Ghost signs: BBC Viewfinder
The BBC is covering Tom Bland’s photography in the archaeological imagination – Ghost signs. “I was seeing layers of typography, paint, colour – and combined with the texture of the crumbling and flaking materials, many of them were appealing to me as contemporary pieces of design in the vein of work by Ray Gun magazine.” [...]
Steampunk at Oxford
What if the Victorians (with their steam engine industrial aesthetic) had had access to digital technologies? What if a Victorian design sensibility had not been eclipsed by modernism and its minimalist aesthetic? What if technologies such as dirigibles, analog computers, or digital mechanical computers (such as Charles Babbage’s Analytical engine) were still with us? Steam-powered [...]
elements of a theory of ruin
A wonderful talk this evening from Alain Schnapp in our Archaeology Center. It was about “ruin” as an intellectual artifact. Through a kaleidoscope of quotes and vignettes about ruin from antiquity to modernity, Alain reflected upon broad human experiences at the heart of our sense of history, memory practices, collection, temporality. Goethe among the ruins [...]
haunted media
Some years ago Sam (Schillace) put me onto a Russian photographer, Sergey Larenkov, who combines old and new photographs of Leningrad/St Petersburg, then – WWII, and now. They have haunted me ever since. It’s not difficult to find the photos on the web; it only took me a few moments to find them again – [...]
IDEO, design, the everyday
This is the first in a series of commentaries on a class running at Stanford, Winter Quarter 2010 – “Transformative Design” ENGR 231 – [Link] I made a visit to IDEO last week, the design consultancy with its head office in downtown Palo Alto, by Stanford. I’m teaching a class next term with one of [...]
Boonville, Anderson Valley, California
Back in Boonville, after the field season in the UK. Standish vinyard – tasting room in an old apple barn. Testimony to the dying orchards of the valley, the fast-growing shift to wine production. Standish – the old connection with the Pilgrim Fathers. One of the Pinot Noirs is named “Mayflower”. Gallery – Link
Behind the Locked Door
An archaeology of the store rooms of the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford Don’t you often wonder about what museums keep in their store rooms, but rarely manage to display? The hidden, perhaps forgotten, treasures of “The Archive” Last year, between March 2007 and April 2008, in a small gallery off the main stair well in [...]
SFMOMA – The Art of Participation 1950 – Now
Life Squared [link], our installation in the online world Second Life, is currently part of the exhibition The Art of Participation 1950 – Now at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Life Squared – web link and gallery link. More links – Linden Lab/Second Life and Wired magazine The exhibition, curated by Rudolf Frieling, is [...]
Found photos
Fascinating website of photographs found undeveloped in old cameras – [Link - westfordcomp.com] Camera c 1947. (Thanks again to Sam (Schillace) for this link.)
The photographs of Edward Burtynsky and the animated museum
The touring exhibition of the wonderful photographs of Edward Burtynsky reaches the Cantor Arts Center today and runs till September 18. Nickel tailings #30 – Sudbury, Ontario Like Gursky, [Link] Burtynsky works in large format – the pictures are up to 5 feet across. His subjects are envrionmental impacts. Great holes in the ground like [...]
Gary Hill’s theatre/archaeology at the Colosseum
Rome Risonanze Oscure Dark Resonances We are at the Colosseum, the Flavian Amphitheatre – me, Nick (Kaye) and Gabriella (Giannachi). It is 10pm. Across the street beneath the temple of Venus we have been looking at flickering images of what look to me like archaeological sediments projected into the foundation arches, behind the protective iron [...]
Invented traditions – the case of the Percy family
Alnwick Castle, Scottish borders – Northumberland UK – home of Harry Potter As I prepare for a month of fieldwork along Hadrian’s Wall in the UK and north into Walter Scott country, never mind the rock art and superbly preserved agricultural landscapes, I came across a new attraction at Alnwick Castle, the fabulous medieval border [...]
collecting culture and intellectual property
Had lunch with Ralph Maurer today. He researches organizational behavior and is interested in how people get attached to what they make, the ideas they have and such, and how this attachment may lead them to manage work and intellectual property without reference to economic gain. Economic relationships are embedded in all sorts of cultural [...]
The Brick Testament
In the light of my recent posts about creationism [Link], contemporary culture and the science wars [Link] and then the Barbie Doll Bronze Age [Link], Cornelius (Holtorf) has put me on to The Brick Testament. Yes – the Bible in lego bricks … The death of Jacob by The Reverend Brendan Powell Smith
landscape messaging – weaving collective stories
Randommedia, the UK based games/web design people, have a fascinating virtual world called Dreamdomain. You design yourself a “drone” – a flying insect, with a “blindwatchmaker” genetic algorithm and then off you go to fly round some very weird landscapes. The dots are messages – text, and video! But you are not at all alone [...]
Joseph Beuys and the archaeological
Tate Modern London. I am still reading today’s Arts section of the Guardian – this time Adrian Searle’s preview of the Tate Modern’s new exhibition of Joseph Beuys [Link] Beuys wasn’t being mischievous or disingenuous when he said there was nothing to understand (in his work). He may have been wrong to believe everyone could [...]
Iain Sinclair and the urban imaginary
A fine piece of writing from Iain Sinclair, a bit overblown maybe, in The Guardian today about the Thames in the urban imaginary that is London – Paint me a river. Liquid prompts guide our steps towards the scintillae of the supremely visible Thames. Here begins the work of poets and painters, their argument and [...]
archaeography.com
Archaeography – the new archaeology photoblog from Metamedia at Stanford – is up and running. [Link] This is how we describe the project Archaeography is a photoblog that explores the connections between photography and archaeology. This is not some quirky juxtaposition – we are convinced that photography is profoundly archaeological, and that archaeography is about [...]
From Ben Cullen to Stephen Shennan on memes
On the anniversary of the death of Ben Cullen. [Link] His parents visited us this summer. Richard (Cullen) has taken up archaeology himself. It was a very poignant afternoon – lunch in our garden here in Stanford, talking of Ben in Wales and Australia. Ben would have been forty. Molly (six) and our own Ben [...]
found photos – portraits and physiognomy
In Boing Boing today – found photos from the Arkansas State Prison 1915-1937 – [Link] I liked the caption: In 1975, documentary artist Bruce Jackson found a bunch of old prison photos in a drawer in the Arkansas penitentiary. The people being photographed have no interest in the photographs being made; the people making the [...]
Derrida’s archaeology
9 October I never got to finish my comment on Derrida who died last week. [BBC Link] The obituaries were largely stifled by misunderstanding, outrage, horror and incredulity – have a look at the Guradian’s lamentable list – [Link] Mark Taylor was better in the NYT – [Link] Jacques Derrida Flying back to the US [...]
everyday horror and repressive normality
An archaeological sensibility I regularly post about the horror that lies just beneath the surface of things, everyday normality rooted in the uncanny secret lives of things – have a look at Horror and disclosure – a scene of crime clings to its past Joe (Adler) has just sent me word of Die Familie Schneider [...]
media archaeology meets theatre/archaeology
Media archaeology – working on the traces of a medium. Theatre/archaeology – the (re)articulation of traces of the past as real-time event. 10×10 / 100 Words and Pictures that Define the Time / by Jonathan J. Harris 10×10 (’ten by ten’) is an interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time. The [...]