Kept Ephemera

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Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:04:00 -0400

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- Austrian architecture studio Splitterwerk made this “holiday residence which relates to the slope in an alternative way”.

I can’t verify how well it works as a house, but I think they did a nice job in taking what could be very alien looking and composing it in a way which somehow mediates between our boxy requirements and the uneven earth.

And I wouldn’t mind if I stumbled across it in the wilderness. There’s something so sterile about it that gives it such a good juxtaposition with the land beyond. That’s the kind of unexplainable mystery that I really enjoy when I find buildings I don’t understand — these structures that seem to draw from many typologies and end up becoming more iconic in the way they respond to their context.

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Thu, 26 Aug 2010 01:13:00 -0400

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- I’ve been hiding.

Getting used to the short windows of free time I have these days.
So this site has been on the back burner.
You understand.

But I hope to get some images and thoughts up more often now that I’m a bit more settled where I am.

This series of hides and stands in the field is from German photographer Rainer Wengel. I admire the unpretentiousness, the raw materiality, the impromptu nature of some of them, and the common need for a slightly more elevated survey of the surrounding landscape.

I know for me as child, I would never want to enclose myself, but to get higher. Trees worked well to some extent, but there was also that basic instinct to build with the branches lying around on the ground. And what better complement to a tree than a ladder and a platform?

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Wed, 02 Jun 2010 02:06:00 -0400

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- I met Jack Tatum in school. Great guy, and I always loved the music he made under various names. Now he’s finally getting the exposure he deserves with his latest project Wild Nothing, and I’m super excited to be able to see him play this month in Brooklyn at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. It’ll be a big change from the intimate shows in Blacksburg, thats for sure.

The debut album is called Gemini, and if you like the sound you should definitely try to catch one of the shows on the just-announced summer tour. Not sure what the lineup will be, since all the press lists him as a one man show, but the last live show I saw it was Jack Tatum backed by a very great band: Jeff Haley, Nathan Goodman, and Max Brooks.

The schedule:

6/9 Atlanta, GA @ The Earl w/ Neon Indian
6/11 Cincinnati, OH @ Fountain Square w/ Neon Indian
6/12 Pittsburgh, PA @ Brillobox w/ Neon Indian
6/13 Baltimore, MD @ Sonar w/ Neon Indian
6/17 Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg w/ Neon Indian
6/20 Washington, D.C. @ DC9 w/ Depreciation Guild
6/21 Philadelphia, PA @ M-Room w/ Depreciation Guild
6/22 Providence, RI @ Jerky’s Live Music Hall w/ Depreciation Guild
6/23 Milford, CT @ Daniel Street w/ Depreciation Guild

Here’s the official video for Chinatown.
For more songs, news, and info: www.myspace.com/wildnothing

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Sat, 29 May 2010 04:23:00 -0400

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- 2010 summer reading list.

Most likely to be completed in parks and on trains.

"an anemone or we cones careen warm venom veers on eve sonorous moves nor arrears warns means..."

Fri, 28 May 2010 00:58:00 -0400

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an anemone or we cones careen
warm venom veers on eve
sonorous moves nor arrears

warns means nervous concern
succor woman vane verse
moon care swear ensures

morse moan ever careers
serum seam one reason coven
coarseness owner more serene are

numerous moaner can acre
were vows ore moron core crevasse
converse cosmos answer rear ours

snows wane warmer noun unease
anus users owns saw serves
murmur worsens neon mane musers

amen worm earns ear roam
avows essence scorn ace arms numen
vase urn raves no rose arse craven

evanescence covers canon nonsense
maven caesura comma venus sores
waxen sorrow acumen wrens remove

nacreous reverence cavern accrue
curve reserve cancerous come razz
awesome avers summer swarm ease

mourners savor vox manse waxes
cornea craze vacuous avenue usura
consumers vex arrows omen sues

anno scarves sown xenon sermons
manures raze morrow oar monsoon
morn norms scum never rancor

movers mason owes measure mamma
assess murmurous commerce marrow
cruvacious moor amaze creasure oeuvre

