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UK artist Ryan Jordan led a workshop earlier this summer in Montréal, building musical instruments out of geological circuit boards, an experiment in terrestrial instrumentation he calls "Derelict Electronics."

[Image: From "Derelict Electronics" by Ryan Jordan; photo by Lauren Franklin].

The sputtering and noisy results use "a mesh of point contacts connecting to chalcopyrite and iron pyrite to make crude amplifiers out of rocks."

"When an electric current is sent through the rocks," Jordan explains, "sporadic noise bursts from the speakers. With some fine tuning these rocks begin to behave like microphones, amplifying howling feedback and detecting subtle scratches and disturbances in their surrounding environment."

[Image: From "Derelict Electronics" by Ryan Jordan].

The extraction of sound from or by way of minerals is less bizarre than it might at first sound, considering that, as Jordan points out, his experiment is actually "based on the Adams Crystal Amplifier (1933), a precursor to the modern transistor, one of the fundamental building blocks of today's electronic and digital world." In a sense, then, these are just a hipster rediscovery of crystal radio.

The resulting instruments, though visually crude, are Frankenstein-like webs of copper wire and rocks affixed to, in these photographs, a wooden base. The potential for aestheticizing these beyond the workshop stage seems both obvious and highly promising.

[Images: From "Derelict Electronics" by Ryan Jordan].

In fact, I'm reminded of the amplified lettuce circuits of artist Leonardo Amico or the recently very widely publicized work of photographer Caleb Charland—in particular, Charland's "Orange Battery"—which literally taps fruit and vegetables as unexpected electrical inputs for lamps and other lighting rigs.

[Image: Caleb Charland, "Orange Battery" (2012), which took a 14-hour exposure time].

Charland takes stereotypical still-life arrangements, using, for instance, apples and potatoes as an electrical source for the lamp that illuminates the resulting photograph—

[Images: Photos by Caleb Charland].

—or he simply plugs directly into crops while they're still growing in the field, as if we might someday set up lamps in the middle of nowhere and build outdoor interiors shining at all hours of the day. Redefining architecture as electrical effects without walls.

[Image: Photo by Caleb Charland].

Combining Charland's and Jordan's work to stage elaborate, fully functioning rock-radios built from nothing but wired-up pieces of crystal and stone could make for some incredible photographs (not to mention unearthly soundscapes: podcasts of pure geology, amplified).

But, continuing this brief riff on alternative geo- and biological sources of power, there was a short article in The Economist a long while back that looked at the possibility of what they called "wooden batteries." These botanical power sources would be "grid scale," we read, and would rely on "waste from paper mills" in order to function.

The implication here that we would plug our cities not just into giant slurries of wood pulp, like thick soups of electricity, but also directly into the forests around us, drawing light from the energy of trunks and branches, is yet another extraordinary possibility that designers would do well to take on, imagining what such a scenario literally might look like and how it would technically function, not solely for its cool aesthetic possibilities but for the opportunity to help push our culture of gadgets toward renewable sources of power. Where forests become literal power plants and our everyday farms and back gardens become sites for growing nearly unlimited reserves of electricity.

(Earlier on BLDGBLOG: Electric Landscapes).

steph davidson posted a photo:

www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-14/space-junk-is-al...

Drawings by Alberto del Pozo of the deities of Afro-Cuban Santería “Each of the illustrations in The Oricha Collection depicts the principal gods and goddesses that comprise the Afro-Cuban religion of Santería. The Afro-Cuban orishas can be traced to the 19th Century slave trade, when thousands of men, women, and children were taken from their Yoruba homes in Nigeria to be sold as slaves in the new world. In Cuba, the slaves were introduced to Catholic teachings, resulting in a blending of Yoruba and Christian beliefs over time. Due to structural similarities between the two religions, the Yoruba gods were identified with Catholic saints, and as a result, many generations of slaves continued to practice their religion under the guise of Christian liturgy. This union gave rise to a new system of beliefs known as Lucumí or Santería, the ‘way of the saints.’’ Via the Cuban Heritage Collection, University of Miami Libraries Thanks to luminousinsect Folkert

3liza:

riotclitshave:

Barcelona today, as firefighters clashed with riot police in front of Catalan parliament during an anti-austerity protest.

this shit is happening all over the world and we are. not. hearing about it.

"Abraj Al Bait", the Royal Clock Tower, Mecca

Third tallest building in the world, largest clock tower in the world.

Ryan Mitchell from The Tiny Life contacted me recently to let me know about an update to his popular book Cracking the Code and I wanted to share it with you as it is full of great information. Here is what Ryan has to say about it:

Many of you have checked out our ebook Cracking The Code – A guide to building codes and zoning for tiny houses; well today I have some good news! We have updated the ebook and added 14 more pages of core content to the ebook with our Toolkit!

Here’s the kicker! If you bought the old version, I just sent you the updated version for FREE! So those of you who supported The Tiny Life, thanks so much, we hope you’ll enjoy the free update.

The Toolkit comes out of some great feedback we got from the first version, where I presented what I came up with as the single best approach to tiny houses and building codes. What we have learned since then is that people were able to take what we taught them and then started coming up with some creative ways to make tiny houses legal in their own towns. So I took those approaches and created this Toolkit which teaches you 10 additional ways to make a tiny house legal!

Get your copy today!

Get Cracking The Code Here

Get Cracking The Code Here

(click to view full size image)

(click to view full size image)

i renewed thinsite.net today for another couple of years. hopefully the next two years are a bit more active than the last two years. though i'll probably just spam the site with baby photos. deal with it. until then, here's another night shot from mexico. this one off our balcony.

CASTLE QUEST

CASTLE QUEST

steph davidson posted a photo:

The Library of Congress posted a photo:

Bain News Service,, publisher.

Harry Cody [with sports medals]

[between ca. 1915 and ca. 1920]

1 negative : glass ; 5 x 7 in. or smaller.

Notes:
Title from unverified data provided by the Bain News Service on the negatives or caption cards.
Forms part of: George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress).

Format: Glass negatives.

Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication.

Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

General information about the Bain Collection is available at hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.ggbain

Higher resolution image is available (Persistent URL): hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ggbain.21074

Call Number: LC-B2- 3755-4

risumiru posted a photo:

Churui (Taiki).
Naumann elephant fossils have been discovered in this town.

risumiru posted a photo:

Betsukai.

cardhouse posted a photo: