Jay Voss's blog

Developing Austin for the Future

Jay Voss — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 04:24:00 +0000

(Image Credit: austinchronicle.com)

This is most likely my last post of the semester, and I thought I spend it writing about development trends in Austin. Anyone who has lived here for more than a few years should be keenly aware of just how quickly this city is changing. Even my landlord is complaining. Well, he’s not technically complaining, but as soon as he has a vacancy to fill, it’s taken, and I think part of the game has been lost for him. But I digress. One of the things about expansive growth in Austin is that it tends to not coincide with urban planning, as I noted in a previous post about the Texas Capital Building. This lack of planning can be frustrating to locals because, well…it’s not Paris. But there’s charm in the city’s architectural idiosyncrasies, and these things do give the city a sense of character. Austin’s a lot like the grimy sci-fi of the original Terminator film, especially when compared to the forensic cleanliness of Star Trek’s sci-fi. So, anyway, there’s a weird thing happening throughout Austin’s current growth spurt, in which planned communities are popping up in the middle of old non-planned neighborhoods. Two questions come to mind: Does it really matter that these communities are planned given the irregular historical zoning beauty that surrounds them? And, secondly, what’s the appeal of these antiseptic neighborhoods, when Austinites could have…well, Austin?

(Image Credit: www.buryinc.com)

Two of these neighborhoods immediately come to mind. “The Domain” shopping area, east of Mopac and north of 183, and “The Triangle,” which is located where Lamar and Guadalupe merge. Anyone reading this who frequents Austin’s hipper areas is probably rolling their eyes at this point – The Domain and The Triangle are not really places where people hang out (no offense). They’re places you go to if you want to visit Office Max or Louis Vuitton. (I didn’t even know how to spell “Vuitton” when I started writing this post.) In a nutshell, each of these planned neighborhoods offers retail space at street level, and apartments or condos above. Rhetorically, it’s quite obvious that these neighborhoods are trying to approximate the European high street. However, in my mind there are two very deep differences between what you find in Europe and what’s popping up in Austin. In most these European urban spaces it’s easy to walk out from where you live and purchase the necessities. In these new Austin neighborhoods, the idea is that you walk out from where you live and purchase luxuries. The second rather obvious difference is that in Austin, these planned urban spaces are suburban. They’re for away from the center of town. So once your mind breaks through the nictitating haze of superfluous consumption, it’s really quite hard to figure out what the appeal of living in these areas is.

(Image Credit: austintowers.net)

To be fair, housing is at such a premium in Austin at the moment, that you can’t really blame anyone for living anywhere. And I guess, really, Office Max and Louis Vitton – I mean “Vuitton” – wouldn’t be putting shops in these places if there weren’t consumers ready and waiting to pounce.

The Austin Zen Center's Garden as a Model for Austin

Jay Voss — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 06:47:34 +0000

(Image Credit: Jay Voss)

Nothing sums up the best of Austin’s landscape gardening tastes like the garden at the Austin Zen Center. Located on West 31^st Street between Guadalupe and Lamar, the Austin Zen Center’s garden is impressive any time of year. Every plant in the garden is native. The vegetation in the garden never, ever receives sprinkler water. The entire growing space is focused around a gorgeous old live oak tree, like a dry landscape garden is focused around a sizable boulder. It’s only when you look at the Austin Zen Center’s garden twice that you notice the massive live oak isn’t centered on the acreage – that it seems to do so is only an illusion. Everything in the garden is clean, pure, and honest, and a steadfast commitment to these virtues on the part of those who care for the landscape has the effect of producing a space that is harmonious and seemingly balanced.

(Image Credit: Jay Voss)

The Austin Zen Center was founded in 1995 when a local psychologist named Flint Sparks lighted upon the idea of starting a weekly zazen practice for the community in his psychotherapy office. Austinites soon started showing up for their weekly dose of zen in serious numbers, and Sparks and his friend Bill Magness had to look for a new location, so in 1998 the group started using a small room in the back of the Clear Springs Yoga Studio. According to the Austin Zen Center’s website, within three months the budding meditation society was overflowing into the Clear Springs Yoga Studio’s other spaces. The group decided to form a board and systematic leadership, and the everyone raised money to rent a new place. In February of 2000, the newly formed Austin Zen Center moved into the house on West 31^st street. An extremely generous donor eventually outright purchased the home for keeps, and the Austin Zen Center has resided there to this day. From what I understand, the gardens on the plot are maintained by Austin Zen Center meditationers.

(Image Credit: Jay Voss)

There’s an odd way in which the past fifteen-odd years of growth at the Austin Zen Center is reminiscent Austin proper’s ongoing population boom. As that Zen Center grew out of the Clear Springs Yoga Studio, its members were bustling about and exceeding their allocated space. Similarly, the turnover stats for rental spaces and homes in the Austin area are impressive. The more I think about it, it’s hard to be cynical about these things. They just happen, and they probably always have happened. I’m sure some Parisians objected when Sacré-Coeur was built, you know? Anyways, what I find idyllic about the Austin Zen Center’s landscape garden is that it’s one shinning example of an Austin community managing insane levels of change. They do so in their gardens with peace and harmony. They strive to radiate balance and honestly. Maybe I’m wrong about all this, but that’s how I feel when walking by the gardens on my way to and from work. Take a look at the pictures in this post and see for yourself.

Searching for Wildflowers at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

Jay Voss — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:00:00 +0000

(Image Credit: Jay Voss)

With spring now fully upon us, and the last frost finally out of the way, plants are starting to leaf in the Texas Hill Country. And aside from appreciating the odd dogwood tree early in the new season, this means that it’s time to go out and appreciate Texas’s extensive native wildflower population. There’s nowhere better to do this than at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Located several miles south of town, just off of MoPac, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center is a great place to spend an afternoon in the sun (especially if Barton Springs is on your way home). I could go on and on with Lonely Planet-like copy about why you and yours should make time for a visit this weekend, but instead I’ll just jump to the chase: the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center is probably one of the most thoughtful public urban landscapes in the Austin metro area. It’s a very, very smart example of landscape architecture, and it ultimately serves a civic purpose.

(Image Credit: Jay Voss)

The center was founded in 1982 by Lady Bird Johnson and Helen Hayes (the actress – A Farewell to Arms, Airport) in an effort to preserve regional plants and landscapes. In 2006 the center was subsumed into the University of Texas at Austin, and I think it’s currently run by the School of Architecture. According to the center’s webpage, for decades Mrs. Johnson had been worrying that regional plants and landscapes were disappearing, and the center was established to keep these endangered species of plants alive in the region. Thus, near the entrance to the center is a perminant garden featuring local plants and fauna. This portion can be seen in the photograph at the top of this post. Each square is organized into various categories (e.g., “Hill Country kitchen plants,” etc.). The order of this grid-like garden is reminiscent of French landscape design, and in spite of this (or, perhaps, because of it) the grid’s focus on native fauna produces a healthy and stimulating dissonance.

(Image Credit: Jay Voss)

Much of the rest of the center is taken up with trails through various Hill Country landscapes. Visitors can walk these paths and explore all the various native Hill Country plants. What’s surprising about all this, especially to a foreign Midwestern such as myself, is the variety of plants that are local to this region. On a recent visit I found myself searching for blooming wildflowers (it was just a tad early in the season for that), and in their stead I found a surprising plethora of plants and trees that I had no idea existed in this region. The true strength of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, I think, is that it organizes all this information into an interactive landscape garden that requires comfy Austinites to get of their cars and learn about plants in the sun. I really can’t imagine a more enlightening civic gesture to get a select group of citizens thinking of their natural environment, especially when that environment is surprisingly rich and beautiful. It might not be Yellowstone, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less complex.

Small-Government Urban Planning Sometimes Negates Itself

Jay Voss — Wed, 26 Feb 2014 04:15:13 +0000

(Image Credit: dfwfoodtrucks.com)

There’s no doubting that Austin’s a great example of urban sprawl. Anyone who’s driven up Burnet Road on a shopping expedition, or down South Lamar looking for a romantic Saturday night dinner, has probably wondered at some point: Why can’t these things just be closer to where I live? Fortunately, I don’t think this question is born out of narcissism. Things are far apart in Austin. And given the town’s expanding population, they feel as though they’re getting farther and farther apart, with all the increased traffic and whatnot. Over the decades, this city has grown and expanded without any apparent civic regard for urban planning. Which makes the Capital Building a really interesting monument. The roads leading to the Texas State Capital are reminiscent of Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s planning of Washington, D.C., and they convey a confidence in American governance that would make Governor Rick Perry blush. Either that or the eyes of Texas are upon us.

The image at the top of this post always makes for a great drive when one’s headed north on Congress Avenue. It’s certainly a statement. As you progress, the Texas State Capital Building stairs you down with equal measures of confidence and invitation. There’s no obnoxious pride from this angle. There’s no celebration of the fact that the building is 33 feet taller than the United States Capital Building in Washington, D.C. Only Dostoevsky’s Underground Man could look at the way the Texas State Capital is set and feel spite or cynicism. It’s all absolutely gorgeous and inspiring, though I’m not really sure I can articulate precisely what it inspires. Maybe it’s meant to inspire a feeling of Texas pride, I don’t know. In any case, you certainly don’t need to have any Texas pride in order to appreciate the front of this building from a mile away due south. When viewed from the north, however, things start to get fuzzy.

(Image Credit: codinacrossamerica.com)

If you stand in front of the University of Texas tower and look south, it’ll appear that you’re also at the end of another avenue leading directly to the Texas State Capital. But you’re not. It’s all a brilliant illusion. The University of Texas is set at an angle to the state capital, but since all you can really see from campus is the rotunda, it appears as if the two institutions are square. Of course, it doesn’t really matter if the two buildings are in fact squared up with one another. Important governmental buildings across our country (and across the world, going back to the Roman forum) have never been flush. But deep down, I suspect that there’s some ancient human impulse that wants our important governing institutions to appear orderly and well thought-out.

(Image Credit: Google Maps)

It’s the best political ad in history: the democratic forum that appears orderly within and without. Can we take pleasure in these proportions and still be good citizens? I don’t know. The Texas State Capital, after all, isn’t the tallest building in Austin when viewed from far away.

Shoal Creek: Perhaps As Resourceful As Urban Planning Gets

Jay Voss — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 15:00:00 +0000

(Image credit: Jay Voss)

The park that stretches along Austin’s Shoal Creek is pretty amazing when you think about it. Starting near Lady Bird Lake downtown, the trails and bikeways wind all the way up towards 38^th street. By my approximated Google Maps calculation, that’s nearly three and a half miles of gravel path, all of which feeds into the much longer Lady Bird Lake Hike and Bike Trail (discussed in my last post). Like the trails around Lady Bird Lake, in good weather the parkland around Shoal Creek is routinely flooded with Austinites seeking exercise and a break from concrete and metal. Joggers, walkers, and “mountain” bikers all frequent the trail. Around about 25^th Street there is a leash free area for pets. At Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard there are three beach volleyball courts. Just north of 15^th Street there’s an extensive playground and more volleyball courts. On the surface of things, there’s nothing exceptional about these recreation areas. Most communities throughout the United States provide their residents with public recreation. Indeed, community owned recreation areas have probably been a part of human settlements for longer than we can imagine. What I think is unique about Austin’s Shoal Creek and the surrounding environs is the extent to which the park consciously embodies a natural environment that challenges the skyscrapers in the distance.

