The Screen That Started It All

The multi-touch screen, the technology that has allowed for iPhones and annoying CNN broadcasts alike, was first developed by NYU researcher Jeff Han.  This video shows Han giving the original model a thorough workout.  Has anyone made a lava lamp app yet?

Double Take Doors

Three more doors from the colorful collage of our Buenos Aires neighborhood.  The long-promised album of beautiful doorways is coming soon, really.

Homeward Bound

These three images are from a new series by the photographer Corey Arnold.  I think that these photographs will either make you glad that you have a nice desk job or profoundly distressed that there is another world, perhaps far more exciting than your own, in which you will always be a stranger. However you feel about these photographs, I hope that they make you appreciate the warm things around you.

Watering Holes

If you were an art fiend, would you get your fix at the Tate...

...Or would you brave the crowds at the Louvre?  One is a maze of the modern, the other a temple of the time-tested.  If you've been I hope you don't ever have to choose a favorite.  And if you haven't been by yet, now is a better time than any to pop on over.

See the rest of this series here.

No One Does It Like You

This is the new video, recently premiered at MOMA, from a favorite band of mine, Department of Eagles.  The song is beautiful and haunting and I think you'll agree that the video more than meets the mood.

Tree Tumor

Quite mysteriously, many of the trees in our new neighborhood have this sort of affliction.  Is it some sort of tree tumor? Has this tree been gorging on rain water?  Or is there some other explanation that deserves a Medical Mysteries-type investigation?  You be the judge, but at least sympathize for this poor piece of flora.

Spooky City Clandestine

An image from a series of photographs that I produced a few years ago. This photograph now hangs in the house of a dear friend, though it remains fresh in my mind.  Especially when I look through the work of...

...New York-based photographer, Yuichi Hibi.  He likes to wander the city in the truly small hours of the morning to capture the remainder of the day.  If you dig the darkness, you can check out more of his work here.  

If You See A Red Door

Eye-catching doors have always been on my radar.  I think these two doors fit the bill.  An album of more like these is coming soon.

Those Spindly Legs

An image from Andreas Nicolas Fischer, an artist who works with data, code and mathematical mediums to create wonderfully unique pieces of art.

An image I took two years ago while studying in Prague.  No one has seen the latter but I thought its day was due when I saw the former. Enjoy.

Deep Search

Just imagine if you didn't live in the city, if you didn't have the smog, the background light and the honking cars.  You might see things as they are beyond the tenements, the pavement and the crowds.  You might see a quieter world, a world that makes you feel both insignificant and profoundly fortunate to be alive.  You might see this.

via Hubble, click here for more.

Early Bird Special

Never fear if you need to park your car in Buenos Aires because every block has four garages. Were these buildings built for this purpose? Were they abandoned and re-commissioned?  Are they wasting space and could they be better used as water parks, skate parks or parks in general?  Eyes on the road, or at least on the lookout for the next parking space.

Long Gone Winter

This is an old image I took in Providence this past winter, when it seemed colder than it had ever been before.  Skipping the rest of what seems to have been a particularly harsh season has left me with no regrets but I thought I would post this photograph in dedication to all those poor souls searching for a glimpse of spring.

And a note on the scratchiness of the image: this is what happens when you run a half-shot roll of film through airport security.  The faint whiteish clouds left by the x-ray machine do remind me of the Milky Way in the night sky, which always appears a bit denser than the scattered stars around it.

Elephants Never Forget

As in, elephants never forget where the child has thrown the food pellet.

The Buenos Aires Zoo is a most ridiculous place, where you can buy buckets of food, pellets actually, that you are allowed to feed to almost any animal, from camel to panda.  Monkeys share habitats with water rats, koi with swans and peacocks with hippopotamuses.  It is animal voyeurism run roughshod, and the saddest sight is certainly the elephants gone begging.

The Great Tree Escape

This image of a tree escaping the house that has been built around it was taken near our old apartment on Cabrera. You have to wonder if this tree was once a forgotten seed, dropped in a courtyard and neglected while its brothers and sisters grew large on the outside.  And now the runt is king.  Keep growing, I will post more soon.

Graham Goes To School

First graders are always trouble, no matter the school, country or native language.  Or so I should have been prepared as I started my first days teaching a bunch of youngsters at the Colegio Jean Piaget here in Buenos Aires.  I do not speak all that much Spanish (though that should read little to none), the kids are quite young and have not yet managed to master 'Hello' and 'Goodbye', so my experience so far has been a bit trying.

There are some exceptionally rowdy kids, giving the entire enterprise somewhat of a Lost In Translation meets Dangerous Minds vibe.  You can read an exceptional account of my first days over at Hop Top.  I will keep you updated, just wish me luck and hope that if this adventure is really like any movie, the movie better be Sister Act II.

A Few Minutes of London

This is an amazing whirlwind video of London, from cameras to Canary Wharf and everything in between.  A great video for a great city. Have a watch and see if you don't feel like a kid in a sweet shop.

via Cool Hunting

Open-Air Museum

All images were taken in Buenos Aires, where graffiti is both well thought-out and sort of spur-of-the-moment, as you can see from this sample.  However well or ill-conceived the street art of the city is, it never makes for a boring walk. Keep your eyes peeled, I will post more as I see them.

Misty Mountains

It has been hot, something like the hottest Buenos Aires summer in thirty years.  You don't move through the air, it just stays with you. These are two scenes of relative relief, children misting and trees lounging.  Stay cool,  I will post more in this series in the next few days.

The Impossible Project

Polaroid cameras, those magic instant documents, have been rotating in and out of my life for many years.  As a costume designer, my mother needed to be able to record immediately the outfits that she was putting together for whatever show she was working on.  Because of this, Polaroid cameras and the big, boxy film cartridges were always strewn about her studio.  Stacks of developed photographs detailed last year's Boston Ballet winter program or a new film project that was just getting off the ground.

The images were at once disposable and intensely memorable, as each was truly unique, unable to be reproduced.  They allowed for the instant gratification that digital cameras do now, but with several minutes of curious anticipation before the final product materialized.  There was a process, nearly lost now, that made each moment before the click of the camera an intimate exchange between subject and photographer.

The Polaroid company has recently decided to drop its film production unit and focus exclusively on digital products and services.  However, as sad as this development was, a new undertaking may soon make instant Polaroid-like photography a proper rival to disposable digital once again.

The Impossible Project has purchased the Polaroid film-production machinery and hopes to develop a new cost-effective system, that would essentially be an updated, more stream-lined version of the original.  Think of Polaroid reborn through some fortuitous natural selection.

They hope to restart production of Integral Film for Polaroid cameras in 2010.  I think this would be an amazing boon to young and old photographers alike, a welcome antidote to what has become a watered-down picture-snapping experience.  Please visit their well-designed website and chuck them a few bucks if you like what they're up to.