[Image: The howling of Hell, illustrated by Gustave Doré for Dante's Inferno]. Nearly seven years ago, we took a brief art historical look at the "landscape architecture of Hell," quoting critic Adrian Searle's description of the medieval abyss: Terraced, pinnacled, travelling forever downward, the...
Morse Road
[Image: Curiosity's tire treads, courtesy of NASA and the nation's taxpayers]. It turns out that Bradbury Landing is also a kind of literary site, an interplanetary Newspaper Rock: the tracks left behind by the Curiosity rover are actually a form of Morse code. The tire treads—wheeled hieroglyphs—spell...
Bradbury Landing
[Image: Bradbury Landing, via the Planetary Society; courtesy of NASA and the nation's taxpayers]. "Bradbury Landing is the first named site on Mars not marked by an object, but by ephemeral burn scars from [Curiosity's] landing thrusters. Project scientist John Grotzinger describes the site as 'four...
British Exploratory Land Archive
Speaking of the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale, I'm thrilled to be an exhibitor this year in the UK pavilion, as part of a collaborative project undertaken with Mark Smout and Laura Allen of Smout Allen. [Image: The British Exploratory Land Archive's "capture blanket" in use on Hampstead Heath, London;...
As if dilating with the secret knowledge of great powers
One of many things you might be missing at the 2012 Venice Biennale of Architecture—which opens this week and runs till November 25th—is a new acoustic installation by Katarzyna Krakowiak inside the Polish Pavilion. Her piece, called Making the walls quake as if they were dilating with the secret knowledge...
Striper
Speaking of the accidental artistry of colorful street markings, artist Simon Rouby became fascinated by the ongoing painting and repainting of traffic lines on the freeways and streets of Los Angeles, like some vast and unacknowledged readymade art project. [Images: Photos by Simon Rouby for "Yellow...
Dot Urbanism
[Image: From Nick Foster's "Hidden Signals" project]. Intrigued by the colorful dots he found spray-painted on the streets of San Francisco, always near drains, Nick Foster began photographing them. [Images: From Nick Foster's "Hidden Signals" project]. He soon learned that these marks are not some...
Maze Machine Garden
[Image: From "Landscape Abbreviated" by Nova Jiang]. "Landscape Abbreviated" by Chinese-born, New York-based artist Nova Jiang is "a garden that is simultaneously a machine." It is an algorithmically controlled "kinetic maze"—a different kind of switching labyrinth—"that periodically generates new pathways...
Roundhouse Foundations
[Image: Aerial photo of the roundhouses site, courtesy of Network Rail]. Another short piece from Archaeology this month highlights the discovery, earlier this year, of the remains of railway "roundhouses" outside York, England. Sadly, they'll soon be covered over by new construction: "Archaeologists...
New York City Sand Pit
The previous post reminded me of a site I've meant to post about literally for years now, ever since first reading about it in Michael Welland's book Sand. [Images: Sand mines, via Michael Welland's excellent blog Through the Sandglass]. Toward the end of his book, Welland points out the role sand...
War Sand
[Image: Geologist Earle McBride's microscopic images of war sand on the beaches of Normandy]. A short piece in the September/October 2012 issue of Archaeology magazine highlights the presence of spherical magnetic shards—remnants of the D-Day operations of World War II—found hidden amongst natural sand...
DredgeFest 2012
Speaking of sailing and the city, Studio-X NYC will host the Dredge Research Collaborative's inaugural DredgeFest symposium and NYC harbor boat tour next month. [Image: Beach replenishment, Rockaway Beach, New York; photo courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers]. DredgeFest will take place over two days—September...
Sailing beneath the city
[Image: An otherwise unrelated engraving of ships in London by William Miller (1832)]. Last week, we looked at the new book London Under by Peter Ackroyd, a very readable, if not quite path-breaking, introduction to the world beneath the streets of London. Roughly halfway through, while describing the...
Tuned Rocks
In an earlier post today, the idea of tuned rocks in a tumbler came up—which reminded me that musician and sound artist Akio Suzuki, known for, amongst other things, his extraordinary found-rock flutes and other handheld accidental instruments, will be performing in Brooklyn next month at the ISSUE...
Field Studies
[Image: Field Studies 2012 runs 10-13 September 2012 in London]. Field Studies 2012 kicks off next month in London. Previously covered on BLDGBLOG here, Field Studies—whose website unfortunately auto-plays sound—"is a four-day summer-school led by three acclaimed sound artists and composers. It explores...
London Bells / Urban Instruments
[Image: Outside the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, London; all photos by BLDGBLOG]. Before leaving London last week, I learned that the Whitechapel Bell Foundry was offering walk-in tours for the duration of the Olympics, so Nicola Twilley and I headed out to see—and hear—what was on offer. [Image: Inside...
