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With awards season in full swing, Hollywood’s sparkly razamtaz occupies our television screens. But what about the unsung, architectural heros of film?  What about the films that are less ‘Schindler’s List’ and more ‘Schindlers Hauser’, less ‘Wrath Of Kahn’ and more ‘Louis Kahn’.  We look past the panoply of stars to bring you 30 of the best Architecture Documentaries which will provoke, intrigue and beguile in 2013.

Feature-length Documentaries (in alphaetical order)…

1. Architects Herzog and deMeuron: The Alchemy of Building & The Tate Modern (2009)

Director: Beat Kuert. 25 mins & 52 mins, respectively.

This documentary traces the journey that 2001 joint-Pritzker Prize winners Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron undertook when they began designing a new addition to the Tate Gallery in London, the largest contemporary art museum in the world. The documentary explores the pair’s design process, from the beginning stages (when it was first proposed to convert a disused power station into the new gallery) to when the Tate Modern opened in 2000.

You’ll like this if you’re into…Herzog & de Meuron, London, Adaptive Re-Use, Cultural Architecture 

Buy on Microcinema DVDs

2. Antonio Gaudí (1985)

Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara. 72 mins.

With little verbal narrative, Hiroshi Teshigahara’s documentary lovingly lingers on the works of innovative architect, Antonio Gaudí (1852 – 1926).

You’ll like this if you’re into…Antoni Gaudí, Barcelona. 

Watch on Vimeo 

3. Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of the Rural Studio  (2010)

Director: Sam Wainwright Douglas. 60 mins.

Featuring interviews with architects like Cameron Sinclair, Peter Eisenman, and Michael Rotondi, this documentary explores the life and legacy of architect and public-interest-design pioneer Samuel Mockbee, who helped found the radical design/build program, the Rural Studio at Auburn University, in one of America’s most impoverished communities.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You’ll like this if you’re into…Public-Interest Design, Design/Build, Rural Studio.

Buy at Citizen Architect 

4. Eames: The Architect and the Painter (2011)

Directors: Jason Cohn & Bill Jersey. 84 mins.

Narrated by James Franco, this documentary offers a glimpse into the marriage of Charles and Ray Eames, a marriage of art and industry, and the design history that came from it.

You’ll like this if you’re into…Design, Mid-Century Modernism.

Watch on PBS, Buy on First Run Features 

5. Great Expectations (2007)

Director: Jesper Wachtmeister. 52 mins.

A pretty groovy survey of the visionary, unconventional architecture and architects of the 20th century.

You’ll like this if you’re into…Oscar Niemeyer, Moshe Safdie, Le Corbusier, Buckminster Fuller, Peter Cook

Buy it on Amazon, Amazon.co.uk 

6. How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr Foster? (2010)

Directors: Carlos Carcas, Norberto López Amado. 78 mins.

A documentary on the exponential rise of Sir Norman Foster and his “unending quest to improve the quality of life through design.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

You’ll like this if you’re into… Norman Foster, Foster + Partners, Sustainability.

Buy on Dogwoof 

7. Infinite Space: The Architecture of John Lautner (2008)

Director: Murray Grigor. 90 mins.

Infinite Space traces John Lautner’s never-ending quest to create “architecture that has no beginning and no end.” The doc, narrated by Lautner himself, follows the famous architect from his early days, when he broke free from his mentor, Frank Lloyd Wright, to go West and find success designing world renowned homes in California.

You’ll like this if you’re into…John Lautner, Mid-Century Modernism.

Watch Trailer on YouTube. Buy at John Lautner Foundation.

8. Kochuu: Japanese Architecture (2003)

Director: Jesper Wachtmeister. 53 mins.

KOCHUU, which translates to “in the jar,” refers to the “Japanese tradition of constructing small, enclosed physical spaces, which create the impression of a separate universe.” The documentary not only explores contemporary Japanese architecture but also reveals the strong influence it’s had upon Scandinavian architecture, and modern architecture in general.

You’ll like this if you’re into…Japanese Architecture ,Tadao Ando, Toyo Ito, Alvar Aalto

Watch the Trailer on YouTube . Buy at Icarus Films 

9. Loos Ornamental (2008)

Director: Heinz Emigholz. 72 mins.

Adolf Loos (1870 – 1933) was one of the pioneers of Modernism, preferring minimalism and open space at a time when ornamentation and intricacy was king. This quirky documentary is an homage to Loos and features still shots of 27 of his buildings, in order of their construction.

You’ll like this if you’re into… Vienna, Adolf Loos, Minimalism 

Watch on YouTube. Buy at Facets DVD 

Click here to view the embedded video.

10. Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003)

Thom Anderson is annoyed. Why? He feels that Los Angeles has been continuously misrepresented in film for decades. Using a vast collection of carefully chosen clips from film through the ages, he makes the case for taking another look at Los Angeles and its identity.

You’ll like this if you’re into Architecture in Films, Los Angeles, Urbanism

Watch on YouTube 

11. Louis Sullivan: The Struggle for American Architecture (2010)

Director: Mark Richard Smith. 97 mins.

This doc is an in-depth look at Louis Sullivan, a man and architect who stood on the edge of two centuries – never quite fitting neatly into either (and never quite understood by the public as a result). The film not only traces Sullivan’s eventual influence on American architecture in general, but also focuses on his tremendous influence on one of America’s great masters, Frank Lloyd Wright.

You’ll like this if you’re into, Louis Sullivan, American Architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright

Watch the Trailer on YouTube. Buy on Amazon

12. My Architect  (2003)

Director: Nathaniel Kahn. 116 mins.

