July 17, 2008

How to Save America

With John 7,000 miles away in a third world country, I have decided to fill in for him. Now, taking his wife out for a night on the town could be a little awkward and very inconvenient for me. Instead, I have decided to guest blog on this widely revered Ascent Stage.

My name is Cory Ritterbusch, and I am the only ecologist that John knows. Some of you AS die-hards may remember my blog PrairieWorks being cited in the past. I practice a small but growing form of land conservation known as Restoration Ecology in the rural Midwest. Ecological Restoration, as a verb, is the practice of repairing a damaged or destroyed ecosystem. Let's try to get our arms around the man-child that is ecological restoration to show you: How you can utilize it in some of your decision making, how to view the landscape in a new way, the power that humans possess and the damage we can reverse.

For millions of years American Indians and the ecosystem co-existed together here in America rather nicely. What is now corn and soybean fields were extensive prairies, savannas and woodlands harboring thousands of different species. Intermingled amongst these prairies were forests, wetlands, bogs, fens, and so on. There was a very smooth and seamless transition into one another without fragmentation. These ecosystems were on fire frequently, started by lighting strikes and by intentional means by Indians. It was a part of the natural process here in America for millions of years. With fire, the Midwest remained open without many trees. The plants living here adapted to these fires and became dependent on them for survival.

Beginning in the early 1800s pioneers began entering these wild areas and by 1850 the landscape had become extremely altered. Prairies were plowed into crop fields, woodlands were cut for timber and wetlands were drained. This had a detrimental effect on the species that had existed here for millions of years. With the suppression of fire and the introduction of plants from other continents, the conservative native plants had a hard time competing and were eventually extirpated. Luckily, small areas known as remnants were spared and botanists could study these areas to learn about them. These are now a benchmark for comparison and a seed bank for plant propagation. Today, restoration ecologists are mimicking the natural processes in hopes of recreating the glory of the prairie's former past.

The landscape, agricultural and energy industries have also taken notice and are learning from these ghost plants of the past. We are now utilizing native plants to amend troublesome site conditions and are designing landscapes that provide a greater sense of place. The deep root systems that native plants formed after millions of years of harsh weather conditions are being utilized for many applications including: Controlling erosion, removing toxins from soils, creating landscapes that do not require water and fertilizers, planting flower filled areas in sub-par soil conditions and for producing ethanol. Native plants also offer a greater sense of place rather than utilizing the same set of plants from state to state and region to region, regardless of climate and soil types. For example, an Applebee's restaurant chain will use the same building design and landscape design for all of its locations in today's current streamlined thought process.

Much like Frank Lloyd Wright's house designs incorporated elements of local materials, we are now doing this outdoors. Ironically, for the first time we are beginning to create landscapes that are of American influence rather than English and Japanese, the norm for the last two centuries. Replacing lawns, which have large maintenance requirements, with short grasses native to the western Midwest is just one example of how we can utilize native flora to reduce financial and natural resource strains for the betterment of humanity. Soon, we hope that the 55 billion dollar landscape industry can be trained in local plants rather than the sharpening of blades at the cost of a depleting water supply.

History comes full circle sometimes. The plants that we destroyed to create food to feed a nation can now be utilized to solve many important issues here at home. Utilizing perennial prairie plants for ethanol, installing plants that reduce labor inputs, attracting wildlife, reminding us where we are, cleaning our air and water, all while stabilizing soil in the process can be useful tools as we look towards the future. The plants that were once used to sustain an entire population of native people may do so again.

Thanks to John for allowing me to preach the power of native plants.

Cory Ritterbusch
cory@prairieworksinc.com

Posted at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 7, 2008

Recursion

I am dying to write in-depth about the Forbidden City virtual world project I've been helming for the last few years. Alas, that must wait for the launch itself.* But. We can talk about it obliquely, no?

