Aperture: f/9 Angle of view: 146° Film format: 110 Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec. Demekin*: a fisheye 110 film camera for subminiature photography.

Above: Demekin camera, detail.

*Text in Japanese; requires Flash Player

“Sanjhih is a small town on the north coast of Taiwan, near Taipei. In late 70’s, a keeper of a rubber company worked out the prototype of the UFO house using his own factory. However, the company closed down in the energy crisis in 1980. In 1989, a development company bought the unfinished UFO houses. They planned to make it a five stars resort hotel. Almost a year after, they decided to shutdown. Then the buildings was abandoned until now.”.

The abandoned future: Sanjhih. A set on Flickr.

Above: a detail from the cypherone@Taiwan’s photostream.
Work released under a Creative Commons license.

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“In the 60’s I became very much interested in grid systems and digital systems. In 1965 I saw the first digital typesetters, and the result was horrible. Then I came to the idea to make another system of alphabet. I called it the New Alphabet. This is a six point Garamond from the digitized period. If you have it twice as big the basic idea is still there, but the whole shape changes, and this is what I couldn’t stand for. So I did “Let me do a typeface with only 90 angles and 45 roundings”. I published it, and I said “This is a theory. This is the way of thinking, and typeface designers should design along this line of thinking”. It made me travel all around the world to give lectures on it.”. (Wim Crouwel)

Wim Crouwel: Proposal for a New Alphabet. From Helvetica (2007), by Gary Hustwit.
Above : New Alphabet font, by Matt McInerney, sample.

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“Not long ago, friends of mine came to me with their their nine-year old son. He couldn’t write. Again, I suggested zigzags. Take a pen in your hand. Move it up and down, as if you were waving goodbye. That’s the movement you need. How do you turn zigzags into letters? You depart slightly from a regular movement, just enough to make characters. A closed top becomes the letter a. An extended line makes an ascender.”. (Gunnlaugur SE Briem)

briem.net: type, handwriting, and lettering, by Gunnlaugur SE Briem.
Above: La Operina, (Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi, 1522), detail.
Meaning: “Enjoy life and health.”

“Necessity is the mother of invention. The father is unknown.”

“Each week there are thousands of new patents issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The patents I pick are usually a) really weird, b) really cool, c) really scary.”.
Patently Silly: the humor of invention.
By Daniel Wright and Alex Eben Meyer.

Above : Nutcracker (David Aaron Powell, patent US D494820).

“I currently conduct research for Nokia Design developing new applications, services and products that, if I do my job right, you’ll using 3 to 15 years from now. Pushing technologies on society without thinking through their consequences is at least naive, at worst dangerous, though typically it, and IMHO the people that do it are just boring.”.

“Future Perfect is a pause for reflection in our planet’s seemingly headlong rush to churn out more, faster, smaller and cheaper.”.
(Jan Chipchase)

Above: This Is A Petrol Station, Ho Chi Minh City, detail.

“A winter’s day I was going to wear a heavy wool jacket, and there was a cat that was watching me and I thought: this cat doesn’t understand what I am doing, it knows nothing, it knows neither what is a jacket, nor that there is the winter, nor what is the cold, it doesn’t know anything, and it will never know anything because its brain is structured in a manner such that it doesn’t go beyond certain boundaries, it is useless to want to go further.
We are in the same situation, we are under one roof and we fail to never go beyond.”.

(Ettore Sottsass: Conversation under a roof, translated from Wikiquote)

“My name is Scott Hansen and I am a San Francisco, California based musician (Tycho) and artist (ISO50). My music can be found at tychomusic.com or you can listen to it while browsing the ISO50 Portfolio.”.

Above: Amsterdam, detail, © Scott Hansen.

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“Benno Baeginzer and Jeano Erforth co-founded the Electra Bicycle Company when mountain bikes were all the rage.”.

“This type of bycicle is not new: in stylistic terms, it comes straight from the world of motors, particularly from the choppers and hot rods of the 1950s and 1960s.”.

“The Townies overcame one of the greatest obstacles to cycling, the fear of having your feet off the ground. To compensate, Electra inched the pedals forward and lowered and moved the seat back slightly so riders could place both feet squarely on the ground when standing and have a full leg extension while riding.”.

From the top: Ratrod and Rally Sport cruisers.
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“I mostly wear second hand or clothes that used to belong to my parents. I love hoodies. My obsession is to play trumpet.”. (Akuliina, age 19)

“Hel Looks is selected street fashion from Helsinki, the capital of Finland.
The pictures are taken in the streets and clubs of Helsinki from July 2005 onwards.”.

By Liisa Jokinen and Sampo Karjalainen.