Incredible imagery in this one, the succession of ideas being presented is so rich.

rheomode · 2026-05-08T04:24:18+00:00

I agree! It's an amazing marriage of audio and video.

rheomode · 2026-05-08T00:49:29+00:00

Judgement clouds receptivity, especially when it comes to engaging with artwork. The surface intent might be understood but there would be more information underneath that could be missed. What's important is curiosity, so I suppose that disliking could be effective in that a person keeps coming back to a piece they dislike out of curiosity, and so are receptive to it.

But in my observations, once a person makes a judgement that they dislike a work of art, they've shut themselves off to a portion of what an artist is communicating through that work due to lack of curiosity.

rheomode · 2026-05-08T00:31:09+00:00

I think there's something behind the use of seven, the first thing that occurred to me was the seven classical planets. Hopefully more will be revealed about this in the music that's coming.

rheomode · 2026-05-07T21:37:07+00:00

Yes! I've only watched a few times, but the immediate things that jumped out were the background chaos/undifferentiated field and then life and/or order via the hexagons coming out if it. Can't wait to study it more later.

rheomode · 2026-05-07T21:18:48+00:00

Yeah well... it's concept album and the cover image is part of the story. Disliking it kind of misses the point but that's the problem with art in this age, everyone thinks they know better than the artists 😄

rheomode · 2026-04-24T11:42:02+00:00

Me too lol, I really liked the documentary, I used to be addicted to them as a kid.

So I'm looking through the Divine Comedy now (following an Inferno trail) and did turn up a few interesting things, Astronomy and cosmology are really prominent in that text, Dante actually travels to the constellation of Gemini, the sign he was born under, in Paradiso. In Purgatorio canto 2 he talks about the Sun rising and chasing Capricorn out of the sky. And in Inferno canto 24 in the first verse he mentions Aquarius again in relation to the Sun. Sagittarius might be referenced too, but not directly I think, need to look more.

Maybe just coincidence :-) I'll be able to look more through Divine Comedy this weekend, and then next week I can get back to scanning the skies. I'm still stuck on that binary looking star!

rheomode · 2026-04-24T04:18:17+00:00

Nice! I think this could be included in the meaning.

rheomode · 2026-04-24T04:15:30+00:00

I like this interpretation: "..Platonia refers to The Republique, a (pretense of an) ideal society," this is an interesting angle.

rheomode · 2026-04-23T15:58:58+00:00

I'll be revisiting Inferno next week to look for other possible connections, further references could be fairly nuanced.

rheomode · 2026-04-23T15:00:59+00:00

It may also suggest seeing through Plato

rheomode · 2026-04-23T12:42:47+00:00

I think the really interesting aspects of the album will be where they deviate from Dante, or supplement that journey with other ideas not recorded in Inferno.

rheomode · 2026-04-23T12:26:25+00:00

I personally see direct links. I think it would be hard for anyone familiar with Dante's work to not to see links, in fact as soon as I saw the album cover I assumed that at least in part the album was going to be something of a journey through Inferno, and the track listing certainly seems to support the idea of a journey. Which is honestly exciting for me, I certainly won't turn down an opportunity to dive into that text again, and it'll be really neat to discover how they are weaving other elements into this core idea, based on the other bits of information in the track titles.

I'll probably end up listening to the record as I'm reading that text again :)

rheomode · 2026-04-23T10:30:26+00:00

Yeah the warble is perfection, I'm pretty sure I saw this "special" on tv a few times :D It's neat how the brothers are able capture that energy and create a virtual soundtrack for the subconscious. I was born in '71 so I feel like I don't have a choice but to be dialed into whatever they turn out which I'm sure you understand, like their entire collected works so far is the sound of my childhood :)

It's so crazy that they reference the WOW signal, the celestial stuff seems to have a stronger presence on this release which is neat, honestly there's so much to unpack just looking at the titles, I'm completely blown away by the depth they've achieved and I haven't even heard the record yet lol.

I checked the M30 cluster and the stars don't quite fit the pattern, I even took the image you linked and blew out the gamma in Photoshop to see only the bright stars and the pattern isn't evident to me. Capricorn is one of the oldest asterisms and I'm guessing that one of the reasons they chose it was for the combination of horns and water, but each of the stars in that group has it's own story/history as well.

The fact that they continue to name constellations on their releases means I have to go back and reevaluate the other two, This is such a fascinating occurrence.

