Paving Slab Animation

A Situationist's Tangram

Tangram sidewalk SMIBE from Nino Heirbaut on Vimeo.

Eva Weber: The Solitary Life of Cranes

A Man Made Puddle

Spanish Architects Alicia Velazquez and Analia Garcia created this 8 metre long puddle from "flabby " reflective silicone rubber. They named it Ablando which means softening. The Albe'niz Theatre borrowed it for the Malaga film festival; it was displayed on the pavement on the outside the main entrance. Velazquez said "we wanted to decelerate people, we created a moment of confusion, so people started looking around, noticing buildings and becoming aware of where they are".

This for me is an ideal example of design in the landscape which altered the way in which people interacted with a space. A simple intervention which would have made many passersby aware and take consideration of a space in totally different way than they had previously.

Flooded MacDonalds

A recent trip to London to see the following film at an exhibition, which comprised a very convincing replica of a MacDonald's Burger Restaurant which gradually becomes flooded, replete with all the design paraphernalia and detritus that comes with themed restaurant spaces:



Flooded McDonald's from Superflex on Vimeo.

Click Here To Listen: Blue Sky Dreams on This American Life

This is an exerpt from a powerful memoir that recounts the author's world (together with his family), growing up in middle-class suburbia, from Sputnik to the present, and writes of the great institutions--the government, the multinational corporations, the church, the suburban tract home neighborhood--in which his family put their faith, and how that faith was betrayed.

Ira Glass: 69 Dreamhouse, This American Life
http://www.powells.com/biblio?PID=28734&cgi=product&isbn=015600531X

Mapping

Astrological map based on French artist Annette Messager's date of birth, showing the positions of the planets.

Day to Day Data

In his Web-based commission entitled 'On Earth As In Heaven' Jem Finer juxtaposes celestial data - constellations - and maps these with the commonplace and the everyday, making new associations and constellations from earthly terrestrial reference points.

Jem Finer: On Earth As In Heaven, Day to Day Data, 2005

Click Here to Listen: Hysterical Podcast from This American Life on Mapping

This Podcast investigates Mapping 'practice' primarily through the five senses. At times trivial and frivolous there is, however, enormous insight into the nature of the place that surrounds us and the space we embody in our everyday lives.

A map of phone, cable, and power lines. Image by Denis Wood. From Act One.