The Weirdstone of Brisingamen

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen: A Tale of Alderley is a children's fantasy novel by English author Alan Garner. Garner began work on the novel, his literary debut, in 1957, after he moved into the late medieval house, Toad Hall, in Blackden, Cheshire. The story, which took the local legend of The Wizard of the Edge as a partial basis for the novel's plot, was influenced by the folklore and landscape of neighbouring Alderley Edge where he had grown up. Upon completion the book was picked up by Sir William Collins who released it through his publishing company Collins in 1960.
The novel, set in and around Macclesfield and Alderley Edge in Cheshire, tells the story of two children, Colin and Susan, who are staying with some old friends of their mother while their parents are overseas. Susan possesses a small tear-shaped jewel held in a bracelet: unknown to her, this is the weirdstone of the title. Its nature is revealed when the children are hunted by the minions of the dark spirit Nastrond who, centuries before, had been defeated and banished by a powerful king. The children also have to compete with the wicked shape-shifting sorceress Selina Place and the evil wizard Grimnir, each of whom wishes to possess the weirdstone. Along the way Colin and Susan are aided by the wizard Cadellin Silverbrow and his dwarf companions.
The novel met with critical praise and led to a sequel, "The Moon of Gomrath", published in 1963. Growing to dislike the main characters, Garner decided not to write the envisioned third part of the trilogy. For the 1963 reprint Garner also made several changes to the original text and by the late 1960s he came to reject "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" as "a fairly bad book". Although it fell out of critical approval it was adapted in the late 1970s as a musical that was staged in Manchester and Essex. In 2010 HarperCollins brought out a special 50th anniversary issue of the book, containing a new preface by Garner and praise from various other figures involved in children's literature, while 2011 saw BBC Radio 4 produce a radio adaptation. In August 2012 "Boneland", the third volume in Garner's trilogy, was finally released.
Plot.
The book's introduction concerns the origin of the weirdstone. Following the defeat of Nastrond steps had been taken to prepare for his eventual return. This involved bringing together a small band of warriors of pure heart, each with a horse, and gathering them inside the old dwarf caves of Fundindelve, deep inside the hill of Alderley which were sealed by powerful white magic which would both defend Fundindelve from evil as the ages passed and prevent the warriors and their horses from ageing. When the time was ripe and the world once more in mortal peril it was prophesied that this small band of warriors would ride out from the hill, trusting in their purity of heart to defeat Nastrond forever. Fundindelve had a guardian, the ancient wizard Cadellin Silverbrow, and the heart of the white magic was sealed inside a jewel, the Weirdstone of Brisingamen.
At the beginning of the story, however, the Weirdstone has been lost, stolen centuries before by a farmer whose milk-white mare Cadellin had bought to complete the numbers in Fundindelve. The stone became a family heirloom and eventually found its way to Susan's mother, who passed it on to Susan, oblivious of its history and purpose. When the children meet Cadellin the wizard fails to notice the bracelet even when the children come to visit him in Fundindelve. However, its presence does not go unnoticed by Selina Place and the witches of the morthbrood, who send their minions to steal it. Susan finally realises the identity of the Weirdstone and, fearing its destruction, sets out to warn the wizard. The children return to Fundindelve but are waylaid by a dark presence and the Tear is taken. Once they inform Cadellin they are told to keep away, to not further involve themselves. However, whilst exploring on their bikes they notice a mysterious cloud travelling across the landscape before hovering over the home of Selina Place, St Mary's Clyffe and they go to investigate hoping to recover the stone on their own. They are successful but become lost in a labyrinth of mine-shafts and caverns. As the members of the morthbrood and Selina Place, later revealed as The Morrigan, close in on them they are rescued by a pair of dwarves, Fenodyree and Durathror, who are close companions of Cadellin. After passing through many perils the group returns to the farm where Susan and Colin are staying to spend the night, where at midnight The Morrigan menaces them through the door. They set out with the farm's owner the next day to return the Weirdstone to Cadellin before it can fall into the wrong hands. Their travels take them through gardens, lawns, fens, tangled rhododendron thickets, pine plantations, mountain peaks and snowy fields while striving to avoid the attention of the morthbrood.
At the climax of the story a great battle takes place on a hill near Alderley during which the children and their companions make a desperate last stand to protect the Weirdstone. However the enemy forces prove too strong and Durathror is mortally wounded. Grimnir takes the Weirdstone for himself and, in the ensuing chaos, Nastrond sends the great wolf Fenrir (in some editions Managarm) to destroy his enemies. As the remaining companions begin to despair, Cadellin appears and slays Grimnir, whom he reveals to be his own brother and who in the final moment accepts defeat and drops the stone into Cadellin's hand. The Morrigan flees in terror while Cadellin uses the power of the Weirdstone to subdue once again the forces of darkness.
Background.
Alan Garner.
Alan Garner was born in the front room of his grandmother's house in Congleton, Cheshire, on 17 October 1934. He grew up not far away, on Alderley Edge, a well-to-do rural Cheshire village that by this time had effectively become a suburb of Manchester. Growing up in "a rural working-class family", Garner's ancestry had been connected to Alderley Edge since at least the 16th century, with Alan tracing his lineage back to the death of William Garner in 1592. The Garner family had passed on "a genuine oral tradition", teaching their children the folk tales about The Edge, which included a description of a king and his army of knights that slept under it, guarded by a wizard, and in the mid 19th century, Alan's great-great grandfather Robert had carved the face of a bearded wizard onto the rock of a cliff next to a well that was known in local folklore as the Wizard's Well.
Alan's own grandfather, Joseph Garner, "could read, but didn't and so was virtually unlettered", but instead taught his grandson the various folk tales about The Edge, Alan later remarking that, as a result, he was "aware of [the Edge's] magic" when as a child he would often play there with his friends. The story of the king and the wizard living under the hill played an important part in the young Alan's life, becoming "deeply embedded in my psyche" and influencing his novels, in particular "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen".
In 1957 Garner purchased Toad Hall, a late mediaeval building in Blackden, seven miles from Alderley Edge. In the late 19th century the Hall had been divided into two agricultural labourers' cottages, but Garner obtained both for a total of £670, and proceeded to convert them back into a single home. It was at Toad Hall, on the afternoon of Tuesday 4 September 1957, that Garner set about writing his first novel, which would result in "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen". Whilst engaged in writing in his spare time, Garner attempted to gain employment as a teacher, but soon gave that up, believing that "I couldn't write and teach: the energies were too similar". He began working as a general labourer for four years, remaining unemployed for much of that time.
Landscape of Cheshire.
Like many of Garner's books the novel is set in the real landscape of Cheshire, in this case focused around Alderley Edge, and features fictional characters interacting at genuine sites such as the sandstone escarpment of the Edge, the Wizard's Well, the open mine pits, and the Beacon." Literary critic Neil Philip would later relate that "this sense of a numinous, sacred potency in landscape" was something that imbued all of Garner's work.
In a 1968 article Garner explained why he chose to set "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" in a real landscape rather than in a fictional realm, remarking that "If we are in Eldorado, and we find a mandrake, then OK, so it's a mandrake: in Eldorado anything goes. But, by force of imagination, compel the reader to believe that there is a mandrake in a garden in Mayfield Road, Ulverston, Lancs, then when you pull up that mandrake it is really going to scream; and possibly the reader will too."
Some features of the Cheshire landscape mentioned in the story are:
Mythology and folklore.
The legend of The Wizard of Alderley Edge revolves around a king and his sleeping knights who rest beneath the hill, waiting for the day when they must awake to save the land. In this tale a wizard, whose job it was to guard the king and his knights, one day encountered a local farmer riding upon a horse. The wizard had lost one of the knight's horses and needed to replace it. He therefore offered the farmer many rich jewels taken from the king's secret store of treasure under the Edge in payment for his horse.
The majority of the non-English words used in "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" have been adopted from Norse mythology. For instance, the svart-alfar, which means 'black elves' in Scandinavian, are described as the "maggot-breed of Ymir", a reference to the primeval giant of Norse myth; while the realm of Ragnarok, which in Garner's story is the home of the malevolent spirit Nastrond, is actually named after the Norse end-of-the-world myth. Fimbulwinter, the magically-induced winter weather that hinders the children's escape, also refers to Norse eschatology.
Other terms are taken not from Norse mythology, but from the Welsh mythology encapsulated in Mediaeval texts like the "Mabinogion". For instance, Govannon, one of the names with which Garner addresses Grimnir, has been adopted from the mythological character of Govannon ap Dun. Although Garner avoided incorporating his story into Arthurian mythology, the benevolent wizard in the novel, Cadellin Silverbrow, does have a link to the Arthurian mythos, in that "Cadellin" is one of the many names by which Culhwch invoked Arthur's aid in the Mediaeval Welsh Arthurian romance about Culhwych and Olwen.
Other words used in the novel are taken from elsewhere in European mythology and folklore. The name of Fenodyree, a benevolent dwarf in Garner's tale, is actually borrowed from Manx folklore, where it refers to a type of grotesque goblin or brownie. Meanwhile, the Morrigan, who Garner presents as a malevolent shapeshifting witch, has a name adopted from Irish mythology, where she is a war goddess who is the most powerful aspect of the tripartite goddess Badb. Literary critic Neil Philip also argued that further folkloric and mythological influences could be seen in the character of Grimnir, who had both a foul smell and an aversion to fresh water, characteristics traditionally associated with the Nuckalevee, a creature in Scottish folklore. Accompanying this, Philip opined that Grimnir was also "half identified" with the creature Grendel, the antagonist in the Old English poem "Beowulf".
Publication.
Garner sent his debut novel to the publishing company Collins, where it was picked up by the company's head, Sir William Collins, who was on the lookout for new fantasy novels following on from the recent commercial and critical success of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" (1954–55). Garner, who would go on to become a personal friend of Collins, would later relate that "Billy Collins saw a title with funny-looking words in it on the stockpile, and he decided to publish it."
Following its release in 1960, "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" proved to be a "resounding success... both critically and commercially", later being described as "a tour de force of the imagination, a novel that showed almost every writer who came afterwards what it was possible to achieve in novels ostensibly published for children." For the book's republication in 1963, Garner made several alterations to the text, excising what Neil Philip called "extraneous clauses, needless adjectives and flabby phrases." In his opinion, this "second text is taut where the first one is slack, precise where the first is woolly." Nonetheless, as the novel was republished by the US market by Puffin Books as an Armada Lion paperback in 1971, the 1960 text was once more used.
50th anniversary reprint.
In the fiftieth anniversary edition of "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen", published by HarperCollins in 2010, several notable British fantasy novelists praised Garner and his work. Susan Cooper related that "The power and range of Alan Garner's astounding talent has grown with every book he's written", whilst David Almond called him one of Britain's "greatest writers" whose works "really matter". Philip Pullman, the author of the "His Dark Materials" trilogy, went further when he remarked that:
Another British fantasy author, Neil Gaiman, claimed that "Garner's fiction is something special" in that it was "smart and challenging, based in the here and the now, in which real English places emerged from the shadows of folklore, and in which people found themselves walking, living and battling their way through the dreams and patterns of myth." Praise also came from Nick Lake, the editorial director of HarperCollins Children's Books, who proclaimed that "Garner is, quite simply, one of the greatest and most influential writers this country has ever produced."
Reception.
In 1970 "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" was given the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award by the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Education.
Upon publication it was a critical success, but later Garner had begun to find fault, referring to it in a 1968 interview as "a fairly bad book" and in 1970 as "one of the worst books published in the last twenty years... technically... inept". Writing in 1981, Neil Philip noted that it had become "fashionable to condemn Garner's early work, perhaps because of his own dismissive attitude to it."
Neil Philip's critique.
Literary critic Neil Philip devoted a chapter to both "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" and "The Moon of Gomrath" in his book "A Fine Anger: A Critical Introduction to the Work of Alan Garner" (1981). He argued that the two books "may be flawed", but that "they are arguably Garner's most popular books; certainly it is on them that his reputation as a purely children's author rests." Philip argued that "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" suffers from a "lack of characterisation"; its "most serious flaw". Yet he also felt that the book had much to commend it, with a narrative that while "unstructured", was "gripping and enthralling", holding the reader's attention and keeping them "guessing what is going to happen next." He commented on "Garner's assured, poetic command of English", with a writing style that is "more fleshy, more prolix than the pared-down economy of Garner's later style".
Adaptations.
A six-part radio adaptation by Nan MacDonald was broadcast on the BBC Home Service in 1963. The cast included:
Colin: John Thornley
Susan: Margaret Dew
Selina Place: Alison Bayley
Cadellin, the Wizard: Geoffrey Banks
Fenodyree: Brian Trueman
Police Sergeant: John Blain
Durathror: Ronald Harvi
Narrator: George Hagan
In the 1970s, "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" was adapted as a musical by Paul Pearson and was staged in Manchester and Essex. The cast included Hugo Award-winning artist Sue Mason, who also designed the programme book. The songs from the show were recently re-arranged by Inkubus Sukkubus with hopes of resurrecting the musical for a modern audience, but copyright restrictions have made it unlikely that it will be presented again. Both the novel and its sequel have also been dramatised for BBC Radio.
In the 2011 BBC Radio 4 adaptation Robert Powell played the narrator; he has known Garner since he was a schoolboy at Manchester Grammar School. Struan Rodger who played the dwarf Durathror, was in a radio production of another Garner story, "Elidor", when he was thirteen years old. This adaptation was broadcast again in November 2012.


