“3AM is the dark heart of the city, when the carefully repressed anxieties, aspirations and dreams of its emotionally parched inhabitants can no longer be contained”
Elena, who is with us at the Proboscis studio under the Leonardo Da Vinci scheme, used a very eloquent excerpt from Night Haunts: A Journey Through the London Night by Sukhdev Sandhu, in her post accompanying the visual essay she is currently composing, Mapping The Streets. The book runs parallel with some of the themes we’ve been exploring for City As Material, particularly the notion of an outsider’s forays into a hidden landscape – in this case, ironically, a world normally veiled by the light of day.
I immediately set out to buy it, but soon discovered it was available in full online, as it was originally commissioned by Artangel Interaction as a web project, with chapters, or “episodes”, released monthly. The website uses ever-shifting, distorted pixels and visuals as a backdrop and ambient sound paired with the text, both emanating an eerie nocturnal resonance, as the reader delves deeper into this insightful and poetic work.
I’ve been following Julia Rothman’s excellent blog, Book By Its Cover for a good while now, and first heard about the concept behind Drawn In months back, but for some reason its actual release evaded me. I’ve re-discovered it now, and immediately snapped it up from Amazon, as we’re planning a new series looking into the methods and practices artists use to do their work, and also because I featured Ying-Chieh Liu’s exquisite sketchbooks recently.
Drawn In shows the creative processes and personal musings of 44 artists from different disciplines, by opening up their private sketchbooks and asking how they use them. It looks fascinating – I’ve always pondered how artists with industrious work ethics manage to actually get everything done! Can’t wait to receive this.
Before the event, we were asked to devise walking routes to create individual cubes, each side featuring a QR code, linking to a particular geographic spot on an online mapping service (Google Maps, OpenStreetMap, etc) – a start point, four waypoints, and a destination. Using an API Gordon coded, and the bookleteer API, entering the six location URL’s automatically generated a StoryCube. My route, based around memorials and tributes in different forms is available here.
Meeting just after 2.00pm, Simon and Gordon gave a summary of the project, and a recap of the development process so far. We talked about the current limitations of Google Maps when creating the cubes, particularly the inability to share manually added, user designated routes with other people (they require two waypoints to locate the route), and had some interesting ideas regarding the next stage of the project. What about a mix of map links, audio files and videos – an interactive tour, scanning QR codes near points of interest to access audio descriptions and related videos? Or, a quasi treasure hunt, requiring players to obtain QR code stickers for the cubes (discouraging them from scanning all the codes at once – cheating!)Â from certain spots to get the next destination?
We decided to use Simon’s cube for our first trial, his route focusing on locations acted on by “centrifugal and centripetal” forces – each point “acting as an attractor of sorts, which in some instances cannot be reached, yet which pulls the walker towards it”.
After departing from the studio, Giles scanned the first code to get our start point – the ramp under West Smithfield. Once there, we scanned the next spot, the middle of Charterhouse Square. All was going smoothly. However, after reaching the third spot, the omnimous brick circle in Golden Lane estate (the “Unplace” we featured in the City As Material: Streetscapes event), we were unable to load the next, despite trying with numerous phones – bad signal, or bad omen? Despite this, we were afforded time to ponder its unusual acoustic properties once again, and plot a cunning plan to subvert this synchronised failing of technologies… cheat!
Simon told us his next waypoint, the Curve Gallery in the Barbican Centre, which we arrived at via its winding walkways (after ceremonially scanning the code we missed). Another hurdle faced us here, as to gain entry to the exhibition, we were expected to don quarantine-esque shoe covers, and couldn’t enter as a group. Bah. The penultimate spot, another circle, on Monkwell Street, beckoned.
From there we were awarded our destination, the Museum of London, or more specifically, outside its entrance. Here, we asked if we were able to get into the recently renovated green space below, and were told “perhaps, but you might not be able to get back up!”. Rather than risk it, we retired to the pub right next door, content in a mostly successful first run of a StoryCube Cairn route.
We’re brimming with ideas for what might be possible next. Until then, view all our routes, and download the cubes yourself here.
