Posts Tagged ‘city’

The World’s Population in One City

Posted on March 17th, 2012 • Filed under Look • No Comments

This is not a new infographic, but incredibly powerful nonetheless. If the world’s 6.9 billion people lived in one city, how large would that city be if it were as dense as…

(via Tim De Chant)

Read the original post on swissmiss

 

Is Google planning to offer IP video to Kansas City?

Posted on February 12th, 2012 • Filed under Learn • No Comments

Does Google want to provide some kind of IP video service for the people of Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri? We’ve heard the rumors. Here’s another hint that they may be true after all: the Federal Communications Commission has received and reviewed an application from Google Fiber for a fixed satellite, receive-only earth station to be located in Council Bluffs, Iowa—about 200 miles northwest of the two Kansas cities. And Google Fiber is a subsidiary of Google; it’s the company that is building out a
1Gbps fiber-to-the-home testbed for the location in question.

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Read the original post on Ars Technica

 

The Museum of Everything is Coming to New York City!

Posted on January 17th, 2012 • Filed under Learn • No Comments

Some of you might remember some not so distant blog posts about the amazing Museum of Everything exhibition in London last year. Well, for those of you who missed that mind-bending spectacle, I have some great news: The Museum of Everything is coming to town, to join in on the festivities of The Outsider Art Fair.

Full details–taken from their newsletter–follow; hope very much to see you at one of these great events!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
THE SHOP OF EVERYTHING
AT THE OUTSIDER ART FAIR
26TH – 29TH JANUARY 2012
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Touching down at the Outsider Art Fair is The Shop of Everything, a glamorous boutique selling limited edition books, prints & merchandise created by The Museum of Everything & its artists.

The Shop of Everything will be open for business from the 26th to 29th January, with lithograph prints by George Widener, William Scott & Sir Peter Blake, designer dresses by Clements Ribeiro in collaboration with Atelier der Villa & Creative Growth, four hand-crafted volumes from the museum’s European shows, not to mention travel-bags, homeware, casual attire, creative stationary, all discounted for this first foray into the Americas.

Please do not miss this spectacular opportunity to buy a few bits & bobs, shake a few hands & see a few wonderful things. Remember, what we got at The Shop of Everything ain’t available anywhere else … & here’s another good reason why you should come:

The Outsider Art Fair is where many first discovered the great non-traditional artists of the 20th Century. Yet can this essential creativity still be dismissed as outsider art? These artists are part of our legacy, the form the aesthetic fabric of our universe, they must be celebrated & included, not denigrated & denied. Death to outsider art! Long live the outsiders!

The Museum of Everything
January 2012

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SCREENING: IS IT ART?
2PM ON FRIDAY 27TH JAN
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In September & October 2011, The Museum of Everything opened Exhibition #4 at Selfridges of London – the first major survey of work from studios for self-taught artists with learning & other disabilities, & a retrospective of American artist, Judith Scott.

Over 100,000 visitors attended the show & its artists were featured throughout the media. During the Frieze Art Fair 2011, Intelligence Squared hosted a debate at The Museum of Everything with some of the leading artists, thinkers & curators in Britain: Chris Dercon, director of Tate Modern; Ralph Rugoff, director of the Hayward Gallery; artists Antony Gormley & Alice Anderson; Tom di Maria, director of Creative Growth; Roger Cardinal, art historian & creator of the term “outsider art” & Jon Snow, Britain’s leading television interviewer & host of Channel 4 News.

The question presented to the panel was: if someone creates work which we call a work of art, yet that same person cannot conceive of it as a work of art, then what is it – art or something else? Find out what they said in the premiere of the film Is It Art?, screening exclusively at the Outsider Art Fair.

Intelligence Squared presents Is It Art?
(60 mins) 2011

2:00pm on Friday 27th January 2012
Outsider Art Fair

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
THE FILMS OF EVERYTHING
5:30PM ON FRIDAY 27TH JAN
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Narrated live by James Brett, founder of The Museum of Everything, The Films of Everything present an illustrated history of the museum, from its critically heralded opening at the Frieze Art Fair 2009, right up to its most recent installation at Selfridges of London.

