
Gallery: Classic Computer Manuals from Apple and IBM- : Photo: Dan WintersThe following manuals show some of the computers that paved the way for that ThinkPad or MacBook you're likely viewing this on now.
When Apple marketing chief Joanna Hoffman wrote the Macintosh Business plan — think of it as a manual for operating a company — in 1981 but she couldn't create a document pretty enough for Steve Jobs. [NOTE: We have no idea what she was using to make the documents... we just know that Steve didn't like anything she was makin... (more)

Gallery: Classic Flight Manuals - B-58A, F-14A, Apollo, Gemini- : Photo: Dan WintersThe Convair B-58 Hustler was the first supersonic bomber in the United States' air arsenal. Its first flight was November 11, 1956, during the peak of hostilities with the Soviet Union, and was designed as a high-altitude, faster-than-screaming bomber with nuclear capabilities. However, the B-58 is probably best known as the airplane that nuked Moscow (and then New York City) into oblivion in the 1964 Cold War classic film, Fail Safe. Pages shown here describe how to land th... (more)

Gallery: Classic Instruction Manuals- How do you run the A/C on a spy plane? Where's the Start button on a nuclear power plant? Don't try to wing it: Read the directions! A portfolio of classic instruction manuals.
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The 20th Century's Industrious Designer- : Photo: Courtesy Library of CongressIndustrial designer Raymond Loewy was a giant in his field. He produced innovative designs in every area from fashion to locomotives. If you admire the Streamlined Moderne style of Art Deco, you've probably admired a Loewy design. You like logos? Then, you like Loewy.
That's enough from us. Take a look for yourself.
Left: Loewy poses in a mocked-up designer's office with modern décor, around 1934. At his side is a model of his 1932 Hupmobile, one of t... (more)

Extreme Makeover: White House Edition — Reimagining the President's Residence-
For all its majesty, the White House is basically the same knockoff neoclassical manse that John Adams relocated to in 1800. Sure, it's riddled with history—but shouldn't we just turn it into a museum and start fresh with something engineered for 21st-century challenges? That's the idea behind White House Redux, a competition to redesign the executive residence, organized by the Storefront for Art and Architecture and the Control Group. As the judges, including heavyweights like Ma... (more)

Assembling Internet Images Into a Garden of Webly Delights-
Give Hieronymus Bosch a Mac Pro with two 3.2-GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors and 32 gigs of RAM, unfettered Internet access — and some electricity — and you have Case Simmons and Andrew Burke's You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth. The duo raided image forums like 4chan and 12ozProphet (plus Flickr and Google Image Search) and collected thousands of files to assemble into four mural-sized collages. The series, accompanied by audio composed entirely of samples from the In... (more)

How to Make a Pirate Treasure Map- Celebrate "Talk Like a Pirate Day" by taking the kids on a quest for lost treasure. Here's how to create a truthy pirate's map using paper bags, markers and a few other cheap materials. Building the ship may take a little more work.
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Cowboy Upgrade: Welcome to the NFL's Next Flagship Arena- ... (more)

Q&A: Philippe Starck on Bioplastics, Virgin Galactic, and His Impossible Chair-
Philippe Starck's latest creation — a plastic chair — earned its name on the first sketch: Mr. Impossible. The French designer said it simply couldn't be made. The challenge? The weld. Polycarbonate chairs are typically formed using a single mold, but Starck's translucent design required two: one for the legs, one for the seat. Fusing the parts using existing methods would mean an unsightly seam, so the engineers at Italian furniture maker Kartell had to forge a new technique. ... (more)

Malcolm McLaren + Vivienne Westwood = Terrorist- Malcolm McLaren was a designer and boutique owner first before he became the manager of the Sex Pistols. Now his son Joe Corre is following in dad's footsteps with a clothing line called, what else, "Terrorist."
... (more)
- Today Beauty and the Beast, Sadler's Wells, London
- Yesterday Hölderin, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin
- Yesterday Farragut North, Atlantic Theatre, New York
- Yesterday Bill Frisell, Barbican, London
- Yesterday Mari Boine, Kings Place, London
- Yesterday The forgotten Surrealist
- 3 days Billy Elliot, Imperial Theatre, New York
- 3 days Othello, Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe, Paris
- 3 days La La La Human Steps/Amjad, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York
- 3 days Così fan tutte, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris

Competing for grammar school- Grammars have always been popular. But as many affluent families feel the strain of the financial meltdown, a free, traditional education has become increasingly attractive to parents of bright 10-year-olds... (more)

