Diller, Scofidio + Renfro is an interdisciplinary design studio that integrates architecture, the visual arts, and the performing arts. The amazing work Arbores Laetae (joyful trees) for MADE UP, 2008's Liverpool Biennial International exhibition. I was mesmerized by the notion of "dancing" trees. Tired of the gray, slushy winter drear? Indulge in a little seasonal time travel and lift your spirits. Spring is just around the corner.
things I love
Time Travel To Downton Abbey's London /
If you're a fan of Downton Abbey watch this extraordinary British film compilation of London shot in the 1920s by Claude Frisse-Greene, son of cinematographer, William Frisse-Greene. Comptine D'un Autre été L'après-midi by Yann TiersenFrom the British Film Institute http://www.bfi.org.uk/
Dancing People and Jumping Frogs: Earliest Animations /
This Is Colossal posted an incredible set of early animations that were thrilling to see. "Nearly 155 years before CompuServe debuted the first animated gif in 1987, Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau unveiled an invention called the Phenakistoscope, a device that is largely considered to be the first mechanism for true animation. The simple gadget relied on the persistence of vision principle to display the illusion of images in motion.
Via Juxtapoz:
"The phenakistoscope used a spinning disc attached vertically to a handle. Arrayed around the disc’s center were a series of drawings showing phases of the animation, and cut through it were a series of equally spaced radial slits. The user would spin the disc and look through the moving slits at the disc’s reflection in a mirror. The scanning of the slits across the reflected images kept them from simply blurring together, so that the user would see a rapid succession of images that appeared to be a single moving picture."
The Beverly Oracle -- Poets and Writers Answer Our Deepest Questions /
Commissioned by an NEA Arts and Cultural District Public Art Competition, "The Beverly Oracle" is a new permanent work for the Beverly Common by artist Anna Schuleit Haber, jointly hosted by the city of Beverly, Montserrat College, and Beverly Main Streets. The public art display, called the "Oracle" will consist of a single-room box in the middle of Beverly Common: four walls, a door and a ceiling. The walls will be transparent until the viewer sits down in a chair in the room, and then they will block the view from the outside. A voice will automatically come from a speaker in the room, telling you to ask a question.
This short film is the trailer for the project's road trip to dozens of poets and writers across America in search of answers for the Oracle. Our road trip will include a forty year-old Buick "Centurion" convertible and a changing cast of co-pilots and navigators, including artists Anna Schuleit Haber, Madeleine Jennings, Caitlyn Doolittle, Katie Dygon, Finnegan, the project dog, and many others.
Best High School Band? /
The Winner of Studio 360's Battle of the High School Bands.
Studio 360's Battle of the High School Bands contest, ended up with 350 submissions spanning six decades of adolescence — from psychedelic pop to soulful hip-hop. (For a handful of the very best, check out their two volumes of mixtapes.) Rock star judges, Andrew W.K. and Thao Nguyen, had the challenging task of picking a winner, and then collaborating on a cover version of that song. Their pick was “The River,” by three young Nashville women who go by Bea, Rita & Maeve.
Listen to "The River" by Bea, Rita & Maeve and Andrew W.K. and Thao Nguyen's cover here.
“There was a very timeless quality this song had, without being nostalgic,” Andrew tells Kurt Andersen. Thao praises the “subtlety and refinement in the musicianship.” In fact, the pros admit to being daunted by the rookies. “It ruined my entire perception of myself in high school,” Andrew confesses. Where the original hews to a folk style, Andrew and Thao’s cover uses rock drums and layers of instruments for a heavier, arena-ready version.
Both versions are extraordinary
Listen As T. S. Eliot Reads "The Wasteland" /
I found this recording by T.S. Eliot of his heavily allusive 1922 masterpiece “The Waste Land” at Open Culture. Originally titled “He Do the Police in Different Voices,” a quote from Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend, the poem is filled with references to Dante’s Divine Comedy, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and James Frazier’s The Golden Bough. Ezra Pound's heavy reworking is responsible for the poem you hear above, read by Eliot himself. The first image in the video shows Pound’s marginal annotations.
What One Ant Can Teach Us About Perseverance /
A year ago I was inspired by this tiny ant dutifully moving a feather across a sidewalk and shot this little film. A perfect fusion of industry and art.
I've Seen The Future And It Is Here /
Michael Wolf's Architecture of Density photo series of dense Hong Kong neighborhoods takes urban activist Jane Jacobs revolutionary notion of the value to be found in organically dense cities and turns it on its head. The beauty of light, pattern, and color are haunting while and the claustrophobic sense of life thrumming behind the facades of the hive-like structures is disquieting. Here are a just a few of my favorites:
Paris 1900 - 2013 In Photographs /
In case France isn't in your summer plans, Rue 89 has paired amazing street scenes contrasting the 1900s with today. Albert Kahn, a banker who made is fortune by speculating on gold mines and South African diamonds, sent photographers around the world to make a photographic collection that includes over 60 countries and 72,000 autochrome plates. Paris was part of the project. Rue 89 sent a photographer out to capture what these streets look like today.
Click here to see full images and slide the red bar in the middle of the two photos back and forth to reveal different portions of each image.
Anna Schuleit Paints The Urban Space /
Anna Schuleit's "Just A Rumor"
Anna Schuleit, a good friend, is a visual artist who studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence and Rome. After graduating from art school in 1998 she worked on two site-specific installations: Habeas Corpus at the abandoned Northampton State Hospital (2000), and Bloom for the closing of the Massachusetts Mental Health Center (2003). From 2001 to 2004 she was a visiting artist at a psychiatric institution in Westborough, MA, that was being downsized and phased out, ending in another closure. During that time she also documented the closing of Medfield State Hospital. In 2005 she completed a master’s degree in creative writing / book arts at Dartmouth. From 2005 to 2007 she was commissioned by the ICA Boston to develop a site-specific project, Intertidal, for the military ruins of Lovells Island in Boston Harbor. In 2007 she created Landlines, a large-scale project that brought dozens of children together with artists, telephones, and the general public, in the forest surrounding the MacDowell Colony. In 2010 she was the visiting artist at UMass Amherst and completed Just a Rumor,
a site-specific project involving a face, a pond, and wild ducks.
She's been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, Bogliasco, Blue Mountain Center, The Hermitage, Yaddo, Banff, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, and a visiting artist / guest lecturer at Brown University, MIT, Smith College, Harvard, The New School, Brandeis, University of Michigan, McGill, RISD, Boston University, Pratt, Bowdoin, and Syracuse University. In 2006 she was named a MacArthur Fellow.
Here is an excerpt from an interview from Bettery Magazine about some of her recent work.
In my paintings and projects, I am swinging back and forth between working on an intimate scale, and working on a large scale. The live drawing (see below) that I did for you, in response to Wayward Plants’ question, was an attempt to bridge my drawings with the sites I love, the streets and alleyways, on a one-to-one scale. I think that wish of drawing directly into the urban space comes from my frustration with the typical reduction of scale in most drawings. It’s a wish for working life-size, and moving beyond the rectangular canvas, out of the studio and into our built environment and public spaces.
Yotam Haber, Schuleit's fiance, composed the music.