the emerald city

seattle, WA.

o canada

vancouver, BC.

root sounds

at the venice biennale this year, france's pavilion features a single site-specific, time-specific work by celeste boursier-mougenot. to install rêvolutions, he's taken the glass out of the skylights over the central atrium in the french pavilion—a vestibule leading to a large atrium from which three shallow galleries branch off—and painted everything white.

three large scotch pines and their root balls had been excavated entire from the ground and brought to the biennale, still embedded in earth. two flank the entrance to the pavilion; the third, in the atrium, has been fitted with a low-gear motor and moves, triggered by sap flow sensors, slowly and erratically around the space.



the galleries are dim, lit only by reflected light from the central atrium, and have been fitted with silicone foam stadium seating on which one may recline and watch the tree in the atrium on its perambulations while listening to the sound of the pavilion. voltmeters buried around the pavilion measure the voltage differential between the roots of certain trees and the surrounding soil; the pavilion's soundtrack is a real-time signal-processing transformation of that differential. somber, serene, and enveloping, this deep and continuous tone fills the entire space gently but completely.

a transcendent experience to lie in the half light, listening to root sounds.

lightness

Soon I became aware that between the facts of life that should have been my raw materials and the quick light touch I wanted for my writing, there was a gulf that cost me increasing effort to cross. Maybe I was only then becoming aware of the weight, the inertia, the opacity of the world—qualities that stick to writing from the start, unless one finds some way of evading them. At certain moments I felt that the entire world was turning into stone: a slow petrification, more or less advanced depending on people and places but one that spared no aspect of life.

italo calvino, lightness.

hello world

the open-source 3D knitting machine awakes.

on the mug rack

in the andalusian hills.

hardware and software

the traditional sherry bodega's solera system blends wines from casks representing many vintages. this allows each bodega to produce a set of consistent products despite the inherent variation across vintages. it takes years of continuous guided observation for bodega's foreman to learn the patterns in how casks of wine develop and what interventions in their development are possible and desirable.

the complexity and optionality of the solera system gives the capataz enormous freedom to move particular casks into and out of different criaderas and soleras; each capataz makes a slightly different set of intervention decisions; consistently made, the differences in these decisions generate distinctiveness in the bottled wine.

the physical bodega and the know-how of the capataz are, in combination, a large part of a technology for reproducing style in wine.

the fino room at bodegas tradición.
3 plaza cordobeses, 11408 - jerez de la frontera

meaning and knowledge

1. The stranger, therefore, approaches the other group as a newcomer in the true meaning of the term. At best he may be willing and able to share the present and the future with the approached group in vivid and immediate experience; under all circumstances, however, he remains excluded from such experiences of its past. Seen from the point of view of the approached group, he is a man without a history.

2. Every word and every sentence is, to borrow a term of William James, surrounded by 'fringes' connecting them, on the one hand, with past and future elements of the universe of discourse to which they pertain, and surrounding them, on the other hand, with a halo of emotional values and irrational implications which themselves remain ineffable. The fringes are the stuff poetry is made of; they are capable of being set of music but they are not translatable. There are in any language terms with several connotations. They, too, are noted in the dictionary. But, besides these standardized connotations, every element of the speech acquires its special secondary meaning derived from the context of the social environment within which it is used and, in addition, gets a special tinge from the actual occasion in which it is employed.

3. In any culture the highest rank is accorded to one of the three types of knowledge distinguished by [Max Scheler]—knowledge for the sake of domination (Beherrschungswissen), knowledge for the sake of knowing (Bildungswissen), knowledge for the sake of salvation (Heilswissen)—and therewith to one of the three types of men of knowledge: the scientist-technician, the sage, the saint. The social acceptance of this rank order determines the whole structure of the particular culture.

Alfred Schutz, On Phenomenology and Social Relations

don't let your meat loaf

pass. saint-sébastien, 75011;
r. saint-jacques, 75005;
r. montorgueil, 75001.

the surveillance state

travertine

louis kahn's salk institute.

california light and space

early morning (80mph) on I-94, dulzura, ca;
midday at sea port avenue on the salton sea, salton city, ca;
late afternoon on the montezuma-borrego highway, ranchita, ca;
sundown at torrey pines scenic drive, la jolla, ca.

risk

561 valencia, sf ca.
3208 cesar chavez, sf ca.

warm spell

a journey to the west

on the street

bolsover street, W1W.

on the deck

the eclipse

clerkenwell road, EC1R 5BL.
163 bermondsey street, SE1 3UW.
12 little portland street, W1W 8BJ.
grosvenor square garden, W1.

signs of spring

stanhope street, london nw1.

monkfish and herring

moxon street, london W1U.

frames per second

papagaio by gusmão + paiva is worth seeing. (at the very nice camden arts centre until march 29. and while you're there, don't forget to look at ruth ewan's french republican calendar.)

arnesby

a sense of the real

When I was making A Sudden Gust of Wind I knew I wanted to show how the air would carry the papers. Hokusai had already solved some of those problems ... He composed something that had a feel of the accidental. It was not accidental, but he knew how to make it look that way ... There is no guide, it's just a feeling, a sense of the real, how things really are or would be.

jeff wall, in revolver (heft 10).

previously: katsushika hokusai reaches a marvellous stage.

international klein blue

5-11 mortimer street. (and previously.)

responsible for lemons

- that lemon—it's nice.
- it's good, isn't it?
- how often do you replace it?
- every week, in fact. it's an important detail.
- very nice.
- betty up there is responsible for the lemon. she terrorises the sainsburys staff.
- oh?
- it's difficult to find a lemon the same shape as the last one. but she always does.

kettle's yard
castle road, cambridge CB3 0AQ

spring

jingumae 3-16.