Visions of Babylonian civilisation- The British Museum's fascinating exhibition examines Babylon as metaphor and a once-glorious reality, writes Robin Blake... (more)

Coronation in Bhutan- The Himalayan country has been adamant in following tradition and preserving its culture. Jeroen Bergmans sees Bhutan's newly crowned monarch continuing this path while keeping an eye on the future... (more)

We can be heroes ...- In different ways, three authors show the transition of journalism from a period of heroism to the age of the internet -- an entrepreneurial time when everyone is a journalist, writes John Lloyd
SuperMedia
Can You Trust the Media?
UK Confidential... (more)

Lunch with the FT: Sachin Tendulkar- Test cricket's greatest run scorer talks about his early years, being a celebrity, and what it is to be a decent person in a sport marred by scandals... (more)

Yesterday Mini Interview: Andrew Gordon- Man, we're behind with our mini interviews... Here's one from with this talented Australian.... (more)

Yesterday Interview: Mark Gergis aka Porest- Audio revisionist Mark Gergis aka Porest discusses Sublime Frequencies, Tourrorists! and other sonic morsels from a comfortable cruising altitude.... (more)

EmailODay: Why the Name Fecal Face?- "Do you have to smear crap on everything these days?"... (more)

Carl Baratta Interview- Just coming off a show @Western Exhibitions in Chicago, Ryan Christian interviews.... (more)

Guest: Ferris Plock- Ferris & Kelly Tunstall drive out to Denver for their show @Limited Addiction Gallery.... (more)

High 5s: Halloween on Angel Island- Why not spend a rainy foggy night on an empty island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay on dress-up day.... (more)

Free Fridayz: Fighting- Be sure to get your drawings in by Nov 14th with next week's theme: HELL.... (more)

Studio Visit: Faile- Out in Brooklyn, Manuel catches up with FAILE at their studios as they prepare to School London.... (more)

N&P: Retinal Webcams- He's alive with Nikki McClure art shows, a grip of hot dogs and heads to Oakland for the Budget Rock Festival @The Stork Club.... (more)

Short Film: Cecil- Terri Timely (http://www.territimely.com/).... (more)

Today Bruce Gilden's best shot- 'I love the way he's looking right through us. You just know these are tough guys'... (more)

Today £350,000 gold collar hailed as best iron age find in 50 years- An iron age gold collar worth more than £350,000 that was found by an amateur metal detectorist in a muddy field in Nottinghamshire was described yesterday as the best find of its kind in half a century."I was only in the field because a customer kept me late," Maurice Richardson, a tree surgeon from Newark, said yesterday. "Normally I'd never want to go into this field because a plane crashed there in the last war, and the whole place is littered with bits of metal."The first beep from hi... (more)

Yesterday Video: Jonathan Jones takes a tour around the British Museum's Babylon exhibition- Jonathan Jones takes a look around the fabled city of Babylon at the British Museum... (more)

Today Artists of the week 16: Heather and Ivan Morison- Quartzsite, Arizona is the very definition of a one-horse town. An arid dust bowl covered in mobile homes and roadhouses inhabited by retired sun seekers and wanderers who make a living flogging bric-a-brac at the annual mineral fairs. It once had a busy mining industry, attracting settlers from all over America, but now it attracts aliens, who seem particularly fascinated by the area's lonesome appeal.Last year there were several hundred sightings of UFOs. Artists Heather and Ivan Morison used ... (more)

Yesterday Charlotte Higgins: £10m boost for Diana and Actaeon campaign fund- The good news is that the National Heritage Memorial Fund, after a meeting yesterday, has committed £10m to the National Gallery and National Galleries of Scotland campaign to purchase Titian's Diana and Actaeon, which is being sold for £50m. OK, the only other pledge announced so far is £1m from the Art Fund, but I gather that fundraising from private sources is gathering pace and that Mark Getty, chair of the National Gallery, has been both energetic and successful in tapping up his wealthy... (more)

Yesterday Arts diary: 'Whores' in the National Gallery- The National Gallery is very excited to be showing the work Hoerengracht, by Ed and Nancy Kienholz, in November next year. The walk-in installation recreates, in pain-staking detail, the contemporary "whores' canal" of Amsterdam's red light district, and is intended to cast light on the gallery's 17th-century Dutch paintings, many of which show scenes from the demimonde. But the news is that the gallery is also planning to make a film in Amsterdam's red-light district - with Colin Wiggins, the h... (more)

Yesterday How to be a Happy Architect: Architecture in Leeds- Architect Irena Bauman on the changing face of Leeds... (more)

