Broadcast » Curio

The Ghosts of Old London

Andrew — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 22:10:57 +0000

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

Abandoned Landscapes

Andrew — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 20:49:19 +0000

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)

The Secret History of Typography

Andrew — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:29:02 +0000

Nick Martens writing on The Bygone Bureau achieves a step closer to becoming that most desirable of authority, a ‘palaeotypographist’, after browsing the Oxford English Dictionary’s archives revealed some hitherto unknown and, given the brevity of their definitions, ambiguous typographic references.

Take this 1688 quote for bake: “when Letters stick together in distributing… This is called the Letter is Baked.” So we learn that, when printing, the physical pieces of type occasionally stuck together, but we’re left to wonder why this happened, how severe it was, and how printers corrected it. Did baking ruin the type? Did each printer have his own method to prevent baking, a trade secret he passed down only to his apprentice?

More fine examples follow but perhaps the best is saved till last -

To beat fat, 1683, “If a Press-man Takes too much Inck with his Balls, he Beats Fat.”

One Million Giraffes

Andrew — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:43:50 +0000

It’s one thing to idly boast you can collect a million drawings of everyone’s favourite, lumbering prairie beast by 2011 and another to build a platform for submissions, display illustrations (of varying quality it must be said) and collect data on the whole project. To succeed, Ola Helland currently needs 1,406 giraffes to arrive each day. I have a feeling this one is going to be a nail-biting race to the finish.

Victorian Maps & Infographics

Andrew — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:28:10 +0000

As an antidote to the charming, eccentric science-fiction illustrations (‘Steampunk’ if you will) that we rely on when discussing the industry and innovation of the Victorian age, BibliOdyssey recently published a range of Victorian posters, pages and pamphlets selected from the David Rumsey Historial Map Collection that reveal the theories, beliefs and understanding across the science and humanities. They also prove the enduring power and beauty of infographics.

Listening Devices

Andrew — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:59:39 +0000

Whilst boffins in England were building concrete behemoths for their ‘Sound Mirrors’ to collect and amplify sounds to detect incoming enemy planes and Zeppelins across the Channel, it seems the Dutch were looking at amplification on more personal format.. I’m not sure if they preserved with these explosions of ear trumpet oddities but the English obsession with acoustic technology of this sort ended with the invention of RADAR in 1935.

Mythical Beast Graph

Andrew — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:17:53 +0000

A tour through the V&A inspired illustrator Jim Unwin to draw up a handy reference graph for the mythical creatures he encountered. My favourite? Cerberus, (dog, dog, dog).

Amusing Ourselves To Death

Andrew — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:06:54 +0000

Stuart McMillen’s illustration expertly distills the concept of Neil Postman’s, ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’ — A book about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.

American Cold War Propaganda

Andrew — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:53:27 +0000

We often see examples of Soviet era propaganda from the High Stalinist Period with it’s utopian harmony, revolutionary fervor and the space race. But what is rare is a showcase of anti-communist or pro-american propaganda, clearly revealing that the propaganda machine was just as busy on the other side of political divide.

The Future That Never Was

Andrew — Fri, 22 May 2009 09:22:35 +0000

Prepare to loose a few hours searching through Matt Novak’s archives at paleofuture.com where our future, predicted from the past decades are collected for our amusement. Some are startling, bizarre and somewhat fragile in their vision.