Invisible

This is the corner in right armpit of the T where Eldert hits Irving, just opposite our building. I walk by it every evening on the way home from work, and love that the shadow the street signs cast under the streetlight is nearly indistinguishable from what is shit graff, buffed.

Outerspace

Protest Balloons

Seen over Williamsburg and Greenpoint yesterday. The height of each pair of balloons is meant to illustrate the visual impact of proposed high-rise developments along the East River waterfront.

Via Urbanfoto

Sunsets

Westside

Negation

Tano, out of Chicago, just sent Wooster Collective some recent flix. Apparently, he photographs the scenes behind traffic signs all over town, and then a wheatpastes prints of the images to each of the corresponding signs. The result is an illusion of transparency (not unlike the transparent screens image pool at Flickr and MacBidouille), that effectively removes the signage from the landscape. If these images are to be believed, they're very well conceived, and very well executed.

Fading

Please view the full-scale image as well.

Home Lifes

Banksy Remains

Hadn't seen this linked anywhere, so I thought I'd give it some love.

Whatisee.org has posted several images of the walls on which Banksy installed his piece in the Met. They depict the damage inflicted by the "high-strength glue", the only remaining residue of the work.

So, as of Saturday, the museum had not yet repaired the gallery. Any word on the other 3?

Future At Hand

Sometimes the bizarre, soulless future we all predict feels closer at hand than usual. Let me illustrate:

Image 1: Britney Spears' chihuahua, Bit Bit, wearing a mink coat. A miniature, hairless, famous, dog wearing mink. From the Dog's Crib portion of her official website. Via Pink is the New Blog.

Image 2: Eva, an android that specializes in incredibly lifelike (and incredibly scary) emulation of human facial expressions. A QuickTime movie of her in action can be found here. Via Engadget.

Wilmoth

Aaron and Heather have a habit of checking in on our hometown paper's "Celebrations" section every few weeks, to see which of our high school classmates are getting engaged, married; which families are expanding, which contracting; who's siblings are graduating college; which doctors are now delivering the newborns. They're pathological about it, each one always hoping that there'll be some particularly juicy gossip (or even better, juicy images) to forward to the other.

While laying in bed killing some time on the web together yesterday (we just regained fully functional broadband, and are both ecstatic), Heather started to trawl the Gazette-Mail while I read over her shoulder. After determining that Spring was coming, that all the good announcements would soon run, and then analyzing the quality of retouching a West Virginian Olan Mills can provide, we ventured (still wanting more) into the "Congratulations" section where I saw the above image of Lucille Wilmoth (Mama Cillie), and consequently spouted: "That's the scariest painting I've ever seen." It of course, it is not a painting (though I'm tempted to break out the oils, trust me). It's just a terrifyingly lo-res image of an haggard woman, distorted by pure, uncut evil.

Galactic Plane

Please view the full-scale image as well.

Glass on Halsey.

Quotations

"Religion is the opium of the people." - Karl Marx

Darius Returns

I should have spread the word on Monday when I first caught this, but for whatever reason it slipped by. Darius Jones has moved his studio back to New York and has just installed his latest piece, two signs "falling in love" somewhere in the Williamsburg/Greenpoint area. I've been a fan from afar for quite a while now, and can't wait to stumble upon this new work; to enjoy/critique it in person. If you happen know the exact location of the site on which the piece was installed, drop a comment below...

Related: Wooster Podcast #9, "On the Streets with Darius Jones"

Via Wooster Collective and Gothamist

Word Travels

Received with a drink at Galapagos (during The Flanks show last night).

Unlikely Though Possible

Hitting The White Cube

Announced today:

British street-artist Banksy stepped up his game (already A). In New York over the last few weeks, he entered the The Brooklyn Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and The American Museum of Natural History disguised in a beard and hat as a British pensioner. He then installed a piece of his own artwork within each of those establishments, complete with an appropriate frame and artist's statement/informational placard. The pieces remained in place for varying lengths of time; the works placed within the Natural History Museum and the Brooklyn Museum of Art still currently installed.

Images and further information were made exclusively available to Wooster Collective by Banksy.

Innerspace

Entropy

Sunsets

This evening, 6:10 PM.

Los MTA

Please view the full image as well.

Found drawing, Artist Unknown.

