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Apart from Joshua Davis' talk, the other main highlight of OFFF, the software and visual communication conference which took place last week in Lisbon, was the panel on Data Visualization curated and moderated by the European evangelist of the discipline: Jose-Luis de Vicente.
As the abstract of the panel reminds: data visualization is a transversal discipline which harnesses the immense power of visual communication to explain, in an understandable manner, the relationships of meaning, causes and dependency found among great abstract masses of information generated by scientific and social processes.
Interaction designer, information architect and design researcher Manuel Lima discussed the story of the website Visual Complexity and the lessons he learnt since he launched it 3 years back. Visual Complexity is not a blog, it is a collection of (so far) over 570 projects of data viz, it is also a space for people to discuss about what is happening in this area. The project started while Lima was following an MFA program at Parsons School of Design. While working on his thesis project Blogviz: Mapping the dynamics of information diffusion in Blogspace, he had to research extensively the visualization of complex networks, and found out that there was a need for an integrated and extensive resource on this subject. Lima's presentation was very very fast with a lot of information crammed in a small amount of time. But here's a few elements from it:
The transmission of information started with the wall paintings, got more sophisticated with the oldest registry of a written language (the Sumerian cuneiforms) and later with Ptolemy's world map. More key landmarks for data viz can be found in Alfred W. Crosby's essay The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600. One first important factor for the development of data viz is computer storage. A second key factor for the development of data viz is Open Databases. Data has never been so widely available at minimal cost (not to say free). A third factor is online social networks.
Over his three years observing dataviz, Lima spotted a number of trends: mapping blogosphere relationships, visualizing del.icio.us tags, terrorism, air routes, gps data, etc. Next spoke Santiago Ortiz who started by presenting the spectacular website that Bestiario has put online a few days ago. The website gets a third dimension as you can "twist" and manipulate it in order to see its full length. The nicest feature is the navigation: you can browse Bestiario's projects anti-chronologically of course but also according to the number of hours they spent working on the projects, by keywords, combination or exclusion of keywords, etc.
Founded 2 years ago, Bestiario is a small Barcelona/Lisbon-based company with a very impressive portfolio. Combining art and science (Ortiz is also a mathematician) they design interactive information spaces which follow their own moto: 'making the complex comprehensible.' It wasn't the first time that i got to be impressed by Bestiario's work and Ortiz' thoughts on dataviz. One of Bestiario's project was exhibited recently at LABoral as part of the Emergentes exhibition which closed a few days ago. The imaginary biological universe Mitozoos encodes and creates virtual organisms called "mitozoos" which interact among themselves. You can watch their life in a 3D environment that simulates birth, existence of a genetic code, the quest for food, energy dissipation, reproduction and death. Each variable and parameter of the model has a graphical representation.
One of Bestiario's latest projects was developed together with Irma Vila and JL de Vicente. The Atlas of Electromagnetic Space is an interactive representation of the services that use our electromagnetic radiospectrum, ranging from 10Khz "radio navigation" to 100Ghz "inter-satellite communication". The activities which unfolds throughout the spectrum (e.g. mobile, satellite, wireless internet, broadcasting) are sorted by electromagnetic frequency. What totally won me over was the features showing the artistic interventions that are commenting on and/or taking place in the spectrum.
City Distances illuminates the strength of relations between cities from searches on google. The main idea is to compare the number of pages on internet where the two cities appear one close to the other, with the number of pages they appear isolated. This proportion indicates some kind of intensity of relation between the cities. The "google proximity" is then divided by its geographical distance. The result indicates the strength of the relation in spite of the real distance, a kind of informational distance between cities.
