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• • • Being a journal by artist and designer John Coulthart, cataloguing interests, obsessions and passing enthusiasms.

Archive for the {architecture} category

 

Weekend links 159

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El Banquete Magnético (2011) by Cristina Francov. • Did Vertigo Introduce Computer Graphics to Cinema? asks Tom McCormack. He means Saul Bass’s title sequence which mostly uses still harmonographs but also features some animated moments by John Whitney. •  Temple of the Vanities by Thomas Jorion. “Pictured here are political monuments and munitions depots, hulking [...]

Posted in {animation}, {architecture}, {art}, {books}, {design}, {electronica}, {film}, {gay}, {music}, {painting}, {photography}, {psychedelia}, {technology} | No comments »

 


Weekend links 156

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Le Vampire (c. 1903) by Agathon Léonard. Via Beautiful Century. • Two masters of rumbling atmospherics interviewed at The Quietus: Bobby Krlic aka The Haxan Cloak talks to Maya Kalev while Thomas Köner talks to Joseph Burnett. Discussions about the arts now have an awkward, paralyzed quality: few judgments about the independent excellences of works [...]

Posted in {animation}, {architecture}, {art}, {books}, {design}, {electronica}, {film}, {music}, {photography}, {sculpture} | Comments Off

 


Chemiserie Niguet

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Spotted at Beautiful Century, this scan of a postcard showing the flower shop which now occupies what was originally the Chemiserie Niguet in Brussels. The shop is in the Rue Royale, and the Art Nouveau storefront was installed in 1896 from a design by Belgian architect Paul Hankar (1859–1901). Considering this is one of Hankar’s [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {art nouveau}, {design} | 2 comments »

 


Doorways

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Another fine book for us collagists, Libro estraordinario di Sebastiano Serlio bolognese : nel quale si dimostrano trenta porte di opera rustica, mista con diuersi ordini, & uenti di opera dilicata di diuerse specie : con la scrittura dauanti, che narra il tutto (1566) is a guide to “porte rustiche”, or old doorways. There are [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {art}, {books} | 4 comments »

 


Paolo Soleri, 1919–2013

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Hexahedron, The City in the Image of Man (1969). “We must build up, not out,” said Soleri. “The problem is the present design of cities are only a few storeys high, stretching outward in unwieldy sprawl for miles…turning farms into parking lots, and waste enormous amounts of time and energy transporting people, goods and services [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {science fiction} | 2 comments »

 


Weekend links 153

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Scarfolk, as was noted here last month, is a home from home, especially if you grew up in the 1970s. The mayor of the rabies-afflicted town, Richard Littler, talked to Creative Review about his unheimlich design project. • Ensemble Pearl, an album stream of “cosmic psychedelic space-doom minimal drone soundscapes” by Atsuo, William Herzog, Eyvind [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {art}, {books}, {collage}, {design}, {electronica}, {film}, {gay}, {music}, {occult}, {photography} | Comments Off

 


On the pyramid

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Lots of attention given this week to a series of photos taken from the summit of the Great Pyramid of Cheops by a Russian group of urban explorers. The Egyptian authorities who maintain the World Heritage site bar visitors from the place at night so the photographers hid in a tomb for a few hours [...]

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The art of Mark Reep

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Crossing. Artist Mark Reep sent me a link recently to his gallery of meticulous pencil and charcoal drawings which he calls “dreams in black and white”. The combination in many of these of isolated settings with minor architectural features is something I always enjoy seeing but don’t find often enough. Offhand I can think of [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {art}, {black and white} | 3 comments »

 


Weekend links 152

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Light Moves on the Water (2010), a collage by Alexis Anne Mackenzie. “[She] stated, emphatically and more than once, that pornography cannot and should not be linked to LGBT rights…When a gay man lives somewhere where his identity is threatened, it’s clear how sex – including pornography – and sexuality are intertwined. His sexual imagination, [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {art}, {books}, {collage}, {design}, {film}, {gay}, {illustrators}, {music}, {photography}, {surrealism}, {television} | 1 comment »

 