(Image credit: Jay Voss)

Based upon the photographs throughout this post, one would be forgiven for thinking that Shoal Creek is out in the countryside. I imagine that anyone who has spent any time in this park has wondered for a brief moment what happened to the city. This is only an illusion, of course – the roar of car engines is never far away, and probably often snaps daydreaming joggers right back to attention. Nevertheless, I think it’s an important illusion. For kicks I’d suggest that it’s really quite brilliant landscape design given that 95% of pedestrians and cyclists are listening to music anyways. But alas, I think the area was developed long before Steve Jobs. More to the point, I think it’s remarkable that Austin, and burgeoning urban space, has left such a central, giant swath of nature untouched.

(Image credit: Jay Voss)

To some extent, the apparent seclusion and scenery shouldn’t be that surprising, and we can’t overdo the accolades. I can’t imagine any other way this sliver of town could have been developed. For all intents and purposes, the entire midtown stretch of creek bed basically forms a valley, with several limestone cliffs rising above the waterway as it makes its way towards Lady Bird Lake. The creek also functions as a spillway for the surrounding residential areas, which is really a basic necessity for a large group of homes. Try to run on the Shoal Creek trails during a massive rainstorm and each of the creek crossings will be flooded over with runoff. Nonetheless, utility and pragmatism aside, it’s really amazing to see that the city of Austin has used this creek as an opportunity to offer themselves a semi-natural workout zone.

Lady Bird Lake Hike and Bike: A Lasting Anchor for Austin

Jay Voss — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 14:00:00 +0000

(Image Credit: Jay Voss)

If we’re to think about landscapes in Austin, it only makes sense to start with something in the very heart of the city. What immediately comes to mind, of course, is the Lady Bird Lake Hike and Bike Trail. This jogging path encompasses over 10 miles of mostly flat jogging track that weaves its way around and over Lady Bird Lake. It has proved to be an enormously popular place for Austinites to escape their concrete jungle. Go down to the area for an evening workout in the warmer months, and the trail will be so packed with joggers and walkers you’d wish you’d braved the midday heat. I’ve long thought all this activity around the lake to be one of the more inspiring aspects of living in Austin. There aren’t really any other cities that I can think of that offer up swaths of seemingly undeveloped land for outdoor recreation. Sure, there’s that stretch along Lake Michigan in Chicago, or along the quays in Paris, but nothing quite compares. The architectural thinking behind the Austin trail is completely focused on getting Austinites out and about, and given that the city is otherwise obsessed with finding all sorts of comfort via technological progress, I think the hike and bike trail is really admirable.

(Image Credit: Jay Voss)

What we now call Lady Bird Lake first started taking shape in 1939, when the Tom Miller Dam was constructed on the Colorado River. This dam was primarily built to provide hydroelectric power for the surrounding area. In 1960, the Longhorn Dam was built east of Austin, and this created what would eventually be called Lady Bird Lake. According to the Texas State Historical Association, the lake was created for two reasons: that the Holly Street Power Plant might have a cooling pond, and that the city might have a new recreational space. By 1970, the lake had become polluted, and its shores covered with weeds. It was then that Mayor Roy Butler teamed up with Lady Bird Johnson to establish the Town Lake Beautification Committee, which worked to transform the lake into a non-polluted recreation area and install the hike and bike trails that are the subject of this post. This makes the Lady Bird Lake Hike and Bike Trail one of the oldest tracks of its kind in the United States.

(Image Credit: austin360.com)

It’s amazing to think that one of the more modern architectural facets of Austin is really 40 years old. I’ve talked to landscape architects from Oregon to Georgia, and several of them have at least one project like this on their docket. From a civic planning standpoint, these trails make a lot of sense. They work to keep intensely urban areas vibrant and youthful, and they encourage healthy lifestyles for citizens (which encouragement has a number of economic incentives). Visiting Town Lake and its adjacent outdoor recreation, you could of course complain how insanely artificial the entire landscape is from a BBC Planet Earth perspective. The “lake” might be said to look more like a stereotypical river, and there’s no telling if the surrounding vegetation was really that lush before the Colorado River flooded its banks.

But I say, at the end of the day, Lady Bird Lake and its surrounding area are just as invasive as the gardens at Villa Farnese and Versailles. I suppose that comparison doesn’t justify the environmental alteration that is Lady Bird Lake, but it sure does remind us that the new landscape is much more satisfying than all the glass and steel that sits behind it.

Can We Measure the Expansion of a City by Its Landscaping?

Jay Voss — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 22:03:01 +0000

(Image Credit: KXAN Austin)

It’s great to be back on viz. after a semester away. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Perhaps the most noticeable thing in Austin upon my return is the city’s insane rate of expansion. When one moves about town and looks at buildings, every few blocks or so there’s a new set of high rise apartments (or whatever) going in. Nowhere are the roads being widened to account for the new residents. Rush hour is literally a bunch of metallic, CO2-emitting rivers, and all this negates (at least for me) most pretences Austin makes towards modernity. I heard somewhere that 20,000 people are moving to Austin each month, although I have no idea if that’s really the case – the statistic can make one feel like they live cattle market. But to be fair, most up-and-coming cities can have that feel. Traffic rant aside, if Austin’s powers at be aren’t adjusting roadways to account for new residents, I wonder how smaller entities (such as neighborhoods, private residents, and institutions) are altering their own urban environments to account for the change. In some cases, perhaps, maybe a few brilliant environments that were designed 20 years ago are still healthy, despite all the change. In other cases, perhaps the city is designing new parks and gardens to address future public needs. I am going to try and dedicate all my viz. posts for the coming semester to landscape design in Austin. It might prove valuable, as I’m not sure these things are being catalogued anywhere else.

(Image Credit: Wikipedia)

First, a bit of landscape design history is in order. This will give my future descriptions of Austin some context, while also help us to gauge the quality of what’s being done around town. Humans have, in some way or another, been reshaping their surrounding natural environments for a very long time. Theories abound about whether or not Native Americans employed fire to clear prairie and alter forest growth. There is archeological record for controlled burnings in many areas inhabited by Native Americans, and academics debate about whether these fires were created by man or lightening. More concretely, there is amazing evidence of conscious human alteration on Easter Island, in the Pacific Ocean, where the cryptic moai statues dot the landscape. I say “cryptic” because it’s commonly agreed that the creation of the statues on the island lead to rapid and complete deforestation – a very big transformation for inhabitants of a remote island. Every single last tree on Easter Island was cut down by the Rapa Nui people and used, it is believed, to help transport new moai statues all over the island. In each of these brief examples, it’s rather obvious that landscaping practices in these locations are cultural emanations of the native populations. The Native American clearings, if they were indeed caused by humans and not lightening, might have had some practical application. If not, they were most surely part of some spiritual event. As far as Easter Island is concerned, the Rapa Nui peoples went to great lengths to dot their island with moai statues, both transforming the landscape by the statues’ addition and the trees’ rapid removal. Current anthropology holds that the moai statues were symbols of authority and power.

(Image Credit: gardensinitaly.net)

In the European tradition, pretty much all landscape design is either an elaboration or refutation of Aristotle’s thinking. Aristotle’s view of the natural world was basically that cognitive intelligence was the zenith of biological development. As such, plants were on the bottom of things and humans were on top. In the Renaissance therefore, when Classical thinking was once again in fashion, wealthy Europeans influenced by Aristotle sought to make natural environments “more beautiful” than they were naturally. This was done by subjecting groupings of plants to fit within the boundaries of planned order and proportion. So between 1550 and 1600 (sometimes referred to as the “Golden Age of gardening”) there was a massive explosion of landscape design in wealthy Italy, all of it built by cardinals vying for the papacy. We are all familiar with the white smoke bit whenever a pope dies, and how the College of Cardinals gets together to elect a successor. These days much of the rhetoric that surrounds that election has to do with spirituality and the like, but in Renaissance Italy, the cardinals tended to elect those who were most influential, wealthy, and cultured. One of the most reliable ways the college could measure the extent of these attributes in perspective candidates was through their gardens. Gardens in Renaissance Italy, after all, were one went to be seen and admired, and the wealthy owners of these gardens took delight in having others want to be in their garden. And so through all of this you get gardens such as those at Villa Farnese just north of Rome, pictured above.

(Image Credit: Wikipedia)

France subsequently experienced its own amazing period of garden design in the seventeenth century, when wealthy French aristocrats wanted to display their own personal wealth and culture in the fashionable ways of Renaissance Italy. Amongst a number of architects and gardeners who were designing new landscapes in seventeenth-century France, the most important was a man named André Le Nôtre. Le Nôtre, for example, had the brilliant idea to align western Paris along the Champs de Elysee, a novelty that almost every visitor to Paris appreciates, even if they know nothing of architectural history. Above you can see a seventeenth-century engraving for the gardens at Château de Chantilly, one of Le Nôtre’s later projects. The English would take all this one step further, and design gardens meant to seem as if they were completely natural emanations. Of course they weren’t “natural” – they were carefully contemplated series of plantings. But, they reflected an emerging aesthetic sense that privileged inspiration from nature over inspiration from proportion and rationality. Below you can find a photograph of the garden at Rousham, designed by William Kent in the mid-eighteenth century. It is, perhaps, the most successful eighteenth-century English landscape garden.

(Image Credit: rousham.org)

I’m already nearly 500 words over my target length. In closing, then, I’ll end by saying that over the coming semester, I will attempt consider landscapes throughout Austin through the full lens of landscape design history. Some will conform, others no doubt won’t, and I’ll consider the implications of all these variations. At the fore will be a preoccupation with the extent to which horticultural work in and around the city makes rhetoric gestures, and the extent to which those gestures are conscious of Austin’s ongoing transformation.

Some Predictions for Luhrmann’s Great Gatsby Film

Jay Voss — Thu, 02 May 2013 21:20:56 +0000

I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to view a trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s Great Gatsby adaptation yet, but I think I’ll see the film. This comment says nothing about my expectations for the film’s critical success, but rather reflects what a visual feast this production is sure to be. From what I can tell, the movie attempts to marry a 1920s aesthetic with the sorts of gratuitous celebrations I remember last seeing 1990s rap music videos. The parties in the Great Gatsby film, as you can glimpse above, seem to be indulgent and overly choreographed affairs. At times the frame rate even appears to slow down a bit (like the polo shot in the trailer above), and I think this is meant to give viewers an opportunity to take it all in. I remember first seeing this technique in rap music videos, when the director would give us a slow-motion pan shot of an eclectic street party. It’ll be interesting to see how successful Luhrmann’s marriage of this 1990s aesthetic is when added to the necessary narrative components of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. One of my reservations is that there’s a way in which the novel is anxious about gratuitous wealth, especially about the ways wealth can potentially corrode moral fiber, and idealizing such parties seems out of step. My other reservation is that, judging from the trailers alone, the movie looks like a 2010s fashion catalogue.