There's a scene** in the Virtual Forbidden City in which a painter sits in a garden with the imperial family, painting away. It's a simple thing, really, but I find it immensely thought-provoking. As a visitor you're an unseen spectator of the painted depiction of a moment in a world which is itself the depiction of a moment of daily life in a virtual milieu. A snapshot (which your avatar can take) would reveal a recursive scene-within-a-scene or, in the lingo of the art world, a mise en abyme -- a technique used for centuries in all manner of paintings, woodcuts, and tapestries.

This got me wondering if there is any historical analog to the depiction of artists themselves inside the frame of the same scene they are painting. Cursory searching and lazytweeting yielded no actual term for such a composition, but in fact there are precedents.

Maybe the most famous is Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez. The work shows the painter (on the left holding a brush, duh) but also situates the viewer (that'd be you) as the object of his gaze. In other words, just looking at the painting you're role-playing royalty.

Even more interesting is the mirror in the back of the room which reflects the royal couple (the true subjects of the painting-within-a-painting) -- or which may simply reflect the canvas itself. In either case the viewer, while unseen, is a participant in the space.

So there it is folks. Diego Velázquez pretty much nailed the lure of virtual worlds in a painting 352 years ago.

• Transcend viewing; embrace participation. (Even if, in this case, it is implied.)
• Fictionalize the first-person. (Nerdspeak: permit the possibility of role-playing.)
• Engage the viewer/participant by telling stories mid-story. (What the hell is that guy doing in the doorway? And why is that kid's foot on the dog? And, the midgets?)

Scrolling forward a few centuries we have Mark Tansey, an artist smitten with the contrast between the static moment and the dynamic (lengthy) process of painting itself. Tansey's Action Painting I and II place the artist in a position that only a photographer could capture, depicting a moment of catastrophic energy as if it were just another still life of fruit.

See also the first Action Painting.

In the Virtual Forbidden City the painting scene is, essentially, a still life of the imperial family, but the fact that your viewing position is unlimited -- you can walk around it, into it, or stick your nose right down onto the painting -- speaks to both Velázquez's and Tansey's focus on the observer rather than the observed. This, to me, is the promise of virtual worlds. And something I hope we at least approach, if not achieve, with the VFC.

Of course the piece-de-resistance (artspeak, yes!) in this vein has got to be Robbie Dingo's unbelievable recreation of Van Gogh's Starry Night. I remember when we were building the prototype of the VFC in Second Life. SL, like many virtual worlds, is built from within, by avatars, moving primitive shapes like sorcerers. It was a striking scene being inside the world watching as walls were moved around, tweaked, textured and placed. Truly living inside the process of a painting.

If you've not seen Dingo's video, do yourself this favor.

Phew, I made it. That was oblique enough, yes?

* And it must wait even a bit longer now. Eagle-eyed viewers of the site may have noticed I slyly changed the date of the project launch in the sidebar from "spring" until "fall" of this year, rounding out my involvement at a cool 4.5 years. Egads that's a long time to work on a project.

* * Scenes in the VFC are basically looping historical tableaux that a visitor can approach on the grounds of the palace. Distinct from an activity which permits interaction.

Posted at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

December 26, 2007

Vinicolor

The idea: use red wine to make a watercolor painting.

Why is this concept art?

A) Because what I tried to paint was the town seal of Barile, my great-grandparents' home town in Italy
B) Because the wine is Aglianico del Vulture, grown in and around Barile, from the winery of the Paternosters, our distant relatives
C) Because the paper is from Amalfi, Italy, waypoint on our trip this summer
D) Because I am an awful painter, but the concept is quite good
E) All of the above

It can be done well -- as this site, where I got the idea, shows.

The thing is, wine is a tough medium. Each time you put the brush to the paper, which in this case was 100% cotton, the wine dab pooled momentarily and then chose the rivulet of least resistance and poured into it. More topographical analysis and fluid dynamics than art, really.

Kinda makes a nice Rorschach though. Do you see an iPod?

Posted at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 5, 2007

Making CD's

So the annual holiday mix is about ready to go out. Shortly I'll post the specifics on this year's compendium, but for now a few tips having spent so much time in the Jewelboxing system putting it all together.

