Category: art

  • Reimagining Mapping

    Always good to see modern cartography – and the unlocking (unleashing?) of potential of digital tools and mobile devices.  An interesting short post at Fast Company’s blog Co.Design looks at some work in mobile mapping (Nokia’s Next Platform) and some interesting tools, many that use nested tiling to make them more nimble. I attempted to…

  • Field Trip: deYoung Museum

    A new series offers some highlights of the epic roadtrip down the coast of California and over to Arizona and back to Oregon via Palm Springs – over two weeks of the holidays. These won’t be in any particular order – just grabbing what grabs my attention when sifting through photos. deYoung Museum – San…

  • Shrinking Cities: The Forgetting Machine

    One of our supplementary readings for the Shrinking Cities group is the recent essay by Jerry Herron on The Design Observer entitled ‘The Forgetting Machine: Notes Toward a History of Detroit.‘  The author is from Wayne State and has been a resident of Detroit since the early eighties, so it avoids some of the outsider…

  • Soundtrack for Spaces – Next Generation

    I have discussed the concept  previous posts on the ‘Soundtrack for Spaces’, where I was making connections between physical locations in the landscape and the potential to imbue place with appropriate musical accompaniment.  These varied, but included looking at the Fleet Foxes as driving music in the Columbia River Gorge, the video customization for Arcade…

  • Purge Sculpture

    Filed under ‘random’ this sculpture was spotted the previous weekend along the waterfront just north of the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle.  A pile of vegetated ‘cans’ with the word ‘Purge’ punched into them – alas a web search has yielded little in terms of info beyond this.  Anyone have any info? UPDATE (02/12/14):  Buster…

  • Europe Journal: Diana Memorial Fountain

    Located at one of the far ends of Hyde Park in London is the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain, an elegantly curved ring of water opened in 2004 (design by Kathryn Gustafson  from her London office of Gustafson Porter).  Although somewhat controversial, I found the feature quite engaging, even experiencing it late in the…

  • Europe Journal – Green Wall Art

    Sep. 17:  On a rainy day next to Trafalgar Square we discovered a somewhat odd installation of a living wall adjacent to the National Gallery which I of course had to sprint over to check out.  Closer inspection shows it to be a living representation of Van Gogh’s ‘A Wheatfield with Cypresses’ painted in 1889…

  • The Real

    In contrast to the previous post of the ethereal, an amazing collection from Nigel Christian’s blog ‘This City Called Earth‘ which, in his words:  “combines my sociologist’s interest in theories of urbanisation, globalisation and post-nature with my photographer’s love of street portraiture and the hard beauty of the built environment.”   The expansive group emerges by…

  • The Ethereal

    Always a fan of great lighting, I find these photographs by Barry Underwood absolutely amazing.  Check out the entire group and interview via Juxtapoz Magazine.  In brief from the interview, “Humankind has left a variety of footprints on this planet. Barry Underwood examines the effect of light pollution on natural landscapes in a series of photographs…

  • Black Rock City

    An interesting article making some strange connections between the land of free spiritedness that is Burning Man, specifically the arrangement of the temporary settlement ‘Black Rock City’ with the ideology of New Urbanism.  I can’t think of two uniquely different mind-sets and approaches, so find the connection to be somewhat comical – but am keeping…