Tomorrowland

Bollywood Dreamer

 

Rahul Dev Burman: Ishk Ishk Ishk (1974)

Fabulous collection of Bollywood soundtracks and album covers at mp3 blog Music From The Third Floor. They also host a Flickr account for easy access to the visual goods.

Powaqqatsi, 20 Years Later

The highway as graveyard, a static perversion of progress and industrial speed.

Godfrey Reggio's 1988 film Powaqqatsi is more than just the second installment in his trilogy of dreamy, technological critiques. It's a rare overlap of the experimental and the popular, a commercially successful portrait of Third World poverty with a rocking soundtrack and zero words.

Deliberately paced, impressionistic, nonlinear, it's not the kind of film that endears itself easily to mainstream audiences. It has not plot. No dialogue. No narration. Roger Ebert called it a "feature length New Age music video" back when it came out; Siskel wasn't much kinder. Its sumptuous if bleak vision of Third World life can be hard to take. The title is a Hopi term for "life in transformation," benign enough until you look at the roots: "Powaqa" is negative sorcerer; "Qatsi" is life. Translated another way it means "parasitic way of life." Definitely not the feel-good flick of the summer.

The film's strongest "pop" element, however, comes from Philip Glass' hypnotic, pulsating score. I recently saw Powaqqatsi in an ideal environment: outdoors in Brooklyn at the Prospect Park bandshell, accompanied by the Philip Glass Ensemble. In that setting the score is more than just arty sonics: its essential bombastic nature is revealed, auditory fireworks that dazzle the park goers sprawled on blankets, nursing their Bud Lights. It's pop music through and through, as spectacular and panethnic and traditionally beautiful as our neighborhood, Park Slope.

Odd to think that Glass' experimental days were behind him at this point. Gone are the dense, hi-speed arpeggios of 1971's Music With Changing Parts and 1976's Einstein On The Beach. He retired those bliss-out masterworks for kinder, gentler, more commercial prospects such as George Lucas-funded films like Powaqqatsi. The film score reassures the audience and compliments the film, never daring to plunge head-first into the Farfisa vortex that drove so many critics and record buyers insane. (When I saw Glass in 1997 at the University of Florida, a well-dressed, older gentleman stormed the stage screaming, "This is NOT music! Get your money back!" Poor guy didn't even know he was 20 years late to the game. Fortunately, Glass just ignored him and kept on playing.)

Powaqqatsi survives, but it represents an end of experimentation more than anything else. It's a bittersweet cocktail that reminds me of what it should have been, daring and blazing, an indictment of First World interests, rather than the National Geographic travelogue it actually is. Fortunately, it holds up better than Reggio's other work in that it asks some interesting questions, silently, suggesting that the life in transformation—the parasitic way of life—may be our own.

An Encyclopedia of Radio Waves

Bluetooth waves, aka Nevrotis Dentus Aquarae.

Amusing visualizations of radio waves from students at AHO, the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. Inspired by old botanical and zoological field guides, the class created fictional renderings of radio "species" such as WiFi, Bluetooth, RFID. Check out the free PDF poster of all documented specimens.

Fractal Africa

Wow-inducing presentation from ethno-mathematician Ron Eglash on the fractal structures of African villages. Non-linear scaling, self organization, sand divination and search engines all factor into the show. Highly recommended.

Incaps Are The New Swoosh

Nearly as ubiquitous today as the swoosh was back in the late 90s, incaps—those quirky little capitalizations occurring inside a word—are destined to become the poster child for clichéd, trend-humping, web 2.0 design mania.

Just look at those logos. Playful, efficient, compressed and connective, they speak the visual language of our times in a dialect we can easily understand. Incaps are a way of orthographically "baking in" a design attribute without having to necessarily rely on decorative iconography. I like that minimalist approach toward branding; it's ascetically noble and trim. But by now, in early 2008, we're beyond the incap tipping point. It's time to learn from the swoosh and collectively resist the temptation to use an incap in our designs. It's beginning to stank like the worst kind of party cheese.

Incap backlash, anyone? 

Here Comes The Hypertablet

Dubbed "The Looking Glass" by tech blogger Yanko Design, Mac Funamizu's slick little hypertablet would tell you anything you need to know about, well, anything you see. For now it's a prototype, but man, wouldn't this be amazing?

oSkope Visual Search

There's more than one way to find stuff online. oSkope is a visual search tool that lets you search content from sites like Amazon, eBay and Flickr, but in a refreshingly new way. Search results show thumbnails of the items which can be tossed around, stacked in a pile, "biggified," arranged on a cool x-y axis and dragged into a folder for later comparison. Definitely one of the slickest web applications I've used in a while.

Kendrick Bangs Kellogg, Architect, b. 1931

High Desert House, Joshua Tree, CA, Kendrick Bangs Kellogg

Rising from the desert like the exoskeleton of a giant prehistoric insect, Kendrick Bangs Kellogg's High Desert House exemplifies the free-form ideals of organic architecture. It's transcendental, sculptural, radically non-Euclidean and eerily timeless. It harmonizes with its environment like a perfect 5th. The interior design is just as eccentric and bewildering as its exterior, and it happens to be the home of Bev Doolittle, 1980s "mall art" painter extraordinaire.

Not much has been written about Kellogg, although he does have his own website if you're interested in seeing some more examples of his brand of architectural abstraction. I also found a discussion of the High Desert House at pushpullbar and an article about Kellogg's relation to biomorphic architecture (with bizarre photos):

"His structures actually tend to derive from Modernist pavilion structures, his organic forms tending toward macro-structural elements which enclose large clear-span spaces rather than building up from cellular room elements. Still, he makes extensive use of integrated furnishings despite an open-plan layout approach, sculpting elaborate interior landscapes within these larger clear-span spaces. His hybrid composition makes his work extremely complicated and expensive to build and limits its use to the wealthiest of clients."

