Here are a few rare clips of Italian prog, arranged in order of ridiculousness and in inverse order of talent.  On the top left are the absurdly overdramatic Officina Meccanica.  There are some legitimately good moments here, but I'm mostly just awed at the strange demeanor of the band and awful synching of the video.  One might expect a folkier sound from Blocco Mentale (top right) given their obviously strong relationship with mother nature - but one often expects unrealistic things, doesn't one?

On the bottom left is Italy's most ambitious attempt at symphonic prog, the New Trolls' Concerto Grosso.  I find the drummer's small mistakes incredibly annoying, especially given that somebody paid a lot of money for a professional symphony to play with these hippies.  At bottom right are the truly talented prog-jazz fusion dons Area.  I'd understand if you don't want to listen to all the interview material interspersed in the video, but I would definitely recommend that you check out footage of singer Demitri Stratos yodeling at a handmirror at about 5:50 into the clip and a second band performace at about 7:45.  Until next week...

Each time I’m around Camargue (South of France, near Montpellier), I try to spend time around La Grande Motte. An intriguing beach resort built in the late 60s, early 70s, the place was formerly a desert of sand dunes and lagoons where giant mole hilles (”mottes” in French) has been designed. The architecture was based on the Inca pyramids models in Mexico, designed with terrace systems along with triangular, round and rectangular features to provide wind and sun shields and sea views.

In France, bashing this sort of architecture is a sort of regular sport, although lots of people go there and enjoy the place. The unity and the coherence of the place is amazingly interesting, and although this city has been created ex nihilo it definitely feels more urban than lots of other beach resorts in the area. Some urban aspects are important: such as the fact that the beach and the building are not separated by a road with cars (but only a promenade for pedestrian and bikes).

Wandering around the city after midnight with a digital camera, food bits and flip flops is a curious experience, especially when the place is not yet crowded with semi-naked humans flocking there for the grandes vacances. The first picture shows a global view taken form the harbor showing the odd ambiance mixing modernist architecture and weird lightings. The other pictures I took give the impression of a retrofuturistic spin that you can also get when you go to University of California Irvine.

Strange angles, fantastic cladding textures are also deeply intriguing in this night atmosphere. Lots of small details, big shapes that you discover and rediscover and stumble across a group of teenagers riding their bikes on curved shapes, old cats trying to get some food and a lost tourist sat on the beach with a laptop.

Lots of people consider this sort of urbanism as a big (and ugly) failure, I don’t by that argument and I would be interested in scratching more the surface to understand what works and what doesn’t to understand how that modern urbanism project has some good lessons to draw. Surely the low presence of cars would be an interesting topic. Also, I am pretty sure the infrastructure layer of the city may be fantastic to inspect more closely.

So this weekend opens the installation of the NYC Waterfalls by Olafur Eliasson and the pictures of the construction are beautiful, like any other construction using scaffolding and cranes.

You will be able to see the waterfalls from 4 different points: under the Brooklyn Bridge, the Piers 4 and 5 in Brooklyn, the Pier 35 in Manhattan and Governors Island. And we shall not miss that at all. Which is really interesting is the logic of privatization of this waterfalls, which is to follow the same as many other natural and non-natural wonders in the world: if you want to see the icebergs in Argentina you have to pay too, if you want to see the Niagara Falls you have to pay too, if you want to dive in xenotes in Mexico you have to pay too. Here you have to pay too, in order to get closer.

Since this is a Public Art Fund Commission, i wonder if they make a franchise of this show? Totally New York style there is even a tour of 50,0000 dollars for narcos and the cheapest is at 25 (!) on the Watertaxi. You can also bug for free tickets here:Free tickets for the OFFICIAL 30-minute tours are available by calling 866.9CLINE1 (1.866.925.4631). Limit one order per household.

