With the very busy Schipol Airport just nine kilometres outside of Amsterdam, noise pollution has posed a serious problem for residents living in that sound footprint, which can propagate over an expanse of some thirty kilometres due to the featureless plain that surrounds the facility.
Back in 2008, however, officials seeking to remedy this situation accidentally noticed that when the fields around the airport were ploughed, noise levels dropped. Inspired and drawing on the nineteenth century experiments and demonstrations of father of acoustics, mathematician and musician Ernst Chladni, an architectural firm dug runnels and raised berms to change the soundscape of the area. The symmetrical furrows are separated by the equivalent to the wave-length of the general racket and disrupt the spread of the noise, cutting it in half. The park that separates the airport campus from populated areas has features named in Chladni’s honour—whose brilliance might be most immediately recalled with his demonstrations of sound propagating through a solid medium illustrated by the way grains of sand arrange themselves according to the vibration. Those shapes (nodal patterns) are called Chladni figures.
Thursday 22 June 2017
super sonic
catagories: ⚕️, ๐ณ๐ฑ, ✈️, architecture
Sunday 23 April 2017
kittyhawk oder wo ist mein fligendes auto?
At an airstrip outside of Mรผnchen, Lilium Aviation, Dezeen informs, undertook its first maiden voyage earlier this week with its electric powered prototype, a two-seater vertical take-off and landing personal jet.
The Bavarian start-up certainly has some robust competition, but they are pulling out ahead of the pack with this feat. With future plans for allowing a fleet to be summoned via cell-phone, like hailing a taxi, the aerial vehicle has a range of three hundred kilometres and can travel as fast per hour, and can either be piloted by its passengers or can fly autonomously with human remote supervision, as was done for this test-flight. Learn more and see video footage of the at the links above.
Tuesday 11 April 2017
5x5
รฆrodrome: Kottke wonders if the circular aircraft runway might ever take off
no mister bond, i expect you to die: movie villain dermatological trends
my beautiful launderette: the Pope opens a free laundromat for the poor and homeless of Rome with plans for expansion
nakkaลhane: scenes from cult films depicted in Ottoman miniature style by Murat Palta, whom we’ve admired previously
bring a whistle to a knife fight and pretend you’re the referee: Texas is tendering legislation to name an official state gun—with the Bowie knife being a top-contender, via Weird Universe
Tuesday 7 March 2017
backscattering
Apparently all those deputised to keep the US borders safe at boarding and departures ought to aspire to be as frisky and handsy as Dear Leader himself with the Transportation Security Administration implementing new, more invasive pat-down methods, as Boing Boing reports, that are so aggressively gratuitous that public-relations ombudsmen are already girding themselves for the coming raft of sexual assault cases.
The TSA also ought to be prepared for legal action on the part of the airlines whose experience was already made pretty awful and now even more so. There are far bigger battles to fight but at work we’re still contending with the knock-on effects of a sloppily worded civilian hiring freeze (plus a hierarchical farce that makes me see almost see why there might need to be such purges—though not carried out this way) and we find it the irony of ironies that among the few jobs that are automatically exempt are the Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention (SHARP) officers and unit victim advocates. I thought under Dear Leader’s at least that might be one annual, mandatory training we’d maybe get out of.
Sunday 5 March 2017
data knows best or don’t forget your toothbrush
Via the globe-trekking Nag on the Lake comes an interesting experiment, practical exercise in surrendering oneself to thinking machines that’ll eventually be better planners than any of us—not for virtue of being more adventurous or resourceful but because they can best navigate and game those electronic corridors of optimising deals and schedules and vacancies with far more efficiency than we can summon—in the form of a spontaneous vacation that’s fully arranged by a robot travel agency to specified parameters.
One doesn’t have to hunt for deals oneself or do the booking, and the computer keeps the travellers in suspense about their destination until in the departures lounge of their local airport. Of course, the machine works within your given budget and allows one to exclude places where one does not what to go (having recently been there) and seemed for a brand new service to not do all that bad. The pair enjoyed a nice weekend getaway in Basel and their only complaints were economic ones—the weak pound and the strong franc, but just imagine how perfectly tailored holidays could become if the robots doing the booking and bargaining knew the likes and interests of the travellers even better than they do themselves, pouring over their social media feeds, etc. What do you think? Would you be willing to invest a not insignificant sum of money to have an algorithm dictate your agenda? It strikes me a little like when you veer off-course from what one’s satnav is directing and the device loses its cool and gets panicky instantly, and if everyone started relying on computerised vacation packages, there’d be no deals left to be scooped up.
Wednesday 1 March 2017
7x7
cabin-brew: brewery formulates a beer that’s optimised for enjoyment whilst flying
dynamo: the Earth core and magnetic field is powered by the crystallization of silicon dioxide
faster empire, strike, strike: a clever fan made a modern trailer for Star Wars Episode V
the night Chicago died: the story of how angry white men tried to destroy disco
lift every voice and sing: the lost, forgotten artwork of Augusta Savage
wiphala: the strikingly colourful mansions of La Paz
momofuku: a visit to the Cup Noodles museum in Japan
Wednesday 25 January 2017
7x7
skycots: vintage photographs show how babies travelled in the 1950s on British Airways
fret zeppelin: a tutoring guitar that helps you learn finger placement fast
great railway journeys: tracing the new Silk Road, a train travels from China to London
c: like light, does darkness have a speed?