The director of this film, Nathaniel Kahn, is also the son of the subject at-hand: Louis Kahn. The documentary is Kahn’s poignant search to understand his father, a man who, while known around the globe for his architecture, led a less-than-satisfactory personal life (fathering children by three different women and living in debt). He would eventually die bankrupt and alone in 1974, but with a tremendous architectural legacy. The film, which was nominated for an Academy Award, features interviews with Frank Gehry, I.M. Pei, and Philip Johnson as well as imagery of all of Kahn’s classics, including The Yale Center for British Art and The Salk Institute.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You’ll like this if you’re into…Louis Kahn

Watch on Vimeo. Buy on Amazon.

13. Philip Johnson: Diary of an Eccentric Architect (1997)

Director: Barbara Wolf. 55 mins.

This documentary is a treat for any architect: a guided tour of Philip Johnson’s work by the bespectacled man himself, including a long, lingering look into Johnson’s “diary” — the famous “Glass House” he designed and lived in. The doc also offers a fascinating peek into this master architect’s eccentric creative process.

You’ll like this if you’re into…Philip Johnson, The Glass House, Modernism

Watch Trailer on YouTube. Buy on Amazon 

14. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (2011)

Director: Chad Freidrichs. 83 mins.

In 1954, the newly constructed Pruitt-Igoe towers in St. Louis, Missouri, designed by WTC architect Minoru Yamasaki , were “radiant examples of Corbusian rationalism,” symbols of the promise of Modernist architecture to renew our cities, particularly for lower class residents. A mere two decades later, the towers, hotbeds of violence and crime, were spectacularly demolished – becoming potent symbols of both social housing and Modernism’s supposed failure.This fascinating documentary challenges this typical narrative, providing an expansive, poignant look at both Pruitt-Igoe’s shortcomings and triumphs, showing us what they have to teach us about America itself.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You’ll like this if you’re into…Social housing, Modernism, Urban Planning, St. Louis

Buy at Pruitt-Igoe.com 

15. Regular or Super: Views on Mies van der Rohe (2004)

Directors: Patrick Demers, Joseph Hillel. 56 mins.

A look at the works of Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) and the tenet that explains them all: Less Is More.

You’ll like this if you’re into…Modernism, Mies Van Der Rohe, Bauhaus

Buy on Amazon 

16. REM (2013)

Director: Tomas Koolhaas

Scheduled to come out this year, REM, a film directed by Koolhaas’ son, Tomas, has been over a decade in the making. As Tomas told us in an interview, ”It took [...] ten years of shooting various projects until I felt ready to tackle this piece and bring the idea to Rem. I had to be sure I was ready because I knew I wouldn’t get a free pass from him. He is not the type of man who would get behind my project merely because I am his son. I knew I had to have a concept that was very different from, and more compelling than any that had been done before.” So what sets the doc apart? According to Tomas, it’s not just a collection of pretty images, but “a rare insight into the reality of the hidden internal life of the buildings.”

You’ll like this if you’re into...Rem Koolhaas, OMA, AMO

Watch Trailer and Clips at ArchDaily.

17. Rem Koolhaas: A Kind of Architect (2008)

Directors: Markus Heidingsfelder, Min Tesch. 97 mins.

An overview of Pritzker-Prize Winner Rem Koolhaas’ creative process – which is directly, and rather surprisingly, related to his journalistic background. For Koolhaas,  a building is like a piece of writing, with a plot, episodes and suspense. The documentary also explores Koolhaas’ theories on architecture and urbanism, his inspirations, style and influence on other architects.

You’ll like this if you’re into...Rem Koolhaas, OMA, AMO

Watch on ArchDaily 

18. Schindlers Häuser (2007)

Director: Heinz Emigholz. 99 mins.

And now for something completely different! This doc takes the form of a ‘cinematic photo album’ showing 40 of Schindler’s L.A houses, chronologically from 1921 to 1952. Emizholz reframes Schindler’s works by slowly panning shots and thought-provoking angles. Narration is cast aside in favor of real time sound from the houses. Filming for all buildings took place in May 2006, creating a subtext about urban living in LA and the decay of architecture.

You’ll like this if you’re into… Rudolph Schindler, Los Angeles, Modernism

Buy on Amazon 

19. Sketches of Frank Gehry by Sydney Pollack (2005)

Director: Sydney Pollack. 83 mins.

While Pollack is probably better known for his films, such as Out of Africa and Tootsie, this documentary deserves note as his last directorial effort before passing away. As Pollack and Gehry were close friends, the documentary has the aura of an ‘extended chat’ between the two men. Artists, critics, Gehry’s psychoanalyst, and even, bafflingly, Bob Geldof contribute to this chat. The film is more than a look at his work, it is a concise view of the man.

You’ll like this if you’re into… Frank Gehry, Sydney Pollack, Postmodernism  

Buy on Amazon

20. Unfinished Spaces (2011)

Directors: Benjamin Murray, Alysa Nahmias. 86 mins.

The story starts in brave new revolutionary Cuba. Castro, eager to bolster the ego of his new state, makes the grand gesture of commissioning three new schools of art. A trio of young visionary architects are called upon and soon construction starts on their radical designs. However, Soviet utilitarianism becomes popular in the fledgling communist state. The new schools, now seen as bourgeoisie and elitist, begin to lose public and political favor. The plans are abandoned, leaving the buildings incomplete. The architects, after fleeing into exile, have only recently been invited back, 40 years on, to finish the now decrepit and misused buildings.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You’ll like this if you’re into… Cuban Architecture, Roberto Gottardi, Ricardo Porro , Vittorio Garatti, Educational Architecture

21. Urbanized (2011)

Director: Gary Hustwit. 82 mins.

75% of the world’s population is expected to live in urban centers by 2050. With this in mind Gary Hustwit, following his previous works Helvetica and Objectified, adds Urbanized to his design trilogy. Urbanized, which looks at the design of urban centers, shows Huswit city hopping to 40 different locations to talk with those in the know, including architectural heavyweights like Foster, Koolhaas and Niemeyer.  