Green? One of the websites that sells tours asks. Of course, in the end of the world, if you don’t mention GREEN you can’t sell. I wonder how the artist handle the contradictions in the discourse of this waterfalls about fake nature, scaffolding as nature, and waterfalls only as excuse to expose other kind of nature, - in relation with the green zoombie madness?

I found this project beautiful mostly because is precisely not about you average green organic carrots sustainability and pushes the buttons about all the prejudices about a nature. I really hope i can get free tickets to get closer, although i’ve been calling that number and is busy all the time.
UPDATE: 11:21 am. Got tix FREE.!

Two bits of news about the High Line and its impending park.

1. Curbed has new renderings of what the park is going to look like. Here's phase 1 (Gansevoort St. to 20th) and phase 2 (21st to 30th). They're calling it a park but from the drawings it seems more like a glorified sidewalk.

2. Photos of the High Line taken last weekend show how much progress is being made on construction.

(link)

Syd Mead has been cranking out visions of the future since the distant past, including ideas for United States Steel from the early sixties that you can see on Flickr here. I had no idea he was still at it, producing drawings like this. fittingly for the Qatar Steel Corporation (does it own US Steel?). It is nice to know that the future includes parks in the sky, dirigibles and a green waterfront, although I think his vision expressed in Blade Runner was more accurate. ::Syd Mead via

[Image: Diagram of Taipei 101's earthquake ball via the Long Now Foundation].

Earlier this week, the Long Now Foundation looked at earthquake dampers inside skyscrapers, focusing specifically on Taipei 101 – a building whose unanticipated seismic side-effects (the building's construction might have reopened an ancient tectonic fault) are quite close to my heart.
As it happens, Taipei 101 includes a 728-ton sphere locked in a net of thick steel cables hung way up toward the top of the building. This secret, Piranesian moment of inner geometry effectively acts as a pendulum or counterweight – a damper – for the motions of earthquakes.

[Image: The 728-ton damper in Taipei 101, photographed by ~Wei~].

As earthquake waves pass up through the structure, the ball remains all but stationary; its inertia helps to counteract the movements of the building around it, thus "dampening" the earthquake.
It is a mobile center, loose amidst the grid that contains it.

[Image: Animated GIF via Wikipedia].

However, there's something about discovering a gigantic pendulum inside a skyscraper that makes my imagination reel. It's as if the whole structure is a grandfather clock, or some kind of avant-garde metronome for a musical form that hasn't been invented yet. As if, down there in the bedrock, or perhaps a few miles out at sea inside a submarine, every few seconds you hear the tolling of a massive church bell – but it's not a bell, it's the 728-ton spherical damper inside Taipei 101 knocking loose against its structure.
Or it's like an alternate plot for Ghostbusters: instead of finding out that Sigourney Weaver's New York high-rise is literally an antenna for the supernatural, they realize that it's some strange form of architectural clock, with a massive pendulum inside – a great damper – its cables hidden behind closet walls and elevator shafts covered in dust; but, at three minutes to midnight on the final Halloween of the millennium, a deep and terrifying bell inside the building starts to toll.
The city goes dark. The tolling gets louder. In all the region's cemeteries, the soil starts to quake.

(Thanks to Kevin Wade Shaw for the link!)

To those who enjoy their status as breathing, sentient beings, riding a bicycle in New York City can be daunting. Aggressive taxis, delivery trucks and carelessly opened doors create a minefield that makes casual cyclists want to hang up their Schwinn. But New York can be safely navigated. Though it's painfully inferior to European cities, it does have a growing network of relatively safe bike lanes (thanks largely in part to Mayor Bloomberg). Ride the City, currently in beta form, is a site launched earlier this month to help aid the process.

Much like Google Maps or HopStop, Ride the City takes two addresses and details the shortest route between them. But unlike the aforementioned sites, it zeroes in on existing bicycle lanes and ignores inhospitable roads like the Queens Midtown tunnel or the BQE. Users can choose between the most direct route, the "safe route" (as many bike lanes as are convenient) and the "safest route" (more bike lanes, especially designated "greenways"). RTC adds "caution" signs as well when the route traverses portions that have a history of accidents.

