Launch Notes: Little Zen Minds on Magento Commerce

We are pleased to announce the launch of Little Zen Minds on the Magento Commerce platform. We upgraded the design of the site to match the creativity and quality of the children’s learning toys offered at Little Zen Minds. Plus, we migrated a problematic installation of Magento from an underpowered shared hosting account to SimpleHelix, upgrading the install to the most current version of Magento via Subversion along the way.

Magento Commerce: Flexible and Complex

Let’s just say 197 database tables, involving EAV (Entity, Attribute, Value) model design. This database design makes Magento very flexible, but a bit of a brain warp to comprehend. To that end, we are participating in PHPArchitect’s Magento Boot Camp. More on this later…

Compounded Light

I pay attention to new visual influences in art and in popular media and I wanted provide you with some images that illustrate a notable use of light sources. It will be interesting to see how many more times this usage emerges. If you come across additional examples, please add them in the comments below…

The first time I saw this use of light was at the new MOMA in 2006. Jeff Wall’s ‘After “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, the Preface’ depicts one of the most well known scenes from the novel. In this the character says, “My hole is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light. I doubt if there is a brighter spot in all New York than this hole of mine, and I do not exclude Broadway. Or the Empire State Building on a photographer’s dream night… In my hole in the basement there are exactly 1,369 lights.”

Next, the photographer Abigail Feldman’s portfolio contained this image of the candle. While the impact of the light is subdued by not being compounded from many light sources, the gleam has a similar feel.

Chris Burden’s sculpture “Urban Light” composed of a gridded cluster of restored cast-iron street lamps is like a radiant cloud, serenely blotting out all darkness. Walking inside the sculpture one is enmeshed in ubiquitous shine. See it at the the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Lastly, in Martin Scorcese’s Shine a Light, he does. Whiting out the Beacon theater by igniting fierce arc lights during the concert, detail flies away and you the viewer become ineradicably exposed. 

Magnetic Ink Visualization

Magnetic Ink, Process video from flight404 on Vimeo.