ะะะขะ: vintage retro-future welcome signs of Soviet towns of science and industry, via Messy Nessy Chic
parfocal lens: it’s the Powers of Ten of dentistry
Saturday 17 December 2016
8x8
sound garden: Dutch Institute of Sound and Vision lets you explore boutique radio stations from around the world
to catch a thief: artist Anthony van der Meer allows his phone to be stolen and tracks what ensues
dichronic: the incredible craftsmanship that went into the ancient Roman Lycurgus Cup harnesses nano-technology
sproglaboratoriet: beating out hygge, ‘Danskhed,’ Danishness, won word of the year
hearth and home: guide to appeasing household spirits around the world
figgy pudding: an overview of the folklore behind Christmas cuisine, via Strange Company
ward & centre: the utopian civil engineering of Ebenezer Howard influenced urban layouts for generations
fuselage, empennage: modular airplane interior could reconfigure itself for long-haul flights for more efficient, comfortable use of space, like a sky caboose
catagories: ๐ณ๐ฑ, ✈️, ๐ถ, ๐ก, ๐, ๐บ️, ๐ฅธ, food and drink, myth and monsters
Friday 21 October 2016
flight-path or airportraits
I’ve been admiring these sleek composite images of planes taking off and landing from airports from photographer Mike Kelley.
Of course the artist had to camp at each location for a few days to amass the right shots, angles and approaches—though probably not all that long considering the volume of air-traffic, and I notice that one of his arrangements captures a milieu that’s very familiar as I drive past the Frankfurt Flughafen on the Autobahn twice a week. Sometimes, by ones and twos only though, a jet will pass overhead and seem incredibly close and looming but I never try to capture that moment, as I don’t need any further distractions while driving. One of these days, I’ll figure out how to safely perch myself in the field or on the overpass. Read more about Kelley’s technique and travels on Colossal.
Friday 23 September 2016
rosencrantz and guildenstern
As a means of avoiding some of the most odious security-theatre of airline passengers, a Danish company is field-testing a smart cart of sort, a baggage trolley that takes the screening process to the queue for much greater efficiency and far less waiting time. Too bad Hamlet’s ill-fated couriers did not heed the advice of airport-security and pack their own luggage—or at least not accept a sealed missive without knowing the incriminating contents. What do you think? Could this device alleviate some of the dread the flying public faces at the airport? Be sure to check out the link above for a video demonstration of this prototype. [Hides behind an arras]
Saturday 4 June 2016
mid-century mฤori
Collectors’ Weekly has very circumspect and well-researched article on the graphic artist Marcus King, whose tenure at the country’s board of tourism (the first nation in the world to create a ministry for that express purpose) helped tout remote and exotic New Zealand to the traveling public and celebrated its aboriginal peoples and culture. Being rather a tough sell, owing to the particular challenges of reaching the island, King and other artists of his time necessarily had to be prolific in promotion. And though a demographic-shift in the availability of global transportation has made visiting New Zealand more attainable, the far-away allure is evinced by the effect that the Ring cycle of Tolkien has had of late as heir to this business of selling a setting. Be sure to check out the full vignette on Collectors’ Weekly to learn more and to browse a gallery of these vintage travel posters.
Saturday 6 February 2016
emblematic
Der Spiegel (liederlich nur auf Deutsch) has an interesting article on the evolution of corporate logos, refined from esoteric and filigreed mastheads to more simplified icons that we recognise today. One can appreciate the images and comparisons in any language and one does not need the captions to wonder how the one computing giant originally was to invoke Sir Isaac Newton’s eureka-moment under the apple tree for its blazon or how an internet browser initially employed the Phลnix rather than the cunning fox or how, until 1949, one German automotive manufacturer betrayed in its ornate design its Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy) roots.
Monday 25 January 2016
flight deck
Forty years ago this week, the maiden voyages of the sleek, supersonic jet liner, Concorde a joint Franco-British collaboration, took place, continuing for twenty-seven years before the fleet was retired. The combination of low fuel prices and industries still slowly being decommissioned as Europe transitioned into its Cold War identity made the time just right for this sort of venture—which sounds like fun and familiar times, four decades on.