Yesterday Life magazine photo collection goes online- One of the biggest photo collections in the world that ranges from the 1880s through to the seminal moments of the 20th century and on into the present day was made available to the public online yesterday.The bulk of the archive is from Life magazine, the premier platform for photojournalists in the 20th century. About 10m images will eventually be available, from Marilyn Monroe and JFK to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. About 97% of the pictures have never been seen before. Google announced ... (more)

Yesterday Jonathan Jones: Why we may have seen the last of dangerous art- We like our art dangerous. We want to be provoked, shocked, teased. We like our public art big, brash and spectacular. But, it turns out, no one told the artists that "dangerous" was a metaphorical term. When councils all over Britain called up sculptors and said "surprise us", they didn't mean "drop steel spikes from a great height".Not that anyone has actually been injured by Thomas Heatherwick's gigantic steel starburst, The B of the Bang, which is next to the City of Manchester stadium. But ... (more)

Yesterday Letter: Building our future- Letter: Jonathan Glancey is right to paint a gloomy picture of the prospects for architects but why does he end with such a defeatist conclusion?... (more)

Today FiveDollarComparison: Safe Delivery-
Today's fivedollarcomparisons: delivery of (priceless) pieces of art to a nearby gallery in Seoul (photo by Ron Saunders) versus delivery of a relieved tourist on a one way burro ride to the east crater lake Laguna del Quiotao, Equador (Xona808) versus delivery of a human being - a taxi ride within the city limits with an English driver in Kabul - a city with a high degree of kidnap paranoia (your's truly).
Want to participate? Uploading is easy here.... (more)

Today Voice Search: New Sounds in the City-
Want to know what you sound like to others? Cup your hand around your ear and speak. To what extent does knowing what you sound like change what you decide to say?
Been playing around with the new glimpse-the-future Google voice search application for the iPhone, that copes with my Caucasian-male-non-Californian voice with an unnerving mixture of precision and humour. Yeah, voice search has been around for a while - just not quite so accessible.
How do the things that people search for using... (more)

Yesterday FiveDollarComparison: Live/Dead Meat-
Today's five dollar comparisons: a live chicken from Kabale (photo by Ben Konrath), Uganda versus 228g of Mortadella ham from Rio de Janeiro (William Yau) versus Spicy Duck Necks from Shanghai Airport (ED209uk).
The ham slices are eating at a leisurely pace, the live chicken is as much as can be eaten by a local family in one sitting - a lack of refrigeration for this family in Kabale means that any food left overnight would go off by the morning, and spicy duck necks are souvineers with lit... (more)

Yesterday The Five Dollar Comparison-
Photos above taken from the fivedollarcomparson.org site - they make more sense with the notes posted here
You're on your way to meet up with friends and only realise after 5 minutes that you've left your mobile phone at home - what do you do? If you're like me you mutter a curse under your breath, retrace your steps and retrieve your phone. But what the cost of obtaining a new phone was radically different than today, what if you could pick up a new phone at the convenience store or from a v... (more)

3 days The Status of What?-
Sitting in a café last week appreciating an hour without a set agenda and watching the Shanghai pedestrian traffic drift by. On two separate occasions women walk by with iPhone earbuds pressed into each ear whilst engaged in conversation with friends. Although it's impossible for the mere observer to know whether at that moment they were listening to music it's reasonable to assume from how the ear buds were worn, that their purpose was as a tool to project identity - "I can afford an Apple p... (more)

Drawing Power-
Recharging an electric scooter in Shanghai, with power cable dangled from home window to tree to scooter. Whilst I've never come across any examples using scooters - whether, and in what contexts its OK to hi-jack someone else's power? And whether you would get away with it?
The benefits/drawbacks of a proprietary charging socket - this takes a standard Chinese 2-pin. (Sinophiles will no-doubt be spluttering into their Monday morning congee - there is of course nothing standard about Chinese... (more)

Support for Anti-Social Behaviours-
Packaging is nice enough - but more interesting this that this is offered in a cafe. In fifteen years time this'll be the social equivilent as finding a stack of sterile needles and tourniquets in your local bar.
... (more)

Tokyo Graph-
Ghetto + Tokyo = Fail.... (more)

Urban Printers-
Tokyo ticket machine used to print out a travel card travel history. For the most part humans like the physical - even if once they have a physical copy they decide to dispose of it shortly thereafter. If you live in the city lo-fi printers are everywhere - from ticketing machines to ATM's to cash registers - and they're becoming smaller to the point of being pocketable. They're also increasingly connected - which creates a whole world of service design and billing options.
Thought for today ... (more)

