Do today’s elite lack the patience and culture for classical music? Or is it a matter of cultural dominance of the popular, the fame producing, and capital revenue streams which have sacrificed painstaking complex creation? John Halle opines.
Landscape
An expanse of earth, adorned, improved, contoured, designed, and experienced. Architecture, travel, design, culture.
Public Art and the Psyche: Olafur Eliasson on Cities
“City planning has been way too pragmatic for a long time.” So says Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, who creates artistic environments that break down the industrial expanse of cities with faux-natural elements, hot sun, waterfalls, rivers, and take over the senses of their spectators.
Geo-Fauvism: Waking to the Wild Earth Through Visual Art
This is the first post in a series where I present the case for Geo-Fauvism, a growing movement of wild earth inspiration in art, literature, music and design. Taking off from the early 20th Century French art “Fauvists” or “Wild Beasts,” these cross-disciplinary creations respond to and react against the collapse of global environmental systems, the destruction of indigenous earth-based societies, and a narrowing of cultural opportunities in the mainstream corporatized media. Geo-Fauvists create to reconnect with the wild and heal humanity’s rift with the landscape, building a new community based on integration with the ecosystem.
The CIA and Psychedelics: From Timothy Leary to the Unabomber
Jeffery St. Clair and the late Alexander Cockburn wrote about the history of CIA-associated psychologists such as 1960s psychedelic pitchman Timothy Leary using LSD and psilocybin, and their effects on subjects, like the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski.
German Prefab House Generates Twice its Own Energy
The prefab Active House B10 prototype in Stuttgart can be built in a day, but its implications will be felt for years. Taking the passive house net zero concept one step further, this fully recyclable tiny house actively generates enough power for multiple properties through its rooftop photovoltaics.
Starchitects and Spectacle: Sustainability Solutions Needed
Architecture must move on from an addiction to spectacle and fad, adrift in a sea of meaningless forms, leaving serious design and sustainability problems unresolved, says Peter Buchanan. But to do this will require a more critical perspective from architectural academe and the media.
Calavera de Azúcar: Painted Sugar Skulls on Dia de los Muertos
Mexico’s traditional celebration of Dia de los Muertos embraces the inevitability of death. Painting faces in the style of Santa Muerte (Saint Death), Calavera Catrina (Dame Skeleton), or another loving tribute to the counter-Guadalupe icon Frida Kahlo pays homage to the beauty in death, offering eye-candy sugar skulls in tribute to the ancestors.