Chris Heathcote: anti-mega

Unearthing the Ruin: Brian Dillon

Chris — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:05:52 GMT

A quick, free talk by Brian Dillon (editor of Cabinet Magazine) at Barbican Lates, to celebrate Robert Kusmirowski’s Bunker in the Curve. It’s interesting and alluring, as it’s a field I’m not very familiar with. It will be explored from a different angle on the 18th Nov, in a discussion about Defensive Architecture in Offensive Times. You can also read a more narrative account than these garbled notes in Cabinet.

Very rough notes (it’s not a topic I’m familiar with):

Looking at the history of ruination.
(Acoustics are unexplored in ruination).

The Renaissance: ruin appears not as object, but a theatrical scenography.
Theatre runs through the history of ruination and fake ruins.

18th Century: “ruin lust” / picturesque.
More poetic fakery of ruination – in English literature.
Ruins give atmosphere and historical background.

Change to ruin study in and of itself.
End of the 18thC: fantastical projection of the ruin into the future.

Sir John Soane – projection of ruination of the Bank of England.

Hubert Robert’s Louvre in Ruins.

Fuseli’s The Artist Overwhelmed by the Grandeur of Ancient Ruins.

Literary: Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey.

Imagining the past and projecting it into the future.

Kubla Khan – itself a fragment, a ruin.

Link between ruination and melancholy – Chateaubriand.

Ruination in contemporary art –

Robert Smithson, an ironic, absurdist take: A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic (pdf)

“the ruin in reverse”, 20thC monuments that dot Passaic, especially along the river, excavated for road building, read as a classical ruin / eternal city.

A dialectical landscape: Central Park.

19thC decayed into the 20thC.

Shuttles between past, present and unknowable future. Projects ruination into the future – the coming catastrophe.

Paul Virilio – Bunker Archeology. Photos taken in the 50s, Nazi Atlantic Wall.

Anthropomorphic structures, modernist. Link between 50s/60s architecture and defensive architecture.

Relics of the very recent that has accelerated ruination, and it talks about a future that hasn’t happened.

90s art – 99 – Tacita Dean – Sound Mirrors. (Disinformation’s prior art)
Future anterior, a relic from the future (now a cliche in culture).
An unlived and impossible future.

Dean’s Palast, 2004 (film of the Palast der Republik)

A highly charged ruin. Now erased from the immediately recent history – to be replaced with a fake Schloss.

Jane & Louise Wilson (e. g.)

A moment in art of thinking about the relics of British modernism.

Peterlee (NTSH, BD)

Now – Hiorns,… Seemingly romantic view of ruins.

St Peter’s Seminary in Cardross near Glasgow, (1, 2, 3 ), under the influence of Le Corbusier.

Murray Grigor’s film Space And Light (apparently also recently reshot, shot-for-shot in the ruins):

(more videos, Urban Splash rear their heads)

Jeremy Millar: Ajapeegel, filmed in 2 Estonian power stations, recreating Tarkovsky’s film ‘Stalker’.

Bunker: foregrounding of theatricality. People want to treat it as immersive, there’s an invitation of textures. Picks up a strand of frank fakery, the spectator is aware. What is the pull/attraction when we know it’s entirely fake? (similarly with fake gothic).

Questions –

Bunkers of France? Art Deco style? – to be covered in the talk on the 18th.

Acoustics of ruin?
Millar’s Time-Mirror, recreating the sounds of Stalker using the power station on the Isle of Grain. Layers of fiction and distance.
There was a project proposal for the sound mirrors, to recreate exact replicas on the French Coast so that they could correspond – too literal. Invention & storytelling needed, a refusal of the literalism, literal resonance.

Nostalgia?
That’s the big inescapable question. At the heart of most recent art. Psychological links between ruin lust and nostalgia, both 18thC afflictions. Aesthetic archeology to be done. So much work about – when you claim to have escaped it, you’ve normally fallen right into it.

all watched over by screens of loving grace

Chris — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:09:19 GMT

On Saturday, a new urban advertising screen was turned on in London. This one’s a little different to the norm though: it’s 176m above the ground, 60m wide and 5m tall. Oh, and it wraps around the BT Tower.