I used the site to map out a ride to work, and it was remarkably close to the route I've painstakingly devised over numerous trips back and forth. It did, however, faithfully abide by the direction of traffic on a couple portions where I usually go against the tide. Which isn't a bad thing. It's comforting to know that the site treasures my well-being even more than I do.

Exquisite corpse or murder mystery?

Homer, in this period is the best example of this phenomenon. He is a brilliant caricature of the American working class. He has the gut of the American worker, the broken shoulders, and all the tastes that we associate with the American worker. Physically, he’s a lot like Michael Moore, himself a product of the working class in defeat. Homer takes no pride in his work, does his utmost to avoid it, and prefers drinking beer, sitting on the couch and watching TV. This is obviously the American worker in a period of defeat.

Link

Minneapolis-based blog Eyeteeth breaks the news that Walker curator Philippe Vergne will be the next director of Dia. The NYT followed.

A list of predictions about the unthinkable future by Kevin Kelly and Brian Eno, made in 1993. This one by Eno isn't half bad:

A new type of artist arises: someone whose task is to gather together existing but overlooked pieces of amateur art, and, by directing attention onto them, to make them important. (This is part of a much larger theory of mine about the new role of curatorship, the big job of the next century.)

(link)

Back in the '20s, in order to catch the new thing before rival record companies, labels would set up shop in a fixed location and invite musicians from far and wide to record.  Victor snagged the Carter Family and Jimmy Rodgers in Bristol.  In 1929 and 1930, Brunswick (with its blues wing Vocalion) chose the St. James Hotel in Knoxville, TN as a recording location and musicians from all over traveled there to sing into the machine. 

A couple years back Lynn Point Records posted a veritable treasure trove of mp3s from the St. James Sessions including tracks from the Tennessee Chocolate Drops, the Appalachian Vagabond, Leola Manning and the Southern Moonlight Entertainers, plus tons of info including a couple great articles by St. James expert Jack Neely.  Below is a short video documentary on the St. James  Sessions, as well. 

In college I studied a Japanese body movement/martial art called Shintaido. My teacher Jennifer Hicks is now a Butoh performer as well. Here is the performance of A Girl, using the weakened body method, by the originator of Butoh, Tatsumi Hijikata.

Just a heads up that the Milk- and Inkscanner now have a website!
It's fluidscanner.moviesandbox.net.

You can find pictures, some explanation and the most recent videos of scanning events plus some new code (as soon as i finished some minor polishing).
For all those who attended saturday's mixer event at eyebeam: THANK YOU SO MUCH!

I uploaded some documentation on vimeo, embedded for your convenience:




Pictures (on flickr) can be seen here.

Documentation is online, plus videos!

 

ACM-R5

ACM-R5 is equipped with paddles and passive wheels around the body. To generate propulsive force by undulation, the robot need a resistance property as it glides freely in tangential direction but cannot in normal direction. Due to the paddles and passive wheels, ACM-R5 obtains that character both in water and on ground.

Each joint unit has CPU, battery, motors, so they can operate independently. Through communication lines each unit exchanges signals and automatically recognizes its number from the head, and how many units join the system. Thanks to this system operators can remove, add, and exchange units freely and they can operate ACM-R5 flexibly according to situations.

Previously, previously, previously.

Tadanori Yokoo, one of Japan’s most prolific and internationally recognized graphic designers, has created a number of psychedelic posters for notable musicians.

