Les Yeux sans Visage, a weblog / a history of photographing the Earth from space / Lightplot is described as a ‘robotic 3D light painting system’, built to make animated sculptures through a clever computer controlled moving projector / a deck of cards created by 52 illustrators / The Shard – a timelapse study, a short film by Paul Raftery and Dan Lowe. Not the turbo-charged ground-to-spire blast you might expect – these are no doubt being compiled by the developers out of footage like this ready for a roll-out later in the year.

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We’re enjoying Mr Baldwin’s travels in search of the American opinion of Paris in Paris, America: Our French Connection / Lay Flat, independent photographic publishing house / The Making of a Room for London by millimetre, the company that built David Kohn and Fiona Banner’s inhabitable Thames-side installation / at top, the Lost Rivers of London, a ceramic work by Loraine Rutt / at bottom of page, Martin Grover paints old 7″ singles, amongst other things.

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The best tumblrs selected by ask MeFi, including Installator, which exists to showcase images of artworks being installed and installations being built / Timescapes, photographs by Willem van den Hoed / Free Association Design posts about Pokegama’s Macro Accelerator, a ‘famed log chute near Klamath Hot Springs, California, [that] dropped 835 feet in elevation for a distance of 2,650 feet from the Pokegama Plateau to the Klamath River’. The logs were apparently smeared in tallow to help them slide faster.

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A tumblr of art and more by Adam Shapland / soundscapes and design at Touch Music / how to make long exposure photographs using burning wire wool / Slot Mods. Ever wanted a full scale replica of a racing car containing a small scale car racing track? / AUTOart makes exceptionally detailed cars / Platform 7, a South London art space / Poul Webb’s Art Blog / a pertinent post in this Ask: ‘Understand “curation” and “criticism” and “taste” for what they are – exclusion, segregation, negation, refusal, and rejection.’

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Hipescu, ‘the city of Thousand Suns’, is spoof urbanism, a fantasy playground for an imaginary despot, overlooked by the 850m tall Hipcescu Tower. ‘And while a highly efficient state-security apparatus ensures your safety at all times, you will thoroughly enjoy our eco-friendly beaches, exciting nightlife, tax-free shopping, reliable nuclear energy sources and excellent real estate investment opportunities.’ A barely concealed jab at the Kazak city of Astana / related, Once upon a time in Dubai, old images of the kingdom. See also Dubai then and now / apologies for the absence and sporadic posting of late.

Various views of the city. George Davis is innocent still lingers on in East London. A campaign against the wrongful conviction of an armed robber (later convicted for another armed robbery…), it resulted in scattered graffiti, damaged test wickets / attention to detail: ‘I’m building a small N-gauge layout which is meant to be set in East London (somewhere between Fenchurch St and Barking); the trains run on a viaduct. It’s set in the 1970s/early 80s’ / photographs by Henrietta Williams / Extreme climbing in Moscow, together with a photo gallery of the adventures of Marat Dupri. The Russian ‘skywalking‘ offers the armchair architectural explorer plenty of entertainment, not least for the glimpses of rusting neo-Constructivist structures, purpose and precise location unknown. More imagery at this Livejournal. Image above is of Vladimir Shukhov’s tower in Moscow’s Shabolovka Street.

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485 Nicolosi Estate was ‘built in 1931 and designed by Paul Revere Williams in the Mediterranean Revival style… the mansion’s spectacular grounds include a serpentine swimming pool three hundred feet in length.’ Williams’ client was commissioned by Johnny Weissmuller, Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer and movie star. It’s hard to see the 300 foot construction on Google maps, as the densely planted gardens of these hillside compounds obscure the treasures within. That part of the world is certainly a fun place to snoop around. Weissmuller died in 1984. ‘As his coffin was lowered into the ground, a recording of the Tarzan yell he invented was played three times, at his request’. The actor has another association with abandoned architecture, the Tropical Wonderland themepark in Titusville, Florida.

Spam-erican Apparel, or how automated customisation just increased your choice to the point of utter incoherence (via MeFi, where someone notes sagely: ‘Zazzle, the Cafepress for people late to the internet’). There is something to be said about the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction here, but we can’t formulate it just yet. Zazzle vendors exist to amplify the confusion by splicing public domain stock photography with Zazzle’s extensive inventory of objects, creating tens of thousands of things with no precedence in the history of design. From the article: ‘ShroudedLake basically arranges miniature versions of a fairly limited number of everyday objects in a seemingly endless number of combinations: square of grass with a tiny shoe on it, square of grass with a golf tee on it, square of grass with a golf ball on a golf tee on it, square of grass with a golf ball next to a golf tee on it, etc.’

