adam in the world

Today I saw the movie 9/11 revisited. It supports the claims that the official explanation of the collapse of the towers are completely inadequate. And it hints at implications of the more (only?!) plausible explanation. Watch it. It's seems interesting and relevant... but also to good/bad to be true. Certainly not boring.

LINK

I, on the other hand have my own theory... dug out of an old Donald Duck magazine... how couold they have known, years before. Disney? Well, he's conveniently dead... to good/bad to be true you say....hmmmm...

UPDATE!!

An anonymous (...hmmm .... yes - I am suspicious too... ) comment to this post has revealed this picture:

Coincidence? I don't think so! This smells of... something....

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Danish online poetry magazine Afsnit P have today opened the online exhibition Svevedikt (floatpoem) by Norwegian poet Ottar Ormstadt. Obviously most fun if you can read scandiwanian of some kind... but still... it's very visual poetry...

LINK

Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking ... and I'm thinking it too. But to begin with all I'm talking about is this project:

Distance tactile ball - 2 tracking balls connected via radio tranceivers, push one and the other one repeats the movement in realtime. Enabling people to do longdistance physical communication.
I'm sure this is technically difficult to achieve for one lonesome design student. But it's not really interesting either, too banal imho, not getting to the core of things.

Here's another attempt - connected by mobile phones, through these devices a grandmother in Chicago can hug her grandchild in Alaska.

Slightly more advanced... but still... (not to mention the fact that this concept should make sense to both a 75 and a 2 year old). And it's even thought up by people at MIT.

Then where is the real things happening? I'll tell you: In the field known by the technical term "Dildonics". From a reliable source I've been told that the only people doing serious non-commercial research in this are, surprise, the Germans. But I'm sure that is nothing compared to what the porn industry is pushing into it.... unfortunately, with their limited imagination, they don't seem to have gotten much further than this:

But don't despair - Dildonics has got it's future in front of it. Domain name phishing is happening and the opensource community is on to it as well. Just wait. The future is coming. I'm sure. And I'll be there, waiting, to use their filthy technology for something that really matters (yes, the rumors are true - there are other things in life than sex).

kowloon

I've written about this place before before and it deserves an update.

On the forum of the SkyscraperPage, there is a thread which I belive must be the biggest collection of info and pictures of Kowloon Walled city on the net.

LINK

orchard

From the Shelter Series by Anthony Goicolea.

"The composed wooded scenes depicted in many of the photos are bisected into two halves and are often times seen as a cross-section of themselves." ... hmmm, interesting...

via (I think, but it's old): pruned

Full title of this sculpture: Monument to Pro-Life: The birth of Sean Preston... so, to get all this straight - This is a sculpture of Britney spears giving birth on a bear rug... and it's not a joke, but a serious pro-life, anti abortion, statement... wow... by artist Daniel Edwards.

Read all about it! ...(and more pictures too)

Via Beautiful Destruction

...ok, I'll go and do something sensible now...hmmm....

UPDATE: After having been brought to the worlds attention here on Adam in the World, the more mainstream media have now picked up the story... fx BBC and CNN .... BUT does this mean that what we've all been waiting for might soon appear - the picture from BEHIND!??

A modest flower for a very simple girl soon...
Originally uploaded by thiooof.

What a body! Whish I could make mechanics as complex and beautiful as this. Pic taken by Thioof - I've shown a bit of his stuff before.

My uncle H. Pigeon in a tOpical moment...
Originally uploaded by Anandamide.

A family album of a most unusual family. Fx. Anandamide's great great grandfather was one of the police officers responsible for the arrest of Pinnochio.

And don't miss his drawings either.

Swarm - a sound installation by Dr. Nigel Helyer. He seem to be making a whole lot of very delicious projects.

Oh, and I've put up a new link too - to fabulist, another one of them blogs that gathers all the best finds of the net... just like mine ... I've found a few interesting things there.

Aaand I'm doing my final project at the moment. An extra bit of excitement in an otherwise dull and grey period. Got some stuff from that on flickr

If reading the post below is to much for you, here's something more suited to your weekend hangovers, a nice little hartbreaking movie about a ghost girl who finds a teddy bear: Spook

Via Wurzeltod

And here's just another little, but hilarious, one from the filmschool in Vancouver: Jameel

Enjoy.

In between reading all I can find about situationists, I do take a little time to actually work on my project. This is a sneakpreview of my Travel Companion™. So far it's a plaster "egg", the size of a small dog. On the basis of this I'm gonna make it as a shell of wax, the same basic principle as THIS.
It's to be carried along on a route through the city, registering this walk, this route, in the deformations and imprints it'll get by the way it's carried and the surfaces it's pressed against. Where my first attempt created frozen moments, this one should be better suited at recording the actual movement over time.

Any questions (i doubt it - this all makes so perfect sense)?

Life around a dead red door
Originally uploaded by thiooof.

Click this, and then the next three photos. They are really something.

Quote of the day (and not particularly connected to the above):
"Men can see nothing around them that is not their own image; everything speaks to them of themselves. Their very landscape is alive"

Let's make a new competition: Who said this? Was he a man or a woman? Did he look like Santa Claus or not? And what was his favorite color?
Prizes will be as elusive as ever, this time you can win a warm smile and a long nose (as we say in Denmark).