(Image credit: Brooks Brothers)

My first impulse was that the film looks like something like a J. Crew catalogue, or maybe a GAP one. But what do I know? I don’t get these things in the mail. Then, over the weekend, I saw fellow viz blogger Jim Wiedner in a dapper seersucker suit, and my immediate thought in the hot Texas sun was “I have to get one of those things.” Not knowing where one gets those things, I pulled up Brooks Brothers website and voilà – they have an entire new catalogue inspired by the new Great Gatsby film. I knew there had to be one clothing chain involved in this picture. And, true to myself, I’m not quite sure how to feel about this. I’ve always felt a bit odd about product placement in film. I’ve gagged when spying a Burger King take-out sack in Iron Man, but absolutely love that moment in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet when Dennis Hopper’s character says “Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!” The cynic would say that this reasoning is largely the product of my own taste, but I do prefer Heineken to PBR (though I never eat Burger King). And every time I see a BMW Z3 I fondly think of Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond films. Maybe what I’m sensing is that there’s something potentially lame or artistically untrue in associating two seemingly unrelated human productions? The moral quandary gets even more complicated here, as Luhrmann’s film crew designed costumes after old Brooks Brothers catalogues. So it is indeed product placement, but it’s also distended product placement. Not only do we learn that these are Brooks Brothers-style suits, but we also are told something about how we’re to think of Brooks Brothers' past. Maybe this is all fine if folks who neglected the novel in high school are inspired to pick it up so that something matches their expensive clothes? Heck, maybe they’ll even pick up Tender Is the Night.

(Image credit: Brooks Brothers)

Of course, I haven’t seen the film yet. It opens nation-wide on May 10^th. Perhaps it’s all a completely successful artistic endeavor. As F. Scott said it himself in the novel that bears its name, “And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”

Musing About Aesthetics: Arnold Newman and Some Famous Architects

Jay Voss — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:00:00 +0000

(Image credit: Harry Ransom Center)

It shouldn’t be surprising, but I was drawn to the photographs of architects in the Harry Ransom Center’s ongoing exhibit, Arnold Newman: Masterclass. They made the exhibit for me. Those of you who’ve kept up with my blogging in recent months know that I appreciate the art of designing interior and exterior spaces, and so to see photographs of architects in the Arnold Newman exhibit…it was a highlight. Jim and Rachel posted earlier this week about how Newman liked to place his subjects in front of something relevant to their work. Thus Igor Stravinsky was photographed next to a Steinway. I suspect this strategy served two purposes. First, and perhaps most importantly, framing subjects with their objets d’art allowed Newman to establish an aesthetic through which his own audience could gage his portraits. (We’d assume the JFK portrait was by Newman even if the photograph wasn’t attributed, because of the contrived way the White House sits in the background.) This surely eased Newman’s routine, as he had a formula to bring to each new shoot. Secondly, framing subjects with their objets d’art allowed Newman to comment on his subjects’ work, in much the same way that we might consider a modern Shakespeare production to be an interpretation of a Renaissance text. All of this is obvious and provocative in Newman’s photographs of architects.

(Image credit: Harry Ransom Center)

Newman’s 1959 photograph of Robert Moses stands at the top of this post because I think it’s a nearly perfect model of this reading. Moses, of course, was successful architect and urban developer in the post-war period. Here he is photographed holding onto some plans on a beam over the Hudson, with Manhattan in the background. The plans suggest architect, and the cityscape behind suggests the scope of his design. But other photographs of architects in the Arnold Newman: Masterclass exhibit drift from the subject/objet d’art paradigm a bit, and I’m surprised that one of these in particular doesn’t have Ransom Center visitors protesting in every modicum of communicative media. I’m talking about Newman’s portrait of Frank Lloyd Wright (above). This was taken in 1947. By that time, there were any number of Frank Lloyd Wright masterpieces that Newman could have framed his subject. (Over the course of his career Wright started revolutions that made his earlier work passé.) So why then did Newman choose to situate Wright in front of a bunch of plans? I think it has something to do with Wright’s renown as an impractical artist. He was always concerned with the visual success of his buildings, sacrificing the more obvious concerns for lofty aesthetic ones. (When one client complained to Wright that the roof leaked, Wright suggested the client move a trash can to catch the drip.) Newman’s framing certainly does suggest a rather conservative understanding of architecture, especially for the 1940s. By that time, many great Wright buildings were tragically being repurposed, and from this picture I suspect Newman might have been OK with such refashionings. How you take a prairie home like the Dana-Thomas House and turn it into an office building is beyond me.

(Image credit: Richard Avedon)

In closing, Newman’s aesthetic is classic in part because it harkens back to a long tradition of portraiture. (In Britain’s National Portrait Gallery, Samuel Johnson is seated next to a table on which stands his lovely dictionary.) But Newman’s aesthetic is also classic because of how influential it proved to be, both in his day and ours. Richard Avedon might not have photographed the Beatles in his way had Newman not photographed Frank Lloyd Wright in such a focused context.

Bob Dylan on Contemporary Literature

Jay Voss — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:00:00 +0000

A few weeks ago a 2001 press conference with Bob Dylan emerged on youtube. Dylan, usually cagey and recalcitrant with reporters, is unusually earnest in the interview. He says a lot about his career and his Love and Theft album, which he was promoting at the time. You can check out a clip above, and the interview’s other five segments can be found on youtube. The reason I choose to bring this to the attention of the blog is that in the interview Dylan makes some interesting comments about the state of literature in America, and in particular some comments about how digital media is affecting the ways we feel. The comments, which I’ll outline below, are particularly relevant after yesterday’s massacre at the Boston Marathon, but I’ll leave that connection to your own reflections – we’ve all seen coverage of that tragedy, and I don’t want to add to the noise. As the version of Bob Dylan who appeared on the day of that interview might suggest, this post isn’t a work of art and thus I have no business telling you how to feel.

(Image credit: brainpickings.org)

Dylan’s comments on literature and the media come after a reporter asked him if there were any new writers he was particularly excited about. After a brief moment of thought Dylan says he “just doesn’t think there are any…we’re living in a different time. The media is all-pervasive. What can a writer think to write that you don’t see every day in the newspaper or on television?” Many of us would disagree with the notion that there aren’t any new writers worth caring about. Few amongst us wouldn’t sing the praises of Zadie Smith or Dave Eggers. Just last week I picked up a copy of Chris Ware’s Building Stories, and I can confidently say it’s a work of genius. It’s certainly worth finding a copy of. So I think I chalk the first part of that comment up as the lament of an older generation. (Ibid Dylan’s later comments on there being no media in late-nineteenth century France.) But nevertheless, despite the factually incorrect way that Dylan frames his argument, I still think he’s on to something. A reporter responds to all this by asking whether “there are [still] emotions that need to be expressed,” and this spurs the heart of Dylan’s argument. “Yeah,” Dylan responds, “but the media’s moving people’s emotions anyway.”

(Image credit: quarterlyconversation.com)

I thought this was a really interesting concept. When I reflect on my own reading or talk to friends who keep up with contemporary literature, there does seem to be a general sense that things have changed. Writers certainly don’t have the cultural heft they once did. Leo Tolstoy and Mark Twain had a profound reach in their day. Today people like David Foster Wallace are certainly considered influential, but that influence is reserved for a much less substantial audience than what Tolstoy or Twain enjoyed. Every serious reader I know has their own list of explanations. Some blame e-readers, some blame TV, some blame declining education standards. Who’s to say? Dylan’s point that other media tell us how to feel about our world is novel and valid. At its heart, I guess, is something about effort. Literature requires us to be active participants, while certain new media make it all too easy to be passive viewers. Some would probably say there are other valuable narratives superseding the novel, but that’s not what Dylan’s talking about.

Maybe the Only Way to Fly: With Wi-Fi

Jay Voss — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 03:28:37 +0000

(Image credit: Southwest Airlines)

I found myself in an odd place a few nights ago: I was flying at 40,000 feet from Chicago to Austin in a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737, and I was listening to this season’s first night of Major League Baseball. How did I do this, you might ask. Nope, didn’t leave my cell phone’s 3G on. I purchased Southwest’s in-flight Wi-Fi for the price of $8, and at 1 mbps I was set to go. You wouldn’t believe how much I enjoyed the flight. It was pure fun. Much of this must have had something to do with the fact that ever since 9/11 I’d associated air travel with inconvenience. I’d even assumed that in-flight Wi-Fi would be unwieldy. For, previously I’d heard that Southwest’s in-flight Wi-Fi hovered around 1 mbps, and being a literature guy even way back in high school when we covered such things in my computer science class (which means that I’d spend those nights reading Lord of the Rings rather than about bandwidth in my computer science textbook), this seemed like an inordinately small amount of bandwidth. Hence my elation when the sounds of summer were back and I was enjoying Major League Baseball by the time the beverage cart came around, with no bandwidth problems to speak of.

(Image credit: ABC TV)

On one level I enjoyed the experience simply because I hadn’t expected to hear my ball team’s first game of the new season on account of the flight. There was that elation that only comes with something you didn’t expect to receive. But aside from that, on a deeper level, I think I enjoyed the experience because I was enjoying the great American pastime in proper American style, which is to say in excess. No, there weren’t oversized fountain drinks. And no, I wasn’t being bombarded with adds for this coal company or that insurance company. But I was listening to a game that belongs in the countryside 40,000 feet in the air. At its heart, baseball is a pastoral game, isn’t it? Even if fans aren’t thinking about it, I’m sure part of the pleasure that most derive from the game stems from the fact that the sport allows us to experience the rural in the midst of the urban. And though I’d like to ponder whether or not this illusion is healthy, for the purposes of this blog it’s probably best to think of it as a subtle rhetorical appeal. And I can attest that this appeal even works at 40,000 feet. So though one might think that live sports are out of place on a cross-country flight (not to mention Wi-Fi), I’m happy to attest that they enrich the experience.

Renovating Austin: New Homes In Old Neighborhoods

Jay Voss — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0000

(Image credit: Jay Voss)

There’s an odd thing happening in Austin’s older neighborhoods: people are moving in, tearing down whatever 1930s homes they find on their lots, and in these spaces constructing decidedly modern dwellings. The subsequent structure stands out on its block like you wouldn’t believe. There’s such a disparity between the neighborhood’s older ranch homes and these new structures of corrugated metal and cantilevered edges. It’s a contrast between the standout and the ubiquitous, and the standout wins the eye every time. To make things more interesting: the locals I’ve asked hate these new structures, while those of us who’ve moved here recently tend to find them more inviting. I’m not sure where I stand on the issue. Although I see and understand the detriment one might perceive in continuity’s disruption, isn’t such materialistic continuity exactly what Austinites are constantly going out of their way to subvert? What gives? Aren’t we all supposed to applaud when something immaterial keeps Austin weird? Coming at the issue from a different angle, I’m a fairly serious student of architecture, and so for me it’s always refreshing to see tasteful structures going up (no matter what the situation, really). To this end I think architecture in its purist form encourages balance and harmony, and building a mansion amidst cottages (just for irony’s sake, I guess) is arrogant and misguided.

