Archive for April, 2009

Photoblog documenting New York City block by block. Most recent entry is about the block I work on. He shot the lightpole I lock my bike to!

Jason Hawkes is the (a?) new Georg Gerster. Actually, maybe Google Maps is the new Georg Gerster.

Maybe the best part is the video-applied LP label.

Links to sites useful to designers.

5 films by or about artworks by Robert Smithson.

TED talk from Aimee Mullins, whom I know primarily as one of Matthew Barney's muses and accomplices in the Cremaster cycle. She discusses the possibilities of prosthetics beyond simply regaining or replacing lost or diminished function.

Second fragment of Wallace's third novel, published in The New Yorker.

These are still hard to read.

A small portion of DFW's unfinished novel.

"The Romans and ancient travelers in general did not use maps. They may have existed as specialty items in some of the libraries, but they were hard to copy and were not in general use. On the Roman road system, however, the traveller needed some idea of where he was going, how to get there, and how long it would take. The itinerarium filled this need. In origin it was simply a list of cities along a road. It was only a short step from lists to a master list. To sort out the lists, the Romans drew diagrams of parallel lines showing the branches of the roads. Parts of these were copied and sold on the streets. The very best featured symbols for cities, way stations, water courses, and so on. They cannot be considered maps, as they did not represent landforms, but they served a similar purpose much in the way schematic diagrams do for users of modern subway systems (e.g. the Tube map for users of the London Underground)."

English architecture blog.

"Scanned from hallfplate glass negatives found in anabandoned Post Ofice warehouse, the envelopes bear the stamp 'London Press Bureau'. The photos were taken in the mid sixties."

"Examples of Modern Alphabets, Ornamental and Plain" - 1864

Seems like there should be more of these, but this is a collection of I think most of the pre-renaissance mythical locations that were actually theorized to exist. The list changes as we get into the renaissance, I think - as the age of exploration begins and some of these disappear but new ones get added.

I remember seeing part of this in Nesbit classes in school, but I guess there's more to it than just Patti Smith.

She'd just been hit by a giant magnolia petal.