the innocence of rural remains?

Thanks to Cornelius, Matthew and Troels for some very astute comment on the recent BBC item about the decline of the English countryside and its transformation into a cultural or heritage playgound – [Link] Key points for me – the remains of the past are wrapped up in relationships between city and “countryside” (a great…

Cuba – on the verge – the physiognomy of historical change

Meg’s comments on the photos of the apartment in San Jose, and her story of small town America were about the way everyday things can be almost too painful, too intimate – because of their personal associations yes, but, also because of their attachment to temporal loss. It makes us think of how we look…

deep mapping – yellowarrow.org

Sam (Schillace) has put me onto yellowarrow.org – a fascinating new project in mobile phone deep mapping. “yellowarrow” [noun] – a collective symbol for personal communication | [verb] – to leave and discover messages pointing out what counts choose – find a place that speaks to you, something you want to point out, a detail…

the individual in (contemporary pre)history

More on what we leave behind in Wired magazine’s August issue – and how tracks through cyberspace can be crucial clues to who we are and were – Raising the dead A water-well digger found the body. It was 1968, and Wilbur Riddle was tromping around Eagle Creek, off Route 25 in backwoods Kentucky, scavenging…

Graflex Speed Graphic 1947 – media archaeology

I have decided our lab needs to take seriously the materiality of media. Not just the picture – but its texture, style, feel, ambience, aura, substrate – and its instrumentality – how it came to be made, by what means, agency, mechanism. So I have been buying old cameras. The Graflex Pacemaker Speed Graphic arrived…