nickkahler reblogged
Hiram Mattison, Illustration from A High-School Astronomy, 1859 (via archive)
What pernicious urban byproducts of cultural processing are accreting in the creative city? Allen J. Scott has pointed to the heavy social costs of two-tiered creative cities unfolding within cognitive-cultural capitalism. The gap between the creative class and low wage service underclass inflected by gender, race and ethnicity is widening. Star architects “sign” idiosyncratic buildings as part of global branding campaigns built onto such exclusionary stratifications.
Deborah Natsios + John Young in Nicholas Korody, “The Whistleblower Architects,” 2016
The finer parts of myself shall sweep me into eternity, higher than all the stars. My name shall be never forgotten. Whatever the might of Rome extends in the lands she has conquered, the people shall read and recite my words. Throughout all ages, if poets have vision to prophesy truth, I shall live in my fame.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, 8 CE
I'll vent the spirit of Delphi within me, unveil the heavens, unlock the decrees of the mind sublime. I'll utter great mysteries, never explored by our fathers' intelligence, mysteries long concealed in the dark. My will is to traverse the stars on high, to abandon this clogging abode on earth, to ride the clouds and to stand on the shoulders of mighty Atlas, gaze down from afar on men who are helplessly straying at random, empty of reason, trembling and troubled by fear of their ending, and so may embolden their hearts by unrolling the scroll of fate!
Ovid, Metamorphoses, 8 CE
There, spread out as far as I could see were literally thousands of tiny luminous objects that glowed in the black sky like fireflies. I was riding slowly through them, and the sensation was like walking backwards through a pasture where someone had waved a wand and made all the fireflies stop right where they were and glow steadily.
John Glenn, “Interview with Life Magazine on First American Earth Orbit,” c. 1962
This poem is not addressed to you.
You may come into it briefly,
But no one will find you here, no one.
You will have changed before the poem will.
Even while you sit there, unmovable,
You have begun to vanish. And it does not matter.
The poem will go on without you.
It has the spurious glamor of certain voids.
It is not sad, really, only empty.
Once perhaps it was sad, no one knows why.
It prefers to remember nothing.
Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago.
Your type of beauty has no place here.
Night is the sky over this poem.
It is too black for stars.
And do not look for any illumination.
You neither can nor should understand what it means.
Listen, it comes without guitar,
Neither in rags nor any purple fashion.
And there is nothing in it to comfort you.
Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon.
You will forget the poem, but not before
It has forgotten you. And it does not matter.
It has been most beautiful in its erasures.
O bleached mirrors! Oceans of the drowned!
Nor is one silence equal to another.
And it does not matter what you think.
This poem is not addressed to you.
Donald Justice, “Poem [This poem is not addressed to you],” c. 1980
nickkahler reblogged
George W. Parker, “Radiant Point for the August Meteors” in Elements of Astronomy, 1911 (via nemfrog)
Source: archive.org
The utter darkness that falls on a prairie like that is inconceivable to an Easterner. There were no stars, no moon, no light, except the light of Mrs. Wall’s kitchen. What lay beyond the shadows of the yard was an endless view of the world that you wouldn’t be able to see till dawn.
Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1957
The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.
Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1957
Iconic architecture and the star-system are both creatures of the architectural critic (rather than creatures of architecture itself) who plays the role of a mediator between the expert architectural discourse on the one hand and the mass media on the other hand. They communicate relevant news from the world of architecture to potential clients, customers and the general public. But architectural stars and iconic buildings are not created ex nihilo by the critics’ Midas’ touch. The critics only distil what the expert discourse among architects and architectural theorists has already selected and confirmed through a proliferating influence within the discipline.
The idea of iconic architecture serves the purpose of filling the explanatory gap that inevitably opens up because the methodology and motivation behind the unusual appearance of a radically innovative design cannot be fully explained to the general public.
air
dream house
future house
ancient house
basket house
air house
wind house
tree house / pole house
screen porch house
light house
dark house
open house
closed house / close house
batten down the hatches
private house
star house
sky house
full body mask / model and house
slide open house
fold-out house
slide-up / slide-down house
transformer living
movable / mobile / fixed
fold-down house
swing-out house
swing-in house
dom-ino unit / Rietveld house / Miesian clearness
air car
the house occupies poles anywhere they are abandoned (a post-technological condition) and becomes an “air squatter above
a long telescoping stair
a lift
lifting
breakfast in bed
rain site / storm view
star view
tree view
leaf view
enter the green
defy / deny the bugs
rain sound
breeze sound
swing together / apart
one – two buckle my shoe
bug sound
grass sound
worm sound
earth