Preset potluck

Posted on October 9, 2016 by things magazine

The story of ORCH5, or, theclassical ghost in the hip-hop machine, or how the ORCH5 patch from the Fairlight IIx found its stabby way into hundreds of pieces of music. More on the IIx, and some input from Peter Gabriel / related, The Iconic Sounds Of Synthesis – Vangelis’ Blade Runner Brass Sound, or how the Yamaha CS-80 was used straight out of the box / more music: Powell – Jonny; Long Pike Hollow / computing for preppers. Which technologies will survive when SHTF? / There’s magic in mess: why you should embrace a disorderly desk / Angular Geometry, the daily GIF art of Tyler Haywood.

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Beach life

Posted on October 7, 2016 by things magazine

1994 Scientology Handbook / sort of related, the Risks Digest / The last day of hot metal press before computers come in at The New York Times / music: Bitter Lake / Liquid assets: how the business of bottled water went mad / sculptures and objects by Akinori Goto / sand drawings by Julian Richardson / Hyperallergic, a site about art.

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Bubbles

Posted on October 4, 2016 by things magazine

Some fine images of Antti Lovag’s “Palais Bulles“, latterly owned by Pierre Cardin and on the market for a rumoured £300m / if you want a proper architectural masterpiece, Luis Barragán’s Cuadra San Cristobal in Mexico is substantially more affordable / VR as a generator of opinionated digital graffiti. The world is going to look very messy with our goggles on / Forgotten Fiberglass, American one-offs, concept cars and esoteric sports cars from the past / a look at the RIBA Stirling Award shortlist.

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Etchings

Posted on October 3, 2016 by things magazine

Brutal Londo, by Zupagrafika (via Daniel Gray) / Richard Leo Johnson, things that were lost but are now found. Photography from the 70s and 80s. More at Oxford American / abstracted masters painted by Anna Ostoya / Tale Pieces, the blog of the Bewick Society, devoted to the work of English engraver Thomas Bewick / from where we find a link to the work of Chris Daunt.

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Steam library

Posted on September 27, 2016 by things magazine

Everything is Broken / fix it yourself with the Piper Raspberry Pi Computer Kit / Line Wobbler, a ‘one-dimensional dungeon crawler game with a unique wobble controller made out of a door-stopper spring and a several meter long ultrabright LED strip display’. By Robin Baumgarten / more game experiments by Jason Rohrer / a collection of favourite transcendent performances / beautiful interior paintings by Simon Adjiashvili / a fairly transcendent New Mexico Ranch by Tadao Ando. For Tom Ford / London’s gentrification habit / Lost footage of Bath, dating back to 1952 / Dorich House Museum, a restored sculptor’s house in South London / new images of the Thermal Baths in Vals by Fernando Guerra to celebrate their 20th anniversary.

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Weekend plans

Posted on September 24, 2016 by things magazine

Music: Jude Woodhead; Black Angel Drifter; The Cure, live in Glasgow in 1984; Ruth and Martin’s Album Club, introducing people to works they’ve never (often inexplicably) heard; Coffee and Riffs; The Caretaker’s new album series is a three year project charting the slow decline of the mind; The Beatles Never Existed / other things. Full Plate, Lego vegetation / the IG NOBELS have been announced. Thomas Thwaites triumphs, presumably unwittingly / for Community fans, Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne / archival imagery from Australia’s Cave Clan / more urban exploration / Kevin Wisbith, Death Star over Florida.

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Sounds of science

Posted on September 21, 2016 by things magazine

On the nation of Yorkshire, a host of links. Related, the East Riding Archives / ‘We’ve reached peak everything’: New photography by Edward Burtynsky / PaperPetShop / Apple in talks to buy McLaren? / related (?), the third transport revolution / not so revolutionary, but intriguing nonetheless, the origin of the Chinese balance scooter / Inside, an atmospheric game / drop nuisance callers into the sales call abyss / the Georgi Markov Story / is NASA messing with star signs? No / Passengers, a new film about space. According to wikipedia, Thomas Newman has scored 78 films. Seven of his immediate relatives are also film composers.