Bonnie Siegler

Bonnie Siegler (born 1963) is a New York-based graphic designer. She is the founder of the design studio Eight and a Half and, before that, co-founded the design studio Number Seventeen in 1993. Her clients include Participant Media, Late Night with Seth Meyers, Saturday Night Live, HBO, Brooklyn Public Library, Maveron, Random House, The Criterion Collection, The New York Times, Nickelodeon, and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.
She is also the author of two books published in 2018. Signs of Resistance: A Visual History of Protest in America and describes the efforts and art of protest from 1754 through to today. The other is Dear Client, This Book Will Teach You How to Get What You Want from Creative People, with 66 short chapters that guide the reader through different aspects of the process of working with creatives.
Both books were published by Artisan Books, a division of Workman Publishing Company.
Personal life.
Bonnie Siegler is married to filmmaker, animator, and painter Jeff Scher. They currently live in Brooklyn with their two children.


Adejoke Lasisi

Adejoke Lasisi is a Nigerian fashion designer, and environmentalist. known for her development of fashion products and designs using nylon and textile wastes. She is the founder and CEO of Planet 3R and Jokelinks Weaving School.
Early life and education.
By the age of 9 Adejoke had begun weaving with her parents. She attend higher education at Obafemi Awolowo University lle-lfe and obtained a bachelor's degree in Economics. She also has a certificate in Entrepreneurial Management from Enterprise Development Center in Lagos Nigeria.
Awards.
In July 2020, Adejoke won the Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) of the Year Award, an event which was well attended by state governors and ministers. She was recognized and celebrated by President Muhammadu Buhari as a youth innovator at the maiden celebration of the National Youth Day on November 1, 2020.
She also won the Eleven Eleven Twelve Foundation's Africa Green Grant Award on November 14, 2020 at the second edition for her actions to improve the environment.


Love Interruption

"Love Interruption" is a song by American musician Jack White. It was released by XL Recordings, Columbia Records, and Third Man Records as the lead single from his debut solo studio album, "Blunderbuss" (2012). The song was made available for digital download on January 31, 2012 and as a 7-inch vinyl single on February 7. Written and produced by White, the track is an Americana song and a blues ballad with lyrics that explore love using violent imagery. It features vocals from White and Ruby Amanfu, and its instrumentation includes the bass clarinet, the Wurlitzer electric piano, and the acoustic guitar. The song received positive reviews from critics, who contrasted it with musical elements prominent in White's earlier musical projects, especially the White Stripes. "Love Interruption" was the first single White released after the White Stripes dissolved, and it reached record charts in multiple countries.
An accompanying music video for "Love Interruption" was uploaded to White's YouTube channel and Vevo on February 14. Directed by the singer, it depicts White, Amanfu and a backing band performing the song. White has performed "Love Interruption" live on numerous occasions, including on "Saturday Night Live" and at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards, and the song has been covered by James Wolpert and First Aid Kit. In addition to appearing on "Blunderbuss", "Love Interruption" is featured on White's compilation album "Acoustic Recordings 1998–2016".
Production and release.
"Love Interruption" was recorded at Third Man Studio in Nashville, Tennessee on December 7, 2011. Multiple versions of the song were created during its production: one with a full backing band and another that did not feature drums. The latter was ultimately used in the final version of the track. This recording was created in a single take, while the clarinet and bass clarinet were added after the live session.
"Love Interruption" was the first single White released after rock duo the White Stripes, of which he was a member, broke up in 2011. On January 30, 2012, White announced his debut album "Blunderbuss" along with the release of its lead single, "Love Interruption"; a free stream of the song was offered on his website. The track was released for digital download outside of Europe on January 31 at 12:00a.m. (EST). On February 7, it was released as a 7-inch vinyl single with the B-side "Machine Gun Silhoutte". "Love Interruption" and its B-side were made available for digital download in Europe on February 25 at 12:01a.m. (GMT). The song was released through Third Man Records, Columbia Records, and XL Recordings.
Composition and lyrics.
"Rolling Stone" described "Love Interruption" as a blues ballad, and Joe Robinson of "Diffuser.fm" characterized it as "gospel-infused Americana". The song is two minutes and 36 seconds in length, and it consists of White harmonizing with Ruby Amanfu, creating a melody that utilizes elements of country soul. It features the bass clarinet and a prominent Wurlitzer electric piano—played by Emily Bowland and Brooke Waggoner, respectively—while acoustic guitar chords work alongside the piano to drive the song. According to sheet music published by Universal Music Publishing Group, the song is written in the key of E major in common time, with a tempo of 96 beats per minute.
In an interview with Dimitri Ehrlich and Buzz Aldrin for the magazine "Interview", White explained that the song's title refers to love's tendency to "get... in the way of itself", elaborating: "We want things so much that we sabotage them". He was cautious about the use of the word "love", believing that he would have to differentiate it from its use in other songs. To that end, "Love Interruption" features "gory" lyrics in which a narrator expresses desires to be treated violently by "love": "I want love to roll me over slowly, stick a knife inside me and twist it all around". "Pitchfork"'s Ryan Dombal viewed the line "I won't let love disrupt, corrupt, or interrupt me anymore" as an indication that the song is "a form of self discipline" rather than "some masochistic fantasy".
Reception.
The song was met with favorable reviews from critics. Jon Dolan of "Rolling Stone" gave the song a rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, describing it as a "loopy little soul sketch" and stating that the song's "organ spritz and puppy-eyed Casio bassoon evoke 'Son of a Preacher Man'". He spoke favorably of Amanfu's vocals, finding that her "harried backing warble fits [the] song". Jem Aswad of "Billboard" described "Love Interruption" as "an unusual but tantalizing lead track" and concluded that it "leaves you lusting for more." Rebecca Schiller of "NME" described the song as "a drumless, minimalist affair based on the chord progression of the Beta Band's 'Dry The Rain'". She said that the track's "intensity is in the lyrics and its powerful, repetitive chorus" and remarked, "I've heard it three times and I can't get a second of it out of my head."
Critics drew comparisons between "Love Interruption" and music produced under White's previous musical projects, especially the White Stripes. "Spin"'s David Marchese found the song to differ from White's previous "thunderous rock" sound, while Aswad commented that it resembles "deeper cuts on the last few White Stripes albums". Citing the song's instrumentation, Michael Roffman of "Consequence of Sound" said that "Love Interruption" "didn't necessarily relive those feelings of seeing" the White Stripes. Schiller found that the "jolliness" on songs produced under the Dead Weather and the Raconteurs is absent on "Love Interruption", as is any "trademark [White] riffing". Dolan stated that the song "adds an awkwardly personal wrinkle to the White Stripes' errant primitivism".
Promotion and other usage.
An accompanying music video for "Love Interruption", which White directed, was uploaded to Vevo and White's YouTube channel on February 14, 2012. Described by "Billboard"'s Jillian Mapes as a "hazy, self-directed performance clip", the video consists of White and Amanfu singing "Love Interruption" alongside a backing band. A dog is briefly present at the beginning of the video. As of August 2018, it has over 16 million views on YouTube.
The song has been featured in setlists for White's live performances. On the March 3, 2012 episode of "Saturday Night Live", White performed "Love Interruption" with Amanfu and his all-female backing band the Peacocks. In 2013, he performed the song at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards alongside the same band. During a concert in London in 2014, White dedicated a performance of the song to touring drummer Isaiah "Ikey" Owens, who had died of a heart attack during the tour. White also performed the song at a 2015 concert in Madison Square Garden that featured Q-Tip. In March 2018, he included "Love Interruption" in the setlist for his first live performance since 2016, a concert at Third Man Records in Nashville, Tennessee. Later that year, he performed "Love Interruption" at Lollapalooza.
James Wolpert covered "Love Interruption" for his audition for season 5 of the American version of "The Voice". The song was later covered by the band First Aid Kit when they appeared on Triple J's radio program in 2014. "Consequence of Sound"'s Alex Young described the cover as a "twangy rendition" of the song. "Love Interruption" also appears on the singer's 2016 compilation album "Acoustic Recordings 1998–2016".
Personnel.
Credits adapted from the liner notes of the single's vinyl release.


