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Each year I read ‘Rings of Saturn’ — W.G Sebald’s melancholy masterpiece inspired on a walk (or pilgrimage) he took around his adopted East Anglia in the Summer in 1992. I’m in thrall with Sebald’s prose — the literary games and puzzles, the meandering vignettes, droll observations and manipulation of narrative and truth so to learn that Grant Gee has used Rings of Saturn as the subject of his film essay, Patience, is fantastic news. The difficulty is tracking down showings as it doesn’t appear to have a wide release.

A screenshot from Patience.

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A collection of photographs, baked in sepia, show the crooked jigsaw of Elizabethan facades and frames against the Empire columns and cheap brickwork of Victorian shops, offices and slums. But it's often the transient objects - bread loves stacked behind painted windows, cart horses pulling hansom cabs -  and ghostly, sinister figures, their faces smudged by the lengthy exposure that draw the eye.

At the back of St Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, 1877.

The Ghosts of Old London
Images copyright © Bishopsgate Institute

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An installation by French contemporary artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, The Curve is an aviary  inhabited by 40 zebra finches with a constructed landscape of electric guitars as perches and cymbals as feeders. As the birds socialise and feed they settle on the instruments, pluck the strings and peck cymbals creating a 'chance composition'.

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Google Earth continues to prove a valuable source for oddities in city planning. Here we have a beguiling set of images showing the pace and change of development in Charlotte County, South West Florida. Sprawling developments of cul-de-sacs, avenues and lanes twist neatly around manufactured lakes, all partially completed they remain ghostly neighbours to earlier, successfully populated suburbs and the region’s natural swampland.

They remind me of another fly-by photo set over an abandoned surburban development — that of California City. Founded in the late Fifties and designed around a large public park and artificial lake, it’s growth was stunted in it’s infancy and the city never came close to usurping Los Angeles as the dominant city in California.

Would these abandoned infrastructures present enough of a future archaeological puzzle, a modern version of the Nazca Lines? Or do they too clearly demonstrate the frailty and whims of the Western property market?

(Thanks to Frankie Roberto for the initial link)

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A little bit of ‘digital archaeology’ meant the message retrieved from the fascinatingly named, ‘spice vax’ backup tape allows us to peer at the moment when Scott Fahlman described the use of a colon, dash and bracket to denote a joke on a Computer Science bulletin board. There we have it, the Birth of the Smiley on 19th of September 1982 and here’s the original conversation thread, (although be prepared to wade through Computer Scientists speculating on the life chances of pigeons in a malfunctioning lift to reach the relevant post).

Even more wonderful is that this linguistic invention unlocked a supposed holy grail of a writer’s rank and legacy as a New York Times interview with Vladimir Nabakov from 1969 reveals —

Q: How  do you rank yourself among writers (living) and of the immediate past?

Nabokov: I often think there should exist a special typographical sign  for  a  smile – some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket, which I would now like to trace in reply to your question.

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With only a quotation from King Lear as the introduction to this enigmatic photo series by Tom Phillips we are left to wander through each carefully composed  scene with only our judgement in taste to decide if the images provoke sufficient reaction to disturb, enlighten or amuse. Despite the cinematic artistry and playful shock of the concept after flicking past several of the works I wonder if they are too easily shrugged off as a little indulgent and whimsical.

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There’s a provocative interview over at Creative Review where Bruno Maag rages over the ubiquitous use of Helvetica and believes it’s comparable to Comic Sans:

…if you start analysing it and going into the nitty gritty it is quite a horrendous font. It’s quite poorly crafted and has become completely overused. People go on about Arial and how awful it is, and Comic Sans, what an atrocity that is, why not the same about Helvetica? It’s often used wrongly too.

So enraged by Helvetica that he has designed Aktiv Grotesk, a typeface aimed specifically at wiping Helvetica off the face of the planet. See if you can tell the difference over at it’s home, the type foundry at Dalton Maag.

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Aleks Krotoski, fresh from touring the world to provide the BBC with a social history of the World Wide Web, is taking Orwell’s 1984 on a one-word-per-day basis as a 365 day photography challenge. Viewed best with the Flickr slideshow option.

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Found Functions is a set of photographs by Nikki Graziano, compelling as urban and landscapes scenes they are presented with the added genius of the mathematical function overlaid on the natural curve found in the scene. Such a brilliant idea, perfectly executed. I’ve clearly come to these late in the day as her Etsy shop is no longer active.

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Anne Shewring is publishing excerpts from her Grandfather’s diaries, choosing an entry for each day of the year.

The entries span the years from 1961 to 1983 -  “printed in block capitals, usually written in pencil. Most of the volumes are contained in a series of sandy coloured journals, diaries issued by May & Baker Ltd, of Dagenham, England, manufacturers of veterinary products.”

Some entries include significant events that mark their place in time such as the miners strike and the disappearance of Shergar but it’s steadfast summary of the everyday that I like. This is the entry for Wednesday, February 4th, 1981

A cold showery day, the wind still strong. Jane got back safe and sound from Nottingham about 9.30 last night thank goodness. A rose tree came through the post this a.m. from the margarine firm. N saved tops from the tubs for it. I planted it in what use to be the pond. N gone over to Dot’s on the two bus. The nurse chatterbox came to look at my toe just as we were having dinner.

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