Isn’t it great that humanity never came to rely on fossil fuels for our energy needs?
Once wind turbines and photovoltaic cells were invented in the 1600s, they became such a feature of our landscapes that it’s hard to imagine masterpieces without them #vangogh#dalle2
Two centuries before Van Gogh, Vermeer took inspiration from the new technologies appearing around him in the Dutch Golden Age #vermeer#dalle2
All over the world, energy from the elements has enabled diverse civilisations to flourish, and captured the imaginations of artists like Hokusai in Japan, Frida Kahlo in Mexico, JMW Turner in England, and, more contemporarily, Etel Adnan in Lebanon #dalle2
Millions of people every year queue up to see Van Gogh’s famous ‘Solar Day’ #midjourney
In the last century, the emergence of new ways of turning the elements into energy, such as the Brazilian solar sky initiative—seen here by Tarsila do Amaral—have extended our abilities even further. #midjourney
In the late 1800s the company we now know as Royal Dutch Shell was started by Marcus Samuel as a trader in seashells, and that’s what it remains today #dalle2
to play around with #dalle2 and #midjourney to imagine how our energy future—or rather present—could have been very different. What might our energy future(s) be?
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I'm fascinated by object-labelling memes knowyourmeme.com/memes/object-l… as a kind of hybrid metaphor / mental model illustration—a rapid, relatable way for people to create "diagrams" of how they imagine concepts relating to each other, via properties of objects as metaphors
A thread:
If we're categorising these somehow, one interesting subgenre is about *material properties* as metaphors: something is heavy, or weak, or spiky, or disintegrates easily (it's interesting how many are about mental health)
Another common subgenre uses the idea of *one element occluding, stopping, or protecting another* as a metaphor
A photo that means a lot to me—here I am, 11th birthday, with Bob the border terrier, in Lockton village, with a '20s Bowser pump. The garage is now @Locktontearooms
And, reaching Day 100 of this incredibly niche set of tweets, I want to say: when I started this back in December, as a kind of Christmas diversion, I had no idea that 3 months later it would be become a way of keeping a kind of sanity and connection with the past amidst the fear
and uncertainty of this very strange locked-in era we're in. When I stood there smiling in that photo, could I ever have imagined one day somehow sharing that photo with thousands of people, while trapped in a house on another continent, thousands of miles away from my family?