Ephemeral

Ephemeral (pronounced ih-fem-er-uhl)

(1) Lasting a very short time; short-lived; transitory.

(2) In biology, a short-lived organism (usually defined as a life-span less then twenty-four hours) as with some flowers, insects, and microscopic life.

(3) In geology, pertaining to a usually dry body of water which fills for brief periods during and after rain.

1560s: From the New Latin ephemerus from the Ancient Greek ἐφήμερος (ephḗmeros), the more common form of ἐφημέριος (ephēmérios) (of, for, or during the day, living or lasting but for a day, short-lived, temporary), the construct being ἐπί (epí) (on) + ἡμέρα (hēméra) (day).  Originally from the medicine of antiquity as a descriptor of diseases and life-spans (lasting but one day), the extended sense of "transitory" is from the 1630s.  The evocative phrase from the Medieval Latin, memento mori, translates as "remember that you will die".  Synonyms are: short-lived, fleeting, transitory, short, temporary, brief, fugitive, transient, volatile, episodic, evanescent, flitting, impermanent and fugacious.  Ephemeral is a noun & adjective, ephemerality is a noun, ephemerally is an adverb and ephemeric is an adjective; the noun plural is ephemerals.  An ephemeron (ephemera the plural) is "a temporary thing"

Ephemeral art

Ephemeral art, as a defined movement, dates from the work of the Fluxus group in the 1960s.  Originally a platform created to disseminate political messages and critiques of materialist capitalism, the genre developed from the merely ephemeral to the concept of auto-destructive art in which objects existed only for the purpose of their own destruction.  It was perhaps the purest and most original art of the high cold war.

Recreation of Gustav Metzger's auto-destructive installation (1960), exhibition Art and the Sixties: This was Tomorrow, Tate Gallery 2004.

John Sharkey (1936-2004) and Gustav Metzger (1926–2017) were most influential in the development of Auto-Destructive Art and best remembered for the Destruction in Art Symposium in 1966 although the first public demonstration of Metzger’s concepts was at the Temple Gallery, London, in June 1960.  Metzger preferred to describe auto-destructive art as “a public art for industrial societies” and for the installation used in 1960, he hid himself behind a pane of glass covered with a white nylon sheet.  As the exhibition began, he used a brush to apply a hydrochloric acid solution to the fabric and as the material dissolved, creating a swirling, glue-like coating on the glass, he slowly became visible through the holes.  The presentation also included waste in plastic bags and models for auto-destructive sculptures. The work was re-created in 2004 by the Tate Gallery for the exhibition Art and the Sixties: This was Tomorrow.

Table (circa 1958), one of Gustav Metzger’s non-ephemeral works.

Metzger’s had first discussed his concept of auto-destructive art in a manifesto issued in November 1959.  In this statement, he emphasized how the most robust, and apparently durable, mechanically-manufactured objects (and those in which he though society was vesting a dangerous faith) ultimately would degrade and eventually disappear, a process which humans might delay but not prevent.  A second volume of his manifesto followed the next March in which he elaborated, explaining that auto-destructive art existed to highlight society’s obsession with destruction and the damaging effects of machinery on human life.  Although he didn’t reference it, there were elements in the manifestos which echoed the warnings of the dangers inherent in an uncritical faith in technology made by Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) in his final address to the court at the end of the Nuremberg trial.  As well as carrying an anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist message, in the context of the early years of the Cold War the anti-nuclear tone of Metzger’s auto-destructive art was blatant.  His views never changed but, after taking the concept to a natural conclusion of public interest, his work assumed more conventional forms although the political agenda remained, addressing the troubles in Northern Ireland, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, terrorism and climate change.

Photographers can emulate ephemerality even without post-production editing by using light to "overwhelm" the focus: This is a three-frame spread of Lindsay Lohan being photographed at the point of photoflash.

Albert Speer and the permanence of the ephemeral

Nuremberg Rally, 1934.

Of all that was designed by Albert Speer (1905-1981; Hitler’s court architect 1934-1942), little was built and less remains.  Although he would later admit the monometalism of the Nazi architectural plans was a mistake, his apologia was always tinged with the regret that in the years to come, all he was likely to be remembered for was his “immaterial lightshow”, used as a dramatic backdrop for the party rallies held at the Zeppelinfeld stadium in Nuremberg.  Compared with what, had things worked out, he’d have been able to render in steel, concrete, marble and granite, Lichtdom (cathedral of light) was of course ephemeral but it’s undeniably memorable.  Speer created the effect by placing the Luftwaffe’s (the German air force) entire stock (152) of 1500 mm (60 inch) searchlights around the stadium’s perimeter and maximized the exposure of the design by insisting as many events as possible be conducted in darkness, the other advantage being the lighting disguised the paunchiness of the assembled Nazis, many of whom were flabbier than the party’s lean, Nordic ideal, something which anyway was suspect, one joke spread by the famously cynical Berlin natives noting that empirically a better description of the Nazi ideal was "as blonde as Hitler, as fit as Göring, as tall as Goebbels and as sane as Hess".

