Via Things Magazine, we enjoyed pursuing this gallery automobile digital dashboards from the 1980s, which focused more on dazzle and filling the cockpit with placebo gauges and skeuomorphs exemplified especially in this wildly over-engineered 1987 Cadillac Allante designed by the venerable Italian studio Pininfarina.
Saturday 11 September 2021
Friday 20 August 2021
6x6
1:1: a growing collection of architectural models appearing in film and television—via Everlasting Blรถrt
brutsch 200 spatz: an unproduced concept microcar trialled in 1954
hej, hello: the first episode of a Finnish television programme that taught English language skills featuring two very British bobbies and a cat on the Moon
subway: a comprehensive map of subterranean Washington, DC—via Things Magazine
purple prose: the 2021 Bulwer Lytton (previously) literature prize winners and dishonourable mentions—via Web Curios
demosaicking: a biographical history of the pixel and its correspondence to reality
Saturday 7 August 2021
dazzle camo
Via the always brilliant Things Magazine, we quite enjoyed this look into this demonstration project with automotive camouflage (see previously, see also) not necessarily meant to conceal but rather confuse and overwhelm the proliferation of prying eyes, perhaps containing a hidden QR code to throw ubiquitous spyware off the trail and send it down the garden path. Prior to the ubiquity of spy technology, the article also contains an interesting aside regarding how auto manufacturers first explored this type of detailing in order to combat corporate espionage when sleuthing photographers tried to capture images of road-testing prototype vehicles before their R&D was ready for market and perhaps steal their design—these concept cars out in the wild published under the caption, catagory Erlkรถnige (with the less poetic English translation, development mule) after the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ballad about the Fairy King with the opening line Wer reitet so spat durch Nacht und Wind—Who rides so late through night and wind? to refer to the drivers who thought they were being stealthy when they were just rather conspicuous.
Saturday 31 July 2021
7x7
70% cรดte d’ivoire, 66% cyprus, 65% republic of ireland: doodle world flags and let a computer guess—via Web Curios
peaky finders: a selection of interactive mapping application still functional and chugging along a decade later
cult of the sun: a look at the Athon, a 1980 Lamborghini concept carss experiment: an unsuccessful ferry, powered by eight horses on a treadmill
astronomia: a lovely antique deck of playing cards with celestial charts and information on the planets and stars
flsa: US congressional representation introducing legislation for a four-day work week—see previously here and here
google doodle: a selection of the best commemorative banners—via Things Magazine
Thursday 24 June 2021
djet et dรฉcoratifs
Though we tend to mostly imagine the chassis of classic automobiles as neatly unadorned, artist Sonia Delaunay, co-founder of the movement known as Orphism, a branch of Cubism emerging as distinct from 1912 onwards, bestowed a quite remarkable and unexpected amount of detailing to the bodies of older autos, especially in the 1920s when a custom job was very much in order. First living woman artist to enjoy a retrospective exhibition in the Louvre and officer of the Legion of Honour, Delaunay’s introduction of geometric abstraction as a regular and customary feature helped establish brilliancy and the Gestalt across her chosen canvas. More to explore at the links above.
Tuesday 22 June 2021
zagato zele
Courtesy of the always interesting Things Magazine, we discover this delightful electric microcar (see also)—sold in US markets as the Elcar with Wagonette models available—from 1974 to 1976. Manufactured in Milan with a run totalling about five hundred, the cubic vehicles came in seven bold, harvest colours.
