You probably know all about the X-Pro2’s specs by now, but what’s it like to shoot with? Sam and Richard hit the streets of Georgetown, Seattle with the camera to see how it handles different types of shooting. What did they like? What came up short? Follow them and find out…
For the specs and more detail about the camera, read our Fujifilm X-Pro2 First Impressions Review.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]
When thoroughfares are subtracted from city grids, subsequent urban infill is shaped by the voids of these former roadways, streetcar or rail paths, standing out like architectural scar tissue when viewed from above. The effect is all the more pronounced when the disappeared passageways cut at odd angles through city blocks, forcing particularly odd-shaped ‘scarchitecture’ to follow.
When architectural writer Geoff Manaugh came across this phenomena in the streets of Los Angeles, readers rapidly began sending in examples from other cities. Some are surprisingly complex and counterintuitive, like the half-circle seen below (if you look closely) that seems to arbitrarily slice across multiple city blocks.
Manaugh’s fascination is infectious: “The notion that every city has these deeper wounds and removals that nonetheless never disappear is just incredible to me. You cut something out—and it becomes a building a generation later. You remove an entire street—and it becomes someone’s living room.”
Perhaps most remarkable of all: many of these scarchitectural expressions frequently go largely unnoticed on the ground level. Most, however, emerge immediately as visual patterns when seen from aerial vantage points, their persistently unconventional orientations going against the grain of gridded streets surrounding them.
Small buildings can completely conform to the unusual geometries these ‘ghost streets’ trace; some sides of other structures, reconfigured paths and even parking space orientations may also follow these uncanny trajectories, in part or in whole, as if aligning to secular ‘ley lines’ of invisible force. Next time you are using Google Maps, pan around your own neighborhood and you could find evidence of scarchitecture, perhaps cutting right through your own backyard.
Half-forgotten historical urban rivers are set to resurface in San Francisco as part of a civic installation project designed to fill in their historical …
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No matter how far and often you might wander around your city, there’s one way you most likely never get to experience it: from above. Approached from …
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Flying over New York City, San Francisco and Las Vegas, this photographer has managed to both capture the essence of each city he shoots from the night sky …
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[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]
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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]
Lighting up streets and sidewalks of Rio de Janeiro, these mobile animation units utilize the movement of tricycles and available city surfaces to create amazing and interactive works of art.
The so-called Suaveciclos were designed by artists Ygor Marotta and Ceci Soloaga of VJ Suave from São Paulo, combining batteries, laptops, projectors and speakers to create a multimedia experience.
While some of the works are projected up high, those aimed at human-accessible surfaces (roads, sidewalks or low walls) are remarkably engaging, sparking children to start playing with the live projections.
The versatility of these stop-and-go projection systems (tweakable to context) make it easy for the artists to react to crowds, stopping where popular or pressing on when their work at one site has run its course. They have pedaled their act in cities in Russia, Luxembourg, Slovakia Germany and Switzerland as well.
From the artists: “small narratives with characters and poetry can travel open spaces, lighting walls on a large scale. The projections illuminate walls, trees, lakes, sidewalks and propose a playful interactivity with the public. With the video manipulated in real time, Suaveciclos bring art to all audiences and create unique moments between the city and the viewer.
In their playful universe, vjsuave deals with current themes with ambient sound accompanying the performance” (h/t Colossal and Prosthetic Knowledge).
In his most ambitious and large-scale work to date, Felice Varini has created a perspectival piece that wraps around the entire historic core of Hasselt, …
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In a city with over a half-million open potholes, one artist is helping address the problem and raising awareness by installing his own creative patches, …
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Making art accessible like never before, this interactive gallery encourages people to play around, with and even inside its artworks, extending the frame to …
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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]
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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]
In an effort criticized by local businesses as well as global visitors, Hong Kong has deemed neon signage illegal and is ramping up its systematic removal of these historic place-making lights.
To fans of the city’s vibrant nighttime glow, such signs define the bustling metropolis as much as any work of architecture or public art, featured prominently in many images taken and movies set on or around Hong Kong Island and Kowloon.
