Merzouga
De Rerum Natura / Dance of the Elements
In his poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) the Roman
poet/philosopher Lucretius (c. 99 – c. 55 BCE) explores Epicurean
physics and philosophy through richly poetic language and metaphors, as
he presents an entire cosmology: based on the principles of atomism,
Lucretius tries to explain the nature of the mind and soul, and the
development of the world. While some of his ideas have been proven
scientifically wrong, some of his thoughts seem strikingly reasonable
even for the cont…
East Music for Wax Cylinders
Erich Moritz von Hornbostel was an „armchair ethnologist“. Due to his bad health the musicologist was unable to travel to faraway countries. Instead he sat at his desk in the Dorotheenstraße in Berlin and received the world through his phonograph. On from 1900 the world’s music arrived at his office in the form of more than 16.000 wax-cylinder recordings from all over the planet. Due to an edict by the Prussian Emperor all German trading as well as scientific expeditors were bound to travel with…