{cities} – Page 25 – { feuilleton }

The panoramic towers of Prague

The Tower at Charles Bridge, Old Town.

More panoramas of Prague from 360 Cities by Jeffrey Martin, a photographer who’s made a speciality of capturing the city in 360º views. Among his collection are a number of photos taken from Prague’s many towers and steeples including a few where he’s managed to remove the supporting building, as in the view from the Charles Bridge above. This gives the effect of floating in weightless suspension above the city and may well induce alarm in vertigo sufferers. Needless to say, all these are best viewed on the full screen setting.

The Powder Tower (Prasna Brana).

Mikulas Tower.

Prague TV Tower Babies 1; one of David Cerný’s crawling baby sculptures looks over the city. See also the 18 gigapixel view from the tower.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The panoramas archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Karel Plicka’s views of Prague

Weekend links 8

Another label design of mine for the Adur Brewery. Much as I like Otto Weisert’s Arnold Böcklin typeface it’s something I’ve been reluctant to use in the past due to its lazy deployment by UK shop sign makers. The ribbon motifs and the hops are adapted from one of my Art Nouveau reference books, however, so it seemed appropriate in this case.

• Dead Fingers Talk: The Tape Experiments of William S. Burroughs, a forthcoming exhibition at IMT, London, “presenting two unreleased tape experiments by William Burroughs from the mid 1960s alongside responses by 23 artists, musicians, writers, composers and curators.” Related: get a Naked Lunch t-shirt (or another cover design) at Out of Print clothing.

• Ronald Clyne: American folk modernist. Rediscovering the album and book cover designer.

• Better Things: The Life and Choices of Jeffrey Jones. A documentary about the work of artist Jeffrey Jones. Related: Mike Kaluta appears in the trailer and Golden Age Comic Book Stories has pages from Kaluta’s illustrated Metropolis (1988), a novel by Thea von Harbou.

• “I imagined myself as a giant penis launching off from earth like a spaceship.” WFMU’s Beware of the Blog explores Cary Grant’s use of LSD. Related: Orange Sunshine – The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World, a book by Nicholas Schou.

• Britain’s armed forces have a lesson for the US: “Only 10 years ago, the Army was expelling soldiers for homosexuality. Now gay weddings get the regimental blessing.” A very modern military partnership.

• Cassette tapes and their growing curiosity/fetish value. Related: Michael Stipe and Maison Martin Margiela’s sterling silver microcassette charm.

• Another week, another theremin link: Detergent bottles become theremins.

• “Edinburgh is a city built on the production of books”.

• The National Archives UK’s photostream at Flickr.

• Typographic playing cards.

• A song for Cary Grant: The Trip by Park Avenue Playground, an obscurity from 1967. And These New Puritans have a new video for Attack Music.

Exposition Universelle catalogue

Regular visitors here will know that the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 is never far away, and this is another addition to the surfeit of information about that event. Following last week’s delve into University of Heidelberg’s digital archives—which I really ought to have properly investigated when I first looked at them last year—I’ve been going deeper into their collection which isn’t always easy when many parts of the site are German-only. One section is devoted to books from 19th century expositions with a sub-section of works concerned with the Exposition Universelle.

The Palace of Electricity.

Among various publications they have the lavish three-volume exposition catalogue which is a real treat to see, not least for its quality. Much of the content is familiar from other books but new views of these remarkable Winsor McCay-like structures are always welcome.

The three volumes are here, here and here.

Main entrance gate.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Exposition Universelle publications
• Exposition cornucopia
• Return to the Exposition Universelle
• The Palais Lumineux
• Louis Bonnier’s exposition dreams
• Exposition Universelle, 1900
• The Palais du Trocadéro
• The Evanescent City

Winter panoramas

Staromestske Namesti (Old Town Square), Prague.

Continuing the winter theme with some views from my favourite panorama site, 360 Cities. These are all from the northern hemisphere, I was hoping for something from Antarctica but it’s not represented there. The view over the frozen tundra at Barrow, Alaska, can stand in for the continent’s absence, however, a white desert which quite chills the soul. Tromsø is about as far north as Barrow but looks a lot more welcoming.

I’ll be taking a welcome break for the next few days so I’m hoping the site will remain stable during that time as I take time out from staring at a computer screen. The continual outages this year have been very annoying but I’ve been too busy to look into changing the hosting, that’s something to sort out in the New Year. As usual, the archive facility will be in operation throwing up random posts from the past three-and-a-half years.

Have a good one.

Barrow, Alaska.

Naberezhnaya, Russia.

Aurora borealis, Lavangsdalen, Norway.

The Arctic Cathedral, Tromsø, Norway.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The panoramas archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Winter music
• Winter light
• Karel Plicka’s views of Prague

Prague panoramas

Now that we’re into the dismal weather, sombre views of Old Prague’s splendour seem appropriate. The pages at 360 Cities have a lot of Prague panoramas—76 in all—including many more of the Viriconium-esque Giant Mantis performance I linked to a few years ago. A shame they don’t do this every year.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Eno’s Luminous Opera House panorama
• Callanish Standing Stone panoramas
• Jaipur Observatory panoramas
• Infinite reflections
• Large Hadron Collider panoramas
• Passage des Panoramas
• Bruges panoramas
• Paris panoramas
• Venice panoramas
• St Pancras in Spheroview
• Karel Plicka’s views of Prague
• Giant mantis invades Prague
• Whirling Istanbul