(Image credit: Jay Voss)

I bring all this up because such a mansion is going in just around the corner from where I live. The site’s been under construction for about 18 months now, which seems a bit long given the speed with which most of the structure’s gone up. Either the project ran into some financing issues or everyone’s really taking their time. I tend to suspect the latter. Crews have constantly been working on the home over the past year – everything from the windows to the floors to the fixtures seems to have been installed with patience and care. This long construction hasn’t bothered me one bit, as I’ve greatly enjoyed considering the uninhabited house. It’s an unconventional structure. For starters, the lot is oddly shaped – it’s an extremely long rectangle (maybe 50 feet by 150 feet). It’s on the edge of a block, with one 150-foot side marked by busy 31^st street. The obvious place to put this home would be as far from 31^st street as possible, affording the future residents some privacy. Surprisingly, the architect (Jay Farrell) decided to plot the home right along 31^st street, with the front of the structure facing inwards towards the side of the neighboring house. The house is at once hidden from and exposed to a busy street, and I can’t decide whether the decision is humble or masturbatory. Before I jump to conclusions, the new residents may have kids or animals that they want to shield from the street, and maybe this is the best way to safeguard the vulnerable.

(Image credit: Jay Voss)

And so it’s interesting to think about how this very modern structure relates to its chosen neighbors. Down the street are a few homes on the Texas State Historical Register, across the street is the Austin Zen Center, across and further along down 31^st street are many ranch homes that constitute (I’ve been told) Austin’s old red light district, and to the garage-side of the new home is a small apartment complex that can be a bit rough. Back when the new home’s lot was still vacant, some of the complex’s residents used to blast heavy metal through an open door and try to shoot bottles in the vacant lot with a riffle. In this way, to varying degrees, it has always seemed as though one resident of the complex is imposing themselves on another. I wonder if the proud owners of the new home across the street have any knowledge of this? I wonder if they have any knowledge of the traffic created by the Austin Zen Center on weekends? At heart, I wonder if the attempted urbanism of this lovely new home is compromised by a simple misunderstanding of place.

(Image credit: Jay Voss)

I can’t say what existed in this home’s place previously – it’s been a vacant lot for as long as I can remember – and I’m not sure what my new neighbors are trying to prove. The great architecture is, sadly, a bit like a sore thumb. I’d like to give the architect my approval, however – he designed a great building given what his client’s offered him.

This Week's New Yorker Cover and Frank Lloyd Wright

Jay Voss — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0000

(Image credit: The New Yorker)

This week’s New Yorker cover features a rendering of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum, and I thought the occasion merited some meditation on what the museum means to us today. It’s an odd shaped building, and I can’t think of one that’s been built like it sense. Snøhetta’s Oslo Opera House, pictured below and opened in April 2008, is a great example of how contemporary architects are still designing buildings for the arts in brave new ways. (That fantastic structure mimics a Norwegian glacier melting into the sea, and many of its smart features work to invite all of Oslo, not just the operatic elite, to inhabit within and without.) But no structure for the arts built since 1960 has been as original as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum. Opened on 21 October 1959, the Guggenheim Museum is Frank Lloyd Wright’s last masterpiece. It was (more or less) commissioned in 1943, but the project took Wright 15 years and over 700 sketches to complete. Such revision is unusual for a Wright project, of course – most of his designs were completed in a matter of hours. (I suspect he was always thinking about his projects, and thus when the time came to get his ideas down on paper for clients there wasn’t much work to do.) What’s so unique about the Guggenheim Museum is that it’s a descending spiral. This design has two benefits: visitors can effortlessly enjoy the museum’s exhibit as they casually descend a ramp and, more importantly, the changing diameter of the spiral always allows for natural lighting at the art. Form follows function.

(Image credit: Wikipedia)

The New Yorker cover is interesting in that the Guggenheim Museum is not its subject, yet the building is featured prominently behind a scene from Central Park. That scene, let’s be honest, features a bunch of dogs dressed lamely according to breed. What are we to make of this montage? Was the Guggenheim placed in the background merely because everybody knows it sits prominently on New York’s Central Park? But anyone who knows this would also know that the stretch of Central Park in front of the Guggenheim isn’t fit for a dog fashion show – the museum’s right in front of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. Of course, I suppose the ridiculousness of the dog show negates some expectation of reality. But then why the Guggenheim? Any number of buildings on Central Park West would have sufficed.

(Image credit: The New Yorker)

I suspect that perhaps the New Yorker cover is a subtle commentary on artsy pretention. Whatever you conclude about the cover will depend on what you think about certain fashions. I myself loved the dapper Dalmatian, and took to enjoying the ways in which each dog’s breed determined their wardrobe. The Pug is correctly dressed like one of the grandmothers from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. But I can also see how someone not interested in the different ways people dress might find all of the dogs on the cover ridiculous. Just the same way that someone might find some of the Guggenheim’s notorious avant-garde art ridiculous. But I think that the take away here is that the museum is iconic. It just sits there in its spirals, and will last longer than whatever trendy business happens outside (or inside). By allowing form to follow function in such an extreme way, Frank Lloyd Wright’s last masterpiece clearly inspired architects as far away as Norway.

The Mid-2000 Nike Watch and the 2014 Apple iWatch

Jay Voss — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 19:00:50 +0000

(Image credit: Macrumors.com)

A few weeks ago I wrote about the breaking news that there might be an Apple iWatch on the horizon. For those of you who missed the post, I surmised that the device would be a useless accessory. We got the iPad for those moments between our iPhones and our iMacs (as Steve Jobs famously put it during the latter product’s initial announcement). Presumably we got the iPad Mini for those moments between our iPad and our iPhone, whatever those moments might be. And now we’ll have an iWatch for the moments between our iPhones and our….wait, what?! The idea of the possibility of this much interactivity strikes me as bizarre. The internet’s great and it makes my life easier, etc., but I’m the kind of guy who uses his iPhone as an alarm clock but waits to read emails from students until after a cup of coffee. Know what I mean? The idea of spending the first ten minutes of my waking day getting caught up on what happened in my work life while I was sleeping strikes me as a terrible way to live. And wouldn’t you get an iWatch to do just this? Wouldn’t you get an iWatch to get caught up on work when you should really be doing something else? All these new Apple products are starting to remind me of a lesson I learned in middle school: just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Just because you can cram an iOS onto your wrist doesn’t mean you should.

(Image credit: Zdnet.com)

Anyways, the reason I’m bringing all this up again is that earlier this week Bloomberg News published a story in which they reported that Jony Ive, Apple’s chief designer, previously ordered a box of Nike watches that were produce in the mid-2000’s. The article is unclear about when Ive ordered these watches, but they factoid should allow us a bit of insight into what Apple might have in store for consumers. As you can see in the image at the top of this post, the Nike watch features a relatively solid strap, and they more or less stiffly clip onto the user’s wrist. Ive’s order of Nike watches, coupled with previous reports that Apple was investigating possibilities with curved glass (see their patent for the glass above), suggests that they have some futuristic device in the hopper. And this is crazy in the context of a watch, I think – most people under the age of 25 don’t wear watches. The reason they don’t wear watches is that they often have a phone in their pocket with which they can check the time. People who grew up without the ubiquity of cell phones often always wear watches. The next time you’re at a mixed-generation gathering, take a poll of who’s wearing watches – I promise it’ll be a generational thing.

So, I suppose any decision to wear an iWatch would probably be an aesthetic thing, mainly. While the device will surely feature some nice programs and whatnot, one’s ability to say…type on such a product will inherently be limited by the size of the thing. Sorry to bombard you with more thoughts on the forthcoming Apple iWatch, but Ive’s order of Nike watches seemed to warrant the issue.

Check Out this Imaginative Map of Renaissance Venice

Jay Voss — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 15:00:00 +0000

(Image credit: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

I was reading Galileo the other day when I became interested in Renaissance Venice (the place had sublime music, visual arts, and all the culture that comes with the great flowerings of these things), and a few Google searches later I found myself staring at the map above for about 20 minutes. (Click here for a larger copy.) The map was drawn by Bolognino Zaltieri in 1565. Now, it’s already allergy season here in central Texas and I admit that I feel as though I’m on allergy meds without having even taken any, so my fascination with the map could be due to various things beyond my own intellect, however, you’ve got to admit – this map is awesome. It’s just crazy to imagine living amongst one of those waterways several hundred years ago. How about all the bridges? And do you notice that a pedestrian going from one mini-island to another might have to plan their trip in advance, as not every mini-island is connected to its peers? And then, of course, you wonder how it was all built without the aid of gasoline-powered construction tools. I thought I’d share it all with you. It’s just mesmerizing how a city built upon a marsh contains so many things, and how a mapmaker was able to portray segmented happenings and city life.

(Image credit: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

I think my favorite aspect of this map is detailed above. This is presumably the section of Venice that was preserved for shipbuilding and maintenance. Venice did have a good navy back in the day, and seeing this image of Renaissance Italy makes me think of those space stations in Star Trek where you sometimes see spacecraft under construction. Like those space stations in Star Trek, where the docks are just extensions of man-made machine out onto space, here the city takes advantage of the fact that it’s inundated by water. Elsewhere, it’s fun to notice all the churches. It’s almost as if every few houses has their own church. St. Mark’s Square is largely as it looks today. It’s fun to look south at the Dorsoduro and see all the small vegetable plots – not what you’ll find there today.

(Image credit: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Galileo’s biggest contribution to the history of thought was his realization that the conditions found in a system tend to work irrespective of the conditions of that system. So, in other words, just because the Earth might be speeding around the Sun doesn’t mean that we on Earth will feel the effects of that movement. Einstein obviously built upon this later in his Theory of Relativity. Looking at this map of Renaissance Italy, it kind of makes sense that someone living there would have come up with such an “inertial system”. In the map waters and time pass throughout Venice, and unmoved, Venice goes on being a cultural capital. Obviously, Galileo’s thoughts and discoveries owe much to technological innovation, new communications technologies (the post!), and the general mingling of ideas, but looking at this map of Venice, one can easily see how he might have been able to develop an aesthetic in such a place.

It sure is an interesting map to look at and daydream at for a bit, with or without allergies.

