David's group

World's Fair, Maps, and Decay

We've talked about ruins, maps, and the World's Fair. But what about the cartographic ruins of the World's Fair?

Ruins on the Autoroute

I came across this post which has fantastic pictures and thought I'd share it here.

Abandoned Motels in the United States.

Providence Tent City in today's Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/us/31land.html?_r=2&hp

A psychogeographical project!

The Backstory: I am currently in possession of a book called "Wreck This Journal". The point of the book is to destroy it, page by page. Examples: burn this page. tie a string around the journal and take it for a walk. collect fruit stickers on this page.

One of the pages instructs the possessor to "Glue white things here". My friend Daria and I decided that we would complete this page a few nights ago. But we didn't have any white things! So we decided to ask everyone in Diman and Chapin (the dorms we have access to) for white things they were willing to donate.

Daria, posing with an "anti-cloud"

We got a lot of confused looks, and, of course, questions as to what we need these things for. Explaining about the journal, we decided, would take much too long (as it was an hour til curfew), so we told everyone it was for a "secret art project". Many people were surprisingly unquestioning of our sketchy response, especially as we collected more items. We acquired:

a few receipts

a nutella lid
a paper plate

printer paper

"anti-cloud" paintings (4)

a Godiva bag

plastic bags (2)

half a bag of mini-marshmallows

gauze

tissue (unused)
a Q-tip (unused)

a plasitc spoon

a hairtie (used)

a pen

sugar packets

a coffee cup lid
a band-aid (in its wrapper)

a ticket stub

a fortune from a fortune cookie

a gum wrapper (no gum)

paper towels

a dryer sheet

and one offer of a person (which we refused)

The page in the book.

When we got back to my room, we had no idea what to do with all of this stuff; we could only fit so much on the page! The solution came to us very quickly: MAKE A ROBOT.

He's so cute!
But really empty on the inside

It only took us about 2 hours to make something totally awesome out of stuff no one wanted! I thought to post this on the blog because, when I was looking through the conflux archive, I noticed a few projects involving collecting trash and making things - I specifically remember the project that tried to make a desk. Our project differs in that we asked people for specific ("mostly white") things, instead of collecting it off the street, and that we didn't have a goal in mind when we set out. All in all, it was a fun and productive few hours.

Psychogeographic iPhone Games

I don't know if anyone remembers Dodgeball, but it was a location-based tool that let users discover where their closest friends were at any time. Users updated their position by texting their location to the Dodgeball service and receiving a response detailing their nearby friends' positions. Clearly it was the perfect tool for, say, the Manhattan socialite wandering around SoHo at night. In this way, Dodgeball had location-aware social features before widespread GPS deployment on mobile devices.

Long story short, Google bought and, subsequently, killed Dodgeball.

The new kid on the block (ha...get it...) is Foursquare, which takes a lesson from Dodgeball: not everyone these days has friends, but they all have iPhones. According to the website (playfoursquare.com), the service lets you "unlock badges for discovering new places, doing new things, and meeting new people." So now you can get online recognition for all your "secret knowledge" of the city (provided it's not too secret for the developers to know about).

Kinetic Art

Impressive kinetic art from Theo Jansen.

Visionary Environments

I came across this site the other day and didn't think to add it to the blog, but after talking about visionary environments I realized it's a perfect fit.

Beautiful, living tree art by Pooktre Tree Shapers.

Metacommie on Brüno

I haven't seen the film yet, but this blog post by a friend of mine makes me think I should.
Lots of reference to the Spectacle and other fun things we've talked about.
Not particularly easy to digest, but I think he's got some good points. At the core (I think) is a claim that the film is a performance of Situationist humor.

Read the original article...

Multiverse

A neat installation at the national gallery of art.