Status Symbol-
In many cultures novice drivers are required to carry a 'learner sign' - here in Japan this extends to elderly drivers who are require to display and have the unique sticker, above.
As we slide towards 'displaying' or broadcasting digital information there is scope to display a far wider range of information. What if you knew that the driver in front hasn't had a (reported) accident in the last 40 years? Or that the vehicle in front was being driven by a teen listening to loud music? And you... (more)

3 days I left this here for you to read-
"I left this here for you to read" is a magazine-project by the artist Tim Devin.
About once a month, the magazine is printed in just 50 copies that are left for random people to find at public places, such as park benches, on buses, in airports etc. The magazine is distributed on Boston, New York and L.A.
Issues are not reprinted and cannot be ordered. The only way to have a copy mailed to you is to help edit, write, design, or distribute it. According to Tim, he prints everything he recei... (more)

3 days How To Keep Motherfu#%s From Putting Their Seats Back-
Simple DIY hack that solves a classic problem.
• anti-seat-back... (more)

3 days SAUMA - Innovative Contemporary Design from Finland-
The Danish Design Center in Copenhagen is currently showing the traveling exhibition Sauma [Design as Cultural Interface], a presentation of innovative contemporary design from Finland.
The exhibition - produced by the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York - contains around 20 projects that on different levels experiment with themes such as usability and user-experience.
My favorite projects has to be the most experimental ones. Like the Dance Shoes and Jacket for Lonely People by A... (more)

Social Souvenir-
A bit of self promotion: A new souvenir concept that I have developed for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denmark just launched. Here follows a description:
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Social Souvenir is an installation and souvenir concept that creates links and social experiences between museum visitors.
The concept is based on 300 T-shirts that are exhibited and put on sale at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde, Denmark. Each T-shirt is imprinted with a text fragment inspired by 15 renowned artists re... (more)

Aliens Vote-
www.aliensvote.org is a newly launched website that gives non-US Americans living in the US a chance to vote at the upcoming presidential election.
At least one out of every ten people living in the U.S. today is an alien. That's approximately 29.1 million people; equal to the entire population of New York & New Jersey combined. But Despite contributing as much to society as most other Americans, they can't voice their opinion in government elections.
In order to vote at aliensvote.org, you ... (more)

SPRMRKT Takes Over Albert Heijn-
In conjunction with the Amsterdam Fashion Week earlier this year, the local fashion store SPRMRKT staged an unconventional catwalk show.
SPRMKT briefly hijacked the nearby Albert Heijn supermarket causing a line of models to mix with everyday groceries and surprised customers.
If you wonder about the connection between a fashion store and a supermarket: The name SPRMRKT is an abbreviation of 'supermarket'.
• Video on YouTube + Images... (more)

127 Illuminated Windows-
A few months before the senseless events on 9/11, the performance-group eteam took part in the LMCC artist in residence program that had studios on the 91st and 92nd floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
On the night of March 29 2001, the eteam created a temporary light-sculpture using illuminated windows in the North Tower to spell their name in capital letters. To create the letters, they needed 279 'dark' and 127 'light' windows on 7 floors (from 89th to 95nd). The event was... (more)

Conflux Festival 2008-
This week, more than 100 international + local artist will transform New York City into a laboratory for exploring the urban environment.
In other words, it's time for the annual Conflux Festival, a four day event devoted to contemporary psychogeography (the investigation of everyday urban life through emerging artistic, technological and social practice).
The theme will be investigated through an impressive array of lectures, guided tours, performances and projects. Following this post is... (more)

Sit Projects - Sustainable Social Service-
Conflux:2008 #1
Sit Projects by Paola Mojica and Daniel Clapp is a series of service-oriented installations inspired by the pressing need for seats at bus and subway stops in New York.
The installations are based on disposed chairs that are recycled and placed at selected bus and subway stops.
By adding something practical and at the same time unique to the otherwise generic world of public transportation systems, the idea is not just to meet commuter's practical needs but also to create a... (more)

9/10 - Mobile Private Public Space-
Conflux:2008 #2
For the Conflux Festival Lucas Murgida will construct a cabinet on wheels and leave it on the sidewalk. The artist will hide inside and not reveal himself until someone assumes possession and brings the cabinet to their home.
The cabinet will be in place west of the Center for Architecture and south of Washington Square Park on Saturday, September 13th, from noon onward. While in the cabinet he will be loading live feeds from his cell phone to Twitter.
Following the happen... (more)
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