Warning, this is niche advice. Meaning, this might apply to one of my two readers. Really I'm posting this as Google fodder for future readers. A time capsule of advice, if you will.

If you use the Jewelboxing system you're no doubt a fan of the simplicity and flexibility of the templates and the DIY construction of the cases themselves. Having made several hundred of the cases over the years I've come to the following conclusions.

• It is much easier to label the CD's once you've set them in the case on the spindle. This holds them still while you apply.
• When ripping the perforations on the STtray sheet it is much easier to rip it latitudinally (the long side) first, then longitudinally.
• Those crazy tiny diagonal perforations near the hinge? Cut them with a small pair of scissors. Much easier than ripping them.
• Once you've printed the booklet inserts it is best to put stack them into 10 or 15 or so and weigh them down overnight with something heavy. This flattens them out so they sit in the tray better.
• When folding the edges of the STtray sheet (the parts that are at 90 degree angles to the tray itself) it is best to fold them at an angle greater than 90 degrees so that on inserting them into the tray there is resistance against the case wall. This makes for a tight fit and usually prevents the spindle tray from ripping the paper.
• Lastly, if you are putting anything in the hinge chamber don't forget to rip off the little rectangle of paper that would normally be the spine. If you don't, you won't be able to see into the chamber edge-on.

And now to confirm the obvious: yes, I have spent too much time putting these suckers together. I need to go play in the snow.

Posted at 11:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

April 9, 2007

Objects in mirror

Clever.

But this is cleverer.

Tags: mirror, rearview, signage

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July 1, 2006

The a-ha! moment

A few weeks ago I moderated a panel of artists and technologists at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum whose aim was basically to complicate the distinction between the two categories of panelists. It was a great disussion in a superb environment: the Aldrich is a first-rate, forward-thinking museum in Ridgefield, CT, a place you'd never expect it. The germ of the discussion was creativity. How are technical creativity and artistic creativity -- "innovation" to be buzzword-compliant -- related? Are they analogous? If so, where do the similarities break down?

We stacked the deck a bit by involving technical folks whose work was clearly artful and artists whose medium was heavily technologized, but the audience itself, also involved in the discussion, were from a wide range of both backgrounds. The goal of the day was to try to isolate, such as possible, the moment of inspiration -- the moment when you knew you had something worthwhile. How did this come about? Almost everyone said the idea came first and only then was the tool sought to make it real. One of IBM researchers said that if he could perform his complex visualizations with a pencil he would.

This surprised me. One of the great things about technology, it seems to me, is its extensibility in ways not intended by the designer. I figured both groups would see this as inspiration in itself. The artist, perhaps not understanding fully the capabilities of a digital tool, cajoles (even breaks) it in unique ways -- while the geek, knowing intimately the capabilities of a particular tool, hacks or applies it in unique ways. Admittedly tool-inspired creativity is only one route, but no one on the panel seemed to put much stock in it. Maybe I'm wrong, but can I be the only person who has loaded an application and thought "Gee, I'd love to make it do X." The creativity, in part, comes in making the tool behave "improperly."

The panelists were a great bunch. See for yourself.

• Jack Blanchard
• Elizabeth Demaray
• Jesse Kriss
• John F. Simon, Jr.
• Martin Wattenberg
• Tracee Wolf

See also Geeks in the Gallery, unrelated to the Aldrich event but very relevant to the discussion.

Posted at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 24, 2006

For a good time, call 877-454-0795

The annual Museums and the Web conference held its opening reception at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History in Albuquerque two nights ago. The dinosaur exhibit -- which is to say, most of the museum -- featured a cellphone-based tour in two flavors, keypad-activated and voice-response. All you had to do was say the number or name of the exhibit and voila! But here's the key point: the tour itself was put together only hours earlier in a conference workshop by museum professionals, podcast-style. This is really quite revolutionary since it shows a real speed-to-market (so to speak) and flexibility of audio tours that previously had not existed. Guerrilla museum tour creation. Yet another example of the web experience for content creators and visitors infiltrating the physical museum space. Wonderful!