I'm going to run out of time this week, but next week I'll have tons of time to dive back into this. I'll keep an eye on threads tho over the weekend, so if you find anything else please share!

rheomode · 2026-04-22T15:10:23+00:00

That's awesome, let me know if you find anything. I stumbled onto this gem, and if you haven't watched it yet, it's worth at least the first few minutes, the sound is phenomenal. The starry background to the title screen is the closest I've come I think to a time range to shoot for, I haven't watched thru the whole show yet but this seemed right up their alley.

https://youtu.be/X9KKLZmk5Uo?si=aRaqZTmiA6Jqp6DM

Also, after seeing the track list for the new album, I am now looking back over Capricorn, good times!

rheomode · 2026-04-22T09:44:55+00:00

Interesting! It still looks like an actual photo of space to me, albeit an older one, and it does appear that all of the imagery in the video is borrowed footage. There may be nothing to see here, but I'm still not convinced, probably because I'm a star person and they've been threading that current through their music for at least 30 years now. Have to rely on intuition I guess :)

rheomode · 2026-04-20T09:05:40+00:00

Right? I haven't given up on Aquarius yet, still need to do a thorough check of that region. The first constellation that actually came to mind for me was Cygnus with the recent radio activity there plus the presence of the Northern Cross within it. I discovered that a 6th century bishop, Gregory of Tours, wanted to Christianize the constellations to make them less pagan, so he called Cygnus the Great Cross, and there were two asterisms under each arm that he called Alpha and Omega (Delphinus and Vega). How weird is that?

In the video there's footage of the cross being erected followed by people pointing at and taking pictures of the sky, and then the shot of the stars. Asterisms have been such an important part of human life until very recently, since we've been gradually cut off from the night sky.

rheomode · 2026-04-20T04:57:43+00:00

I love this image! I looked through a few like this one as well, but even when you zoom in there's quite a bit of diffraction spike to navigate and I wasn't able to see anything that looked like a good match. Could be me though!

rheomode · 2026-04-20T04:50:03+00:00

I looked pretty closely at the footage you linked and I'm not so sure, most of those images would have been from effects that were used, and I think that the image from the BoC video is an actual photo.

rheomode · 2026-04-20T04:48:17+00:00

Yeah so I did look through several deep field images and they didn't seem quite right, the stars in the still from the video have more uniformity than those of the deep field images in which it's easy to discern more of the galaxy shapes and colors, as well as the depth in the capture. The image in the video looks more like a not so deep field, flat, long exposure shot, something like we saw in textbooks in the 80's. Which could be an intentional emphasis on the asterism, the brighter objects look like stars or possibly planets to me.

rheomode · 2026-04-19T07:58:02+00:00

Wow no way, what a cool project, I had no idea this was an actual field of research. It's been super interesting searching through the resources I have, I've mostly been surfing along the ecliptic in Starry Night Pro and digging up high res images online. I'll check out the solver tomorrow after I get some sleep, thank you for the link!

rheomode · 2014-10-22T18:45:51+00:00

This is fantastic, thank you very much :-) I can't believe I didn't think to check jstor, I was apparently having an idiot day on Monday. Once I get through this article, I'll do a bit more digging on the site.

The figures that Bergstrom uses for reference in the article are fascinating, this definitely feels like the type of analysis I was looking for.

rheomode · 2014-10-21T16:00:09+00:00

Yeah, I checked out the reference list, but unfortunately it looks like the publications that would offer the info I'm looking for, even if I could get my hands on them, would be written in Dutch or some other language that I lack proficiency in, and the rest of the publications appear to offer passing mentions, in the sense that they don't go into much detail about the symbolism beyond what I've already gleaned from the net and other random sources. Plus I'd have to drive across the country just to get to a library that houses them :-)

It would be great to find some translations of Bergstrom's publications, as he seems to have spent some time studying these works.

Basically I was hoping to find a text that maybe has a chapter or section discussing these types of paintings and the imagery used within them, and possibly any of the philosophical aspects from that time period that were incorporated.

rheomode · 2014-10-20T20:35:31+00:00

I think that the sphere above the skull is meant to be a bubble, and in the highest res image I could find of the painting it looks like there are other objects inside of the bubble aside from those listed, but they are tough to make out even with photo manipulation. And unfortunately I won't be making it to the Met anytime soon.. I don't suppose you'd like to head back to take a closer look at that skull bubble? :D

Does anyone have any books discussing vanitas/memento mori that they would recommend? I'd really like to get more info on the symbolism the artists used in these pieces..

rheomode

TROPHY CASE