Cultural Cartography

"Always something to do"

Saw this being put up yesterday on the way to see a friend. Proof that Berlin really is the home of modern art at the moment. Even the houses are getting involved. Don't know anything else about it though. Despite having googled "Immer was zu tun" which fittingly means there is always something to do. Which is of course true and particularly in the case of this house.

Old logos seen with new(ish) eyes

I am back in London for a couple of days before heading off for an idyllic week's walking! One of the first things that struck me was the old British Rail logo that you still see when you get on the train at Stansted.

It really is a design classic. (as said here). What really struck me is that you know what it is, without having to think what it is. It makes use of elements of the product itself - in this case the rails; delivers a sense of what the product delivers - movement; and above all presents a clear sense of an entity which has a sense of purpose. The latter is actually more than what now adds up to British Rail does, but hey ho! the logo is still around and maybe sometime BR will be back.

Mauersegler or Wallflyers

I am spending more time sitting at my desk at home at the moment as I am in the process of restructuring my work life balance (gosh what an elegant way to say I am trying to work less and have more time for myself). So I have more time to dream and think about things and whilst I do, I can pay more attention to what is going on around me. Just as in London, I loved the starlings, so in Berlin I have become very attached to the swifts. They are called Mauersegler (or wall flyers/gliders) in German, which is very apt name for birds that appear in Berlin in the summer. I imagine that the people who lived here whilst the wall was up, not more than a few hundred yards from where I am living, looked up at the birds circling overhead and wished that they too could fly so easily from one country to another. 

And then there is their cry: they really do screech through the air. (check out this page in German!) I have become addicted to it. It reminds me of where I am and also that I share this bit of the world with not only other animals but also with other people. 

What social networking does to us

I found this on Post Secret (which I am sure you all know about). I am sure there are thousands of thousands of people doing just this. That is what being permanently virtually on show does to us. It's nothing new but this is definitely a whole new dimension.

Virtual Coke

Walking through a shopping mall in berlin yesterday, I came across a vending machine from Coke. It flashed at me, and beeped at me and basically did its best to stop me in my tracks. Of course I thought nothing more about this than normal because that's what vending machines always seem to do nowadays. Until I looked a bit closer.

The thing was I couldn't see how to get a bottle of coke out of the machine. That's because it was a digital vending machine. It sold content such as ringtones, logos, pictures etc. And also coke.

It took me a while to find the Coke button but I did. And then of course I felt like I was acting like a true dinosaur, trying to get Coke from a Coke machine.

Didn't get a picture as my new status as dinosaur prevents me from carrying a camera phone, leaving me only with a Blackberry which I can onyl just about work.

More here, but still no pictures

late night Tv: Four Eyed Monsters

It's been a while since I just surfed but today I did and I found this: Four Eyed Monsters, touching, beautiful, real and at the same time surreal and a thousand times better than anything I would have found on network TV. (Be warned, it is a feature film and lasts over an hour.) It gave a whole new feeling to what the web can do, as I could watch this at home and then go and check out the website and the comments online and the blogs and everything. Don't know quite how to explain it but it gave me an amazing sense of possibilities and freedom. That in especially because today I've been trying to work out how I can watch BBC Prime on the web. It made me feel that this is what it's really about. Me at home thinking I want to watch a film, typing in streaming video and finding a link to this film on Google. The reason I ended up watching this film is not because it was right at the top of the list but because there was something about the name and the visuals and the idea which spoke to me. I chose it but it had to be there to be chosen.

I'm excited to see where things go with this project but with this idea of just looking for things randomly, a bit like opening the bible to see which verse jumps out at you.

Pull a veil over it

up
Originally uploaded by Perpetually.

As my wedding is getting closer (only 4 weeks away), I am naturally starting to think more about the various cultural associations and semiotic aspects of a wedding. We are getting married in church so there are numerous codes and symbols as you can expect. Interestingly our vicar told us that the reason the CofE service has the declaration which sounds very much like the vows and then the vows was that traditionally after the declaration the couple would go away betrothed and see if things worked out. Then they would come back and finish things off.

One of the most interesting things for me has been considering whether to wear a veil or not. My feeling is that the veil is the one thing which really makes a bride into a bride. It's bizarre given who I am and the world we live in. The one thing which least fit, in that it originates in order to preserve the bride's modesty is the thing that makes you into a bride. Actually on thinking about it, it's not bizarre at all given that brides are somewhat out of fashion at the moment.

Flocks of starlings

In keeping with the current interest about swarms, herds and thinking en masse in general driven largely I think by Mark Earls getting  his book out on the market about herds, I started thinking about my favorite exhibit of that swarm thinking: Starlings flying. Where I live there is a flock that sometimes fly in such a beautiful pattern that I have to stop and watch them (and then miss the bus). It is for me one of the wonders of the natural world. Not much to do with semiotics though. More to follow on Mark's really interesting thinking.

There are some great films on Youtube like this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB42cYu0Agk

Wanted to also point out here, that I am away for the next week. Back on March 19th hopefully not having eaten too much Utah snow. Have a great week while I'm away.

Spring in London

I heard an ice cream van today playing Bobbie Shafto. It made me think that you don't only have to see green spring grass, you could just hear the ice cream van coming round the corner for the first time that year.

Where am I?

A little quiz for the readers: I am on a train in a major European city and this is the pattern on the PVC in the carriage. Now where am I?

A clue: Look for big important buildings you might know.

The Brandenburg Gate. The Reichstag. The TV Tower and now we are getting more into things for the locals, The Red Town Hall ; the Deutsche Dom etc.

Yes, that's right. I was in Berlin (again).

When I realised this, I thought how great. Let's use the semiotically most important symbols of our city to decorate the way you get around them.

I know that the Tube has a different pattern for the seat covers for different lines as witnessed by another quiz here but that's making it too difficult for tourists.

Imagine fitting the symbols to the places the line goes under or even to. You could have Buckingham Palace on the Piccadilly Line and the Victoria Line because they both go to Green Park and it would be a much nicer of way of working out the intersections.