silent world imagines cities at the end of the world
the ‘silent world’ photographic series by lucie & simon uses neutral density filters and long exposure photography to eliminate people and cars from busy cities and streets
‘tian’anmen square’ (2010)
C-print, 200x256cm
in their series ‘silent world’, paris-based, franco-german artistic duo lucie & simon use tricks of the photographic trade
to render the world’s busiest cities free of cars and even people.
neutral density filters allow photographers to limit light entry without closing the aperture or increasing the shutter speed.
the higher the F-stop reduction, the greater the effect, allowing for super-long exposures which make moving objects like people and cars
essentially invisible, while only immobile structures remain. extremely high level filters are used by NASA to analyze star patterns.
in the ‘silent world’ images, lucie & simon leave just one or two people visible in the photograph:
‘small intrusions [whose] disconcerting presence disrupts the majestic calm of the streets and squares.’
‘xizhimen ring road’, beijing, china (2012)
0’59 video, plasma screen, 80x110x30cm
‘silent worlds’ (2012)
Eish, it’s definitely English
A word might be worth a 100 pictures… from DAILY MAVERICK
Why do South African English-speakers say “now-now”, or “rock up”, or the ubiquitous “shame”? Rajend Mesthrie has the answers in Eish, but is it English? By REBECCA DAVIS
Regular listeners of the SAfm radio programme Word of Mouth will be familiar with University of Cape Town linguistics professor Rajend Mesthrie. The Sunday programme features a group of experts discussing various language issues. Often listeners appear to be elderly individuals who have been greatly put out by a mispronunciation by a South African TV presenter, or what they see as the gradual encroachment of “nonsensical” modern terms on English. Sometimes it is difficult not to feel some of their issues have nothing much to do with language, and everything to do with a sense of unease and confusion at a rapidly-shifting modern landscape. That’s the thing about language, of course: extricating it from matters of identity is an almost impossible task.
In some ways linguists are precisely the wrong people to have on the radio panel, where the listeners often seem to be expecting a judgement handed down on whether some usage is right or wrong. The first rule of linguistics is “Thou shalt not prescribe”. What linguists do involves observing and documenting language in all its everyday grittiness and mess, without judging “correctness”. That’s the job of English teachers. There’s no such thing as “right” and “wrong” for linguists, merely language forms more widely used than others, or accorded more social prestige for historical reasons.
Within English alone, there is a great deal of diversity between the varieties of the language spoken worldwide. While UK English has been taken to be the gold standard of the language because of its origins, nobody would argue against saying “sidewalk” instead of “pavement”. Yet in South Africa there still seems to be a great deal of anxiety about what constitutes “proper” English, as evidenced by correspondents to Word of Mouth. This is the result of historical factors in this country, where perceived proficiency in English is taken as a marker of social prestige and educational success. But one of the most refreshing elements of Rajend Mesthrie’s Eish, but is it English? is his insistence that all the divergent varieties of English spoken in South Africa be celebrated equally.
At this juncture in South Africa’s history, it may seem an odd time to write a book about the use of English in South Africa. The notion might seem regressive, colonial, even a bit politically incorrect. Mesthrie is quick to correct this.
“Despite being a minority language in South Africa, English is the most-shared language,” said Mesthrie. “Post-1994, English is the language which has spread the furthest as a second language. As such, discussing issues about English leads us to talk about all South African communities.”
You’ve got Astronaut mail!
Pretty awesome to have seen the whole Earth’s surface in detail like this – out of this world photography !
NASA astronaut Douglas Wheelock who is currently aboard the International Space Station shares pictures of the Earth he snaps with the world through Twitter. Known to his nearly 68,000 Twitter followers as Astro_Wheels, Wheelock has been posting impressive photos of the Earth and some of his thoughts ever since he moved into the space station in June, five months after it got Internet access.
In search of Joburg’s condemned buildings
From Daily Maverick what’s next?
