We've written before about the single-pixel depth of online culture, but perhaps we should also stress the infinite length and width of that one-pixel-deep image, a vast jpg that envelops the earth. Imagine the world scanned and mapped at 1:1 scale, with no surface left unimaged. Part of the problem of writing about 'things' in a virtual place is that so much of the physical world is left unchronicled. For us, if something isn't online, it doesn't exist.

Throw in the things that don't exist anywhere but online, and you have a world of confusion, a place where the only time you get to dive beneath the pixel-deep surface is when you are entering a virtual world. A case in point: the Infocom Collection, text adventures of legendary depth and complexity (via metafilter). Here are places to get lost without even moving. 'Congragulations on your fine dental hygiene'.

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Hermann Zschiegner's thirty-four parking lots of Google Earth (posted at reference library) inspired him to 'collect Ruscha-inspired book and have found close to 50 different Ruscha-esque books... [including] Jeff Brouws' "26 Abandoned Gasoline Stations" and "Macintosh Road Test" by artists Corinne Carlson, Karen Henderson and Marla Hlady.'

Monopoly City Streets, supposedly the world's largest game of Monopoly? Interesting to see how this one plays out. How about a global version of Risk? Or War Games? (although apparently DEFCON: everybody dies does a good imitation). The Google Maps API could be hacked about to allow any number of games to take place around the world.

Related, high resolution photos of the moon, taken from Earth (via kottke) / photography and mash, aggregating London photography exhibitions and a gallery / Tumblr round-up. Schumtzig presents illustration / lqdx blgr, 'scrapbook of infogasmic charts and interesting links' / Jen Benkman, gallerist and curator / are2, old artwork and posters.

Parenthetically wonders 'how many middle aged advertising and fashion executives of the '60s fetishized the look or music of their youth: the 1920s.' / Stork Bites Man, a weblog / bunker chic, the Nixie Concrete Clock (via Yanko Design) / Allee Willis has a Museum of Kitsch, a sort of Stuckist anti-museum / Escapees, an RV discussion forum.

Archive and Conquer, which points us to the site of artist Rosamond Purcell, 'keeper of an incredible wunderkammer', 'a full-size recreation of 17th Century naturalist Olaus Worm's Wunderkammer', the original etching of which can be seen here, with more selections from Museum Wormianum seu Historia Rerum Rariorum (1655).

Technology histories: Edison National Historic Site / Transdiffusion Broadcasting System, comprehensive television archives / the Soviet Digital Electronics Museum / the Fading Ad Blog / mag and cover art linked here / slightly circular, via this greeble piece at Creativity Online (picked up via our referrer logs), an essay, 'John Scalzi's Guide to the Most Epic FAILs in Star Wars Design'.

'The British public, and more especially naval circles, are very much amused over an amazing hoax perpetrated last week on Admiral Sir William May, Commander in Chief of the Home Fleet, and the officers of the flagship Dreadnought at Portland by a young woman and five young men.' More about the Dreadnought Hoax, perpetrated by Horace de Vere Cole ('The prankster at one point gave theater tickets to each of his bald friends, strategically placing them so that their heads spelled out an expletive when viewed from the balcony'), with friends including Virginia Woolf and Duncan Grant. Simpler times...

Labels: museums, things

posted by things at 12:57 / 1 comments