And don't forget to say "Gigantism." Not only because it triggers the audio, but because it is a lovely word.

Posted at 6:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 23, 2005

Meet the Friendlies

China recently unveiled the sporting event pictograms for the 2008 Olympics. I've been a fan of these little icons since Australia somewhat amazingly created one for each sport using little more than boomerang imagery. Athens continued the trend of using culturally-specific imagery in the pictograms by styling each event icon as if it were found etched on the side of an ancient amphora. (What, Plato never played ping pong?)

But China has gone further, entering the realm of the awesome and bizarre. Meet the Friendlies. The five main mascots -- Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying and Nini -- are endearing and meaningful (spelling out "Welcome to Beijing" among other things). It can't erase the horror that is the Whatzit mascot from the Atlanta games, but it helps.

Their cuddliness is deceiving, though. The actual sport pictograms truly kick ass.

From left to right that's the Modern Pentathlon, Taekwondo, and Shooting, also known as Plunder, Uppercut, and Make My Day.

More on Olympic pictograms and logoing:
The Graphic Design Olympics
A Mini History of Olympic Pictograms
Logos and Mascots

Posted at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 5, 2005

Motorcycle Giger

Interesting figurines of sci-fi movie characters made completely from motorcyle parts. Alien, Predator, Robocop, and Dragonheart. Full size at Flickr.

(Shop near Lincoln and Newport.)

Posted at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 30, 2005

Lingualism

Real time translation in a conference setting always amazes me. The translators in their claustrophobic boxes have to keep up with nervous, mumbly presenters whose language is often specialized or vague. I try to make it a point to thank whoever has the misfortune of translating me. But it is such a great service. Sometimes I think about how life-changing it would be to have this device all the time. I have, in fact, walked out of a conference hall with the headset on and momentarily forgotten that it is not a Universal Translator that will work anywhere. Darn.

The movie The Red Violin is the first I have seen that moves smoothly and rapidly between many different languages, five in this case. Just when you've disabled the subtitles in an English section you're thrown back into German or Chinese and you have to turn them on again. Thankfully toggling DVD subtitling, especially on a laptop, is painless. (Though it would be nice to be able to say "if any language other than X is being spoken I need subtitles.")

Which brings me to website design. Multilingual sites -- which should be every site but for obvious practical reasons cannot be -- must work just as the translator headset or as DVD subtitles work. There should be complete symmetry in all languages and minimal design variation so that a lateral flitting from one to the other is seamless in every regard, except that the language changes -- just like switching channels or subtitles. Wikipedia famously achieves this. Eternal Egypt is based on this premise too. In effect what you create this way is a single site with multiple languages, rather than multiple language sites for the same content.

Posted at 7:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 22, 2005

Colorful language

Data visualization master and Most Admired Colleague Martin Wattenberg has created a new info map. Color Code takes English nouns and represents them using the color average of corresponding images of that noun found on the web via Yahoo. Interesting how earth-toned nouns are, but then I suppose much of what we name is human or organic. Yes, all your favorite sexual nouns are included. Yes they are fleshy.

A great extension of this would be to infer colors for verbs based on the images of nouns that the verbs most often operate on. For example, the verb "to fly" might be bluish because of its association with the sky and because the machines that do fly are often colored similarly.

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August 1, 2005

If I were in to garden gnomes

This is what I'd have.

I need to start a new category called Found On The Walk To The L.

Posted at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 29, 2005

Architectural spine

BusinessWeek just published their annual design awards. The Kansas City Public Library won one for their facade-as-library-shelf.

I knew I was on to something in this post, but maybe not quite so literally.

See also: Virtual flâneur

Posted at 9:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 27, 2005

Always check the hitch

At the MCA.