After three people were crushed in a Johannesburg building last week and the city committed to clearing condemned properties, GREG NICOLSON went in search of Jozi’s best dilapidated architecture. It’s a potent symbol for a voyeur of change.
On the corner of Twist and Wolmarans Streets in Joubert Park, Johannesburg, sits Lorna Court. Its facade has faded and the paint’s chipped. The doors on the balcony terraces have come off their hinges and the windows are broken.
Inside, debris covers the floor like a carpet and each room, bar the security guard’s, is blackened by smoke. On the fifth floor, the roof has caved in and weeds grow in rooms overlooking the park.
Seven years ago, says the guard who lived in the building, a man was fighting with his wife and used a gas funnel to set her alight. The building went with her and has been condemned ever since.
It’s a telling example of the city’s neglected beauty. After another Johannesburg building caved in on three people in search of scrap metal last week, I set out to catalogue some of the city’s most beautiful but condemned architecture.
Lorna Court, a block of apartments encapsulating all Johannesburg’s supposed potential to become the next Manhattan, stands for many as a symbol of the City of Gold’s decline.
Literary presenter Victor Dlamini said: “No one will ever know for sure what precipitated this exodus from this once hallowed city, but overnight, once prestigious office blocks and gleaming restaurants were left vacant, haunted by their quick fall from glory. Parking spaces that had once been reserved for shiny chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royces were left to rot and decay as the offices were abandoned. The rush to flee the city led to a plethora of suburban office and residential developments in places like Sandton and Fourways.
“The departure of the city’s business for the suburbs had a devastating effect on the inner city as rents collapsed and restaurants, fine shops and nightlife spots closed in quick succession. The departure of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange from its imposing building on Diagonal Street was probably the symbolic moment when the inner city became a ghost town.”
Photo: Inside Lorna Court, apartments have been gutted by fire and weeds grow on the top floor. It remains a symbol of the city’s potential for rejuvenation. DAILY MAVERICK/Greg Nicolson.
Buildings across the city serve as testament to the city’s glamorous past and current neglect. Opposite the Gauteng Legislature stands the imposing Rissik Street Post Office, built in 1897 and destroyed by a blaze in 2009. Behind a street fountain, the building’s gutted insides are visible through missing windows that climb towards the timeless clock tower. The building, unlike many others in Joburg, is undergoing developments.
Take a short walk down Rissik and the ground floor of apartment and office blocks have been concreted closed, with an occasional colonial building title hanging over a door, offering a glimpse of a half-destroyed building. On the brick wall of one condemned building, a Johannesburg Art City billboard towers over the street, next to floors of smashed windows.
After many of the moneyed residents fled, a list of opportunist developers, inspired officials and nostalgic community groups tried to “rejuvenate” what has always been and still remains a contested African city of capital and culture, a mimic of its European counterparts while at the same time a hub in the continent’s production.
In his state-of- the-city address, Johannesburg mayor Parks Tau lauded the new Maboneng precinct as a sign that the inner city is opening itself to those excluded after its “decline”. Optimists also point to Braamfontein, where developers have focused on delivering affordable accommodation to students and young professionals. The streets are generally clean and the areas developed by South Point offer a comfortable entry to the city for those who normally tread in the suburbs.
Heading east down Smit Street, a Tudor-style brick home stands on a corner before the Hillbrow Community Health Centre. Circled by overgrowing grass, it’s one of the few standalone homes so close to town. Tiles on part of the roof are missing and cracks run through the once-solid brick structure. On the footpath, behind a fence shielding the house from pedestrians, three men sit sniffing glue. Two begin to fight.
Photo: A Tudor-style brick home and other inner-city shops and buildings in decline. DAILY MAVERICK/Greg Nicolson.
