kennzeichen

Once automobiles in Germany attain a certain age (a calculus of year of manufacture and number of vehicles produced) they are classed as Old Timers (what we’d call classic cars) and have an H added to their vehicle registration plates (see more about German and European license plates and tags here, here and here). Fully-electric vehicles have for the past few years earned an E at the end.
I was very happy to find out that in Poland, antique autos are distinguished with an old-fashioned coach. Vehicles registered to Americans stationed in Germany have undergone several different iterations of markings—going from having them really stand out to blending in.

give me that old time disruptor

Collectors’ Weekly has an interesting review of some of the gimmicky, vintage gadgets of the Industrial Revolution that were touted (at least by the tinkerers who had them on offer) as game-changers for industries yet to be established and plied eagerly on early-adopters.
Some of these inventions and interventions—called revelatory due to the times—or their ideas are still with us, like various punch-clocks and time-verifiers, much like those productivity-boosters and service-tickets built into our infrastructure to make sure our utilities aren’t putting their thumbs to the scales, which is sometimes just as much as a time-thief. What do you think? Some inventions create problems to solve.  Will digital-signatures, encryption, kick-starter campaigns, drones and the formalised sharing-economy (in all senses, models built on gigs and renting out one’s time and property as well as platforms for interaction) look like snake-oil and tonic compared to the real innovations of the age to the next generation (perhaps authentically, 3-D printing, gene-editting and immersive virtual reality for therapy and exploration) and are only capitalising on the excitement of the present? Of course, I suppose the trick is in recognising the hucksters from the brokers and engineers and for most of us, that’s usually only gained in hindsight.

6x6

gaslight: those prim rows of street lamps originally were pilot-lights for burning off excess methane and prevent sewer explosions

glitter ball: surreal street artist transforms a construction site in Lyons into a disco floor

quartz revolution: the role of Soviet Russia in the spread of the wrist-watch

capcom: imagined movie and classic arcade tie-ins that look fun to play

fire-break: network of alarms scattered in Spanish forests hope to combat seasonal blazes

trongs: Japanese inventor designs utensils to make eating insects easier to handle

choreographed geometries

Our thanks to the brilliant Messy Nessy for her extended and studied appreciation of the sublimely strange Triadic Ballet of the Bauhaus Theatre movement of the 1920s.
We had marvelled at the production and revivals beforehand but we were not clued into the backstory, inspiration and legacy enough to be able to enjoy it to the full extent, one always being induced to learning more, like realising the aspirations of Bauhaus itself was in a way realised in the lifestyle engine that is IKEA. The passage through the acts to something darker and more mechanised, formal and constrained in its expression, symbolised synthesizing the Dionysian impulse (which we’d assign to dance) in purely artificial and abstract Apollonian terms—which is ultimately the fate or anything staged and the burden of performance art. In fact, one of the character designs of Oskar Schlemmer that appeared in the third triad became the inspiration for Kansai Yamamoto’s 1973 Ziggy Stardust exaggerated jodhpur jumpsuit. There is currently an exhibit on set layout, choreography and costumes in Metz, and while no troupe is performing the piece right now, you can watch a video of a seminal production at the source link above.

7x7

how about a nice game of chess: Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s platform for discussion on the way machines handle moral dilemmas

dantooine: Rogue One to digitally resurrect Peter Cushing to reprise his role as Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin

flippy mcflipface: from Amusing Planet’s archives, a US naval research ship that can flip from a horizontal to vertical orientation

take this job and shove it: what if we’re deluding ourselves by praising the discipline and structure that work supposedly furnishes?

senior superlatives: humourous high school year book quotations and tag-lines from 1911

champagne wishes and caviar dreams: an essay by Dave Pell examining how celebrity distorts the institutions of justice and democracy, via Kottke

treble clef: clever, colourful tableaux illustrated on vintage sheet music from Russia duo People Too

old-timer

The always fabulous Everlasting Blört introduces us to a classic automobile that’s an absolute Art Deco icon (though considered too pricey at $10,000 and ugly at the time with another beetle more favoured) with the Stout Scarab from 1934, which most credit as the first mass-produced minivan and a later model was the first with modern suspension and a fibreglass chassis. Engineer and contemporary of Buckminster Fuller William Bushnell Stout built his pioneering vehicles—which included a prototype flying car, in Detroit and his line was eventually absorbed by the Ford Motor Company. The source blog, Just a Car Guy, is certainly worth a gander and there’s also a video of a Scarab in operation at the link up top.

colour by number

Far more than just previsioning the popularity and therapeutic nature of the colouring book for grown-ups, British illustrator Walter Crane was one of the most prolific and influential of his generation and really embodies the spirit of the Arts and Crafts movement.
Crane’s contributions were numerous and across many different formats, but Crane found himself increasingly isolated and was blacklisted for his Socialist leanings, his work appearing in many anarchist and social justice publications and scandalised himself by defending his American cousins who incited the riots that lead to the Haymarket Massacre. Unable to curb his compulsion to draw and create—with or without a public outlet, Crane turned to children’s literature, including this 1889 Painting Book of fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Although denied a proper voice among his contemporaries, Crane inserted his thoughts on design and composition and what the æsthetic of the age ought to be within the details of his complex and allegorical illustrations.