Finally, Aaron Koblin took the stage to present his own work. Crap! this guy is so talented it's scary. Aaron studied Design and Media Art with Casey Reas at UCLA and used processing a lot in his projects which not only represent huge amounts of data, but are also producing data to raise questions about a series of issues. Narrative made sense for cultures based on tradition and a small amount of information circulating in a culture - it was a way to make sense of this information and to tie it together (for instance, Greek mythology). Database can be thought of as a new cultural form in a society where a subject deals with huge amounts of information, which constantly keep changing, said Lev Manovich whom Aaron quoted to further ask the audience: If the database is the new narrative, then what is the role of visualization?
A first answer is that visualization help us understand what it means to have dozens of thousands of planes flying above North America every day. Video demonstrating how Flight Patterns does exactly that: Data from the U.S. Federal aviation administration is used to create animations of flight traffic patterns and density. The Sheep Market is one of my favourite projects ever. The very Petit Prince work manages to be critical and poetical at the same time. Thousands of workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk webservice were paid two cents to "draw a sheep facing to the left." Their sheep drawings were collected over a period of 40 days, selected and printed on stamps. You can also head to the project website and spend the evening counting the animals. Aside from his purely artistic works, Aaron also works for Yahoo and collaborate on research project. For example, he developed the visualizations for the New York Talk Exchange, a project by the Senseable City Lab at MIT.
Based on a principle similar to The Sheep Market, Ten Thousand Cents has thousands of individuals working in isolation from one another painted a tiny part of of a $100 bill without knowledge of the overall task. Workers were paid one cent each via Amazon's Mechanical Turk distributed labor tool. The total labor cost to create the bill, the artwork being created, and the reproductions available for purchase are all $100. The project, which has been developed in collaboration with Takashi Kawashima, explores the circumstances we live in, a new and uncharted combination of digital labor markets, "crowdsourcing," "virtual economies," and digital reproduction. Video of Ten Thousand Cents: The panel ended with JL de Vicente reminding the audience of the Visualizar workshops he periodically organized at Medialab Prado in Madrid. A new call for project proposals will be launched later this year. Related: Coverage of Visualizar workshop. |
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Just back from Frankfurt where i participated to the marvelously organized and well-attended Node08 Forum for Digital Art conference. As i was in town for two days, i visited All-Inclusive. A Tourist World at the Schirn Kunsthalle.
All-Inclusive. A Tourist World presents works from 30 artists depicting and commenting on various phenomena influenced by the continually growing tourist industry. Vladimir Raitz pioneered modern package tourism when in 1950 his company, Horizon, provided arrangements for a two-week holiday in Corsica. For an all inclusive price of £32.10s.-, holiday makers could sleep under canvas, sample local wines and eat a meal containing meat twice a day. Within ten years, his company had started mass tourism to Palma, Lourdes, Costa Brava, Sardinia, Minorca, Porto, Costa Blanca and Costa del Sol.
An increase in the standard of living, affordable air travel and the development of the package tour enabled international mass tourism to thrive. For someone living in greater London, Venice today is almost as accessible as Brighton was 100 years ago. The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) forecasts that international tourism will continue growing at the average annual rate of 4 % (at least in places where global warming won't totally destroy the sector.) As a result international arrivals are expected to reach over 1.56 billion by the year 2020.
The All-Inclusive exhibition opens with 2 artworks which both evokes two of the most unpleasant moments that pave the tourist's journey: the passage through security with Ayşe Erkmen's Safety Doors which will inevitably ring as you go through, and the wait for your suitcase with a baggage conveyor belt turning around its own axis by the Scandinavian artist duo Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset .
Further away, you're met with another tourist staple: Tensa-barriers that control more than they guide your way along the long long queues. Eva Grubinger's Crowd, 2007 is separating one room of the exhibition to another one. There's no alternative: you have to go through it and feel as foolish as ever.
The mood is set, you're not here to dream and get an overview of the most charming aspects of tourism. And you might exit the show feeling guilty to contribute to the phenomenon. Not that this will stop you from booking a Summer holiday next week.