BANK (art collective)

BANK was an artists' group active in London during the 1990s.
History and project.
Simon Bedwell and John Russell spent a few years on sporadic art events and fake mailout-only 'shows' in the years after leaving St Martins artschool, then in 1991 organised their first proper show, with fellow ex-St Martins friend Dino Demosthenous, in an ex-Barclays on Lewisham Way, South London; this is where the name BANK came from. Dino Demosthenous left in 1992. In 1993, Russell and Bedwell were joined by Milly Thompson, David Burrows and Andrew Williamson (Bedwell, Burrows and Williamson having worked as a group sporadically for the 2 years previously, with shows at Richard Demarco gallery Edinburgh, and Clove 2, London). Burrows left BANK in 1995, Williamson in 1998, Russell in 2000. When BANK's own gallery, Gallerie Poo Poo, closed after the three-day show Press Release in January 1999, the group began to exhibit their collective work in other venues: The Mayor Gallery, London, Magasin 4, Bregenz, Rupert Goldsworthy Gallery, New York, Anthony Wilkinson Gallery, London, Chapman FineARTS, London, Suburban, Chicago, and finally the inaugural show at Store, London, after which Milly Thompson and Simon Bedwell began to work separately as artists whilst managing the BANK archive. BANK works have continued to circulate in exhibitions in the UK and abroad, most recently in The Banquet Years, a mini-retrospective at MOT International, London, who now represent the 'estate' of BANK as well as Bedwell and Russell.
BANK's contribution to UK contemporary art was a series of curated group shows, often with comical, and sometimes offensive, titles. As a group they adopted an aggressive stance towards the mainstream contemporary art scene of the time.
The approximately twenty shows curated by BANK included the work of the BANK artists alongside the work of several future Turner Prize nominees and winners. Although the BANK exhibitions were mostly held in warehouse spaces on Curtain Road, then Underwood Street (both Shoreditch, London) the name of the gallery changed. Initially it was BANKSPACE, then DOG, and finally Gallerie Poo-Poo. The various artworks were bound together, via polemical mailouts, deliberately overt thematizing and radically non-hierarchical methods of display, within single sprawling installations with a penchant for what then seemed like visual vulgarity.
BANK also published a satirical magazine delivering tabloid-style critiques of the art world. Headlines included, "AD MAN YOU’RE A BAD MAN," and, "GALLERIES 'ALL OWNED BY RICH PEOPLE' SHOCK." Other "frankly adolescent" headlines were "ARSE COUNCIL", "SIMON PATTERSON - ONE IDEA, EIGHT YEARS", "CARRY ON CURATING", "PIPPA-LOTTA-RIST-ACTION" and "SAM-TAYLOR WOULD-NOT" These 34 tabloids, along with the Fax-Back project - in which gallery press releases were returned to galleries with corrections and commentary - have since become BANK's best known work.
Julian Stallabrass describes BANK’s activity as "the parodic creation of corporate identity at the centre of which (as their name suggests) is a noisy and constant reference to that matter of which the art world usually whispers: money." They had, according to Matthew Collings, a "surly, self-destructive, self-conscious, introspective attitude - combined...with critical intelligence and a flair for spotting weaknesses in the art system".
BANK SHOWS 1991 - 2003
2003
"SIMON BEDWELL & MILLY THOMPSON" Store, London
"ART IS HELL" The Suburban, Chicago
2002
"BANK" Anthony Wilkinson Gallery, London
"CAPITULATER!" Project, Dublin (solo BANK show/billboard)
2001
"BANK" Chapman Fine Arts, London,
"BANK" Centre for Artist Books, University of Dundee
1999
"PRESS RELEASE" Gallerie Poo Poo, London
"PRESS RELEASE" Rupert Goldsworthy Gallery, New York
"IF HOPE WAS A TIME MACHINE" Magazin 4, Bregenz, Austria
"DEAD LIFE" Mayor Gallery, London
1998
"WHITE3" (BANK, Bethan Huws) Gallerie Poo Poo, London
"WHITE3" (BANK, Art & Language), Gallerie Poo Poo, London
"WHITE3" (BANK, Lolly Batty), Gallerie Poo Poo, London
"STOP SHORT-CHANGING US. POPULAR CULTURE IS FOR IDIOTS. WE BELIEVE IN ART!" Gallerie Poo Poo, London
"GALLERIE WINNER" (BANK, Wayne Lloyd) Gallerie Poo Poo, London
"CONFERENCE" Waygood Gallery, Newcastle
1997
"SEWAGE LUST" ICA (Nash&Brandon Rooms), London
"JESUS WAS A JEW"
The Works, Berlin,Germany
"MASK OF GOLD" (Christy Astuy, Bank, David Burrows, Roddy Thomson & the Lowe Brothers, Margarita Gluzberg, Mark Jones, Peter Seymour, Eric Wright) Gallerie Poo Poo, London
"WINKLE THE POT BELLIED PIG AND HIS WOODLAND CHUMS" (Bank, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Minimal Club, John Cussans & Ranu Mukhergee, Michelle Griffiths, Russell Haswell) Gallerie Poo Poo, London & Bricks and Kicks, Vienna
"IT'S A STITCH-UP!" DOG, London
"GOD" (Liz Arnold, BANK) DOG, London
1996
"DOG-U-MENTAL VIII!!!" (Terry Atkinson, Bank, Dave Beech, David Burrows, Carina Diepens, Keith Farquar, Rebecca Howard, Michael Kay, Graham Ramsay, Fergal Stapleton, John Stezaker, Milly Thompson, Rebecca Warren, Wayne Winner) DOG, London
"Viper/BANK TV" (130 artists incl. Liz Arnold, Dave Beech, David Burrows, Tracey Emin, Michael Kay, Leeds United, Beagles & Ramsay, Orphan Drift, Bob & Roberta Smith, Martin Vincent, Wayne Winner) DOG, London/Dukes Bar, Manchester
"F**K OFF!" (BANK, Lolly Batty, Gavin Turk, Rebecca Warren) DOG, London BANKcatalogue
"THE HAPPY SQUIRREL CLUB" (Liz Arnold, BANK, Anke Dessin, Stephen Glynn, Roddy Thompson/Colin Lowe, Neil Miller, Matt Mitchell, Mike Nelson, Peter Newman, Stephen Nicolas/Stephen Caley, Orphan Drift, Rebecca Warren) De Fabriek, Eindhoven, Netherlands
1995
"COCAINE ORGASM" (Tim Allen, Liz Arnold, (Maxine Boobyer?), Bank, Lolly Batty, Dave Beech, Simon Bill, John Cussans & Ranu Mukhergee, Stephen Glynn, Gerard Hemsworth, Simon Martin/Anna Mossman, Soren Martinsen, Muntean/Rosenblum, Chris Ofili, Janette Parris, John Stezaker, Michael Stubbs, Jessicca Voorsanger, Rebecca Warren, Max Wigram, Andrew Williamson) BANKSPACE, London
"THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE" (BANK, Simon Bedwell, John Cussans & Colin Lane, Matthew Higgs, 0rphan.drift>, Ingrid Pollard, Bob & Roberta Smith), BANKSPACE, London
"ZOMBIE GOLF" (BANK, Dave Beech, Adam Chodzko, Maria Cook, Martin Creed, Peter Doig, Matthew Higgs, Sivan Lewin, John Stezaker), BANKSPACE, London
1994
"WISH YOU WERE HERE" (Simon Bedwell, Sonia Boyce, David Burrows, The Cabinet Gallery, Lucy Gunning, Anne Lislegaard, Matt Mitchell, Ian Pratt, John Russell, Bob & Roberta Smith, Milly Thompson, Andrew Williamson, cur Bank), BANKSPACE, London & Newcastle
1993
"NATURAL HISTORY" (Simon Bedwell, David Burrows, John Russell, Milly Thompson, John Timberlake, Andrew Williamson) Battlebridge Centre, 2 - 6 Battlebridge Road, London NW1
1992
"SPACE INTERNATIONAL" (Simon Bedwell, Luis Contreras, Dino Demosthenous, Valentine Figueros, Esther McLaughlin, Susanna Medina, Derek Ogbourne, Jim Russell, John Russell, Stephen Park, Clifton Steinberg, John Timberlake, Battlebridge Centre, 2-6 Battlebridge Road, London NW1 & El Dientes Del Tiempo Gallery, Valencia, Spain
"CHLORINE" (Simon Bedwell, Dino Demosthenous, Julia Judge, Michael Rohde, John Russell, Carol Smith, Christopher Winter, Marshall Street Leisure Centre. Soho, London
1991
"BANK" (Simon Bedwell, Dino Demosthenous, John Russell, Carole Smith, Christopher Winter) ex-Barclays Bank, 239 Lewisham Way, London
Selected exhibitions since 2003.
2013 THE BANQUET YEARS MOT International, London
2012 SELF PORTRAIT: RELICS AND ARCHIVES Treize, Paris WRITER IN RESIDENCE Ormeston House, Limerick, Eire
2010 RUDE BRITTANNIA: BRITISH COMIC ART Tate Britain, London
 GRAND NATIONAL: ART FROM BRITAIN Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, Vestfossen, Norway
 PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT Invisible Exports, New York
 EAST END PROMISE: SHOREDITCH 1985-2000 Red Gallery London
 SO BE IT:INTERVENTIONS IN PRINTED MATTER Roth, NY
 GALLERY, GALERIE, GALLERIA Norma Mangione Gallery, Turin
2009 IN NUMBERS: SERIAL PUBLICATIONS BY ARTISTS X Initiative, New York
 THE MIND OF THIS DEATH IS UNRELENTINGLY AWAKE Office for Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway.
 FAX The Drawing Center, New York; Contemporary Museum, Baltimore
 THE LITTLE SHOP ON HOXTON STREET Limoncello, London
2008 LESS IS LESS, MORE IS MORE, THAT'S ALL CAPC Bordeaux
 AIR KISSING Arcadia University Art Gallery, Philadelphia
 EXACT IMAGINATION CCAD Canzani Center Gallery, Columbus, Ohio
2006 FAX-BACKS Dolores/de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam
 BRING THE WAR HOME Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York & QED Gallery, Los Angeles
2005 STILL LIFE Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Panama City: Museo de Arte Moderna, Guatemala City; SESI, São Paulo, Museo de Arte de Lima, Lima MAC, Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro
2003 FRASS UBS Bullion Vault, London
DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THAT FROG WHO WANTED TO BE A PRINCE? HE WENT TO A BED AND DREAMED THAT HE WAS ONE... WOKE UP AND FOUND THAT HE HAD BECOME ONE. HE WAS STILL A FROG Club Egg, London
FORGETKULT The McAllister Institute, New York
SUBSCRIBE: RECENTART IN PRINT Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York
NIHILISM/FAITH 47 Paul St, London
CHOKKABLOKKA Jeffrey Charles Gallery, London
STILL LIFE Museo de Belles Artes, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gill, Mexico City Caraccas & Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, Bogota cat