(bad photo – it’s hard to take a picture of)

It can be seen from Aldwych, the South Bank, parts of the City, even glimpses from Clapham Junction. It has a brightness of 3000 Nit (candela per square metre) – or over 810,000 lumens in total. Standard laptops and desktops operate at around 250 Nit, a screen designed to be seen in daylight is 500 Nit, a cloudy day is about 2000 Nit, and the Moon is 2500 Nit. Looking a different way, it’s equivalent to over 1000 60W light bulbs (average 800 lumens).

Although it’s displaying an Olympic countdown, as well as BT branding, it’s designed to be permanent – at least until 2014.

I was interested in the planning permission – so I’ve dug it out of Camden’s website (here and here).

This is the notice that was displayed asking for feedback on the planning permission:

Slightly smaller than 270m2. Unsurprisingly, there was no response on either side lodged with the council. It’s not a part of the city which lots of people visit.

The application focuses on two aspects: that it’s an upgrade of the lighting equipment that has been deployed on the tower since 2004, and that there’s no impact to the listed building itself, and St Pauls sightlines. Construction was started before planning permission was granted.

The proposal does show a mockup of what the screen would be like, but most views are shown with a calmer purple background – there’s one view with a white background, which is considerably brighter.

I’m actually not against this screen, but I do worry that existing planning processes aren’t suitable for things that, well, radiate. Surely something that can be seen in over 8 boroughs should be the responsibility of the Mayor, rather than the borough where the screen is located? Also, paper planning documents are not a suitable medium for adequately assessing the impact of illuminated and animated signs.

In the UK, the advertising networks have kept within current planning by using static imagery on their billboard replaced by screens. In the US, there have been attempts to railroad through legislation allowing billboards to be changed to animated, illuminated signs without any public questioning, such as in Los Angeles (now overturned, but with a lawsuit in response).

There should be a civic discussion about how, why and where screens are deployed in public space, rather than the question being asked per application.

Dressing for Gentlemen

Chris — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:39:25 GMT

London of To-day, 1890:

buildings that sell

Chris — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:18:55 GMT

Russell said some while back that ‘Designers and architects are excitedly planning for a world where every building is draped in an interactive skin… and some of them will be beautiful. But most of them will be covered in unsatisfactory media art, and then, fairly swiftly, they’ll be featuring 2-for-1 offers from the local pizza shop.’

Well, you’ll be glad to know it’s happening tonight in London – a similar technology used for these projections will be used to open a facade advertising network, starting with Waterloo Station.

1730-2200 tonight (29th October 2009), outside Waterloo main entrance.

lampstandard

Chris — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:11:30 GMT

I was rather tickled with a couple of recent stories about reactive street lighting – Toulouse’s heat-sensitive street lamps and Dörentrup’s textable lighting.

I can’t help feeling there will be unintended consequences – will light attract as well as guide? Will people clump together to use the existing light rather than turn on their own? Will people start treating street lamps as familiar strangers? Is an unlit lamp lonely? I text it to let it know I’m thinking of them.

I can’t help feeling that the action/reaction of being able to turn on lights somewhere in Germany from my desk is quite appealing. Is the new street art getting cities on the other side of the world to strobe?

wall art

Chris — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:51:58 GMT

The BBC has another great but offputtingly-named series on BBC4 at the moment, called Inside Antiques. This week’s show is on the history of commercial posters, starting in Europe, through their use in World War I to being revived by the railway and underground companies of Britain. There’s lots of good stuff here, with a sojourn to the National Railway Museum archive, and inevitably an aside about Beck’s tube map.

Watch again for the next 7 days on iPlayer here.

Whatever diminishes constraint, diminishes strength

Chris — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:10:48 GMT

“For me, drawing is an inquiry, a way of finding out – the first thing that I discover is that I do not know. This is alarming even to the point of momentary panic. Only experience reassures me that this encounter with my own ignorance – with the unknown – is my chosen and particular task, and provided I can make the required effort the rewards may reach the unimaginable.”

“The very bleakness and constraints of this uncharted land seemed to hold an attractive potential, as Stravinsky claimed in Poetics of Music: ‘My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint, diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit.’”