One of the most symbolic artworks show in Frankfurt is Santiago Sierra's 2001 action on a Spanish beach. In August, the peak of touristic period, he had a huge banner hung from a rock wall overseeing a beach in Mallorca that read "Inländer Raus" ("Natives, go away"), targeting the tension on the resort island between the Spanish residents and the German tourists. out). The work not only inverts the classic xenophobic motto "Auslander Raus" (Foreigners get the hell out), but it also overtly refers to German retirees and celebrities who have virtually displaced the Spanish natives in Majorca. Responding to complains, the town council immediately ordered the banner torn down, then had it re-installed, and finally it mysteriously disappeared. Soon after the announcement that Sierra had been selected for the Venice Biennale, a series of articles in Spain's mainstream press attacked the decision, probably because people were afraid the artist might destroy the Biennale pavilion. The work evokes also the tremendous impact that tourism can have on an entire area. Think of Benidorm, that village turned "the Manhattan of the Costa Blanca", or of that forgotten city in the Basque city which has become a tourists magnet since its Guggenheim Museum opened in 1997.
The number one favourite activity of the tourist is taking picture. There are plenty of those in the show. Not by tourists but by renown photographers. Martin Parr's (more in Martin Parr retrospective: from fish & chips to mass tourism) depict tourist patterns of behavior frozen to clichés in a Swiss mountain resort.
Reiner Riedler's lens focuses on artificial tourist landscapes. His photo series Artificial Holidays show people sunbathing on an indoor tropical island in Berlin, skying in Dubai, having dinner at the bottom of Florida's very own Mexican pyramid are based on similar stereotypes. They confirm the theory that tourist photography mainly serves the purpose of confirmation and not of discovery.
Thomas Struth's Museum Photographs show tourists in shorts, jeans and t-shirts with their cameras and guidebooks as they wander around museums with a look on their face that says that no matter how interested they might or might not be in the paintings hung on the walls, they just "have to" be there and be seen contemplating the works. You look at them and find it a bit repulsive then you realize you're just one of them, no matter how educated and refined you might be. Last year, for example, art travel packets -including flights, car rental, entry tickets and hotel- enabled the enlightened to tour the most distinguished event of the European art Summer: the Venice Biennale, Art Basel, documenta in Kassel, and Skulptur. Projekte in Münster.
NL Architects's futuristic scenarios do not forecast a brighter future. In their manipulated images, tourism is used as a weapon by invaders coming to your shores with amusement parks erected on the decks of aircraft carriers.
Tourism and travels are not just about cultural city trips and long afternoons at the beach, it can also be grounded in political and economic circumstances. The Moroccan artist Yto Barrada has captured this fact in A Life Full of Holes: The Straits Project, her photo series about Tangier and the Straits of Gibraltar. The narrow channel that divides Europe and Africa is a sea basin just 14 km across in some places. It is one of the most traveled waterways in the world, but few Africans are able to cross it. The photos examine the hope of migration, its influence on the Tangier cityscape and the temptations of leaving to begin a new life in the other side of the sea.
All-Inclusive reminds us that tourism is one of the most powerful economic forces in the world and as such it is one of the hottest topics in the debate over globalization. Tourism doesn't just bring mouthwatering economic perspectives, it comes with ecological and political aspects: migration, terrorism, pollution of the environment, prostitution, etc. Both Stern and FAZ have slideshows. |
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Tokyo correspondent Vicente Gutierrez paid a visit to the Yokohama Museum of Art last month to check the exhibition Goth - Reality of the Departed World . Here's what he has to say about it:
Dr. Lakra, Untitled (Muscidae and Tea), 2007. Courtesy of the Artist and Kurimanzutto, Mexico City Unmistakably, Goth-culture has emerged from centuries ago back into the fore of 21st century life. While the noir-drenched subculture's origins are rooted in the aesthetics of the "gothic" art movement which permeated Europe from the 12th to 16th centuries, Goth imagery and iconography and fashion we see today is more connected to the 19th century British revival movement which entertained a longing for medieval times. The Goth culture of today, found in movies, music, fashion and literature, is influenced more by the revival movement and hinges on darker, yet familiar, concepts of death, darkness or night, abnormality, insanity and just about anything that is opposed to a healthy and conservatively-perceived status quo. And so, the youth, pop-culture as well as contemporary art have been infected with notions of Goth. Whether it be Marylyn Manson's baroque stadium tours, a noir-revival in film or artists who explore death, deformation of the body or self-identity, these attempts break through the norm of the status quo. The exhibit at the Yokohama Museum of Art featured approximately 250 works of contemporary sculpture, painting, video and photography by six internationally active artists to cite a new working definition of 'Goth' in a contemporary setting.