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Bone yards

Posted on September 20, 2016 by things magazine

Photos of the Loch Ness Monster revisited (via MeFi) / Jørn Utzon’s Ahm House, his only UK project, up for sale / photographs by Sascha Weidner / a collection of free Vintage Stock Photographs / rocket launch failures / The Towner, a beautiful and literary online magazine about cities / Novelty Mag / a new issue Dirty Furniture is out. ‘Toilet’ / Music from Too Quiet / music from S U R V I V E / music from Troller / How to make a simple electronic musical instrument. Or you could just make a popsicle stick harmonica / B-52s in the Desert.

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The spirit of place

Posted on September 19, 2016 by things magazine

Xchurches, a tumblr of ex-churches / photography by Alexandre Guirkinger / paintings by Bernardo Siciliano / photography by Ignas Maldus / In pictures: Georgia’s forgotten people, ‘Approximately 400 are living in harsh conditions in an abandoned Soviet-era military hospital in the capital, Tbilisi’ / The Emblem of Austerity Nostalgia, Owen Hatherley’s essay on ‘Keep Calm’ now up on Reading Design (‘… a nostalgia for the state of being repressed – solid, stoic, public-spirited, as opposed to the depoliticised, hysterical and privatised reality of Britain over the last thirty years.’).

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Wilfrid Wood sculpts Will Self / Michael Gump, aka BobBugs, is a master of daily disguise / It’s Nice That flags up a new book, Flying Saucers are Real!, from Anthology Books. See also our related collection of pulpy Saucer book covers / Cool’n’Vintage sell shiny classic cars and take fine films of their stock / massive collection of scanned and archived material in MoMA’s exhibition history section / Strong Language, a blog about swearing / Expedition Trucks are long-distance yachts for the road. Related, turning a Land-Rover into a camper.

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Out on the ice floes

Posted on September 15, 2016 by things magazine

Compare and contrast: the voyage of the Crystal Serenity via the buried, frozen and long lost wreck of HMS Terror / painting Peckham, the work of artist Mark Pearson / on modern video game architecture / Victorian architecture at risk. A couple of good video game environments there, we reckon / Artificial Intelligence. Many graphs / India adds up to almost 9,000 new vehicles a day to its roads / a history of squatting in London (via the shiny new tmn).

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New things

Posted on September 13, 2016 by things magazine

Two of our staple daily destinations, Kottke and The Morning News have both unveiled redesigns. In the case of the latter, there’s a greater focus on the links between daily changes, updates, obsessions and events, while Kottke is more concerned with presentation for an increasingly mobile readership. Let it be noted that we are no longer going to even attempt to redesign, mostly because we have forgotten how to use css (and do people even use css in any case?).

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Shipping News

Posted on September 12, 2016 by things magazine

Shipmap.org, tracking global cargo ships in real time (via Smith Journal) / Citroen Origins / music by Phantom West / How A Movie Looks Like Before-And-After Post-Processing / Forensics: The anatomy of crime, an exhibition at the Wellcome Trust / Circumstellar Habitable Zone Simulator / Spelunky, a classic game / a pdf collection of early punk zine, Unsound / photography by Romain Veillon / how to build a lute / Oleomingus, a tumblr.

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Twist and turn

Posted on September 8, 2016 by things magazine

Some numbers: All 25 of Apple’s Dongles in One Place / 30 minutes of Jerry Lewis’ infamous Holocaust movie have surfaced online / 1000 Things for Boys to Do, 1948 / Joanna Hogg’s Architecture of Desire, filmed in Sauerbruch Hutton’s H House in London / optical illusions by Adam Pizurny. Some nsfw / the fidget cube.

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Left, left, right, left, up. Turn on light.

Posted on September 6, 2016 by things magazine

The Constructivist Map of Moscow / eight artists illustrate the video-game obsessions of their childhoods / How did you spend your day? / Amazon introduce a push button world / the bureaucratic hell of America’s gun tracing system / art and objects at Design is Fine / The Improbable, Bold History of Space Concept Art / The House Abandon, old school style text adventure with a twist / sort of related, Stranger Things as an 8-bit video game / the Organ, is a long, long running zine about music.

