POWERS OF TEN-CHARLES AND RAY EAMES

Center for Land Use Interpretation

Check out the CENTER FOR LAND USE INTERPRETATION's website. An incredible resource is their LAND USE DATABASE, through which you can research sites of geographic, cultural, industrial interest, and more. Their offices are based in Los(t) Angeles. For their website click HERE.
Below are some photographs I took a few years ago while visiting their Wendover facility - it's an artist in residence program at an abandoned airbase. There was a MICA alum in residence at that time.
Artist studio.
Solar power panels, solar shower and greywater distiller.
Off the grid operations.
Experimental "Smart" Car used to tour the property.
Dashboard of Smart Car displays sites of interest.

Trouble in Paradise Project

The artists, Christoph Steinbrener and Rainer Dempf have created a remarkable installation at the Vienna Zoo dealing with environmental issues. See more on their website HERE.

Amazing Subterranean Landscape

[Image: From Sietch Nevada by Matsys; renderings by Nenad Katic].

Read/see these amazing subterranean landscape renderings inspired by Frank Herbert's novel, Dune, on BLDGBLOG, a wonderful architecture blog that covers many interesting space/place matters.

To link to the subterranean world, Hexagonal Hyropolis, click HERE.

New post of media file

New post

The new post is of a random image found on the space of this computer desktop.

Deserted Futuristic Resort Village

The deserted resort village of San Zhi (Sanjhih), outside of Taipei Taiwan, constructed of fiberglass. More here: http://www.notcot.com/archives/2008/03/san_zhi.php
and here: http://sofree.cc/truth-about-frp/
and here at cypherone's flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cypherone/167280555/

Landscape Urbanism Bullshit Generator

http://www.ruderal.com/bullshit/bullshit.htm
Deterritorialize topographical mappings, inhabit fallow corridors, embrace robust terrains, enhance post-industrial pluralities, strategize plug-and-play sustainabilities, and mesh dynamic methodologies and more!

Explore the Depth of the Oceans on Google Earth

From New York Times, February 3, 2009
Until now the existing features on Google Earth were mountains, valleys, cities, plains, ice sheets — were built through programming from an elevation of zero up. “We had this arbitrary distinction that if it was below sea level it didn’t count,” recalled John Hanke, the Internet entrepreneur who co-created the progenitor of Google Earth, called Keyhole, and moved to Google when the company bought his company in 2004.

Through new programming and data collection simulated oceans were created as a significant of several upgrade to Google Earthy. Historical Imagery, another feature provides the user with the ability to scroll back through decades of satellite images and watch the spread of suburbia or erosion of coasts. Touring is a feature where you can create narrated, illustrated tours, on land or above and below the sea surface, describing and showing things like a hike or scuba excursion, or even a research cruise on a deep-diving submarine.

Archives of information, called “layers” accessible by 20 buttons, a visitor can read logs of oceanographic expeditions, see old film clips from the heyday of Jacques-Yves Cousteau and check daily Navy maps of sea temperatures. The replicated seas have detailed topography reflecting what is known about the abyss and continental shelves — and rougher areas where little is known. Some of these features convincingly visualize the increasing interplay of humans and the environment, for better and worse, as populations grow and spread.

“It’s a way of raising awareness from thousands to billions overnight,” said Richard W. Spinrad, the N.O.A.A. assistant administrator for research, who served on an advisory panel.

