Detroits Robocop-Statue is ready for Duty
„Ready for Duty“ ist übertrieben, aber das da oben ist die fast fertige Positiv-Form von Detroits crowdfinanzierter, 3 Meter hohen Robocop-Statue. Von dem Teil wird dann eine Gussform gebacken und in der wird dann die finale Bronze-Statue gegossen. Stay out of trouble!
Just take a look at RoboCop in his 10-foot-tall pixel-atom-perfect glory. So far he’s passed from you, the backers, to Fred Barton’s expert custom sculpting, to Across The Board Creation’s 3D scanning, digital enlarging, physical fabrication, and assembly in foam, wax, clay, and steel (pictured below), and now he’s headed to Venus Bronze Works in Detroit for casting and manufacturing in bronze. We bow to all parties for going above and beyond.
Detroit Needs A Statue of Robocop!: Speechless (With Lots of Pictures) (via Boing Boing)
Podcasts: The Detroit-Berlin Connection
Ich höre mich grade durch die Radioserie „The Detroit-Berlin Connection“ von WDET Detroit Public Radio. Es geht um Abandoned Kram, Techno und den Tresor, Kreativität, Urbanität, Globalisierung, DJ Rolando, Architektur und vieles anderes. Ganz großartig!
Detroit and Berlin are iconic cities; symbols of cultural and economic domination, as well as of collapse, and (potential) rebirth. Detroit and Berlin have ideological similarities that go far beyond industrial power. As beacons of culture, Detroit and Berlin have both been on the cutting edge of arts activities. Berlin is a crossroads of European film, art, music and food; Detroit is a center of African-American culture, with global credibility in jazz, techno, and emerging cultural expressions.
The Detroit – Berlin Connection looks at the futures of these two great cities and looks at the measures being used to reinvent industrial cities for the 21st century.
Mini-Doku: Detroit – The Blueprint Of Techno
(Youtube Direktdetroit, via Ronny)
Schöne Minidoku aus den später 90ern mit u.a. Terrence Parker, Mike Huckaby, Juan Atkins, Ritchie Hawtin, Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, Carl Craig, Rolando und Jeff Woodward über Detroit und sein Techno. Vor ein paar Tagen hat auch jemand die Techno-Doku „Speaking in Code“ bei YT hochgeladen, über die habe ich zwar schon tausendmal gebloggt, das sei aber hier der Vollständigkeit halber auch erwähnt.
Doku: High Tech Soul – The Creation Of Techno Music
(Vimeo Direkttechno, via Dangerous Minds)
Tolle Doku aus dem Jahr 2009 über die Entstehung von Techno in Detroit mit allen, die daran beteiligt waren (natürlich mit Ausnahme von „Mad“ Mike Banks). Von der Website von Plexi Films:
HIGH TECH SOUL is the first documentary to tackle the deep roots of techno music alongside the cultural history of Detroit, its birthplace. From the race riots of 1967 to the underground party scene of the late 1980s, Detroit’s economic downturn didn’t stop the invention of a new kind of music that brought international attention to its producers and their hometown.
Featuring in-depth interviews with many of the world’s best exponents of the artform, High Tech Soul focuses on the creators of the genre — Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson — and looks at the relationships and personal struggles behind the music. Artists like Richie Hawtin, Jeff Mills, Carl Craig, Eddie Fowlkes and a host of others explain why techno, with its abrasive tones and resonating basslines, could not have come from anywhere but Detroit.
With classic anthems such as Rhythim Is Rhythim’s “Strings of Life” and Inner City’s “Good Life,” High Tech Soul celebrates the pioneers, the promoters and the city that spawned a global phenomenon.
The film features: Juan Atkins, Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, Eddie (Flashin) Fowlkes, Richie Hawtin, Jeff Mills, John Acquaviva, Carl Cox, Carl Craig, Blake Baxter, Stacey Pullen, Thomas Barnett, Matthew Dear, Anthony “Shake” Shakir, Keith Tucker, Delano Smith, Mike Archer, Derrick Thompson, Mike Clark, Alan Oldham, Laura Gavoor, Himawari, Scan 7, Kenny Larkin, Stacey “Hotwax” Hale, Claus Bachor, Electrifying Mojo, Niko Marks, Barbara Deyo, Dan Sordyl, Sam Valenti, Ron Murphy, George Baker, and Kwame Kilpatrick.
The film’s soundtrack includes: Aux 88, Cybotron, Inner City, Juan Atkins, Mayday, Model 500, Plastikman, Rhythim Is Rhythim, and more.
The Ruins of Detroit revisited
Yves Marchands und Romain Effres Abandoned-Fotografie hatte ich vor fast genau einem Jahr schonmal, jetzt hat sie der Guardian entdeckt und einen schönen Artikel über ihre Arbeiten und ihr neues Buch geschrieben inklusive schicker Galerie mit ein paar Bildern, die nicht auf ihrer Website zu sehen sind.