Bridget Riley on drawing and the creative process, in the LRB.

anywhere, everywhere

Chris — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:19:46 GMT

I’ve just been inside The O2 for the first time since it’s been converted into an entertainment venue complex. It struck me that the main public ring (Entertainment Avenue) is probably as close to a 2015 vision of a/any UK high street as you’re going to find; generic branded eateries, bars and coffee shops, a few generic nightclubs, a cinema multiplex, a little public art, a mobile phone concierge and only one or two corner-esque shops where you can buy things, all rendered in private/public carved concrete neo-constructivism. And: screens. Everywhere. I stopped counting at 20. None of them really saying anything. I felt a bit dizzy with future-boring-reality-vertigo.

whatever happened will happen again

Chris — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:40:45 GMT

Last Friday I gave a talk at last.fm about modern London, looking at what modernity means, and focussing on the period 1850 to about 1910 – what may sometimes be called the second Industrial Revolution. I showed a few maps, a few travel guides, and some other ephemera. My slides alone don’t do much of explaining, but I’ve included below the main timelines of London infrastructure, and links to various videos and books. I don’t think a lot of people really understand how much of London that they use and experience today was constructed before 1900.

Anyway, it seemed to go well and there was a great discussion about cities and their growth afterwards. It’s always nerveracking doing a new talk, and even more so this time, in a completely new area for me. I’ve really only just scratched the surface of London, even just the last 150 years.

BFI Youtube channel – Solarflares burn for you
London Bridge
Blackfriars Bridge
Rush Hour
Old London Street Scenes
Greenwich Observatory
Colour On The Thames

British Pathe

Google Books – London: being an accurate history and description of the British Metropolis
The history and antiquities of London, Westminster, Southwark, and Parts Ajacent, Vol III
Edifices of London, Public Buildings Vol II

Victorian London – London at Dinner, or Where to Dine

A Dictionary of London on British History Online
London Online Books
Internet Archive Texts (often have things that have disappeared from Google Books)
Project Gutenberg

London Old Maps

Steen Eiler Rasmussen’s London: The Unique City (out of print, but mentioned here)

The Ephemera Society

the informational city

Chris — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:36:03 GMT

Another set of notes from a talk – this time Erik Spiekermann of Edenspiekermann and Tim Fendley of Applied Information Group – organised by the Research Unit for Information Environments & the Institute of Urban Information for the London Design Festival. Titled The Informational City, I was hoping for something, well, modern, touching on the new digital screen explosion in the city (which has been dragged by the marketers into the acronym DOOH – Digital Out Of Home). Whilst interesting and entertaining – never be late for Spiekermann – the talk could have been given pretty much any time from 1960 until 2007: the closest to modern technology it got was the Walk Brighton iPhone app, and Spiekermann’s Nokia font for mobile phone screens. I’m worried that both the academic and design communities are twiddling their thumbs whilst the screen technology is being deployed – whether it’s good or not.

Anyway.

Rough notes, again:

A Sense of Place, Erik Spiekermann

His company: design for places, people, environments.

Installed an espresso machine first at work, it’s a centre for the office.

Architects define the place by landmark buildings – gehryfication.

But cities have been designed by engineers and bureaucrats. Secondary and tertiary architecture – apocryphal, no-author.

Icons: yellow cabs / red buses / black cabs – mean you couldn’t be in any other city.

London – red bus, red phone box, red letter box. 1 icon has survived – the underground roundel.

Paris Metropolitan (art deco) sign – illegible, but gives us 100 years of Paris.

Designed the Berlin transport info system – couldn’t be in any historical style, as there were so many different ones in the existing infrastructure.

If a train/bus comes every 5-7 minutes, people don’t care how long it will be. 8-10 is bad. >10 they get angry.

When info graphics were applied to the transport system, everything became yellow. Totally changed the city.

“Univers is unsuited to signage systems.” – Paul Mijksenaar, designer of Schiphol info system

He’d say Frutiger was the right and only font for signs.

((he showed many airport sign systems – this page will approximate – in fact, I suspect some of his slides came from this))

Charles De Gaulle – turned from the black on yellow to yellow/white on black, as it was thought that signs were acting as lamps. Too bright.

Never use bold on signs. Let sign and type size do the work.

Copenhagen – their own typeface.