Border Stripes on Brooklyn Asphalt

Reposted from Bryan Finoki's Subtopia Blog:
A Subtopian Rainbow Under Your Feet
A relatively innocuous borderline has been literally drawn smack dab in the middle of downtown Brooklyn, we are told, absurdly enough, a “de-militarized “zone” only about one foot wide” to be exact.
Apparently there is a little turf war going on between the city’s construction workers and the federal employees at the site of the new federal courthouse, where both contingencies are vying for use (and perhaps control) of the parking lot. Funny. The line was painted by the city to advise construction workers to respectively stay on their own side with regards to storing equipment, parking, etc.
Even though it appears there is nothing really contentious going on, it’s interesting to see that an actual line has been painted on the street to make perfectly clear where city authority ends and federal power takes over. “Until 9-11," the Brooklyn Paper mentions, "the street (Camden Plaza East) was open for drivers, who could use it as a straight shot from Downtown to DUMBO. But after the terror attack, the feds seized it, citing security needs.”
I don’t know, I kind of like that the line was painted, for whatever reason. Makes me want to cruise around the nation, going city-to-city, with maps of each, some GPS nav gear, and maybe one of those professional pavement stripers you see city dudes driving in the middle of the street converted into my very own personal borderline striping chariot, and paint more of them -- federal versus local geographic lines in the city.
Better yet, what if geography departments in universities across the country coordinated a nationwide semester curriculum, so that each class could be responsible for marking similar boundaries in their own state’s prominent cities. The universal assignment would be just that: to simply roll around downtowns everywhere and outline all of the little unknown, unseen boundaries that exist between federal and local aauthorities as they are territorially distributed, on the streets, over sidewalks, in front of courthouses, underground in secret tunnels, around bollards, behind secret DHS buildings, ICE detention centers, weaving together districts of federal offices and military recruiter outposts in meandering perimeters of nice wet paint, for all to see; not missing, of course, the secret NSA listening rooms harboring in phone company HQ buildings, or the TSA interrogation rooms within airports, the research labs bellied in even the most liberal universities, old industrial sites, toxic brown sites, mysterious test sites, even new border fence property acquisitions, or national landmark buffers, and so on.
I would love to see an army of students and their professors invading the city with hordes of pavement stripers scrawling the margins of various no-access zones like mad, leaving nothing behind but a fresh coat of visibly territorialized entrails in their tracks. Along these trails there would be collection meters so that people could pitch in a few pennies for more paint.
Maybe once finished tracing the perimeters of the fed’s sovereign landscape within America's urban heartland in a nice and glossy black, the next semester these cryptic pavement stripers reveal another colored urban geography: the corporate privatizations of public space in royal blue; the following semester we find the redacted acreage of seized public park space marked in harsh lines of cement gray, and the next one after that the nation’s CCTV metro-surveillance grids appear on the streets in red, and the newly designated ‘free speech and protest zones’ in pink, then the anti-homeless panhandling spheres pop up around ATMs in green, the restricted day laborer gathering spaces on various street corners and parking lots appear in yellow, and on and on and on.
In the spirit of Ronen and Francis’ illuminated borders projects, I’d love to bring these subtle and unmarked boundaries to the surface, in a kind of crisscrossing rainbow of longitudes and latitudes similar to the guiding lines you find in hospitals on the floors and along the walls, where separate colors lead you to different quadrants and different departments within the hospital; a kind of architectural navigation system for the institution's compartmentalized bureacracy.
People could then tour these rainbow grids at lunch, or on the weekends, and just take a little cruise of the hidden geographies of America’s urban landscape, along the way dropping a little spare change into the meters so all the kids could be supplied with fresh paint for next semester. By Bryan Finoki
Link to SUBTOPIA blog

ashley's portfolio pix

Wandering work - a set on Flickr

Wandering: YOUAREHERE

some images from the shoW!

Letters

While browsing through "This American Life" every morning, Kate found this section on Letters, where people read aloud their letters.
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=629
Letters have this bizarre intimacy that seem strung out on a limb because of their blatant hope for correspondence. Its almost like talking to yourself; hearing these bits of others without knowing the whole story throws me off a bit but in a way that I feel slightly suspended over the narrative.

New Public Sites - Symphony Terrace Vista

Symphony Terrace Vista is a continuation of the New Public Sites installation series where I invite participants to explore invisible or unseen public spaces. For NPS-STV I set up neon pink "x"s leading people to the circular, landscape brick terrace structure in front the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra building at Preston Street and Park Avenue. After climbing the odd HVAC structure, one finds three yellow strips of tape that both orient the viewer and frame a fantastic cityscape vista.

This installation was a part of the Wandering: You Are Here show at MICA's Middendorf gallery that ran December 3-10, 2008.