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Learning zones

Posted on September 2, 2016 by things magazine

Classrooms around the world, photographed by Julian Germain. See also James Mollion’s series on Playgrounds around the world / a collection of rare early city maps / the Hyperloop is all hype / who needs hyperloops when Fiat 127s can fly? / also from City Metric, the ‘new’ walking Tube Map / Historic City Atlases / a collection of mechanical gifs / Nathan Barley, collected. Defiantly nsfw / Shoegaze Band’s Pedalboard Becomes Self-Aware, Demands Creative Control / sort of related, music by Minor Victories.

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Atoms for space

Posted on August 30, 2016 by things magazine

Every Building in Baghdad: The Rifat Chadirji Archives / film and more at Slightly Intrepid / Dreams of Space, regularly visited / related, the Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness. More marvellous space things at Atomic Rockets and at False Steps, ‘the space race as it might have been’ / Go-Karts for the modern age / paintings by Tim Kennedy / geometric gifs by Ross McCampbell / What’s Next for the Car / ‘Freaks on the peaks‘: the lonely lives of the last remaining forest fire lookouts. Strangely doesn’t mention Firewatch / The Dinosaurs of Crystal Palace (via MeFi). See also things13 / Patrik Schumacher looks on the bright side of Brexit. The comments are enlightening / via world-architects / old book covers at Toekneesan’s flickr page.

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Raise the roof higher

Posted on August 25, 2016 by things magazine

A tranche of new music curated at Bandcamp Daily / women in publishing, at Motherland, ‘an online destination for women who happen to be mums’ / Peter Garritano’s series Hajwalah looks at drifting culture in the Middle East. See also the fascinating book Joyriding in Riyadh (via Wired) / more W: House Raising, photography of storm preparations by Ira Wagner / Stéphane Goin’s photographs of the American road trip / paintings by Zsofia Schweger have something of the low-res early 3D game about them (at the incomparable It’s Nice That) / Scorched Ear, music and UFOs / nature’s imitators / a list of unexplained sounds. You can listen too / the Doig verdict is not unsurprising. Previously / explained sounds courtesy of the pedal wizards at Henretta Engineering / music and nostalgia, repackaging the past with Touch & Go / my God, it’s full of stars.

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Art and photographs

Posted on August 24, 2016 by things magazine

Harvard Art Museums makes available a large searchable Bauhaus archive / Get in the Sea / Tom Gauld’s Jetpack, a great tumblr / yet more visual insights into Historic London / another look at Henry Ford’s failed jungle utopia, Fordlandia / A Moveable Beast, Helge Skodvin’s images from the ‘Natural History Collections in Bergen, Norway, [which] are undergoing a major restoration’. We also like Skodvin’s 240, a celebration of a venerable Volvo / photographic projects by Francisco Reina / art by Joanne Hummel-Newell / This is Frank Lloyd Wright / photographs by Henry Leutwyler.

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Borrowed and Billowing

Posted on August 23, 2016 by things magazine

X-ray images by Xavier Lucchesi / still life photography by Andrew B.Myers / Paging Adam Curtis – ‘Nooscope mystery: The strange device of Putin’s new man Anton Vaino’ / the rise of ‘Borrowing Clubs‘ / parenting styles distilled, a review of The Gardener and the Carpenter by Alison Gopnik / the works of science fiction author Ted Chiang / Instagram profiles reveal user depression in new machine learning study (via DP Review) / a collection of cutaways / design concept for London housing by Matt Lucraft / the architecture of London’s Olympicopolis Arts Quarter – would B-OS have been a better choice (giving London the art-centric megastructure it’s hankered after since the 70s) / the Voynich is coming to facsimile. More at MeFi: 2003, 2014 / collections by Dina Kelberman / a fascinating exploration of the modern fascination with ‘field guides’, how we’re all cultural explorers and collectors now: Cloud and Field / see also An Ode to Clouds (via Kottke) / Milton Glaser analyses Olympic logo design through the ages (via Medium).

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Since you’ve been all mapped out

Posted on August 18, 2016 by things magazine

Superb Popbitch article about the influence and importance of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ 2003 song ‘Maps‘, tracing it through its sampled life with both the Black Eyed Peas and Beyoncé, as well as the track’s inspiration for a peerless and hugely influential piece of pop-rock, Kelly Clarkson’s Since U Been Gone (check the middle 8s), an early triumph for Max Martin and a template-setter for the decade.

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