Via Nag on the Lake, we are directed towards an installation, Kirkby Design’s submission for the recently concluded London Design Festival, that rehabilitates and revamps the interior dรฉcor of a vintage subway carriage. The new palette is informed by the dreadful-excellence of traditional moquette (previously) that was meant to durable, aesthetic and invisible all at the same time. I think it would be fun to transform our foyer (or at least the entryway of my little apartment) into something like this and pass through each morning.
Friday, 4 October 2019
rolling stock
Thursday, 3 October 2019
fernsehturm
On this day in 1969 in East Berlin’s Marienviertel, just adjacent to Alexanderplatz, the Television Tower was declared complete, the occasion marked with an inaugural elevator ride by a delegation of high ranking government officials and the launch, the start signal of two stations to broadcast in colour. Opening to the public on Tag der Republik four days later, the tower was at the time, at over three hundred and sixty metres, the tallest freestanding structure in Europe and with its viewing platform and rotating restaurant remains one of the most frequented tourist attractions of the capital.
duplex and double-tone
We appreciated this in depth re-acquaintance with the still in circulation trade magazine The Inland Printer (previously) from Public Domain Review and its dazzling, showcase advertising, meant to underscore the illustrators’ typographic skills and the colour range and technical abilities of the publisher, typified by the marketing campaign of Augustus Jansson (*1866 - †1931) for Queen City Printing Ink Company. Based originally in Cincinnati, the Queen of the West, the company’s reputation, in part bolstered by the popular Art Deco figures of Jansson, allowed it to expand to major cities across America. Peruse a whole gallery of images, a complete colourful menagerie, and Inland Printer’s back catalogue at the links above.
gdp or where art irritates life
Provocative artist Banksy (previously here, here, here, here and here) has opened a boutique storefront in Croydon offering—via a parallel online store, a line of his signature works on capitalism, environmental exploitation, dystopian dragnet surveillance, immigration and foreign-relations.
While also a chance to put the artist’s greatest hits on display for members of the window-shopping public to inspect, Banksy’s admitted ulterior motive comes after consultation with his attorney to seek relief from a greeting card company’s appropriation of his art.
Because Banksy did not formerly produce his own merchandise (maybe this is where all the tote bags come from), another party willing to commercially champion his creations can legally claim a trademark. Hopefully, by actively asserting ownership, Banksy’s can reclaim his own work. Despite this goal, the artist’s invitation stands: “I still encourage anyone to copy, borrow, steal and amend my art for amusement, academic research or activism. I just don’t want them to get sole custody of my name.” More to explore at the links above.
potut pottuina
Overshadowed by his magnificently telling tantrum, the Trump’s White House did manage to open up a second front in his ongoing trade wars with the US Trade Representative, a Trump appointee, announcing that the World Trade Organisation will grant the US the right to levy tariffs on around seven billion euro (one percent of US-EU trade) on European exports—wine and cheese, in retaliation for the EU’s privileging its domestic Airbus over international competition.
We can’t say that the US has been subsidising its native industries in the same way for the past decade and a half of this squabble or whether it’s quite a fair ruling—though it highlights the asymmetry of government support and interventions and how diverting subsidies from staid business models in transport and agriculture would help drive greener and cleaner innovations. Further implication might be the UK becoming even more willing to crash out of the Union with no deal and into an unequal partnership with the States. The EU is expected to respond in kind—though direct countermeasures are not allowed, WTO rules have no jurisdiction on boycotts.
zipfelbund
Since the inception of the holiday, the date of formal reunification rather than events leading up to it chosen in 1990, the chief celebrations have cycled through several host cities, usually state capitals.
Wiesbaden was the setting of 1999’s festivities and created the Compass Confederation, settlements that represent the geographical extremes (see also) of Germany:
the cardinal points being List on the Island of Sylt in the North, Selfkant in the West, Gรถrlitz in the East and Oberstdorf in the South, the towns honoured annually as co-celebrants. Though it took decades longer for the German map to have these extremes and present borders, the most westerly municipality of Nordrhein-Westfalen, Selfkant, was annexed by the Netherlands as war reparations in 1949. The allocation of this single district was the much diminished outcome of an original demand for Aachen, Kรถln, Mรผnster and Osnabrรผck, pared down significantly when the Dutch failed to garner support from the US for it. After three years of negotiations at the Hague, the territory was returned to West Germany (see also the Kleine Wiedervereinigung) in August 1963—with the exception of a hill and surrounding glade called Duivelsberg/Teufelsberg which the Netherlands retains and maintains as a nature reserve.
prager botschaft
To prevent further exodus to the West Germany via Prague, the government of East Germany closed its border with Czechoslovakia on this day in 1989 after some seven-thousand political refugees had camped out on the grounds of the West German Embassy and were granted safe passage on special trains bound for the BDR. The Velvet Revolution is fomenting at the same time as unrest in Berlin, Leipzig and elsewhere ensues and once the border is reopened a month later, another group of East German asylum-seekers cross into Hof, a West German frontier town.
Wednesday, 2 October 2019
8x8
surveillance cinema: iconic movie scenes from the perspective of security cameras, via Kottke’s Quick Links
take this job and fill it: a satisfying gallery of resignation letters
fortress america: Trump wanted to fortify border wall with snake- and alligator-filled moats
๐: a startup in Seattle demonstrates a mobile robotic chef that makes up to three hundred pizzas an hour, via Slashdot
flyover: a cache of gorgeous, high-resolution images of our planetary neighbour courtesy of the Mars Express orbiter
biogarmentry: living apparel made from biofabricated textiles photosynthesise
pareidolia: a surveillance camera detects a face in the snow and won’t shut up about it