You’ll like this if you’re into… Urban Planning, Sustainability, Urban Design.

Watch Trailer on YouTube. Buy on Amazon

22. Visual Acoustics (2008)

Director: Eric Bricker. 83 mins.

Dustin Hoffman lends his dulcet tones to narrate this exploration of the work of architectural photographer Julius Shulman. Shulman, trained in neither photography nor Architecture, became the man who defined L.A glamour. Photos of beautiful people in plate glass living rooms made postwar America hungry for modernism. Shulman was never in any doubt of his genius as a photographer, and this documentary follows him right up until his later work with Frank Gehry. 

You’ll like this if you’re into… Photography, Julius Shulman, Mid Century Modernism, Los Angeles  

Watch trailer on YouTube. Buy on Amazon 

23. The World of Buckminster Fuller (1974)

Directors: Baylis Glascock, Robert Snyder. 85 mins.

Stitching together clips from several lectures, directors Baylis Glascock and Robert Snyder keep their input to a minimum – no narration, no interviews, no talking heads. With Bucky in the driving seat, this doc is at times fascinating, at times rambling. It is, however, also an undiluted portrait of the ideas and theories of this visionary architect.

You’ll like this if you’re into… Buckminster Fuller, Googie Architecture

Buy on Amazon

Short Docs/Made for TV Docs

24. Frank Lloyd Wright (1998)

Director: Ken Burns, Lynn Novick. 146 mins.

If someone penned the story of Frank Lloyd as fiction, it would be accused of being too Hollywood. This highly regarded Ken Burns doc balances the man, his work, and his legacy. Rebellious beginnings, his rise to prominence, his early work, his misdeeds and mistresses, the tragic slaying of his family, the fall from grace, followed by his triumphant eleventh hour return as the master of American architecture.

You’ll like this if you’re into… American Architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright

Buy on Amazon

25. First Person Singular: I.M. Pei (1997)

Director: Peter Rosen. 90 mins.

First Person Singular is a broad look at the life and work of I.M. Pei. Narrated frequently by the architect himself, the doc takes on his early life in China, his education at MIT and Harvard, and tours through some of his more recent, celebrated work. Bach, suitably, provides the soundtrack as Pei draws parallels between their work, both using several variations on a simple theme.

You’ll like this if you’re into… I.M. Pei 

26. Make No Little Plans: Daniel Burnham and the American City (2010)

Director: Judith McBrien. 60 mins.

A city in the nineteenth century was a crowded, dirty, ugly place to be. Having proved his talent at designing buildings Daniel Burnham, broke the mold by dreaming up beautiful and efficient designs for entire cities, contributing to the birth of modern urban planning. There are several cities today that still bear the mark of his plans. This documentary examines his life, including his planning of the gargantuan World Columbian Exhibition in 1893.

You’ll like this if you’re into… Daniel Burnham, Urban Planning  

Watch Trailer on YouTube. Buy on Amazon

Click here to view the embedded video.

27. Vertical Expectations – The Shard (2011)

Director: Simona Piantieri. 26 mins.

With the Shard growing taller above the city of London, local resident Simona Piantieri took a deep look at the architectural and social significance of the building in her, rather derelict, London neighborhood. Taking a look at the mainly Qatari-backed building through the eyes of local residents, activists, and academics, this short documentary throws light on the nature of urban redevelopment and those who really benefit from it. Sometimes beautiful and sometimes foreboding, shots of the building rising over the skyline provide the backdrop for the conversation.

You’ll like this if you’re into… Skyscrapers, Urban Planning, London, Renzo Piano

TV Series

28. Architecture School (2008)

Directors: Michael Selditch and Stan Bertheaud

A group of fourth year students from Tulane University School of Architecture are challenged to design and build a low-cost, single-family home in post-Katrina New Orleans. This six-part series follows their quest from design stage to construction. Come for the interesting development of an idea to completion, stay for the awkwardly realistic portrayal of studio life.

You’ll like this if you’re into… New Orleans, Post-Disaster Architecture 

29. Architectures (a.k.a Baukunst) (2001-2005)

A highly regarded and comprehensive collection of DVD’s produced by the European public television channel ARTE. Each episode deals in depth with a different significant architect and his work. 

You’ll like this if you’re into… Modernism 

Buy on Amazon

30. Dan Cruickshank’s Adventures in Architecture (2008)

Enthusiastic historian Dan Cruickshank goes globe trotting, to take us to what he considers to be the world’s most thought provoking architectural sites. Each of the 8 episodes covers a theme, such as beauty, power or disaster.

You’ll like this if you’re into… Religious Architecture 

Buy on Amazon

 

The 30 Architecture Docs To Watch In 2013 originally appeared on ArchDaily, the most visited architecture website on 28 Jan 2013.

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What time is the Super Bowl?

Not until the evening, ski resorts across the country are working to remind visitors, extending deep discounts for lift tickets on February 3 in an effort to lure visitors on a normally slow day.

Lift ticket brokerage Liftopia says the day of the big game is traditionally one of the very best for beating lines and getting great runs because so many skiers stay home.

Read More...
More on Skiing

Writing for The Awl, Jeb Boniakowski shares his vision for a massive McDonald's complex in Times Square that serves food from McDonald's restaurants from around the world, offers discontinued food items (McLean Deluxe anyone?), and contains a food lab not unlike David Chang's Momofuku test kitchen.