Kellogg has built only a handful of projects, so it was pretty weird to find that one of his celebrated works is the Chart House seafood restaurant on the south bank of downtown Jacksonville (not a town known for its architecture). I used to live near the Chart House in San Marco and always wrote it off as beachy kitsch. (Has anyone actually eaten there? Is the "organic" aesthetic distributed throughout the interior? Does the carpet match the drapes?)

More on Kellogg here, here and here. 

Spiral Jetty: Endangered Land Art

Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, viewed from space (via Tropolism)

Bad news, folks: the Spiral Jetty—Robert Smithson's brilliant, visionary earthwork from 1970—is officially at risk for destruction. According to the Dia Art Foundation, nefarious oil barons plan to drill in Utah's Great Salt Lake near the iconic 1,500 foot long coil. This is certain to disrupt the remote ambiance and placid environment so crucial to the Jetty's design.

From Dia's February 6, 2008 press release:

"Dia strenuously objects to the proposed drilling which will occur less than 5 miles away from the Jetty. The drilling itself, and potential subsequent oil extraction, will disrupt the viewshed and the area's isolated character, and will degrade the natural environment of the lake by introducing barges with large-scale drilling equipment.

Moreover, construction and operation will introduce toxins and chemicals to the delicate saline water and wetlands that surround the lake. In the case of a toxic spill, the proposed operation would cause irreparable damage to the lake environment and threaten the physical integrity of Smithson's extraordinary sculpture. Additionally, Dia is concerned about increased traffic and heavy transport on the rural road that leads to the Spiral Jetty through Golden Spike National Monument, and the potential for noise pollution from drilling and operations."

If you'd like to actually DO something to oppose the destruction of Spiral Jetty, please email or print out the convenient PDF letter and mail it to the address at the top of the form. I don't normally use Tomorrowland as a bully pulpit for any sort of cause, but Robert Smithson's work is inspiring enough to warrant this sort of outreach. Let's save the Jetty!

The Spectacle of Paradox

Badd Madame at the Eighties Club Bands database.

"All I've got is a photograph" - Def Leppard, Photograph

Without a doubt, the homoerotic pageantry of late-80s "butt rock" was high paradox, a spectacle of drifting genders and mirrored shades that nowadays leaves most of us laughing at our cultural past in an eye-rolling embrace of a once-guilty pleasure.

Perhaps kitsch is where this sort of thing works best, "high" and "low" locking lips in star-crossed union, good taste (and common sense) be damned. Things just get more authentic when viewed at the local level. The burgeoning database of Eighties Club Bands demonstrates, yes, vintage rock sleaze. But you won't hear about these bands on VH1. They're unknowns, forgotten heroes of the glam revolution, curious artifacts, each one now reduced to a quaint, dusty photograph.

Chief exhibits include BareBac, Maniac, Fantasy, Ice Water Mansion, Sweet Savage, and High Risk.

The Pelican Project

Pelican book covers from the 1970s.

The always-fascinating Things Magazine has posted the Pelican Project, a visual archive of Pelican paperbacks from the 1930s to the 80s. Breathe in the stark clarity of geometric layouts, Helvetica variations, and ample white space.

The designs are definitely "from an era," but that era was also really interesting, a time when brainy little monographs flew off the shelves at independent bookstores, when information was shared and consumed en masse via organic materials, pressed vegetation, before we turned our economy over to the pixel and set fire to the past.

Follow the discussion over at Biblioklept.

Emma Kunz, Healer, 1892-1963

Untitled healing grid, Emma Kunz, circa 1938

Born into a family of Swiss weavers in 1892, visionary artist Emma Kunz created pulsing, mandala-like grids which she regularly used as instruments of healing. Abstract, lush, enigmatic and illusionistic, each diagram was reportedly drawn by Kunz in a single sitting. The Emma Kunz Center hosts an online gallery of her astonishing work.

"The time will come when my pictures will be understood," said Kunz. "[They] are destined for the 21st century."

Crystal Cathedral

Crystals as big as a bus, no Photoshop required. (via National Geographic)

More than a thousand feet beneath the parched earth of Chihuahua, Mexico lies the Cueva de los Crystales, a naturally occurring collection of some of the largest crystals in the world.

The cave was just discovered in 2000 by a couple of workers from a Mexican mining company. Can you imagine accidentally stumbling upon a hidden crystal kingdom? Insane! I'd half expect some Ewoks to crawl out from behind the beams, spears drawn, little noses sniffing the warm air. Then I'd show them my head lamp and we'd be pals.

Check out this incredible photoset from National Geographic. These crystals go to ELEVEN.

Wooden Wand

Real wood memory sticks from Dutch design studio Oooms. Touchy-feely tech always scores high in my book.

Here's hoping Santa's a regular Tomorrowland reader.

Bas Jan Ader, Dreamer, 1942-1975

Untitled (Westkapelle, Holland), 1973

In 1975, Dutch conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader set sail aboard a 13-foot boat on a solo voyage across the Atlantic. The experience was to be part of a work he called In Search of the Miraculous. Authorities discovered his boat six months later, half-submerged off the coast of Ireland. Bas Jan Ader was never seen again.

Slapstick, melodrama, catastrophe and the natural world appear as key themes throughout his works. Very hard to pin this guy down, as his persona was as slippery as his subject matter.

Ader's official website is a stunning document of his life and work, featuring an unparalleled use of full-screen video. Highly recommended.