Category Archives: nostalgia

Patina and posing

Patina is not something that is associated with new technology. Disregarding the fact that an object exists in its primal, unsullied state for mere minutes after it has been unboxed, there is still an emphasis on perfection in technological goods. … Continue reading

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It’s all a bit of a blur

Three posts on the lingering memory of the space of ancient video games, and how the ordering of spatial experience – however simplistically and abstractly achieved – can persist in the mind for many decades. First up, Castlevania: Harmony of … Continue reading

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Empty spaces

Photo essay: The Edge of Light: Wendover, exploring ‘the interstitial, unoccupied spaces at the edges of the interstate, among the ruins of the military base, and between the nightlife zones and the casino workers’ tract housing. We set out to … Continue reading

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Another brick in the wall

Few ‘analogue’ companies have managed to splice their product so convincingly with the digital world as Lego (we’re still puzzled by the pluralisation of the word in the US. After all, “Lego” already encompasses the plural). This appears to be … Continue reading

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Lost villages

Why are there so many abandoned villages in the UK? Inspired by this call for imagery of lost settlements in connection with the forthcoming Times Atlas of Britain. A new print atlas is a hard sell in the age of … Continue reading

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Archaeology of the recent past, revisited

Embedding traces of one technology into another rarely takes obsolescence into account. Back in the early 1980s, a small number of music acts used the then prevalent technology of the time, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, as a conduit for a … Continue reading

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Runways old and new

Human landscapes in SW Florida, especially Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, ‘originally planned as the Everglades Jetport, and construction started in 1968 on what was to be the world’s largest airport with six runways to support supersonic transport. Being surrounded … Continue reading

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Islands

The latest issue of Cabinet is all about islands. There’s not a lot online (you should really buy the issue; like every Cabinet, it is wonderful), but even the little that is offers tantalising glimpses of histories and connections. Islands … Continue reading

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Digging through the past

An ACME Novelty Toy Gallery, ‘All toys designed by Chris Ware, and assembled by myself‘ / Blissbat, a blog mostly about books / Shakespeare’s Monkey, ‘a two line poem with a random letter generator underneath (random letters that coincide with … Continue reading

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Blur

The blurry, bleached-out pseudo-Polaroid-esque nature of the lead images on this story about aimless 20-somethings is a visual TLDR for the entire piece (via), an example of the self-conscious aesthetic nostalgia that has created a circular mythos of a ‘golden … Continue reading

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Cupcakes and Creative Automation

Installations, sonic and visual, by Urs Hofer, including the Scenic Panner, a ‘visual instrument’: ‘Scenic Panner is project, in which we are photographically collecting lots of items like buildings, objects, streets, plants, persons. These items are stored in one database. … Continue reading

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Before and After, During, Then and Now

People are doing great things with free APIs. These Streetview panoramas by Jamie Thompson are highly reminiscent of Hockney’s polaroid collages / History Rambler, photographs of decaying houses around America / Shopwork, a new project by El Ultimo Grito, mixing … Continue reading

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More small things

What’s Your Time Perspective, a way of decoding what particular zone of the present different people operate in. Somewhere buried in all this is nostalgia, the ‘past positive’ way of thinking, a way of thinking that shapes the way we … Continue reading

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The birth of twitch culture

Some musings on Knight Lore, back when computer games were hard. The physical effort and time commitment one had to make to load a game from cassette meant that when you finally got it, you jolly well played it. Short … Continue reading

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