Posted at 8:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 20, 2005

Lincoln for our time

As New Yorkers and political activists around the country bicker viciously about the story of freedom to be told at Ground Zero, I was able to make a trip down to Springfield, Illinois last week to visit a freedom museum of a different sort, the newly-opened Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

I went in with low expectations, figuring that the experience would be either like the creepy robots in the Disneyworld Hall of Presidents or the imposing apotheosis of Lincoln at his memorial in D.C. It was neither. It was, in short, one of the best museum experiences that I have ever had. I'd highly recommend taking a trip down there to see it, if you can. The website is lackluster, but the buildings themselves are quite high-tech. Here are some highlights:

Ghosts of the Library - Think holodeck meets your local librarian. This might be the most interesting application of technology. The museum calls it "holavision" (blech), but it is really just projection that the audience views through a stage-wide pane of polarized glass. A real actor (the "librarian", though with a twist that I will not ruin for you) interacts with a real set and with seemingly three-dimensional projections on the stage. The effect is very convincing. The most interesting part of this section is that the purpose of it is to explicitly address the connection between period documents/artifacts and the stories that are told in the museum. That is, they make a strong case for the importance of the seemingly inert collection of documents and artifacts and how they relate to the vivid stories that the museum tells. It is convincing and well-presented. Basically the credo of the Eternal Egypt project: using historical source materials (elements) to bring stories to life. (Also a great political trick, tying the importance of the library to the success of the museum.)

Hall of Whispers - A simple but moving hallway depicting the political invective that brought the country to the brink of the Civil War. This is done through period political cartoons and "whispered" broadsides that rain down on visitors as they move through zones of directional audio. The interesting thing is how the use of skewed lighting and off-center mounting of the cartoons create a disconcerting, almost unstable feeling as you walk through the hallway. (Some people get dizzy, apparently.) In other words, even if you don't read or hear anything in the hallway you get the sense of a nation coming apart. A little spooky actually.

Lincoln-Douglas Debates - Controversial but fascinating, this exhibit uses a real television control room with multiple feeds going simultaneously to recreate these historic debates as if they occurred today. They have real news anchors (I remember Tim Russert, specifically) with fake infographics and news crawls ("Physicians discover substance called 'germs'!"), and actors representing Lincoln, Douglas, and supporters yelling back-and-forth ala today's news shows. You watch this from the perspective of the television room producer. Not sure if it completely works, but it certainly had children rapt in a way that the debates might not normally.

The Union Theater - An extremely high-tech theater with multiple proscenium-style stages, overlapping/moveable screens, rumble seats in the audience, and other special effects. The current programming there is a show called The Eyes of Lincoln that uses the actual depiction of the man's eyes in photographs over the years as points of departure for explaining his life. It might seem a stretch, but it actually works. (Look again at his left eye. It wanders.) What I liked was the thought given to the actual subject-matter in such a high-tech theater. They could easily have gone all George Lucas on the thing and relied only on the smoke machines, but they didn't.

Looking for Lincoln - Not a technology, per se, but interesting in that this program seeks to explicitly situate the museum exhibits in the context of other Lincoln sites around Illinois. Throughout the museum you are entreated to "look for" Lincoln at his home, law office, or other related structures around Springfield and elsewhere in Illinois. Likewise out in Springfield one encounters well-presented plaques that give background and direct people into the museum for more information. Sort of a dispersed regional tour embedded in the museum proper.

There are of course more traditional museum exhibits -- artifact-based -- but even these are nicely enhanced with technology, such as projected signage that is nearly identical to the actual printed signage on the walls. (You have to pass your hand in front of them to tell.) Overall the museum is about experiences and storytelling and the technology is used in the service of that. Critics call this Disneyfication. I think they've avoided the worst excesses of that label.

Lastly, lest my rah-rah for the museum make you forget that I am talking about downstate Illinois, I have included this photo of a hog truck pulled up right in front of the Futurama-Prairie Style museum building (seen from the rotunda of the library across the street). The old and the new.

Posted at 10:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 29, 2005

Tinkertoy iceberg

I finally got a chance to stop by the Art Institute last night to see an installation by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle. The exhibit is a two-story nylon lattice fabricated from a radar/sonar scan of an actual iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland. Basically he's taken a structure that is solid for a moment in time (it calves, melts, sinks, reforms), mapped it, broken it down to its wireframe, and created it using rapid prototyping techniques. The result is a complex natural polygon that floats inside a stairwell at the ARTIC.