Nuremberg Rally, 1936.

Few though were unimpressed by Lichdom.  Sir Neville Henderson (1882-1942; UK ambassador to Germany 1937-1939), the UK’s admittedly impressionable ambassador described the ethereal atmosphere as “…both solemn and beautiful… like being in a cathedral of ice.”  History though has preferred “cathedral of light” and brief views are captured in Hans Weidemann’s (1904-1975) Festliches Nürnberg (Festival of Nuremberg; a 1937 propaganda film chronicling the 1936 and 1937 events) which is mercifully shorter than Leni Riefenstahl’s (1902–2003) better-known works although the poor quality of the film stock used can only hint at the majesty achieved but the use of Richard Wagner's (1813-1883) Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868) as a musical accompaniment helps.  Riefenstahl actually claimed she suggested the idea of the searchlights to Speer and a much better record exists in her film Olympia (1938) which documented the 1936 Summer Olympics at which the technique was also used.  Architects had of course for millennia been interested in light but apart from those responsible for the placement of stained glass windows and other specialties, mostly they were concerned with function rather than anything representational.  It was the advances the nineteenth century in the availability and luminosity of artificial light which allowed them to use light as an aesthetic element not limited by the time of day and thus the angle of the sun.

Speer had plenty of time to reflect on the past while serving the twenty years in Berlin’s Spandau prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity, a sentence he was lucky to receive.  His interest in light persisted and with unrestricted access to the FRG’s (the Federal Republic of Germany, the old West Germany) technical libraries, he assembled close to a thousand pages of notes for a planned book on the history of the window in European buildings, musing on variables such as the cost and availability of glass at different times in different places, the shifting cost of the labor of glaziers & carpenters and market interventions such as England’s notorious “window tax” which resulted in some strange looking structures.  Ever drawn to the mathematics he’d in his youth intended to study until forced to follow his father into architecture, he pondered the calculations which might produce the changes in “what value a square meter of light had at different periods” and what this might reveal beyond the actual buildings.

It was a shame the book was never written.  He recalled also the effects he applied to the German pavilion he built for the Paris World’s Fair in 1937, bathing it at night with “…skilfully arranged spotlights.  The result was to make the architecture of the building emerge sharply outlined against the night, and at the same time to make it unreal... a combination of architecture and light.”  It was at the Paris event the German and Soviet pavilions sat directly opposed, something of a harbinger and deliberately so.  He was nostalgic too about the Lichtdom, thinking it recalled “a fabulous setting, like one of the imaginary crystal palaces of the Middle Ages” although wryly he would note history would remember his contributions to his profession only for the ephemeral, the “…idea that the most successful architectural creation of my life is a chimera, an immaterial phenomenon.”  Surprisingly, for someone who planned the great city of Germania (the planned re-building of Berlin) with its monumental structures, the news that all that remained in the city of his designs were a handful of lampposts (which stand to this day) seemed something almost amusing.  In all his post-war writings, although there’s much rejection as “a failure” of the plan of Germania and the rest of the “neo-Classical on a grand scale” which characterized Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) vision of representational architecture, it’s not hard to detect twinges of regret for the unbuilt and sometimes he admitted it.  As he was contemplating a return to the drawing board upon his impending release, he noted: “Although I have had enough of monumental architecture and turn my mind deliberately to utilitarian buildings, it sometimes comes hard for me to bid goodbye to my dreams of having a place in the history of architecture. How will I feel when I am asked to design a gymnasium, a relay station, or a department store after I planned the biggest domed hall in the world?  Hitler once said to my wife: ‘I am assigning tasks to your husband such as have not been given for four thousand years. He will erect buildings for eternity!’  And now gyms!”  As things transpired, not even a gym was built and he instead wrote his history in text.  Of that piece of curated architecture, some were fooled and some not.

Illusion

Illusion (pronounced ih-loo-zhuhn)

(1) Something that deceives by producing a false or misleading impression of reality.

(2) The state or condition of being deceived; misapprehension.

(3) An instance of being deceived.

(4) In clinical psychology, a perception, as of visual stimuli (optical illusion), that represents what is perceived in a way different from reality.

(5) A very thin, delicate tulle of silk or nylon having a cobwebbed appearance, for trimmings, veils and similar designs.

(6) The act of deceiving; deception; delusion (mostly obsolete).

1340–1350: From the Middle English, from the Latin illūsiōn(em), stem of illūsiō, (irony, mocking), the construct being illūs(us), past participle of illūdere (to mock, ridicule) + lūd (play) + tus (past participle suffix) + iōn.  The suffic -ion was From the Middle English -ioun, from the Old French -ion, from the Latin -iō (genitive -iōnis).  It was appended to a perfect passive participle to form a noun of action or process, or the result of an action or process.  It was from the Latin lūd that English ultimately gained ludicrous, illudere meaning "to mock at" (literally "to play with").  The borrowing from Latin displaced the Old English dwimmer, from the Old English ġedwimor or dwimor (illusion, delusion, sleight, magic) and, as absorbed by both Medieval English & French, meaning tended towards “act of deception” rather than “mocking or irony” which was the Classical Latin form.  The English sense is reflected in the word’s use in Church Latin which is thought the source of the meaning-shift.  In modern English use, particularly since the rise of mass-market visual entertainment, to some extent the preponderant meaning has shifted back.  Illusion & illusionist are noun, illusionary, illusional and illusioned are adjectives; the noun plural is illusions.

