• Piscium
  Old fish illustrations from BibliOdyssey - pretty amazing.
  (tags: art illustration fish bibliodyssey)
• New Left Review - Mike Davis: Fear and Money in Dubai
  Mike Davis on Dubai
  (tags: urban theory city dubai)

Originally from Pruned by Alexander Trevi

Of all the phenomenal spaces concocted by Paisajes Emergentes for their entry in the Parque del Lago ideas competition, our favorite one has to be the open-air theater that doubles as a rainwater storage tank.


(Image by Paisajes Emergentes.)

Or is it a water tank that occasionally hosts cultural events, the itinerary being dependent on weather conditions beyond a day's forecasted precipitation? One can't imagine it functional during the wet season or even during the dry season if rain isn't particularly scarce.

Of course, there's a simple solution: build a floating stage. The number of available seats might then determine what sort of program can be schedule. If mostly empty, a popular band can be booked. If one or two tiers are available, an experimental play. How about a local production of Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses or an avant-garde staging of The Odyssey? A micro-naumachia?

Even in its flooded state, however, the space is still occupiable, a point of interest just like any of the artificial lakes and pools in the park.

Surprisingly adaptable, it's a space attuned to the temporal vagaries of climate, the fluctuating rate of water consumption and the cultural preferences of Quito's residents.

In the Archives:
Rainwater Harvesting in Al-Andalus

Originally from The Clapper



John Daker nailed it. This is very Tim & Eric minus Tim or Eric.

• MiniAjax.com / A showroom of nice looking simple downloadable DHTML and AJAX scripts
  Useful ajax stuff.
  (tags: ajax webdesign web2.0 tutorial ui)
• Prototype Window Class : Introduction
  Great prototype windowing stuff.
  (tags: webdesign web2.0 tutorial ui ajax javascript)

Originally from Conversational Reading by Scott Esposito

Via RSB, I find this nice report from The Auteurs on Georges Perec's 1974 movie Un Homme Qui Dort. The movie is based on Perec's early novella of the same name (published in English by Godine as A Man Asleep.)

The occasion of this report is Dort's release on DVD (although currently unavailable through Amazon U.S. Based on The Auteurs's description (and some of the stills), Dort sounds somewhat similar to Robbe-Grillet's experimental film, Last Year at Marienbad:

In the early '70s Perec and his friend Bernard Queysanne, a filmmaker whose experience had heretofore been as an assistant director, teamed up to make a film of the book. While much of the film's narration—which comprises the entirety of the film's verbal content; there is no dialogue—is taken directly from the novel, Perec jettisoned the book's linear structure in favor of, Bellos explains, "a mathematical construction. After the prologue (part 0, so to speak) there are six sections. The six sections are interchangeable in the sense that the same objects, places, and movements are shown in each, but they are all filmed from different angles and edited into different order, in line with the permutations of the sestina. The text and the music are similarly organized in six-part permutations, and then edited and mixed so that the words are out of phase with the image except at apparently random moments, the last of which—the closing sequence—is not random at all but endowed with an overwhelming sense of necessity."

For anyone who has seen Marienbad, this still will especially resound:

All in all, sounds like a worthwhile film. I'll be looking forward to its appearance on these shores.

Originally from The Triumph of Bullshit

Originally from MAGPIE by Arthur

SERIES: ROBERT DOWNEY, SR. - A PRINCE
“After being thrown out of the house, four schools and the United States Army, I discovered that I was on the right track.” - Robert Downey, Sr.

Robert Downey, Sr.’s early films are just as rebellious, reckless and fun-loving as their maker was in his youth. While perhaps best known for his advertising industry send-up Putney Swope, Downey actually emerged from the early-’60s New American Cinema scene. Breakout hits from the underground movie circuit of that era, his outlandish satires Chafed Elbows, No More Excuses and Babo 73 are as barbed as Lenny Bruce, as absurd as Alfred Jarry and as out-to-lunch as Eric Dolphy. Rough around the edges and all-around hilarious, Downey’s first films stand as landmark works in the history of independent cinema. The Cinefamily is proud to have the L.A. premiere of brand-new restored 35mm prints of Chafed Elbows and No More Excuses preserved by Anthology Film Archives with the support of The Film Foundation, alongside the recently-discovered “lost” Downey film Moment To Moment, and very rare theatrical screenings of Pound and Putney Swope.