The central attraction of the ground floor level is a huge mega-menu that lists every item from every McDonald's in the world, because this McDonald's serves ALL of them. There would probably have to be touch screen gadgets to help you navigate the menu. There would have to be whole screens just dedicated to the soda possibilities. A concierge would offer suggestions. Celebrities on the iPad menus would have their own "meals" combining favorites from home ("Manu Ginobili says 'Try the medialunas!'") with different stuff for a unique combination ONLY available at McWorld. You could get the India-specific Chicken Mexican Wrap ("A traditional Mexican soft flat bread that envelops crispy golden brown chicken encrusted with a Mexican Cajun coating, and a salad mix of iceberg lettuce, carrot, red cabbage and celery, served with eggless mayonnaise, tangy Mexican Salsa sauce and cheddar cheese." Wherever possible, the menu items' descriptions should reflect local English style). Maybe a bowl of Malaysian McDonald's Chicken Porridge or The McArabia Grilled Kofta, available in Pakistan and parts of the Middle East. You should watch this McArabia ad for the Middle Eastern-flavored remix of the "I'm Lovin' It" song if for nothing else.

And I loved his take on fast food as molecular gastronomy:

How much difference really is there between McDonald's super-processed food and molecular gastronomy? I used to know this guy who was a great chef, like his restaurant was in the Relais & Châteaux association and everything, and he'd always talk about how there were intense flavors in McDonald's food that he didn't know how to make. I've often thought that a lot of what makes crazy restaurant food taste crazy is the solemn appreciation you lend to it. If you put a Cheeto on a big white plate in a formal restaurant and serve it with chopsticks and say something like "It is a cornmeal quenelle, extruded at a high speed, and so the extrusion heats the cornmeal 'polenta' and flash-cooks it, trapping air and giving it a crispy texture with a striking lightness. It is then dusted with an 'umami powder' glutamate and evaporated-dairy-solids blend." People would go just nuts for that. I mean even a Coca-Cola is a pretty crazy taste.

I love both mass-produced processed foods and the cooking of chefs like Grant Achatz & Ferran Adrià. Why is the former so maligned while the latter gets accolades when they're the same thing? (And simultaneously not the same thing at all, but you get my gist.) Cheetos are amazing. Oscar Meyer bologna is amazing. Hot Potato Cold Potato is amazing. Quarter Pounders with Cheese are amazing. Adrià's olives are amazing. Coca-Cola is amazing. (Warhol: " A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking.") WD50's Everything Bagel is amazing. Cheerios are amazing. All have unique flavors that don't exist in nature -- you've got to take food apart and put it back together in a different way to find those new tastes.

Some of these fancy chefs even have an appreciation of mass produced processed foods. Eric Ripert of the 4-star Le Berdardin visited McDonald's and Burger King to research a new burger for one of his restaurants. (Ripert also uses processed Swiss cheese as a baseline flavor at Le Bernardin.) David Chang loves instant ramen and named his restaurants after its inventor. Ferran Adrià had his own flavor of Lay's potato chips in Spain. Thomas Keller loves In-N-Out burgers. Grant Achatz eats Little Caesars pizza.

Tags: David Chang   Eric Ripert   Ferran Adria   food   Grant Achatz   Jeb Boniakowski   McDonald's   NYC   restaurants   Thomas Keller   Times Square

wayneandwax posted a photo:

spring 2013

“Yesterday’s New York Times caught up with a story that’s been making the rounds of the internet music circles since Zoe Keating published her finances about a year ago: in many cases, Spotify pays so little they might as well not be paying artists at all. Sure, artists get fractions of cents in royalties, but very few, if any, will be able to make a living off streaming audio. This should surprise nobody. The commodity status of recordings has been in question since the file-sharing boom. But getting people un-used to the idea of buying recordings does not automatically mean that the recordings will lose their commodity status. In the spotify example, recordings have moved from physical commodity to service. Of course, radio–and practices like middle music before it–already employed a service model for music. But middle music was performed by living musicians who were paid; radio had a royalties system tied to a commodity system of recordings. Spotify is what you get when you subtract recordings from radio. In their 2006 book Digital Music Wars, Patrick Burkart and Tom McCourt predicted this outcome. They argue that the utility model–the adopt the term “celestial jukebox” from industry publications–is actually preferable to the sales-of-goods model for large segments of digital media and music industries, and that the result will be diminished returns for both musicians and for audiences: The Jukebox may promise more innovative music, more communities of interest for consumer, and lower prices for music; in fact, however, it gives us less (music in partial or damaged or disappearing files) and takes from us more (our privacy and our fair-use rights) than the old system… . Rather than a garden of abundance, the Celestial Jukebox offers a metered rationing of access to tiered levels of information, knowledge and culture, based on the ability to pay repeatedly for goods that formerly could be purchased outright or copied for free (136-137). Real reform of the music industry has to start with social questions about music, not new business models. How do we want to support musicians and music-making? What kinds of musical culture do we want to develop? Those questions should animate social thought about music, music criticism, and music policy. If you’ve never heard of music policy as a current thing, that’s because we need it right now.”

- Once Again, the Political Economy of Communication People Had It Right

Phillips “Robot skin” (LONG VERSION) by Aveillan (by vici22g)

What Made “The O.C.” Great, Bitch | The Awl

A charity for the homeless is the proud owner of one of Tolkien's tottering twin towers.

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Earlier this month, two pedestrians were severely injured trying to cross Route 355 and Shady Grove Road in Rockville, Maryland. So Ben Ross at Greater Greater Washington went out to investigate.

It took Greater Greater Washington writer Ben Ross more than eight minutes to cross Route 355 and Shady Grove Road in Rockville, Maryland. Image: Greater Greater Washington

It ended up being quite the adventure. Ross documented his attempt to cross this monstrosity on foot, and it took him a remarkable eight-and-a-half minutes:

There is no crosswalk across the south side of the intersection (because there’s a traffic light here, there’s no unmarked crosswalk). Therefore, I had to wait for the walk signal to cross the 9 lanes of Shady Grove Road. The wait was substantial, because this is a slow light; the signal cycle is 2½ minutes.

When I reached the next traffic island at D, I found a “beg button“—a button that you press to get a walk signal. Cars made left turns for a little while, the through lanes began to move, and I got my signal to proceed across the 8 lanes of Route 355. The walk and flashing don’t-walk phases, together, lasted 23 seconds.