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Amazon has over 700 books about the history of Route 66. The British road system hasn’t inspired quite such attention, but there are a few classics in the genre. Pieter Boogaart’s A272: An Ode to a Road, for example (reviewed back in things 12) and Edward Platt’s Leadville, a biography of the grimy ribbon of asphalt destruction that is the A40 in West London. Now there’s a new A-road biography for the pile, A303: Highway To The Sun, the book of the film. More on the A303 at the wonderful SABRE, The Society for All British and Irish Road Enthusiasts, with its incredibly maps and forums. Are there any other minor British roads that deserve their own monograph?

A selection of Historic Photos From the NYC Municipal Archives. In comparison, London’s digital archives seem to have a long way to go before they can match the quality and quantity of the material now available at the New York City Municipal Archives (870,000 images). The issue is largely funding. Throughout its history, there have been surveys and records of London. The London County Council Photograph Library comprises of around quarter of a million images, for example, whereas the London Metropolitan Archives ‘is the largest local authority record office in the United Kingdom. There are 105KM of archives, modern records, plans, audio-visual and printed material in our strong-rooms – an enormous amount of information about the capital and its people.’ The problem is that these collections are scattered and confused, some digitised, some not, some paywalled, some watermarked, all belonging to different collections and agencies and institutions. The potential is there: Collage, which offers imagery from Guildhall Art Gallery and London Metropolitan Archives, is a start, as is the London Metropolitan Archive. But to have a resource like the one in New York? A pipe dream.

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Otherthings. Speaking of archives, John Peel’s Record Collection has a very 2008 feel to it / we love Archived Music Press, but it seems to have shut up shop about 14 months ago / the jesus collection / Graphic Nothing on the art of Jan Pienkowski / Nicology, a tumblr / advertising imagery, film posters, stills and more at Harald Haefker’s photostream, from where the above comes: famous mysteries that baffle us all.

The 1900 Summer Olympics attained a height of elegance and quirkiness that few games have managed since. Known as the Games of the II Olympiad and held in Paris. From Wikipedia: ‘Some unusual events were contested for the only time in the history of the Games including automobile and motorcycle racing‘. In this novel category, France won every single medal but two, including gold, silver and bronze in the ‘Delivery Van – 500 to 1200kg – Electric – 300km’ category. Unfortnately no record car type or driver survive. According to the Journal of Olympic History (pdf) there’s some debate as to whether these events could realistically be described as ‘Olympic’, given that prize money was often awarded.

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Nevertheless, the city to city race was hotly contested, often by those entering cars from their own company. Drivers included René de Knyff, the director of Panhard, Selwyn Francis Edge, Louis Renault (who won a gold medal in a car built by the company he founded and was later – probably unfairly – accused of collaboration with the Germans) and Baron Adrien de Turckheim, manager of the Luneville factory of the Societe Lorraine des Anciens Etablissements de Dietrich & Cie, a car maker that could trace its industrial origins to the late 17th century.

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Other unique events in 1900 included cricket, croquet, pelota and ballooning, the latter another pursuit, like motor racing, that flourished in France at the time. The event was also probably an offshoot from the Exposition Universelle, held concurrently. The Exposition was
carefully reconstructed in 3D a few years ago: there is also a host of archive material available. The 1900 Games weren’t especially well organised, with accusations of cheating (‘Three marathon runners from the United States contested the result saying the French runners who got first and second places took a short cut, and the proof was they were the only contestants not spattered with mud.’) and poor organisation. Some even claim that ‘Very few [Exposition visitors] even knew the Paris Olympics was underway.’ Nonetheless, Paris went on to hold the Games in 1924. Olympic Venues Past, Present and Future as Seen From Space.

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There was also some fishing: ‘Apparently, at a series of competitions in August, some 600 fishermen, of whom 40 are from 5 other countries than France, participate, and final prizes are awarded.’ Many more gems to be found at the LA84 Foundation’s Sports Library, which ‘houses one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of sports information’ Much of which is searchable.

Doug Aitken’s MoMA installation ‘Sleepwalkers‘, from 2007, gets the lavish box set treatment. Someone needs to start a gallery of great box sets, from music to art and more / how to polish a car / Monolithic, a look ‘at the immensity of monolithic landscapes and architecture’ at Super Colossal / Four the Love of Art / Static in between channels, music and video / Page 1, a ‘typographic experiment in which 70 different graphic designers have responded to the same brief: to layout the first page of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.’ A project by GraphicDesign&.

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Lego continue to demonstrate their ability at bridging the digital/analogue divide with the super hero movie maker app / pictures from an old book, a weblog about illustration / Little Magazines of the modernist era (via MeFi) / Tiny Houses / architecture for sale. See also the Modern House. Urlaubs Architektur, architecture to rent / Literary Minifigs.