surcease mores coarson resume rune
oven croon sonar aura woes
cue mascara cower cuss swerve

vacuum sacrum censure wavers
neo nurses conserve sauna ensnare
cavernous raucous crux excrescence

warren necromancer arson scones
even renown announce acorn souse
corona menace woven morose nexus

azure erasure zero moa raven
veneer recess assumes weave venue
reassure nova memo museum

razor carouse cross zeven rams
screen exzema camera course crew
sour carcass ounce uncover coos

snooze severance wan macaroon
macaw noose rooms consume
recourse cease annex caresses arose

ouzo sorceress crossover scream season
excuse arcana scan awareness
ovum emu mar cameo rows once

surname corns successor rerun
sooner reverse craves rover runners
someone suave rumors revenue nuance

recover rum rowers manner came
raccoon ozone mowers occurrence
seance smear rouse overseer van

rowan eons snare cwms scene
snore sauce us cess amorous curse
ooze amuses sewn caravan ruse

roan access swoon nausea zoom
rue zen weans reave ensconce
currs scour ravenous mace crane

coerce nave overcomes case moss
score enormous swan assurance
resonance severs nonce convene

woo maroon unseen eaves revue
commoner masseur worn narrow cores
concourse manna assures men menu

sax sameness mourns uno craw
summa manor commences narrower
a cursor racecourses arc rescuer

wee recur roars unaware coves
none corner crass sun crevance
ware sass mars seesaw scree

concave saver screw concur
rare enamor renew ass masseuse
cure uncommon seamen excursus

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- This is a poem called a an av es. It was written by Alan Davies in 1981.

What I love about it is its disregard for any kind of traditional narrative or grammar. It’s just a collection of euphonic words. And as arbitrary as it seems, I get the sense that he spent a long time deciding the best order and arrangement of the words on each line, and the groupings within each stanza. But then again, he might have spent no time at all on the composition… And that’s what made it great for me — the poem is what it is, regardless of the construction or intended meaning.

What also struck me about it was how familiar this type of poetry seemed, and I suddenly realized that I see this type of disrupted language all the time — in my junk email folder. It’s the seemingly random generation of a text, as a filler… as nonsense. But not gibberish. These are real words with real meanings… it’s just the bizarre combination that makes it obviously unintelligible. And I always thought the spam was sort of inspiring even in its vulgar mish-mash of dictionary extracts.

But I guess it’s much different (and more interesting) when a discerning human being starts to write this way. It becomes a game of connected sounds and rhythm, even down to the aesthetic of the letters themselves and verbal shapes they make as they are read aloud.

Aside from the syntax of email spam, another linguistic game came to mind as I read this: the rearrangement of phrases into anagrams. I’ve always loved that transformation, and the feeling of uncovering some secret obscurity within the letters of your everyday language. And yes, I had so much fun with it that I ended up using the game as a heading for this website… so what?? Anyway, I get that same feeling of discovery as I read through the poem, only this time there isn’t any original phrase to deconstruct. It’s simply a collection of phonetic harmonies with unknown origins, complete with the abrupt counterpoints which give it that sense of assemblage. Maybe it’s based in artistic taste, maybe it’s aleatoric. Either way, it’s definitely musical.

And in terms of composition, I’d say all poetry could be considered a form of collage… and maybe in a realm somewhere between music and graphic art. Just the combination of words that together bring out a certain meaning. In the case of this poem, it’s really broken down to that basic idea: bringing together words which have probably never been put together in that order… and the sounds and visual ideas that are associated with those juxtapositions are so fresh and new because of it.

Then of course the volume of words, the sheer quantity of this collection… that spoke to me as well. If you know me well you know I love things in multiples, little sets of slightly varied objects, etc. So in terms of repetitive impact, I think this poem really nails it with the gravity of just so many interesting yet similar sounding words.

It was really a little epiphany in my head. I’m thinking, why does a work of art or design have to make logical sense, why can’t it just be nice for what it is? Maybe the act of curation doesn’t always have to provide a justified narrative… sometimes it can just present an edited arbitration for the sake of beauty.

