aureolin – first made in 1851 and its chemical composition is potassium cobaltinitrite it used in oil paints and watercolours. It is a transparent, lightly staining, light valued, intense medium yellow pigment. It fades quickly in watercolor form.
panopitcon- a type of prison building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in 1785. It is of circular construction with the cells around the outside and the guard tower in the middle allowing the prisoners to be watched invisibly from the guard tower at all times. No prisoner knows whether or not someone is watching him but is constantly aware that someone could be. All prisoners are therefore totally exposed at all times and their only relationship is with the authoritarian presense of the guard tower itself. It required less staff than any previous prison models. This model was picked up and examined by Micheal Foucault in his study Discipline and Punish where he highlights as a repository for homogenous power, and reveals it polyvalent applications; it serves to reform prisoners, but also to treat patients, to instruct schoolchildren, to confine the insane, to supervise workers, to put beggars and idlers to work. Though it has been largely disregarded as unhumanitarian as an architectural model (prolonged exposure unsurprisingly had a direct link to mental instability) the same mechanism is being used throughout the developed world; one way windows into our existence where we have no idea who is watching us; survelliance cameras, store cards, facebook to name but a few.
Curta mechanical calculator devised by Curt Herzstark while he was in Buchenwald concentration camp. He was given a drawing board and was encouraged so that it could be given to the Feuhrer. However, development was completed after liberation by the Americans. It is a stepped gear type calculator capable of the four functions, and more using special techniques
52 mm diameter x 105 mm high (2″ x 4″).
Made in Liechtenstein 1947 – 1970.