Finding Ossian: Fun in an Eighteenth-Century Pleasure Garden

Jay Voss — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 18:58:59 +0000

(Image credit: Jay Voss)

About a month ago I was fortunate enough to find myself outside of Ossian’s hall. I was on the banks of the River Braan in Craigvinean Forest, just to the west of Dunkeld, Scotland. Crazier still, though I’m writing a dissertation concerning the Scottish Enlightenment, I hadn’t set out that morning to find where Ossian came from. I was just in the area doing a bit of hiking (or “hill walking,” rather), and on the last day I set out for something I’d been told by a local that I just had to see. He called it “The Hermitage”. What I was to discover that morning was a pleasure garden designed in the later half of the eighteenth century for the Dukes of Atholl. So I set out from Dunkeld on a mulch path next to the strong River Tay, and about a mile and a half from town where the River Braan enters the River Tay I headed up into the hills and entered the Craigvinean Forest, which is a beautiful old-growth swath of Douglas firs. As I was soon to discover, what was crazy about the pleasure garden, and thus why I think it might be fun to present it here, was that it is a visual representation of the immediate fanfare that surrounded James Macpherson’s eighteenth-century cycle of epic poems.

(Image credit: Jay Voss)

These days modern readers really get hung up on the fact that Macpherson’s Ossian cycle is largely fabricated, but back in the day the work was an international literary sensation. Such esteemed readers as Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon Bonaparte, and the young Walter Scott were huge fans. (OK, Napoleon isn’t necessarily known for his delicate literary tastes, but nevertheless you get the idea about Macpherson’s reach.) The first structure I came across in the pleasure garden was the actual Hermitage (seen above). It was built in 1757 by the 2^nd Duke of Atholl as a viewing station for the gorgeous Black Linn falls that lie below. In the course of later additions to the garden (during the early 1780s) the space was dedicated as a shrine to Ossian. The interior space was then lined with mirrors, which reflect the Black Linn falls’ light in an amazing way. I do not have a photograph of this effect to share, unfortunately, as the overall lighting in the space wasn’t kind to my iPhone’s aperture, but suffice it to say that William Wordsworth wrote a couple poems while stopping in this room in 1803.

(Image credit: Jay Voss)

Further back in the garden one can find Ossian’s cave, seen above. It isn’t so much a cave as an igloo made of rocks, but the literary fan in me couldn’t help but be delighted. This structure was constructed in 1760 by the third Earl of Breadalbane. What a better way to celebrate the blind poet Ossian than with this lovely cave? The limited capacity of the blog genre doesn’t necessarily allow me the space here to expound on this garden’s aesthetic heritage, but in closing I’d like to say that Ossian is really perfect subject matter for a garden. Gardens, and particularly eighteenth-century gardens, are explorations of the extent to which man can control nature, or the extent to which man can play with nature to produce something that seems more natural than what was originally there. Throughout the eighteenth century, man’s ability to shape nature on grand scales was considered to be a testament of human progress. (One only needs to think of André Le Nôtre’s design of the Champs-Élysées for an example of this.) How to design a wilderness in tribute to an ancient blind poet of the Scottish highlands?

Keep it wild and place a nice waterfall in view.

Would you buy an iWatch?

Jay Voss — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:00:00 +0000

(Image credit: Business Insider)

Speculation has flared up this week about what Apple might think to include in an “iWatch”. This happened after Nick Bilton revealed in The New York Times blog Monday that the company has been experimenting with a curved form of Gorilla glass. Per usual, Apple has not commented on the product and we shouldn’t expect them to any time soon. But I thought it might be fun here to consider two things: first, a look at some of the many iterations of what an iWatch might look like, and secondly, a meditation on the potential uses of such a “smart watch”. Over the past few years I’ve been seeing ramblings of the coming of the smart watch, and I’m just not sure these things will be of use to twenty-first century humans. Younger people are increasingly less prone to wearing watches because, for the most part, they’ve already got a phone on their person. Are we to expect that we’ll want a smart watch in addition to a smart phone? Doesn’t such excess betray the supposed convenience of technology that made us fall in love with it in the first place?

(Image credit: Cult of Mac)

The photo at the top of this post is Business Insider’s sarcastic take on how Apple might market the iWatch. (In fairness it’s hard to know if the sarcasm is intentional on Business Insider’s part.) The hypothetical FaceTime interface suggested in the picture seems like it’d be entirely functional. There’s a front-facing camera on the watch, and enough screen space to make use of the straightforward app. I must admit that, although FaceTime wasn’t the first thought that popped into my head when I read the word “iWatch”, now that I think about it, it entirely makes sense that people would want to hold a virtual conversation while walking down the street or driving their car. I walk to and from work, and quite often I see students stopping right in the middle of a busy sidewalk to select a new song on their iPod or drivers running red lights while texting. So, since we’re not already making those considerations where we should, why not just FaceTime while we’re at it? (I’m kidding of course.) The image at the top of this paragraph represents what I think to be a more believable rendering of the iWatch (the Business Insider version doesn’t have any curved glass). Here the device clearly runs some variation of the iOS operating system. It’s even got a FaceTime camera. I wonder if this iWatch would run iBooks? Wouldn’t it be comfortable to read a book with your arm in the checking-your-watch position?

Honestly though, when I first read the word “iWatch”, I was trying to make sense of how such a device might be useful, and the thought that immediately came into my head was: “Oh great! Now I could go running and just leave my iPod Nano at home, since I’d already have my iWatch on from my work day.” But, on second thought, can you imagine running with headphones plugged into something on your wrist? That headphone chord would be flying all over the place. When I go running around Austin, it’s quite often on rocky trails. What if I slipped on a wet rock or something? Surely my headphones would rip right out of my iWatch. Maybe Apple’s also designing some series of arm bands to be worn up one’s arm that act as fasteners for the headphone cable? After all, Apple did show in their recent quarterly report that they are making more from accessories than their smart phone competitors are making from their phones.

New Images of Richard III and Robert Johnson

Jay Voss — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 15:00:00 +0000

(Image credit: BBC)

It’s only halfway through the week and we’ve already seen new images of King Richard III and Robert Johnson. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the week has in store. These pictures are a big deal. The images help us to reimagine the persona of these figures, and seeing that I thought I’d take a moment in this week’s post to highlight the discoveries. The Tudor kings who came to the English thrown after Richard III perpetrated history that suggested Richard was a grotesque tyrant. Commentators on this week’s discovery are suggesting how traditional renderings, perpetuated by luminaries such as William Shakespeare, might be historically inaccurate. Shakespeare’s Richard III is a complex plotter who we appreciate for his witticisms, but whose disgusting figure personified his vileness. This understanding might be far from the truth, for whatever it’s worth. Richard III did have scoliosis (see the remnants of his spine below), but scholars are revisiting the extent of his supposed vileness. As for Robert Johnson, previously only two images of the guitar player were known to exist, one of them merely being the size of a postage stamp. In this newly authenticated image, we’re treated to another glimpse of someone we hardly know.

(Image credit: New York Times)

The exhumation and authentication of Richard III’s bones is largely the result of a concerned British citizen named Philippa Langley. Interviewed by The New York Times, Ms. Langley commented that “I think he wanted to be found, he was ready to be found, and we found him, and now we can begin to tell the true story of who he was.” Richard III was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field, in August of 1485, where his forces met those of Henry Tudor. And though Richard’s own forces outnumbered Henry’s by as many as 3,000 troops, the battle was not Richard’s to win. At some point in the battle Richard III was hit in the head with a halberd and died. No English king has died in battle since. The body was carried roughly 20 miles from Bosworth Field to Leicestor, where it was buried in a corner of Greyfriars Priory. 500 years later the site was a car park, paved and concreted over. Ms. Langley suspected the spot of Richard III’s burial based on an account of the events as recorded by John Rouse, a historian writing 200 years after the late king’s death. A team led by Ms. Langley and the Richard III Society unearthed the body, ran DNA test with two known living descendents of Richard III, and announced this week that they’d found the late king’s body. The photo at the top of this post, supplied by the BBC, compares one of Richard III’s known descendents with a quality reconstruction of the late king’s head.

(Image credit: The Guardian)

The new Robert Johnson photograph turned up eight years ago, when a classical guitarist from Houston named Steven Schein was looking around on eBay for a guitar. The eBay caption for the photo read “Old Snapshot Blues Guitar BB King???” Schein bought it. The more he considered the picture the clearer it became that neither of the men photographed in the picture was B.B. King. But the fellow on the left did have a narrow left eye and longer-than-normal fingers – attributes that are known of Robert Johnson. In the six years since, Lois Gibson (who works for the Houston police department) has worked to authenticate the photo – and now she’s sure that the figure on the left is Robert Johnson, reports The Guardian. I’ve always liked the mystery that surrounds Robert Johnson’s character. Grateful though I am for this new portrait, I’d be perfectly happy if no others surface during my lifetime. I like the fact that there are no videos of the bluesman. I like imaging what I can’t hear.

Is the relatively frequent disappearance of important data a natural feature of human societies?

Jay Voss — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 18:33:37 +0000

(Image credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve always been amazed that our ancestors lost copies of gospels we think existed, Ciceronian tracks we know were read, and Shakespeare plays we know to have been performed. How do such valuable things disappear? Who’s accountable for these losses? Who ever commissioned Vasari paint a fresco over da Vinci’s The Battle of Anghiari in the Palazzo Vecchio’s Salone dei Cinquecento? (No one today would dare destroy the Vasari – a masterwork in its own right – to see if the da Vinci lay underneath; though we’re 95% sure the da Vinci lies under it, I’d say.) In truth, the real history of these lost artifacts is much more complex, and it’s kind of hard to hold anyone accountable for the losses. Different cultures in different times appreciate different treasures from our past. There exists a whole bookshelf’s worth of scholarship about Shakespeare’s only moderate popularity in his own day, explaining perhaps how Love’s Labour’s Won or Cardenio could have fallen through the cracks. Nor should Vasari feel bad for taking a da Vinci battle painting from us. Leonardo was experimenting with a new painting technique after a bad experience with variations of the fresco medium in The Last Supper, and in The Battle of Anghiari we think he used a thick undercoat of something (possibly a wax) to help preserve the finished product. But the medium used in The Battle of Anghiari was even more prone to decomposition than that of The Last Supper, and thus the painting remained damaged and unfinished for over 100 years before Vasari picked up his brush. The drawing above is a 1603 copy by Peter Paul Rubens.

(Image credit: Foreign Policy blog)

I’ve been thinking about all this since last Friday, when news broke that libraries in Timbuktu had been destroyed in Mali’s ongoing chaos. As Lila Azam Zanganeh reports in the New Yorker’s blog, up to three of the city’s eight libraries were probably destroyed by rebels during their rampage. These archives contained centuries of learning. The most important of them was the Ahmed Baba Centre, which contained up to 100,000 different pieces of writing, many of them dating back to the thirteenth century. The writings cover such diverse topics as political science, history, botany, poetry, anatomy, women’s rights, and music. These are all topics that, as Zanganeh reports in the New Yorker blog, are typically deemed evil by Islamic fundamentalists. (Although, ironically, the city’s medieval universities were always Islamic).