Portland – Futura. All wrong. An arrow pointing to the right has to be on the right.

Need arrows on every line / or use lozenges to group as at Heathrow.

Info systems can age – look tired, ancient.

Zurich – Akzidenz-Grotesk. White on black. The Swissest. But, too bold.

Dusseldorf – designed the info system, but lots of complaints. Went back to have a look: the architects had reduced the type size of the signs by 50% to make them look ‘better’.

He disagrees with Paul – not always the same font, everywhere. Fonts are also branding. There needs to be some grammar.

EU made a new font for LED signs (PDF here) – roadworks etc.
Now a new font for the entire EU road network. ((a page about the current European road typefaces, and a “discussion”, including Spiekermann, about transport typefaces))

Austrians introduced it – but had too long names, wanted ultra-compressed version. Created that, but used it everywhere, rather than just where needed.

Nokia – needed a typeface for tiny screens. Created bitmaps in 2000/2001. Now Monotype turned it into a font, now the brand of the company. Only paid 20k.

Y***o – a narrow mobile typeface. Never used. Clear that just changing the font created a branded interface.

Mobile city wayfinding, Tim Fendley

London has 27m new visitors a year. Looking for landmarks. Asking others to find their way.

Feelings on uncertainty stops us making trips.

Two modes: strider vs. stroller. Will switch between them depending on the circumstances.

Need seemlessness: journey planner / tube station / on the street / landmarks / road signs…

But they’re all run by different people.

2004: 32 different sign systems in London. (now 37)

from Legible London research report

Sign on South Bank – 3m up. Trying too hard.

44.5% of people use the Tube map to walk round London.

Very few long visits in London.

Aren’t the tower like in US to orient.

If the architecture is fundamentally legible, you don’t need many signs.

People will walk up to 12-15 minutes in London (less in smaller cities – 5 mins).

A five minute boundary plotted on a map.

People use the tube as safety.
Pockets of knowledge.
Paint the short gaps in between.

Anything that gives character can be used to navigate.

Place cells in hippocampus. Connect together as places in real life.

Nodes and paths. People normally go back the same way.

Experts start to skirt the busy streets.

They got people to draw mental maps.

We do connections, but not directions very well.

Areas / Villages / Neighbourhoods. Give names to these.

Wayfinding is a spatial art. Has to be in place/context.

Scored a number off maps for performance as walking tool:
A-Z 25%
Rough Guide 49%
Google Maps 25%
Legible London 92%
Tube map 12%

Width and character of streets. Added landmarks. Used 3d models where used for navigation.

Show shops and interesting areas.

Added a 15 minute walking map at a different zoom.

All maps are heads-up, not N-up.

Currently 19 signs. More for 2012 (2000?)

Not just signs: in tube stations, paper map to be given away in hotels.

New system in Brighton (Walk Brighton).

Guide books, A3 maps in hotels, online & downloadable.

Created special map for conference venues for Labour Party – overlaid.

Need enough of each map to relate / hand over to next map.

iPhone app coming – not available yet.
(EDIT: now available – iTunes link)
GPS is not accurate, worse in cities.
Shops are shown a different colour – indicates interestingness / areas to go to.
Nightlife view – changes shops for bars/clubs.

Questions

Different mental modes seen on the Internet – searching, browsing – how do these work in cities?
Search is the biggest benefit of going digital.

New tube map / river disappeared. Comments?
Tim: they tried to do the right thing. Didn’t go far enough: didn’t take off operational info/disability symbols.
There should be 30 different maps, depending on who you are and what you’re trying to do.
Erik: decisions are made for many reasons – some social. Anyway, it’s a diagram, not a map. That’s where there’s confusion.

Q about use of digital tools. Get rid of physical?
Erik: GPS means people lose the way. Lose the touch of the place. Dumbing factor.
Tim: Will still need physical, people use mixed media.
Erik: As long as there’s the same logic between.

70 million pounds to put Legible London throughout Zone 1. Far less than, say, escalators to fix the problem at Covent Garden.

Legible London links

Legible London / new maps and signs / background research / Bond Street prototype / 3 new prototype areas

Pics from a Legible London sign on Regent street:

A recording of the audio for this sign.