The decision to ground the planes and put them on almost taxidermical display so one can wonder and be nostalgic over having never been whisked across the ocean at twice the speed of sound always strikes me as an affront to progress—no matter how elite and exclusive that the manifest tended to be, and was driven in part to the 9/11 Terror Attacks that drained all the romance out of jet-setting and also to the development of higher capacity freighters to shuttle more and more passengers to their destinations, teethed on high-overhead and unchecked competition. Maybe it’s even more retrograde to try to recapture past accomplish, though the technical achievement (at least for something that is commercially available) was never repeated, and though although new break-through in รฆro-space but it would behove one to remember that cruise-goers (or soldiers’ of fortune) are not the heroes that astronauts are, and while space-tourism might be driven by individual investment and could very well lead to innovations in efficiency, that enterprise—purely a commercial venture—also strikes me as giving up the ghost. Like for Concorde, there’s no separate flag-ship and we’re all just classed in different ways—through cordons and charters that might make the flying experience marginally less traumatic for a few but generally, democratically bad all around. What do you think? Can you believe it’s been forty years since the inaugural flight?
catagories: ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐ฒ๐ฝ, ✈️, holidays and observances, travel
Monday 14 December 2015
5x5
box seat: researchers propose turning a remote bunker in the Scottish Hebrides into a station for listening to whale opera
cockpit: luxury jetliners to offer exclusive upper deck views in flight
stream of consciousness: mapping river valleys with LiDAR reveals historic courses
satellite of love: the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 relaunch pledge campaign has been record breaking
Friday 20 November 2015
5x5
antique singer sewing machines: cosplay caliphate labs are desperate to obtain red mercury
genre: enterprise in Grenoble to furnish free short works of fiction so people waiting don’t feel compelled to stare at their phones
space oddity: theatrical preview of David Bowie’s upcoming Blackstar album
b.f. skinner: pigeons can be trained to spot anomalies on diagnostic screenings as good as human radiologists
Wednesday 14 October 2015
fliegerhorst wasserkuppe
Over the weekend, H and I took a little stroll on the leveled summit of the highest peak of Hessen—the Wasserkuppe outside of Gersfeld and just in the Rhรถn mountain range over the state border.
The first sustained, hang-gliding sessions happened here, about two decades after the first mechanical fixed-wing flight—as the properties of aerodynamics were not very well understood until this feat. Interest in the air-sail grew considerably with the end of World War I, whose conditions of surrender forbade German research or use into powered flight, and competitions in glider design were launched centred around the Wasserkuppe and in a few years, test-flights of all sorts of flying-machines, including the Messerschmitt and early rocket-jets, were conducted there. After the war, elements of the American and the French air forces occupied the summit, especially prized for its commanding view into the Iron Curtain, and the radom in the background is a remnant of those days. The recreational use of the mountain, however, was not restricted for too many years.
Friday 31 July 2015
utc or the living daylights
Via the splendiferous and venerable Presurfer comes an interesting survey of the time zone deviants of the world—those who rejected the original international accords that established Greenwich Mean Time to coordinate a smaller, industrialised planet and those who later came to make being out of sync into a political expression.
The article leads with the complex, bureaucratic chronometer of the Russian Federation, which has undergone numerous changes, tweaks and adaptations that usually go under-reported to the world at large—but surely these alterations and alternations are not insular matters. Though Day-Light Savings Time was famously decreed in 2011 to last all year, and multifarious adjustments took place regionally in the meanwhile, no one seemed to pay it much mind until the IOC asked Russia to go back to Winter Time during the Solchi Winter Olympics for the convenience of the Western European audience. Perhaps another overlooked casualty in the Crimean conflict were the two native Ukrainian time zones who saw their coverage much reduced and re-aligned with Russian Time. This piece made me think of another depiction I came across last year of how much the twenty-four time zone deviate from real time of day, according to the Sun. There are quite a few stories of loitering and malingering to explore and reflect on our convention and what reach change (planes, trains, markets and computers plus for whom it’s tolerable and for whom it’s intolerable and out of the question—as it does seem unthinkable and inviolable for some and no grave matter for others) can have.
Tuesday 16 June 2015
5x5
flight-path: merry prankster living near an airport welcomes fretful passengers to the wrong city
i want to believe: nature reserve in Vancouver had the most screen time of any of the X-Files stars
prefab: Chinese engineers and architects construct flat-pack skyscrapers in record time
the place of shining light: holographic projector used to recreate the Bamiyan Buddha
identity politics: 1967 Mike Wallace documentary on the homosexuals
Monday 30 March 2015
five-by-five
tron, troff: vector map that renders cities as if out of the film Tron
sky hostess: gorgeous vintage collection of stewardesses in uniform, via Neat-o-Rama
phoenix: from out of the rubble, a show-and-tell of San Francisco rebuilding and reinvention after the great quake
digital syndicate: a roundup of podcasts to peruse
catagories: ✈️, ๐ช️, ๐บ️, ๐ง, networking and blogging
Wednesday 11 March 2015
five-by-five
another brick in the wand: a German teen cover version of the Pink Floyd classic
family-friendly: prudishness protects the bottom-line
mรคrchen: photographer Kilian Schรถnberger treks across Europe capturing vistas that evoke Grimms’ fairy tales
l'arboricoltura: vertical forest in Turin
beizjagd: Lufthansa to join growing list of air-carriers that allow falcons
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ฎ๐น, ✈️, ๐ถ, myth and monsters