Earth, Wind & Fire, 1976 [Enlarge]

Santana - Lotus, 1974 [Enlarge]

The Beatles, 1972 [Enlarge]

Emerson, Lake & Palmer concert poster, 1972 [Enlarge]

Tangerine Dream, 1976 [Enlarge]

Beatles - Star Club, 1977 [Enlarge]

Cochin Moon, 1978 [Enlarge]

Holst - The Planets, 1979 [Enlarge]

Earth, Wind & Fire, 1993 [Enlarge]

* * * * *

Yokoo is also known to have designed the occasional movie poster, including these three psychedelic beauties for Roger Corman’s “The Trip.”

The Trip, 1968 [Enlarge]

The Trip, 1968 [Enlarge]

The Trip, 1968 [Enlarge]

Pieter Bruegel
The Fall of the Rebel Angels
1562

"In Bruegel's rendering, the violence is expressed not in the bitter nature of the battle--indeed St Michael and his sparse troops do not appear particularly threatened by the demons--but by the intensity of the fall--infernal and endless--of this crawling, hideous multitude that invades the entire surface of the picture, in a remarkable unity of action which increases its impact."

I paid David Horvitz $30 to watch the ocean for 30 minutes. See all the things he will do in exchange for dollars: davidhorvitz.com/if/index.html

I have a soft spot for fluxus business art. 

 

I am currently working on new ways for people to create sets within moviesandbox, and the general idea of it is to use projection and then draw the actual 3D information right into the level.
The general idea behind this is best described with two screenshots:

on the first screenshot, you see a simple grid image projected onto the standard Moviesandbox creationbox level. nothing special there.


This second image however reveals that, given you are looking at this image from the right point of view with the appropriate projection angle and so on, you see a perfectly fine grid, even though it is projected over a couple of corners.
With this idea in mind, you can now start painting the actual 3D grid and use the projection as reference and texture. Got it?
If not, don't worry, i'll explain soon and you'll see how this can help you.

There are a couple of art projects that use a similar approach - although mixing different media - and i think they explain a bit better what i'm trying to implement.

First, there's the lovely "Roermond-Ecke-Schoenhauser" from Markus Kison where the live-feed of a couple of webcams is projected onto miniature architecture models of the places they watch. It gives you a good idea on how a simple picture - just by the way it is projected - can create a miniature 3-dimensional scene.

The second one is the "augmented sculpture" by Pablo Valbuena. Here, a static object is being projected on and several different light situations or drawing types are simulated just by the projection. It gives you a good idea of what artistic possibilities you have when you start thinking in ways of projection and 3D.

Now taking off from the airport in Portland - and hopefully seeing you soon at the European Machinima Filmfestival!

In “The Cybercities Reader (Urban Reader)” (Steve Graham), there is a wonderful text by Anne Beamish called “The City in Cyberspace” which tackles the city metaphor in “virtual worlds” and how superficial the metaphor is often taken.

Some excerpts I found relevant to my interests:

“What do these digital worlds [Alphaworld represented above, Planet9, Le Deuxieme Monde, Virtual Los Angeles] tell us about the creators’ image of the city? When digital urban environments are designed, the downtown is often seen as the Holy Grailv - the vivid, exciting, teasing, tantalizing city is held up within sight, but out of reach. The image of the city is used to attract us and to draw us into the world, but it functions mainly as a decoration or marketing technique intended to get the customer in the door. The creators of these virtual worlds appear to take the image of the city literally but superficially, and they generally do not seem to have given much thought to what it is about a city that their visitors would find appealing. They use the image of the city liberally but strip it of meaning.
(…)
Too often, rather than mimicking the vitality and excitement of downtown, the digital environment is disconcertingly desolate and empty; the buildings are blandly modern; and it is common to travel around these worlds without meeting another soul.

To be fair, though, the crude and simplistic environment is not always a reflection of the creator’s aesthetic taste; it is also a reflection and result of technology, economics and regulation.

“

Why do I blog this Working on both fields of video games and urban computing, I find interesting to observe the relationship between the image of the city and its physical counterpart. For that matter, it seems that some progress are attempted especially with games such as GTA IV. The representation of the city in entertainment is surely interesting as a sort of artifacts to depict “possible futures” which are of course very culturally-situated.