English offers many variations on the theme; words like fantasy, hallucination and delusion all refer to false perceptions or ideas.  An illusion is either (1) a false mental image produced by misinterpretation of stuff that actually exists or (2) a deliberate creation in some form to create an impression of stuff in a way not real.  A mirage is a distortion of reality produced by reflection of light against the sky but in general use is widely deployed as a synonym for anything illusory. A hallucination is a perception of a thing or quality that is either wholly or partially unreal.  A delusion is a persistent false belief that need not have any basis.  A chimera is something which, while unreal, has many elements of the real and thus seems more plausible.  A fantasy is either (1) a fictional creation where one is aware of its untruth or (2) a fictional creation one believes.

The Illusion Panel

The illusion panel is a visual trick used by fashion designers which to some extent mimics the appearance of bare skin.  It’s done by using a flesh-colored fabric, cut to conform to the shape of wearer and the best known products are called illusion dresses although the concept can appear on other styles of garment.  Done well, the trick works, sometimes even close-up but it’s really intended for photo opportunities.  Lindsay Lohan illustrates the idea in a few examples:

At left is a gown from the Fendi Spring/Summer 2016 collection, worn at the Asian Awards, London, April 2016.  The gown was technically a different take on the illusion panel because the skin was real: Fashion faking itself.  It’s a playful take on the idea because above the modest cut at the midriff were translucent panels which created a nice effect, especially when in motion although opinion was divided on whether the geometric pattern was too busy for the concept, some suggesting a solid color or even some bold stripes might have lent better emphasis.

The centre image is of a Julien Macdonald green and blue sequin embellished mini dress with open neckline, accented with illusion panel & black hemline, from her Fall 2013 collection, worn at Gabrielle's Gala, Old Billingsgate Market, London, May 2014.  Some comment was provoked by the choice not to retain the black belt with which it was shown on its catwalk debut and it true that did work well with the hemline trim, width and shade of both matching.  However, a panel with quite that much illusion doesn’t demand accessories and probably is more effective with neither belt nor necklace to distract.

At right, dating from January 2013 is a black Dion Lee cocktail dress with illusion panels and an off-the-shoulder silhouette, the shoes Christian Louboutin peep-toe booties.  It’s a classic example of why it’s thought illusion dresses work best if tailored in solid colors with a marked contrast between material and skin tone.

Kylie Jenner (b 1997, left) in 2017 used the idea in what was (by the standards of her clan) quite subtle but trolls quickly realized the possibilities offered by digital editing (centre).  Swedish musician Tove Lo (Ebba Tove Elsa Nilsson, b 1987, right) actually enhanced the illusion with a T-shirt which included shadow effects so the look would be consistent even in settings where ambient light was unhelpful.  Pairing the T-shirt with an oversized, double-breasted blazer was a nice touch.

As a garment, an illusion dress is not technically difficult to cut or assemble but for its effect it relies on a close congruence between the colors of panel and the skin.  Assuming such fabrics are either available or can be dyed to suit, that’s fine for bespoke creations but in the vastly bigger prêt-à-porter (ready-to-wear) market, buyers are compelled to pick whatever is the closest match, the technique of choice being to alter the skin tone for the occasion, fake tanning product the usual choice which is fine if a darker hue is needed but when lightening that’s needed, the creams used temporarily to cover tattoos are said to work well, better even than the (now often controversial and in some cases dangerous) skin-lightening preparations popular in some markets.

The illusion industry also borrows motifs.  A cage bra is built with a harness-like structure which (vaguely) resembles a cage, encapsulating the breasts using one or more straps.  Few actually use the straps predominately to enhance support and the effect tends to be purely aesthetic, some cage bras with minimal (or even absent) cup coverage and a thin band or multi-strap back.  Some things about cage bras can be illusory but the skin on show is usually real whereas when used over a skin-toned panel, the straps exist to enhance the illusion although, there’s no reason why they can’t also be structural, functioning effectively as an external bra.  Ashley Graham (left) in cage bra with the focus on flesh and Ricki-Lee Coulter (right) in a dress with illusion panel under straps illustrate the difference.