Zen Pinball 2

Zen Pinball 2 is a pinball video game developed by Zen Studios for the Wii U, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Android, and PlayStation Vita. The game was announced on April 9, 2012. The first PlayStation versions were released on September 4, 2012 in North America and September 5 in Europe while the Wii U version was released on March 21, 2013 in North America and January 31, 2013 in Europe.
"Zen Pinball 2" is an upgrade to the original "Zen Pinball 3D". It features a new UI and an upgraded version of the game engine which improves graphics and physics. There is also a new social sharing feature which allows players to post their scores on Facebook.
Although "Zen Pinball 2" is fundamentally a free download, users who already own "Zen Pinball" or "Marvel Pinball" for the PlayStation 3 are able to use all their downloadable content in the PS versions of "Zen Pinball 2", which imports automatically. There were 26 tables at launch (available separately as premium DLC) each of which are available as a free trial (though packs like "Marvel Pinball: Vengeance" and "Virtue" will still have to be bought as a whole). Users who purchase a pinball table on one Sony console are able to play it for free on the other.
Reception.
The game has a score of 86% on Metacritic.
Sequel.
In 2017, Zen Studios released "Pinball FX 3", a joint sequel to "Zen Pinball 2" and "Pinball FX 2" that bridged the divide between Microsoft and non-Microsoft platforms that initially existed between the first two "Pinball FX" games and the "Zen Pinball" sub-series, bringing an end to the latter.


SuperSpy Productions

SuperSpy Productions was a song-writing and production duo that consisted of Mher Filian and Isaac Hasson in Los Angeles. They contributed several hit songs to popular culture.
Isaac Hasson.
The Canadian-born Hasson was a member of the Boston-based Division St., which self-released three albums and provided opening acts for the Barenaked Ladies and the Black Crowes. After growing tired of the club scene, Hasson moved to Los Angeles to focus on songwriting and production.
Mher Filian.
Filian is currently running his own music production company, splitting his time between New York and LA.
Credits.
Demi Lovato - "Here We Go Again" (Hollywood): “Here We Go Again”, “U Got Nothin on Me”

Selena Gomez - "Kiss & Tell" (Hollywood): “I Promise You”, “More”

Push Play - "Found" (Wind-up): “My Everything”

Cassie Steele - "Destructo Doll" (Rob N Steal)

"Instant Star 4" (Orange): “Pavement” Cassie Steele
TV, Film and Multi Media.
"Live Like There's No Tomorrow" - Selena Gomez, for the Fox film "Ramona and Beezus"

"Summer Nights" Cassie Steele appearing in The Sims 3 World Adventures

“Damage is Done” appearing in “The Hills”

“Better Off Alone” appearing in “Secret Life of the American Teenager”

“Ride My Train” “Heartbroken Fool” appearing in “All I Want”

“Rock Star Beau” Cassie Steele appearing in Degrassi The Next Generation


Tha Bizness

Tha Bizness is an American record production and songwriting team from Seattle, Washington, composed of Justin "Henny" Henderson and Christopher John "Dow Jones" Whitacre. Tha Bizness have produced songs for several prominent artists, including Ne-Yo, Jay Z, Snoop Dogg, Nas, Ice Cube, 50 Cent, and Kendrick Lamar, among others. In 2009, they received a Producer of the Year nomination at the BET Hip Hop Awards.
History.
Henny, who was previously a singer under the name "J Henn," and Dow Jones, who was previously a mixtape DJ, joined forces to form the production team "Tha Bizness." Dow used his mixtape series, titled "Play Your Position," to promote their beats. Eventually, they were noticed by West Coast artists, for whom they produced songs for mixtapes. In 2007, Sha Money XL contacted the duo via Myspace and offered the duo a production deal with G-Unit Records and Sha Money's management team, Teamwork Music.
Tha Bizness achieved mainstream success with the production of "Every Girl" from Young Money's 2009 album *We Are Young Money*. The instrumental was originally intended to be for R. Kelly, for whom Tha Bizness had previously collaborated on "Hair Braider" in early 2008, but Lil Wayne heard the beat and bought it first. Tha Bizness also produced another song on the same album, title "Ms. Parker."


Spiral (piercing)

An ear spiral is a thick spiral that is usually worn through the ear lobe. It is worn in ears that have been stretched. It is normally held in place only by its own downward pressure. Glass ear spirals are shown but many materials are used. Some designs are quite ornate and may include decorative appendages flaring from the underlying concentric pattern.


Chhel Vayeda

Chhel Anandji Vayeda (1935 – 12 November 2014) was a Gujarati art director and production designer from India.
Early life.
Chhel was born in 1935 in Dwarka (now in Gujarat) to Anandji and Jayakunvar. He was the youngest in seven siblings. His family moved to Bhuj when he was ten years old. He completed matriculation and joined School of Arts, Bhuj affiliated with University of Bombay. He started his job as assistant draftsman in state bus transport, GSRTC. His elder brother practicing law in Mumbai introduced him to Dr. D. G. Vyas who was an art critic and director of Sir J. J. School of Arts. He resigned from GSRTC and moved to Mumbai to study in Sir J. J. School of Arts in 1960.
Career.
Gujarati stage director actor Honey Chhaya brought him in the field of art direction and production design in 1963 at Rangbhoomi Natya Academy. His first Gujarati play as an independent set designer, "Parinita", produced by Rangbhoomi won him the first prize in state level play competition.
He joined Paresh Daru in 1966 and the duo was called Chhel-Paresh thereafter. Together they designed sets of more than 700 plays in five languages including Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi, English, Sanskrit and Oriya; and 55 films in six languages and TV serials in three languages. These films include "Train to Pakistan" (1998), "Ankahee" (1985), "Tere Shahar Mein", "Khubsoorat" and "Lorie" (1984). He was an art director of some Gujarati films including "Kanku" (1969), "Upar Gagan Vishal", "Dada Ho Dikri", "Lakho Fulani".
He died on 12 November 2014 at Mumbai.
Personal life.
He married Kusum in 1964. His son Sanjay Chhel is also writer and director. His daughter Alpana Buch is an TV actress who is married to actor-director Mehul Buch.


DragonVale

DragonVale is a park simulator video game developed by Backflip Studios and released on September 14, 2011 for iOS and on November 9, 2012 for Android. DragonVale was acquired by publisher DECA Games in March 2020 following the closure of Backflip Studios. DragonalVale is also a breed-and-nurture game that was one of the first commercial free-to-play mobile games with a significant female audience. The game has been downloaded over 45 million times which has generated a total revenue of over $200 million. Backflip Studios was purchased by Hasbro in 2013, because of its popularity. In late 2019, Hasbro shut down, which was then acquired by DECA games in March 2020.
Gameplay.
"DragonVale" is a dragon breeding simulation game in which players design an island park and display dragons in habitats. Displaying dragons allows the player to earn "dragoncash". Dragoncash can be used to upgrade a park with new islands, habitats, and decorations. Currently, the game has a max park level of 140, and there is a total dragon count of 619 (204 elemental dragons, 265 special dragons, and 262 epic dragons), decoration count of 479, and an island count of 29.
Basic elemental dragons can produce a specific set of hybrid dragons by being paired in the Breeding Cave, the Epic Breeding Island, the Berrywhite Breeding Cave, which is only available during Valentine's, or the Cooperative Breeding Cave. The ten basic elements are Plant, Fire, Earth, Cold, Lightning, Water, Air, Metal, Light, and Dark.
Epic dragons are rarer than basic elemental dragons and hybrids. Types of Epic dragons include Sun, Moon, Rainbow, Treasure, Olympus, Gemstone, Dream, Seasonal, Apocalypse, Chrysalis, Ornamental, Crystalline, Snowflake, Monolith, Aura, Hidden, Galactic, and Surface.
There are a number of limited or rare dragons, known as "Special Dragons", that are only available during a specific period of time. These dragons are themed toward specific holidays, seasons, anomalies, months, and events. For example, the Ghost dragon is available for Halloween and the Reindeer dragon is available for the winter holidays. Many Epic dragons are also limited; for example, the Leap Year Dragon that is theoretically only available every 4 years. Limited dragons are often released alongside a limited park decoration. Limited dragons include the gemstone dragons, which correspond to the monthly birthstones. Gemstone dragons earn gems rather than Dragoncash. Backflip Studios has held several "bring them back" events to give players a chance to breed a limited dragon they may have missed the first time around.
Gems are a vital part of DragonVale. Without them certain goals take longer to achieve. Gems can be acquired through trading them with friends, winning them in the colosseum and race track, purchasing them directly, or from gemstone and crystalline dragons.
The Rift is another dimension in the game. In the Rift, Gems and Dragoncash are useless and the player must collect Etherium. The best way to collect Etherium is having dragons in the rift. The rift has a maximum of 55 habitats, which can be decorated using Rift habitat themes. Many dragons can go into the rift, but the rift has 34 special dragons.
Though breeding is the most common way to earn non-basic dragons, they can also be bought from the market for a high amount of gems unless they are the basic elemental dragons, for which you can use Dragoncash. Players can buy new islands to make space for more habitats although there is a limit on habitats.
Players raise dragons to adulthood by feeding them treats grown from treat farms, won from the race track, or earned from the completion of quests. The higher level a dragon is, the more Dragoncash it will earn per minute. Different dragons earn Dragoncash at different rates. For example, a Gift dragon at level 10 can only earn 77 Dragoncash per minute while a level 10 Moon Dragon can earn 256 Dragoncash per minute. Rainbow Dragons can earn 400 Dragoncash per minute at level 10.
There have also been several events held in relation to time of year or holidays that require the player to do a number of activities like collecting Dragoncash/Gems, hatching or selling dragons after incubation, and other special provisions. These activities give the player a certain limited time currency that corresponds to the event and enables the player to buy exclusive or unique items.
Critical reception.
The game has a score of 84 on Metacritic based on 5 critic reviews.
The game also has an average score of 7.1 out of 10 based upon the community's reviews on Metacritic currently.


