Wonderful narrative in watercolor – view it here.
Posts archived in Looking at Things
Women are Heroes - Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya - 2008
TED awarded $100,000 to photographer and street artist JR.
Of his work, the prize committee writes:
JR creates pervasive art that spreads uninvited on buildings of Parisian slums, on walls in the Middle East, on broken bridges in Africa or in favelas in Brazil. People in the exhibit communities, those who often live with the bare minimum, discover something absolutely unnecessary but utterly wonderful. And they don’t just see it, they make it. Elderly women become models for a day; kids turn into artists for a week. In this art scene, there is no stage to separate the actors from the spectators.
(or Why You Should Vote Republican)
As Republican-Independent-Libertarian-Constitution Party Oregon State Senate candidate Marilyn Kittelman emphatically declares, “The Choice Couldn’t Be More Clear”:
(emphasis mine)
That settles it for me, I’m voting against that burgling, raping, home invading, career politician Floyd Prozanski (or as some like to call him, that Democrat Floyd Prozanski).
I’m not actually, influenced politically by this mailer sent to my home on a Saturday afternoon. I’m kind of befuddled though. Doesn’t Marilyn’s campaign know the “tough on crime” meme is most effective when you give the criminals a name, a la Willie Horton?
A new way of visualizing how city road systems work uses only typeface. These maps are much more legible, despite how counter-intuitive the idea seems at first. See for yourself.
Ill-faded graffiti artist Banksy, who recently made his big screen debut with the art doc “Exit Through the Gift Shop“, will be hitting your television screens on the newest episode of The Simpsons. Don’t want to tune into FOX to watch this rare happening? Click here.
“Artists have always done that in society,” says Burtynsky. “Who else reflects on what we do? Philosophers and artists – the rest of us are usually engaged in life. The job description of an artist is not just in crafting materials and working in the world of physicality, but also in expanding consciousness to explore new ways in which that material can be used – or in using that material to tell stories and raise our consciousness in ways that hasn’t happened before – to speak of our time…Who does that? Writers and artists.”
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2:02 PM
October 2, 2010
Picture Yourself ___________ (insert name of any American suburb)
An unforgiving portrait of suburban sprawl in SW Florida gives us a glimpse of exactly what those developers, builders, and designers had in mind when considering how Americans should dwell. Shapes. Squiggly lines. Straight lines. One way in, one way out. Ambiguous, ubiquitous.
From the same module, a single-family detached house, infinite arrangements cannot be made. Possibilities are limited, for the decision-makers and for the eventually residents and owners. The aerial images show a ruling class of housing developers running out of options. While these are examples from one isolated part of the country, nothing really separates them from the other 99% of the suburbs in America.
All this amidst an unabashed ethos of individualism and self-determination. Ultimately those are just words though, ideas that make Americans feel more important. What we see below were just lines and shapes, ideas that made certain Americans feel more intelligent, savvy, and cunning. Sadly though, these are now tangible, translated from a context-less environment of 2 dimensional trace paper and computer screens into real people’s lives, into ecosystems and habitats.
I find myself drawn to the unfinished developments. Infrastructure laid, roads paved, but no people. Acres of expansive frameworks whose ends are already known to too many people. We see the first contact made on land presumed to hold inherent value. Clear the land of trees, subdivide the land into tax lots, connect the land with roads and power lines. Mark the stark divide between developed and not, punctuate the boundaries of each property and dissuade your neighbors from infringing upon that threshold. They should have just stopped there.
Detroit’s a callin’, beckoning our attention to learn its lessons. Each step taken, presumed to be a step forward, almost guaranteeing its eventual abandonment and decay.
Southwest of Ft. Meyers
Southest of Bonita Springs
North Ft. Meyers
See more here.
Musings on the Motor City, white flight, urban decay, and Detroit’s art scene, as seen from the former Talking Heads frontman’s bicycle.
"Pity the poor mail carriers, who often only have one or two houses per block."
The domination of the city by one industry, the riots, the nearsightedness and collapse of the car companies and now the financial crisis—all contributed to what one sees here. But this city is not alone. It’s just more iconic and extreme in what’s happened to it. On my last tour we saw acres of abandoned warehouses in downtown St Louis and much of the main street in central Cleveland is boarded up.
On the plus side—and there is one—folks here are now open to a re-think, and to new approaches and ideas, wherever they come from. There is maybe less red tape, as everyone wants things to improve. There’s unity on that at least…
…Jenni asked, “Are there other towns that have been hit so hard that have come back?” Both Michael Morris of Artangel and I replied “Glasgow”. It was known as having the worst slums in Europe back in the day, and I remember visiting my grandparents and all the buildings were grimy black, from soot. That city hasn’t come back as an industrial powerhouse it once was (steel and shipbuilding) but as a cultural hub. Life is good there now, and the city is cleaned up and nice to look at. (David Byrne’s Journal 9.23.10)
New from Sebastian Peiter: 60 minutes on graffiti, artists, economy and form.
Speaking for themselves, on the St. Giles Mixed Use Development, Renzo Piano Building Workshop:
Located in Camden, the project is part of a complex urban patchwork of medieval streets, modern buildings and traditional urban blocks. This environment had a dramatic impact on the design of the project.
The scheme is composed of complex volumes, which are characteristically chiselled, fragmented, and reduced in scale to match the surrounding buildings. These chiselled volumes make St-Giles an impressive architectural sculpture characterized by a combination of shimmering facets.
Each facet is unique, differing in height, orientation, colour, and relationship to natural light. Glass, steel and ceramic are the primary elements of the skin. In each facet the ceramic is used in different shades and colours that respond to the surrounding building, thus helping to integrate the scheme in the immediate urban environment.
A critique of Renzo Piano on context and function:
Renzo Piano’s Central St Giles project has put commercial architecture on the media map for the first time in many years – not since Sir James Stirling’s No 1 Poultry in the City have we encountered such a wilfully vivid mixed-use building. Yet there is a risk that Central St Giles will convey a false sense of worth by suggesting that the design of so-called rent slabs is all about dramatic, “because you’re worth it” architectural implants.
Architects, developers and planners will serve our towns and cities better if they face up to the fact that commercial architecture need not be predicated on glib non-ideas about the hearts and souls of forgotten places. They must instead address what Eric Parry describes so elegantly as “the finesse of the relationship between the mercantile world and very brave architecture”. That is the real challenge. And gift-wrapping buildings isn’t the answer. (The Independent 6/3/10)
Good Morning America sends two divers, including Felipe Cousteau Jr., into the oil-contaminated waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
“The consistency is unlike anything I’ve ever seen…a lot of people are saying that when you apply the chemical dispersant, you know, it disappears, the oil goes away. But here we go right now. This is evidence that doesn’t happen…
…the oil is now suspended. You can now imagine any fish coming through this would just be covered in it.”
News To (Me)dia
…and everything in between
Stay on point :
