tornello

Not without controversy on both sides of the debate, Venice installed turnstiles (tornelli) and gates to limit access and control crowds, suggesting that priority would be given to residents over the throngs of tourists and holders of public transportation passes.
In practise, the move was probably more symbolic and resulted in few bottlenecks or people being turned away entirely and probably did send the signal that perhaps tourists should try to book off-season or head for less popular areas. What do you think? The gates’ detractors argued, however, that perhaps more ought to be done to dissuade cruise ships from dominating the port or cheap flights from flocking to regional airports and divert visitors well before they arrive and such queuing and quotas make it seem like the authorities are affirming and reinforcing the amusement atmosphere already associated with heavily-visited areas.

splash & burn

Having recently been reminded myself how damaging and disruptive the practise of palm oil harvesting can be for society the ecology, this interview with artist and activist Ernest Zacharevic from Colossal struck us as quite resonant and important.
Zacharevic has partnered with an array of international and local artists to raise awareness of devastation that what has been portrayed as a sustainable industry has caused for the people and environment of Indonesia—the former by short-term employment opportunities and a one-time infusion of revenue in exchange for selling off the lands of indigenous peoples and part of the country’s patrimony and the latter by habitat destruction, monoculture and eventual desertification—all exacerbated by the popularity of coconut oil, sourced from the same plant and plantations, and palm oil as a bio-fuel, diverting more agricultural resources from nutrition towards green-washing.

code insee

Despite having muddled through for the past seven-hundred years of letter deliveries and liaisons without the regiment of named streets and numbered addresses, the medieval French town of Sarlat-la-Canéda in Dordogne is finally bowing to pressures from telecommunication providers, who demand that municipal authorities adopt formal street names and put up signage for its pristine fourteenth century old town.
The ten thousand residents of Sarlat, a contender for inscription on UNESCO’s rolls, are rushing to find fitting namesakes for a surveyed two-hundred nineteen avenues and alleyways by the end of May in order to have fibre-optic cables installed. Here is an alternative proposal for a system of geolocators, or rather INSEE (Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques) code, that the request and reform reminded me of. Local guests—the town being the backdrop for a number of historic cinematic protrayals—and national heroes are among the nominees.

calliope

We’d heard of renditions of songs being made with outmoded media players beforehand and of efforts to curate the endangered sounds of technology before for coming generations that might never appreciate the satisfying clangs and clunks of mechanical relays or baud versus bandwidth. We had not, however, sampled the repertoire of any of the artists behind this preservation movement until being introduced by Things Magazine to Paweł Zadrożnia and his extraordinary Floppotron.

pontificia cohors helvetica

We discover via Super Punch that the latest class of soldiers to matriculate into the Pope’s elite (notice that this is now the only acceptable context for that word) army, the Swiss Guard, will be issued as parts of their elaborate uniforms 3D plastic printed helmets rather than the traditional worked metal ones.
Though it strikes me as a bit costume-shop, there’s also surely less impact on the planet in having printed gear—which also burdens the wearer significantly less, though at nearly a thousand euros a piece (but still half the price of engaging a blacksmith) one has to wonder when and how the revolutionary, democratising moment of this technology will arrive.