Stiletto heel

A stiletto heel, or just stiletto, is a shoe with a long, thin, high heel. It is named after the stiletto dagger.
Stiletto heels may vary in length from 2.5 centimetres (1 inch) to 25 cm (10 inches) or more if a platform sole is used, and are sometimes defined as having a diameter at the ground of less than 1 cm (slightly less than half an inch). Stiletto-style heels or shorter are called kitten heels.
History.
High-heeled shoes were worn by men and women courtiers until the French Revolution. When high heels came back in style in the late 1800s, they were worn only by women. The stiletto heel came with the advent of technology using a supporting metal shaft or stem embedded into the heel, instead of wood or other, weaker materials that required a wide heel. Italian shoe designer Salvatore Ferragamo paved the way for stilettos by inventing the steel arch. Some historians also credit him with inventing the stiletto heel, while others credit French fashion designer Charles Jourdan. French designers such as Roger Vivier and André Perugia popularized the stiletto design in the 1950s, which quickly spread across Europe and the United States.
After an initial wave of popularity in the 1950s, they reached their most refined shape in the early 1960s, when the toes of the shoes which bore them became as slender and elongated as the stiletto heels themselves. As a result of the overall sharpness of outline, it was customary for women to refer to the whole shoe as a "stiletto", not just the heel, via synecdoche ("pars pro toto"). Although they faded from the scene after the Beatle era began, their popularity continued at street level, and women stubbornly refused to give them up even after they could no longer readily find them in the mainstream shops. A version of the stiletto heel was reintroduced in 1974 by Manolo Blahnik, who dubbed his "new" heel the "Needle". Similar heels were stocked at the big Biba store in London, by Russell & Bromley and by smaller boutiques. Old, unsold stocks of pointed-toe stilettos and contemporary efforts to replicate them (lacking the true stiletto heel because of changes in the way heels were by then being mass-produced) were sold in street fashion markets and became popular with punks and with other fashion "tribes" of the late 1970s until supplies of the inspirational original styles dwindled in the early 1980s. Subsequently, round-toe shoes with slightly thicker (sometimes cone-shaped) semi-stiletto heels, often very high in an attempt to convey slenderness were frequently worn at the office with wide-shouldered power suits. The style survived through much of the 1980s but almost completely disappeared during the 1990s, when professional and college-age women took to wearing shoes with thick, block heels. The slender stiletto heel staged a major comeback after 2000 when young women adopted the style for dressing up office wear or adding a feminine touch to casual wear, like jeans.
Image.
Stilettos, like all similar high-heeled shoes, give the optical illusion of a longer, slimmer leg, a smaller foot, and overall greater height. They alter the wearer's posture and gait, flexing the calf muscles and making the bust and buttocks more prominent.
Stiletto heels are particularly associated with the image of the "femme fatale". They are often considered to be a seductive item of clothing, and are even fetishized as an erotic object by some.
Disadvantages.
All high heels counter the natural functionality of the foot, sometimes causing skeletal and muscular problems if users wear them excessively; such shoes are a common cause of venous complaints such as pain, fatigue, and heavy-feeling legs, and have been found to provoke venous hypertension in the lower limbs. Despite their impracticality and fluctuating demand, they persist as a fashion option.
Stiletto heels concentrate a large amount of force into a small area. The great pressure under such a heel, which is greater than that under the feet of an elephant, can cause damage to carpets and floors. The stiletto heel, unless equipped with a "heel stopper" to enlarge the floor contact area, can be impractical for outdoor wear on soft ground (such as grass, sand or mud), or in environments where floor damage is unacceptable.


Assocreation

Assocreation is a group of fine artists founded in Vienna, Austria in 1997. Its works are primarily based on haptic perception and conscious temporal motion in space. In seeking to inspire reflection and insight through motion and sensory experiences, Assocreation works primarily with interactive installations and public happenings. Ground and floor play an important role in its works.
Works.
Assocreation's agents are anonymous yet they consider their work to be the product of an individual. Their creations include a wide range of physical works which have been premiered at art festivals such as the "Ars Electronica" in Linz, Austria; the "Bienal de Valencia", Spain; and the "Machine-RAUM Biennale" in Vejle, Denmark.
The group made its first international appearance in 1999 at the "Ars Electronica Festival" under the motto "Life Science", where it featured its interactive, telematic installation "Bump". In this work two sidewalks were connected via the internet and set up in public areas in Linz, Austria, and Budapest, Hungary. In walking over one sidewalk participants trigger electronic impulses which are then transferred to the other, raising that sidewalk's planks and pedestrians several centimeters and vice versa. This installation was presented in Istanbul, the European Capital of Culture 2010, on both European and Asian sides of the city.
The project "Common Ground" followed in 2003 at the "Bienal de Valencia", featured in the “Department Store” exhibit under the care of Will Alsop. This installation is made up of a stone-tiled floor mounted on springs and set up in an urban context. Every step unleashes a wave of movement which spreads through the floor and takes hold of other participants. Like "Bump", "Common Ground" also turns solid ground into a loose membrane.
In 2005 "Public Hangings" offered participants the opportunity to be suspended by the collars of business suits in a place normally reserved for the processing of dead meat.
Various smaller projects were realized thorough 2006, including "Pink Prints" and "Freedom". The latter consists of yellow drainage pipes shaped into writing and mounted as 3D graffiti on the chain-link fences of several basketball courts in Vienna, Austria. It was around this time that Assocreation was first invited to display its work in art galleries. The installation "Red Carpet", an actual carpet made of loosely joined broom heads, was created by the group for the exhibit “Knock Knock Picnic” in the New York gallery "Jack The Pelican Presents". This work was also presented at the European art festival Europalia 07 in the group exhibit “Agorafolly”.
Assocreation started its "Moon Ride" project in 2006 which is also the object of its current activities. Originally featured at the "Ars Electronica Festival" (motto “Simplicity”), it was also on display at the "Machine-RAUM Biennale for Video Art and Digital Culture" in Vejle, Denmark, in 2007. Participants are invited to hook their own bikes up to bike trainers previously transformed into generators. Every step on the pedals generates electricity, illuminating – at varying intensity – a large light balloon hovering in the night sky. Moon Ride is inspired by the fictitious presumption that without human effort the night is void of light, even moonlight. This installation is due to be presented at the festival "Warsaw under Construction", under the care of the Warsaw Museum of Modern Art.


Tulsi Ramsay

Tulsi Ramsay (29 July 1944 – 13 December 2018) was an Indian film director. He was the son of F.U. Ramsay and was one of the famous Seven Ramsay Brothers. The other six are Kumar Ramsay, Shyam Ramsay, Keshu Ramsay, Arjun Ramsay, Gangu Ramsay and Kiran Ramsay. Tulsi Ramsay directed several movies in the Horror genre during the 80's and 90's. Movies such as Hotel, Purana Mandir, Tahkhana, Veerana, Bandh Darwaza have acquired a cult following. He has also directed the "Zee Horror Show" TV series in 1993. The memories of most of the episodes of this TV series are still afresh in the hearts of horror enthusiasts in India. He ran a production company, Tulsi Ramsay Production located at Andheri in Mumbai. Ramsay died on 14 December, 2018 in a city hospital in Mumbai after complaining of chest pains.


John Murphy (engineer)

John A. Murphy is an American inventor and computer engineer credited with inventing ARCNET, the first commercial networking system, in 1976. He was working for Datapoint Corporation at the time. His biography appeared in the IT History Society website.
Background and career.
Originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma, Murphy graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1965 with an B.S. degree in electrical engineering. He first worked at IBM, then Motorola, Telex, and Singer Business Machines before joining Datapoint, where he led design of the computer networking system ARCNET. Victor Poor had established the R&D function at Datapoint as industry leading: with Harry Pyle, Poor co-created the architecture that was ultimately implemented in the first successful computer microprocessor, the Intel 8008.
ARCNET.
Developed in 1976, ARCNET (Attached Resource Computer NETwork) was the first widely available networking system for microcomputers.
Datapoint had pioneered microprocessors; the challenge ARCNET addressed was how to facilitate the efficient transmission of information between different machines. In an interview with Len Shustek for the Computer History Museum, Murphy notes that Datapoint took ARCNET from concept to reality in "under a year and probably very much under a year." As the first commercial local area network, ARCNET found early success, but corporate struggles at Datapoint led to slower adoption in the 1980s, relative to other commercial alternatives like Ethernet. According to Techopedia, "ARCnet was the first simple networking based solution that provided for all kinds of transmission regardless of the transmission medium or the type of computer."