I found a an av es at U B U W E B :: Anthology of Conceptual Writing, found via Chase.
Also, check out more poems by Alan Davies here.

And if you toss your own phrases into this anagram maker, it’ll spit out poetry.

Professor Sambo by Broken Social Scene. A lot going through my...

Thu, 27 May 2010 18:22:00 -0400

Professor Sambo by Broken Social Scene.

A lot going through my mind as I pack my things to leave home.
So much to look forward to and to figure out about myself in New York.

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Tue, 25 May 2010 02:32:08 -0400

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- Great pieces by Japanese furniture company Truck.

A lot of nice clean lines, but there’s still a raw warmth to the wood and a nostalgia in the classic shapes they’ve appropriated. It seems like a fine line between a bunch of thrift store gems and custom handcrafted objects, and the ambiguity of the collection’s origin seems to give that time-tested feeling to each of the pieces.

I’d love to go to Japan and get any one of these. And I’d probably start with that table in the last image…

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Tue, 25 May 2010 01:42:00 -0400

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- “12 rooms”, photographed by Jeremy Blakeslee.

Not sure what the building is, or where, but I love the honesty of the rooms being documented as-is, and the straight-forward and repetitive composition. It’s really nice how the photographer’s framing places the architecture in the role of “control”, bringing out all the subtle changes in light and decaying detail across the 12 rooms. You start to wonder if you would have really noticed all the nuances of a room if it hadn’t been compared so strictly to similar spaces.

It’s a great study in natural light, and a perfect example of statistician and infographic artist Edward Tufte’s principle of small multiples.

By the way, Christina and I recently picked up a copy of one of Tufte’s books, Envisioning Information… highly recommended.

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Sun, 23 May 2010 01:11:00 -0400

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- Brooklyn artist Alyssa Monks painted these. I was blown away when I first saw them, and even now I still can’t understand her mastery of light and water. Really some of the finest realist painting I’ve seen.

The skill is amazing, but what drew me in further was another kind of realism… the brutal, melancholic introspection that she captures, the kind of silent thought that occurs in the most intimate alone times. During the ritual cleansing of a shower or bath, it’s that serene moment when we look at ourselves for who we really are, and have a few minutes to think about it.

Aesthetically though… they’re just so nice to look at. I’ve definitely taken time before to appreciate the smallest details of water and steam like this, but it’s another thing to try and achieve that sensation through paint on canvas. Really impressive.

Be sure to take a look at the rest of her work here.

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Sat, 22 May 2010 23:39:00 -0400

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- Nicola Enrico Staübli, previously mentioned in this post, has a new project. It’s a system of universal furniture joints called INDIE FURNITURE.

The idea is a storage solution designed to reconnect the designer and the user, without a corporate middle man (read: IKEA). After receiving a set of aluminum joint components directly from the designer, and acquiring wood panels locally or from trusted carpenters, the individual consumer becomes actively involved with the creation of each unique piece, constructing it with his own hands. As the aluminum fasteners hold the custom wood in a strict grid, the concentrated design concept is translated across the entire piece, instantly regulating a wide variety of possible configurations and material requirements with one simple repeated form. Rather than disrupting the aesthetic of the wooden parts, the clamps serve to emphasize and highlight the connective details of the shelf as a whole, bringing a compelling and honest form that illustrates its own function.

As a flexible concept, INDIE FURNITURE is non-binding and reconfigurable from beginning to end. The freedom of the initial arrangement and assembly is carried through to the decomposition of the unit, as the robust components are easily dismantled and reused for other shelves. As a straight-forward and restrained design element, the aluminum joint offers an open versatility to a wide range of tectonic possibilities, only limited to the material thickness of 17-20mm. It is an open-source concept of furniture, in which the user’s specific need informs the design, and the language of construction is at its most basic.

