Art + Architecture + Design
Archive for April, 2007
How to Lift the Earth
Apr 22nd
Not sure just where the fulcrum would lie, but this is fun to think about, just in case we ever need to do a little planetary rearranging:
UPDATE: Somewhere along the line, we neglected to document the provenance of these images. They can be found in a terrific essay by Kircher scholar Michael John Gorman titled “Mathematics and Modesty in the Society of Jesus: The Problems of Cristoph Grienberger (1564-1636).” As it turns out, Greinberger himself calculated that “by means of no more than 24 wheels with toothed axes, the Earth’s globe, even if it were made entirely of gold, could be driven away from the centre [of the universe], by the force of only one Talent.”
via kirchersociety
Join the NY Media Elite – FREE!
Apr 22nd
This is just so much dorky goodness that I have to post the full entry. From Kottke.com:
I might be shooting myself in the foot by posting this, but the table of contents for the newest issue of the New Yorker is usually available on Sunday on newyorker.com, the day before the issue hits the newsstands and arrives in subscriber mailboxes. All you need to do is hack the URL of the TOC from the previous Monday. Here’s the URL for the April 23 TOC:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2007/04/23/toc_20070416
“2007/04/23″ is the date of the issue and “toc_20070416″ refers to the date of the posting. This then is the URL for the April 30 issue:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2007/04/30/toc_20070423
At right is the cover for tomorrow’s issue, which includes Adam Gopnik’s piece on the Virginia Tech shooting, a new piece by Atul Gawande, and Anthony Lane’s review of Hot Fuzz. Monday’s New Yorker on Sunday is usually only available to the select few of the Manhattan media elite who are sped their new issues hot off the presses. Now everyone can have a similar experience on the web.
Enjoy.
via kottke.org
Bleakness Rules the Day; Cormac McCarthy Wins 07 Pulitzer
Apr 22nd
Cormac McCarthy’s "The Road" is as bleak as it gets. The end of the world. Fire. Nuclear winter. Fanaticism. Cannibalism. Blood, bones and dust.
It’s McCarthy’s 10th Novel, and at 73 it seems things are looking worse than ever to the author of such standouts as "All the Pretty Horses" and "Blood Meridian". Apparently the Pulitzer committe sees it that way too.
Be sure to check the articles at the NYTs for more. HERE
Nam June Paik @ Andrewshire 4/2007
Apr 22nd
Anyone working with film and/or video in the last fifty years likely owes much to Nam June Paik, and is also likely to know it. Who among us has not come face to face with "TV Cello" or "Global Groove" and been rendered speechless.
Don’t miss the chance to see this new show of the late artist’s work at Andrewshire Gallery, LA this month. From the press release:
"Nam June Paik died on January 29, 2006. His presence lingers in the surprising array of ideas and artworks he left behind. These works signal the contribution the artist made to contemporary art and culture. Paik’s often whimsical compositions, video-objects and installations are studied portraits wherein the artist himself seems to look out across the distance from the work to a point inside each of us. These artworks, already held in preservation, are perpetually connected to us while appearing suspended in time due to their vintage look. They serve as elucidations in which the artist and his countless viewers are portrayed and linked even as their mutual search for meaning is in flight. In his absence, Paik somehow still lives out the revelations he experienced in the bounds of the work which endlessly reproduces his era and his vision."
Nam June Paik
Selected Works
April 21–May 12, 2007
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 21, 6–8:30PM
ANDREWSHIRE GALLERY
3850 Wilshire Blvd #107, Los Angeles, CA 90010
Director, John Souza
213-389-2601
E-mail, souza@andrewshiregallery.com
Web site, http://www.andrewshiregallery.com
Hours, Tuesday – Saturday, 11am – 6pm
Doris Salcedo Sculpture; International Instanbul Biennale, 2003
Apr 18th
"…This amazing art installation was made by Colombian sculptor Doris Salcedo for the International Instanbul Biennale in 2003. She used over 1,550 chairs stacked on an empty lot between two buildings!"