Filmfare Award for Best Costume Design

The Filmfare Best Costumes Award is given by the "Filmfare" magazine as part of its annual Filmfare Awards for Hindi films.
Dolly Ahluwalia holds a record won maximum 3 awards.
List.
Here is a list of the award winners and the films for which they won.


Larry Harris (game designer)

Larry Harris, Jr., is a game designer.
Family.
Harris is the son of Lawrence (Larry) Harris, Sr., who was a U.S. infantryman in the Pacific Theater, participating in assaults in the Solomon Islands, New Guinea and the Philippines.
Career.
Larry Harris is most famous for creating the board game "Axis & Allies", as well as all of its sequels. During 1984, his first year at Milton Bradley, 13 games of his design were featured in the company's catalog. This included the three initial titles in the Gamemaster series: "Conquest of the Empire", "Broadsides and Boarding Parties", and, "Axis & Allies". Other companies for which he has designed games include Mattel, Coleco, Parker Brothers, Hasbro Games Group, Hasbro Interactive, and Infogrames Interactive. His other significant games include "LionHeart" and more. He has also assisted in the further development of "Trivial Pursuit" and "Risk". Larry is also the inventor of "Thin Ice". Harris runs his own company, Harris Game Design.
Four of his "Axis & Allies" games won Origins Awards, including the induction of the original game into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design's Hall of Fame in 1996.
Harris has lived extensively in Europe and three years in Iran. He speaks fluent French, is an Army veteran with five years' service, and has been known to pilot an ultralight.


The Crystal Key

The Crystal Key is a 1999 graphic adventure video game developed by Earthlight Productions and published by DreamCatcher Interactive. A work of science fiction, it casts the player as an interstellar explorer on a quest to save Earth from Ozgar, a malevolent alien conqueror. The player uses portals to traverse multiple planets, including desert and jungle worlds, while collecting items and solving puzzles. "The Crystal Key" was conceived by John and Jennifer Matheson in the mid-1990s, and it underwent a five-year creation process hampered by problems with its technology. It was signed by DreamCatcher as part of the publisher's strategic push into the adventure game genre.
"The Crystal Key" became a commercial hit and was DreamCatcher's best-selling game of 2000. It was a central piece in the effort by the publisher's parent, Cryo Interactive, to penetrate the North American market; the title proceeded to sell above 500,000 units in that region alone by 2004. The game received mixed-to-negative reviews from critics, who cited bugs and often unfavorably compared it to "Myst". While certain reviewers praised "The Crystal Key"s visuals and gameplay, others panned them outright, along with the game itself. After a lengthy development period, Earthlight followed up "The Crystal Key" in 2004 with the sequel "Crystal Key 2", a co-production with Kheops Studio in France.
Gameplay and plot.
"The Crystal Key" is a graphic adventure game that takes place from a character's eye-view in a pre-rendered graphical environment. Using a point-and-click interface, the player navigates the game world, collects items and solves puzzles. Player movement is restricted to jumps between panoramic static screens, in a manner that has been compared to "Myst". The camera view can be rotated 360° on each screen. The character's movement through the world is portrayed by animated cutscene transitions between jumps. At the bottom-left of the game screen, a "spacepack" inventory can be toggled to reveal the items carried by the player character. These objects may be used on things in the world to complete puzzles and progress through the game.
As a work of science fiction, "The Crystal Key" casts the player as the pilot of an experimental spacecraft able to reach the speed of light. Shortly before the game starts, Earth is attacked by an alien military led by the malevolent Ozgar. Around the same time, Earth intercepts an interstellar message from a race called the Arkonians, which reveals that Arkonian forces had previously defeated Ozgar by unknown means. The player is sent to the source of this transmission to learn more, and to explore the worlds left behind by the Arkonians. "The Crystal Key" begins as the player reaches the transmission's origin point, near series of locked portals to other planets. Locating a device known as the Crystal Key, the player accesses these portals and travels to a desert planet, a jungle-themed world and the Arkonians' underwater city of Suralon. The Arkonians' mission had long been to keep this key away from Ozgar. Ultimately, the player boards Ozgar's spacecraft and vanquishes him, thereby saving Earth.
Development.
"The Crystal Key" was conceived by John and Jennifer Matheson in the mid-1990s. Developed by Earthlight Productions, the game ultimately underwent a five-year creation process. John Matheson later noted that the project suffered from "technical issues with [its] development platform" that slowed production. The Mathesons collaborated on the game's story, while John served as programmer and was among the title's 10 artists. Earthlight employed QuickTime VR to create "The Crystal Key"s 360° panoramic environments, which were devised to allow some vertical scrolling without being truly spherical. In an effort to minimize the game's interface, the team designed "The Crystal Key" in such a way as to never require double-clicks.
By April 1999, Earthlight had signed with publisher DreamCatcher Interactive to distribute "The Crystal Key" and was set to release the game that year. DreamCatcher had started doing business in 1996 with the publication of "Jewels of the Oracle", and gradually drifted into the adventure genre after finding that "customers really were hungry for" these titles, according to DreamCatcher's Director of Sales Marshall Zwicker. "Profit" reported that the publisher located such projects via "networking at tradeshows and reviewing unsolicited game proposals." "The Crystal Key" was among several games that DreamCatcher used to push its corporate strategy in the adventure genre at the time, alongside ' and '. The publisher compared the game to "Beyond Time", one of the adventure game releases whose reception had drawn it to the field. In July 1999, DreamCatcher announced an autumn release for "The Crystal Key", and in October set it for November 15. It launched on November 22, 1999, at a budget price point and on two CD-ROMs.
Reception.
Sales.
"The Crystal Key" was a commercial success. During the first quarter of 2000, DreamCatcher Interactive shipped more than 120,000 units of the game to major retailers in the United States, including Target and Walmart. The title was a central piece in the effort by DreamCatcher's parent Cryo Interactive, which bought the publisher in March 2000, to expand its international reach. In the United States, "The Crystal Key" debuted on PC Data's computer game sales rankings at #14 for June 2000, with an average retail price of $18. It secured 17th place in both July and August, but was absent from the top 20 in September. According to PC Data, its sales in August alone were 19,079 units, for revenues of $358,984. "The Crystal Key"s North American retail sales for 2000 ultimately totaled 178,690 units, by PC Data's tally. December accounted for 35,643 of these sales. The game was DreamCatcher's biggest seller of 2000 and represented 32% of company sales that year.
"The Crystal Key" continued to sell in North America during 2001, when PC Data reported 29,539 sales by March, 49,478 by June and 67,099 by year's end. Another 21,702 units were sold in the region during the first six months of 2002. By June of that year, the game's total sales had surpassed 400,000 units. This led Susanne Baillie of "Profit" to declare "The Crystal Key" "one of the best-selling PC games of all time", and she cited it as part of DreamCatcher's dominance of the adventure game market by that point. According to DreamCatcher, sales of "The Crystal Key" in North America reached 455,000 units by early 2003, and ultimately surpassed 500,000 copies by March 2004.
Critical reviews.
In 2004, Scott Osborne of GameSpot wrote that "The Crystal Key" "received a ho-hum reception at best and was quickly forgotten". "PC PowerPlay"s Agata Budinska, Inside Mac Games' Richard Hallas and "The Electric Playground"s Niko Silvester characterized it as a low-quality clone of "Myst"; the third writer called it "Myst"s "grubby little brother". Reviewing "The Crystal Key" for "Computer Games Strategy Plus", David Ryan Hunt described it as a game devoid of redeeming qualities that ultimately "doesn’t have anything to offer". He sharply criticized its low-resolution visuals and found its story shallow and its gameplay uninspired. Budinska and Silvester echoed Hunt's critique of the gameplay, and Silvester similarly noted its "muddy" visuals and abrupt ending. One argument in its favor, in Silvester's view, was its low price point.
Erik Peterson of IGN had a more positive assessment of "The Crystal Key". In contrast to Silvester and Hunt, he highly praised the visuals and panoramic views, and found the puzzles "both challenging and intriguing". By his estimation, it was "a surprisingly fun game" and possibly "one of the last true adventure games." Nevertheless, he shared Hunt's problems with major bugs in the software, and encountered a game-breaking glitch on the jungle planet. Saved game glitches and numerous crashes were likewise reported by Darcy Danielson, the reviewer for Just Adventure, who followed Silvester in criticizing "The Crystal Key"s disk swapping. Danielson also concurred with Peterson on the game's limited sound design, which IGN's writer considered to be a core problem that held the title back from greatness. Despite these issues, Danielson felt that "The Crystal Key" was "quite a find" and shared Peterson's positive view of its graphics and puzzles, and his belief that it suited both novices and experienced players.
Hallas and Adventure Gamers' reviewer, Ray Ivey, both felt that "The Crystal Key" failed to break new ground in its genre. This led them to different conclusions: while Hallas wrote that "other games have already done very similar things much better", Ivey dismissed the idea that the game's lack of innovation posed a problem, given its high quality. The latter writer praised the music, concurred with Peterson and Danielson on the puzzles and summarized "The Crystal Key" as "a very fun, satisfying game for us "Myst" Clone fans". However, he found the visuals "uneven", noting the beauty of certain environments but agreeing with Silvester on the "muddy" look of others. For Hallas, the graphics were mediocre and the puzzles a mixed bag, and like Silvester and Hunt he was let down by the ending. In line with those two writers, Hallas concluded that "The Crystal Key" is a "rather disappointing" experience.
Sequel.
A sequel to "The Crystal Key", at first entitled "Crystal Key II: The Far Realm", was revealed by DreamCatcher Interactive's Adventure Company imprint in April 2003. It was among a slew of announcements in preparation for the 2003 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), and Marek Bronstring of Adventure Gamers called it one of the publisher's "top titles premiering at the show", alongside "". Earthlight Productions developed "Crystal Key 2" with Virtools and V-Ray. It was designed to feature spherical 360° panoramas, unlike its predecessor's more limited viewing areas. According to John Matheson, Earthlight sought to overcome the problems that had affected "The Crystal Key"s production pipeline and give its art team more room "to be as creative as possible". The game's plot builds upon that of the original, and casts the player as Call, who seeks to stop the minions of Ozgar and save the world of Evany.
Initially developed by Earthlight and set for a winter 2003 release, "Crystal Key 2" underwent "many years" of production and took longer than The Adventure Company had wanted, Benoît Hozjan of Kheops Studio later remarked. As a result, Kheops was hired to co-develop the game late in production, which Hozjan said included "the programming and the integration, hand in hand with John Matheson." In July 2003, Matheson estimated "Crystal Key 2" as 75% complete and on track for December, but it ultimately launched in March 2004. The review aggregation website Metacritic summarized the game's critical reception as "mixed or average".