pam 21-41

Covering the entire gamut of good manners and etiquette becoming to both an officer and a gentleman, in 1949 the US Army issued a fantastically illustrated Personal Code of Conduct publication for soldiers, not just acclimating those who found themselves newly stationed in strange and exotic locations but also a day to day guide for common courtesies like tact, self-control, respect for women and being ambassadors of good will. I agree that we especially need this sort of civics manual to fall back on in these times.

legacy software

Corroborated with the US Government Accounting Office’s (GAO) annual report, the Simpsons have been vilified in accusing the Internal Revenue Service (the IRS, the tax authority) of operating the “slowest, punch-cardiest” computer in the government—at least, in one sense.
Those who work for the government have enjoyed heretofore some measure of job-security in knowing that their position is justified because different, entrenched systems cannot communicate with one another and need human translators—or at least water-bearers, but often it’s not the equipment, the hardware that’s wholly off life-cycle. Those laurels can be awarded to the nuclear defence platforms running on the same mainframes since inception and cannot be taken offline for updates and payroll systems. They may not be the most sophisticated but that does not necessarily mean that a system that goes on working for decades, with proper maintenance, ought to be overhauled for the sake of efficiency or intelligibility—since they are impervious to attack (at least the lazy, automated kind) and there might be an element of self-preservation in the programming, like the Voyager space probes exploring the Cosmos as our competent ombudsmen.

artoo-deco

Author and artisan Kurt W Zimmerman has crafted an retro R2 unit in a style that evokes the Art Deco movement. Zimmerman uses his droids (this one also being radio-controlled and naturally makes all  the boops and blips that we expect and understand) and other custom props to inspire school children and visit the hospital-bound to and fund raise for raise charitable contributions.

salone del mobile

Thanks to Fast Company, we learn that the late David Bowie was a grand patron of the Memphis-Milano movement having amassed a sizable collection with signature pieces from artists like Peter Shire and Ettore Sottsass.
The collection is so extensive and representative of the group’s work, Bowie’s furniture will be given its own auction and one can preview the lots at the link. Comprised chiefly Italian designers, they took the name Memphis, incidentally, after hearing the Bob Dylan song “Stuck inside of Mobile (furnishing as well as a city in Alabama) with the Memphis Blues Again.”

7x7

art deco revival: Paris’ 1920s Hotel Bachaumont is reopening with all its former grandeur after four decades

sequoia: the puzzling phenomena of the albino redwoods provide a glimpse into how trees communicate and support one another 

travelling far to see the sky: Yoko Ono’s Sky TV installation in remote Japan, via the always discerning Nag on the Lake

suburbia: New York City is getting an underground park complete with Victory Gardens

transhuman: the first Cyborg Olympic Games are being held in Zürich

nightliner: with competition from discount flights and long-haul busses killing romance, Austrian railways are trying to save the sleeper berth

luminophore: self-charging, glow-in-the-dark bicycle and pedestrian paths in Poland 

wainscoting

There is something calming and satisfying about pouring over these meticulously arranged catalogue pages from a Chicago-based interior design company from 1919. These neo-classic varieties of decorative and ornamental buttons, friezes, trims, moulding and panelling look pretty elegant and were designed to be simply pasted onto furniture and base-boards and ceilings to tie the different and perhaps piecemeal elements of a room together as an ensemble.

boxy, boxy lady

Though more or less just reflecting the marketing environment of the times, one forgets what sort of ethnographical insights can be gleaned from ephemera, as in this interesting portrait of the mascot Miss Cora Gated that Box Vox furnishes. The niche blog that is focused on vintage and innovative packaging tells the story of this vixen (foxy lady) dressed in a box that was created in 1953 by advertising executives for the concern Hinde & Dauch, the authoritative manufacturer of corrugated (pleated) boxes.
Miss Gated capitalised on all the popular conceits of the day, including sports stars, Hollywood and Broadway productions, promotional items and toys but also—perhaps uncomfortably, inserted herself into literature and touched on social issues of the past that were apparently acceptable topics of polite conversation (or at least the milieu of publicity) of the 1950s, like the Underground Railroad and slaves escaping to freedom. It’s a really fascinating glimpse into what was considered in good taste for that era and where ads might gain a purchase (I think the bounds of advertising-space and sponsorship change too and not necessarily in proportion). Snap, Crackle and Pop probably never broached controversial or serious societal issues and Green Giant never admitted to his association with the Symbionese Liberation Army or whatever happened to Sprout after that incident with the Monsanto laboratory. A colourful candy, while not a metaphor for potential terroristic elements having infiltrated the general refugee population, did go monochrome so not to take away from the pride movement. Who’ll remember that gesture or that stunt and its place in the future? Now I am wondering about the secret or simply forgotten careers of mascots. The world may never know.

press, depress, mash, hit, punch

With a sense of nostalgia that really is resonant, Messy Nessy Chic curates a vintage gallery that pays tribute to the disappearing push-button—those real, physical knobs and switches that arrayed dashboards, control panels and cockpits as well as gadgets and household items that felt so satisfying to push, and highly tempting to do so despite what catastrophic results might ensue. It’s certainly worth scrolling through all the images, especially the concept cars of future-past, and worth it as well sticking around and exploring more of her website.

