Links

Interesting stuff on the internet

Interesting stuff on the internet is an article sharing my favourite recent online inspiration and distractions.

Jon Ronson author of the The Psychopath Test talks about the grey area between crazy and sane and questions the occurrence of a definitive line between the two.

Dana from Yellowtrace has written a great article of highlights from the 55th Venice Biennale 2013. I love the ‘Cripplewood’ installation by artist Berlinde de Bruyckere: A large scale wax reproduction a fallen tree trunk which portrays a disturbing resemblance to human bones, muscles and tendons.

Mapping the linguistic peculiarities of american english: Y’all Vs. You All, soda Vs. Pop, Sub Vs. Hero. Joshua Katz examines the significant differences in pronunciation and word choice across the US.

From mapping the US to mapping the globe, World Map Archive is a crowd sourced project by Benjamin Pollach. The archive reveals the unique regional and individual perceptions of the word depending upon the location of participants.

It turns out if you spend enough time around old books you can start to hallucinate.

Agony Architects have created a funny series of short and sweet videos. Directed to students of architecture, they focus on answering some tricky questions about finding a job, from what you put in your folio, to how you make your application stand out, from the low of rejection, to the high of acceptance and then what it takes to get the job done.

Why rational people believe in conspiracy theories: An article about human belief systems which indicate believers are more likely to be cynical about the world and politics in particular. Conspiracy theories are also more compelling to those with low self-esteem, and is a way of reacting to uncertainty and powerlessness.

Aldo van Eyck and the City as Play­ground: Aldo van Eyck’s playgrounds were initially a spatial experiment that went on to mark the childhood of a generation. A great article about shifting away from the modernist top down organization of space towards a bottom up design approach.

Il Magistero: De Carlo’s Dialogue with Historical Forms: Since the 1950s, Giancarlo De Carlo has been a member of CIAM’s rebellious Team X. The article is about architectures role in organising and shaping space for use, for the individual and collective experience with consideration to the effects of time: how it ages, becomes stratified, continues to be enriched with new meaning, until at a certain point it begins to design and redesign.

Architecture is too important to leave to architects: A conversation with Giancarlo De Carlo who criticises the modern techniques in architecture as a means of removing accountability.

I came accross the work of Superuse Studio through the 2013 (Material) National Architecture Conference, Melbourne. Superuse Studio are committed to ‘reuse’ as their integral design strategy. Their work includes a playground made from wind turbines and a bar made from washing machines. Superuse Studio have also developed a process available to Architects for auditing and managing local waste materials.

It is not uncommon for architecture to be inspired by music or sound. David Byrne talks about the opposite, how architecture has inspired the evolution of music.

Corridors of the mind: An article about how the environment changes the brain, and therefore our behaviour. Studies in neuroscience indicate the quality of a built environment has the ability to enhance the performance of the brain and to generate the growth of new brain cells.

I hope you found inspiration from my distractions. I’d love you to share your own interesting distractions in the comment section below.