In the last decade, thousands of signs have been removed through incremental city initiatives while preservationists scramble to save, store and display them. Populated with curators and directors from around the world, including the Tate in London and MoMA in New York City, the new M+ Museum is becoming the de facto guardian of many of these castoffs, collecting physical signs as well as videos, images, maps and other documentation.
More about the digital arm of their endeavor: “Presented by M+, Hong Kong’s museum for visual culture, “Mobile M+: NEONSIGNS.HK” is an online exhibition that celebrates a key feature of the city’s streetscapes by exploring, mapping and documenting its neon signs. Alongside curatorially-produced essays, videos, slideshows and artist commissions, over 4,000 photos were submitted by the public from 21 March to 30 June 2014 to collectively create a unique neon map of Hong Kong. The site will remain as a lasting record and examination of Hong Kong’s fast disappearing neon signs.”
The classic art of neon sign-making involves electrified gas-filled glass pipes, originating in Europe but dating back nearly a century in China. Today, factory-made LEDs are becoming the industry standard. Around the world, the old methods are fading, but many artisanal practitioners continue to fight to restore old signs and keep such practices alive (images by Keith Macgregor, Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze and Mark Pegrum via TheCreatorsProject).
Twice as dense as New York, and four times as crowded as London, Hong Kong is a fascinating mix of natural landscape edged by incredibly dense human …
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This terraced structure is not the remains of some ancient amphitheater, but a metropolis of the dead that’s just as dense as that of the living city of …
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Between raised walkways, subways, ferries, cable cars, a multi-block outdoor escalator and extensive double-decker bus system, it is possible to traverse a …
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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]
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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]
Wind and rain conspired to set loose a gigantic inflatable piece of installation art, turning it into a kind of impromptu performance piece for drivers and bystanders as one (very big) red balloon rolled by. In some regards, the resulting viral sensation has taken on a life of its own, extending the reach of the sculpture far beyond its target audience.
Designed to be a source of urban interaction, the RedBall was in the process of being wedged between two downtown businesses before being redirected by forces of nature. Museum staff, installation participants and a handful of bystanders chased the recently-liberated sphere down the streets, eventually catching, deflating and returning it to the installation site. Instagram user jeremy419 happened to catch much of the action from atop a nearby building. Meanwhile, a hacked version of video puts a fresh tomato-style spin on this unexpectedly interactive work of art.
The museum’s director of communications, Kelly Garrow, recapped the sequence of events for reporters: “It started pouring rain, so the ball was wet and slippery. The wind picked up, and it popped up and just started going. You can see in the video that’s going viral that it rolled about halfway down a block and then mysteriously took a left-hand turn. It made its way partially down the street before people caught up with it.“
Despite its size (15 feet in diameter), the ball weighs only 250 pounds, minimizing its potential for damage to one bent street sign – quite tame compared to rounded corporate art sculpture set loose in Fight Club as part of Project Mayhem.
A world-traveling artwork, the ball was created by Kurt Perschke to be pressed into tight spaces and has been in play for nearly a decade without incident. Meanwhile, add this escapee to Nena’s 99 Luftballons lyrics and you get a nice rounded “100 red balloons go by.”
Remember when searching for a good radio station was a process of discovery, slowly turning a knob to hear snippets of music or talk making its way through the …
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Subverting the shopping cart, this urban installation is a play on consumer culture and its cyclical nature. Of course, it is also a lot of fun to play with, …
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Half-forgotten historical urban rivers are set to resurface in San Francisco as part of a civic installation project designed to fill in their historical …
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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]
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[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]
Airports take up vast amounts of valuable real estate in and around urban areas, but what if we could get to and from planes faster, make takeoffs and landings easier, and save city space in the process?
The Airport City project proposes a radical reinvention of the airport, elevating tracks above roadways and waterways in the heart of Stockholm, Sweden.
With ground-powered plane taxi systems tied to this track setup, noise and air pollution could be reduced as well, but the critical concept is the degree of urban integration and reduction of single-use architecture and infrastructure associated with a conventional airport.
