After Corbu

If I were to spend $500 and the next two weeks of my life on this:

Would that be just awesome?
Or,
Would it be the most brilliantly awesome thing in the history of humanity?
I really just can’t decide…

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We have the waterfalls.
We have the technology–>
So how about we just solve this whole energy crisis right now?

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Urban-ism has a nice roundup of some standouts from culture jamming genre, the best of which are the Homeless street signs in Toronto by Mark Daye, a graphic design student.  My favorite sign is at right.
Culture jamming actually being practiced in the world (as distinct from that practiced in glossy mags) makes me extremely […]

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The Town by Victor Servranckx

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Photo from monkeycycle. Thanks!
TXTris: People text in messages, which then drop down onto the Toronto skyline, which fragments the words as letters fall to different depths, stacking tetris-style. I’m sure this can be a metaphor for many things, but lets set textual analysis aside and just agree that this is really cool.

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Here’s an excerpt from the best spam comment I’ve received here at After Corbu:
Studies have the past gadoversetamide policies or of drinking detail. Views of the source of time gadoxetic acid when an galantamine interview. From the infect another an active galdansetron syndrome.
It will from those gallamine triethiodide new health influences. The two charged by […]

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Work has been kicking my ass, and I’ve neglected my pontification. So sad. Instead, I offer you Spain boosterism:

Photo by tigrejones. Thanks!
I’m not a fan of the weird column capital detailing at La Sagrada Familia, but these tree columns are pretty cool. I’m not really clear on how one designs them […]

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Pax Americana, in defense of deductable charitable donations for the arts:
The first [reason] is that deductions are an indirect subsidy to lots of people who aren’t rich, including the middle class, artists, and those that benefit from the research done by universities, which might end up including poor people. The second is that if we […]

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“Old-timer, keeping up with the boys. Many structural workers are above middle-age. Empire State [Building]” Photograph by Lewis Hine, 1930 (check out more of his work at the National Archives).
I’ve been spending most of my work-time on the engineering for a 700-foot steel building, and so it’s neat to see all the small pieces and […]

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The Rachofsky House: a modernist bachelor pad turned private art gallery (site of the previously mentioned Death-by-Meta show).
Lots of Meier trademarks here: white, strict adherence to a visibly articulated grid, sterile.  To my eyes, very beautiful as an art piece (as a home?  Well…maybe not, but then this is the typical critique of modern architecture.  […]

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Speaking of Chris Burden and meta-art, Spawn of the Surreal has good discussion on the imitation of famous art (including Burden’s Shoot) in Second Life.  An appropriately snarky conclusion is reached:
Video killed the performance art stars. RIP.

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There is a subset of contemporary art that is primarily concerned with self-examination and asks “what is art?” And then asks it again. And again. It’s a legitimate question — Tolstoy has a treatise on the subject — but I don’t see what the visual arts really add to the discussion.
I […]

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Reading Reluctant Metropolis, I discover that the above Disney Concert Hall was originally intended to be clad in stone.  This was later changed to steel as a cost-saving measure.  Hard to imagine the building different than it is now, harder to believe Gehry was actually willing to go with a less space-age look.
This speaks to […]

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Picture from sam brown, explodingdog. Thanks!

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I inadvertently wandered into this show twice, first at the Hammer and then the DMA, which I think of course makes me an expert on Dada art. I enjoyed many of the pieces, though they range from brilliant to 2nd grade macaroni art, and I love the Societe as an artist’s art museum; a […]

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I’m not the biggest Elliott Smith fan, but this is assholic.  All the graffiti artists I know (and by all I mean both) take pains to avoid hitting anything that’s at all valuable — and there’s so many ugly urban surfaces available, it’s hardly very restricting.  But it’s this kind of tomfoolery that gives street […]

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