I walk briskly, so I was able to finish the 104-foot crossing before the signal became a solid don’t-walk. But a slower, and strictly law-abiding, pedestrian would have had to stop in the median. There is no beg button in the median, so they would have had to wait—who knows how long—until another pedestrian came along who follows traffic rules so punctiliously that they bother to push beg buttons.

Having finally reached point E, I had to wait again for a walk signal. This time I had 10 lanes to cross, but here there is a long green that gives you plenty of time. Finally, I walked along the sidewalk from F to G, and after 8½ minutes I arrived at the southbound bus stop.

What do you think? Got any other contenders for America’s worst intersection? Send them our way.

Elsewhere on the Network today: Copenhagenize relays how the city’s conscientious snow removal efforts make winter bike commuting a low-stress affair. Streets.mn offers three ways to improve pedestrian safety without changing street design. And Urban Cincy reports that Cincinnati’s transit system has seen a 4.2 percent jump in ridership in part because of successful partnerships with local universities.

As part of their homeschooling curriculum, the children learned to weather the neighborhood kids’ frost-shaming. 

(Photo: Richard Powers; Dwell)

Tech giant faces group privacy claim after it allegedly sidestepped Apple security settings

More than 70 Apple iPhone users in the UK have joined a landmark privacy action against Google over the way it tracked their online habits, and another 30 have expressed interest, lawyers said on Tuesday.

The internet giant is facing a group privacy claim over the way it sidestepped Apple's security settings on the iPhone, iPad and desktop versions of its Safari web browser to monitor their behaviour. The US Federal Trade Commission fined it a then-record $22.5m (£14m) last year over the privacy breach's effect on American users.

More than 100 internet users have contracted the law firm Olswang, which is co-ordinating the claim, since Sunday to register their interest in joining the privacy action. A Facebook group set up by those suing Google, called Safari Users Against Google's Secret Tracking, has been "liked" by more than 430 people.

Dan Tench, the lawyer coordinating the claims, told the Guardian: "We've had more than 70 people come forward to join this action. We are seeking further details in respect of these individuals' cases and, where appropriate, will be making further claims for them against Google."

The litigation is the first group privacy claim against Google in the UK and could run up a significant legal bill for the search company. An estimated 10 million Britons owned iPhones, which use Safari as the default browser and Google as the search engine, between summer 2011 and spring 2012, when the breach is believed to have occurred.

Google has admitted it intentionally sidestepped security settings on Apple's Safari web browser which blocked websites from tracking users through cookies – data stored on users' computers that show which sites they have visited. Security researchers revealed in February 2012 that Google's DoubleClick advertising network intentionally stored these cookies on users' computers without their consent.

The search giant is no stranger to damaging privacy issues after rows over its Google Buzz social network and the collection of data from Wi-Fi networks. It agreed to a 20-year oversight of its privacy methods after Google Buzz revealed users details to each other against their wishes.

Lawyers for claimants in the UK have ordered Google to reveal how it used the private information it secretly obtained, how much personal data was taken, and for how long. It is understood the claimants are suing Google for breaches of confidence and breach of privacy, computer misuse and trespass, and breach of the Data Protection Act 1998.

Google declined to comment. A statement it released at the time of the $22.5m fine last July claimed it had "collected no personal information" with the cookies.

• Google
• iPhone
• Apple
• Mobile phones
• Telecoms
• Smartphones
• Search engines
• Internet
• United States

Josh Halliday
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The calendar says its January, but the atmosphere looks more like April over the Midwest U.S., where a spring-like surge of warm air is interacting with a strong low pressure system to create a dangerous severe weather situation. The warm air surging northwards has already broken high temperature records for the date in Chicago, where the mercury hit 61°F at 7 am CST; a tornado watch is posted for portions of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas. Golf-ball sized h...<br /><a href="http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2338">Read More</a>

The Knife “Full of Fire”

If you write or talk about music a lot, you end up throwing around a lot of phrases that suggest that a song is warping your mind in some way, but at least in my experience, that’s all hyperbole. I can only think of a few songs that genuinely do something strange to my brain, and seem to hijack my thoughts and physical responses. This new single by The Knife is one of them. It feels like a very convincing simulation of actual insanity. It goes from tense to more tense to almost unbearably tense, and it feels like a vice grip on your mind, crushing your thoughts until it’s just this super-compressed anxiety and dread. As far as I can tell, this is a song about questioning one’s identity and gender, and that’s perfect for this track. It’s as if they’re just trying to show you what it’s like to be unsure of who or what you are, but taken to an extreme, where you just lose your mind from all the pressure.

Buy it from Amazon.

The Momenta Quartet plays Ushio Torikai's Four TEEN.

Jessica Alba - has lunch with a friend at The Ivy (8-17-12) II

“LA FWAY” — A Bad Lip Reading of Beyoncé (by BadLipReading)

Duke Ellington & His Orchestra - Blow by Blow (by Ken James)

iOS 6.1 wasn’t Apple’s only software release on Monday. Issued alongside it was some new software for the company’s beloved hobby, Apple TV. A relatively minor update to the Apple TV system software, 5.2 does add a couple new features to the device: Support for Bluetooth keyboards and AirPlay audio for videos, and the “Up Next” content queuing feature that debuted in iTunes 11.

um·brage (mbrj)
n.
1. Offense; resentment: took umbrage at their rudeness.
2.
a. Something that affords shade.
b. Shadow or shade. See Synonyms at shade.
3. A vague or indistinct indication; a hint.