The lone house seems a symbol of change and contest. It’s a walk away from the lauded Braamfontein developments, across a bridge from the streets between Bree and Noord taxi ranks (dirty but not dilapidated), down the road from Hillbrow and a short drive from the Maboneng precinct. It’s an obvious choice for a smart developer, a potent symbol for a voyeur of change. DM
Libros híbridos y realidad aumentada
Via Scoop.it – Machines Pensantes
Libros híbridos y realidad aumentada | DPR Barcelona…
Special Issue about “Cartographies of Fictional Worlds”
The quarterly published Journal “The Cartographic Journal” is this time (Volume 48, Number 4, November 2011) dedicated to the Geography of Literature. This volume was guest-edited by Barbara Piatti (literary studies) and Lorenz Hurni (cartography) and gives an impressive overview and insights into exiting interdisciplinary projects.
»A literary-geographical reading can change our
understanding – not only of books, but of the world we
live in. It creates knowledge. Through literary geography,
we learn more about the production of places, their
historical layers, their meanings, functions and symbolic
values. If places emerge from a combination of real
elements and fictional accounts, then literary geography
and literary cartography can work as a very effective eyeopener.«
Barbara Piatti and Lorenz Hurni: Editorial, pp.218-223
»This special issue of the Cartographic Journal on
‘Cartographies of Fictional Worlds’ is made up of fascinating
stories, exotic places, original concepts, and a series of
media that ranges from…
View original post 83 more words
Delhi, Where Shall I Find You?
From [polis]
I walked through the bustling gullies of old Delhi, from Chandni Chowk to Jama Masjid and then to Ballimaran. This area was part of the walled city of Shahjahanabad founded by the Mughal emperor Shahjahan, who built the Taj Mahal. The city was a symbol of Mughal cultural and architectural wealth. In 1857, during the first armed revolution against British rule, soldiers destroyed 80 percent of the palaces here.
Today, the area is crowded with rickshaw pullers, kebab sellers, biryani makers, goats and a few cows. The dynasties are gone; the nobility has vanished. What remains are dilapidated buildings, and dangling serpentine electric cables.
Among the poets and artists that the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, assembled at his court was the great Urdu and Persian poet Mirza Ghalib. In a letter to a friend in 1861, Ghalib wrote:
The city has become a desert… by God, Delhi is no more a city, but a camp, a cantonment… No fort, no city, no bazaars, no watercourses… Four things kept Delhi alive – the fort, the daily crowds at the Jama Masjid, the weekly walk to the Yamuna Bridge, and the yearly fair of the flower-sellers. None of these survives, so how could Delhi survive? Yes there used to be a city of this name in the land of Hindustan.
I intruded into the fallen minarets, libraries and palaces of a bygone era, asking myself: Delhi, where shall I find you?
Aslam Saiyad is an animation instructor and freelance photographer from Mumbai, India. He also volunteers for the Borderless World Foundation, a non-profit organization that works with children in conflict areas.
Credits: All photos by Aslam Saiyad
Maps to the past – always interesting to see how representation shapes our ideas….
What is Cyborg Anthropology?
An Illustrated Dictionary of Cyborg Anthropology is a Companion to the book A Complete Dictionary of Cyborg Anthropology, by Amber Case and Maggie Nichols.
Summary
Cyborg Anthropology is a way of understanding how we live as technosocially connected citizens in the modern era. Our cell phones, cars and laptops have turned us into cyborgs. What does it mean to extend the body into hyperspace? What are the implications to privacy, information and the formation of identity? Now that we have a second self, how do we protect it?
A Dictionary of Cyborg Anthropology covers various subjects such as time and space compression, hyperlinked memories, panic architecture, mobile technology, interface evaporation and how technology is changing the way we live.
Who?
Useful for researchers, scientists, interface designers, developers, professors, students, and anyone who engages with or wishes to better understand technology and culture.
Written by Amber Case
Amber Case
Illustrated by Maggie Nichols
Maggie Nichols
Fort de Roovere Trench Bridge by Ro&Ad Architects
Intelligent response to a question of context from Contemporist
Ro&Ad Architects designed the Trench Bridge at Fort de Roovere in Halsteren, The Netherlands.
