Monthly Archives: February 2014

From around the web

Tech things. Smartphones versus DSLRs versus film: A look at how far we’ve come. Can a modern cameraphone outperform a DSLR? Even a very old DSLR? / Google’s Project Tango, a sensor-stuffed phone that makes ‘over a quarter million 3D … Continue reading

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Breaking up

One of those staggering brain dump extravaganzas, Deus-Ex-Arhitektura / Space Project, featuring ‘songs incorporating sounds recorded in space by the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes’ / sort of related, Music from Outer Space, a synthesizer and tech extravaganza … Continue reading

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Space for the 1%

“Welcome to the world’s largest ever gathering of future astronauts”: Jon Ronson is ready for blast-off. Is Richard Branson? The idea of space as a playground for the rich is a rather dispiriting one, and Ronson softly skewers the self-importance … Continue reading

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Catching up

Meades is once again on the money: ‘Britain is once again being architecturally cleansed in favour of timidity and insipidity.’ An A-Z of Brutalism. The accompanying programme: Bunkers, Brutalism, Bloodymindedness: Concrete Poetry / Black Houses / inside the Ruth and … Continue reading

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Raiding the 20th Century

Close encounters with the Third Reich, a 1978 essay arguing that the ‘theme, structure, and symbolism [of Close Encounters of the Third Kind] strongly echo those of the films of pre-fascist and Nazi Germany’. A fascinating artefact from the dawn … Continue reading

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A wealth of history

The news that Penguin is planning to relaunch the Pelican imprint will doubtless have many book designers salivating. In the past decade, boosted by Phil Baines’ excellent Penguin by Design, the company has embraced its position as both design icon … Continue reading

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Scrubbed cities, manipulated buildings

Ian Martin, always worth a read, writing on the ‘new’ British city. ‘This ‘urban vibrancy’ is really social cleansing‘. What does a real community sound like? ‘Not a gurning ukulele ensemble doing a version of You Got the Love in … Continue reading

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Stills, frames and specials

Auto Aerobics, a project by Chris Labrooy (via Phaidon) / cinegaze, a blog dedicated to Australian Cinema and Television / This Must Be The Place, a tumblr of classic film stills / all that was still turned into frantic movement: … Continue reading

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Pretty Things Organized Neatly

If we were twittering types, we’d disseminate this one far and wide: the Playmobil Furnished Shopping Mall, presented in its current catalogue as ‘a girl’s dream brought to life in the Modern Shopping Centre’. Ah, someone else has done exactly … Continue reading

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Boldly going into the back bedroom

Make your own space. Following on from the space simulator built into a caravan, we trawled around to find this list of ‘five homemade flight simulators‘. Alternatively, if you have a spare £3.25m you could buy this South London mansion, … Continue reading

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