Insubordinate Automata

I discovered just recently that my buddy H.R., who’s been away in Paris the past ten months on an internship, has been going to work each day at this place, the home office/laboratory of Francois Roche and R&Sie(n) Architects… Extraordinary generative strategies for a biophilic architecture… sure hope some of this influence comes back with him, if he ever comes home…

“…where Lewis Carroll used mathematics to confuse a little girl’s perception, such apparatuses, including ‘’bachelor machines,” stretch a line of subjectivization to organize repetitions and anomalies using and developing paradoxes that are able to re-complexify and de-alienate the edges of the truth system, in order to re-invert the logic of meaning and turn it into a vanishing point…“

Bruce Sterling makes a friendly guest appearance on the R&Sie(n) website, contributing some future-fiction based in the Spidernethewood house.  He also penned this article for Wired in 2005 on the firm’s chief architect-designer Francois Roche.

Recommended are Sterling’s Viridian Manifesto of 2000, and his classic endo-symbiotic bio-punk Schismatrix of 1986. Amazing stuff; ideas which which will play out for generations.

Joy Web Sight

Some recent works from the constantly evolving artblog of one of my favourite humans: a brilliant wit and polymathic intermedian: artist, photographer, designer, filmmaker,  and concrete comedian, Rodney Sanches…

Tyler Brett and Tony Romano’s brilliant Carchitecture series …

Astounding new work from : Maneater, on Tiny Vices:

Take a moment from your brief eternal life to shudder in the telepresence of Supernatural, 2006…

An interview from 2006 … and another from maybe 2008 …

Someone asked me recently, apropos of nothing, “who is the most famous person who knows you by name, who would recognize you in the street” … Since first seeing her teenage work in Vancouver circa 2003, I’ve believed that one day coming soon, this person would be Aurel Schmidt. Outrageously talented artist, world-class, clear from fifty paces — lucky for everyone she’s in New York now — historians of the present moment, ears up.

Kelly Wallace was one of the first serious artists I connected with in Vancouver, circa ‘93/’94– Kelly’s intensity and rigor considerably influenced my own creative arc, from long summer conversations on the procedural and minimal, and the color yellow, in terse syllables — I’d lost track of him in ‘95, but found his work online again, yesterday — These are his still-incredible drawings - No surprise they’re even more explosively packed with attentive intensity and rigorous labour as I remember their author to exemplify — Great to find you again old buddy — Accept my salutations, comrade, it’s been a long while.  Amazing work - SC

Exhilarating discovery of the day: the lettraset drawings of Kelly Mark — so excellent, I knew Donato Mancini couldn’t be the only one … Still squirming in my seat with excitement — I love this kind of stuff — Strong work Kelly, thrilled to find this book “Important Instructions for Saving the World” today at Pulp Fiction… sonorous jets of cheer and glee from this vulture of culture … we diggit:

David Spriggs‘ work keeps getting more and more amazing — and he started at ‘outrageous’ — always ambitious, he’s now working at a scale which befits his subject … check out his incredible new installation, Axis of Power - .. whoah … -

or 2008’s ‘Half Explosion‘

or 2007’s ‘Dark Matter‘

… brilliant technique, extremely cool work… Congratulations, and may ‘reap the whirlwind’ sound a blessing, Mr.Spriggs … mindblowing stuff.  Salude.

Conquer 2008 at Numen Gallery

and Pattern Machine Retro Style Alien on Behance Network

References - 3660 photos from the Chair Factory

Portraits

Adam Dodd portrait by Robert Mearns

Robert Mearns portrait by Meesoo Lee

The Death and Life of Great Little Mountain

My buddy Pirooz currently has a haunting suite of documentary photographs showing at Dadabase Online - a political series which speak to limit systems applied in the contemporary metropolis; in this case, to a neighborhood social-housing project in pre-olympian, post-real-estate-credit-collapse, still-perniciously-hyper-real, bubble-economic-surreality of Vancouver BC, c.2009.   I really enjoy this cat, and have been loving the photos he’s showing online - stoked that Dadabase have taken him under their wing, and recognize his talent. Check out also this poetic and meditative journalistic suite, shot on a visit to Palestine in 2007, 1967 Time Still — Exceedingly fine work, the kid’s got great eyes for the camera’s lyrical potential. Enjoy, and keep watch for more impressive movements from Pirooz Nemati…