As you might know I've been studying the urbanist ideas of the International Situationists. Two books they, more specifically Guy Debord and Asger Jorn, really seemed like something special. They "Fin de Copenhague" and "Memoire". The first one describes Jorns youth in Denmark and Copenhagen. The second Guy Debords in France and Paris. Each printed in just 200 examples of which most have been lost. Making the books rather priceless. Luckily they were printed in Denmark, so now I've ordered them at the royal library. I can only read them there. But I'm so thrilled about going there tomorrow, sit there and touch these original masterpieces. And see and feel for myself what the concept of detournement is really about.

fin de copenhague.jpg

This is from "Fin de Copenhague". I think it's amazing how cool and modern it looks. It was made in just 24 hours, and the story of the books creation is really interesting. You can read about it in this very nice essay.

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I think we need a nice picture to start the week. This is from Hamburg.

Pruned is a blog I found a few days ago focusing on landscape architecture. And it's the nicest architectural blog I've come across so far. It's some quite cool and rather different examples he writes about. For instance this one about a Japanese stadium turned into a small city. Or this one with the most beautiful drawing of the mississippi rivers geological development. He even has a sense of humor :)

So, now you know - that's a good place to go in emergency situations when there's nothing of interest here. It'll be added to the links section.

I have a very ambiguous relationship to Cuba - on the one hand I have a great passion for the music and have been wanting to go there for many years. On the other hand it has dawned on me what tremendous asshole Fidel is and what a cruel dictatorship he is running.

Recently a friend of mine brought to my attention the Cuban installation artists Los Carpinteros (The carpenters). Their stuff is really nice, beautiful, on the border between art, design and architecture. But I can't help wondering how artists like that can work under strict censorship from the state. Is what we see just a faint shadow of what they would produce under other circumstances. There is however a lot of bridges, crumblings walls, even some watchtowers among their drawings and installations. And then, there's this drawing, Floatable Pool.

I believe it must be inspired by Rem Koolhaas' swimming pool, described in Delirious New York, powered by Soviet dissidents and constructed to escape to New York. With the cruel twist to the story that, for some reason which I don't remember at the moment, New York is not so alluring when they finally arrive. So they turn the pool around and head back.

Enjoy the weekend.

Ok, I'm back. Have troubles with the net in my house at the mo (perhaps something to do with not paying) and spend the weekend celebrating my birthday... and felt more like reading, real, oldfashioned books than surfing aimlessly on the net.

First book I read: "Det uperfekte menneske" ("the Unperfect Human"... oops that's "the Imperfect Human" to be completely correct) - brand new autobiography of Jørgen Leth, which caused such scandal that he can no longer be Danish consul in Haiti and no longer comment Tour de France for Danish TV2. Those bastards.

Second Book: "Theory of the Dérive and other situationist writings on the city". And I tell you- those situationists were some funny and thought-provoking fella's:

"Psychogeographical Game of the Week

Depending on what you are after, choose an area, a more or less populous city, a more or less lively street. Build a house. Furnish it. Make the most of its decoration and surroundings. Choose the season and the time. Gather together the right people, the best records and drinks. Lighting and conversation must, of course, be appropriate, along with the weather and your memories.

If your calculations are correct, you should find the outcome satisfying. (Please inform the editors of the results.)"

Situationists International Online is a collection of pretty much all their writings. And this link will take you straight to the Theory of the Dérive.

UPDATE: As a special service to my Danish readers here's a collection of Situationist texts in Danish - Situationistisk Arkiv på Det Fri Universitet.

As promised, here is the finished prototype no. 1 of my Travelcompanion:

The core is a skeleton of wood. Just to give some basic structure for its way to move.
travel companion1.JPG

Around this a layer of wool, tightly packed with a felting needle.
travel companion2.JPG

Then a more fluffy layer of wool to allow manipulation of the surface.
travel companion3.JPG

The outside layer is a skin of wax. It gets softer and sticky with heat and hard when it's cold.
travel companion4.JPG

The last "layer" it needs, which I've just started working on, is a number of mechanical instruments or tools, that will attach themselves to the wax surface and support different sub-programs. This can be help carrying it, protect fragile imprints, heat it, make signs and traces in it, etc. These can be taken on and off so the Travelcompanion can be modified for specific tasks/walks.

When it's brought along walking through the city it will take shape and impressions from the way it's carried and surfaces it's pressed against or dropped onto. Thus the first purpose of it is to as a registrant the walk.
The second (or perhaps this is in fact the first) purpose is as a medium through which I will start seeing the well known city with new eyes. In other words, help defamiliarize the city as discussed in my posts on the term ostranenie, here and here. And quite possibly, people who see me walking around, carrying this strange object, will also have an experience of defamiliarization. Let's see what will happen.

My friend Jens showed me this link today: e-Cuerpos, online retailer of quality, human bodyparts, originating from lovely places like Columbia, Uzbequistan and the more undefined east Asia, as well as Canada, Spain, etc...

"E-Cuerpos ... will always sell human bodies and limbs, discreetly and preserving the privacy of its clients. Scientists, collaborators and human body enthusiasts will always find in E-Cuerpos a serious, dedicated and socially responsible supplier."

Now, what I would like to know is, firstly - what exactly is a "human body enthusiast", and secondly - is this a joke?!? We've been discussing this, but don't feel sure about anything, what do you think?

UPDATE: My friend Libo, who is a very wise man, belives it's fake. He tried to buy a pair of blue eyes (a childhood dream for that poor italian boy) and it was impossible... so...

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Came back from Venice last night. Feels like I was there for a week, though it was only 3,5 days. That city is so amazing, incredible, unique... I'm in lack of words... You can expect a couple of posts the next few weeks about my mind-boggling experiences there. Meanwhile an appetizer can be seen HERE - the photos I've uploaded so far.