VXW-MTR Crossing Guard performance

For this performance I served as a crossing guard along the busy stretch of Mount Royal Avenue where a month prior I had set up my "Visionary Crosswalks - MTR" installation". VXW-MTR Crossing Guard" was a playful experiment in helping pedestrians cross the dangerous thoroughfare while also exploring some of the hidden behavioral constructs of that public area. I was not impersonating anyone or acting as a character, but rather genuinely serving as a direct action, volunteer crossing guard. I am myself during such performances, and am prepared to face any sort of consequences my actions may provoke.

I served as a crossing guard for approximately one hour while fellow artist Jeni Mattingly so graciously shot video of my every move. The reactions I had were varied, and I was mildly surprised by the slow pace of people crossing mid-block. I ended up spending a little over half of the time hanging out in the median strip while looking out for potential jay-walkers to help. I would say that of the people I did manage to help across the street, half seemed to ignore me, a quarter were outwardly supportive and grateful, and the rest seemed lest than trusting to tried to avoid me altogether.

Eventually I was stopped by a MICA police officer who was concerned for my safety. He made it clear I did not have approval from the school to be a crossing guard and said I needed to stop. I tried to respond with a positive attitude, noting that I had sought permission from the school only to discover that they "couldn't help me out because they do not own the street or sidewalks along Mount Royal Avenue." The officer suggested that I do my thing at a real crosswalks, and not mid block on a busy street. I said that I was just following the pedestrian traffic, and offered him a compromise. I asked if it would be okay for me to simply let people cross during gaps in traffic, as we usually do, while I simply "go through the motions" of being a crossing guard. The officer did not seemed convinced, but could not say no as I had pointed out that this was not the schools jurisdiction.

Leon Ferrari

These are some images of Leon Ferrari's mail artworks that I mentioned during Siobhan's critique yesterday. I scoured the internets and these were the best I could find to illustrate what I was talking about. Still not great, but most of these images come from Jeffry Cudlin's (Arlington Arts Center's curator) blog:
And here's a blurb about Ferrari's work at the Arts Center: "eón Ferrari, winner of the Golden Lion in the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. Ferrari will exhibit his heliographs—large prints that resemble labyrinthine city plans, and reflect on the political oppression of the Argentinean military dictatorship in the 1980s."

horay!

this american life: you are here

Three stories, three people, and three sets of maps. Stories of people trying to figure out where they are in the world in the most literal and least literal ways possible. We explore what it's like to be lost — how we all struggle in that moment not to give ourselves over to fear but try to enjoy it.

august 1999
archives
thisamericanlife.org

WHOLE WIDE WORLD

http://theboxla.com/exhibitions/past/kiersten_puusemp/index.html

Recent exhibition at THE BOX in Los Angeles. Take a look...

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1211

The archives of This American Life have a great broadcast about mapping from October 2007. It's free to listen. Enjoy!

from failblog.org

Hey if anyone has documentation of the opening of Tread Meal can you please email it to me

Albatross!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUS8uQnx1VA

Mr. Attenborough gets cuddley with albatross.

El Mirage Dry Lake as interpreted by Ry Cooder

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/11/23/travel/23ry_cooder/index.html

this one's for Scotty...

TreadMeal? How about the SpeedFit? A genius invention for the multi-tasker in all of us, featured on "Wait Wait Don't Tell" this morning on NPR.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2008/11/genius_i_tell_you_genius.html

not sure how this is really any different than just plain running, but what do I know?

Semi-Final Gallery Layout

Michael Snow, Degrees of Remove: Landscape and Affect

SculptureCenter and Anthology Film Archives Present: Degrees of Remove: Film Series

This screening series was developed in the context of the exhibition Degrees of Remove: Landscape and Affect at SculptureCenter, on view through November 30. Degrees of Remove suggests the contemporary experience of landscape as increasingly mediated through documentation in urban societies. The works on view explore the representation of spatial constructs through fiction and affect, revealing how artists transpose spaces onto surfaces through various degrees of allegorical remove. Curated by Sarina Basta, Fionn Meade, and Anthology Film Archives.

PROGRAM 3: Special Focus on the Work of Michael Snow - Sunday, November 23 at 8:30pm
Using concert footage of CCMC, the free improvisational ensemble Snow co-founded in 1974, the filmmaker/musician digitally weaves together images and sounds from performances that have taken place across the globe. “I desired an equivalence of seeing and hearing so that one could actually listen, pay attention to the music, as well as follow the picture development,” Snow writes.