(Image credit: Wikipedia)

Understanding how remote Timbuktu, situated on the southern extremity of the Sahara Desert, came to be the center of learning is important. Many valuable trade routes passed through the city from the fifteenth century onwards (see map above), and this commerce, coupled with the town’s mosque and university, produced a significant culture of intellectual pursuit. Scholars and scribes in Timbuktu wrote about a range of topics, and they assumed a fundamental value in recording these advancements for future generations. In the quick three to four hours that I have in my schedule this week to post a blog entry for your delectation, I couldn’t ascertain what the shifting borders of the medieval Sahara were. So it’s hard for me to say with any authority whether the city has always found itself in such a sparse environment (look it up on Google Maps), but it’s fair to assume that Timbuktu has at certain times enjoyed greater wealth and lushness than at present. Just the same as it once enjoyed a more vibrant intellectual culture. I suppose part of what the rebels must have been after in destroying these libraries was a visual articulation of their poise. They wanted outsiders to look over at Mali and see that they mean business. What this suggests to me, however, is the importance of learning to all peoples, and the extent to which intellectual hubs can come and go. Central Texas, where I live, is currently experiencing an extended drought. The price of drinking water is sure to skyrocket over the next 50 years. Who knows what effect these economics will have on our archive, the Harry Ransom Center, much less the city’s vibrant culture.

Dreamlinin’: Adventures on a Boeing 787

Jay Voss — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:00:00 +0000

The other day I flew from New York to Houston on a new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. This was just a few days before the aircraft was deemed unsafe for travel. Now I count myself among the lucky few who’ve had a chance to experience the vehicle. What’s all the hype about? The plane is Seattle-based Boeing’s newest in 20 years, and clearly represents their bid to remain one of the world’s top airline manufactures. (Europe’s Airbus A380 has presumably pressured Boeing to innovate.) Before last week’s grounding of all Dreamliners around the world, Boeing was struggling to meet demand. Before last week’s grounding there were roughly 100 of these planes in the global skies, and roughly five times that amount on order. Carriers include All Nippon Airways, Japan Airlines, and Air India. The only American airline company that flies them as of this writing is United Airlines. They own six Dreamliners, and I was lucky enough to be flying on their first, which has been in operation since early November. The Dreamliner’s issues had been in the news prior to my flight, but I did not learn about them until I was leisurely reading The New York Times midflight. Problems I read about included cracking windshields, wings leaking fuel, and batteries catching on fire. All this made for one of the more notable flights of my relatively short life.

(Image credit: airlinereporter.com)

The plane featured plenty of upgrades to the 737 that I’m used to. Instead of window shades, Boeing’s new 787 features window tinting. By merely pressing a button you can shade your window with increasing hues of blue. No matter how dark you decide to shade your window, you can still see out of it, which is a nice touch. Oddly, none of the shades are allowed in use during takeoff or landing, which, given that you could more or less see out of them while maximally shaded, doesn’t make sense. (What’s more, given that so much of the Dreamliner is given over to electronic innovation, and given that the shades are entirely electronic, it doesn’t make sense that they don’t automatically clear when need be.) There’s much more overhead space on the Dreamliner than anything you’re used to (except if you’ve flown on an Airbus A380), surely to the delight of passengers with certain phobias. Each seat has a USB input, presumably for charging various devices. I didn’t plug in my iPad, but it’s conceivable that one could play personal device content through that seat’s personal entertainment screen (although I’m not sure why someone would want to do this – the plane’s entertainment probably isn’t as good as and iPad or whatever else consumers have these days). Apparently, the shell of the 787 Dreamliner is made out of carbon fiber, making the plane lighter and thus more efficient. They really tout this last feature. United Airlines had a promotional video (at the top of this post) that they play at the beginning of all their flights (even if you’re stuck on one of the cigar-sized “regional” planes), and the main thing they emphasize in the clip is the Dreamliner’s increased efficiency. I couldn’t help but ask each time I saw the advertisement: What does efficiency matter? It took United three flights to get me from my origin to my destination. That’s three polluting take offs when one would have sufficed. And to think that such excesses are going on all day, 365 days a year. If these planes are more efficient, American consumers will probably think of the savings and reason that it means they can fly more for the same old price.

For my money, I’d rather take an “old” mechanical plane. Well not quite – for my money I’d rather take a train. But I guess what I mean is that, when I’m up at 40,000 feet, I’d rather be indebted to gears and bolts and combustion – not batteries and fancy new electronics.

What Obama and Romney Talked About

Jay Voss — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 14:37:00 +0000

(Image credit: New York Times)

Throughout the presidential election I was amazed how little either candidate discussed climate change – that is, neither said anything about it and both championed “clean coal,” whatever that is. Hearing the phrase “clean coal” makes me think about what it must be like for a quinquagenarian to eat Wendy’s before going in to get their blood pressure checked, and how on their drive to the doc they might shamelessly try something to mitigate the effects of their lack of restraint. What’s the humane and intelligent response to such tomfoolery? And then to think how much of that “clean coal” is powering the servers that are hosting this blog and all others out there on the interwebs…quit reading now! But of course none of us are going to quit reading or streaming, or eating Wendy’s. Hence why neither candidate thought the subject smart enough to broach, I guess.

(Image credit: Associated Press)

The word cloud pictured at the top of this post is probably old news to some of you, but it serves my point. It can be found on The New York Times website, and it’s neat because there’s a search bar at the top in which you can determine how often speakers at the two presidential nominating conventions said a given word. Neither party mentioned drones at all, and only Democrats mentioned climate change – at a rate of 0.5 times per every 25,000 words. What words did the two parties frequently mention? Democrats overwhelmingly uttered the words Medicare, women, economy, vote, health, workers, seniors, and forward. Republicans overwhelmingly mentioned the words business, leadership, freedom, better, government, and success. The parties mentioned immigration an equal number of times, which given the Hispanic turnout in the election, it’s nice to see that actions still matter more than words. Republicans surprisingly mentioned hope more often than Democrats at the 2012 conventions, and surprisingly these instances weren’t responses to Obama’s 2008 campaign theme. I’m not really sure why Democrats mentioned fight more than Republicans. But in all seriousness, taking stock of the words uttered by Democrats and Republicans at their nominating parties – the moment both teams start making their formal arguments – it should be clear why the Dems prevailed. Medicare, women, economy, vote, health, workers, seniors, and forward are all much more substantial kernels than business, leadership, freedom, better, government, and success. I would have liked to hear about the climate, however.

Bel Geddes, Surprising Office Buildings of the Early Twentieth Century, and an American Work Ethic

Jay Voss — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 23:36:25 +0000

(Image credit: Harry Ransom Center)

The other day I was walking through the Harry Ransom Center and noticed some very cool designs for office buildings that Bel Geddes penned in the late 1920s (pictured above). I wasn’t surprised that he had come up with such things, of course – the ongoing Bel Geddes exhibition at the Center, “I Have Seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America,” features an exceptional range of content, from baseball stadiums to cruise ships to Worlds Fair exhibits. By I did stop for a second and wonder “Why an office building?” It’s Bel Geddes design for the Toledo Scale Factory Machine Shop. What’s so striking about the design is its focus on aesthetics. This isn’t surprising, of course, given that in most everything Bel Geddes ever designed, function follows form. But this notion is quite contrary to the Modernist architecture of the period, and I couldn’t help but think of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Johnson Wax Building. Aesthetically the structures are similar, but Wright’s focus is on his building’s interior, which he made into a temple of work. The exterior of Wright’s building is completely in the service of its interior. But somehow Wright’s trademark consideration of lighting resulted in a building that looks like Bel Geddes’. Yet they are vastly different structures, despite appearances. Except for cost considerations. When Toledo Scale’s president presented Bel Geddes plans to the company’s board of directors, he warned that the building “would cost lots of money and be extremely different, even weird looking.” Wright’s plans inspired a similar response.

(Image credit: zeospot.com)

Wright’s Johnson Wax building (above) shares much of the abstract futurism of Bel Geddes’ design. In the Toledo Scale Factory Machine Shop design, why two buildings and a circular structure interconnected by a pathway? As for the Johnson Wax Building, why stacked ovals combined in weird angles? Which of course makes me wonder what Bel Geddes was up to in the first place. If one’s an architect, their work is entirely dependant on clients. Clients are one half of architects’ equations. If an architect has no clients, their work will rarely materialize. If Frank Lloyd Wright never had one single client, it’d be as if Beethoven never had one single orchestra or quartet willing to play his music. But Bel Geddes approach to his work is much different (granted, I know Bel Geddes was not an architect by trade). He had "clients," but seeing some of these projects through seems to have been the last item on his agenda. Bel Geddes seems to have been quite content that some of his designs remained in the abstract, though a few of them did actually materialize. He’s like a fashion designer, I suppose. And so why dapple into corporate aesthetics?

(Image credit: worldarchitecturemap.org)

I’ve always thought that the main room in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Johnson Wax Building is one of the most elegant spaces in America (pictured above). For this room Wright designed lily pad-like stems out of concrete that are strong enough to support something like twenty times their own weight. These stems undergirded a glass ceiling, and in between the pads natural light falls easily on the workers below. More so than most other office buildings in America, Wright created a workspace in which the outside weather conditions determined the working interior environment. This space is a celebration full of respect for all that those inside are up to. It is not some cynical glass cube that inadvertently makes its residents specimens. It’s a democratic space celebrating the American brand of ambition. And this is not to suggest that Bel Geddes merely designed zoos, of course. Rather, I can see Frank Lloyd Wright taking a note from the designer’s earlier building. Wright was not the kind of person who could admit something like this.

(Image credit: Harry Ransom Center)

Check out the Harry Ransom Center’s Bel Geddes exhibition if you get a chance – it’s well worth the trip.

The views expressed herein are expressly those of a graduate student, and they have nothing to do with how the Harry Ransom Center thinks or feels about Bel Geddes, although I’m nearly certain they’d be sympathetic.

Staging Election Night

Jay Voss — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:00:00 +0000

(Image credit: Chicago Tribune)

Did anybody notice how many American flags graced the stage of Mitt Romney’s rally last week on Election Night? Why were they grouped in threes? What was the Romney campaign trying to suggest by dressing the stage in such a way? That Mitt Romney was patriotic and put America before all things? That not only is Mitt Romney patriotic, but he can afford many American flags? That like all-things American, our flags should come in large proportions? Is there anything in Mormon theology that preferences the number three? If three is somehow significant, why give us four sets of three? Maybe we got four sets of three because this way Romney could be positioned in the middle of flags during his speech? Are the three sets of gaps between the tri-flags on Mitt Romney’s Election Night stage significant? If Mitt Romney’s was supposed to stand between one of the gaps, and Paul Ryan was supposed to stand in another, does anybody know who was supposed to stand in the third gap? Does anybody know where one can buy 12 regulation-size American flags? Never mind the flags, does anybody know where one can get the flag poles that have the eagles on top?