I was recently mesmerized by Theo Angell’s video vignettes Hillybilly Modern, created during his 2006 residency at Caldera. It’s full of snowglobe worlds, electric rainbow dancers and hillbilly happenings… Since it is not available online I thought I’d share another of Theo’s brilliant body of video animations. Deerling is a collaboration with Finnish psychedelic folktress Jonna Karanka of Kuupuu.

From brokenumbrellas:

For nine days (July 10-18), shamanism, science, art, and music will come together in Peru for Convergence 2008, an ayahuasca shamanism seminar in the heart of the Amazon rainforest.  The extraordinary gathering will feature lectures, exhibitions, workshops, musical performances and ayahuasca cermonies..

http://www.amazonconvergence.com/

I'm not much of a film critic. But when I was invited to last night's premiere of a new HBO documentary, I accepted because the subject of the film is one of the main themes we discuss here on the blog: artists-galleries and artists-collectors relationships. Directed by Jeff Stimmel, the documentary focuses on the career of painter Chuck Connelly. Here's how HBO describes it:

The Art of Failure: Chuck Connelly Not for Sale is the unusual story of the rise and fall of a major talent, along with Julian Schnabel and Jean-Michel Basquiat, from the 1980s art world. Though he was extremely talented with a profitable collection of work, Chuck Connelly ended up alienating every collector and gallery owner he worked with. This 63-minute documentary follows the life of this brilliant yet enigmatic painter, who had great success as a young artist but who now sees his career fading. Driven by desperation, and left by his wife during the course of this documentary, Connelly hires an actor to pose as a young, upcoming artist to sell Chuck's work to galleries and art dealers. The film provides an intimate and often troubling character study of Connelly, a working-class guy from Pittsburgh who holds "traditional" beliefs that art is, above all, about personal expression and craftsmanship. These notions have proven to be less-than-fashionable in today's elite art world, the inner workings of which are also glimpsed in the film. Shot over six years, this dramatic and entertaining documentary explores a painter's passion for his work, despite being his own worst enemy.

Describing The Art of Failure: Chuck Connelly Not for Sale, director Jeff Stimmel notes, "This is a simple story of a working-class outsider who is fighting ageism, elitism, and cronyism - in this case within the art world." In the film, Connelly vocally rails against what he sees as profit-hungry tactics of dealers and gallery owners, who buy paintings in bulk to get the greatest return on their investment. With over 3,000 paintings in storage, Connelly could be paid a large sum to clear out his studio and sell his entire collection of artwork. Though this would make him rich, Connelly would never agree to sell in bulk because each individual painting would be priced "dirt cheap."

Interestingly, in 1989 Martin Scorsese was looking for an artist who could be a model for his film, New York Stories: Life Lessons. Several art dealers recommended Connelly. Subsequently, the "wild man artist" played by Nick Nolte was based on Chuck, and all of the artwork shown in the film was Connelly's.

A number of insiders in the art world are interviewed in the film, including the venerable gallery owner Annina Nosei, who launched both Chuck's career and those of Basquiat and Schnabel; the successful 1980s artist Mark Kostabi, who is the very opposite of Chuck; Walter Robinson, editor of ArtNet, who provides astute insights into Connelly's art; Matt Garfield, Chuck's patron, and others.

I actually enjoyed the film. There were plenty of comical moments and food for thought about careers in the art world. But I don't think I can object enough to how this description frames the film for the viewer. I'm gonna try though:
Where to begin?

I guess with the positive stuff. Of all the art world insiders interviewed, the one who stood head-and-shoulders above the rest in terms of not confirming some caricature (truly, his description of Connelly's work was lovely) was Walter Robinson. Just about everyone else--perhaps through editing, perhaps through the questions they were asked, or perhaps through their own doing--was portrayed as a one-dimensional character.