Ugly carpets

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The latest work-related research has had me browsing pages of these garish carpet designs. The photos above and below are by Chris Maluszynski, a man who’s spent some time documenting the alarmingly vivid patterns used on the carpets in Las Vegas casinos. Maluszynski spoke to the New Yorker about his project in a piece which [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {design} | 2 comments »

 


Terror and Magnificence

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Christ Church, Spitalfields, London, in 2001. A photo I took with a disposable film camera. And so let us beginne; and, as the Fabrick takes its Shape in front of you, alwaies keep the Structure intirely in Mind as you inscribe it. First, you must measure out or cast the Area in as exact a [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {books}, {music}, {occult}, {photography}, {religion}, {television} | 4 comments »

 


Weekend links 151

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Untitled art by Yang Yongliang. There’s more at But Does It Float. • “Newly unearthed ITV play could be first ever gay television drama“. Writer Gerald Savory, incidentally, also adapted Dracula for the BBC in 1977, still the version that’s closest to the novel. • Craig Redman and Karl Maier‘s poster designs for the Bavarian [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {art}, {books}, {burroughs}, {design}, {electronica}, {gay}, {music}, {photography}, {television} | 1 comment »

 


Wavelength

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Thanks be to YouTube for once more resurrecting moments of underground cinema which would otherwise be very difficult to see. Wavelength (1967) is Michael Snow’s experimental masterwork, a 45-minute zoom across a New York loft that ends on a photograph of waves that fills the screen. This recipe for ennui is not without incident: we [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {film} | 2 comments »

 


Raising the roof

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Roger Dean’s album cover art extends further than his sleeve illustrations for Yes. His earlier designs for the Vertigo label showed his visual invention to good effect, and a couple of those designs have had their imitators. The cover art for Dedicated To You, But You Weren’t Listening by the Keith Tippett Group is one [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {design}, {music}, {psychedelia}, {science fiction} | 3 comments »

 


Babel details

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The Tower of Babel (c. 1563) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Seeing as how I have a fetish for Towers of Babel I ought to have examined this one sooner, the copy at the Google Art Project being one which allows you to explore the surface of the picture in greater detail [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {art}, {painting}, {religion} | 2 comments »

 


Out of season

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Photographer Andrew G Fisher sent a link to his web galleries recently, among which there’s a great series of shots from various seaside towns. If I respond to these more than the others it’s because I grew up by the sea. Views like this are an indelible feature of my childhood memories, they often recur [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {photography} | 1 comment »

 


Le Panorama Exposition Universelle

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One day I really will have exhausted this subject but for the moment here’s another look at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900. I’d downloaded this photo album months ago from the excellent resources at the University of Heidelberg then promptly forgot all about it. The book is of interest for the variety of views [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {cities}, {photography} | 1 comment »

 


London zoom

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I’m generally indifferent to panoramic views of cities, especially London where the sprawl lacks the distinct contours of Manhattan or the Napoléonic severity of Hausmann’s Paris. This view is different, however, being a 320 gigapixel panorama of the capital seen from the top of the BT Tower. This view is currently the world’s largest panoramic [...]

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Weekend links 148

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Quantum Entanglement by Duda Lanna. • An hour-long electronica mix (with the Düül rocking out at the end) by Chris Carter for Ninja Tune’s Solid Steel Radio Show. • “…a clothes-optional Rosicrucian jamboree.”: Strange Flowers on the paintings of Elisàr von Kupffer. • A Paste review of volume 2 of The Graphic Canon has some [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {art}, {books}, {comics}, {design}, {drugs}, {electronica}, {fantasy}, {gay}, {music}, {painting}, {science fiction}, {work} | 1 comment »

 


Weekend links 146

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A Chinese postage stamp celebrating the Year of the Snake. • Cyclopean is a collaboration from Burnt Friedman, Jono Podmore and Can founding members Jaki Liebezeit, and Irmin Schmidt. The Quietus has a preview of all the tracks from their forthcoming EP. Great stuff. • Ten Things You (Possibly) Don’t Know About Kraftwerk. Related: a [...]

Posted in {architecture}, {art}, {books}, {design}, {electronica}, {film}, {music}, {painting}, {politics}, {sculpture} | 3 comments »

 


 




 

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