INDIE FURNITURE is also a collaborative effort toward a more energy efficient assembly model. With a vast portion of the energy footprint of a product being caused by transportation, INDIE FURNITURE is an opportunity to challenge centralistic business models by outsourcing the heavy and bulky parts to the user himself. As only 6% of the total weight of the shelf, the aluminum clamps offer an easy and accessible solution for local man power to engage the process of design with their own resources and minimal assistance. Since parts and fittings are sold separately, the assembly concept also redirects patronage to community driven craftsmen and the immediate online marketplace. This integration serves to stimulate low-cost and environmentally efficient packaging, distribution and delivery, as well as to amplify the voice of the independent “furniture revolution” through word-of-mouth.

Nicola is one of my favorite young designers, and I’m happy to see that his work with INDIE FURNITURE is currently being exhibited at the Design Museum London.

Check out all of his projects at his portfolio website, Nicola from Bern.

"… There’s an extreme close up of someone’s mouth - a man with a 5-o’clock..."

Sat, 22 May 2010 04:32:14 -0400

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There’s an extreme close up of someone’s mouth - a man with a 5-o’clock shadow, pronouncing the “ü” sound, in different words in different languages.

Now another person, an attractive woman’s jaw and mouth with pale lipstick, also saying similar “ü” sounding words like “moose”, “brooding”, “bündesliga”, “unidos”, “bündner kunstmuseum”, or “Chur”.

Faster… different people saying this “ü” sound… all kinds of mouths at different speeds… cutting from one person to the next but never showing more than the nose, mouth, and chin.

Suddenly the scene is pulled back, and I am somehow a judge, sitting along a table of other judges, like something from the olympics. We are all watching and listening as a person speaks these words while standing at a low diving platform, above a huge swimming pool. Our judges table is also along the side of this pool. The pool is not calm, and its jostling surface seems to be emitting a bright glow from under the water, as if the floor of the pool is fitted with fluorescent tube lights. It’s the only light in the space, and casts an ominous flickering tint on everyone’s faces from below.

It’s in this cool diffuse light that I start to notice the rest of the room. It’s a cavern, a grand concrete hall with a ceiling so high that the pool’s animated glow doesn’t reach it. The surface is old and weathered, and long white streaks of efflorescence paint the in situ concrete down from the darkness. The stoic traces of board formwork seem so heavy and still as a backdrop for the energetic motion of the bluish light from the pool.

As I look around the room I hear an echo, and suddenly realize that I am supposed to be listening to this person pronounce these words, and judge him on his accuracy and tone. All of a sudden I focus in again on the mouths, the hundreds of strange faces and mouths reciting these phrases out of context.

Trying to hear them, I’m immediately frustrated by the echo in the huge space. I am intensely aware of the size of the room as I listen to the sound come off the tongue, hit the water, and bounce into an endless concrete ricochet all around us.

My mind races, trying desperately to listen to the impossibly inaudible words. I seem somehow alone my exasperation. The other judges watch calmly and write notes here and there, while the speaker seems even calmer and more calculated in the delivery of each phrase, as if to tease me with the slow yet indistinct speech.

It becomes unbearable, the endless reflection of sound… it become a din of “s” and “ü” sounds that I can’t take anymore. I jump over the table and into the pool, and the huge splash is drowned out by the echos. Underwater I hear nothing but that calm heavy sound of my own blood in my ears. Relief.

As I open my eyes underwater, I feel an acidic sting of chlorine. I see that the orator has jumped in also, and continues to speak to me though the water’s muffled thickness.

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- Dream log #2

Grey Scale by Fennesz. Listen loud. Warms the bones on a breezy...

Wed, 12 May 2010 02:58:00 -0400

Grey Scale by Fennesz.

Listen loud. Warms the bones on a breezy spring night.

Found this photo today. I was really really moved by it. It...

Sun, 09 May 2010 21:16:00 -0400

Found this photo today.

I was really really moved by it. It just struck me as very powerful and wonderful, that the space where he is sitting doesn’t exist anymore. Just that he decided to sit there, holding a piece of rebar as some kind of offering, and meditate in the center of his pre-solid volume… Maybe it’s just me but I felt this great sense of spirituality in the fact that he is somehow consecrating the birth of that slab, really sensing the strength and openness of the rebar as it enjoys it’s last moments of air.