The Great Illusion (1910) by Norman Angell (1972-1967) was first published in the United Kingdom in 1909 as Europe's Optical Illusion.  Angell’s theme was that the economies, financial systems, markets and supply chains of the world’s big industrial and military powers had become so inter-twined and inter-dependent that war had become impossible.  Angell proved that not only would war be unprofitable, in any big conflict, the victor would suffer at least as much as the vanquished so no nation would be so foolish as to start one.  Quickly, The Great Illusion was translated in eleven languages and in the optimistic world of early twentieth century Europe, it became a cult, its thesis a dogma.  The aristocrat commissioned to review the British Army after its disastrous performance in the Boer War (1899-1902) were understood instantly became an adherent to the idea that “new economic factors clearly prove the insanity of aggressive wars”, delivering lectures in which he pointed out that “a twentieth century war would be on such a scale… that its inevitable consequences of commercial disaster, financial ruin and individual suffering [would be] so pregnant with restraining influences” as to render the thought of war unthinkable.

Read even now, the wealth of examples he offered and the incontrovertibility of his argument seem convincing.  Unfortunately, Wilhelm II (1859–1941; Kaiser (Emperor) of the German Empire 1888-1918), although it’s known he received a copy of the book, was more influenced by one published in 1911 by the Prussian General Friedrich von Bernhardi (1849–1930) with the unambiguous title Deutschland und der Nächste Krieg (Germany and the Next War).  Bernhardi’s text is of great interest to students of military, diplomatic and political history but the casual reader can gain the necessary understanding merely by glancing at the table of contents, the uncompromising chapter headings including The Right to Make War, The Duty to Make War and World Power or Downfall.  In case anyone might have thought he had written a work of abstract theory, another chapter was titled Germany’s Historical Mission.   Describing war as a "divine business", his central two-pronged strategy was the one which would doom both the Second Reich and the Third: Wage wars of aggression and ignore treaties.

World War I (1914-1918) was something probably worse than even Angell had prophesized and in its aftermath the phrase “the war to end all wars” was popular although some of the delegates leaving Paris after the Treaty of Versailles (1919) weren’t so sanguine, reckoning all that had been gained was a truce.  Despite the cynicism however, the 1920s were the years in which the (now mostly forgotten) successes of the League of Nations included the notion that war had been made not only unthinkable (both because of Angell’s analysis and the shock of the World War) but actually unlawful.  It was a brief, shining moment and by 1933 Angell felt compelled to add to a revised edition of The Great Illusion the new theme of the need for collective defense.  Other things happened in 1933, the implications of which would mean that too would prove an illusion itself but that year, Angell was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Illusions however seem to be something to which men can’t help but be drawn and by the late twentieth century, as globalization 2.0 accelerated, another part of Angell’s conceptual framework gained a new audience.  Angell had noted the obvious: That the imperative of modern capitalism was profit, not romantic nationalism and that there was more to be gained from peaceful trade than attempts at conquest with its unpredictable outcomes.  By the 1990s, political commentator Thomas Friedman (b 1953) had reduced this to what came to be called the “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention (the idea that countries with McDonalds restaurants didn’t go to war with each other) and while that’s since been proved untrue, the point he was making was the same as Angell: That democracies run according to the rules of market capitalism don’t go to war with each other because the it’s too threatening to the hegemonic class which owns the means of production and distribution.

By the time Mr Putin (Vladimir Putin, b 1952, president or prime-minister of Russia since 1999) began his special military operation (the invasion which started the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022), it’s doubtful there were many left in Europe with illusion about the nature of man.  Unfortunately, it may be that in the Kremlin the reading of Bernhardi may not have gone beyond those first few bellicose chapters because deeper into his book, the author moved beyond the justification of “necessity” to the nuts and bolts of “method” for once one convinces one’s self one has a duty to make war, one must ensure it is waged with success.  To be successful he explained, the state must begin a war at “the most favourable moment” of its own choosing, striking “the first blow” in a manner which guarantees victory.  Mr Putin had illusions of his own, about the people of Ukraine, about the West and about the state of his own military.

In 2014, an illusion outfit attracted much comment when the Colombian women’s cycling team uniform was first seen at an event in Italy, held in honour of former Italian champion Michela Fanini (1973–1994).  Despite the appearance, it wasn’t a two-piece, the otherwise standard strip augmented by a flesh-coloured section across the lower torso and upper hips.  The photographs caused a stir and the unusual degree of international attention must have pleased the team’s sponsor, the city government of Colombia's capital, Bogota.  Innovations like this might be one way to redress the imbalance in the media coverage afforded to women's sport.

Mosaic

Mosaic (pronounced moh-zey-ik)

(1) A picture or decoration made of small, usually colored pieces of inlaid stone, glass etc.

(2) The process of producing such a picture or decoration.

(3) Something resembling such a picture or decoration in composition, especially in being made up of diverse elements (in general use, often confused with a collage or montage).

(4) In surveying, a number of aerial photographs assembled as a continuous photographic representation of an area (commonly called a mosaic map, aerial mosaic or photo-mosaic).

(5) In architectural plans, a system of patterns for differentiating the areas of a building or the like, sometimes consisting of purely arbitrary patterns used to separate areas according to function but often consisting of plans of flooring, reflected ceiling plans, overhead views of furnishings and equipment, or other items really included in the building or building plan.

(6) In the plant pathology field in biology, any of several diseases of plants, characterized by mottled green or green and yellow areas on the leaves, caused by certain viruses (also called mosaic disease); an organism exhibiting mosaicism.