Much of my work involves scanning artifacts that have not changed in eons in order to most realistically reproduce and preserve them. Which is why Manglano-Ovalle's process -- scanning an ever-changing structure to break it down to its basic geometry and build it back up -- is a bit of an intellectual delight.

My friend Craig noticed this little detail. Manglano-Ovalle includes a 512MB memory key in the lattice. A docent noted that all the data from the iceberg scan is contained on that key.

As a bonus we popped down to see the stunning Photo-Respirations exhibit. Tokihiro Sato uses long exposure times, a flashlight (by night), and a sun-reflecting mirror (by day) to create eerie scenes puntucated with will-o'-the-wispy blurs of light. Definitely worth a look.

Thanks for the tip, Matt.

Posted at 7:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 16, 2005

Wet cement botany

It took me few blocks to realize that Vancouver's sidewalks come preloaded with leaf impressions. The relief is a bit high (extra heavy foliage?), but the effect is kinda nice. Fossils of tree-lined avenues that don't actually exist.

Posted at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 24, 2005

So average

Amazing the complexity that simple innovations beget. Flickr continues to inspire and facilitate some really astonishing technical and artistic development. The latest is a set of images created by a user named brevity by averaging 50 photos of a single type of subject -- an eye, a candle, a mountain, etc. The result manages to be both numinous and chthonic. Have a look-see.

And if you like this sort of layering, have a peek too at the work of Matt Wenc. He's an artist (and good friend) who works in thick grids of color that often achieve the same kind of rear-lighting effect that the Flickr averages do.

Via alt text.

UPDATE: Matt points us to the artist Jason Salavon. Check out his averages of residential real estate markets.

Posted at 9:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 23, 2005

Content provider

You gotta admire the audacity of this. Guy walks into four of the most prestigious art museums in NYC, hangs his own art complete with labels, snaps some shots, and walks out. If nothing else the act itself deserves mention as a superb piece of performance art.

He says - "This historic occasion has less to do with finally being embraced by the fine art establishment and is more about the judicious use of a fake beard and some high strength glue." Banksy continues -"They're good enough to be in there, so I don't see why I should wait"

Staff at the New York Met discovered and removed their new aquisition early Sunday morning while Banksy's discount soup can print took pride of place in the MoMA for over three days before being torn down.

As of now, the other two pieces currently remain firmly in place.

Full photos here.

Via Kottke.

UPDATE: MoMA took Banksy's piece down (it was not in a gallery to begin with), but they didn't throw it out. Wonder what they'll do with it?

Posted at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 8, 2005

Networks and lines

I have been thinking about networks since Craig's thought-provoking comment about the radial nature Chicago L system a few days ago. Thing is, I can't shake the feeling that narrative and transportation networks are somehow related.

One easy relationship has to do with consumption. I enjoy being on the subway because it affords me time to read that I otherwise would not have. (I turn down rides home because I crave the time to read on the subway.) But what I really love is the way the L -- especially when it is underground and impervious to cell transmission -- eliminates options. You may be late for work, but there's really nothing you can do about it. You can't call anyone; you can't get off the train and get to work any faster; you're stuck. And that is wonderful. I feel like I suffer from a surfeit of options sometimes. It is so nice to just resign yourself to the moment. I'm going to keep reading until my stop, damnit. So nice to succumb to linearity.

But that's not really what interests me. I'm still trying to tease this out, but clearly subway system design has conceptual similarities with new media. Stories can be point-to-point, multi-linear, radial, and true networks. They can even break out of the established route, creating new stations further afield. If you mapped these narrative arcs I bet they would bear a striking resemblance to the abstracted maps of subways around the world.

Posted at 9:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

February 26, 2005

A CTA Map for 2055

Proposed Roscoe Village Brown Line spur that would make my life approximately 1000 times easier.