(Image credit: Chicago Tribune)

The Obama campaign’s setup made a bit more sense. The only thing I was initially wondering about was the fact that there were high school gym bleachers behind the podium where Obama was to address the nation. And I noticed this during the Carl Rove-recall-Ohio debacle, at which point MSNBC (the station I was watching) was talking about Rove’s confusion and showing a broad shot of the Obama supporters celebrating in the Chicago convention center. From this angle, the riser at the back did look a bit out of place. Of course, when Obama came out and started speaking, from the TV angle it looked just as if he had a diverse group of people behind him, which is certainly what his campaign must have been going for. I don’t watch too many campaign speeches, or at least I like to tell myself that I don’t watch too many campaign speeches, but I’ve got to think that having bleachers in back is almost a standard of the genre. Whenever clips of such events are shown on The Daily Show or wherever else I see them, it makes complete sense that folks are standing behind a given candidate.

I wonder if the difference between the Romney and Obama campaigns here speaks to a larger point, and something that ultimately has to do with how things turned out. The Obama team was clearly aware of who their audience was (folks watching around the country on TVs), and of how their Election Night stage would come across to those tuning in. The Romney campaign apparently didn’t think of such things. Or if they did, they must have come to the conclusion that their fans wanted a certain cynical and gaudy excessiveness.

Bob Dylan's Thoughts on the Election

Jay Voss — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 15:00:00 +0000

(Image credit: Star Tribune)

Hard to know what to write about here. The regular 9 AM postings of this blog necessitate that I write a full day in advance, and I have nothing to say about the election returns, about which I’m sure is only what you wish to be reading on the morning after a general election. Sorry. But it seems like some discussion of Bob Dylan’s election predictions are worth your while, however. Two nights ago in Madison, Wisconsin, Dylan was wrapping up yet another gig on his current tour with Mark Knopfler. He’d just taken an encore break and was coming back on stage for the night’s final number. Before continuing on with the music he said, “We tried to play good tonight since the president was here today.” (Obama had earlier wrapped up a rally in Madison.) Not only this, but Dylan went on to say, “Don’t believe the media. I think it’s going to be a landslide.” Now, the obvious response is: “What does Bob Dylan know about election polls, much less the Electoral College? How could he possibly be calling this thing so early? There’s no way.” Well, I wonder if he might indeed be on to something.

(Image credit: The Guardian)

Except for the voter exit polls, which are currently taking place as voters leave the polls and thus haven’t been concluded as of writing, most of the general election’s polling has dealt with landline phone numbers. Now, when I think of the people I know with landline phones, they’re disproportionately older than 50. Asking my peers today, out of maybe 20 friends I polled on the issue, only 1 of them has a landline. So, if anything, all the polling reports in which Mitt Romney’s down by 1% or maybe even tied with Barack, well, they’re probably a bit generous to the governor. The polling companies have likely asked groups of voters naturally more predisposed to vote Republican what they’re thinking of the election, and on average Obama’s up by 1 or 2 percentage points nationally. The margin of error on these things is usually about 3%, and if the polling process is a little bit biased towards Romney, it’s not really that much of a stretch to see many (if not all) of the close states breaking Obama’s way tonight. And the major media outlets haven’t mentioned any of this in the endless quest for readership and profits. A “tight race” is good for the media outlets profit-wise, and I wonder if this economic certainty has been influencing what we’re being told to think about the election. All this, I suspect, is what Bob Dylan was getting at in his Madison comments two nights ago.

Bel Geddes' "All-Weather, All-Purpose Stadium"

Jay Voss — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 18:11:31 +0000

(Image credit: Harry Ransom Center)

The other day I was walking through the ongoing Norman Bel Geddes exhibition over at the Harry Ransom Center, and I spotted a photo of the designer with Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella. You wouldn’t believe my surprise. What in the world were Robinson and Campanella doing with Bel Geddes? Up until that point in the gallery, I’d seen absolutely nothing having to do with baseball. And I didn’t think I would. Bel Geddes aesthetic preoccupation with what on the surface appears to be simply aerodynamics suggests a version of the future that we’re still trying to attain, like Ahab and his whale. Whether our cities will ever look like his remains to be seen. Perhaps I’m missing the point a bit, and maybe much of Bel Geddes’ work represents aesthetic advertisements rather than specific blueprints. But one can’t deny that Bel Geddes’ designs intently seek the immediate, the sleek, and the fashionable. These are all preoccupations inherently at odds with the boredom of baseball.

One of the reasons we love baseball is that it’s a pastoral break from the present. In many ways it’s completely contingent upon the past. The successes and failures of players are measured against the successes and failures of all who have come before. In its design it can be a vestige of Victorian oddity. It’s the only sport I can think of in which the defense possesses the ball. It’s a countryside recreation that’s most often played in cities. It’s doesn’t require a clock. And in the absence of countdown and a suggestion of veldt, baseball offers one time to think. Before and after each out players and fans have time to recollect or ponder, whether the game or not the game. And in these pauses baseball is boring when compared to modern electronic life. We have an aversion to silence in modern America, especially in public places. When, for instance, was the last time you went to a coffee shop and there wasn’t music playing?

(Image credit: Harry Ransom Center)

Bel Geddes was photographed with Robinson and Campanella because in 1949 he designed a new stadium for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The working title for this building was “All-Weather, All-Purpose Stadium,” although one’s got to think that had the project gone through this name would have been substituted for something a bit more intimate. Bel Geddes wanted the Dodgers to have a perfect park. No support posts obscured any views. The outfield wall was consistently 380 feet from home plate. The retractable roof could prevent rain delays. The artificial playing surface could negate a bad grounds crew. The shopping concourses were to contain entertainments for all sorts of fans. And maybe for these reasons I’m not sure if the stadium would have been the ideal park for modern fans. We like irregular outfield walls, real grass, cheap beer and O.K. food. I’d like to think of “All-Weather, All-Purpose Stadium” rather as an ideal entertainment venue. It was designed to seat 55,000 persons, but could make accommodations for as many as 90,000 if need be. Baseball parks only need to seat 45,000 max. As for the roof, I don’t mind a rain delay – such things just afford more time to think. At professional baseball games, music is played for certain concrete reasons (the Seventh Inning Stretch, for instance), and I wish I could report that Bel Geddes took this into consideration. More likely the case, however, the boredom of baseball might not have been apparent in 1949.

President Obama's Pink Bracelet

Jay Voss — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 03:36:39 +0000

(Image credit: The New York Times)

I noticed during the other night’s debate that President Obama is wearing a pink bracelet in support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This is a welcomed embrace of a worthy cause, no doubt. But after Romney’s “binders full of women” in the last debate and both candidates’ rather transparent desire for female votes, I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not President Obama is actually this interested in this particular disease. The alternative would be that his wearing of the bracelet is a cynical gesture designed to cobble up some more votes. Moreover, if this were a cynical gesture on Obama’s part, what might this confirm about the ongoing political conversation in the United States? After a term in which Obama frequently supported women’s health concerns, his wearing of a bracelet is really what it takes to attract female voters? With these questions in mind, I did a little Wikipediaing a was instantly reminded that Obama’s mother died of ovarian and uterine cancer – facts I then recalled from my reading of his two books. I now felt like a jerk for my own cynicism. It was soon clear to me how much my own cynical reasoning was a product of the media-dominated culture in which I live. But what’s the alternative? Wouldn’t seeing the bracelet and not thinking twice be like watching all those negative TV ads and accepting them at face value?

(Image credit: stylebistro.com)

President Bill Clinton is the only other recent president that I’m aware of who wears a bracelet. (Despite what the previous sentence might suggest, I’m really don’t keep track of presidential jewelry – I merely Googled “presidential bracelets” and Clinton is the only other of the 44 who came up.) According to an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Clinton received the bracelet from a group of Columbian children who sing for peace against narotraffickers. The interview was conducted in 2009, and in it President Clinton says he’d been wearing the bracelet for seven years, or since 2002. So this is all since he left the White House. Thus, although it’s hard to know how Clinton met the children or the circumstances of their gift, it’s quite hard to be cynical about this Columbian bracelet. There’s absolutely no way Clinton’s wearing this thing for political advantage. Of course, someone could counter that “President Clinton’s only wearing this bracelet to project the humanitarian side of his foundation,” but the issue is of the sort that I’m not sure many people would care to argue about.

So congratulations to President Obama and his support of breast cancer. While there’s no sense in questioning his decision to wear a pink bracelet, the only alternative here is to adopt a certain naïvety about the circumstances behind his decisions. Quite the binary. I’d like to say I’m not cynical, but I’m afraid I might be too enmeshed in today’s media culture for my own good. Maybe President Obama is a model for productive naïvety? The other night’s debate featured a lot of talk about which candidate was “tougher” – at least one of them was man enough to don some pink in support of breast cancer research.

Some Notes on the Matt Holliday Slide

Jay Voss — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 22:33:16 +0000

(Image credit: SB Nation)

I can’t help but write about baseball today. My apologies, my apologies. If you don’t feel like reading anymore, by all means, you’re more than welcome to click over and read more pundits’ spin about last night’s debate. What I have to say below deals with the San Francisco Giants, and even if you don’t continue reading, their rabid internet fan base is sure to increase our blog’s trafficking statistics. So do as you will, no offense taken. But I know you’ve already read your fair share about last night’s Presidential debate, and that any more emotional reactions might be dizzying to the point of a certain paralysis, so let us think about baseball for a moment. Was Matt Holliday’s slide into Giant’s second baseman Marco Scutaro during Monday night’s Game 2 of the National League Championship Series a dirty play? There’s no way.

(Image credit: SB Nation)

Check out Hal MacRae’s “slide” from the 1972 World Series above. All the Giants sympathizers are complaining that Holliday didn’t slide before hitting the bag. MacRae didn’t even touch the bag. Just imagine if I could make a .gif of a Ty Cobb postseason slide. Now that you’ve had a chance to look at the MacRae hip check, scroll back up and take a second look at the Holliday slide: by comparison, Monday night’s play looks like good, clean baseball. Holliday didn’t leave the base path, and by his own admission he wasn’t trying to harm Scutaro. He only wanted to break up the double play. Scutaro only got hurt because he was insistent upon completing his throw. Had he just settled for the force play at second, his upper torque would not have resisted the slide as much and his body would have gone away from second. But Scutaro was playing the game hard. His body gave at its weakest points, which happened to be his hip and knee. By remaining persistent on that throw to first, Scutaro was only playing the game as hard as Holliday.

(Image credit: Charles Conlon)

What’s at stake here, and why I think this play is relevant in a blog dedicated to visual culture, is that the entire hullaballoo says a great deal about how fans’ views of baseball have changed over the past 20 odd years. Without much exaggeration, the general outrage directed towards Matt Holliday over the past two days is what I’d expect from a baseball league comprised of businessmen, not athletes. Fans should expect athletes to play the game hard, whether that entails Holliday going in fast at second or Scutaro trying to make his throw even in the odds of immanent pain, which is exactly what we saw on Monday night. Instead, what’s left in the wake of Monday’s game is a bunch of fans sounding off in online forums about their “outrage.” (Probably not all that different than what you’ve been reading about last night’s Presidential debate. I know. Sorry. But I had to entice the non-fans into reading about baseball somehow.) Holliday’s slide says a lot about the current state of American culture, even if what this means is the exact opposite of what we’d like to think. With that cold irony of the advertising machine, Monday night’s play is exactly what’s celebrated in Ty Cobb posters throughout professional ballparks. From this vantage, it’s kind of endearing that fans would get so upset.

