dog food

from freeloveforum.

I was googling E.A.T. – Experiments in Art and Technology when I came across this collaboration for the Expo ’70 Pepsi Pavilion in Osaka, Japan. The outside of the building was covered by a water vapour cloud sculpture by Fujiko Nakaya. The dome shaped objects in the foreground are six-foot high moving sculptures by Robert Breer, they travel at less than 2 feet per minute and emit sound.

The interior skin of the building consists of a giant Mylar bubble, producing a spherical mirror effect. The bubble was inflated by a slight vacuum created between the Mylar skin and the buildings outer structure. Follow the link, click on the image thumbnails, be amazed.

Grace Jones has a new video.

Steven Shaviro reflects on the video, gender, race, and capitalism and explains why Jones is such a compelling figure.

from PES.

from John Young.

I just listened to an interview with Jaime Lerner (transcript here), president of the International Union of Architects and 3 time mayor of Curitiba. He has many insightful things to say about cities as instruments for change. What struck me, in our current climate of 2020 and 2030 plans, was his three principles for change: keep it simple, begin it now, don’t rush to have all the answers.

People are waiting to have all the answers, but the start is more important, so don’t try to have all the answers, just try to start and the people will teach you how to correct your working process. – Lerner (2004)

Sometimes using the internet feels a bit like that movie cliché where a black van pulls up and a character gets dumped out onto the pavement. Your dazed, you have no idea how you got there, yet things seem vaguely familiar. It was like that today when I found myself on the North American Railcar Operators Association website. I couldn’t tell you what lead me to the site but I remembered these pictures my sister sent me back in 2002 (taken while travelling in the US).

Joss Whedon (writer/creator/director of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, etc.) has a new three part web-based musical mini series. Act I, II, and III are now available! Light, funny (via laughing squid).

John Seely Brown was Chief Scientist at Xerox for many years and the Director of the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) from 1990 – 2000. Some amazing stuff came out of PARC, including the Macintosh personal computer – John has something to say on that towards the end of this video. It’s a long video (almost an hour and a half), it rambles, and the font on the slides seems dated, but John is a wealth of information and experience – there are some gems in here.