Bethany Shorb, “Supplemental Restraint System” By Bruce Sterling

Interesting article in Wired about some really cool Ballard inspired artwork.








I have been in more then a half dozen accidents in my lifetime.... but... were they really accidents? Maybe I just like being in accidents. The crunch of metal and shock of body being restrained by the seat belt. The uncanny perspective of having the sky become green grass above the car roof for a split second. Recalling the slow motion movement of particles of shattered safety glass flying through the air. Observing the bent, twisted metal, and the gnarly pieces of broken trim for the first time, while still in a state of shock. Is that semi truck going to hit me? Oh Shit! It just hit me! Every time it happened, I always thought about the damage to the car before I even bothered to think about my own state of health. It's amazing that I only pay around $100 a month for insurance... still. Seems like it should be a lot more... like I got away with something. I did get away with something. I walked away every time.

I get in my car almost every day. I don't even think about how dangerous it really is. Even after all of those collisions and the roll over. I don't even worry about it. I worry about stupid trivial shit... like my lost cell phone... or global warming.

The car is such an insane invention. It is massive, world wide insanity. There could be saner, more practical forms of transportation like trains, but we are not having any of that! The car is a semi-private, isolated capsule of getting somewhere else. The daily commute in the average larger city is a bizarre exercise in kamikaze-like competition for road space. "GET OUT OF MY WAY ASSHOLE!!!" It causes massive pollution, wars over oil, road rage, death, pain... and it adversely affects the climate.

Cool to see Bethany's artwork get recognized by Mr Sterling. If I wasn't so damn broke all the time, I would buy the one in the above image in a second. Maybe I am so broke because I have been in so many car crashes.

http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2011/06/bethany-shorb-supplemental-restraint-system/

Small models of places and imagined places:

Core77 Photo Gallery: Otherworldly - Optical Delusions and Small Realities

A gallery exhibition of small models.



A violin repair shop, street scenes, a ghetto, a 17th century micro-brew pub, a library, endless pre-computer age offices, and other surrealistic spaces... An exhibition of pretty interesting and cool miniature models of places that take you somewhere else.

Some are re-creations of real places that have an imagined slant to them probably more the way the artist remembered them then the actual place. Some are kind of dreamy, imagined places.

New experiment

Here is a new experiment. A place to post stuff that I find interesting and in a format that is not so facebookish.