Shown in Japan for the first time, the detailed, wooden sculptures of Ricky Swallow [Australia] juxtapose vanity and death with the use of skull iconography in this work. Even though skull iconography seems to be everywhere as of late, Swallow also displayed a delicately wood carved skeleton with so much invested work that it seemed human. Each bone, while carved and pieced together delicately to replicate the raw, natural human form, echoed of [human] flaws. The composed, docile macabre posed in the center of the room, with an enigmatic chagrin. In addition to his woodcarvings, Swallow's sculpture of a bronzed vintage boom box further expressed the artist's concern with the flow of time, whether in cyclical or standstill. To preserve what we love despite beauty's transience, knowing it will ultimately die, reminds us of the brevity of life and the tragically comforting adage, that nothing lasts forever.
Spanning the wall of the exhibit space were Pyuupiru's collection of self-portraits which featured the artist with a variety of dramatic, mutilated poses. Appearing androgynous at times, self mutilation and modification were the tools the artist has taken to find her true self in hopes of actualizing her value as a person- psychologically and physically. With the progression of photographs, perhaps Pyuupiru is awaiting a final metamorphoses. How long? Remains a question for the viewer and artist alike. Here, the photos are said to present the process of transformation from man to woman and from a monster to a total self. The incision, modification and mutilation of her physical self seem not to deflect her bold and persistent gaze at the camera- what appears fragile on the surface is not. Rather, in exploring her self identity, her search for true-self is nihilist although a longing for a perfect love of self is detectable.
Comfortable in his technique, tattoo artist Dr. Lakra [Mexico] used vintage Mexican magazine covers (featuring pin up girls and wrestlers) as canvas for his permanent ink. While some of his exhibited works were completed during his residency at the Yokohama Museum of Art Common, Lakra's concerns with death led him to rely on dark iconography such as demons, bats, insects, spiders and gothic patterns which are intertwined with the beautification of the very figures he draws upon. The darker image of Lakra maintains as beautiful literally overwrites original perceptions of these vintage cover models; shunning the original conventions. Lakra's subversive obsession with kitsch beauty and death is perhaps strongly correlated to his up brining in Catholic-heavy Mexico, where such conservative ideas pervade. Continuing to mix the sacred and the secular, Lakra's resistance to an overarching conservatism is clear.
Masayuki Yoshinaga's [Japan] massive archive of street photos of modern day Goth youth, reveal the culture's current vitality. In this collection of photos, Goth iconography is seen translated in a variety of ways- the lolita dresses pervade, as does heavy, aesthetically-driven make up in addition to teeth actually sharpened into a set of fangs. Another stronger body modification, for the truly committed goth, were triangle slits into tongues for a vampire or serpent effect. Yoshinaga's lens focuses on the more colorful and vibrant tangent off the Goth tradition- youth who's obsessive concentration on their subculture suggests a darker, clouded periphery. That is, all else, i.e. values of the status quo, are meaningless. In order to capture such vanity, Yoshinaga elects subjects who wear their heart on their sleeve, no matter how dark it may be.
