Sydney has just ranked in the world's top 5 cities for culture on this global
Navigating a way forwards
Broken Veil is a new podcast that dips into the weird/psychogeographic/quasi-non-fictional realm / a sad farewell to publishers Unbound / Elizabeth Goodspeed on what happens when we treat the past like a stock library / The Social Media Sea Change, a must read from the Culture Study. ‘What happens when the thing that structured so much of our lives loses its utility?’ / The Satellite Crayon Project from SKY Perfect JSAT. Includes “Crayons of the Seas”, “Crayons of the Mountains” and “Crayons of the Lakes” / tech schadenfreude parts I and II: surprised face. ‘Neom is reportedly turning into a financial disaster…‘ / Starship was doomed from the beginning.
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‘Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991‘ / record labels vs the Internet Archive: ‘Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” is perhaps the most heavily streamed song in the case, with nearly 550 million streams on Spotify compared to about 15,000 views on the Great 78 Project‘ / The Sunderland Collection, ‘exquisite cartographic objects from the 13th to the early 19th centuries; / Naked under dungarees, the rise of #hotboybadart / Uniform Freak, (air) hostesses with the mostest / see also Anya Hindmarch’s Air Anya concept store / an ode to the OP-1, a Pandora’s Box in reverse / an incomplete bestiary of contemporary humanoid robots.
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Paintings and amazing drawings by Hope Gangloff / Of Gravity, Clocks, and Audio Dragons, via this appreciation of hi-fi charlatan Peter Belt / music by the Oldfield Youth Club / photography: Take a (rail) trip down memory lane to 1973’s London Victoria / Jim Goldberg’s series on the “Rich and Poor” of San Francisco between 1977 and 1985 / Belgian photographer Thomas Nolf documents the aviation obsessed / AI-designed (or ‘aided’) architecture? Not nearly as clever as it thinks it is, ushering in the Tech-McMansion era / in a similar vein, why is Country Lifeusing AI to create cover art?
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We’re all being quietly gaslit by AI. Is ChatGPT’s short story genuinely beautiful? Jeanette Winterson thinks so. Some other writers respond / Joan Didion’s Los Angeles, a map / “There Is No Advantage to Thinking”: on Leon Festinger’s ‘When Prophecy Fails’ / US specific, but interesting nonetheless. Search for a brand and see its politics: Goods Unite Us / a visual search through Frauenkultur’s Second Wave Feminist Reading Archive / ‘Blood, sweat, tears and body shaming: a cartoonist’s guide to becoming a mother‘ / ‘is there a word for how a vision of the future always seems an obvious product of the era that created it?’ / Out of Fashion, an exhibition of 20th century art.
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Visit the Museum of All Things, ‘a nearly-infinite virtual museum generated from Wikipedia’ (via Kottke / the delayed consciousness of phoneworld, Kate Wagner on The Eternal Present / Of Gravity, Clocks, and Audio Dragons, via this appreciation of hi-fi charlatan Peter Belt/ sort of related, The Great Vinyl Record Buying Swindle (unexpurgated version). Price vs quality / related, the Secret 7″ sale / Disney for adults, Nickelodeon resorts / Livebox Bonn make custom dioramas / sort of related, an absolutely wonderful collection at the cutaway house illustrations appreciation post & fan club / classic Penguin box sets. Both via Meanwhile / the timeless appeal of Olivetti / the effects of vertical social media photography on architectural representation.
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Inside the story of Jaguar’s re-brand / how to make a profit by bulk-buying the last ‘traditional’ Land-Rovers ever made / an overview of BMW’s historic models / digital art by Dirk Koy / a 3D model of San Francisco’s Sutro Tower(via Kottke) / related, Gaussian Splatting / Andy Vella on his recent Cure artwork / Miki Berenyi on life after Lush / search out emulation via Virtual Synthesizers (via Synthtopia) / an interview with Bong Joon Ho / all about the Folly Tower in Oxfordshire commissioned by the eccentric Lord Berners. ‘His Rolls-Royce automobile contained a small clavichord keyboard which could be stored beneath the front seat’. Berners’ satirical novel, The Girls of Radcliff Hall is at the Internet Archive.
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The Inconvenient Astrologer Of MI5 / Twin Peaks donut supercut (via Andrew Womack) / Arcade Marquees, a book that ‘showcases a collection of 600 arcade video game marquees from 1980 to 2020′ / see also this huge digitised library of computer games magazines / the pocket computer museum / the story of the Hexham Heads / a collection of book covers for Stanislav Lem’s Solaris / items – many intriguing – from the personal collection of the late Barry Humphries / rig rundown with The Jesus Lizard / very Things-adjacent, the Office of Collecting & Design and its excellent Instagram page / see also John Foster’s Accidental Mysteries.
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Construction timelapse of the largest cruise ship ever built in Germany, the AIDAnova (via Jalopnik) / sort of related, Solstice – 5, a short film by Paul Chadeisson (via MeFi) / Drawing without Borders, an online exhibit from the Royal Drawing School / the capital on film, sets and backlots at These other Londons: the imagined city of the backlots / a history of South London’s Dawson’s Heights Estate at Hidden Archiecture / the tallest abandoned skyscrapersaround the world / see also The Leaning Tower of New York.
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A new album from Black Bordello / Sixes And Sevens, a new album by former Banshee John McKay / a balding salaryman / TWELVES, an archive release of Loop’s classic 12″ singles from Dinked Edition / Cabin Crew, a new book about holiday huts / paintings by Aglae Bassens / letterpress studios in the UK: Hooksmith Press, The Printer’s Devil, New North Press, Railton Press / Johatsu, ‘the people in Japan who purposely vanish from their established lives without a trace’ / ‘hurtful crashes‘, schadenfreude-infused supercar CGI / a bungled stunt in the (original) Italian Job. The scene in question.
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The ongoing rise of Technofascism / A Cartography of Genocide at Forensic Architecture / depressing AI generated visuals of Trump Gaza City incoming in 3, 2, 1… / sort of related (bear with us), Logos of the early Ufology Scene, a book from the KFAX Series, covering the graphic design of organisations run by ‘Self diagnosed experts [who] bestowed wisdom upon loyal readers, enraptured with stories of flying saucers and big eyed little green men’. Here’s a theory. Flying saucers are a projection of collective colonial guilt. Flaps happen at times of great national crisis or uncertainty (eg drones in New Jersey ahead of Trump II: the Trumpening, or the saucer hysteria that coincided with the communist witch-hunt era) and are accompanied by much wailing speculation about whether ‘they’ are saviours or subjugators.
