Ghost buildings

Bakersfield

Bakersfield, California

Not quite Hopper... but...

Almost everyone I met in LA/SF was horrified that I had visited Bakersfield, let alone that I quite appreciated it. There's no doubt, the place has a visceral reality, and I found the people friendly and hospitable - if rather right wing... But then, just don't mention down there that you like NY and SF. Oh well.

bridge-work

Near Tower bridge

almost

Luton airport

Disconnected point

Luton airport departures/arrivals

Desire paths

People defining how they use their environment - design by ourselves - rather than being designed for us.

"This really needs to be paved - but it won't be. The buildings in the left background are the shops. The planners would have us walk along the path to the right and under the road through a dark tunnel.

It would be far too dangerous to allow people to cross the road here and far too expensive to install a pedestrian crossing and so folk have to walk through the mud on wet days and brave the traffic because planners think of people in cars."

GeorgieR - From desire paths flickr group

airports

DUR NBO LHR YEG LHR YEG LHR YWG YEG AKL YQY CPT PLZ ELS DUR VIR JNB DUR JHB LHR XDT LHR FCO CCS LIM CCS FCO LGW LGW AMS LGW ATH LSW ATH LGW LHR YYT YHZ EWR LGA YYZ LHR JFK LHR JFK EWR LHR LAX LHR

Airports: they've been described as non-places, but that might be an overstatement. However, they are supremely bureaucratic authoritarian spaces - but paradoxically overlaid with anticipation of escape. Corresponds with inside and outside. Will Self marvelled at how something as incomprehensible as flight has been rendered so boring.

Myself, I'm fascinated by the overall geography of the runways; of the signage; of the codes. Flatness - geometric shapes - ethereal blue skies.

air

The wild passion of letting yourself be transported by wind, by burning heat and by cold space... the pleasure of being anonymous, of being quiet for a long time, of existing in no place at all... where the dialogues of others continually slip in... the pleasure of leaving, of being far away, of being missing... the subtle pleasures of erasing the presence of your body, your words and your shadow, of counting for nothing, of hiding yourself, of becoming so light that you fly away...

Michel Serres - Angels: a Modern Myth

We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and the far, of the side by side, of the dispersed. We are at the moment, I believe, when our experience of the world is less that of a long life developing through time than that of a network that connects points and intersects with its own skein.

Michel Foucault - Other Spaces’ - Diacritics

Maps

"Functional visualizations are more than innovative statistical analyses and computational algorithms. They must make sense to the user and require a visual language system that uses colour, shape, line, hierarchy and composition to communicate clearly and appropriately, much like the alphabetic and character-based languages used worldwide between humans."

Matt Woolman - Digital Information Graphics at Visual complexity