Monday 7 June 2021
9x9
glass menagerie: a Murano bestiary on display in Venice
glow up: beauty tips from Ancient Roman—via Strange Company’s Weekend Link Dump
coconuรritter: a short about Foley artists and creating soundscapes
happy little clouds: explore a relaxing gallery of Bob Ross paintings (previously), via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Linksculaccino: a database of words that do not readily translate succinctly, like this Italian term from the mark left on a table by a cold glass—via Swiss Miss
electrobat vi: antique electric forerunners side-by-side with modern EVs
the perils of everybody: a ‘mistake waltz’ that illustrates the pratfalls all ballet recitals are prone to
where the buffalo roam: restoring the ecosystem of the North American Great Plains by reintroducing charismatic megafauna
kitchenette: re-examining Liza Lou’s beaded exhibits
Friday 28 May 2021
8x8
pier 54: Thomas Heatherwick’s Little Island on the Hudson off NYC’s Meatpacking District opens to the public
al fresco: limited edition Rolls-Royce Boat Tail to take picnickingcosmism: the cosmic religion of Nikolai Fyodorov that inspired and informed Soviet space-faring aspirations
astronomicum cรฆsareum: a beautifully illustrated scientific text from 1540
circle of friends: a visualisation of the intimates that one can socially maintain—see previously
rollercoaster tycoon: an engineer explains the different types of amusement park rides
pole of inaccessibility: plotting when the ISS crew are one’s closest neighbours when one lives near Point Nemo
project plywood: non-profit Worthless Studios transforms discarded materials used to board up storefronts from inclement weather and civil unrest into art
Friday 30 April 2021
sffd
Friday 9 April 2021
responsable de style
Via the always interesting Things Magazine, we are directed towards an appreciation and celebration of the life and work of the recently departed French engineer and automobile creator Robert Opron (81932), head of the design department at Citroรซn since 1964 and then working with Renault in 1975—headhunted to develop an ultra-compact city car concept before transferring to Fiat and Piaggio a decade later. Custom coachbuilt Citroรซn Presidentials were commissioned for Queen Elizabeth’s state visit in 1971 as well as this clever CX camera car for the BBC were Opron’s doing and his whole line of models were visionary and iconic whilst working with the major French and Italian manufacturers. Opron’s most innovative and unconstrained design was for the smaller Fiat spin-off Simca with his first foray in 1958 in the bubble-topped, roving UFO called the Fulgur—Latin for lightening. Responding to an industry challenge to create a vehicle for the 1980s, this two-wheeled, gyroscopically-balanced concept (“idea”) car was to be—though not in the demonstration car—was to be guided by radar, voice-controlled and atomically-powered. More from the obituary at the link above.
Friday 26 March 2021
la pista automobilistica
catagories: ๐ฎ๐น, ๐, architecture
Tuesday 9 March 2021
sancta francesca romana
Made patron of automobile drivers (see also) in 1925 by Pope Pius XI due to anecdote that her guardian angel lit her path before her while she travelled, Saint Frances of Rome (*1384) was a caregiver and mystic who excelled as an organiser of charitable services and founded a community of oblates, a mendicant order who lives with the general population and not cloistered, uniquely without religious vows and is venerated on this day, on the occasion of her death in 1440. Living at the time of the Western Schism and wars between rival popes and anti-popes, Francis felt it incumbent on her to use her station and wealth to provide succour and aid to the suffering amidst the collapse of a social safety net and sought to recruit the company of like-minded individuals.
Wednesday 24 February 2021
6x6
street legal: these stunning automobile illustration are from a 1930 Soviet children’s book by Vladimir Tabi—via Present /&/ Correct
conferment ceremony: Finnish PhD students receive a Doctoral Sword and Hat on graduationa coney island of the mind: Beat Poet and activist Lawrence Ferlinghetti passes away, aged 101
train ร grande vitesse: Roman roads of Gaul presented in the style TGV routes across France, Belgium and Switzerland—see previously
epilogue: French electronic music duo Daft Punk disband after twenty-eight years
usps: design proposals for the next generation US mail truck
Saturday 20 February 2021
¼ tonne, 4x4
Saturday 13 February 2021
here we come on the run with a burger in a bun
We enjoyed very much this appreciation of the Cabazon dinosaur ensemble, a novelty roadside attraction two decades in the making created by theme park artist and sculptor Claude Bell (of Knox Berry Farm fame) off the freeway near Palm Springs to draw diners to his nearby restaurant, the Wheel Inn (1958 - 2013). The Brontosaurus, Dinny the Dinosaur, and Mister Rex are made of out of salvaged, reclaimed road construction materials and since the restaurant’s closure, have been host, in a surprising turn, to a gift shop and a museum devoted to doctrine of creationism (inside of Dinny—the Tyrannosaur formerly had a slide in his tail but has been since filled with concrete due to safety concerns)—selling dinosaur related souvenirs with the rather shrill caveat that the “fossil record does not support evolution” (see also) and espousing young Earth beliefs, that place Adam and Eve among the dinosaurs about six millennia ago. Exhibits run counter to a frieze that Bell painted along the internal passage way that portray a scientific point of view and timeline that includes Cro-Magnon, Java Man and Neanderthals. More from Pasa Bon! at the link up top.
