integument

ornament – overlooked and revisited

courtly-floral

I have just received a copy of Diana Newall and Christina Unwin’s marvelous book The Chronology of Pattern [Link] – just published in the UK by Bloomsbury/A & C Black. We still radically separate ornament from style and meaning, treating it as superfluous and superficial, yet it is the primary experience we have of much [...]


site and artifact – media materialities

ShiKai-Tseng

Sam (Schillace) has put me onto a very interesting photo project – where site becomes the surface of artifact. PhotoGraphy from ShiKai Tseng on Vimeo. (An artifact is placed inside a pinhole camera that records a 360 degree panorama onto its surface.) Further focus on medium as mode of engagement, as much as signal and [...]


ghost in the mirror 2

Daguerreotype c 1850. Oblique view. See the project Ghosts in the machine.


ghosts in the mirror 1

Spent a family Thanksgiving up in Boonville, Anderson Valley with Sam and Angela Schillace. As ever, the locality is, for me, one of few fragile traces of somewhat indeterminate and agricultural pasts, juxtaposed with major investment in business futures. An old (cultivated) apple tree in the nearby field, railway carriages in the town converted to [...]


epigraphy #3

Bamburgh, Northumberland


gravestone, Bamburgh, Joyous Garde

Northumberland UK In the graveyard of Saint Aidan’s church – built in the 13th century. Founded c635.


three books #1