6x6

utopia planitia: Elon Musk’s seven year plan for colonising Mars

working-title: David Lynch was once considered as director for Return of the Jedi, originally called Revenge of the Jedi

sepia: amazing true colour slides of America in the 1930s and 1940s

dangerous minds: trading cards of thoughtful and revolutionary intellectuals

forced perspective: one dedicated individual’s mission to document vanishing ghost train ride attractions

pen pineapple apple pen: a bizarre but catchy musical performance by singer-songwriter Pico Taro

wintertuin ou hôtel particulier

Thanks to Messy Nessy Chic for piquing my curiosity with this divinely art nouveau glimpse of the Hôtel Hannon in Brussels, a Hôtel Particulier being a grand, detached townhouse in French. A wealth and successful petro-chemical engineer named Édouard Hannon in 1902 commissioned an architect friend to design him a home in the city. The house was transformed into a showcase for some of the finest art of the period, with fine frescos and mosaics, stained-glass from the Tiffany tradition and Émile Gallé, who contributed lamps, vases and other bric-a-brac. Tragically, the family only were able to reside there a couple of years and the mansion was left to decay, until having purchased the property, the borough opened house as a museum in 1989 after extensive restoration.

5x5

sprockets: historic, confrontational Nazi disc-jockey booth at a gramophone expo prompts a discussion on propaganda, via Messy Nessy Chic

populuxe: lone surviving prototype of Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion kit home, via Nag on the Lake

the story of the hitchhiking bride: fraudulent “ghost drivers” vexing ride-hailers in China, via Super Punch

babel fish: in an on-going series of Icelandic monsters of the month, the Sögusteinn, the tale stone, a sort of egg that when inserted into the ear can answer all questions

curated: the New York’s Museum of Modern Art has made tens of thousands of images of their past exhibitions available on-line, via Kottke 

overt and covert

Beginning with some lines of haiku lifted from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, Hyperallergic explores how the battery of diagnostic tests that psychologists use or purport to use (recalling that for the Rorschach ink blots and the like, there are no wrong answers—just crazy ones) taken out of the clinical-setting and context become accidental-art. I especially enjoyed the primer on the now discredited narrative-type or storytelling exams, like the Thematic Apperception Test or Make a Picture Story that operated on the principle that the subject’s motives and character would be revealed by his or her projections, since our veiled self-indictments must mean that we are repressed or vicarious ourselves.

colossus and curio

After reading about Iowa County Wisconsin’s House on the Rock, a sprawling labyrinthine campus of connected wings built in the late 1940s by an eccentric collector to house an expansive and random collection of artefacts (whose provenance and authenticity could not always be vouched for, so there are no more labels or signs)—which includes the world’s largest indoor merry-go-round, an “infinity room” that juts off the edge of the cliff it’s perched on, a mock Victorian street, wax-figures, elaborate Glockenspiel and other musical automatons, besides displays of historic dresses, chandeliers and Santa Claus figurines, I was reminded of the time we visited the Colossus of Prora on Germany’s Baltic coast and spent a day in its museum.

The four and a half kilometer long compound hugging the beach was to be a monumental retreat for Nazi party members and service-members on shore-leave, a resort with accommodations for twenty thousand and available to all at nominal prices—but was never completed and abandoned.

The East Germany army had used a small portion of the building up until Reunification, when it was wholly deserted. When we visited, one could wander the neglected and graffiti-spattered but sturdy corridors freely, and there was only one central column that was put to any use at all, hosting a youth hostel and a museum, curated by a local family.
Being that Seebad Prora has been refurbished and sold off as luxury condominiums, I doubt the museum with its random exhibits of taxidermy, mock-ups of East German Command and Control and the typical resort room plus the typical East German living-room, geology, motorcycles, grade-three’s artwork, some exhibits defying explanation, a lot of Ostalgie and a Viennese café are there any longer.

It does make me sad to think that there was no room for someone as passionate about history (and wanted to make sure that that place and those times did not fall into total obscurity) as the individual who commissioned the House on the Rock above—and despite the chaos, I do remember that every item was well researched and documented—but maybe all these artefacts got to stay together, somewhere.  That rugged and quiet beach is probably again off-limits to the all-comers as well.

Here are all the images of Prora that I could find from our visit and exploration back in the summer of 2010.  One ought to really visit such places when one has the chance, since one can never say if it will always be accessible to the curious public.