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A bridge was needed to be built to allow visitors to cross over the moat of this historical attraction, but the architects found it strange to create a bridge over the canal of a defensive fortification, especially because the bridge needed to be built on the side where traditionally the enemy was expected. Therefore, the architects created a bridge that from a distance is invisible, and has less impact on the historical nature of the fortress than a typical bridge would.
Visit the Ro&Ad Architects website – here.
Cloud Cities by Tomás Saraceno
From the Contemporist
Artist Tomás Saraceno has created the Cloud Cities installation, which is currently on display at theHamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin, Germany.
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Visit Tomás Saraceno’s website – here.
Photography by Jens Ziehe and Tomás Saraceno
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Jaume Plensa @ YSP
YSPpresents an extraordinary body of new and recent work by renowned Spanish artist Jaume Plensa. Encouraging tactile and sensory exploration, this vibrant exhibition includes a 50-metre curtain of poetry made of suspended steel letters, large illuminated sculptures in the landscape, and engraved gongs that visitors can strike to fill the gallery with sound.
Irma
yorkshire souls I, II and III'
- Nuria & Irma 2010
Jaume Plensa
la llarga nit
house of knowledge
heart of trees
spiegal'
Playing Games with the Urban Landscape (via The Dirt)
Some ideas for what do in that boring city space….
via The Dirt
Taking green wall for ride… or new green cars
I thought you may like to see a little green wall/ roof inventions applied
elsewhere!
(seen parked in Noordhoek beach parking lot) by Penny Moir
Urban Photography – A view on its values
Not all urban photographers are o voyeurs of poverty – journeying to Khayelitsha or crossroads in Cape Town on a “reality tour” some provide values that go beyond the simplistic snapshots of barefoot children and cardboard and corrugated iron shacks – this post by Katia Savchuk in [polis]
In reflecting on how to better portray a city through photographs, I am inspired by the work of Brendan Bannon, a Nairobi-based photojournalist that I interviewed for an article on ethical travel photography. Tired of photographing only refugee camps and health crises for his editors, last April he put out Daily Dispatches to paint a fuller portrait of Nairobi. His warm, quiet photographs are brimming with dignity — you don’t realize how skewed the typical portrayals of African cities are until you see his counterpoint.
LUDO: green berry
Crazy Steet art – self publicity and socio-political commentary:
‘green berry’
© LUDO
in the last couple of years LUDO has become one of the most talked about names in street art.
the parisian artist’s work depicts technology and contemporary consumer goods fused with
insects and plants. most pieces are produced as wheat pasted prints enhanced with fluorescent
green spray paint.
contained within the visually arresting concoctions LUDO creates there’s usually a critical
comment on consumerism and globalization, with famous logos and iconic products
transformed to have a more sinister appearance. LUDO’s feelings perhaps were most
clearly displayed in his series ‘co-branding’ where the artist branded his own images with
existing logos and placed them in bus shelters ‘commercializing’ his work in the process.
mike + doug starn: big bambu at the venice biennale
‘big bambú’ by mike and doug starn of starn studio, venice, italy
image © designboom
currently on display at the 54th venice biennale is ‘big bambú’, an evolutionary and complex structure by american artists and brothers mike and doug starn. previously installed on the roof of the metropolitan museum of art in new york – where it ranked forth in the world for total attendance of a contemporary exhibition in 2010 – the piece is being presented as an
official collateral exhibition, part of a special project by glasstress. sculptural and experiential, the hollow bamboo structure features a spiraling and undulating trail which leads visitors to an expansive lounge fifty feet above the grand canal. meandering through the courtyard of casa artom next to the peggy guggenheim collection, the organic and woven maze remains in a state of constant flux, complete but never at rest. the artists, along with a crew of eleven rock climbers, will continue to lash together more than 3,000 bamboo poles, extending the pathway upwards and adding an additional
fifteen to twenty feet of height until the dismantling – expected to last two weeks – begins on june 18th.
