1) You are sitting on a stage, wearing a blind-fold. 2) Every electrical device in the building around you is on. 3) Suddenly, you detect a slight difference, a vague change in sonic pressure somewhere, as if an extremely distant mosquito has been swatted – a spot of silence, as it were, has appeared in the room. 4) “Toaster, fourth floor!” you call out – and you’re right. Someone turned off the toaster. 5) You win a trip to France.
Space as a Symphony of Turning Off Soundsat BLDGBLOG

The sunset that night does not spread itself out like a stain across the sky; it does not explode into great symphonies of crimson and mango but remains strangely minimalist, like a Japanese flag, a simple red disk descending beyond the Pacific. Our boat captain signals its primal retreat with the call of a conch shell and on its note we prepare our own descent into the waters below.
On our journey out to this spot, earlier that afternoon, just off the black lava cliffs that edge the Kona airport, a …

I was quite taken tonight by the cover of Criterion’s re-issue of Paul Schrader’s Mishima. Interestingly, from what I’ve found online, not everyone approves, my favourite pan being “this thing reminds me of the make-up gun that Homer invented in that Simpsons episode.”
The design is by Tadanori Yokoo, a Japanese graphic designer, illustrator, printmaker and painter who was not just a contemporary of Mishima’s but also a friend and collaborator (he actually makes a brief appearance in the movie). All of which makes his contribution of the DVD art appropriate …

It was only after seeing the rendering for the Hines tower next to a photo of the Institut du Monde Arabe in today’s NY Times Magazine article that I made the connection and realized, holy shit, Jean Nouvel is hands down my favourite architect. Then I got lost in his website for about 3 hours…

THE LOVELY SPARROWS – DEPARTMENT OF FORSEEABLE OUTCOMES
Department of Forseeable Outcomes seems like the perfect song for the last scene of an HBO pilot: A son finds out that his parents are bank robbers when he accidentally blows up his dad’s car while trying to make meth in the back seat and the money from their last heist that was hidden in the trunk now rains down on him. He stands in the middle of the street with his arms stretched up to heaven laughing at the irony of it …