For this exhibition, a new video installation was created around the theme of human life, which the artists symbolized through birth, maturity and aging. One video, focused on multiple angles of an infant, simply laying on a cold, tiled floor unable to move or walk. In its peril, the infant managed roll over, all the while crying, for some kind of salavation. Is there something beautiful in this or do we file it under morbid? Concerned with conditions of human existence, IngridMwangiRobertHutter's videos provide introspection into moments we opt, and opt not, to remember or avoid confronting but nevertheless expected in our life span. Moreover, how do we deal with the violence, injustice and consequent endemic suffering in our world? Other projected clips focused on an older individual going through suffering, as if surviving a failed suicide attempt from a buildling as well as an elder patient anxiously awaiting in a clinical room.
In a darker room, Tabaimo's large format 360 degree video installation, raised to the ceiling, presented an inner imaginative world where severed hands and feet floated in an interstitial space within the circular canvas. The looped animated sequence revealed a fluid morphing and mutilation of body parts into and out of each other. More fascinating than disturbing, closer attention to the enigmatic evolution of the floating limbs, garnered Tabaimo's individual aesthetic as an animator. From this collection of contemporary works, Goth is clearly moving onto a wider platform. It is not only the style or the fashion, but rather a means to communicate profound ideas of life, whether those be painful or sorrowful or morbid, they are messages with the same importance and relevance of those found in pop art, or other avenues of pop culture. And on such a platform, these contemporary artists will continue their reflections on birth, death and the transformations that come in between.
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Back from the DLD conference which was held in Munich on January 20-22. You can't count on me to report on the whole conference. However, Ulrike Reinhard is busy posting her notes and videos from the conference on her blog and you can find online the videos of some of the panels and presentations. I'd recommend Craig Venter & Richard Dawkins' discussion on Life: a gene-centric view and some of you might be interested in Design: from thoughts to actions, a panel featuring Greg Lynn, John Maeda, Yves Behar, Konstantin Grcic and Paola Antonelli. The most exciting panel for me was dedicated to cities of the future.
Carson Chan, co-director of Program, one of my favourite galleries in Berlin, and Johannes Fricke, DLD associate curator of art and architecture', set up the cast. In the order of appearance: Kazys Varnelis as the moderator; Richard Saul Wurman as the character whose mission is to make the complex clear, Patrik Schumacher from Zaha Hadid Architects was the guy who shoots fascinating key concepts faster than his shadow, Charles Renfro from Diller Scofidio + Renfro as the archetype of the creative New Yorker and Bjarke Ingels in the role of the annoyingly young and bright rising star. Cities are communication systems Varnelis (the book he wrote together with Robert Sumrell, Blue Monday, should be on you Must Read list if you're into "Stories of Absurd Realities and Natural Philosophies") compared cities to communication systems. History shows how the two of them are closely interconnected. Think of the impact of the commercialization of Graham Bell's invention in the 19th century and how the suburbs wouldn't have developed the way they have without the tv. But what about the 21st century? What is the impact of the new media on cities and architecture and vice-versa? 192021 Richard Wurman presented the 5-year project he is currently dedicating his energy to: 192021. The research is based on 19 cities which will count 20 millions inhabitants in 2021. The aim is to collect information about urban and business planning and its impact on consumers around the world. Corporate infrastructures who ambition to work "globally" are actually not ready for life, communication and business in these intense urban hubs. Ultimately, 192021 will provide a "roadmap for understanding the world ahead."
Visit the website to get some facts and figures about cities. The one i found most striking was the top 10 of the largest cities throughout the ages. In turns out that Cordova was the most populated city back in 1000, followed by Kaifeng in China and Istanbul. Paris appears in the top 10 only in 1500, ranking as the 8th largest city at the time. London appears as number 2 (behind Beijing) in 1800. In 2005, London is number 22 and Paris is not there anymore. Tokyo is currently the biggest city. Parametric Urbanism Patrik Schumacher mentioned that the challenge today for architects is to be able to comprehend and reflect in their work the increase in society complexity. Order and lack of complexity bring disorientation A quick look at the way urban areas were built in the 50s brought us makes the case clearer.