Anchor Bay Entertainment are from the quick and dirty school of film-making, with countless schlocky slasher movies and knock-off action titles in their copious backlist. The parade of DVD covers gives an interesting masterclass in the art of cinematic design, with every conceivable cliche explored multiple times. They’re also purveyors of Car’s Life 2, which together with films like Tangled Up and The Little Cars in the Great Race continue a long tradition of the ‘deceptive purchase’, the chameleon-like object that is designed to appear just similar enough to a more well known product that it may well be bought by mistake, rather than intentionally. The saddest is not that these films are artless, incompetent and wafer-thin imitations of other people’s ideas, but that someone somewhere probably worked very hard indeed to get this to market, unsupported by a producer, a script, a director or even any colleagues to bounce ideas off. Imposter objects usually just get lumped in with pure plagiarism, just as own brand goods walk a careful line between imitation and simple copying. Sites like You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice and this collection of Extreme Graphic Design Plagiarism simply skim the surface of cut and paste design. But a true imposter object is designed to sit alongside their more expensively produced doppelgangers in established outlets, with the veneer of respectability that implies.

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The above image is from a BBC gallery launched to coincide with John Ryan – A Retrospective, a recent exhibition in the late illustrator’s home town of Rye, East Sussex.

Buran Suprematism, a Kosmograd post that either reveals the ease with which the hard-won aesthetic discoveries of the early twentieth century come to our tech-filled lives, or the prescience with which these visual pioneers were able to foresee an unimaginable digital future / Animated Engines (via Autoblog) / The Architecture Observer is a new online publication that boldly eschews a scattering of shiny images in favour of large chunks of text offering insight into issues like architecture festivals / the Devil amongst the Tailors, Aberrant Architecture’s 21st century recreation of the classic pub game / 101 Spectacular non-fiction stories.

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Leadholder, the drafting pencil museum. Related, The Genius Pencil, a Salon piece about the Blackwing, cult pencil par excellence: No Ordinary Pencil: A Portrait of the Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602 / Quigley’s Cabinet, a weblog with a focus on ‘death and the anatomical body’ / Future Headlines works well as an archive page / B-U-I-L-D, an image curation tumblr.

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ZX Spectrum’s chief designers reunited 30 years on. Releated, Buzzsaw+, a brand new Spectrum game published by Cronosoft / related, a huge collection of Spectrum clones from around the world, some of which, like the Soviet Hobbit, were wholly unofficial.

Eleven facts about the notorious spot paintings, via this isn’t happiness. We can add a number 12: one of Hirst’s former spot painters was children’s author and illustrator Lauren Child. The above is obviously a Hirst Medicine Cabinet because, well, the spots are a bit boring, aren’t they? / When art directors get bored: slow-motion destruction (via MeFi Kottke). Vimeo is awash with Phantom Flex videos. Related, Vimeo Awards, experimental film category.

The BBC on the theme park economics behind Nantes’ epic Machines de L’Ile workshops, currently hard at work on a massive Carousel, as well as the Heron Tree, ‘A monumental structure in the heart of the city, this steel tree 45 m in diameter and 28 m high will be topped by two herons. Visitors will be able to take a circular flight under the heron’s wings and walk from branch to branch in the amazing hanging gardens’

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Links. A real find: Goth Night in Batley, West Yorkshire, 1984 (via Youth Culture History, a tumblr). Quite possibly one of the inspirations for Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer’s seminal ‘The Club‘ / Machizukuri, a tumblr about architecture / MIDItrail provides 3D visualization of MIDI datasets. Video / heylookmumnohands, a tumblr / we live off your visits, or grow from your links, or whatever, but the Guardian’s carefully plotted one-man crazy wall, an interactive map of Anders Breivik’s manifesto is suitably tangled mess / 10 years of Waxy.org / giant Star Wars music box / The Front Section, a new aggregator / Les grandperes ont toujours tort, an art blog / more painting and practice at Rosanna Jeffery’s Art / jewelery design by Atelier Ted Noten / vote for the PPA Cover of the Year.

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The Great London Stink of 1858, one of the catalysts for the creation of London’s sewer system and the beginning of the end for professions like toshers, mudlarks, flushermen and night soil men (more at the Jack the Ripper forums, which is a source of esoterica, to say the least).

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The secret town of Oak Ridge (via MeFi and the flickr blog): ‘In 1942, as part of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. government acquired nearly 70,000 acres of land in Eastern Tennessee and established a secret town called Oak Ridge. At its height in 1945, over 75,000 people lived and worked in Oak Ridge with a primary focus on nuclear materials research and production.’