Bilder oben: „The biology classroom at George W Ferris School in the Detroit suburb of Highland Park“ und „Detroit’s Vanity Ballroom with its unsalvaged art deco chandeliers. Duke Ellington and Tommy Dorsey once played here.“
Cumulatively, the photographs are a powerful and disturbing testament to the glory and the destructive cost of American capitalism: the centre of a once-thriving metropolis in the most powerful nation on earth has become a ghost town of decaying buildings and streets. There is a formal beauty here too, though, reminiscent of Robert Polidori’s images of post-hurricane Katrina New Orleans. “It seems like Detroit has just been left to die,” says Marchand, “Many times we would enter huge art deco buildings with once-beautiful chandeliers, ornate columns and extraordinary frescoes, and everything was crumbling and covered in dust, and the sense that you had entered a lost world was almost overwhelming. In a very real way, Detroit is a lost world – or at least a lost city where the magnificence of its past is everywhere evident.”
This sense of loss is what Marchand and Meffre have captured in image after image, whether of vast downtown vistas where every tower block is boarded-up or ravaged interior landscapes where the baroque stonework, often made from marble imported from Europe, is slowly crumbling and collapsing. The pair have photographed once-grand hotels that were built in a carefree mix of gothic, art deco, Moorish and medieval styles, as well as countless baroque theatres, movie houses and ballrooms – the Vanity, where big band giants such as Duke Ellington and Tommy Dorsey played in the 1930s; the Eastown theatre, where pioneering hard rock groups like Iggy and the Stooges and the MC5 held court in the 1960s.
Detroit in ruins: the photographs of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, Galerie zum Artikel (Danke Dudy!)
Vorher auf Nerdcore:
Johnny Knoxville als Urban Explorer in Detroit
The Ruins of Detroit
Rotting Detroit Photography
Urban Landscape Photography
Johnny Knoxville als Urban Explorer in Detroit
(Youtube Direktdetroit, via Cool Hunting)
Johnny Knoxville hat Detroits Ruinen und da vor allem die sich dort breitmachende Künstlerszene besucht. Die ganze Doku gibts auf der Seite vom Schuhhersteller oder nach dem Klick die beiden anderen Teile von Youtube.
Once the fourth-largest metropolis in America—some have called it the Death of the American Dream. Today, the young people of the Motor City are making it their own DIY paradise where rules are second to passion and creativity. They are creating the new Detroit on their own terms, against real adversity. We put our boots on and went exploring.
Doku: Requiem for Detroit
(Youtube Direktdetroit, via MeFi)
Im März lief auf BBC 2 die Doku „Requiem for Detroit“ von Julien Temple (sein erster Film war übrigens der Sex Pistols-Flick „The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle“, hier sein Wikipedia-Eintrag). Der Film ist voller verrottender, vergammelnder Awesomeness und Musik und außerdem hat ihn jemand auf Youtube hochgeladen.
Hier die Seite der BBC zur Doku („Julien Temple’s new film is a vivid evocation of an apocalyptic vision: a slow-motion Katrina that has had many more victims.“), im Guardian schreibt Temple selbst über seinen Trip nach Detroit: Detroit: the last days. Snip daraus und die restlichen Videos nach dem Klick.
The Ruins of Detroit
Ich bin mir sehr sicher, Yves Marchands und Romain Effres Abandoned-Fotografie hier schonmal gepostet zu haben, finde es aber nicht, deshalb nochmal: Yves Marchand und Romain Effre streifen durch das verrottende Detroit und fotografieren die verrottende Architektur. Immer noch sehr spooky, das alles.
Since the 50′s, “Motor City” lost more than half of its population. Nowadays, its splendid decaying monuments are, no less than the Pyramids of Egypt, the Coliseum of Rome, or the Acropolis in Athens, remnants of the passing of a great civilization.
The Ruins of Detroit (Danke Nik!)
Rotting Detroit Photography
Vor ein paar Tagen ging (mal wieder) James D. Griffioens Photoportfolio durch die Blogs, das ich hier schonmal irgendwann hatte. Der Mann hält unter anderem fest, wie sich die Natur Stück für Stück Detroit zurückholt und das ganze sieht ziemlich genau so aus, wie schon in der Doku „Life after People”, nur eben in echt.
Und Mitch Cope plant ein Foto-Buch als Kollaboration mit 6 weiteren Detroit-Fotografen.
Detroit is one of the most visually interesting cities in the world however it is also one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented cities. This group of photographs illustrates what contemporary Detroit artists have been doing in regards to developing an understanding and appreciation for this complex and diverse city from street portraits of the “survivors” to the landscapes of wild new growth to the industrial leftovers.
These seven artists have been working in the city as explorers, adventurers and pioneers for years to capture the city as it changes, evolves, devolves and transforms into something unbelievable, profound and heartbreaking. In the end they hope as a group to show Detroit as it is, not what it should be or what it was, but how it is. This in itself a provocative gesture as there are not many who feel content with the Detroit of today.
The photographs here are made within the last 5 years, all within the City of Detroit.
They are: Corine Smith, Mitch Cope, Clinton Snider, Mark Alor Powell, Antonio Gomez, Ingo Vetter, Scott Hocking
proposed book: 7 Contemporary Detroit Photographers (via BoingBoing)
Vorher auf Nerdcore:
Life after People – Apocalypsen-Dokumentation online
Urban Landscape Photography