Schumacher had something like 12 minutes to run through a presentation which i imagine would usually last an hour. He therefore invaded the screen and our brains with a fast-paced series of images, renderings and key concepts that the Zaha Hadid office is working on. The main source of inspiration when exploring well-managed chaos and cacophony is nature or "Complex Order" (e.g. beehive). The idea is to simulate this nature, create a "second nature", to recreate natural systems and inject them into the design process. Key concepts: Schumacher demonstrated how he and Hadid chose the Thames Gateway area as a testing ground in which to evolve new ways of approaching large-scale urban developments. Driven by architectural rather than town-planning concerns, they used a series of digital design techniques to develop an approach to urban regeneration which they call 'Parametric Urbanism'.
Hadid and Schumacher started with a research into the historic permutations of different building types in London and internationally. They examined four main building types: individual villas, high-rise towers, slab-shaped buildings and city-blocks. Then they used a modelling software to project these four building types over a base map of the Thames Gateway. They adjusted the model to reflect the area's current conditions, and used it to speculate on possible forms of future development. They tested multiple combinations of the different building types, often fusing them to create hybrid structures. The outcome of these experiments was documented in a large-scale image with a range of new forms during the Global Cities exhibition at the Tate Modern last Summer. The Low Down on the High Line and Tales of Architectural Insider Trading The studio Charles Renfro runs together with Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio is known for blurring the boundaries between architecture, art and technology. His talk focused on how one of their latest endeavours which blurs the lines between architecture, urbanism and the marketplace. After he turned 40, Renfro bought a property on the 30th street in Manhattan. Coming from Brooklyn, it felt to him as if he had "left New York and entered America" because of the amount of ugly condos and, more generally, the banalization of the city.
The High Line, an elevated railroad stretching 1.45 miles along Manhattan's Westside, was used as food delivery rail line. Built in 1929, the High Line was partially torn down in 1960 and abandoned in 1980. The remains of the railway structure float above the city and intersect with the heart of hot art in Manhattan: Chelsea. Many people wanted to get rid of the line. Until the not for profit organization Friends of the High Line decided to save the track and launch a competition to design a master plan for The High Line. Images of the current state of the High Line show that pristine eco-system has developed since the track has been abandoned, with some plants native from New York and others brought by the food train and wind sewn along the track.
The competition, won by DSR, saved this romantic industrial ground with cracks and decay. Why keep it? Because the night owl, the bird watchers, people who like to walk, etc. could enjoy spending some time up there. Important: no commercial developer would be allowed on the track. DRS came with what they cal "Agri-Tecture", a merger of agriculture and architecture.
The first section of the project is already in construction. The flipside of the High Line project is that some 50 projects of condos have flourished, attracted by the new landmark. The High Line and the building projects that derive from it form the biggest architectural project in the city since the turn of the 20th century. Still, some interesting "Starchitect Condos" should show up in next few years. They've been designed by Annabelle Seldorf, That's a development that DRF had not expected. Keep reading.... DLD panel on Future City (Part 2)
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Editors' blurb: A new breed of public interactive installations is taking root that overturns the traditional approach to artistic experience. Architects, artists and designers are now creating real-time interactive projects at very different scales and in many different guises. Some dominate public squares or transform a building's facade others are more intimate, like wearable computing. All, though, share in common the ability to draw in users to become active participants and co-creators of content, so that the audience becomes part of the project. Investigating further the paradoxes that arise from this new responsive media at a time when communication patterns are in flux, this title features the work of leading designers, such as Electroland, Usman Haque, Shona Kitchen and Ben Hooker, ONL, Realities United Scott Snibbe. While many works critique the narrow public uses of computing to control people and data, others raise questions about public versus private space in urban contexts; all attempt to offer a unique, technologically mediated form of self-learning' experience, but which are most effective concepts in practice?
