Although not a surpassingly great technological achievement nor a particularly indemnifying marketing ploy (and I’ll confess I’d never patronise this establishment no matter what the gimmick or give-away), I could not get this taut out of my head—these paper-thin keyboard dining tray inserts so guests can avoid getting grease and crumbs (from a restaurant that built its reputation in part for being messy and lugubrious) on their smart phones. I suppose there’s a little bit of harmless fun to be had here—like with selfie-sombreros and display-cases for one’s more artfully arranged meals, but it does bother me that we’re so ready to admit that we can’t put down our phones even at the table and cannot fix our attention to what’s right in front of us. What do you think? Do we need to be encouraged or enabled any more than we already are?
Friday 22 May 2015
dozy doats oder extra-sensory
The village just west of Wiesbaden probably got its name (and crest, a “T”) owing to a count of the court of King Dagobert I called Tuzzo, but the designation Dotzheim was to become an important aristocratic line under the rule of the House of Nassau in its own right and the cast-iron mascots, Dotzi, hung on many of the older buildings at the town centre.
A bit further on (which is why I needed to split up my walk—plus it started to rain) one encounters Schloss Freudenberg—which, for being only built in the early 1900s, has a pretty extensive and complex history. It was completed in 1903 but the youngest castle in Germany dates from 1908, and is included in this collection. The mansion was commissioned by a Scottish post-impressionist painter and his wife but they only lived there a few years—to be later appropriated as a home for expectant mothers and young children of the Lebensborn programme.
During the course of the war, a garrison was built up on the surrounding gardens near this railhead and was afterwards occupied by the US forces. Freudenberg became an officers’ club and casino until 1973 when it abandoned and fell in disrepair.
The castle was saved from ruin by a group of adherents to the philosophy of Hugo Kรผkelhaus, who turned the estate into playground for the senses. Kรผkelhaus along with his promoted exercising ones perceptions to the fullest in order to hone ones imagination and understanding of the world and eschewed the sanitary, inhuman architecture and design that confined and exhausts by removing those things we are made to feel.
Several permanent installations, called experience stations (Erfahrungsfelder), are on display.
The ongoing renovation project itself is also an extension of Kรผkelhaus’ beliefs and is therapeutically defined as the combination of healing and art. There is the further objective of educating visitors in abstractions that are independent of the powers of perception (by cultivating and refining one’s physical senses as much as possible) so that they might apprehend what’s just beyond—like dignity and equality.
As well as being the home and headquarters of Hugo Kรผkelhaus’ movement, Schloss Freundenberg hosts regular seminars and events for kindred organisations and schools of thought. By rushing through I suppose that I was completely missing the point by not playing and discovering fully, but when there is more time, I certainly plan to return and experience all the textures and trapezes.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐, ๐, ๐ง , environment, Hessen, philosophy
Thursday 21 May 2015
five-by-five
finger lickin’: one casual dining franchise introduces Bluetooth keyboard tray inserts to keep cellular phones less greasy
swissmade 2069: a tribute to the lesser-known work of HR Giger
becomes a flotation device: airline safety video featuring every meme and personality from the internet
crowd-sourced: Swedish Hemnet dream home designed by internet traffic
1up: charity arcade games
Wednesday 20 May 2015
room 237
five-by-five
bellum omnium contra omnes: sobering graphic that charts percentages of US lives spent under war and peace
take-away: interesting look at the history of ๅบๅไธไธ—the culture of Japanese food delivery
nocturne: darker sequel to E.T. that was never made
doctor zaias: simian newsletter back-issues
parallax view: China’s space aspirations to reach the far side of the moon
catagories: ๐ฏ๐ต, ๐ฌ, ๐บ, ๐ญ, food and drink, foreign policy
time-lapse or moraines and drumlins
catagories: ๐ณ๐ด, ๐ก️, ๐ช️, environment, travel
Tuesday 19 May 2015
fort morgan or unredoubtable
The pentagon layout of Fort Morgan with its high masonry ramparts was really impressive and surprising, evoking images of the Vauban fortifications we’ve encountered along French beaches.
This megalithic discovery—which although seeming perfectly in place and familiar was still very unexpected for us in its cavernous extent and location, there, in Alabama—was constructed originally to bolster seaboard defences in the aftermath of the War of 1812 (not the striking back of the British Empire as usually portrayed but the North American theatre of the much broader Napoleonic crisis) in about twenty years, making extensive use of slave-labour.
Soon the bastion constituted a hotly contested strategic nexus that guarded the waterways and thus the supply-lines of the Confederate armies and the launching pad for attempts to break the Union sea blockade during the US Civil War.
This project was one of the first major endeavours of the US Army Corps of Engineers, buttressing existing earthen redoubts, temporary forts, along navigable rivers. The term national redoubt refers to an area, ideally some place providing protection, where retreating or defeated armies can withdraw and regroup.
This notion of For- tress Amer- ica also con- vokes a metaphorical turning-inward and the US only, unlike many other countries, had to take a last-stand and make a temporary capitol under duress once.
The fort suffered extensive damage but was not long neglected before the citadel was reinforced and batteries added for the conflicts of Filipino and Spanish-American Wars. Fort Morgan was again activated for the twentieth century’s hostilities but did not again experience the tempo of action it saw during the Civil War and is today preserved as a national park.
catagories: ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, foreign policy, transportation, travel
bypass or great big convoy
Via the ever-excellent Kottke comes this rather profound study and projection of how self-driving vehicles will alter the economy and particularly the gas-food-lodging infrastructure built to support commercial trucking. While it does not take much boldness to imagine a phalanx of safer, more efficient robot guided convoys taking truckers out of the drivers’ seats as it has already come to pass, but the impact does not of course stop with this last lament of middle-class bread-winners.
The article is written from an American perspective and by analogy compares the seismic changes that could occur to those communities that the interstate freeway system passed by and withered for the sake of expedience, but I think the analysis is completely universal. With manufacturing increasingly retreating into yonder tightfistedness, goods are forever being shuttled back and forth. Consuming merchandise created and delivered by machine, vast swathes of the human workforce (and ultimately, all of it) become redundant and without access to meaningful employment. The untenable situation is accelerating to an important junction, wherein either there is no demand to satisfy the production-capacity because no one has the tender to pay for it or money becomes a rather meaningless trifle and in a utopian society, humans are at last allowed to enjoy the fruit of their labour. I suppose that’s precisely the point of progress but it is hard for me to imagine that the robber-barons might herald this event joyfully—especially if they knowing ushered in their own severance. What do you think? Will those automated cars drive us all off a cliff or make our existence better by abolishing capital?
catagories: ๐ฑ, labour, philosophy, revolution, technology and innovation, transportation