Mapnificent -a time-based transit map
STEFAN WEHRMEYER, a 23-year-old German programmer, has developed a Google Maps application called Mapnificent (harhar). It’s pretty cool: it shows you the places in your city that you can reach in a given amount of time using public transport. This does not yet work in South African Cites , but is still an interesting application of already existing cloud network i.e. Google Maps and the programming API has lots of potential for creating your own applications
Today’s Newsdesk: Welekia and the Worldwide Soil Map
From faslanyc the mapping and history of the landscape as tool to understanding new visions of the past as well as how to visualize an alternative future landscape and place in context
Get up, stand up: 30 years since Bob Marley left us
Perennial favorite of ours Bob Marley remembered and honored by RICHARD POPLAK
from The Daily Maverick
Thirty years after his death, it’s still almost impossible to fully engage with Bob Marley’s legacy. We’re somehow too close to his music, still baffled by his songs playing everywhere – in varsity residences, coffee shops, movie soundtracks, Rasta flops and more. He remains ubiquitous.
Marijuanaman, then, is another shard of Bob Marley’s legacy tossed into the pop cultural maw. Indeed, Marley almost singlehandedly brought the idea of marijuana smoking into the mainstream, defending it as a cornerstone of his religious and cultural beliefs. This was only one element of his persona that, all things being equal, should have shut him out of the broader cultural arena. His politics was another. But rather, Marley was embraced. His 1984 album “Legends” has sold at least 25 million copies, and continues to sell a few hundred thousand a year. When kids are discovering music, they will inevitably make a pit stop at that album. Many stay there for a lifetime.
Why is this so? And what makes Marley’s music so enduring? We’re not the first to ask that question; nor are we the first to posit that his music endures because it is so sublimely good. One needs no background to love his songs, but to properly understand its place and cultural cache does require a quick refresher.
Marley was born Nesta Robert Marley, on 6 February 1945. His father was a white, English Navy captain and plantation boss named Norval Sinclair Marley. His mother was an Afro-Jamaican called Cedella Booker. This biracial past is essential to his character, and infuses his music with the sort of empathy that keeps it from being overly strident. His influence was universal because his experience was universal: “Me don’t dip on the black man’s side and me don’t dip on the white man’s side,” he once said. “Me dip on God’s side.”
Which is not to say that Marley didn’t pick sides. When push came to shove, he saw himself as a black African, and a pan-Africanist who revered Marcus Garvey and Haile Selassie. He believed in the concept of a black Zion—an African home to repatriated black Caribbeans and North Americans—and in songs like “Blackman Redemption” and “Babylon System”, he sings about such struggles.
Watch: ‘Rastaman Vibration’ Live@Amandla Festival, 1979.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srjInCOLJI0&feature=player_embedded (more…)
anish kapoor: monumenta 2011 – leviathan
Sculpture as urban intervention or environment from designboom
image © designboom
monumenta 2011
‘leviathan’ by anish kapoor
grand palais, paris
may 11 to june 23rd, 2011
each year the french ministry of culture and communication invites a leading artist to create a work that responds to the exceptional architectural space of the grand palais in paris. the sheer monumental scale of the building provided the inspiration for a big idea: monumenta. this year, indian-born, british-based artist anish kapoor created a temporary, site-specific installation inside the nave of the glass-domed hall. the space was originally unveiled at the 1900 universal exhibition. for its fourth edition, after guest artists anselm kiefer, richard serra and christian boltanski, it has been the turn of anish kapoor to meet the challenge with a brand new work for the 13,500 m2 space.
‘it has been a slow process. it seems to me that I’ve been working on it since almost 20 years.
now it is here. we did it.’says anish kapoor in an interview with designboom.
‘the sculpture is a total immersion in an unexplored physical and mental dimension. once you are inside,
in the giant 4-armed balloon, the involuted form reminds you of an organic outer space and inner self at
the same time — but when you travel outside of it (once you are back in the space of the grand palais),
I hope the viewer has another encounter with the piece and with the luminosity thrown down by the glass roof.’
image © designboom
(more…)
Immaterial Terrain
Urban Observatory 