Archive for July, 2008
Photophores: July 28, 2008
In today’s WSJ, why Chicago is a housing success story. “Bringing more units to market — think of all those cranes along the lake — explains in some part of why Chicago is more affordable.” If you take a cursory glance at craigslist in Portland or Seattle, you’ll see that it costs an incredible amount of money for a decent apartment anywhere near downtown, because there’s just no supply. What’s considered a mid-priced building in Chicago is practically a luxury penthouse anywhere else. Moreover, they just don’t build residential buildings this tall anywhere else in the U.S. Vancouver has done something to encourage a large number of residential high-rises, but the demand for real estate there keeps prices quite high.
Crain’s reports that you can even get units in the Trump building for, um, relative bargain prices. “At least 34 hotel suites sold by the developer in the past six months are back on the market, some priced at a steep discount to comparable unsold hotel units in the yet-to-be-completed project.”
A New Yorker visits Chicago and likes the lack of “constant searches and surveillance” (though Chicago has expanded surveillance lately). “It’s amazing how good this felt. And it gave rise to thoughts about whether we really need all the searches, identifications, metal detectors, sensors that characterize life in New York.”
“The International Press Club of Chicago seems to consist of whoever shows up for lunch on Wednesdays on the second floor of the Loop’s Beef and Brandy Restaurant — visitors welcome.” All riiight!!
Here’s an article about the green 2,500-square-foot home on exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry.
The NYT has a three-pager on children’s book author Tomi Ungerer. Phaidon will be republishing Ungerer’s books this fall, starting with The Three Robbers (1962), “a darkly drawn tale of big-hatted brigands and the orphan girl who shows them the error of their ways.”
Finally, David Byrne and Brian Eno have finished their new record, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. Get one of the songs free next week, here.
Add comment July 28, 2008
Photophores: July 25, 2008
I’m reading Jeffrey Ford’s marvelous The Girl in the Glass, but there’s a detail that’s driving me nuts. Ford refers to the FBI in the context of 1932, but at the time, the bureau was called the United States Bureau of Investigation. The Federal Bureau of Investigation wasn’t the permanent name until 1935. I know, I’m a pedantic asshole, but I love the book and can’t wait to read everything else he’s written. In the meantime, I’ll have to keep putting the book down for fifteen minutes with every instance of ‘FBI’ and taking deep breaths.
Dexigner has a brief review of The Design of Semi-Industrial Confectionery — “an encyclopaedic record of 92 Portuguese daily confectionery cakes.” Fantastic. It sounds like the mcguffin in a 70s paranoia thriller. “This is no damned book! Somebody or something is rotten in the Company!”
Reuters has an article on the International Symposium on Electronic Art 2008 at the National Museum of Singapore. I like this one: “Sound forms the basis of ‘Run Silent, Run Deep’ by Australian artists Nigel Helyer and Daniel Woo, who made an audio portrait of Singapore which visitors can navigate much like online map.”
Add comment July 25, 2008
A Mind at Play: Context and notes
A Mind at Play is the current photography exhibit at the Art Institute, featuring “the work of artists who embraced this notion of the viewer’s subjective experience and explored how such perceptions can be manipulated through photography.” This post comprises highlights of the exhibit, contextual links to various interviews, videos and additional works, and a few Chicago connections.
- Three (maybe four) works by Sao Paulo native Vic Muniz, who was influenced by James Gibson’s Eye-Head theory of visual awareness. Muniz likes to work with images that are “exhausted somehow,” like Elvis and, I suppose, his own face. I saw Muniz give a talk at the MCA some time ago.
- German photographer Peter Keetman’s 1001 Faces, 1956, with tiny faces on water drops in a wire mesh. Maybe you’ve seen his book, Volkswagen: A Week at the Factory.
- Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison’s Reclamation, 2003, in which two pinstripe-suited men pull grass over a ravaged, old west-feel landscape. The “Everyman” figure in the series is Robert himself, who reminds me of the ghoul in Carnival of Souls, one of my very favorite movies. See some of the ParkeHarrison’s other work at The Architect’s Brother traveling exhibit.
- Kenneth Josephson’s Chicago, 1976, a trompe l’oiel brick wall. Josephson received his MS from the Institute of Design of the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1960, and was a professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1960 to 1997.
- Several works from Gary Winograd, including New York City, 1964, with a seal facing the camera.
- Duane Michals‘ photo sequence The Bogeyman (1973) was my favorite work in the exhibit. It’s a sequence of seven photos: a girl, about six years old, asleep in a chair next to a man’s coat (in focus) hanging on a rack; she’s awake and curious; she investigates; she opens the coat on the rack; she’s asleep on the chair again; the bogeyman in the coat (now fuzzy) approaches the sleeping girl; the bogeyman carries the (screaming?) girl out of the room. Pix Channel has a video interview of Michals, titled Beyond Observation.
- Robert Cumming, Zero Plus Zero Equals Zero/A Doughnut Plus a Doughnut Equals Two Doughnuts, (1974), Two Explanations for a Small Split Pond and other works. Cumming received his MFA in 1967 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
- Abelardo Morell, a Cuban-born photographer known for his camera obscura work. The exhibit had his work It Was Much Pleasanter at Home (1998). Morell’s work was at the AIC back in 2005, with A View With a Room: Abelardo Morell’s Camera Obscura Photographs. See his Alice in Wonderland series here. Watch a trailer of a film about Morell called Shadow of the House and see a video of Morell making a Camera Obscura in a Venetian Palazzo here. I also recommend watching Morell’s guest interview on DriveTime. Moreover, see four of Morell’s Chicago works here.
- Marvin Newman, a photojournalist who studied with Harry Callahan at Chicago’s Institute of Design (as did Kenneth Josephson), and often photographed the streets of Chicago. See his Shadow, Chicago series here.
Add comment July 20, 2008
Showing off new books, again
My wonderful husband gave me a veritable bucketload of books, selected with considerable thought from my Amazon wish list and given over a span of four days, so I thought I’d show them off.
Look at this gorgeous, three-part cover for Michael Chabon’s Maps and Legends, illustrated by Jordan Crane. The photo doesn’t do it justice, and it feels good to hold, too.
Here’s an article about McSweeney’s and their books. “McSweeney’s is drawing a line in the sand, insisting that books between hard covers still matter enough for the time and the energy to be devoted to making them look like takeaway works of art. After all, you can’t have an embossed tri-fold jacket on a Web site.”
Lynda Barry’s book is beautiful (see below), and has 210 inspiring, marvelous pages of illustrations, collage, autobiography and creative encouragement.
Here’s the inside cover:
Add comment July 16, 2008
Dinner: Mustard water
This is the fridge of someone I know, who has apparently stopped eating. As a token effort toward preparing for the impending zombie apocalypse, she has purchased four granola bars (see door).
Add comment July 14, 2008