The series continues this afternoon in St. Louis, first pitch at 3:07 PM.

Fusterlandia

Jay Voss — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 14:00:00 +0000

(Image credit: David Schroeder)

Last night I was online looking for photos of Cuba’s baseball league, and I stumbled across the work of Cuban pop-artist José Fuster. Specifically, I stumbled across Fusterlandia, a ceramic wonderland that’s grown to include Fuster’s home, studio, and neighborhood. This world is a cartoon that’s come to life. In addition to ceramics, Fuster also works with canvas, graphite, and engraving, and his studio work is often shown in France and Britain. And since we don’t hear a lot about individual Cubans down here in Texas, save their aging leader, I thought I might take a moment in this week’s blog post to highlight the work of José Fuster. Fusterlandia is visually stunning, to say the least.

(Image credit: David Schroeder)

Fusterlandia started roughly 10 years ago in Jaimanitas, a small fishing village outside Havana. Since then, Fuster has covered the homes of over 80 neighbors with ceramics and paint, decorating each house according to the character of its owner. The site is amazing to look at. The sky’s blue is mimicked on the tops of buildings, and surprising yellows and greens often make odd arcs in the air. Vibrant hearts pop up on the side of buildings, their red patriotically beating the same red that’s on Cuba’s flag. Ceramic hands and the shapes of vegetables are perched on top of buildings, reminding me of all the hideous marquees that I see when stopping for coffee at American highway-side gas stations. Except here in Fusterlandia the shapes are not hideous because they satirize the rather careless way that all cultures have decided to obfuscate our horizons.

(Image credits: David Schroeder)

What attracts me most to Fusterlandia is the way in which José Fuster has created a new world, and instead of simply projecting this world onto another medium (the way that one might do with canvas or film or any other form), he’s laid it on top of the world he inhabits. And so this isn’t some bustling corner of Havana, but rather the honest streets of a dusty and humble fishing village. The way in which Fuster works within these constraints reminds me of David Lynch or Picasso. Fuster’s not working in one of the most affluent parts of the world, and yet he refuses to be hemmed in by the circumstances. He’s creating something completely original that resonates with modern post-industrial life. There are bounds within which he must work, and he optimistically does so. This is not an art about breaking rules. It’s an art about optimistically playing with restraint. Check him out.

PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE SPECIAL: Obama and Romney on the cover of The New Yorker

Jay Voss — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 23:08:41 +0000

With reports that Mitt Romney’s been practicing “zingers” for two months in preparation for tonight’s debate, and press releases from both campaigns attempting to temper our expectations, I can’t help but post something related to this entertainment. And though I’m dying to ask you, patriotic reader, in light of the aforementioned press releases, whether American politics has actually distended to the point where our Presidential candidates admittedly aren’t our most able communicators, I’ll keep this on the lighter side. Well, actually, one serious question real quickly: If one practices zingers for two months do they actually retain their efficacy? OK, now that I got out of my system…I’m teaching a composition class based around The New Yorker this semester, and just yesterday I had the notion that a consideration of the magazine’s recent political covers might afford a decent summation of the issues currently at stake. I don’t know if I’ll have time to do this with my class anytime soon – we’ve got articles planned through Thanksgiving – but I thought the blogosphere might find it interesting. If nothing else, it’ll be a quick refresher before tonight’s commoditized version of Enlightenment political economy (the debate will make those of us who consume it feel like engaged citizens, even though it’s obvious that both candidates are products of a slightly un-democratic fundraising process).

I’ve always been a fan of the Mitt Romney dog-on-car story. I feel sorry for the dog, of course, and shake my head at Romney’s terrible packing techniques (just because something’s been dry cleaned doesn’t mean it can’t be folded), but that we would deem the escapade this politically relevant is a reminder of how much a vibrant democracy depends upon a critical citizenry. We’re at where we’re at because of the decisions we’ve collectively made, and we’ve got no one to blame but ourselves for the hilarity of our political discourse. Accusing the other side’s voters of making things bad denies one’s own culpability in the process, and is antithetical to the project of an enlightened democracy. I think this is what the cover above is getting at. The “passenger” on top must live with the decision he’s made. One can only guess that if this cover came out after Paul Ryan was announced as Romney’s VP (on August 11^th), Ryan would be up top. This would obviously lead to another set of conclusions.

We’re likely to hear a lot about “Obamacare” tonight. However many of Romney’s criticisms will be meaningful is up for each of us to decide, especially since the structure of the overhaul is modeled on Romney’s work in Massachusetts. The issue of The New Yorker that’s pictured above came out just after the Supreme Court upheld Obama’s primary piece of domestic legislation, and it relishes the opposition’s fear that government will control their healthcare. One could also see this cover and think about the way the Obama administration forced the health care law through Congress, and thus about how Obama made politics work even after it appeared broken. Dr. Obama, Board Certified Acute Legislative Care Practitioner.

Then there’s the cover we got after Ryan was announced as Romney’s running mate. It’s quite funny, isn’t it? The fakeness of their public disposition is contrasted with all the benevolence it would actually take to make those smiles possible. They’d have to enjoy chocolate shakes out of the same glass, fix cars like folks did in the 50’s, play immature tricks on dogs. (Maybe Romney should go for a pet cat if he gets elected?) It’s the hurriedness of their shared excitement that arouses our suspicions. When at rallies and the like it’s as if they’ve just fallen in love. And this is surprising because previously Romney had painted himself as much more of a moderate Republican than the brash Ryan would ever approve of. Of course, there’s the image of Congressman Ryan reading to Romney in bed. Ryan’s reading Atlas Shrugged, and Romney’s out cold. Maybe it’s this dissonance that they want to smile over.

And then there’s this past week’s cover, which is surely a response to the Mother Jones 47% video. It’s preposterous – Romney’s taking a backseat ride on a horse while his butler attempts to jump the Potomac. The casualness with which Romney embraces what would otherwise be a huge leap for the average commuter is in line with the Mother Jones video’s aftertaste. He’s out of touch. Riding a horse is good exercise, and he’s having someone do it for him. Not only is someone doing it for him, but Mitt’s nonchalantly reading what’s likely to be The Wall Street Journal all the while. The first two historical figures I can think off the top of my head of who preferred white horses are Julius Caesar and Napoleon. Do with that what you will.

So there you have it. Tonight you can look for Obama to deride Romney’s decision process and elitism as he celebrates his major policy achievements, and look for Romney to talk about how Obamacare’s going to raise our taxes. Get out the popcorn – it might be better than whatever sitcoms people are watching these days. The ratings will probably be higher, anyways. If democracy is anything more than a commodity, we should spend tonight engaged in our local politics: these will most certainly have more of an impact on our immediate situations, and the world in which our children grow up in.

Fahrenheit 451 vs. Long Live Books!

Jay Voss — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 22:40:47 +0000

(Image credit: TILTS)

The Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies (TILTS) kicks off the 2012-2013 season tomorrow night with a lecture by Nicholson Baker, to be held in Blanton Auditorium at 5:30 PM. It’s open to the public, and all within the Austin area are encouraged to attend. TILTS is an initiative supported by the Office of the President, the Vice-Provost, the College of Liberal Arts, and the Department of English of The University of Texas at Austin. Each year the symposium brings a group of scholars to campus with the goal of enriching intellectual life in the community, and I can’t say how much I appreciate the program and the extent to which I think it’s an absolute success. Each year the symposium takes on a different theme (“The Digital Human[ities]”, 2010-2011; “Poets & Scholars”, 2011-2012), and this academic year we’ll be hearing about “The Fate of the Book”. Auspiciously titled, no doubt, but certainly relevant. And though advance copy of Nicholson Baker’s speech isn’t circulating (surely this is as important as major politicians’ speeches?), my familiarity with his books suggests that he’s going to be rather optimistic about the fate of print.

(Image credit: Reuters)

I don’t think we could be hearing about “The Fate of the Book” at a better time. Yesterday we woke up to news that there’d been a significant riot at a Foxconn Technology production facility in Taiyuan, China. This plant makes products for Apple, Dell, and Microsoft, and many sources are reporting that the new iPhone 5 has been coming out of the Taiyuan plant. While reports of worker strife in China are always spurious, we do know that at least 5,000 police offers were called in to quell the uprising. It must have been significant. So, I ask, if books are being made obsolete by various tablets and mobile computing technologies, is our convenience worth the price of exploiting poor workers in places like China and Brazil? Read enough books and you’re sure to answer that question in the negative.

On a less urgent and more domestic note, it’s striking how many arguments in the ongoing election cycle are blatantly dependent upon voters’ illiteracy. It’s shocking, really. Assuming that readers of this blog vote for both sides of the spectrum (I know, I know…most of us probably vote left, but pretending for a sec that we live in a vibrant democracy) I’ll quickly give a benign example. Two days ago, at a fundraiser for Todd Akin, Newt Gingrich proclaimed that “My expectation would be that in the crunch, in October, governor Romney is going to be for the entire ticket, and he’s going to be for Todd Akin.” While this does sound like Gingrich’s typical line of argument, he’s telegraphing Republican hopes that Missouri voters will have completely forgotten about Akin’s odd perspectives by Election Day. Democracy’s contingent upon a critical citizenry, and I’d hate to think that Missouri voters could forget about Akin’s remarks in such a short span of time. I happen to think that reading books impedes such apathy and is fundamentally important to the future of a democratic society. It’s clear that digital literacies will be necessary for corporate success in the twenty-first century, but I’ve yet to see any evidence that they will enhance democracy in the same way that traditional literacy did throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

(Image credit: easyvectors.com)

Digital literacies are important for any number of reasons, and it’s an honor that we have the opportunity to teach them in the twenty-first century. These days, anyone with a decent bachelor’s degree should be able to figure out how to use seemingly odd new computing programs, especially if they had no knowledge of how those programs worked previously. That’s the mark of digital literacy, by my measure. But it strikes me as unfair to assume that a digital system could somehow replace books. For one thing, technology remains very expensive. Lower-income homes simply cannot afford Apple products (even if the company does own an aluminum mine, which I’m starting to suspect they do), and I bet that a majority of humans will continue to read books long into the future, so long as they have access to basic education. Aside from economic constraints, most graduate students I know seek out physical books when they wish to do a few days’ worth of serious reading. Half of my own students choose to read physical versions of our text, even though everything is available digitally. In fact, when I’m in the airport, most of the people I see reading digital books are of my parents’ generation.

So, in short, I do feel optimistic about the future of books. It’ll be fun to hear what others have to say throughout the course of this year’s TILTS symposium. If nothing else, I can’t imagine that humans would ever stop telling ourselves stories – that would certainly represent a certain death.