In other words, forget academic rigor. Never take the appropriate next step. Talk about Chinese urban design, the European space program, the landscape in the films of Alfred Hitchcock in the span of three sentences – because it’s fun, and the juxtapositions might take you somewhere. Most importantly, follow your lines of interest. Finally, I want to reiterate that BLDGBLOG is fundamentally about following, and not being ashamed by, your own enthusiasms, whether or not they are rigorous and appropriate for the academic mores of the day, or even interesting for your family and friends. – Geoff Manaugh
High Houses are proposed as part of the reconstruction of Sarajevo after the siege of the city that lasted from 1992 though late 1995.
BLDGBLOG (pronounced “building blog”… maybe) is written by Geoff Manaugh, it’s subject matter is “architectural conjecture, urban speculation and landscape futures.” Read by millions since its launch in 2004, BLDGBLOG is a leading voice and uniquely futuristic vision, offering and enthusiastic, idea-filled guide to what lies ahead in our built and technological environments. With stunning images and original content, BLDGBLOG is part conceptual travelogue, part manifesto and part sci-fi novel. Under the guise of writing his blog about architecture, Manaugh has crafted a tribute to the world-transforming power of the imagination itself. Along the way, he incorporates some of the most ambitious minds of our time involving everything from urban design to climatology, music, astronomy and pop culture. On reading the blog you start to interrogate everything you take for granted about the environments we create for ourselves.
Arctic glacial core samples
Geoff Manaugh has provided the reader with an excursion into a new world – part digital fantasy, part reality at the intersection of art, technology, design and pure ideas. The blog is personal, idiosyncratic and, best of all, incredibly interesting. It uses architecture as a lens for delving into related aspects of society and takes enjoyable turns into the stretches of imagination. It’s an urban fantasy made from the remainders of a very large equation. The modus operandi of his work – the fervid linking between seemingly disparate realms of emotion, experience and academic discipline feels appropriate for our densely networked, accelerating, neurotically twittering era…
In 1982 a phenomenon began in St Petersburg. On examining a Japanese compact camera called the Cosina CX-1, an engineer at the Leningrad Optics & Mechanics Amalgamation saw a compact automatic format which could provide to the masses a reliable workhorse for everyday photography. An order was given that an improved copy should be produced on mass for the Soviet peoples snapshooting pleasure. With greater potential of a sharp glass lens developed by Professor Radionov as well as an extremely high light sensitivity and robust casing the LOMO LC-A was born. Within a year the camera quickly found its way into the hearts and camera pouches of the enthusiastic proletariat in Communist states such as Ukraine and Czechoslovakia and even as far as Cuba and China. After a ramp in production there were 1200 people working solely on production of the LC-A, 500 of whom were assemblers.
Optical genius – Professor Radionov!
Fast forward to 1991 and two Austrian marketing students are holidaying in a newly liberated Czech republic and bought a camera in Prague as they forgot to take one with them. Their eye fell on a certain 35mm compact produced in the Soviet Union. They bought it, experimented with it, hyped it… By this time the LC-A’s market share had been weakened by flashy imports from Asia and production was grinding to a halt. Being marketing students, they kept tight control over their hype as it developed – founded the “LOMOgraphic society” to preach their gospel and made a deal with LOMO to become the sole worldwide dealers of the LC-A. To find a solution to the ever-expanding demand and diminishing supply of the LC-A, the marketeers travelled to the LOMO Optics factory in St. Petersburg. The society heads managed to convince the factory heads (and Vladimir Putin – Vice Mayor of St. Petersburg at the time) to begin full production of the camera once again.
The marketing students started a genre of photography built around the LC-A – LOMOgraphy. They orchestrated get-togethers and happenings at trendy places. They started a website early on while the web was still fresh. They made sure every LOMOgrapher passed through their society. And all the time with cash flowing in. They currently charge €250 euros for the basic model, a large markup on what is essentially very simple technology. Similar products, with similar results (genuine Soviet cameras included) can be found for less than half the price. LOMOgraphy is a profitable business, making money on everybody’s desire to be part of the in-crowd. The LOMOgraphy company has branched out to include clothing, hip gallery stores and the aforementioned parties and get-togethers. More and more it’s encapsulating it’s customers with a prefab lifestyle of which it is the only supplier with an admission fee of €250.
The intent of LOMOgraphy is to let go the burdens of traditional photography, to capture life as it is, spontaneous and from the hip. To be wild, young and free. To translate freedom into pictures. It’s not a bad philosophy, but it can lead to pictures being shot with the least possible brains in order to impress others with said spontaneity. When a philosophy becomes less of an ideal and more of a business it inevitably loses its shine. Among some photographers, LOMOgraphy has become a byword for debasing of their craft, a synonym for bad pictures, for seeing things that are not there and labeling everything art.
In 2005 the LOMO optical factory ceased all production of the LC-A camera. Their overall production had become more specific and high-tech to optical instruments such as gunsights and microscopes. Perhaps they didn’t want the insinuation that they were associated to lo-fi, low tech photography. The LOMO LC-A+ is now made-in-China, but according to it’s makers, delivers 98% the same results as its original.
