CatSynth

The theme of this week’s Photo Hunt is spiral, a shape that appears frequently in art, mathematics, nature, and of course in Luna’s expressive tail.

This is an old photo with a much younger Luna in our former home in Santa Cruz.  It is one of the best examples of the tight curl she often forms in her tail.  Here is a more recent example:

The spirals in Luna’s tail are all about motion, and often difficult to capture in a still photograph. However, you can see them very clearly in the recent videos from our performance.

With respect to music, a spiral was also one of the symbols I used in my recent piece for conduct your own orchestra night:

This is the classic Archimedean spiral, defined by the formula r = aθ. Essentially the distance from the center increases proportionally to the angle as one “spirals out” from the center. There are other formal mathematical variations on the spiral, such as Fermat’s spiral, which I find visually interesting.

Is mathematics, music and cats not a fine way to start the weekend?

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Weekend Cat Blogging #249 will be hosted by our friends LB and breadchick at The Sour Dough.

The Photo Hunt is hosted by tnchick. This week’s theme is spiral.

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted this Sunday by Kashim, Othello and Salome.

And the friday ark is at the modulator.

This week’s Photo Hunt theme is foreign. Cats often intersect with my foreign travels, and with the objects that I bring home. Consider the Suzhou painting silk cat and Maneki Neko from Japan in the photo below:

We have seen these items before, in discussions of cats of China and the cats of Tokyo, respectively.

Here, we see Luna near some of our art pieces:

Most of these, including the large watercolor on the left and small metal sculpture, are local. However, the mostly yellow geometric print is foreign. It is by a Cuban artist. I visited Cuba twice in 2001 and purchased this print in the town of Matanzas. The topic of visiting Cuba as an American (and the entire U.S. policy towards Cuba) could fill up an entire article.

Sometimes one may assume something is foreign when it is in fact not. Consider this photo of Luna from December:

The title may be in French and evoke a bygone era in Paris, but it is actually the work of an American artist, Ken Bailey.

We close with some more maneki neko figures:

All of the cat figurines in this photo are from Japan. There is one more cat, however, on the matchbox. This is not foreign, and created by a local artist.

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A sad note this weekend. Gattina and family, who regularly host “Cats on Tuesday”, said farewell to their cat Lisa this week. Lisa was a little over eighteen years old, which is a good long life for a cat.  We send them our thoughts.

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Weekend Cat Blogging #248 is hosted by Meowza at his blog iMeowza.

Photo Hunt 203: Foreign is hosted by tnchick.

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted this Sunday by Nikita Cat at meowings of an opinionated pussycat. We also wish Nikita a happy birthday this weekend!

And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Luna was a big hit at my performance last Thursday, where she was featured in the video 月伸1.

Here are more screenshots from her video debut:

The video quality in different sections is deliberately different, sometimes dark or grainy, sometimes really crisp, as these shots below (which were featured in previous posts that you can find here and here):

And here are some clips from the video:

The video was just part of the performance; I did live improvisation with electronic instruments to accompany it. I do have a video of the full performance, although I have not had a chance to review it. Look for a formal “CatSynth review” of the performance as well as Polly Moller’s Genesis in the near future.

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Weekend Cat Blogging #247 is hosted by Nikita Cat.

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted this Sunday by Sniffie and the Florida Furkids.

And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

This weekend we once again combine Weekend Cat Blogging and the Photo Hunt, taking advantage of the rather easy them of cuddly.

Of course, Luna is very cuddly, and we have hundreds of photos in the CatSynth archives to prove it. But she also seeks this quality from her environment and the objects around her. Readers may recall the blue fish that Luna received as a holiday gift. She took to it right away, and is still quite fond of it. A few weeks ago I found her carrying it around and lying down with it in the studio, much as child would treat a favorite stuffed animal.

I even found her using it as a pillow:

I think that clearly qualifies as “cuddly.”

Coincidentally, I composed a jazz piece almost 20 (!) years ago called “The Blue Fish.” It might be fun to dust it of and try playing it again one of these days…

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Weekend Cat Blogging #246 is being hosted by Billy Sweetfeets. He is also celebrating his Gotcha Day.

Photo Hunt #201 is hosted as always by tnchick. This week’s theme is “cuddly.”

Carnival of the Cats #310 will be up this Sunday at When Cats Attack.

And of course the Friday Ark #283 is at the modulator.

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Weekend Cat Blogging #244 is hosted by Kashim, Othello and Salome together at Paulchens FoodBlog?!

The Carnival of the Cats will be up this Sunday at iMeowza.

The monthy Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos will be hosted by Nikita Cat

And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Luna obliged with some cuteness for this photo series. She really is a fantastic photography model, when she chooses to be.

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Weekend Cat Blogging #243 is hosted this week by Jules and Vincent at Judi’s Mind Over Matter.

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted on Sunday at Kashim, Othello and Salome.

And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

It’s been very stormy week here, with sometimes violent winds and heavy rain, and flash floods. Indeed, it has been raining at least once every few hours continuously since I departed from Los Angeles last Sunday. It’s the kind of weather where one really just wants to curl up and stay warm:

In additional to seeing Luna napping on one of her favorite chairs, I liked the way the clothing draped on top formed this perfect triangle above her. This image has a very symbolic quality – the triangle is a very powerful element in my own visual ideas, and I have often talked about juxtaposing geometric elements against more natural organic shapes.

This morning, the sun has appeared at CatSynth HQ for the first time in over a week, and Luna peers out into the world:

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Weekend Cat Blogging #242 is hosted by Nikita Cat.

The Carnival of the Cats will be up this Sunday at When Cats Attack.

And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

I managed to get this photo of Luna sitting in front of a ledge overlooking the downstairs. I think she matches the works of art on the wall quite well.

Astute readers may recognize the large black painting from one of our reviews last October. See if you can pick out the artist.

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Weekend Cat Blogging is being hosted this weekend by The Meezers.

The Carnival of the Cats will be up on Sunday at iMeowza.

And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Our first Weekend Cat Blogging of 2010 begins in grayscale:

Luna is on her favorite beanbag chair in a relatively clean studio. Nearby is a crate full of old audio interfaces – it seems we have quite a few E-MU, M-Audio and Digidesign interfaces, some in various states of disrepair or obsolescence.  We rely on one or another of these portable interfaces for live shows.

Meanwhile, Luna drifts off to sleep…

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Weekend Cat Blogging will be hosted by Pam at Sidewalk Shoes.

The Carnival of the Cats will be up this Sunday at Mind of Mog.

The monthly Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos will be hosted on Sunday by Samantha and The Orange Kitty at Life from a Cat’s Perspective.

And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

This weekend, we present some of the cats featured in the Macy’s SF/SPCA Holiday Windows. Every year during the holidays, San Francisco SPCA teams up with Macy’s in San Francisco to feature adoptable pets in the holiday window displays at their main store in Union Square.

Here are couple of kittens in one window:

and this handsome black cat:

Many passers-by in this busy shopping district were surprised and delighted by the live animals in the displays.   We at CatSynth certainly hope that some of these animals, including the cats featured above, find new homes as a result of this program.

To find out more about the program, including when to see the animals and how you can contribute, please visit the official Macy’s SF/SPCA Holiday Windows site.

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Weekend Cat Blogging #238 will be hosted by our friends at the House of the (Mostly) Black Cats.

Carnival of the Cats will be going up this Sunday at When Cats Attack!.

And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Happy Holidays!