toward an architecture of the image
“Tagging is the quietly disruptive technology. Everybody tags. It is the most basic human urge to mark what we find. We do it with Folders in Windows. We do it online with Bookmarks. Specialist tag Microformats such as Hcard and Hcalendar add more structure and we are only at the very start of this wave.”
From 11 Things to Know About Semantic Web by Bernard Lunn
[pix by imagineering]
I recently journeyed to the Department of Immigration and Naturalization here in the Netherlands. While waiting in line with other foreign visa seekers and aspiring residents of Holland, I was surprised to note that the entertainment was a Disney show-reel screen, with looped highlights from Disney hits.
[pix by imagineering]
Kind of into signs on the streets referencing the nets.
[pix by imagineering]
In the background is the newest wing of the Van Abbemuseum, by architect Abel Cahen. Eindhoven, NL.
[pix by imagineering]
Eindhoven, NL
[pix by imagineering]
A refreshing selection of 140 DIY books and pamphlets from the (sadly now defunct) Loompanics Unlimited publishers, Washington, USA. The books were exhibited as part of a work by Bik Van der Pol, at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. I picked up a couple of them suspecting they were a joke, but, amazingly, they were exactly what the covers promise. The artist included a copy machine with the work, so folks were free to reproduce excerpts. Enjoy.
[pix by imagineering]
“Signs are wonderful but troublesome elements because unlike abstract ornament they require an ingredient of content and, ironically, while our information age projects lots of graphic imagery, it is still hard to organize … content.” Robert Venturi, Iconography and Electronics
It is nice to misapply Venturi, who is talking about architecture and how signs function in the landscape of cities. In the above text he’s after “a dynamic iconography for a generic architecture of surface.”
But I’m led from the commercial roadside strip, which is what he’s got in mind, to the computer screen.
[screengrab by imagineering]
I do love this sign though, particularly for that super funky zig-zag base.
[pix by imagineering]
Marshmallow Cosmos is a replica freeway column mass-produced as a breakfast cereal. A series of high resolution photographs of supporting columns from underneath the I-280 freeway in San Francisco were offset printed, using the same process as standard cereal packaging.
The work is a re-branding of generic breakfast cereals. Types and flavors of enclosed cereal vary widely and the variety of cereal in each box is unmarked. (Yes, there is really a bag of cereal in there, and no, we can’t remember what kind. You can pick it up and give it a shake.)
Our attention is drawn to the blurring of word and image in the layered buildup of graffiti. On a cereal box we read for brands and logos, but in this “freeway” version we find instead a networked sprawl of animated text.
Marshmallow Cosmos documents the supporting columns of the I-280 freeway in San Francisco, California, and all graffiti and painting was done by artists who frequent that site. 10% of the sale price of each box is donated to SF Connect, a local charity. The work is printed in a limited edition of 1,000 and each box is individually signed, numbered and sealed.
For more information please see my website www.kposehn.com. To purchase or inquire about the work, feel free to email me at kposehn at gmail dot com.
[pix by cindy and imagineering]
[pix by imagineering]
“Pedal-powered Buick displeases Canadian cops.”
[pix by imagineering, thanks to mike for the buick link]
For carnival anything can be and is attached to wheels and pushed, pulled or dragged into town. Today I saw an football team and cheerleaders about 4 kilometers outside of the city center. They were pushing a sound-system (which was fully operational) the size of a volkswagen bug along the side of the road. When I passed by again forty minutes later, they’d only moved a few hundred metres.
The little-known NASA “Recovery” pictured here on a mission with hamburger fixings and a waffle maker; the official parade; mixed-myths of the American frontier all saddled up; the Chinese Olympic Ping Pong Team 2008, with table; and a portable laundry.
[pix by imagineering]
