plus nine. neo now.

Wet Concrete I by OsloInTheSummer

Flickr Pool: Urban Microscapes.

When I read the CNN Fortune article about cubicles, I nearly missed the most beautiful sentence:

It [the cubicle] is the Fidel Castro of office furniture.

file under: "Sätze um die ich Sie beneide"

Cheers for that, Julie Schlosser!

information architecture is about people first, and technology second.
25 theses by the Information Architecture Institute

yikes! (more stuff at worth1000.com. Also, check out the Fun With Propaganda section.)

The Kleptones entertain you for 24 hours.

"A number of major cities have these autonomous zones, and how a given city chooses to deal with the situaton can impact drastically on that city's image. Copenhagen, for instance, was one of the first, and has done very well. Atlanta, I suppose, would be the classic example of what not to do." Harwood blinks. "It's what we do now instead of bohemias," he says.

"Instead of what?"

"Bohemias. Alternative subcultures. They were a crucial aspect of industrial civilization in the two previous centuries. They were where industrial civilization went to dream. A sort of unconscious R&D, exploring alternate societal strategies. Each one would hve a dress code, characteristic forms of artistic expression, a substance or substances of choice, and a set of sexual values at odds with those of the culture at large. And they did, frequently, have locales with which they became associate. But they became extinct."

"Extinct?"

"We started picking them before they could ripen. A certain crucial growing period was lost, as marketing evolved and the mechanisms of recommodification became quicker, more rapacious. Authentic subcultures required backwaters, and time, and there are no more backwaters. They went the way of geography in general. Autonomous zones do offer a certain insulation from the monoculture, but they seem not to lend themselves to recommodification, not in the same way. We don't know why exactly."

William Gibson: All tomorrow's parties

The execs told him to come back with a bubble they could wash off their boardroom table. That was nine years ago... Until one day, his stubborn persistence led him to $500,000 in financial backing, enough to hire a dye chemist. Together, they took Kehoe's obsession to an outcome even more amazing than he had ever hoped, an outcome no one could have anticipated for the simple reason that no one imagined it possible. The secret to nonstaining colored bubbles, it turns out, is a dye that could unlock a revolution in color chemistry. All you need to do is make color disappear.

POPSCI EXCLUSIVE: The 11-Year Quest to Create Disappearing Colored Bubbles

[via kunstbetrieb.org]

five tips. more tips for other stuff, from other people? (some nice how-tos there, too.)

"A project devoted to the study of graffiti-covered walls as they change over time": the beautiful project Graffity Archaeology.

Fascinating, too, is how they get new material: Via a flickr pool.

(more fun with a fast connection.)

schoenes flickr-set: Space Invaders in Paris

[via die romantische komoedie]