And for him, later on, to know that he has been inside the place where the concrete now fills… a solid which is never again inhabitable. It’s something very human to idealize a void like that, as a way to nirvana. I don’t know, I just got chills thinking about it.

Image via strange eyes.

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Tue, 04 May 2010 02:38:00 -0400

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- Zumthor.

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Tue, 04 May 2010 00:49:00 -0400

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- The HMS Victory.

Drawn by John McKay in 1987, and published in the book Anatomy of the Ship: The 100-Gun Ship Victory. Even in poor quality reproductions, the drafting skill is amazing. Click the pictures for better detail.

via the photostream of subnutty.

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Tue, 27 Apr 2010 20:00:06 -0400

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- I love this video for What’s A Girl To Do? by Bat For Lashes.

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Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:51:00 -0400

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- London-based artist Nick Gentry makes great use of discarded 3.5” floppy disks.

His arresting portraits are applied directly onto the obsolete disks, with minimal interventions of paint that reveal the colors, markings, and notes that brand each old cartridge. Certain aspects of the disks are used strategically: metal plates for eyes, colored casings for a jackets and hair, etc.

On his website, the artist describes his inspiration:

Throughout history, information has always been recorded on physical objects. Important documents, favourite songs, videos and more were stored on mountains of tapes, polaroids, cassettes and disks. As media is rapidly absorbed into the World Wide Web the rich variety of formats of the past are becoming obsolete.

This represents a big shift away from physical, real world objects, driving towards a human existence that is ultimately governed by billions of intangible data files. This release of information from the physical form allows personal data and identities to now be revealed and infinitely shared online. At the same time many of us consider individuality and privacy to be more precious than ever. Will humans be forever compatible with our own technology?

Each floppy disk used in the paintings has a history and story of its own. It represents the increasing pace of the modern life cycle, where objects are created, used and disposed of quicker than ever. To challenge this notion, as these personal artefacts of life are cast aside, the obsolete are now given new life and a renewed purpose by using them as a medium for art.

I like it a lot. And something about the colors and gritty technology makes me really want to watch Blade Runner…

Just updated my print shop and added a few sketches for anyone...

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:13:17 -0400

Just updated my print shop and added a few sketches for anyone who is interested.

Check it out here: RYPAT SHOP

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Tue, 20 Apr 2010 23:11:03 -0400

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- Need You Tonight (INXS Cover) by St. Vincent & Liars, at Beck’s Record Club.

So good. Amazing voices, and yeah… it just jams.

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Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:37:00 -0400

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- Münich-based Marcus Buck made these amazing portraits of party walls. In each photo, we’re presented with a pretty common urban condition: the residual traces of a demolished building on it’s surviving context.

Aside from the purely aesthetic genius of these unconscious works of art, the colors and forms on these walls are also a visceral reminder of the real contact that was once made to connect the structures. Not only have the interiors been protected from the elements, but they have gained the character and specific alterations of individual rooms and structural elements.

When a data on a digital hard drive is deleted, it is not completely gone… There is a remnant of data left a a result of the erasure, holding bits of information about the contents of those files. In these walls I see that same evidence of life and function. Here it’s just so startling because so rarely do we actually see a physical section of a building in one-to-one scale.

And while totally possible in rural areas, its really a unique condition to the city. Whenever I come across these, I get a really bittersweet feeling… like an exciting signal of new growth along with a quietly exposed vigil of the building’s life and death. The secrets of section that are finally made public.

If the drama of posthumous architectural voyeurism doesn’t do it for you, maybe you can think of the visible remains of a building as a drawing. How often can can the architect visibly recognize his 2-dimensional work on the site? As the process of construction is inherently solid and perspectival, it can’t be read as easily a pure translation from the paper. With the combination of dense urban fabric and the indiscriminate act of demolition, you suddenly have an unveiling of the marks made years ago by contractors. So in fact the alteration of the party wall itself and years of interior customization literally create a physical poché, realizing an actual cut along the surface of the wall.

Thanks to Marcus Buck for the photos and Pruned for the link.

Related: Gordon Matta Clark