The installations and projects presented in this book are exactly those i used to cover back in the good old days, the days when my readers were happy because i was writing about merry interaction design, big and playful screen-based installations, etc. I cannot remember when exactly i started to realize that i was much more moved by what i was seeing at the Venice Biennale than by the Transmediale programme. Now all's been going down the drain, it's mostly bioart, non-tech art and more bioart on wmmna. Well, i do intend to keep on following the wrong track, guys but i haven't turned my back on interactivity (yet!)
Now the book! How about 96 pages written by smart people we all admire?
Techno fashion authority Despina Papadopoulos gives the lowdown on wearable devices and their potential to change fashion and our everyday life; Usman Haque has a must-read 8 pages on the terms used to refer to interactive design (what exactly does it mean to be "interactive", how to deal with the issues raised by the translation of Open Source concepts to interaction design, etc.) and another chapter dedicated to the legacy of relevance of cyber-dandy Gordon Pask; there's a spotlight on the works of Electroland and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer but also on particular installations or facades such as SPOTS by Realities United and Colour by Numbers by Krikortz, Laven and Broms. That was just an appetize, the full menu is here. If you're into interactive anything you will love that book, if you feel like an old dog who is tired of seeing how much unimaginative interactivity is being added these days to any object and any location -from your breakfast rolled oats to the office bathroom, you might very well regain some interest in the field. As far as i am concerned 4dsocial is the most inspired and most accessible book on interactive design environment i've read so far. You won't find new names though, just the usual suspects. If you're a student the booklet is a must; if you're a practitioner, you might want to get your hands on it and see where you stand and what is the sate of the art right now in interactive design environment. |
4dsocial: Interactive Design Environments (Architectural Design), by Guest Editor 
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Global Cities at the Tate Modern in London. It's a pocket version of an exhibition that was running last year at the Arsenale during Venice Architecture Biennale. Cities, architecture and society, curated by Richard Burdett, focused on the key factors facing large scale metropolitan areas around the world. Last year, some critics were unhappy with the show, saying that there were too many facts and figures and not enough architecture. I guess some might find that the Tate version of it lacks to much of a fine art aura. Whatever... i found the show engrossing.
The starting point is the fact that today more than half of the world’s population lives in cities. "The 21st century will be the first truly urban era, in which more than 75% of the world’s population will live in urban areas, much of it in mega-cities with more than 20 million inhabitants concentrated in the countries undergoing rapid development in Asia, Africa and South America. In the meantime, many Western and European cities are shrinking, or have been forced to re-invent themselves in order to adapt to a post-industrial condition."
The Turbine Hall which hosts the Global Cities exhibition is big but not quite as much as Venice's 300-metre long Corderie dell’Arsenale. That's probably one of the reasons why the London version is tinier, there's more focus on London obviously, less photographs by artists who portray urban sprawl, the London team also skipped a few cities --namely Barcelona, Berlin, Bogota, Caracas, Milan-Torino and New York-- which in some cases made perfect sense (who'd say that Milan and Turin provide the most exciting examples of urban life?) But if the London gig is not enough for you, there's still plenty of paper fun in the catalogues of the Venice Architecture Biennale (Amazon USA So we're left with Cairo, Istanbul, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Mumbai, São Paulo, Shanghai and Tokyo. Information and data are painted on the walls to demonstrate on these cities are being transformed in social, economic and cultural terms. Besides, each city is studied through five thematic lenses – speed, size, density, diversity and form.
Venice has polystyrene 3D graphic presentations to represent the density of the cities, London had wooden ones. The models compare the number of people living within the administrative boundaries of the cities, the highest the peak, the higher the density. The Tate website is very informative and clear. I'm not going to repeat what's already there. Instead i'll just present and link to some of the photographers whose work is on show at the Tate for the way they engage in a sometimes spectacular way (for its beauty or creepiness) with urban phenomena.
There's quite a few images so the show proceeds over here!
Continue reading Global Cities.
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