dw: 02.2003

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i have been looking at the pictures of dublin on fantasyjackpalance.com for a few months now. i love the randomness of it all, so ive spent a few minutes looking through google for an equivilant site based on new york city.

a nice one, but not enough photos (click on the photo):

i remember seeing a scene in an early james bond movie. where james is getting tortured or something in a room. and there is a large circle in the roof, covered in glass. looked so cool. then i remember talking with my mate elena about something similar. anyway, here is a tadao ando building that is based around a similar idea. (its a swimming pool in naoshima, japan)

i bought a book in new york a few years ago. pretty randomly. one of those books i have lying around to make me feel as if i have some architectural knowledge. its a book about the work by a japanese architect called shin takamatsu. the book is an essay and interview with the architect and is really interesting (although a lot of it does go over my head).

there is a few buildings in the book that stick in my mind.

above: origin (osaka)

below left: karin plaza (osaka)
below right: ela tower (somewhere, maybe, its not in the book.. just saw it on the website)

pretty cool stuff. the book also gives loads of sketchs that show the evolution of the ideas that lead up to the buildings.

the fella (genndy tartakovsky) who brought us "dexters laboratory" and "samurai jack" on cartoon network is now bringing (in conjunction with george lucas) a series of short cartoons based around the events between star wars 2: attack of the clones and (the unreleased) star wars 3.

the story is here

ive been watching loads of samurai jack over the last month or so, and its amazing! really really good. with loads of little brilliant moments in there (like the crazy scientist who keeps asking jack to "high five"). precious moments.

looking through that design site from the previous post.. i had a bit of a shock..i saw "pringle" in there as one of their other clients.

anyone who knows me knows that i hate "pringles" at all costs. i have avoided consumption of them for most of my life now (any drunken consumption doesnt count).

anyway, i click on it and i saw this:

thankfully it is the golf company, not the evil crisp manufacturing empire (with the worst ads ever)

i remember about a month ago on tv 5 there was an infomercial type thing about swiss (the airline formed to take over from swissair).

the style and design of this airline is fantastic. colours and tones. hurray. brilliant. we saw some tickets and flyers at a recent travel exhibition here in helsinki... and they looked beautiful. (i like strange things!)

the design was overseen by tyler br�l� who ran wallpaper* check out the website here

anyway.. here is a picture of an interior. (note the austere yet sexy looking attendant)

hurray. holidays were really cool. got a lend of jodys digicam while i was in dublin and i got some cool (but basic shots) while on my travels.

off on hols till 17.02. bye

im going to be seeing sigur r�s next week in concert, hurray. and on sale at the gig will be a soundtrack they did for an icelandic documentary called "hlemmur" which is based on some of the people who live in and around the central bus station in reykjav�k in iceland.

i am really looking forward to hearing this, from the clip to the trailer (from which those screenshots are taken) and another released song from the album, it sounds very very electronica-ish.

as a sorta prequel to the matrix movie. a series of short anime style movies are being made. nine in total. the first four of which will be put online for free. this four and the remaining five will be able to be purchased on dvd later on.

the first one of the movies went online over the last day or two. it shows the start of the human dependance on the robots and the beginning of mans downfall.

here are some screen shots

the first episode can be downloaded here and is well worth the download (even though the largest setting is 141mb .mov file)

eboy! waheyyy!!!

a group of german artists (along with one or two in america) came together to form this outfit. i first saw their stuff about 5 years ago when they did some icons and stuff for an issue of wired. they have a book out at the moment, i found it last year in an irish shop.. there is soooo much detail in all their pictures.

here is a sample, click on the little icon fool!:

super cool

i spent a bit of time very early this morning reading one of those books that you can buy in your local bookshop. the ones that deal on loads of subjects. like "20th century art" and stuff. well i got "20th century photography". i saw one picture by a photographer called robert capa. one of his most famous photos is called "death of a spanish loyalist"

its hard to make out the detail in the image, but its taken at the moment of a mans death. this picture (amongst others) gave capa a great reputation. he went on to photograph d-day in 1944 and his brother founded the international centre for photography in new york city (a place i kept meaning to visit when i was there, but was too lazy)

anyway. he also helped to set up magnum photos

he was killed in 1954 while on assignement in vietnam. he had a motto "if your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough". in the end his motto cost him his life. thankfully he left some amazing photos behind

we were in a bar near us earlier. called bar ysi (ysi is slang for yhdeks�n (9 in finnish)). any time we go in there we end up reading a japanese magazine called brutus.
i just visitied that website and followed a link off it to an english language magazine that they also make. this magazine has an interview with tadao ando (im not sure about japanese preference for first name or surname first, so it might be ando tadao). anyway.

this is the interview which involves him talking about his impression of a few cities (nyc, paris, rome and osaka).

pretty good stuff

im completely addicted to a song by the mamas and papas. called "twelve thirty" from 1967 or something.

i was listening to it the other morning on the radio and the first line caught my attention:
"i used to live in new york city"
and i smiled and remembered the good times for a split second, then i heard the next line:
"everything there was dark and dirty"

and i laughed for a while.

anyway. get it somewhere if you can. tis a good one.

here in finland ive fallen in love with the use of cotten bags for shopping. they are brilliant. we have about 6 of them here. anyway, i want this one:

i want to be part of that wallpaper* world. well lit models with fantastic houses/villas with full length windows and a pool over looking the pacific, jetting off on swiss to their pad in z�rich aswell. if i save enough euros... you never know.....

sigur r�s debuted their new video last night on mtv.com. real streaming video. i dont really know what to make of the video. i loved the svefn g englar video and the vi�rar vel til loft�r�sa videos. both were amazing.

this one didnt do anything for me. the song itself is a bit lacking (only exceptional live).

click on the picture for the page that links to the real stream. im gonna watch it again when its available for download or at least a proper full screen over on sigur-ros.co.uk in a few days.

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