Designed by Alex Sutton, graduate of the Bartlett School of Architecture, the idea may not be ready for lift-off anytime soon, but it nonetheless invites designers and travelers alike to rethink the current typology of contemporary airports and how we will accommodate increased air travel in future urban designs.
As automation increasingly transforms airplane travel processes and planes get quieter, there is something magical about imagining we could watch flights take off right within our cities, and step right off of planes into downtowns.
From the designer: “Travel demand in the aviation industry is set to double by 2030 and continue increasing exponentially into the future. In order to satisfy demand and the increasing importance of the airport on local economies, capacity in the industry needs to increase. This project uses Stockholm, one of the fastest growing cities in Europe, as a testing ground to establish a fully integrated urban airport as part of a new city district, in a time when aviation technology is such that aircraft and airports could operate from within our cities.”
With their inefficient terminals and bloated footprints, today’s airports are typically ill-equipped to adapt to sharp increases in demand, scarce land …
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Beyond merely extending solid ground like most downtown-on-the-water expansions, this project creates new mobile infrastructure right out on the waves.
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Proposed by a landscape architect from Edmonton, Alberta, this 7-mile urban project may not be as far fetched as it first sounds – in many regards it is …
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[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]
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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]
If context is critical to understanding art, then what happens to a work when you push a famous piece through time and space to a highly familiar and everyday place? Where fine artwork meets street scenes, strange and beautiful things begin to happen.
In a series called Art History in Contemporary Life, Ukrainian artist Alexey Kondakov elaborately relocates key figures from their historical canvasses into jarringly mundane settings, putting classical art in modern contexts. The results are seamless and convincing – one could almost imagine rehanging the hybrid works back up in museums.
Madonna, child and a chorus of angels are suddenly found sitting in a dirty subway car, cherubs flutter below a shanty overhang and a half-naked hand harp player spins tunes for pennies for commuting pedestrians. Famous figures share drinks at a modern dive while lovers kiss on a darkened subway car.
Renaissance angels cling to each other in front of a graffitied wall, hellish medieval imagery is splashed across a pair of Doc Marten boots and God has met …
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London may have changed just a tiny bit since the 17th century, but you’d hardly know it looking at some of these mash-ups of classic paintings …
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In a world of mobile devices, share icons and popup alerts, fine art is interrupted by signs and symbols of our times, adding a jarring layer of technology to …
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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]
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[ By WebUrbanist in Culture & History & Travel. ]
Half-forgotten historical urban rivers are set to resurface in San Francisco as part of a civic installation project designed to fill in their historical footprints with a bright blue work of temporary art. The project will stretch across roads, sidewalks and other urban staples with colorful swaths reflecting part the city’s hidden history.
It might seem obvious upon reflection, but few people realize just how many surface waterways ebbed and flowed on the surface of a city like this before development forced their paths into culverts, tunnels and sewers. Set to debut at the Market Street Prototyping Festival (more on that below), this piece explores the intersection of past and present through installation art. Still at a conceptual stage it remains to be decided whether the work will involve physically painting the streets or projecting light down on them from above.
From project creator Emily Schlickman: “Every city has invisible histories embedded within its landscape. Up until the 19th century, ephemeral streams ran through nearly every valley in San Francisco, channeling rainwater to peripheral tidal estuaries. This project, ‘Ghost Arroyos’ seeks to reveal these forgotten waterways of the city through a simple, but powerful intervention. Visitors … will be invited to trace the path of the waterways while listening to a curated recording of hydrological soundscapes and oral histories.”
Emily is a designer living and working in the Bay Area. She is interested in the intersection of landscape processes, art, and systemic design and aims to incorporate these issues into her work. Hers is just one of dozens of crowd-selected projects set to line Market Street during the festival and spanning multiple neighborhoods.
CityLab writes more about the historical waterways of this urban environment: “There was once a time when San Francisco was glistening with creeks and arroyos, or streams that stay dry for part of the year. When Spanish explorers arrived in what’s now the Lower Haight in the late 1700s, they found a healthy brook and named it Fuente de Dolores. Down in the Mission there was a gulch whose water helped sustain cattle and crops. In 1878, the municipal government took another natural channel under modern-day Cesar Chavez Street and turned it into a sewer.”