Yes, that's the positive stuff. My lingering impressions of what the director did (more what he missed) go down hill a bit from there.

Let's start with this nonsense: "This is a simple story of a working-class outsider who is fighting ageism, elitism, and cronyism - in this case within the art world." "Working-class outsider"? Really? You mean like Warhol? Or de Kooning? or a thousand other starry-eyed youngsters who come to New York from working-class backgrounds across the country and the world and yet manage to learn how not to be their own worst enemy? The notion that the gallery system is oppressively classist is hogwash. I come from a working-class background, as do most of my friends who own galleries (granted, most of my friends who own galleries began in Williamsburg, but...) as do many of the artists I work with.

The film provides an intimate and often troubling character study of Connelly, a working-class guy from Pittsburgh who holds "traditional" beliefs that art is, above all, about personal expression and craftsmanship. These notions have proven to be less-than-fashionable in today's elite art world, the inner workings of which are also glimpsed in the film.

I actually wish the director had lived up to this last claim. The "glimpse" of the inner workings of the art world is so thin as to be virtually translucent, revealing a bias behind it about how unfair the art world is that could have been easily put aside in the interest of objectivity.

For example, everyone I spoke to after the film was still confused about exactly why the galleries that worked with Connelly stopped working with him. The gallerists interviewed never got a chance to explain that. There's the implication that once Page Six got a hold of Connelly's quote about the Scorsese film (Chuck was quoted, although he was involved in the film, as saying "It sure wasn't Raging Bull") that his career was instantly over, but no further explanation of why or how that comment ended his career. What "inner workings" exactly were at play there? Most dealers I know could spin such press into buckets of sales. Or would at least try. Why didn't that happen here? We never find out.

I should note that I think Connelly is a very talented painter. Several times I gasped at works shown in the film. But this notion: "that art is, above all, about personal expression and craftsmanship" and $2 will get you a subway ride out to Flushing. In other words, why, if that's all art is about, wouldn't thousands of other artists out there deserve the same success Connelly feels was robbed from him? There are thousands of talented artists who will tell you that personal expression and craftsmanship are central to their work. Does the world have the means to celebrate them all? To make them all rich? Is that, "above all" what the world needs from its artists?

There's a good deal of self-pity in the film. Connelly complains at one point "They tell you to be a rebel and then they tell you to kiss ass," without any sense at all that whoever "they" are, they have no role in telling you to be a "rebel." If you truly are a "rebel" you'll refuse to kiss ass no matter who urges you to do so, which would seem to be what Connelly feels he's doing. Which, admittedly, is admirable. But moments later he says "The art gallery's being mean to me." (I think he was mocking some other artist, but the idea lingers that he too has been abused by the galleries.)

And here's where I think both Connelly and Stimmel miss the point. Chuck insists on playing by his own rules. That's great. But he goes one step further and more or less expects playing by his own rules to handsomely reward him. He admits he spent all the money he made in the 80s, just spent it up, and he wants more to keep coming in while he continues to party ferociously, offend people, screw those trying to help him, etc., etc.

I have repeatedly supported the notion that if artists are not happy with the terms of the system they have every right to change those terms. Implied in that opinion, though, is that the work of changing the terms falls to them. Not to the rest of the world. It's no one else's responsibility to change the system to meet your personal needs or preferences. There's hard work involved in moving the world. If you're not willing to do that work, then live with or work with the way it is. Sitting around bitching that it's not designed to celebrate just you is sophomoric.

I will still highly recommend you check out this film. Again, the comical moments are priceless and the interviews offer plenty of valuable lessons. I do wish HBO wasn't marketing it the way they are, though. Appealing to the public's biases about how elitist the art world is is a cheap route toward attention, IMO.