Craig Berman, author of the wonderful Fueled by Coffee blog, has a great piece up at Gaper's Block. Using the CTA's proposed Circle Line as a starting point, he meticulously outlines a subway plan for the future of Chicago.

The CTA needs to form a mass transit network -- as opposed to the current radial commuter rail. Right now, all lines lead to the Loop in the morning and back out in the afternoon -- these lines don't take into account that a lot of living happens outside of the skyscrapers of the Loop. What happens when I want to get from Bucktown to Wrigleyville? Andersonville to the West Loop? Hyde Park to Pilsen? Little Village to Logan Square? These rides are a pain in the ass -- they're slow, indirect, and require multiple bus transfers. Why can't you move from the North Side to the northWest Side without going downtown first? I want answers, dammit!

Amen, brother. Where do I sign up to help digging?

See also: Art of the subway

Posted at 7:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

February 23, 2005

Umbrella locker in Nanjing

Note the drip runoff troughs. Nice design.

Posted at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 17, 2005

Beasts in Babylon?

The Guardian reports on widespread destruction of cultural monuments in the Iraq city of Babylon -- not by looters, but by U.S. troops. Apparently we've set up a military depot there. Um, hello. You'd think with the Olympics just in Greece we'd be saturated with knowledge that this is a very bad idea. Say it with me: ancient structures make bad armories. Repeat.

Where were the much-ballyhooed cultural heritage consultants to the military on this campaign? Ugh.

(Thanks, Mark.)

Posted at 8:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

January 6, 2005

Art of the subway

It's a day for snatches of free music: bells,
sirens, a saxophone echoing the spheres,
industrial-strength percussion from a tribe
of project kids, the techno beat
of sprockets as trains reel overhead
like runaway strips of film.
-- Twenty Feet Above The Street, Stuart Dybek

The London Underground map -- benchmark for all transit information design since it was created in 1933 and a work of art in its own right -- was based on an electrical circuit diagram. There's something about depicting conduits for the transport of humans using visual language developed to denote conduits for the movement of electrons that is captivating to me, a suggestion of what we really want: seamless teleport from point A to point B.

3D Tube Map, Corey Clarke

Subways have an interesting relationship to art. For a period the cars themselves were the most desirable canvases available. Then the art went inside, became sanctioned. But most often subways are the subject-matter, creative fodder for the good, the mediocre, and the atrocious. Sometimes subway trains are the means of art production themselves. Or even the means of documenting the process of production. Now that's travelling full-circle.

Posted at 12:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

December 14, 2004

Wheels and towers

Daniel Libeskind became a celebrity when he was selected, amidst much controversy and eventual, bitter infighting, to provide the master architectural plan for Ground Zero. But before that, he was a minor hero of mine for orchestrating the construction of a funky 16th century contraption called the "reading wheel," basically a precursor of modern hypertext. Libeskind's studio took great pains to reproduce this machine:

"To try to become the pure medieval craftsman — that's really the object of this exercise ... So we did it that way. We got up at the crack of dawn, four o'clock in the morning. We built this machine in a small place without any power tools, just with hand tools; with no electricity, just with candlelight. We went to bed early because with candlelight you can't work late. And we did it in silence because there is nothing to talk about when you work like that."

One wonders if real students of Libeskind's style and oeuvre could chart a linkage between his interest in the reading wheel and the twisting, aerie-like Freedom Tower. Perhaps it is the turbines in the lattice at the top of the structure? (Not sure about that one; didn't Skidmore add that?) Who knows, but I like the tower better for it.

The wheel itself, though not Libeskind's version, pops up from time to time in literature and art. Richard Lester used some version of the wheel as a pratfall prop in his Three Musketeers. And, most recently, in The Confusion Neal Stephenson uses the wheel, called a Bücherrad, as a literary device (literally) in the lab of Gottfried Leibniz. Wheel on over to Amazon and read a bit.

Elegantly primitive, technologically advanced, but most of all beautiful in how it addresses a simple need, the wheel is truly captivating. If Libeskind achieves half that with his tower at Ground Zero he'll have accomplished quite a lot.

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