances for artists such as Britney Spears, Missy Elliott, Salt-N-Pepa, Erykah Badu, Madonna, Destiny's Child, Busta Rhymes, Aretha Franklin, Jay-Z, and Sean Combs (P. Diddy). These projects encompass a two decade span in which Norsworthy designed films, videos, and commercials, working with directors Matthew Rolston, Hype Williams and Spike Lee. He was elected and served on the New York Chapter Board of Governors for the Grammy Awards from 1999–2000.
Norsworthy's art has been exhibited in galleries and institutions. His work was shown at the Studio Museum in Harlem as part of the exhibition "Harlemworld: Metropolis as Metaphor" organized by curator Thelma Golden in 2004. His piece, entitled "Reparation Tower, Harlem", was a full-scaled sales office for a luxury high-rise in the form of an upraised fist. The installation and exhibition were favorably reviewed by architecture critic Herbert Mitchell Muschamp in The New York Times who described the work as "... a symbol of defiance aimed at indifference. But the symbol is handsomely fitted with interiors that signify bourgeois complacency... the views from within must be fabulous."


George Burchett

George "Professor" Burchett (23 August 1872 – 3 April 1953) was an English tattoo artist known as the "King of Tattooists".
Profile.
Burchett was born George Burchett-Davis on 23 August 1872 in the English seaside town of Brighton, East Sussex. He was expelled from school at age 12 for tattooing his classmates and joined the Royal Navy at age 13. (Boys as young as that age could enlist in those days.) He developed his tattooing skills while travelling overseas as a deckhand on . After absconding from the Navy, he returned to England.
With studios on Mile End Road and at 72 Waterloo Road, London, Burchett became the first star tattooist and a favourite among the wealthy upper class and European royalty. Among his customers were King Alfonso XIII of Spain, King Frederick IX of Denmark, and performer Horace "The Great Omi" Ridler. Though it was reputed that he tattooed the "Sailor King" George V of the United Kingdom, there is no reliable evidence to attest to this actually being the case.
He constantly designed new tattoos from his worldwide travel, incorporating African, Japanese and Southeast Asian motifs into his work. In the 1930s, he developed cosmetic tattooing with such techniques as permanently darkening eyebrows.
He continued tattooing until his sudden death on Good Friday in 1953 at the age of 80. A purported autobiography, "Memoirs of a Tattooist", edited by Peter Leighton (a pseudonym of writer Edward Spiro, also known as EH Cookridge), was published in 1958 by Oldbourne Book Company, five years after Burchett's death. This work included photographs illustrating some of Burchett's tattoo designs. Recent research has revealed that, despite the claims made in the foreword, the text was not actually compiled and edited from Burchett's own notes, but cribbed quickly from newspaper articles made shortly after Burchett's death.


Hum Award for Best Television Sensation Male

The Hum Award for Best Television Sensation Male is one of the Hum Awards of Merit presented annually by the Hum Television Network and Entertainment Channel (HTNEC). It is given to an actor who has delivered an outstanding debut performance while working within the television industry. At the 1st Hum Awards (for 2012), award was given to Shehryar Munawar Siddiqui for his role in "Meray Dard Ko Jo Zuban Miley". The nominations are solely made by Hum membership.
Since its inception, the award has been given to four actors, as of 2016 year ceremony, Feroze Khan is the most recent winner of this award.
Category.
As of 1st ceremony Hum honored a debut Male actor for giving his spectacular performance in drama release in 2012, This category officially termed as "Best Television Sensation" or unofficially known as "Best Male Debut".
Winners and nominees.
This category has no nominations since it is given to only one actor, who has delivered outstanding debut performance. However nominations can be made but it is not shown during nomination announcement and winner is only revealed during the ceremony. Following the hum's practice, Actors won for the dramas released by year of their Pakistan qualifying run, which is usually (but not always) the drama's year of release. Date and the award ceremony shows that the 2010 is the period from 2010-2020 (10 years-decade), while the year above winners and nominees shows that the dramas year in which they were telecast, and the figure in bracket shows the ceremony number, for example; an award ceremony is held for the dramas of its previous year.


Robert Winter (business theorist)

Robert Winter (born c. 1960) is a German business theorist, Professor of business & information systems engineering at the University of St. Gallen, and director of its Institute of Information Management. He is known for his contributions in the field of Enterprise Architecture and Business Engineering.
Biography.
Winter studied economics, business administration and business education at the Goethe University Frankfurt, where he received his PhD in 1989 and his Habilitation in 1995.
Winter started his academic career in 1984 as Associate Professor at Goethe University Frankfurt. In 1996 he moved to the University of St. Gallen, where he is appointed Professor at the School of Management (SoM), and director of its Institute of Information Management (Instituts für Wirtschaftsinformatik). Winter is Vice Editor-in-Chief of the "Business & Information Systems Engineering Journal" and associate editor of the "European Journal of Information Systems", "International Journal of Organizational Design and Engineering" and "MISQ Executive Journal".
His research interests are in the field of "Situational Method Engineering for Information Management, Enterprise Architecture Management, Enterprise Transformation Management, Health Network Engineering, Corporate Management Systems and Service Innovation & Engineering."
Publications.
Winter authored and coauthored numerous publications. Books, a selection:
Articles, a selection:


Owl Project

Owl Project is an art collective formed by Simon Blackmore, Antony Hall and Steve Symons. They work with wood and electronics to create music-making machines that fuse sound art with sculpture. Notable works include 2012 Cultural Olympiad commission ~Flow, a large-scale floating installation which sonified the flow and salinity of the River Tyne using a range of hand-crafted machines, and the iLog, commissioned by Crafts Council UK. They are based in Rogue studios, Manchester UK.


Jason L Blair

Jason L Blair is a writer and game designer, best known for his work on the roleplaying game "Little Fears".
Career.
After the release of the award-winning tabletop roleplaying game Little Fears in 2001, Blair wrote for various other publishers and published an urban magic game through Key 20 titled Wyrd is Bond.
Blair's Key 20 Publishing and Adept Press sponsored a booth for The Forge to appeal to indie game enthusiasts at Gen Con in 2002.
He eventually joined Human Head Studios as their Adventure Games Director where he led the development and publication of the board game Frankenstein's Children, the card game Villainy, and the 1950s B-Movie roleplaying and Normal, Texas while also assisting on the script for the video game Prey.
After leaving Human Head, Blair primarily freelanced for a variety of video game studios. He also continued to develop and publish his own tabletop work such as Streets of Bedlam (using the Savage Worlds system) and Little Fears Nightmare Edition.
In 2012, he joined video game developer Volition Inc where he worked on Saints Row IV, and Agents of Mayhem.
After a brief stint as Creative Director at Funcom’s US office, he joined High Voltage Software in 2019.
His work has been nominated for multiple awards from IGN, ENnie, Indie RPG Awards, and Origins Awards.