t log
Artful meditations, ancient and modern. It's a joy to get unexpected feedback from somebody, out of the blue.
In a delightful note, Tim Girvin tells me that his work with the Wachowsky brothers was "surely one of the more interesting exposures in my creative litany".
 Good timing too, with cinema magazines everywhere gearing up for 'The Matrix Revolutions', due for Bonfire Night release. The multi-talented Tim and his team "branded the Matrix", as logged here in March.
A "flight of the fantastic", Tim says today.
Before 'Reloaded' was released, disappointing many moviegoers and critics alike, producer Joel Silver was promising the moon.
He's at it again.
"A gigantic film, as enormous as it's possible to be," Silver's quoted as saying in November's issue of the admirable 'CinéLive' (Fr).
"'Matrix Reloaded' was only an hors d'oeuvre," claims fellow producer Dan Cracchiolo. "The real film is 'Matrix Revolutions'."
We'll find out soon enough.
The stolen moment comes from Tim's thoughtful personal site, a work of art in its own right where I occasionally stop by for refreshment. His journals make me think of 'Myst' (& 'Riven/D'ni') and of renaissance and mediaeval sketchpads.
A further feast for the eyes has recently been put on line by multimedia publishing house Nouveau Monde éditions (Fr.) That link too is but an "appetiser". The full meal, served up in three languages, is to be savoured at 'The Illuminated Middle Ages.'
This flagship Flash site is a rich companion to a masterly DVD-ROM, 'Le Moyen Age en lumière' (Mac/PC), which draws on the treasures of French libraries to offer 10 different pathways through Mediaeval art and illumination.
 The colours, content and form of the hundreds of images on display, many of them hitherto unpublished, are quite stunningly beautiful. Nouveau Monde and their partners set out to surprise us as well, putting paid to many received ideas about the Middle Ages.
Some mediaeval scholars, we learn for instance, knew perfectly well that the Earth couldn't be flat long before one Nicolaus Koppernigk (St Andrew's University page on Copernicus) distributed a pamphlet of his revolutionary notions in about 1514.
The detail from a Metz manuscript reproduced here, the rabbit playing the bagpipes, is "a clear evocation of homosexual relations", the historians say.
Hmm. That interpretation doesn't exactly leap out off the page, but then visual acuity was never my strong point.
I'm considerably more inclined to take their word for it than sign up as a member of my offbeat place of the week, the Flat Earth Society.
At first glance, the DVD-ROM isn't cheap -- even at Amazon France, where they've beaten the local shops to Christmas talk. Going by the companion site and some glowing reviews, however, it looks priceless.
[taliesin's log]
11:38:55 AM 
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