Left / Right or Other

Thomas Visual Culture

Thomas Visual Culture

Set in a futuristic urban dystopia and examines a common science fiction theme of the day: the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism. The film stars Alfred Abel as the leader of the city, Gustav Fröhlich as his son, who tries to mediate between the elite caste and the workers, Brigitte Helm as both the pure-at-heart worker Maria and the debased robot version of her, and Rudolf Klein-Rogge as the mad scientist who created the robot.

Thomas Visual Culture

via facebook. A chilling expression of what the Arizona Immigration Bill means.

Thomas Visual Culture

via [ NPR ] “Oil Rig Explosion Could Cause Ecological Disaster” By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Gerald Herbert/AP

Gerald Herbert/AP

NASA image of oil slick

uru

This Disaster Brought to You by BP

Thomas Visual Culture

Thomas Visual Culture

via [ Boston.com ]

Thomas Visual Culture

via [ airoot/eirut ]

Thomas Planning Mishaps, Visual Culture

Matt Yglesias points me to the green design on the PvdA (Labor Party - Netherlands) website.

Thomas Misc, Visual Culture

Perhaps the most important lesson from this dialogue is were it is occurring.

Update - Friendship Confirmed (Feb. 18 2:54 pm): I’ve been given entry to this gated community.

Thomas Art, General Arts, Visual Culture, What I am Looking at

The apparatus of manufacturing opinion & the development of a national paranoia

via [ New York Times Magazine ] January 27, 2010

Thomas Visual Culture

via [ BAGnewsNotes ]

Consumer culture — the endless manufacture of desire — is killing us. It knows no morality.

And ultimately, the newswire photo just compounds the problem, establishing its value — this clever, colorful piece of drive-by eye candy — as a cocktail of conscience with a twist of irony.

On the 27th, let’s do nothing about it. …And then, let’s do even less.

Thomas Visual Culture

via [ Triplecanopy ] by Joseph Clarke

Tracing the parallel histories of the American megachurch and the corporate-organizational complex.

THE 1980S AND ’90S SAW THE RISE of so-called seeker megachurches, which targeted those disillusioned with religion. Rather than enforcing traditional worship styles, they embraced counterculture and youth rebellion. Chief among them is Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, in Orange County, California. Built in the ’90s, Saddleback plays down crosses and other conventional Christian signifiers and avoids mention of its Southern Baptist denominational affiliation. Instead of a massive auditorium, the church occupies multiple midsize structures scattered across a lush 120-acre campus. Visitors customize their worship experience by choosing from a range of services: “Saddleback Classic” in the main Worship Center, “OverDrive” for youth, and “Praise!” for gospel-music lovers. 

As Warren’s model gained traction, the ideology of the democratic office was taken to new levels by management theorists associated with the Quality of Work Life movement. They recommended radically open office environments that would give workers control over their environment and dissimulate corporate hierarchy. “Office facility planning should be a systematic process that encourages employee participation, promotes innovation, and champions mobility,” advised a 1985 article in National Productivity Review…

It’s no coincidence that Saddleback mirrors the top office environments of its day. Warren was a good friend of Drucker’s (the consultant died in 2005), and the books he has written for pastors quote Drucker liberally. Drucker, in turn, was so impressed with the business acumen of evangelical leaders that in 1998 he declared the megachurch “surely the most important social phenomenon in American society in the last 30 years.”

Thomas Case Studies, Misc, Visual Culture

via [ English Russia ] 

Sergei Larenkov, the author of “Petersburg Now and Then” has released the second part of the modern city photos combined with the photo made during the city siege at World War2.

These images remind me of Harvey Keitel’s Character in the movie Smoke. His character takes a single photo everyday at the same place and time. They become records of differences and similarities - maybe not as dramatic, but carriers of the betweenness in what they reveal. It is partially what Monet’s haystacks where revealing to us in less dramatic fashion.

Thomas Visual Culture

With Blogs there is the tendency to get to the end or close a story prematurely and write an opinion. I hope this blog is more about traveling and collecting stuff as I move to firmer ground for the occasional useful statement.

How we unfold or project the earth often depends on what we want to get at and sometimes it depends on the limits of the tools we have on hand. The difference between “what we want to get at” and “limit of the tools we have on hand” can tell us more about the gap.

Each projection is self-consciously 2-Dimensional.   

[ Map Projections: USGS ]

Thomas Design, Visual Culture, What I am Looking at

[ Gapminder ] Unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view.

The Activist Cause

I want to look back at Hans Rosling’s now very famous presentation at the 2006 TED-conference for a moment. In this presentation Hans is hocking this “Ah-Ha” moment to the audience. He knows what he is pedaling and he knows its ramifications. Does this moment fit in the history of progressive “Ah-Ha” efforts? I think so.

Many of the great achievements of the “progressive” movement, in America, came from those who answered oppressive conditions supported by neglect, power and wealth with extraordinary discipline of research and evidence. Some examples are found in W.E.B Du Bois’ survey of Philadelphia’s Seventh Ward in his 1899 classic book, The Philadelphia Negro work in Philadelphia, and Jane Jacobs’ book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) writtten during height of “Urban Renewal.”

It appears Hans’ visualization tool sits well within this tradition, his scope however, widens out to the early reaches, and future projections of statical analysis of DATA. What I find interesting about Hans’ work is the certain manner in which he strolls through his subject matter. It reminds me quite a bit like Jane Jacobs approach with the Urban build environment. 

Thomas Case Studies, Design, Visual Culture

From this mornings (04-10-09) headline “Top US General: We May Have to Ignore Iraq Deadline: at the Huffington Post.

There is no better way to bring some of the reality of this war home to Americans and create the sense of a comfortable domestic setting being pierced by an very violent force than to use familiar visual and graphic cues like the “put your trash in the garbage.”

Thomas International, Visual Culture