(7) In television production, a light-sensitive surface in a camera tube, consisting of an insulating medium (a thin mica sheet) coated on one side with a large number of granules of photo-emissive material (small globules of silver and cesium insulated from each other).  The image to be televised is focused on this surface and the resulting charges on the globules are scanned by an electron beam.

(8) Of, pertaining to, resembling, or used for making a mosaic or mosaic work.

(9) As a general descriptor, something (physical, abstract or conceptual) composed of a combination of diverse elements (in this sense mosaic, collage & montage are often applied in undifferentiated fashion).

(10) To make a mosaic; to decorate with mosaic.

(11) In theology, of or pertaining to Moses or the writings, laws, and principles attributed to him (always initial capital).

(12) In genetics an alternative name for chimera (an individual composed of two or more cell lines of different genetic or chromosomal constitution, but from the same zygote).

(13) In graphical production (or as a tool of censorship), a pixelization of all or part of an image.

(14) An early web browser developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), the name an allusion to the integration of multiple components including HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and Gopher's search & communications protocols.  It was the first widely adopted browser which used an implementation of the user interface still in use today.

(15) In palaeontology, as Mosaic evolution (or modular evolution), a theory that evolutionary change can occur in some body parts or systems without simultaneous changes in other parts.

1350–1400: From the Middle English, from the Old French mosaicq (mosaic work), from the Middle French moysaique & mosaïque, from the Italian mosaico, from the fifth century Medieval Latin mōsaicus & musaicum, a re-formation of the Late Latin musīvum (opus), from the Latin musēum & musaeum (mosaic work) of unknown origin.  The variants are assumed by etymologists to be linked to the Late Greek Μουσεῖον (Mouseîon) (mosaic work; shrine of the Muses; museum) by analogy with archivum & archīum (archive) although the classical Greek is nowhere attested in the sense “mosaic”.  The Ancient Greek mouseios (of the Muses) was from Μοῦσα (Moûsa) (Muse).  Because of the influence of both Moses and the Muses, the history is tangled.  The word was formed in Medieval Latin as though from the Greek, but the Late Greek word meaning "mosaic work" was mouseion (and further to twist the tale etymologists note this sense in Greek was borrowed from Latin).  The meaning "a piece of mosaic work" dates from the 1690s while the figurative form (anything resembling a mosaic work in composition) had been in use since the 1640s.  The familiar adjectival use in English in the sense of "made of small pieces inlaid to form a pattern" dates from the 1580s.  The spellings mosaick & musaic are listed by dictionaries respectively as obsolete & archaic.  Mosaic is a noun, verb & adjective, mosaicked is a verb, mosaicing, mosaicism & mosaicist are nouns, mosaiced & mosaicking are adjectives and mosaically is an adverb; the noun plural is mosaics.  All forms use an initial capital if used in association with Mosaic law.

Mosaic of Bruce McLaren (1937–1970) by Nikki Douthwaite (1973-2022); car is a 1968 Mclaren M7A, still fitted with the adjustable spoilers which (of course) the FIA banned.  The late Ms Douthwaite used a technique called pointillist hole punch art, the mosaics crafted by individually placing (using tweezers) colored paper dots which are the waste material from office hole punches.  Her mosaics, containing sometimes hundreds of thousands of dots, were constructed over weeks and finished with a preservative varnish.

Although the specific technical meanings are respected in science, in art & design, the terms mosaic, collage and montage are often used interchangeably and that’s sometimes understandable because the three can be visually similar and close examination can be required to determine the correct form.  In the visual arts, a mosaic is created by locating & fixing small (classically square tiles), usually colored pieces of inlaid stone, glass etc to create a pattern.  A collage is a picture created by using items of different shape, composition etc to create a (hopefully) thematically integrated result.  A montage is a work created by in some way assembling a number of separate components which are conceptually or thematically similar (even to the point of being identical.

Portrait by Lindsay Lohan by Jason Mecier (b 1968).  His work is crafted using discarded items and he attempts where possible to use objects in some way associated with his subjects.  Although described by some as mosaics, his technique belongs to the tradition of college.

The use in theology dates from 1655–1665, from the New Latin Mosaicus, the construct being the Late Latin Mōs(ēs) (Moses) + (the text-string) -aicus, on the model of Hebraicus (Hebraic).  In writing relating to Mosaic law or ethics, the adjectival forms Mosaical (which pre-dated Mosaic) and post-Mosaic are common.  The Ebionites were a Jewish Christian sect during the first two centuries after the crucifixion of Christ.  Ebonite was from the Latin ebonita, from the Greek Ἐβιωναῖοι (Ebionaioi), from the Hebrew אביונים‎ (ebyon; ebyonim; ebionim) (the poor, the poor ones) and the sect’s name was chosen to reflect their belief that poverty was a blessing and plenty a curse.  Their Christology was adoptionist, maintaining Jesus of Nazareth was mere human flesh & blood and therefore Christians continued bound by the Mosaic Law, the adherence to which was why God choose Jesus to be a messianic prophet in the vein of Moses himself.  While within the sect there were theological differences but the central tenet was that the essential Christian orthodoxy of the divinity of Jesus was a heresy and that he was the natural born son of Joseph and Mary.