Co-Presented by Arthur Magazine

Thursday:
11/6 @ 8pm
“Putney Swope”
shown with
“Pound”

Come to this incredibly rare 35mm screening (using quite possibly the only print in existence) of one of the legendary cinematic fuck-yous of its time. Putney Swope still delivers an brazen, acidic portrait of advertising culture during the height of the counterculture era. Putney Swope, the only black exec in his firm, finds himself unexpectedly elected its president due to a by-law messup, and turns the industry on its ear as his new Black Power-driven company churns out outrageous, taboo-breaking TV commercials (strewn throughout the film like comedic landmines). Truth and Soul, Inc. becomes the most powerful ad company in the world, giving Downey a chance to skewer across the political spectrum, as Swope rises from token black to the fascistic Generalissimo of Madison Avenue. Shot in a mix of both black-and-white and color, Swope plays out in a series of absurd vignettes perfectly sequenced for its original intoxicated audience. Pound, Downey’s barely-released follow-up to Putney Swope (a chagrined United Artists thought Downey was producing an animated feature!), is performed like a conceptual theatre piece, as as humans play dogs with nothing signifying their doggieness–no makeup, no costumes–but what they have to say and think. Trapped in an animal shelter as they await the “doggie gas chamber”, they see flashbacks of their former lives, watch TV and yammer at each other. Downey’s fast-and-loose dialogue, zany musical numbers and broad, wild performances from his large ensemble (including a five-year-old Downey, Jr.) keeps Pound consistently unpredictable and entertaining.
Putney Swope Dir. Robert Downey, 1969, 35mm, 84 min.
Pound Dir. Robert Downey, 1970, DigiBeta, 92 min.
Tickets - $10

www.cinefamily.org

---

Originally from ReadySteadyBlog by no-reply@readysteadybook.com (Mark Thwaite)

The Auteurs' Glenn Kenny reports on Un Homme Qui Dort, Perec and Queysanne's 1974 film of Perec's book of the same name (thanks Robin):

In the early '70s Perec and his friend Bernard Queysanne, a filmmaker whose experience had heretofore been as an assistant director, teamed up to make a film of the book Un Homme Qui Dort. While much of the film's narration — which comprises the entirety of the film's verbal content; there is no dialogue — is taken directly from the novel, Perec jettisoned the book's linear structure in favor of, Bellos explains, "a mathematical construction. After the prologue (part 0, so to speak) there are six sections. The six sections are interchangeable in the sense that the same objects, places, and movements are shown in each, but they are all filmed from different angles and edited into different order, in line with the permutations of the sestina. The text and the music are similarly organized in six-part permutations, and then edited and mixed so that the words are out of phase with the image except at apparently random moments, the last of which — the closing sequence — is not random at all but endowed with an overwhelming sense of necessity." (More...)

• Chuck Spinney: How Obama Won
  Great breakdown of Obama's campaigning style.
  (tags: politics election rhetoric)

Originally from website of caleb waldorf - by caleb waldorf

There will be no t-shirts this time but all this other stuff will come to pass.

Originally from kottke.org by jason@kottke.org reBlogged by caleb waldorf on Nov 4, 2008, 9:07PM

Originally from The Sound Projector by Ed Pinsent

Krautrock Kompendium in Kolour

• A Diagram of the MySQL information schema
  Metadata galore!
  (tags: mysql reference programming information_schema)

Originally from Uncertain Times by noreply@blogger.com (John M.)













John Sayles, Studs Terkel and John Mahoney

Eight Men Out

• Senate Predictions Part Two: The Democrats Get 60 | The Agonist
  Great breakdown of the close senate races that optimistically predicts 60.
  (tags: senate politics election)
• Publishing the Unpublishable
  "What constitutes an unpublishable work? It could be many things: too long, too experimental, too dull; too exciting; it could be a work of juvenilia or a style you've long since discarded; it could be a work that falls far outside the range of what you're best known for; it could be a guilty pleasure or it could simply be that the world judges it to be awful, but you think is quite good. We've all got a folder full of things that would otherwise never see the light of day. "
  (tags: ubuweb publishing poetry)
• GlyphJockey, or, if you will, Glyph Jockey
  Fake baseball cards of rock musicians.
  (tags: photoshop rock baseball)

Originally from BAGnewsNotes by Michael Shaw

Many of you have written and forwarded snapshots from Obama rallies, making particular note of the energy, and in the case of the very large outdoor gatherings, the sense of joy and calm. I'm awed, but not an ounce surprised by the grand canyon-like gap between these personal reports and the experience of looking at similar images through the intensely-amped and all too controversy- or just poll-obsessed media sphere. It's like zen meets crystal meth.

It's because of the difference I'm glad to have this group of photos Alan Chin shot yesterday and last night in Pittsburgh.

I see someone who has brilliantly transcended the cheap tarring of the "celebrity" tag.

I see someone more ready for us than we are for him given how Bush's despotic rule has been mainlining cynicism directly into America's veins.

I see someone who is highly confident but not at all over-confident.

I someone who, in his expression, seems to reflect the steep challenge ahead far more than the electoral task at hand.

What I particularly see -- although the white-corporate media hasn't been all that interested -- is an intense pride welling up in so many African-Americans, young and old.

(images © Alan Chin. Pittsburgh, PA. Oct. 27, 2008)