I See Shadows

Images from I See Shadows, a project by Dylan Davies.

Via Eyebeam

Missing Absence

Each and every time I make it past the city's paved borders and into fields, forests and mountains, I'm shocked to discover that I've forgotten what silence is; what darkness is; in many ways, what absence is. The same flood of pleasant and empty memories; the same simultaneous familiarity, novelty; the same acceptance that the knowledge will not last, all befall me.

I do not experience silence here, never darkness. Even at my most sedate, sleeping soundly through the night, I am bombarded with far-less-than-ambient sound; my loft is bright enough to easily expose photographs (sans tripod). Creeping in through poorly veiled windows and from pin-prick LEDs, light and the information it often conveys breach what should be as black and silent as space. Sodium-vapor street lamps, a red digital alarm clock, snoring white Apple LEDs, headlights panning across our panes, 6 faint green OLEDs on 6 black boxes, the occasional blink from the smoke detector, the occasional blink from the carbon monoxide detector, and the constant orange sky on any day not crushed under a high pressure system; all conspire to extend my hours of stimulation into a space once reserved for reflection and rest.

With life this full, saturated by employment and pleasure (both now augmented by always-on media appliances), I'm comforted to know that many like myself are beginning to ask: Why? What are the consequences of such toil? What does it mean that I find the silence of the rural landscape disconcerting, that I wake up in the night to check email, feeds and Bit Torrent? How much emptiness, absence is necessary for peace, introspection and innovation? How has our abandonment of the 12 -hour day for the 24 advanced us? Has it? Will we fall prey to the voracity of our collective appetite? Have we?

Thoughts:

The Beneficial Powers of Darkness by Hugh Wilson via Circadiana
Quitting the Paint Factory by Mark Slouka via Heather

Flame Bird Bar

As you may have deduced, I walk down West 13th everyday, twice a day. This small sticker caught my eye this morning.

Slow

Please view the full-scale image as well.

Hudson and West 13th.

Passing the Equinox

I make a point to appreciate these grey days, numbered by the approach of Spring, in which seagulls disappear briefly when they bank, only to emerge as black ribbons when the wind changes direction. Obligations are lower when the day's sun is shrouded in white cloth, and I am happy to presently cower within its comfort; happy to hide from the wave of extroversion I can see on the horizon (gleaming with squeezed smiles and unnecessary skin).

Favor for Violaine

Within

Please view the annotated image on Flickr as well.

So, while we were both still groggy this morning, I tried to convince Heather that she ought to empty her bag for the meme of the moment, Whatsinyourbag. She agreed, admitting that the images we'd been browsing lately told accurate and interesting stories about their creators, and that her bag was bound to house some gems. After I shot the pic, in my pajamas, balancing atop a ladder, she added her own little roll-over descriptions via the Flickr Notes feature. They're wonderful, taking what's going on throughout the whole thread to a new level. Read them here.

Eldert Marks

Texts by the residents of 345 Eldert.

Innerspace

Average

Flickr user, Brevity has created a program that given any tag, for instance the word shadow, selects 50 random Flickr images that contain the tag, and then layers their contents, effectively producing an "average" image of whatever the program is told to search for. The visual results are beautiful, mysterious and muddy, reminiscent of a young oil painting scrubbed down to the canvas, or a Gerhard Richter.

Conceptually rich as well, the computer-created images pose many intriguing questions about the dissolution of the subject, the collective unconscious, the perceived truth depicted in photographs, and the wisdom of crowds. Once again, Flickr is showing great potential in the journey towards a shared global visual memory; I'm beyond excited to witness the kinds of ideas it facilitates.

Image 1: 50 People See a Candle by Brevity
Image 2: 50 People See a Shadow by Brevity

Waiting at The Abbey

Monolith

Holland Tunnel Ventilation?

Quietly

I'd like to open a bar called Quietly.

I haven't given any thought to the marketing. The aesthetics. The location. I've only thought about the sound. In opposition to nearly every club, every dive, Quietly would be silent. Employing computer-controlled noise-canceling technologies in addition to traditional acoustic architecture, the bar would be divided into several discreet sound zones, each completely auditorilly isolated from the next; each only large enough to accommodate a single party. There would be several larger zones to house parties of 4 or more. However, the majority of the space would be devoted to zones meant for 4 or less. While in one of these private zones clients would have the choice of utter silence, only hearing the sounds they themselves make (clothes rustling, their own breath and voices), or their own soundtrack provided by a client's iPod (Quietly would provide iPod docks and personal volume controls seamlessly integrated into the tables within each private zone).

