Geometric Order Amidst Starling Chaos
Brad Woodard, visualnews.comA murmuration of starlings may seem random, but one artist has found the geometric order to this phenomenon of nature in her work. About six months ago a video flooded the internet of two women out on a canoe while a murmurat…
The PAS House by Francois Perrin and Gil Lebon Delapointe
dezeen.comSkateboarding star Pierre Andre Senizergues wanted to skate over every surface of his new house, inside and out, so he turned to Californian architect Francois Perrin plus designer and skater Gil Lebon Delapoint to make it a…
Frank Lloyd Wright Sketch Misinterpreted?
core77.comYears ago a Frank Lloyd Wright sketch of what appears to be a globe stand (above) surfaced at the Foundation in his name, which holds archives for more than 20,000 of his drawings. A Chicago-based company named Replogle Globe, the world’s…
Flithy Lurker’s Street Interventions
Amir, beautifuldecay.comFilthy Lurker’s sculptures walk the fine line between site specific installations, street art, and teenage gags. His website states that “his art is sparkling with humor, recklessness, and shocks you to look at the world in a new way.” Wh…
Photos of Abandoned and Mysterious Yugoslavian Monuments
Stefan Bacigal, inspirefirst.comJan Kempenaers is an Antwerp based photographer and is attending the Royal Academy of Fine Arts at the University College Ghent in Belgium where he is working on a PhD in the visual arts about the picturesque…
Underwater Hotel planned for Dubai
Karissa Rosenfield, archdaily.comCourtesy of Deep Ocean Technology
Dubai shipbuilder Drydocks World has signed on with Switzerland’s BIG InvestConsult, on behalf of partner Deep Ocean Technology (DOT), to become the sole construction contractor of the…
100,000 LED Lights Illuminate a Japanese River
Pinar, mymodernmet.comTokyo Hotaru Festival 2012 took place recently, releasing 100,000 blue LED lights to float in the Sumida River. The bulbs rolled along the waves of the river bank, mimicking hotaru (the Japanese word for “fireflies”), for the festival…
The interesting thing is not primarily that it perpetuates itself through use, restoring its identity from one productive cycle to another and thus determining a certain temporality; but that it is a trap, an apparatus that lets us overturn relations of force. The machine is then neither an instrument nor a weapon, but an artifice, which is and which is not coupled with nature: it is so coupled in that it does not work without capturing and exploiting natural forces; it is not so coupled in that it plays a trick on these forces, being itself less strong than they are, and making real this monstrosity: that the less strong should be stronger than what is stronger.
text Franz Reuleaux, Kinematics. Fundamental Principles of a General Theory of Machines 1875
drawing: Neil Denari, Prototype Architecture School No. 5, project, Los Angeles, California, Elevations 1993
(via p-851)
“The perfect world”, whether it consists of industrial modernism or 1960s nomadic settlements, typically effaces differences within. The speculations that become concrete easily become demanding as well, expecting the world to somehow shed its flaws and become a glossy fiction itself.
Scenarios, speculations, ideals and utopias all dwell in the same spectrum of envisioning possibilities. It is the fine line between the possibility of the scenario and the necessity of utopia that describes precisely where our fictions can succeed or fail. As an image of potential futures, these speculations can aid in reflecting on the consequiences of choices.
As a necessary future to be attained, however, the threatening nature of the scenario becomes apparent: trying to enforce a Utopian world on a flawed reality amounts to little more than violent domination.
text: Lara Schrijver, Dreaming the world that might still become.
drawing: Walking City in New York, 1964 Ron Herron, Archigram
(via p-851)