Georgi Koshelev

Georgi Georgiyevich Koshelev () (1930 – 1996) was a Soviet production designer and set decorator. Koshelev has worked as a set decorator at Mosfilm in 1961 – 1986. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Art Direction for his work on the epic film "War and Peace" (1967).
After leaving Mosfilm due to illness, he was engaged in painting and iconography, drawing posters for films.


Lana Marks

Lana J. Marks (born November 18, 1953) is a South African-born American business executive who founded the eponymous fashion brand. She is the former United States Ambassador to South Africa, having served from 2019 to 2021.
Early life and education.
Lana Bank was born in East London, South Africa. Her father, Alec Bank, had immigrated from Lithuania as a child; he was an affluent property developer and a leader in the Jewish community. She attended Clarendon High School for Girls in East London, and speaks Xhosa and Afrikaans.
Marks is an avid tennis player, having played for Bermuda, having won bronze medals for the United States in the Maccabiah Games in 1985, playing in the South African Open, and also made it to the qualifying rounds of the French Open.
Career.
Marks was the CEO and designer of Lana Marks, a fashion accessories brand which specializes in exotic leathers and is known for creating some of the world's most expensive handbags. When Helen Mirren won an Academy Award in 2007, she carried a handbag designed by Marks to the stage. Her daughter currently runs the brand. The Lana Marks company has stores in Palm Beach, New York, Beverly Hills, and Dubai.
Ambassador to South Africa.
Marks’s rumored appointment to the ambassadorship was leaked from a source within the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, South Africa's foreign affairs department. On November 14, 2018, President Donald Trump nominated Marks to be the United States Ambassador to South Africa. Marks had known Trump for more than two decades and was a member of his Mar-a-Lago club. She was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on September 26, 2019. She was sworn into office on October 4, 2019, and arrived at her posting on November 9, 2019, and presented her diplomatic credentials to President Cyril Ramaphosa on January 28, 2020.
Marks stated that her primary goals include youth and women’s empowerment. During her first sixty days, Marks launched two major initiatives, to invite all of Africa's leaders to a U.S.-Africa investment summit in Washington D.C., and to lift South Africa into a top-20 U.S. trading partner.
With the onset of COVID-19, and as regional travel restrictions in South Africa limited free travel, Marks coordinated the repatriation flights for over one thousand citizens from four countries in Southern Africa. She then regularly facilitated the successful commercial travel of thousands of additional American citizens.
In September 2020, anonymous U.S. intelligence sources claimed that Iran was planning an assassination attempt on Marks in South Africa. The plot, claimed the sources, was in retaliation for the U.S. drone strike in Baghdad, Iraq, that killed the former commander of Qods Force, Qasem Soleimani, and deputy leader of Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces militia, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis on January 3, 2020.
During her time as ambassador, according to press reports, Marks was known for unideological and pragmatic policy decisions, forging strong relationships within the South African government, and mobilizing the Covid-19 response with both equipment and personnel. She emphasized trade, and helped expand U.S. port access for South African citrus; this, coupled with a USDA preclearance of refrigerated citrus, eventually led to a 68% increase in imports. Marks also made achieving HIV epidemic control by 2021, by means of her in-country leadership of PEPFAR, one of her priorities, and helped to facilitate the first visit by a U.S. Navy Ship to South Africa in nearly a decade, expanding ties with the South African Navy. The signing of a letter of intent between the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and NuScale, to develop 2,500 MW of nuclear power in South Africa, was cited as perhaps being one of her most significant accomplishments.
In December 2020, Marks spent 10 days in intensive care with Covid-19. She used the opportunity to thank health care workers, and to urge all South Africans to follow precautions against the virus.
As a Trump political appointee ambassador, she resigned from the office following the inauguration of President Joe Biden on 20 January 2021 and was succeeded by John Groarke as "Charge d'Affaires ad interim".
Personal life.
Marks has been married to Dr. Neville Marks, a practicing psychiatrist affiliated with JFK Medical Center, since 1976. Marks and her husband later lived in Bermuda before moving to Florida in 1987. She has two children.
Marks was a personal friend of Diana, Princess of Wales. According to Marks, the two women had planned a four-day trip to Italy for the end of August 1997. Marks canceled at the last minute when Marks's father had a heart attack. Diana went to Paris with her partner Dodi Fayed where they were killed in a car accident.
Since 2010, Marks has been a member of Mar-a-Lago. According to Marks, she joined because other country clubs in Palm Beach did not admit Jewish members.


Foam (organization)

FoAM is a Brussels-based group of designers, scientists, cooks, artists, engineers and gardeners who share an interest in taking knowledge from their respective areas of expertise and applying it in new public contexts.
FoAM was founded by Maja Kuzmanovic in 2000 as a cultural research department in Starlab. In 2001, FoAM became an independent, distributed entity with cells in Brussels and Amsterdam. Since that time, the core group of this de facto new-media think tank has included members from Belgium, the Netherlands, Australia, Croatia, Lithuania, the UK, and Sweden; its larger network has attracted people from around the world.
Since 2004 FoAM has positioned itself as the only Flemish "Hybrid Reality Lab," with a primary focus on the field of hybrid reality (technologies, media and materials entangling the physical and the digital).
Projects.
One concept common to many of FoAM's explorations of growth and transformation in natural/artificial worlds has been that of "responsive environments". In this way, the capacity for change in technologically enhanced spaces is gauged by observing the playful explorations between physical and digital surroundings, and the accompanying fluid dialogues between people, materials and media. As a result, a strong contrast often emerges between the aesthetics of the designed and the beauty of the grown. Such explorations extend across several media, e.g. computer generated images and sounds across and within buildings and other forms of architecture as well as self-grown biological environments. Accordingly, FoAM's creation of public media art and its study of responsive environments have required the development of an open-ended responsive media system, which enables sensor data analysis and interpretation and further perceptual modeling. Representative examples include the following:
groWorld developed out of a proposal to research historical examples of sustainable urban spaces that have focused on dynamics and diversity in the social, biological and cultural domains. Examples of such public spaces include community gardens and pocket parks, non-institutionalized plaza and street life, travelling fairs and periodic festivals. The results of the project have suggested ways in which an alternative economy can be conducted that is based on emergent trans-local actions, rather than accepting the generic, mono-cultural approach of the global free-market. One essential focus is biomimetics and its implications for growth processes in audiovisual media, textile design and human computer interaction, and the ways in which it can be applied to mixed reality installations, a-life gaming environments and smart textiles.
Lyt_A is at the same time an artwork, an instrument and a translation medium in one. It is a flexible structure that can transmit touch (i.e. haptic information) at a distance, so that when the structure is touched on one site, the touch will be visible and touchable on another. The installation consists of two identical but mirrored parts placed 100 meters away from each other on the concourse of the Phaeno Science Centre in Wolfsburg, Germany. Placing the two structures in separate locations encourages the visitors to play with each other by manipulating the structures with their hands and bodies, and learning about each other's shapes through touch. Furthermore, the visitors' touches will remain as shape-traces in the memory of the installation. In moments of low activity, the installation brings the traces back to the surface of the structures. lyt_A's software uses the visitors' traces to create new shapes and body-forms: the traces are therefore mixed, transformed and grown, as if the visitors' touch has 'fertilized' this anorganic form that became alive and autonomous.
TRG is a "transient reality generator" and explored ideas of temporary autonomous reality and the "irreal", i.e. the tension or imbalance between tangible reality and imaginary worlds. It built on the two previous installations, TGarden and txOom. However, while TGarden was designed to allow human gestures to use video and audio as calligraphic media, and txOom extended the concept, becoming an 'irreal ecology' where media would grow based on their interaction with the participants, TRG extended the scale to infinitely large and infinitely small 'irreal universes', whose existence is highly unstable and unpredictable, where minuscule local interactions can conjure up the lives massive worlds. In this way, the project focused on mixed reality, i.e. environments containing significant virtual and physical interaction possibilities, strongly intertwined, and exploring the implications thereof in the cultural sphere.
txOom, as a project, grew out of its name, a neologism of 'texture' and 'bloom'. Initial research involved digital physics, phenomenology, biomimetics, human-computer-human interaction, and the development of experimental technologies. This research culminated in three site-specific public experiments in Torino, Great Yarmouth and Maribor, and involved a pan-European collaboration between FoAM, Time's Up, Kibla, Future Physical and the Interactive Institute. Essentially, within the framework of txOom, responsive environments were created which comprised audiovisual media and real-time media synthesis mechanisms, and which exhibited behaviors and properties similar to those of living organisms.
TGarden originated in a partnership between FoAM in Brussels and sponge in San Francisco. The project resulted in a responsive Play Space whose visitors shape the media environment around them through their movement, gesture and social interaction. TGarden was developed in collaboration with several art and technology centers (in 2001 these were: the Topological Media Lab at Georgia Institute of Technology, Ars Electronica, V2, Banff Centre for the Arts) and a number of independent artists, technologists and scientists from Europe, USA and Australia. Essentially the TGarden (with T signifying 'time' and 'topology') constituted a built space in which the movements of the visitors' bodies was used by the TGarden's nervous system (hardware and software network) to shape visual, aural and tactile media. The gestures, such as those of touching, brushing along other bodies, dancing, stretching and falling, provided the impetus for the generative processes in TGarden.
Workshops.
Beginning in 2004, in an effort to remedy a perceived lack of experimental media education in Belgium, FoAM, together with nadine, and okno, organized a series of workshops under the name "X.Med. K.". These workshops first began as introductory tutorials and were later expanded to range from master classes to informal gatherings. The programme allowed participants to become prolific media artists over a period of two years, encouraging the use of free media tools and the creative use of open source and free software. Workshop topics have included Max/MSP, Final Cut and DVD Studio Pro; physical computing, how to build a computer to fit people's specific needs, and the issues of environmentally sustainable media arts and design. In later workshops, after participants gained technical proficiency, they could opt for instruction from FoAM and okno in the use of real-time audiovisual systems and tools, and online collaboration tools, while in other seminars nadine has explored the artistic use of computer games and gaming engines.
Luminous Green.
Luminous Green is a series of gatherings in which FoAM "calls upon the creative sector to enrich the public debate around environmental sustainability, ethical living and eco-technology". The symposium featured prominent speakers from the fields of design, education, communication and technology, and was presented as three sessions devoted to "Change, Communication and Matter". The hands-on workshop was conceived for artists and designers with a tutorial component focusing on power generation, renewable power sources, low-power computing and audiovisual displays. The first Luminous Green workshop was led by Slovenian artist Marko Peljhan with FoAM's Maja Kuzmanovic. It was attended by Belgian and international artists and designers from the 1st to the 4th of May 2007.
FoAM Food.
FoAM's workshops, events, and other gatherings provide an opportunity for the various members to explore their self-avowed interest in food - not just in its functions as fuel and nourishment, but also its aspects that involve performance art, design-science, social celebration, and distribution as participatory economics. This interest manifests itself in various ways, ranging from thematic in-house food events to external transdisciplinary team-building to networking with food co-ops, farmers' markets, and kitchen-style chemistry labs. The resulting experimentation emphasizes molecular gastronomy and flavor pairing based on chemical constituents and incorporates nearly forgotten and/or often overlooked wild plants and herbs.
This concept of food activism has extended to public events held under the aegis of other organizations. For example, for its contribution to the "Altitude 1000" Sonic and Visual Arts Festival, held in Brussels in December 2006, FoAM chose to invite Kate Rich and Kayle Brandon, who wildcrafted their own cola from an online, open source recipe. The participants of the resulting "Cube-Cola Lab" took part in Amy Balkin's "Radical Cola Challenge" by blind-tasting Cube-Cola alongside its major market rivals (including Mecca Cola and Coca-Cola). Moreover, Cube Cola was then used as a so-called "watchlist ingredient" of the Guantanamo Libre cocktail.
Members.
FoAM's core group of collaborators currently includes two of its founding members Maja Kuzmanovic and Nik Gaffney along with Cocky Eek, Theun Karelse, Dave Griffiths, Rasa Alksnyte, Ingrid Vranken and others.