Some additional information on the festival itself (with a further video introduction above): “Market Street will transform into a public platform, showcasing exciting ideas for improving our famed civic spine and how we use it. Winning entries, as diverse and exciting as the people of San Francisco themselves, will be brought to life for three days along Market Street’s sidewalks, where millions of pedestrians from all walks of life will have the chance to experience, explore, and interact with the prototypes.”
Like other projects in the mix, Ghost Arroyos is designed to be interactive and community-driven. “The goal of the Prototyping Festival is to unite diverse neighborhoods along Market Street, encouraging these vibrant communities to work with designers, artist and makers to build a more connected, beautiful San Francisco”
The brand-new, wealthy urban center of Ordos in northern China has sat empty for five years as citizens of the old town hesitate to relocate.
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The urban sculptures of Alan Wolfson are tiny, incredibly detailed views of the mundane city landmarks that urban citizens interact with on a daily basis.
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A tale of two neighborhoods, these graphics (and their hybrid) stunningly illustrate how much further you can get on foot when you take a walk through an …
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[ By WebUrbanist in Culture & History & Travel. ]
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[ By Steph in Drawing & Digital. ]
Anonymous subjects from under-appreciated paintings that hang forlorn in secondary museums, overlooked and nearly forgotten, come to life in the streets with an interactive art project called ‘Outings.’ Dreamed up by French artist Julien de Casabianca, the ongoing, international participative project invites you to snap photos of lesser-known portraits hanging in museums, print them out and paste them onto urban surfaces in cities like London, Paris and Madrid.
Taking these characters out of their cultural and historical context, participants breathe new life into them, appointing them as watchers over a new and unfamiliar world, making their faces far more visible than they are when hanging in small frames beside more famous and notable works.
The process is simple: discreetly capture any images you like in a museum or gallery with your phone and follow the Outings Project instructions for importing and editing the image in Photoshop. Have it printed in a local shop, and then use wallpaper glue and a brush to adhere it to a wall – the grittier the better, for proper contrast. Get more info and apply for a grant for the price of printing at the Outings website.
Life is an adventure for tiny wooden figures navigating the urban world in this miniature art installation series by Joe Iurato. The New Jersey-based street …
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Pay phones used to be ubiquitous – in many places they remain a physical presence, but without a use … at least until these artists and designers came along.
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More than the sum of its parts, the conceptual swappable-piece mobile phone design that went viral but is now being backed by Google-owned Motorola and is …
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[ By Steph in Drawing & Digital. ]
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[ By Steph in Destinations & Sights & Travel. ]
On September 19th, 2014, residents of cities around the world rushed into the streets to reclaim what is rightfully theirs, taking urban spaces back for their own enjoyment. Well, sort of. Park(ing) Day is an annual event that encourages temporarily converting public parking spaces into parks, playgrounds, venues and other recreational spaces, and it’s usually officially sanctioned by the cities in which it’s held. Here’s how a dozen cities around the world celebrated, from Quito, Ecuador to Dublin, Ireland.
Oversized benches double as chalkboards in Sydney, along with more conventional park setups.
In the cities of Paris and Nancy, France, Park(ing) Day participants played video games in makeshift living rooms, displayed their art, and created iconic Parisian cafes (in the street rather than the sidewalk.)
Literal garden beds, gay pride displays and a beautiful turf-covered sculptural bench made appearances in Dublin.
Puppet show or game of croquet, anyone?
Buenos Aires becomes a fantasy urban playground in this fun video by Black Sheep Films, featuring roller coasters with no tracks that zoom through the city.
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In the asphalt-covered space that would normally be occupied by a single vehicle could be a bike rack, a dance floor, an outdoor cafe, a kiddie pool or a …
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At the top of a mountain, a crumbling Yellow Brick Road winds around forests filled with creepy anthropomorphic trees, Dorothy’s dilapidated house and an …
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[ By Steph in Destinations & Sights & Travel. ]
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