Included in the talk will be films recording the museum’s projects at Tate Modern and with Sir Peter Blake, as well as those featured in Exhibition #4, revealing self-taught artists in studios across Europe, plus the BBC2 segment on celebrated American artist Judith Scott.

The films & talk will be followed by a Q+A discussion on the museum’s growing visibility on the international stage, as well as projects in African, Russian and Middle Eastern pipelines.

The Films of Everything
(90 mins) 2009-11
Premiere Screening & Talk

5:30pm on Friday 27th January 2012
Outsider Art Fair

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COLLECTING OBSESSION
6PM ON SATURDAY 28TH JAN
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Find out what it takes to be an accumulator of accumulations, as leading European collectors Bruno Decharme of abcd Paris & James Brett of The Museum of Everything share war stories with American collector Lawrence Benenson & describe the ins & outs of amassing work by some of the overlooked creators in the history of modern art.

Moderated by art historian & curator Valérie Rousseau, the talk will take the form of a discussion panel & might degenerate into a wrestling match.

Collecting Obsession
Discussion Panel

6:00pm on Saturday 28th January 2012
Outsider Art Fair

More can be found here and here.

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Kowloon Walled City Lives On in Videogames

Posted on September 15th, 2011 • Filed under Look • No Comments

1989 German documentary on Kowloon Walled City (English subtitles, Part 1 of 4)

In Kill Screen, Michelle Young writes about Kowloon Walled City as an inspiration for game level designers. The fortress-like Hong Kong settlement once contained 35,000 residents within its 6.5-acre enclosed space. A labyrinth of alleyways, staircases, and 250 sq ft apartments; much of it poorly lit makeshift spaces with unstable construction; it was also largely a lawless enclave with thriving drug trade, mafia, and other black market activities. It was demolished in 1993:

Often, aspects of Kowloon’s architecture and environment are used to impart a sense of repression, confusion, or loss. In videogames, the mafia and undercurrent of illicit activity provided ideal storylines amidst dank and mysterious backdrops. The cramped businesses in the inner alleys, and the jumbled exteriors of Kowloon, gave videogame designers a rich visual vocabulary.

The characteristic that most set Kowloon Walled City apart from other slums was its high-rise, skyscraper form. Videogame design has capitalized on the city’s verticality. In the opening sequence of Shenmue II, we are transported between the normalized architecture of Hong Kong to Kowloon and enter the city as if falling upside-down from the sky into the depths of the Walled City. The distance between Hong Kong proper and Kowloon is greatly exaggerated with hills and wide plains separating the two, likely an attempt to emphasize Kowloon’s “Otherness.”

 

Kowloon was an anomaly in modern urban construction not only for its organic formation, but also for its reversal of standard building aspects: interior versus exterior, street versus roofs. Its ad-hoc construction engendered a maze of narrow alleys and staircases. Think of single apartment units being stacked over time like Jenga pieces—except that the façades don’t have to be match or be in-line with each other. The network was so vast that it was possible to cross from one side of the city to another without touching the ground once. In essence, the roads were on the roofs and inside the buildings.

The “Kowloon” map in Call of Duty: Black Ops takes advantage of this reversal of streets and roofs by focusing all play on the upper levels of the city. A common experience by players when first playing the map is, “Where the hell am I?” A video DailyMotion goes through the space: “Obviously,” narrator Kevin Kelly says, “This map takes a little bit of time to learn.” Without streets, you traverse over planks, ramps, ladders, rooftops; there’s even a zip-line to take you to the other side of the map. Each building has multiple entrances and levels, and there are many opportunities to fall. At the same time, however, the irregularity of the architecture creates vantage spots for snipers, and nooks in which to hide

…

It is because Kowloon was both real and anomalous that it has captured the imagination of videogame designers. The space lends itself to both highly realistic rendering, as in Black Ops; and mythical spaces, as in Kowloon’s Gate. The real Kowloon City was a place beyond the reach of government regulation until its demolition before the handover of Hong Kong. Perhaps it is only fitting that John Woo’s Stranglehold shows Kowloon destroyed not by the hands of Big Brother, but by the inhabitants themselves, in a continuously crumbling space vulnerable to collapse by Triad gang warfare.

 

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