The bar would initially attract audiophiles and people in need of the privacy inherent in a dynamically controlled sonic environment (if each zone is completely isolated from the next, clients would have absolute security within their zone, free of the worry that others are listening), but would eventually catch on with the general public. The experience of socializing in silence would not be initially comfortable to some however, and would likely feel strange to clients normally bombarded by city noise. Comfort with the experience would grow after a couple visits though, eventually enveloping clients in its purity, winning them as customers. The silencing of all background noise would make for a simplified and serene setting in which amazingly well-remembered conversations, debates, and romances would coalesce.

I'm confident that the public, and consequently, the media would latch onto the concept, heralding it as being on the edge of a new macrotrend (people seeking less stimuli, reverting to more "human" and "simple" experiences in a hyper-stimulating postmodern world) and that Quietly would provide the public with much needed, and much desired escape.

How to Disappear

This October the Museum of Modern Art will present SAFE: Design Takes On Risk, an exhibition of design objects and prototypes designed to:

1. Respond to situations of emergency
2. Protect the body and the mind from dangerous or stressful situations
3. Provide a sense of comfort and safety.

Included in the exhibition is the How To Disappear Kit a collection of disappearance articles: tips, gadgets and instructions designed to aid the user in becoming invisible. The kit is packaged in an anonymous video cassette case and will be available to the public via vending machine. Described by the creators, 6 students at Danmarks Designskole, as a reaction to the surveillance society that has grown around us in recent years, the kit is as much about empowering the user to be more visible, to openly defend their privacy, as it is about the common desire to disappear.

Image by Sverre Stølen

Via Near Near Future and Guerrilla Innovation

Innerspace

Cleft

Popsicles
Marriages post divorce
The human brain
Wishbones
Movie tickets
Laura Palmer's necklace
Curtains
Cells post mitosis
Germany, 1949-1990
Korea, 1948-present
Atoms
Juries
Peanut shells
Sunflower seeds
Cab fare
Wood post maul
Coconuts
Peas
The check
Hair

Image 1: Latemate
Image 2: Magic1000

I Love

Written in Hoboken Terminal

Aerospace

Within

Please view the annotated image on Flickr as well.

My contribution to the whatsinmybag and whatsinyourbag Flickr tags.

Within:

Ultra-Pod miniature tripod
Single-zipper LeSportsac
Panasonic 16MB SD memory card
Velbon tripod mount
Panasonic Lumix DMC-LC40 charger
Panasonic Lumix DMC-LC40 USB and AV cables bound with an Ikea Velcro cable-tie
15" Apple PowerBook
Hand-knit gloves
Sony-Ericsson T610 charger
Cassette adapter
iPod
AirPort Express
Apple portable power adapter
Uno bound with a rubberband
United Colors of Benetton wallet containing a miniature NYC Subway map and assorted ID/bank cards
Black Diamond carabiner
Sony-Ericsson T610
Sanrio rainbow pencils, a Sakura gel pen and fine point Sharpies
Moleskine notebook
Keys
Cuff by Hersk and Paul Frank for Arkitip
Ray-Ban New Aviators
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon
Camel Lights
Bills and taxes
Scrap paper
Checkbook and business cards
Swiss Army knife
Ranitidine, Sudafed, Listerine PocketPak Strips, Pill Box containing assorted pills and Visine
Gerber Multi-Tool
Bloc Rhodia No. 14 bound with a rubberband
Triple-zip LeSportsac
Shake and a flake of hash
Bowl
Walker pouch
Sony Fontopia earbuds within pouch
1996 Swatch Irony
New Jersey Transit tickets - Maplewood to Hoboken
30-Day MetroCard
Neutrogena Lip Moisturizer
One-hitter sealed with red Bic Roundstic cap
Bic lighter with child-proofing removed
Bambu papers

Breeze

Please view the full-scale image as well.

Union, New Jersey

Shuttle to Myrtle

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Wyckoff and Halsey, Bushwick