With aggravating frequency and on a timeline I don't understand, a bagged block of Yellow Pages is delivered to my house. I didn't ask for it and, except for the three-incher propping up my laptop right now, I don't use it. Turns out I'm not alone. Ed Kohler writes that 85 percent of these un-asked-for deliveries end up in the garbage, not in recycling bins, and oftentimes in foreclosure-struck neighborhoods like mine they're a welcome sign to copper thieves looking for vacant homes. Thankfully, there's a solution: Opt out.

RoboVault describes itself as a Maximum Security Robotic Storage facility.
Hurricane-resistant, fully insured, and protected by biometrics, RoboVault is proposed for "an extraordinary location at the crossroads of several major roadway arteries including Port Everglades and the Hollywood/Fort Lauderdale International airport."

[Image: A glimpse inside RoboVault].

"No one enters the storage part of the facility," we read; this has the effect of "minimizing the risk of theft or damage." Indeed, "This revolutionary concept in storage uses robotic parking garage technology, allowing you to operate your rented storage unit automatically, so you can store and retrieve your possessions when you want."
Which raises the question: How much longer must we wait before robotic parking garage technology crosses over into other architectural typologies? Single-family homes (you move your bedroom to the ground floor every morning), libraries (where's that book? oh, that's right... whoosh), football stadiums (your seats greet you at the entry gate).
In fact, for me, this whole complex sounds more like something out of a design studio at SCI-Arc, combining transport infrastructure, personal consumption, import/export laws, national sovereignty, exurban geography, climate control (the building offers "atmospheric consistency," we're told), new business models, biometrics, and the mechano-Derridean future of the archive – together with the narrative possibilities of architectural representation.
"What's your building's story?" the concerned professor asks.
You could even invent a new – presumably quite boring – party game. Take a proposed building or business model from anywhere in the world and then work backward: Try to imagine the design studio in which that project would first have been proposed. Try to imagine what they read. Try to imagine the keywords.

[Image: The biometrics of RoboVault].

In any case:

Here’s how it works: If you rent a RoboVault Space, you simply place your prize possession on the elevator, use the retinal eye scan and keypad security features and your property is safely stored away in a matter of seconds. You use the same process to retrieve your possession. Since there are no floors or entries, you don’t have to worry about theft or vandalism. With RoboVault Spaces, you’re buying peace of mind!

It all seems to have been designed solely to be featured in an as-yet-unannounced Jerry Bruckheimer film.

[Image: RoboVault's "extraordinary location at the crossroads of several major roadway arteries including Port Everglades and the Hollywood/Fort Lauderdale International airport"].

If you'll excuse the long quotation, this reads like the opening scene of Bad Boys III or Mission Impossible IV – or even Blade: Miami Nights:

A vehicle arrives at the overhead door and notifies the office of their impending entry. The overhead door is raised and the vehicle drives into the building after which the overhead door is then closed. The client is the only person/vehicle in this secure area. The client removes the contents to be stored from the vehicle and accesses the interior door by use of a pin code and biometric scan. When this occurs, the office staff is notified and meets the individual to provide access into the safe deposit box room. Once inside the dual locking system can be accessed by the client and RoboVault staff. The client then has the option to enter into one of two small viewing rooms. Exiting of the safe deposit box room will occur much in the same manner. An important feature is that there is one entry and exit out of the safe deposit box room. Each member of RoboVault personnel is bonded and have gone through background checks to ensure complete reliability.

Et cetera.
I love the idea, though, that certain building types – certain works of architecture – can actually catalyze new business models, complete with ripple effects outward into the worlds of insurance, tax law, and even the private behaviors of everyday citizens.

[Image: RoboVault].

And then you'll franchise this building type, and build one in London, and wild new filmic possibilities arise. Bank Job 2. National Treasure 3.
Architecture built only for the purpose of inspiring Hollywood sequels.

(Thanks to Adam S. for the link!)

Holy Snow White, Mother of Mars. Blessed is the ice of your soil

Artist Nina Katchadourian lists The Mended Spiderweb series as an uninvited collaboration with nature, and I don't know what is more impressive