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.

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.

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?

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.)

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.

My good pal Matt Wenc will participate in the 34th Pilsen Artists Open House this weekend. If you’ve never experienced Matt’s work this will be a real treat. The thick, layered grids of nebulous color that characterize his work are absolutely mesmerizing. The event itself allows artists to open their studios to the public alongside performances and exhibitions in the neighborhood galleries. Matt has also invited artists Julie Vari and Michael Wille to show their work in his space. His studio will be open this Friday 6-10 pm, Saturday and Sunday 12–7 pm at 727 W. 19th St. Stop by!