7x7
the lady and the dale: a con-artist and the “car of the future”
the lovers, the dreamers and me: after a five-year hiatus Snarkmarket makes a return to analyse and discuss two songs from The Muppet Movie—via Kottke and RSS reader
tennesee tuxedo as a school-marmish cereal cop: children’s animated breakfast commercials often touted dark, authoritarian narrativesi don’t want to be carrot man but i am carrot man: a delightful vintage guide on making costumes
act-out: one hundred eighty-five German stage, television and film stars stage mass coming-out in support for greater representation and gender diversity in roles, via Super Punch
like a small boat on the ocean sending big waves into motion: Trump’s legal defence wraps up a bizarre, specious rebuttal
the witch of kings cross: a dramatization of the persecution that a sorceress and healer faced in 1950s Australia—via Strange Company’s Weekend Link Dump
Sunday 17 January 2021
motown
Via the always excellent Things Magazine (with several other utopian visions to explore and debate in this instalment), we learn about Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe (*1900 – †1996), town planner, landscape developer and architecture and his 1959 project Motopia, which despite its automobile-centric name, really was dedicated to the prevention of sprawl and spill-over and the preservation of green spaces where no car or lorry could encroach—see also. Instead what Jellicoe envisioned was a grid of mixed-used residential towers connected by elevated jetways, whose intersections were all roundabouts following the roofline of the blocks with the option to spiral down to one’s home or office, leaving the land below pristine and even wild. Though never realised according to plan, districts like Shanghai’s Oriental Pearl Radio and Television Tower were informed by Jellicoe’s design. Much more at the links above.
Monday 19 October 2020
i’ll take the high road and you’ll take the low road
Saturday 12 September 2020
rules of the road
Via Strange Company’s Weekend Link Dump, our attention is turned toward traffic planning and the evolution of the parking lot as a cultural and ethnographic study, guided and informed largely through the direction of businessman and civil engineer William Phelps Eno (*1858 – †1945).
Despite (and perhaps because) never learning to drive himself, Eno was an early champion for traffic control and regulation—mostly non-existent before his pioneering proposals for London, Paris and New York, and helped to move street signs, cross-walks, one-way streets, roundabouts and traffic islands into mainstream adoption. Framing regulations, like right-of-way and priority Eno also helped frame the language: to rank was to line up vehicles one behind another aligned with the kerb—what we’d called parallel-parking—whereas to park, was to stand (left for “dead” as opposed to a “live” vehicle continuously occupied by its driver and prepared to move it for the accommodation of others) one’s car at an angle to the street. These new rules quickly revealed the need for dedicated parking lots and streets were becoming more congested and less navigable due to vehicles left unattended. Municipalities attempted to restrict the rank and file to “live” automobiles only but this became unenforceable as ownership increased beyond those whom would or could engage a chauffeur or valet and instead began allocating spaces for off-street parking.
Tuesday 8 September 2020
906 turbo
The always interesting Nag on the Lake directs our attention to a beast of a sedan in this custom six-wheeler constructed by designer and company engineer Leif Mellberg.
Completed in 1984, it was fully equipped with a video screen, a sixteen-speaker stereo system, a police band monitor and refrigerator whose colossal scale recalls these airport stretch limousines, through this model never went into production and became a mobile advertisement for Mellberg’s side business refurbishing Saabs.