PROGRAM 4: Special Focus on the Work of Michael Snow – Monday and Tuesday, November 24 & 25 at 7:30pm
La Région Centrale (1971, 180 minutes, 16mm)
Made over the course of five days on a deserted mountaintop in North Quebec, the vertical and horizontal alignment as well as the tracking speed of Snow’s equipment was all determined by the camera’s settings. Anchored to a tripod, the camera turned a complete 360 degrees, craned itself skyward, and circled in all directions. Because of the unconventional camera movement, the result was more than merely a document of the film location’s landscape, as its themes became the cosmic relationships of space and time.

These programs take place at the Sculpture Center in Long Island City and at Anthology Film Archives in Manhattan. For more information: www.sculpture-center.org

Pedestrians & SIdewalks Opportunity

Pedestrians & Sidewalks
Urban Art Program

The Urban Art Program is an initiative to invigorate the City's streetscapes with engaging temporary art installations. A component of DOT's 'World Class Streets' program to transform ordinary public spaces into pedestrian-friendly hubs, art will be installed in public places and add to New York's vibrant street activity.

DOT will partner with community-based organizations to install temporary murals, sculpture, and other installations in plazas, and on medians, triangles, sidewalks, jersey barriers and construction fences. DOT will also work with organizations/artists on temporary art projections and lighting projects in plazas and on appropriate bridges (masonry on sides of bridges), viaducts, and archways, as well as performance art and musical and theatrical performances in plazas.

Organizations or organization-artist teams are invited to apply to one of
the three Urban Art Program tracks:
pARTners
Site to Site
Arterventions

It's simple! Download an application, fill out and provide required
supporting materials. Applications will be reviewed by DOT (Department of Transportation) and outside
advisors following the Selection Ranking System that includes: public
safety, artistic merit, site suitability, organizational capacity, and
artwork durability.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/sidewalks/urbanart_prgm.shtml

Resampled Architectural Space

Here's something interesting that was on BLDG BLOG on the Belgian artist, Filip Dujardin:
Belgian photographer Filip Dujardin makes images of unexpected buildings – that is, he "combines photographs of parts of buildings into new, fictional, architectonic structures," Mark Magazine explains.
The resulting projects look like old factory sites in the American rust belt – Mark describes them as "informal and often dilapidated structures with unspecified functions"

ionesco puts life and its absurdities in a language that is universally understood

Astronaut Loses Tool Bag in Space

Not the first incident of space junk, that's for sure. Here's an amusing article from the AP. A spacewalking astronaut has had a grease gun erupt in her bag, and the tote has drifted off into space. Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper (stef-uh-NIHshun PIE-pur) was wiping the grease off her spacesuit Tuesday when she accidentally let go of the bag outside the international space station. The bag floated off, and the astronauts were not able to do anything about it. She was on the spacewalk with Stephen Bowen. He had his own tool bag with another grease gun, putty knife and oven-like terry cloth mitts. They are using those tools to wipe away metal grit from a clogged joint at the space station. Mission Control says the spacewalk will continue as planned, and that the two astronauts will share tools.

This reminds me of a camera an astronaut lost in space:

Viewfinder project puts the flickr in Google Earth

I stumbled across the Viewfinder project on artist Michael Naimark's website yesterday.

The project site states: "Our objective is to provide a straightforward procedure for geo-locating photos of any kind, and our approach is to engage a community of users for a certain amount of human help."

Indeed, such ongoing web 2.0 panorama research is promising. I can't wait for this virtual/real hybrid place future...

The Neistat Brothers

These short flicks by the Neistats apply.  Joyce's post reminded me because they have worked with Tom Sachs on a few occasions.  Plus there are a few recent MICA alum helping them out lately. Check it

NEISTAT BROTHERS - Movies: Red Balloon

NEISTAT BROTHERS - Movies: Goldfish

shane what do you think of Abramovic's shoes for departure? 

wwjd

Hello Kitty + friends go to Paris!

check out article in SuperTouch

Tom Sachs up to his antics in Paris... foreign pop culture figurine turned universal icon turned globetrotters. ;P