The glow of grime Of course this 'sheen of antiquity' of which we hear so much is in fact the glow of grime. In both Chinese and Japanese the words denoting this glow describe a polish that comes of being touched over and over again, a sheen produced by the oils that naturally permeate an object over long years of handling—which is to say grime. If indeed 'elegance is frigid', it can as well be described as filthy. Jun'ichirō Tanizaki & Thomas J. Harper, In Praise of Shadows timeaestheticsfilthflaws
Caustic Engineering An Article by Geoff Manaugh www.bldgblog.com Show image 0 Show image 1 A piece of milled plexiglass acting as a projecting lens; via the Computer Graphics and Geometry Lab at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne New milling techniques applied to glass and plexiglass panels could be used to “create windows that are also cryptic projectors, summoning ghostly images from sunlight.” [Pauly and Bompas] hope that the technique will be used in architectural design, to create windows that mould sunlight and throw images or patterns onto walls or floors,” which, if timed, milled, and manipulated just right, could produce a slowly animated sequence of images being projected by an otherwise empty window during different times of day. Caustic (optics)Architectural Caustics opticsflightcaustics