102 Spectacular Nonfiction Stories from 2012 | Byliner Anthologies

Download free fucking books!:

A fuckload of classic literature:

1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
3. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
4. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
5. Aesop’s Fables by Aesop
6. Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
7. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll
8. Andersen’s Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen
9. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
10. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
11. Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
12. Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
13. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
14. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
15. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
16. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
17. Dracula by Bram Stoker
18. Dubliners by James Joyce
19. Emma by Jane Austen
20. Erewhon by Samuel Butler
21. For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke
22. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
23. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
24. Grimms Fairy Tales by the brothers Grimm
25. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
26. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
27. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
28. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
29. Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
30. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
31. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
32. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
33. Middlemarch by George Eliot
34. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
35. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
36. Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard by Joseph Conrad
37. Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
38. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
39. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
40. Paradise Lost by John Milton
41. Persuasion by Jane Austen
42. Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter
43. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
44. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
45. Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen
46. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
47. Swanns Way by Marcel Proust
48. Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
49. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
50. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
51. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
52. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
53. The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
54. The Great Gatsby
55. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
56. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
57. The Iliad by Homer
58. The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells
59. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
60. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
61. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
62. The Odyssey by Homer
63. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle
64. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
65. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
66. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
67. The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli
68. The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
69. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
70. The Tales of Mother Goose by Charles Perrault
71. The Thirty Nine Steps by John Buchan
72. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Duma
73. The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
74. The Trial by Franz Kafka
75. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
76. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
77. Ulysses by James Joyce
78. Utopia by Sir Thomas More
79. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Within A Budding Grove by Marcel Proust
81. Women In Love by D. H. Lawrence
82. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Click on the motherfucking Hypelinks bitches.

Here! Have a fuckload of modern literature, too!

1. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
2. A Study In Scarlet - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
3. Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter - Seth Grahame-Smith
4. An Abundance of Katherines - John Green
5. Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer
6. Bossypants - Tina Fey
7. Breakfast At Tiffany’s - Truman Capote
8. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
9. Catcher In The Rye - J.D. Salinger
10. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
11. City of Bones - Cassandra Clare
12. Clockwork Angel - Cassandra Clare
13. Damned - Chuck Palahniuk
14. Darkly Dreaming Dexter - Jeff Lindsay
15. Dead Until Dark - Charlaine Harris
16. Ender’s Game - Orson Scott Card
17. Everything Is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
18. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer
19. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
20. Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
21. Go The Fuck To Sleep - Adam Mansbach
22. I Am America (And So Can You!) - Stephen Colbert
23. I Am Number Four - Pittacus Lore
24. Inkheart - Cornelia Funke
25. It - Stephen King
26. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
27. Lolita - Vladmir Nabokov
28. Marked - Kristin Cast
29. Memoirs Of A Geisha - Arthur Golden
30. My Sister’s Keeper - Jodi Picoult
31. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
32. One Day - David Nicholls
33. Paper Towns - John Green
34. Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightening Thief - Rick Riordan
35. Pretty Little Liars - Sara Shepard
36. Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
37. Snow White And The Huntsman - Lily Blake
38. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
39. The Bourne Identity - Robert Ludlum
40. The Giver - Lois Lowry
41. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
42. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
43. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
44. The Notebook - Nicholas Sparks
45. The Outsiders - S.E. Hinton
46. The Perks of Being A Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky
47. The Princess Diaries - Meg Cabot
48. The Things They Carried - Tim O’Brien
49. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
50. The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
51. Tuesdays With Morrie - Mitch Albom
52. Uglies - Scott Westerfeld
53. Vampire Diaries: The Awakening - L.J. Smith
54. Water For Elephants - Sara Gruen
55. Wicked - Gregory Maguire

A quarter of jobs in America pay below the federal poverty line for a family of four ($23,050). Not only are many jobs low-wage, they are also temporary and insecure. Over the last three years, the temp industry added more jobs in the United States than any other, according to the American Staffing Association, the trade group representing temp recruitment agencies, outsourcing specialists and the like.

Low-wage, temporary jobs have become so widespread that they threaten to become the norm. But for some reason this isn’t causing a scandal. At least in the business press, we are more likely to hear plaudits for “lean and mean” companies than angst about the changing nature of work for ordinary Americans.

How did we arrive at this state of affairs? Many argue that it was the inevitable result of macroeconomic forces — globalization, deindustrialization and technological change — beyond our political control. Yet employers had (and have) choices. Rather than squeezing workers, they could have invested in workers and boosted product quality, taking what economists call the high road toward more advanced manufacturing and skilled service work. But this hasn’t happened. Instead, American employers have generally taken the low road: lowering wages and cutting benefits, converting permanent employees into part-time and contingent workers, busting unions and subcontracting and outsourcing jobs. They have done so, in part, because of the extraordinary evangelizing of the temp industry, which rose from humble origins to become a global behemoth.

The story begins in the years after World War II, when a handful of temp agencies were started, largely in the Midwest. In 1947, William Russell Kelly founded Russell Kelly Office Service (later known as Kelly Girl Services) in Detroit, with three employees, 12 customers and $848 in sales. A year later, two lawyers, Aaron Scheinfeld and Elmer Winter, founded a similarly small outfit, Manpower Inc., in Milwaukee. At the time, the future of these fledgling agencies was no foregone conclusion. Unions were at the peak of their power, and the protections that they had fought so hard to achieve — workers’ compensation, pensions, health benefits and more — had been adopted by union and nonunion employers alike.

But temp leaders were creating a new category of work (and workers) that would be exempt from such protections.

via opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

Here's the trailer for the new Coen brothers movie, Inside Llewyn Davis.

The film stars relative newcomer Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake, and John Goodman and according to IMDB, will be out in February. (via viewsource)

Tags: Coen brothers   Inside Llewyn Davis   movies   trailers

Speaking of haute fast food, Jessica Saia creates the finest in bodega-to-table cuisine with the likes of Fritos and SPAM.

Seared Spam with Tostitos queso-dip mashed potatoes and canned green beans. Topped with a Flamin' Hot Cheetos and Corn Nut salsa verde.