Paduka

Paduka is an ancient form of footwear in India, consisting of little more than a sole with a post and knob which is engaged between the big and second toe. It has been historically worn in South Asia and Southeast Asia. "Paduka" exist in a variety of forms and materials. They might be made in the shape of actual feet, or of fish, for example, and have been made of wood, ivory and silver. They may be elaborately decorated, such as when used as part of a bride's trousseau, but could also be given as religious offerings or themselves be the object of veneration.
Although simple wooden "padukas" could be worn by common people, "padukas" of fine teak, ebony and sandalwood, inlaid with ivory or wire, were a mark of the wearer's high status. In the modern world, "padukas" are worn as footwear by mendicants and saints of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. Its significance in Hinduism is linked to the epic "Ramayana". "Paduka" can also refer to the footprints of deities and saints that are venerated in symbolic form in houses and purpose-built temples. One such temple is the Vishnupad Mandir in Gaya, India. Similarly, Buddha footprints are worshipped under the Bodhi Tree in Bodh Gaya.
"Paduka" are the royal symbol in Malaysia. "Seri Paduka" denotes "His Majesty", which is a title bestowed as an honour of recognition to dignitaries of the Malaysian court.
Etymology.
The Sanskrit word "pāduka" is derivative of "pāda" meaning 'foot'. This terminology was coined to define India's ancient archetypal footwear.
Legends.
The word "pada" ('foot') is cited in the ancient Hindu scripture "Rigveda" as representing the universe, namely the Prithvi (earth), Vayu (air), Akash (sky) and the element of the realm beyond the sky.
In the Hindu epic "Ramayana", the cursed King Dasaratha sent his son Rama (an incarnation of god Vishnu) into exile for 14 years at the behest of his wife Kaikeyi (stepmother of Rama), who wanted her son Bharata to be crowned in Rama's place. However, Bharata did not wish to have the kingdom, and visited Rama in exile, beseeching him to return to Ayodhya. When Rama replied that he would return only after completing his exile, Bharata requested Rama's "paduka" to serve as his proxy, to be crowned and to serve as an object of veneration for Rama's followers. Bharata carried Rama's golden "padukas" with great reverence by placing them on his head as a mark of his obedience to his elder brother. Bharata ruled Kosala as Rama's proxy in the name of "Ram's Padukas".
Construction.
The footwear is basically a sandal, which has generally a wooden sole with a post and a stub to provide grip between the big and second toes. It does not have straps of any kind to adhere the sole to the foot, so the wearer has to actively grip the post between the two toes to keep the sandal in place while walking.
It is also known as "Khadau", "karrow", "kharawan" and "karom", and used in the Indian subcontinent mostly by mendicants, saints and commoners. Made in the shape of the footprints, with two narrow and curved stilts, the design is specific to ensure that the principle of non-violence – practised by the saintly followers of Hindu and Jain religions – is not violated by accidental trampling of insects and vegetation. The Brahmins wearing such a "paduka" may be heard praying: "Forgive me Mother Earth the sin of injury, the violence I do, by placing my feet upon you this morning."
"Padukas" made of ivory were in popular use among royalty and saints. Hindu religious ethos requires that the ivory be taken from elephants which died naturally or harvested from domesticated elephants, in a manner which avoids cruelty. People of high societal status wear "padukas" made of fine teak, ebony and sandalwood and inlaid with ivory or wire. They are also made in the shape of fish as a symbol of fertility.
Other forms of "padukas" worn on special occasions may be incised with silver or of wood covered with silver plates and sometimes adorned with bells to sound upon walking. Bronze and brass "padukas" may be worn for ritual and ceremonial use.
A unique pair of wooden "padukas" have their toe knobs inlaid with ivory lotus flowers and are minutely painted. At each step, a trigger mechanism in the sole signals the lotus to open from bud to blossom. They are also made in the shape of an hourglass or with carved toes.
Eighteenth-century footwear used as ritual wear made of "wood with bed of sharp iron spikes" has been found. It is inferred that it was meant to be used to inflict pain to the wearer to demonstrate his conviction in religious forbearance of pain.
Veneration.
"Paduka" is often gifted as part of a bride's dowry. They are worshipped and given as votive offerings by faithful believers.
In a festival associated with the Hindu god Vithoba, pilgrims travel to his Pandharpur temple from Alandi and Dehu towns that are closely associated with poet-saints Dnyaneshwar and Tukaram (respectively), carrying the "padukas" of the saints in a silver palkhi (palanquin).
A popular religious belief is of the contact ("sparsh") with the salabhanjika sculpture yakshini's foot. It is said that when the yakshini encircles a dormant tree with her leg around it, it starts to blossom and bear fruit. Shalabhanjika yakshi is also an embellishment in the form of an architectural bracket in many Hindu temples.
Another notable feature of veneration is of the goddess Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity. On Deepavali festival day, Lakshmi is devotionally ushered into the house through symbolic representation with a series of her footprints ("paduka") drawn in paint or kolam and lit with oil lamps, from the main door to the private sanctum. This is done with the wish that good fortune shall be bestowed by her upon the householders.
Below the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya where Buddha received enlightenment, there is a vacant throne that is adorned with the foot prints on a foot rest of the Buddha. This place is deeply venerated.
Vishnupad temple.
Vishnupada Mandir is said to enshrine the footprints of Vishnu. This footprint denotes the act of Vishnu subduing Gayasur by placing his foot on Gayasur's chest. Inside the temple, the footprint is imprinted in solid rock and surrounded by a silver-plated octagonal enclosure. The temple is in height and has 8 rows of elegantly carved pillars that support the pavilion. Within the temple precincts, the banyan tree called the 'Akshayabat' is located where the final rituals for the dead takes place.
Paduka Sahasram.
"Paduka Sahasram" (literally meaning "1,000 verses on the padukas of the Lord") is devotional poetry extolling the virtues of worshipping the "paduka" (feet) of Vishnu, enshrined in Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple in Srirangam, Tamil Nadu. It is considered a sacred script of the Sri Sampradaya or Sri Vaishnavism. The Sahasram was composed in 1,008 verses in 32 chapters by Swami Vedantha Desika, a follower of the Vishishtadvaita philosophy. It is also said that Desika composed this as a challenge to his rival group of Tengalai Iyengars (who belonged to the southern school of the Srivaishnava philosophy) in one-quarter of a night. The eulogy of the Lord's Paduka centres around Rama's "paduka", which ruled the kingdom of Ayodhya for 14 years. Desika propounds that it was due to the special relationship that people of Ayodhya had with Rama's "paduka" that they attained salvation in life.
Guru Paduka Sthothram.
Adi Shankaracharya has also written nine devotional verses under the title "Guru Paduka Sthothram" as salutations to his guru (the Lord). An English translation of the first verse is:
<poem>
Salutations and Salutations to the sandals of my Guru,
Which is a boat, which helps me, cross the endless ocean of life,
Which endows me, with the sense of devotion to my Guru,
And by worship of which, I attain the dominion of renunciation.
</poem>
Satchidananda Utsav.
Satchidananda Utsav (celebration of truth, consciousness and bliss) is organised by Sadguru Shree Aniruddha Upasana Trust (Mumbai, India) and celebrated every year on the second Saturday of Margashirsha (the ninth month of the Hindu calendar). It is usually performed for two to five consecutive days. The holy "padukas" worshipped during the celebration are prepared from the paper pulp of Ram Naam books issued by Aniruddha's Universal Bank of Ram Naam and written by thousands of devotees across the world.