On the subject of Storm Thorgerson...to tie in with his current exhibition in Ostend, Belgium, on Wednesday night the cover of Pink Floyd's 1987 album A Momentary Lapse Of Reason was brought back to life (in slightly varied style) on the local beach.

As BD contributors Jan Hollevoet and Vince Delhaye told us, the cover was the inspiration for a very special evening. Using 150 beds, a small, less expensive number than the 700 or so used in 1987, they were set up on the beach in an admittedly different orientation than Storm's original. One of the sponsors, Eastpak, was behind the event, where a few lucky people got an invitation to be part of the setting and could "sleep under the stars" for the night if they wanted to.

The picture to the right, from Eastpak's Facebook page, gives an impression of what the scene was like. The local press also covered the event, and you can read more over at the Standaard website.

Computers Have A Lot To Answer For is a new, 40-year retrospective of Storm Thorgerson’s photographic prints. Being held at the Public Works Gallery in Chicago, Illinois, between September 7th - November 2nd, it sees Storm's work making a return to a US gallery.

As one of the founders of the design studio Hipgnosis, and a key part of the Pink Floyd story, Thorgerson’s reality-bending vision and maximalist style have produced many of the defining images of music culture and the 20th-century at large, including the covers for Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of The Moon and Wish You Were Here, as well as Led Zeppelin's Houses of The Holy. As most of you know, his execution of elaborate sets, intricate image composition and complex photo montage is unparalleled. The gallery puts it like this: "Computers have a lot to answer for, and the man they answer to is Storm Thorgerson."

Since forming Hipgnosis in 1968, Thorgerson has completed over 300 album covers for Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Genesis, ELO, Peter Gabriel, Black Sabbath, Def Leppard, Paul McCartney, and more contemporarily, Phish, The Cranberries, Anthrax and Muse. Many of these covers will be on display, and as you may have gathered from various reports we've run over the last few years, Storm's exhibitions are well worth visiting if you are able to...

André Kuipers, Dutch physician and ESA astronaut, the first Dutch astronaut to make two journeys into space, recently revealed himself to be a Pink Floyd fan whilst talking about his experiences on the International Space Station.

"You're just working. There is noise, someone is training, there is music. The fan is noisy, someone is calling from the ground. You are constantly busy. You have to really isolate and call deliberately for some atmosphere. At night everything is made dark around me and listened to the music of Pink Floyd for example, Dark Side of The Moon I had with me. Then you look outside and then you realize that you really float around the earth. That is very special. Then you think: this is the dream. Now I am in the science fiction world where I used to dream about," said Kuipers in an interview with Reuters.

This is the original link to the Dutch newspaper. Our thanks to Richard van Oosterhout for the info and translation.

The Brighton Dome is one of the legendary venues in Pink Floyd's history. The Dome went down in history as the place where the band set out to perform Dark Side Of The Moon live in public for the first time, although it was not without its problems...

Inspired by the Corn Exchange in Paris and originally covered with a huge segmented glass dome, the remarkable Brighton Dome (shown to the right) was designed as the Prince Regent's riding stables and was finally completed in 1805. Part of the famous Royal Pavilion Estate, it was later converted into a Concert Hall in 1866 and became the most fashionable and culturally significant venue in the south. It was restored again in 1935 with a resplendent art-deco interior, and showcased some of the world's biggest names in entertainment.

From 1967 onwards, it became a regular haunt of Pink Floyd, and they chose the venue to start their 1972 tour (see picture, left). The Brighton Dome are currently researching the history of Pink Floyd there, and are looking to petition for a grant to fund research into and recreation of the Dome's rich history with the band.

They are calling on all Floyd fans to register their support by visiting thedarksideofthemoon.co.uk where you'll also find more information on the project.