I want that into my mouth. Look at the sear marks on that SPAM! (via @mmpackeatwrite)

Tags: food   Jessica Saia

OR: superpanoptic data profiling in “Scream & Shout”

[and, as always, this is raw, unrefined writing/work in progress...]

will.i.am & Britney’s “Scream and Shout” does something really musicallyinteresting. The track features Britney: she went into a recording studio to lay down vocals specifically for this track. However, her most musically significant line—that is, what she sings that do the most structural or compositional work in the song, or what she sings at climactic moments—is a sample (or a reperformance meant to sound like a sample) from her 2007 single “Gimme More.” “Scream and Shout” clips the “it’s” from “Gimme More”’s “It’s Britney, bitch,” and cuts this in right before the track’s rather understated drops (e.g., at 1:13-14). So if the most important vocal Britney delivers is actually a sample of one of her earlier songs, why bother to “feature” her, to pay her for a custom vocal? Seems like it would be cheaper to pay for the sample than for a new performance, right? Or, if you want to feature her, why use this sample (or a reperformance that sounds exactly like it was lifted from “Gimme More”)?

Why is this sample presented as what is most definitively Britney? Why is this sample a somehow more full experience of “Britney” than a custom Britney vocal?

The answer is that “Britney” is not Britney Spears, flesh-and-blood person, or even Britney Spears, set of vocal chords. “Britney” is actually the assemblage of all the media (re)presentations of Britney Spears—recordings, paparazzi photos, performances, interviews, etc. “Britney” is a media profile, an assemblage of digital data, .jpegs, mp3s, html, hyperlinks, TV programs and DVD-ed performances, etc. If “Britney” can be said to have an aura in the Benjaminian sense, this aura is not an index or repository of authenticity (the ‘original’ whose provenance we can trace, the authoritative, true iteration of which all others are less-than-perfect reproductions). Instead, “Britney”’s aura is relational and referential—the question is not “is this the REAL Britney” or “is this an accurate re-presentation of Britney” so much as “does this Britney fit in with everything else I know of/about Britney?” or “does it feel or soundlike “Britney”?. In other words, aura is not a measure of individuality, but of fungibility: can this Britney-token be related back to other Britney-tokens? So, the “aura” resides not in Britney Spears, person, but in the “Britney”-archive or “Britney”-database. We recognize the sample as an instance of “Britney”-aura not because it is a direct product of Britney Spears’ labor (it’s not an “authentic” performance), but rather, because it sounds and feels like another recording with which we are already familiar. There is a fungibility of data and a fungibility of affects, which leads to a fungibility between and among data and affects. In the same way that a .jpeg or .wav file can be played on any number of devices, affect can be transmitted and “played” in a cross-platform way…cultural objects like songs or samples are like affect “recordings” that then get sampled and played in various devices (mp3 players, club speakers, etc.). I’m working more on this concept of affective transmission—but to stay on topic, I’ll leave that for another time (though, I will talk about it in my CAA 2013 paper in Feb in NYC…).

The Britney sample is a musical analog to what Steven Shaviro calls  the non-indexical character post-cinematic visual media. Conventional notions of “aura”—the idea that reproductions refer back to an original—are indexical in the same way that “cinema” is indexical. As Shaviro explains, “cinema therefore always assumes—because it always refers back to—some sort of absolute, pre-existing space” (17). The film camera records what passed before it IRL. The “Britney”-sample “does not refer back indexically to [Britney Spears’s] body as a source or model. It does not image, reflect and distort some prior, supposedly more authentic, actuality of [Spears]-as-physical presence” (18). It re-presents an already-distortedvocal recording—the referent is the recording, not Spears the person/performer. Spears’s performance in “Scream & Shout” is still indexical—it just indexes a profile—a “complex, aggregated and digitally coded electronic signal” (Shaviro, 19) rather than a subject. Or rather, it understands the subject it references as a profile and not as an “individual.” This profile can be used to generate any number of different “Britney”s.

This read of “Britney”’s presence on “Scream & Shout” reinforces Shaviro’s concept of the postmillennial, “post-cinematic” star: “there is no original, or Platonic ideal, of a celebrity: all instances are generated through the same processes of composition and modulation, and therefore any instance is as valid (or ‘authentic’) as any other” (19). This premise structures pretty much the entire video. On the one hand, images of each star are multiplied: there are both multiple instances of their image in one frame, and their images and/or words are reproduced on various devices (smartphones, digital cameras, tablet computers). On the other hand, their visual and audio profiles are reproduced apart from their visual/material presence.  We literally see will.i.am’s profile “generated” through a process of digital fabrication. W’s visual profile, or, more specifically, the “profile” of his double-edged fade cut, is key to his visual iconography/identity in this video. We can tell this is the most important visual representation of W because it appears at the most musically important moment in the video: it is what we see during his stuttered, “nows” preceding “Britney, bitch”. His bust/hair profile is his “image” or “brand.”

This, then, is reproduced by a 3D printer over the course of the video:

Interestingly, his 3D-printed image/profile is directly juxtaposed with the 2D multiplication of W’s image with funhouse-style mirrors.

So visually, the video sets up a contrast between 2D reproduction (the infinite mirroring) and 3D/4D reproduction. 2D visual representation is shown as a technology of copying originals: there’s the foregrounded, flesh-&-blood will.i.am, and then there are first, second, third, n-order reflections of reflections of reflections. It is, in this way, indexical (reflections indexed to other reflections, & ultimately back to an original).  The video’s “post-cinematic” 3D/4D production (by ‘production’ I mean both musical/video craftspersonship, and making/manufacturing) is not only not indexical necessarily, or even primarily, visual. We do see plenty of visual manifestations of 3D/4D production: the transmission and transposition of their profile-signals into video images on phones and cameras, into 3D printed models, etc.  However, I would suggest that the song’s lyrics, as well as its use of the “Britney” sample, suggest that this 3D/4D production is most optimally (even if not necessarily or sufficiently) sonic.

