citius, altius, fortius

Here is a collection of icons or pictograms designed for the different venues of the 1968 summer competition. This set of symbols made for the host Ciudad de México established an international standard that’s prevaded all sorts of gatherings, pointing the way and demarcating usage. I wonder if, given an expansive palette and canvas and absent the potential babel of diplomacy, language would have gone retrograde with such expressions and signs and would have invented or re-purposed them even if the need was not there. Most platforms, real and virtual, have liberal margins and encoding and masking is not necessary but logos are still invented and postal and area codes are as much identifiers as the localities that they stand for. The capacity for meaning to remain recognizable and immediately intelligible while curling in on itself, I think, is a hallmark of good and enduring design.

viva lars vegas or norwegian photo round-up

 I just wanted to take the opportunity to share a few not orphaned but as of yet unused photographs from our Norwegian adventure. On our way home, passing through Stavanger, I caught out of the corner of my eye a street called Lars V--, which naturally I dubbed Lars Vegas.
It was truly a fantastic trip and with a different motif around every turn, it is impossible to distill or censor ones impressions to just a few iconic images. Nonetheless, here are a few.

milkman or pfandtasic

For several years now, there has been a campaign against litter and to promote recycling in many parts of Europe by imposing a deposit on beverage bottles, from a few cents to a significant portion of the cost—like with bottled water when the empty bottles can be worth more than their contents.  This is called Pfand in the German Sprachraum. 

Generally, I am pretty cognizant of the culture that has developed as a results of these fiat containers, which are not like leaving bottles out for the milkman on the stoop—washed and reused, like the phenomena of driving around ones trash, keeping a hamper full of used glass and plastic, the people of all types and means that dig through dumpsters for a Guthaben tossed or couldn’t be bothered with, and even opportunities to donate one’s deposit to charitable organizations right at the supermarket, but on vacation my awareness is especially acute. In Norway, they employ the same system, though called pant there and it’s funny how this special minting influences shopping, not wanting to be laden with a bottle that one cannot return at home, sort of like the coinage that money-changers won’t convert. Someone ought to develop an applicant—although I suppose it would be like a coupon-scam, that could scan the bar-codes that the Automats read and print or etch the appropriate mask, since the bottles have all the same potentially intrinsic recycling value and stores selling them are just following a mandate towards that end.

Speaking of masking with bar-codes, as those QR-codes, able to tag one’s phones, are becoming more and more prevalent on billboards and signage, I began to wonder whether such inscrutable things are for one always connected with what they appear to be, could guerilla marketing be appropriating advertising space and redirecting people to a competitor or something completely different, and whether such codes could be made invisible and less voluntary, forcing one to like something just for glancing at it, tricking someone with crypto-sponsorship into buying one product over another for snapping a photo of some scenic view, in reality brought to you by corporate and not just nature or history. It’s a scary thought—to sway ones gadgets with subliminal messages and what is seen that cannot be unseen

from russia with love or ladies-in-waiting

Over on the side bar, are you seeing those solicitations for romantic services for those wanting to meet women from Eastern Europe, too—or is that just a glitch in my own marketing algorithm? Those advertisements are prejudicial and tawdry and I think reinforce negative and unwarranted stereotypes, and makes one wonder about the threshold for promotion and sponsorship quality. Still, seeing such ads made we wonder what people might say about the girls from this particular Ukrainian locality.

smoking is derpy

dannelsesreisen

Just checking in. Here are some the highlights—or rather anchor points—of our grand tour (Dannelsesreisen) through south-western Norway, with surely many spots in between. Stay tuned for more regular holiday dispatches on our travel blog. I do not quite imagine, however, a disembodied, stern- and Wagnerian-looking Henrik Ibsen presiding over our schedule, though surely such a spectre would be a very good guide.

fjord explorer

PfRC will be taking a bit of a sabbatical for the next few days for continuing adventures on the road—this time to Norway and back. Please stay tuned to our little travel blog, in the meantime, for holiday dispatches and postcards from the great northern reaches.

no quarter or crowded house

Here’s a pessimistic thought: the same mob-mentality that fomented the same froth of bubbles that burst with the real estate market is likewise the authoritative voice on what constitutes a secure harbour, a safe-haven investment to berth one’s wealth and is kettling (purposefully or otherwise) to the same supposed shelters.

Not finding the proposition of holding fiat currency liable to fluctuation at interest rates that are not keeping pace with inflation and an uncertain stock market, people sought shelter in fundamental instruments that were lauded to retain the value that by all rights they should’ve: homes and real property. This trend, however, attached more takers than the market could honestly sustain and some trickery and greed kept up the enticement far too long. Though they have economic trifles of their own to address, bigger markets like the US and Germany are able for the time being to absorb the rush and act as a relatively secure harbor, but brokers are redirecting interest and channeling fear to a clutch of smaller economies to their acute displeasure. I don’t think a Switzerland, a Norway or an Iceland on the mends particularly like being dubbed a safe-bet as the influx of phantom money, held in trust but not benefitting the local marketplace, that they cannot accommodate and is proving ruinous for trade as it over-values their domestic currencies. Consequently, like with the housing sector, or anything else over-sold and amateurish, one seriously risks inflating so-called safe-havens and worse denigrating the commodity that is one’s home—maison, zu Hause, Huset, Húsið, and making it worth less through attribution.