Montage created with fragments from Lindsay Lohan's Playboy Magazine photoshoot, 2011.

The Ebionite world-view obviously shares much with Judaism but to mainstream (indeed almost all) thought within Christianity they are wholly heretical, the rejection of Christ’s divinity the objection rather than and technical points of difference with the Mosaic code of law.  Islam of course objected to Christian theology because it distorted the purity of monotheism, the doctrine of the Trinity a dilution of the Abrahamic God and really a type of iconography.  However, the Ebionites were faithful to the original teachings of the historical Jesus and thus shared Islamic views about Jesus as a prophet yet still mere human flesh and blood, leading to the intriguing situation of the Jewish Christianity which vanished from the early Christian church being preserved in Islam.  The particular Ebionite teaching of Jesus as a follower of Mosaic law was later reflected in the Koran which were the words of the prophet Muhammad.

Detail of the pointillist hole punch technique.  There are a number of pointillist methods using devices as varied as lasers and Sharpie brand pens.

Lichtdom

Lichtdom (pronounced lish-dumm)

A visual technique using light to emulate large-scale architecture.

1934: The construct of the German Lichtdom was licht + dom (literally “cathedral of light”).  Licht (variously light, effortless, freely, easy, free; luminous; eye, clear, sparse, bright, light, shiny, light colored; distinct, plain, obvious, explicit, lucid, straightforward) was from the Middle High German lieht and the Middle German līcht), from the Old High German lioht, from the Old Saxon lioht, from the Proto-West Germanic leuht, from the Proto-Germanic leuhtą, from the primitive Indo-European lewktom.  The descendants include the Dutch licht and the English light.  The obsolete alternative spelling was Liecht.  The colloquial uses include describing candles and (in hunting), the eye of (especially ground) game.  The usual plural is Lichter but Lichte operates as a plural when speaking of candles.  Dom (cathedral; church; big church building; dome, cupola) was from the French dôme, from the Italian duomo, from the Latin domus (ecclesiae (literally “house (of the church)”)), a calque of the Ancient Greek οἶκος τῆς ἐκκλησίας (oîkos tês ekklēsías).

Nuremberg Rally, 1934.

Of all that was designed by Albert Speer (1905-1981; Hitler’s court architect 1934-1942), little was built and less remains.  Although he would later admit the monumentalism of the Nazi architectural plans was a mistake, his apologia was always tinged with the regret that in the years to come, all he was likely to be remembered for was his “immaterial lightshow”, used as a dramatic backdrop for the party rallies held at the Zeppelinfeld stadium in Nuremberg.  Compared with what, had things worked out, he’d have been able to render in steel, concrete, marble and granite, Lichtdom (cathedral of light) was of course ephemeral but it’s undeniably memorable.  Speer created the effect by placing the Luftwaffe’s (the German air force) entire stock (152) of 1500 mm (60 inch) searchlights around the stadium’s perimeter and maximized the exposure of the design by insisting as many events as possible be conducted in darkness, the other advantage being the lighting disguised the paunchiness of the assembled Nazis, many of whom were flabbier than the party’s lean, Nordic ideal, something which anyway was suspect, one joke spread by the famously cynical Berlin natives noting that empirically a better description of the Nazi ideal was "as blonde as Hitler, as fit as Göring, as tall as Goebbels and as sane as Hess".

Nuremberg Rally, 1936.

Few were unimpressed.  Sir Neville Henderson (1882-1942; UK ambassador to Germany 1937-1939), the UK’s admittedly impressionable ambassador described the ethereal atmosphere as “…both solemn and beautiful… like being in a cathedral of ice.”  History though has preferred “cathedral of light” and brief views are captured in Hans Weidemann’s (1904-1975) Festliches Nürnberg (Festival of Nuremberg; a 1937 propaganda film chronicling the 1936 and 1937 events) which is mercifully shorter than Leni Riefenstahl’s (1902–2003) better-known works although the poor quality of the film stock used can only hint at the majesty achieved but the use of Richard Wagner's (1813-1883) Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868) as a musical accompaniment helps.  Riefenstahl actually claimed she suggested the idea to Speer and a much better record exists in her film Olympia (1938) which documented the 1936 Summer Olympics at which the technique was also used.  Architects had of course for millennia been interested in light but apart from those responsible for the placement of stained glass windows and other specialties, mostly they were concerned with function rather than anything representational.  It was the advances the nineteenth century in the availability and luminosity of artificial light which allowed them to use light as an aesthetic element not limited by the time of day and thus the angle of the sun.