A document of the five City As Material events we ran in London last year, this eBook collects the blog posts penned after each event, a selection of photographs taken, as well as an introduction to the project and our motives for undertaking it. Created in place of an individual eBook for Sonic Geographies, due to the absence of a special guest, this account of the series provides a narrative that was lacking from the other books produced, detailing the experience from each event on the day, not just the resulting output, and hopefully intriguing potential future collaborators.
Simply using the existing text from the bookleteer blog and full-page photographs as covers for each section, in a book, turns transitory blog posts and assorted snapshots into a publication that can stand on its own right, demonstrating the transformational effect and credence associated with a printed document (although it’s also readable online), made possible with the eBook format.
Read City As Material: An Overview with the online bookreader below, or download, print and make via Diffusion.
I’ve found Etsy to be a great source when looking for remarkable zines, often not featured anywhere else; either a sign that unfortunately, no-one has picked up on them yet, or the author is simply satisfied with creating and making their zines available to whoever stumbles upon them. Certainly the latter can make the reader feel as if they have discovered a hidden treasure of their own volition, rather than via the many zine groups floating about the internet, or word of mouth within the community.
This couldn’t be more true for anyone viewing Ying-Chieh Liu’s reprinted sketchbooks, containing stunning, ethereal illustrations from her numerous travels. It’s an interesting concept to reproduce a personal sketchbook (in I assume, its raw form), without interpretation or much of a narrative, but when they contain such intriguing artwork it’s hard not to be engrossed.
I’ve just discovered The Book Barge, a canal boat that acts as a floating bookshop and workshop space, currently touring around the U.K. The interior looks amazing, and not least of all, inviting – perfect for a relaxed perusal of its shelves. Normally moored in Staffordshire, in May it set off on a six-month tour to highlight the struggle of independent bookshops to readers across the country, buying essential items using only its own stock as currency. Curious and commendable – best of luck!
Knowing my penchant for unusual pieces created from books and paper, Giles turned me on to the extraordinary work of artist Nicholas Galanin, who hand-carves 3D portraits from lengthy volumes, as if they were inverted sculpture blocks. The source models for these surreal, paper death masks were first captured with a 3D scanner to produce an exact digital rendition of the subject, then cut out and bound at the back – a sculpture you can actually leaf through.
Click on the picture below to view the Flickr gallery.
I have been blogging about creative portfolios recently, with the notion of ‘standing out from the crowd’ as my backbone. This is also relevant to CV’s. Just like a portfolio, you have to stand out from the crowd to get noticed! I came across two fantastic CV’S which mimic a London tube map, and instead of different stops, each coloured line represents a category such as qualifications or education and each ‘stop’ is what the person has achieved or what skills they have or what clubs they belonged to.
On Jonathan Kaczynski CV, the Piccadilly line has been transformed into ‘Education ‘ a timeline reflecting his progress throughout education and the ‘Circle line’ shows off his extra curricular activities, wheres as the longer ‘District line’ demonstrates his computer skills.
However, each line on Kevin Wang’s ‘tube map CV’ reflects places he has worked instead of different categories like Kaczynski’s. It doesn’t matter which way this format is set up, I’m a fan either way! Just how the purpose of a tube map is to figure out how to get you to places, one destination to another, this format for a CV I feel may reflect the same purpose – moving from one job to another, trying to gain more and better skills to get yourself to that next destination – a higher paid job or to become more qualified . An interesting concept, one which I may use myself in the future.
Kenneth Goldsmith, poet and founder of UbuWeb, created this series of six StoryCubes, each inscribed with the side effects of a certain prescription drug. The text is rendered in illegible 1-point type, so that the words become texture – some resembling the grooves in a vinyl record, another a peculiar lilac coloured static noise. Kenneth also provides an interesting point in regards to their physicality:
“When folded into cubes, these warnings – secretly embedded into the pills we take – are reconstituted into three-dimensional forms, creating a new type of placebo.”
An anthology series of poetry and illustration, Stop Sharpening Your Knives has been around for a good few years, and is currently accepting submissions for its 5th edition. I had the good fortune to hear a performance by one of its editors, poet Jack Underwood, at the launch night of the London Word Festival a few months back, who was equally hilarious and heartfelt. No doubt he’s got good taste as well, eh?