"Doris Salcedo makes sculptures and installations that function as political and mental archaeology, using domestic materials charged with significance and suffused with meanings accumulated over years of use in everyday life. Salcedo often takes specific historical events as her point of departure, conveying burdens and conflicts with precise and economical means." –White Cube
Berlin Alternative Art Spaces; The Artist-run Scene
Apr 18th
As if you needed any more reasons to visit Berlin this summer, Artkrush has just posted a link-filled guide to the alternative scene:
"As alternatives to the white cube, artists reconfigure buildings such as abandoned butcher shops and bombed-out department stores. The new After the Butcher project turns a former meat-processing plant into a space for site-specific installations, while the artists of super bien! host exhibitions in a glass greenhouse. General Public animates a derelict building with shows, film screenings, and performances, and the collective Chaos Computer Club set up an interactive LED display in the windows of an empty office building, enabling passersby to generate light shows with their cell phones. Far more common, however, is for artists to open project spaces in their spare bedrooms; Croy Nielsen, for example, is an exhibition venue in an expansive apartment in Prenzlauer Berg."
via Artkrush
Hudson World Bridge Proposal
Apr 18th
Another fabulous idea from Eytan Kaufman, Int’l. Assoc. AIA: The Hudson World Bridge. I might even consider moving in…
"The bridge, designed in consultation with Ove Arup engineers, would span the Hudson at 34th Street, and would be not so much a transportation corridor as a destination, providing the city with a gathering place like no other. The surface of the bridge, nearly a mile long and 200 feet wide, would provide more than 10 acres of green park and plaza to be used for cultural and commercial activities. Hanging above the park would be a capsule-shaped building containing hundreds of thousands of square feet of meeting and exhibition space. At either end are hotels and ramps for emergency and service vehicles. (Automobiles would not be permitted on the bridge, but there would be escalators, moving sidewalks, and cable cars.) With its 34th Street location, the bridge could supplement the Javits Center, and would do so in far more spectacular fashion than the addition now planned. It could also do something the Javits Center has so far failed to do: attract development to Manhattan’s Far West Side."
via ArchNewsNow
J. Prévert – Le Discours Sur La Paix – Speech on Peace
Apr 17th
Vers la fin d’un discours extrêmement important
le grand homme d’Etat trébuchant
sur une belle phrase creuse
tombe dedans
et désemparé la bouche grande ouverte
haletant
montre les dents
et la carie dentaire de ses pacifiques raisonnements
met à vif le nerf de la guerre
la délicate question d’argent.
(Near the end of an extremely important discourse
the great man of state
tumbling on a beautiful hollow phrase
falls over it
and undone with gaping mouth
shows his teeth
and the dental decay of his peaceful reasoning
exposes the nerve of war
the delicate question of money)
C’était un Rendez-vous: Filmé par Claude Lelouch
Apr 16th
Need a little adreanaline rush? Click here to get 9 minutes a unadulterated, uncut speed with this little cult classic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyabObFKp0s
A big thank you to the just discovered (to us) Studio 109. Plenty of good debate on the authenticity of speed here, here and here…
According to Studio 109
"This short film by seminal French director Claude Lelouch presents a unique experience of the urban environment. A nine minute tour of 1970′s Paris from a moving vehicle. There are some pretty tense moments as the driver speeds through the cobblestone streets. There is a lot of controversy surrounding the nuts and bolts of the film. Who was driving? What type of car? Was it staged? Has it been altered to make the cars speed appear faster? But the overwhelming consensus is that Lelouch himself was driving, the roads were not block off, and he reached top speeds between 90-140 mph in a Ferrari 275 GTB before ending his voyage at the Basilica Sacre Coeur."
via Studio 109
The Flame’s Core
Apr 16th
Thinking gives off smoke to prove the existence of fire
There are wonderful shapes in rising smoke that imagination loves to watch
But it’s a mistake to leave the fire for that filmy sight
Stay here at the flame’s core
- Rumi
via Whiskey River
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