468B Thy Future, martel on an obscure 'found poetry' book by Bern Porter, described in more detail on UBUWEB, where you can also get a pdf of the entire work (link, 19mb). 'The pages of this book were taken from computer printouts Porter lifted from the 1960s Saturn moon project at Huntsville, Alabama. A low-level technician on the project, Porter probably used printouts that came across his desk, which were not top secret.' Also: 'Found implies lost. What others discarded he appropriated and claimed its authorship. He combed through trash (often at the post office, after sending off a fresh batch of mail art) to find new poems. In his life he scavenged for everything, not just language and imagery, but also food, clothing, and rides.' A fascinating man, who 'contributed to the invention of television, worked on the Manhattan Project and the Saturn V rocket, and made the acquaintances of Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Werner von Braun'. Some interviews and poems.

Porter's work reminded us of the found objects and sounds that underpinnned Jake Tilson's sublime Atlas Magazine, hugely influential on us back in the day for its now all-too-common blend of esoteric imagery and noise. There really was a sense of discovery with an issue of Atlas, which belonged to the era before the internet turned cultural excavation into a click-fest. Mind you, some of the earliest online repositories of ephemera and information are starting to take on a musty, abandoned feel, as expectations about presentation make us skim over anything that looks too 'old'. An example, Douglas W. Jones' venerable Punched Card Collection, old school in design and execution. That long-standing web accumulator of cast off ephemera, Found Magazine (and its sister publication Dirty Found), now seem just a little too slick.

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Other things. Missed this first time round: Justin Quirk's piece on retro concerts: The Don't Look Back concert series is about more than just nostalgia: 'Thurston Moore made the point that pre-digital technology, so little of the 70s and 80s underground was documented that actually seeing the gigs constitutes a sort of "secret history" of alternative music.' It is amazing that collections of gig flyers can circulate the internet with the kind of reverence once accorded to fragments of the true cross.

Art by Scott King / photography by Mathieu Bernard-Reymond / down with tractors, an mp3 blog / more mp3s and reviews/reminiscences at dk presents / David Kreutzer and the city, an architecture and design weblog / 30 New York Times magazine covers. Consistently interesting / Emma Laiho's weblog / BladBlog, a visual aggregator.

Alvar Aalto's Architecture, a database, via Lewism / Connotype, a designer's website / The White Whale Laughs Last, illustration / Spacing magazine has two blogs, Spacing Toronto and Spacing Montreal / deceit in popular culture, meish on the sliding scale of deception for entertainment / Arkitekturmuseet's Picture Bank / the Curated Object, collating the increasingly dense world of online collections / Thorsten Klapsch, a photographer's weblog.

The Pink and Blue project. Somewhat reminiscent of Michael Wolf's Real Toy Story project / POPjisyo, 'a web based pop-up dictionary for Japanese, Chinese, Korean and other languages.' / The Party Racket, JF Kane on the web of lies, intrigue and double-dealing involved in the average child's birthday party / interesting documentary about the late John McGeoch, post-punk guitarist par excellence: listen again / Rocksellout, an mp3 blog.

When a high-tech society goes to ruin the results are truly spectacular: No Man's Land - 'The haikyo phenomenon shines a light on Japan’s ghost towns, deserted islands and abandoned spaces'. See also Haikyo Hyoryu - Images of Destruction in Japan, filled with remarkable structures.posted by things at 19:32 / 0 comments