Speer had plenty of time to reflect on the past while serving the twenty years in Berlin’s Spandau prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity, a sentence he was lucky to receive.  His interest in light persisted and with unrestricted access to the FRG’s (the Federal Republic of Germany, the old West Germany) technical libraries, he assembled close to a thousand pages of notes for a planned book on the history of the window in European buildings, musing on variables such as the cost and availability of glass at different times in different places, the shifting cost of the labor of glaziers & carpenters and market interventions such as England’s notorious “window tax” which resulted in some strange looking structures.  Ever drawn to the mathematics he’d in his youth intended to study until forced to follow his father into architecture, he pondered the calculations which might produce the changes in “what value a square meter of light had at different periods” and what this might reveal beyond the actual buildings.

It was a shame the book was never written.  He recalled also the effects he applied to the German pavilion he built for the Paris World’s Fair in 1937, bathing it at night with “…skilfully arranged spotlights.  The result was to make the architecture of the building emerge sharply outlined against the night, and at the same time to make it unreal... a combination of architecture and light.”  It was at the Paris event the German and Soviet pavilions sat directly opposed, something of a harbinger and deliberately so.  He was nostalgic too about the Lichtdom, thinking it recalled “a fabulous setting, like one of the imaginary crystal palaces of the Middle Ages” although wryly he would note history would remember his contributions to his profession only for the ephemeral, the “…idea that the most successful architectural creation of my life is a chimera, an immaterial phenomenon.”  Surprisingly, for someone who planned the great city of Germania (the planned re-building of Berlin) with its monumental structures, the news that all that remained in the city of his designs were a handful of lampposts (which stand to this day) seemed something almost amusing.  In all his post-war writings, although there’s much rejection as “a failure” of the plan of Germania and the rest of the “neo-Classical on a grand scale” which characterized Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) vision of representational architecture, it’s not hard to detect twinges of regret for the unbuilt and sometimes he admitted it.  As he was contemplating a return to the drawing board upon his impending release, he noted: “Although I have had enough of monumental architecture and turn my mind deliberately to utilitarian buildings, it sometimes comes hard for me to bid goodbye to my dreams of having a place in the history of architecture. How will I feel when I am asked to design a gymnasium, a relay station, or a department store after I planned the biggest domed hall in the world?  Hitler once said to my wife: ‘I am assigning tasks to your husband such as have not been given for four thousand years. He will erect buildings for eternity!’  And now gyms!”  As things transpired, not even a gym was built and he instead wrote his history in text.  Of that piece of curated architecture, some were fooled and some not.

Tribute in Light annual commemoration, New York.

Dramatic though it was, the exact effect Speer achieved in the 1930s is so tainted by its association with the Nazis that few have attempted to recycle the motif although one pop-star used the effect as a visual backdrop in 1976 when he was going through a right-wing phase which he chose later not to mention.  Isolated or clustered beams are however often used and one display is an annual “Tribute in Light” to commemorate the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  It demonstrates the way the play of light can be used; depending on conditions, the light can bounce off the clouds, creating a very different effect than that afforded by a clear sky and it’s possible to render in those clouds a virtual oculus.

Tribute in Light annual commemoration, New York: The oculus effect.  Note the circling birds.

One problem with high intensity light the Tribute in Light has high-lighted is the way temporarily it messes each year with the migration of hundreds of thousands of songbirds.  The memorial uses 88 focused spotlights, the beams of which reach some 6¼ miles (10 km) into the sky and are visible from as far away as sixty miles (100 km).  Traditionally, the display was illuminated from dusk to dawn but of late it’s been switched off for twenty minute intervals in deference to the songbirds which in mid-September make their long flight from their breeding grounds in Canada's boreal forests to their winter homes in the southern US, Mexico, and Central & South America.  They fly mostly by night and it’s thought they’ve evolved to navigate by the stars but, unfortunately, are much attracted to light.  The Tribute in Light having more light than anything else at altitude, the display seems to confuse the birds and it was noted the death toll from birds crashing into New York windows increased every 9/11.  Observers found there was also an element of sound involved, the birds in the light issuing the call associated with distress, this tending to draw more songbirds to the light.

Tribute in Light annual commemoration, New York: Songbirds caught in the light.

Researchers used radar to quantify the effect.  Typically, the skies within a ¼ mile (400 m) of the un-illumined memorial contained around 500 birds but when lit, within 20 minutes, there were almost 16,000.  Extrapolating the data, it was estimated some 1.1 million migrating songbirds had been affected between 2008-2016, even accounting for the lights since 2009 having been shut-off for twenty minutes whenever volunteers count more than 1,000 birds in the beams.  It’s thought the death–toll from birds crashing into buildings is relatively low but there’s concern also the creatures are compelled to expend energy when circling the site, burning up vital energy needed for their long flights.  Shutting off the lights is thought to allow the birds to re-focus on their guiding stars to find their bearings and continue the migration south.  Bird lovers would prefer searchlights not be used at all and some sites have agreed not to use them during the migration season but there’s obviously much sensitivity around the 9/11 commemoration.  Human development of the built environment has for a long time influenced the migration path, the radar data confirming birds disproportionately choose to fly over cities, the researchers referring to the “almost magnetic pull of birds to light.”  We need to remember that it’s their planet too.

