Relentless

The nature of competition in tooth and claw.

We all know that the fittest survive, that is the evolutionary premise for everything living. But evolution is a game of both appearances as well as functionality, and nature is quite the gifted designer.

A recent paper, published by University of Montana looks into the development of animal armament, and particularly the how it is actually utilized in battle. The examples are endless, ranging from the surreal horns on these dung beetles, to the sadly extinct Irish Elk.

Apparently, the weapons (be it claws, antlers or horns) would actually be used for battle at the very beginning of the species' evolutionary development. After evolutionary pressures diminish, they grow to become a signaling device, that would essentially cause animals to resolve conflict by sizing up their opponent's armory, rather than battleing it out.

Even though they end up losing their feasibility, these variegated outcomes of evolutionary forces all of a sudden become works of natural art. Ones of strange, almost baroque appeal.

The Renaissance's master technologist.

It has taken us nearly 400 years to start coming to grips that one of Renaissansce's great masters may have been using an early form of photography to inform his sketches.

Image-capturing devices are nowadays more than just cameras - they help us communicate, feel secure and often entertain us. As a result, we have such a high level of visual awareness, that we often take the technology for granted or we ironise it. The roots of photography, however go much farther than we might have imagined.
 
According to Roberta Lapucci from the prestigious Studio Art Centers International in Florence, the artist used a spotlight that would illuminate his subject and react with light-sensitive substances that he applied to his canvases. Taking into consideration the craftmanship that becomes immediately evident when confronted with one of his masterpieces, it actually comes a bit as no surprise. 

He just strikes us like the kind of person that would invent photography, if he had to.

Thanks go to Parkour Generations for their help with the mag.

The urban landscape. Not a concrete jungle but a human zoo. Flocks herded at the whims of architects and planners by fences, roads, pavements and bollards. Stifling movement and choking the senses.

But some do not see - and do not believe - that any way is shut. For them, where there is a fence, there is also a hurdle; where there is a building, there is also a ladder. Utilising nothing but primordial agility, these Artists climb, swing, vault and run, navigating their own path through the asphalt, an urban canvas of infinite possibility...

Such is the life of a free runner...

A convergence of literary genius and 21st Century technology.

In the first issue of This Is The Order, we featured a pair of young artists re-imagining Dante Alghieri’s epic journey through the three realms of the dead. ‘The Divine Comedy’ is a true literary colossus, so vast in scope that few would dare attempt recreate it today...

But Sandow Birk and Marcus Sanders did it last year with a book that held up the the first stage of Dante’s voyage, Inferno - his route through hell - as a tweaked mirror to their own familiar world. It showed a dystopian California engulfed in what can only be called pure Armageddon - an infernal landscape of traffic jams, collapsed bridges, smouldering rivers, sulphurous sunsets and fire. Lots of fire. Now EA - behemoths of the video game - plan to bring Inferno to the gaming community. How will they fare? Well, if a recently released trailer created by design studio Psyop is anything to go by, pretty damn well.

Clark Little’s photography shows us the world as seen from the very inside of the gnarl.

Born in California and raised in Hawaii, the American ex-professional surfer-turned-photographer has an impressive and very intimate knowledge of the wave.


Equipped with a Nikon 4200 in a protective casing, Clark Little would dive right into the centre of the action and focus on the miniscule elements that end up constructing the grand tapestry of the ocean wave.



Judging by the level of detail he achieves, it is conceivable that it was probably for the best that he stepped off the board and took on photography. It must have been quite a difficult decision making exercise - do I marvel at the wave or do I ride it? Get under the fold for the former.

For more info: Clark Little's website.