            Let’s look at the lyrics. Britney’s chorus kicks off the song, and her lyrics start by referencing listening, but then talk more extensively about the gaze, before returning to the idea of “scream and shout” as a response to being seen and heard.

           

When your hear us in the club
You gotta turn the shit up (x3)

When we up in the club
All eyes on us (x3)

See the boys in the club
They watching us (x3)

Everybody in the club
All eyes on us (x3)

I wanna scream and shout and let it all out
And scream and shout and let it out
We sayin' oh we oh we oh we oh
We sayin' oh we oh we oh we oh
I wanna scream and shout and let it all out
And scream and shout and let it out
We sayin' oh we oh we oh we oh

You are now now rocking with
will.i.am and Britney bitch

“Us” first emerge as audio signal—something, presumably this song, that you hear over speakers or a sound system.  Only after this do “we” materially/physically/IRL appear in this same space (which makes sense, given the convention in some clubs of simulcasting a song’s video). To be a bit literal here, W & B actually do, materially and physically appear in most clubs across the globe as audio and video signals—their persons are not “in” the clubs where their works are played. This makes the next three sections of the chorus more interesting: perhaps what people see and watch, what they put their “eyes on” is precisely this audio (and maybe video) signal? Are people “gazing” at the song? Or rather, are they watching the data profile that specific types of receivers (speakers, video projectors or screens) output as different types of media? In other words, is the “panopticism” here really superpanopticism (to use Puar’s term), the ‘surveillance’ of data profiles?

            I think the surveillance is superpanoptic because the response to this surveillance manifests not visually, but sonically, as the desire to scream and shout. You “let it all out” by overdriving the audio signal. The video equates screaming and shouting to blown speakers: these practices overdrive or “blow” the voice like overly intense signal blows speakers (sometimes, indeed, setting them alight, as I can attest from personal experience). So, W & B appear for others as outputs of digital fabrication processes—either the sculptural fabrication of W’s visage, or the sonic fabrication of their vocal performances. The artists are their data profiles. They can be multiplied on screen (as both B and W are), they can be broadcast on multiple screens (e.g., the camera, the smartphone), they can be reproduced 3-dimensionally (by the printer) and 4-dimensionally (the audio sample, the club speakers). There is one key difference between “Scream & Shout” and Jones’s “Corporate Cannibal,” the video from which Shaviro derives his analysis. In this latter video, Shaviro argues, “Jones’s imagined body is not a figure in implied space but an electronic signal whose modulations pulse across the screen” (Shaviro 16). “Scream and Shout,” however, does not visually depict the signal as such, but material products generated from these signals. Thus, it emphasizes the role of receivers—devices like the 3D printer or the beats by Dre speakers that translate profile/signal into material form. The video and the song themselves can be thought of as “receivers” that translate signal into media perceptible by human eyes and ears—the sample is a materialization of “Britney,” bust a materialization of will.i.am. Human eyes and ears can’t interface directly with binary code or with electronic signals—they’re not within the range of frequencies we can hear or see. The song and the video transpose data-signal into light-signal and/or sound-signal.

            So, why use the “Gimme More” sample in a new song featuring a custom Britney vocal? Because in the end it’s all “Britney”-signal, which, to superpanopticism, is all the same anyway. Including the recognizable sample with the new performance clearly situates the new data with respect to the older, already-legible data. It encourages listeners to associate their affective responses to the older data with the new data. As I have shown, the visual content of the video is about precisely this sort of “transmission” and superpanoptic listening.

Remaining questions:

1.    How exactly does this use of “data profiles” (.wav files, digital fabrication specs, etc.) transmit affect, i.e., implicit knowledge? How then is this transmission of implicit knowledge actually sort of like a form of disciplinary power, maybe? Is this using biopolitical tech/means to produce disciplinary effects/ends?

2.    What’s the significance of the use of “receivers” to translate data/signal into material form? Any relation to increasing shift from “virtual reality” to “mixed reality”?

3.    What about recent spate of other “Scream” songs—Usher, Kelis...others? “Scream” as overdrive, response specifically to sine-wave form of biopolitical management?

4.    WTeffingF is up with Brit’s faux-English accent? If anyone can please explain this, you win the internet for the day.

A New Hampshire police chief is outraged that an AR-15-style rifle -- the same type of gun used by Adam Lanza in the Newtown school massacre -- is being auctioned off in a statewide fundraiser.

Even more outrageous: the auction is being run by the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police for its cadet training program.

Nicholas J. Giaccone Jr., the Hanover, N.H., chief of police, told the New York Times that he cursed at his computer when he Googled the Ruger SR-556C, one of 31 guns the organization (along with two New Hampshire gun makers) is raffling.

"It's an assault rifle," Giaccone said.

Many state lawmakers and gun-control supporters are also stunned that a law enforcement organization would get behind a fundraiser involving guns like this so close after Sandy Hook and during a divisive national debate over gun control. But organizers don't see the problem -- and some supporters even charge critics with playing politics.

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It’s long been a conservative truism that universities are enemy territory, stacked as they are with sandal wearing humanities professors and scientists whose research depends on empirical reality. But the ivory tower has probably never been as liberal as the right wants to believe: 51% of college graduates and 42% of “postgraduates” voted for Mitt Romney.

Even so, the academy’s supposedly implacable hostility to conservatives has been a career boosting foil for rightists from William F. Buckley to David Horowitz. But writing in Buckley’s National Review this weekend, Betsy Woodruff sees an emerging trend that could help level politics in the quad: Frat boys!

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Hey BahngBoyer, check this out: !sdrawkcab epyt ot flesym thguat i ,emit eerf siht lla htiw... ok not really, that took an hour to figure out...