palimpsest

I’ve found myself obsessed too with the concept of ghostly signage and the forgotten, former incarnations of buildings for quite some time, and so was really excited to learn about this hybrid of projection mapping, light show and augmented reality experience on the streets of London to reveal the past superimposed upon the present. One can even take tours of selected districts in the city and follow a historic narrative that says volumes. Be sure to visit Fast Company at the link above to learn more about this project and its plans to expand.

pro-bono or controlling-share

Rather than yielding to investor demands that the social media giant sell out to the highest bidder and thus loose its independent voice (Yahoo! was once offered the Facebook and where are they now?), I thought that a government, like the tech-haven Iceland, ought to swoop in and operate Twitter for the public good, sort of like an NPR of socials.
Despite the ability of Twitter to turn a profit, those charged with maximising returns are sensing the opportunity for a windfall—however that’s reckoned in business terms. There is another avenue to explore, as Boing Boing informs, that may be for the good of all stakeholders in allowing the users to take it over (in the sense of financial stewardship) and run it as a cooperative venture. As the proposal points out, and not being a follower of the sports ball really, I would have never appreciated the genius of this model, there’s a parallel to be found in the premier status that the small town of Green Bay in the state of Wisconsin has retained over all these years and the last of its kind. The Packers (named for Acme tinned meat company) are owned by their fans and have never been the playthings of billionaire investors. What do you think? Greed tempers censorship as much as any other ideology.

parity of esteem

Since first hearing about the small village outside of Antwerp over the summer on NPR’s Invisibilia, I’ve really been intrigued about the story of Geel and its approach to addressing mental illness and appreciated Hyperallergic’s giving the community and its mission further exposure. After becoming a pilgrimage destination for the mentally ill in the late twelfth century, the villagers have hosted displaced and alienated souls, bringing them into their homes and providing a course of treatment and therapy that doesn’t try to make their guests conform.
This unusual patronage is traced back to the daughter of a pagan Irish chieftain and a Christian mother, called Dymphna (Little Fawn) who herself converted to Christianity against her father’s will. Dymphna’s mother passed away when she was a teenager and her father became absolutely inconsolable, quickly descending into depression. His courtiers pleaded with him to re-marry, and reluctantly, the chieftain agreed, provided he could find one as beautiful and charming as his lost wife. The chieftain’s overtures turned towards the teenaged Dymphna, and fearing what would come next, she fled to Belgium with her confessor and, oddly, the Court Jester. Dymphna and her crew problem would have never been found, but at Geel, where they settled she founded a hospital for the poor and suffering and her charity eventually made its way back to Ireland. Her father went to Geel to retrieve Dymphna but she refused at which point her father beheaded her. Though perhaps not the imbalanced party and unsuccessful at that particular juncture, many of the demon-plagued who visited the place of her veneration were pronounced cured of their condition, maybe not advancing the understanding of mental disorders in the broader public awareness but at least reducing the social stigma on a local level. The lives of the boarders are chronicled in a series of photographs that blurs the distinction between guest and host and is in stark contrast with the usual methods of reintegration through institution.

wainscoting

There is something calming and satisfying about pouring over these meticulously arranged catalogue pages from a Chicago-based interior design company from 1919. These neo-classic varieties of decorative and ornamental buttons, friezes, trims, moulding and panelling look pretty elegant and were designed to be simply pasted onto furniture and base-boards and ceilings to tie the different and perhaps piecemeal elements of a room together as an ensemble.

cocktail hour

Discerning gourmand Nag on the Lake had two successive food and drinks posts that paired very well together indeed. First, there were the exquisite still-lives of artist Greg Stroube who imagined how the Renaissance masters might depict a Bloody Mary or a Lime Rickey with all its garnish and the hyper-realistic detail of Bellini (also the name of a cocktail, Prosecco and peach nectar) or Vermeer.
These delights of and for the palette are then served up with a selection of sumptuous recipes from the mind of Salvador Dalí from a cookbook being reissued over forty years after its first and only print run. The surreal and bizarre cult cookbook called Les Diners de Gala has over a hundred illustrated recipes—of the strange and decadent variety, like toffee and pinecones or frog pastries. Be sure to indulge more delectable delights on Nag on the Lake.