Fragment from Olympia (1938) with Lichtdom.

Ersatz

Ersatz (pronounced er-zahts or er-sahts)

(1) Serving as a substitute; synthetic; artificial (adjective).

(2) An artificial substance or article used to replace something natural or genuine; a substitute (noun).

1875: From the German ersatz (units of the army reserve (literally "compensation, replacement, substitute"), a back-formation from ersetzen (to replace; substitute good) from the Old High German irsezzen, the construct being ir- (an unaccented variant of ur; in German, the prefix signifying a notion of getting something (either by conscious effort or (rarely) producing the effect of coming to have it unintentionally) by specific means) + setzen, from the Middle High German setzen, from the Old High German sezzen, from the Proto-Germanic satjaną, from the primitive Indo-European sodéyeti; from the primitive Indo-European root sed- (to sit); it was cognate with the Hunsrik setze, the English set and the Dutch zetten.  Historically an adjective, use of ersatz as a noun was first noted in 1892.

Technically, although ersatz has many synonyms (synthetic, phony, imitation, fake, sham, substitute, counterfeit, bogus, manufactured, pretended, simulated, spurious, copied, false et al), because of its association with inferior quality goods (such as chocolate and, most famously, the notoriously unpleasant ersatz coffee, made typically from acorns), produced in Germany during the world wars to compensate for the shortage of genuine products, Ersatz tends to be used in that context while the preferred terms in modern English use are fake & faux, the latter with the particular sense of something imitative yet deliberately not deceptively so.  Indeed, faux can have positive connotations (faux fur, leather etc) and, among vegans, such things may be obligatory. 

Originally, the German military jargon was Ersatz Corps which described reserve, substitute or replacement troops, the word later adopted by the Kaiserliche Marine (the Imperial Navy) as part of the secrecy protocol which didn’t reveal the names of vessels until launch (and, in war-time, even during sea-trials), ships thus appearing in the naval lists with names like "Ersatz Yorck class".  During the two world wars, it was most famously applied to over ten-thousand substitute products, both industrial and consumer goods, created because of shortages.  The word entered Russian and English and came to describe any product thought not as good as the original.

Lindsay Lohan v Take-Two Interactive Software Inc et al, New York Court of Appeals (No 24, pp1-11, 29 March 2018)

In a case which took an unremarkable four years from filing to reach New York’s highest appellate court, Lindsay Lohan’s suit against the makers of video game Grand Theft Auto V was dismissed.  In a unanimous ruling in March 2018, six judges of the New York Court of Appeals rejected her invasion of privacy claim which alleged one of the game’s characters was based on her.  The judges found the "actress/singer" in the game merely resembled a “generic young woman” rather than anyone specific.  Unfortunately the judges seemed unacquainted with the concept of the “basic white girl” which might have made the judgment more of a fun read.

Beware of imitations: The real Lindsay Lohan and the GTA 5 ersatz, a mere "generic young woman".

Agreeing with the 2016 ruling of the New York County Supreme Court which, on appeal, also found for the game’s makers, the judges, as a point of law, accepted the claim a computer game’s character "could be construed a portrait", which "could constitute an invasion of an individual’s privacy" but, on the facts of the case, the likeness was "not sufficiently strong".  The “… artistic renderings are an indistinct, satirical representation of the style, look and persona of a modern, beach-going young woman... that is not recognizable as the plaintiff" Judge Eugene Fahey wrote in his ruling.  Lindsay Lohan’s lawyers did not seek leave to appeal.

Schematic of Ersatz Yorck's armor deployment.

Ersatz Yorck was one of the project names for a planned build of three battlecruisers ordered in 1916 by the German navy.  After the first keel had been laid down, influenced by the tendency, noted since the launching a decade earlier of the Royal Navy's HMS Dreadnought, towards bigger guns, the design was revised to become was significantly heavier than the Mackensen class which had been the original template.  The name Ersatz Yorck was derived from the ship being the replacement (ie ersatz in the original German sense of the word) for the Roon class armored cruiser SMS Yorck, sunk in home waters in 1914 after striking a (German) mine.  The other two ships in the programme were Ersatz Gneisenau & Ersatz Scarnhorst, both slated as replacements for namesakes lost during the Battle of the Falkland Islands (1914).

The three ships were never completed because it had become apparent augmenting the surface fleet was reinforcing failure and that U-boat (submarine) construction was a better use of available resources.  Thus the partially built Ersatz Yorck, years from completion, was broken up on the slipway and cannibalized to support U-boat production.  However, the navy retained the blueprints and it was these plans which in the 1930s provided the basis for what became the Scarnhorst class battleships although, in the Second World War, the illusion a surface fleet would be a more effective instrument of war at sea than the U-Boats proved again a chimera and one which meant that even in the early days of the conflict, the British never quite lost control of the Atlantic.  Had Germany entered the war with the 300 operational submarines advocated by the navy's U-Boat branch rather than the two-dozen odd available in 1939, the battle in the Atlantic would have have assumed a different character.