Despite the undeniable guilelessness of the photographs it can produce, as well as the product’s usability and universal intentions – everybody can be a LOMOgrapher and with some practice everybody can do it well – it’s very democratic. As much as LOMOgraphy can claim to be beyond the realm of traditional photography, it remains photography nonetheless. LOMOgraphy is special because it is very individual but it takes no specialist skill. It plays on the notion that everyone is special, even if we are all alike – selling exclusivity, but with the whole world as their market. It’s only business, after all.
Be sure to check out the galleries on the official website.
The ubiquitous smiley face. A stylized representation of a human smile. The first recorded depiction of the form was in the Ingmar Bergman film Hamnstad in 1936, although not technically a smiley since the suicidal factory girl protagonist in fact draws an unhappy face on the bathroom mirror with lipstick. Sunkist oranges used smileys in a 1930s ad campaign, but the crude black and white stick drawings bear little resemblance to the finished work of art we recognise today.
Photo by Frank Weyrauther - Phrank.net
The smiley face craze is the work of two brothers, Bernard and Murray Spain. They were in the business of creating fad items and in 1970 recalled the smiley which had by then been floating around for years in the advertising business. Looking for a peace-like symbol but with more general appeal, while surrounded by protests, war and hate – what they wanted was a symbol of happiness and love. The brothers say with admirable frankess, it was also to make a buck. In essence they did little more than add the phrase “Have a nice day” to the smiley, the fad lasted a year and a half and the number of smiley buttons produced by 1972 was estimated at 50 million.
But who invented the original smiley face? In December 1963, State Mutual Life Assurance initiated a merger campaign which had bad effects on company morale. They wanted a way to “promote friendship” and turned to Harvey Ball, a graphic artist in Massachusetts. Harvey, clearly not a man to waste ink initially drew only the smile but realised it could be turned upside down to become… a frown! He added two eyes, so that if it was now turned upside down it would mean… I’m standing on my head – a more ambiguous sociopolitical message. He made it yellow for a sunshiny look and State Mutual upon realising the buttons were a hit, began to hand them out by the thousands. Mr Ball’s take home pay: $45 art fee. State Mutual, clearly not quick on the uptake, didn’t make any money either.
Seig Howdy!
The feel-good symbol of freedom and experimentation hit the American masses at just the time of post-1960’s malaise: a traumatised American public turning to visual soma in order to forget the Vietnam war and presidential meltdown. The smiley represented such a blank childlike form of contentment it was ripe for subversion. In 1979, Bob Last and Bruce Slesinger put together a collage of Californian Governor Jerry Brown and a Nuremberg-style rally to illustrate the UK Fast Records release of the Dead Kennedys’ California Über Alles. Behind the podium were large red, white and black banners: in place of swastikas were large Smileys. In the comic Watchmen the smiley is used as a visual metaphor for megalomania. Then came the explosion. In February 1988, Bomb The Bass released a 12″ record using the blood-stained Watchmen smiley face as cover. A month earlier, Danny Rampling has used the smiley for his infamous club Shoom. The symbol took only a few months to catch on, but when it did, it swept the country as the logo of acid house.
Bomb Dis Bass
The initial media response to acid-house culture was positive. In the UK the smiley had been loosely associated with psychedelic scenes since the 70’s. The emerging movement of the second summer of love in the 80’s cemented it’s counter-cultural status by engraving the smiley logo on ecstasy tablets of the time. Like most youth cults, there was soon a media backlash – connecting the symbol to immorality and vice. The smiley began to be associated with “evil ecstasy” and drug barons. The negative associations continued into the 90’s with Nirvana using it in their iconic “corporate-rock-whores” t-shirt with crossed out eyes and a drooling mouth.
As you might expect, the Smiley has also been surrounded by copyright controversies ever since the early 1970s when a Frenchman, Franklin Loufrani registered the trademark as Smiley World in some European countries. He claims to not only have created “the smiley” but also own the concept as an international trademark. It can be factually proven that the symbol was conceived long before his trademark claim, so surely this is just profiteering on a cultural phenomenon of which he has no honest right to possession. In 2006 Wal-Mart tried to trademark the smiley, but lost in a court case with Loufrani.
Faces everywhere
In terms of Ibizan folk-lore. It is said that Alfredo popularised the smiley face with a collection of stickers he got from a friend working for an Italian children’s charity at the time. After his marathon daytime sets at Amnesia, people would beg him for copies of records he had played. The Balearic master would stick the smiley face stickers to the label of the 12″ before handing them out to revelers. Thanks to Mat Playford for that little piece of info.
It may seem weird that such a bland symbol should be used to convey emotion, in such a way that creates as much distance as real empathy. But then there is something powerfully archetypal about an image of a happy face that resembles the sun. Infantilisation or greater communication, joy or horror: the Smiley can encompass everything. It pretends to be our servant, but it will rule us all. – The Guardian
