Goodby, Silevrstein & Partners along with a host of collaborators has just launched this intriguing and ambitious project for Adobe. Their Museum of Digital Media idea is an online space that blurs the boundaries between physical interaction environments and interactive spaces. The ‘Musuem’ itself is a digital piece of architecture, towering 50 storeys high in the real world. It will hold and curate and ever revolving (and growing) collection of digital media experimentation and artistic explorations. The first exhibition launched in the museum is from Tony Oursler, a video artist who has created some frankly bonkers pieces of work within this space, I might not like all of them but I respect the adventurousness of the work…

Overall, I think this is a hugely exciting and strikingly original piece of creative work. It has the potential to work fabulously on a strategic level for Adobe, (reinforcing their preeminent digital position) and is a beautifully sideways approach to a creative brief from the guys at Goodby. The interfaces and inside the museum right, once you go full screen, you really start to lose the sense you are in a browser. More than anything, this obviously is a starting point, as with any museum, the more exhibits there are (it seems the museums content will be curated by a number of different people, as opposed to just a single vision throughout it’s life) the greater the story will become. Great work guys.

Here’s the intro.

and the ‘making of’

(Via Digital Buzz)

Last Sunday’s Observer had an insightful and tragic article on the slow decline of one of the most iconic cities in the USA, if not the world. Detroit. Highlighting not just the hardship that the recession has wrought on the long suffering working class of the city, but also the damage now being inflicting the once prosperous suburban districts, scene of the ‘white flight’ that left inner city Detroit a unique wasteland. This wasteland has now taken on an almost post-apocalyptic quality, with some abandoned skyscprapers now sprouting plants and vines, mimicking something out I Am Legend. A truly surreal state. So it’s no surprise the the Internet is at the forefront of documenting this slow decline.One site in particular captures the essence of fallen Detroit. 100 Abandoned Houses. In the “about” blurb of the site, one thing really stood out for me.

“In these neighborhoods I encountered concerned citizens, packs of wild dogs, 20 foot high piles of toilets, and houses with the facades torn off, filled with garbage.”

Simply composed, the photos vividly bring to life the desolation which we are well aware of, but surprisingly, the unique architecture and construction of many of these houses. This was not a city of idealised white picket fences, but of distinctive personalities of a boldness and confidence in the strength of American Industry, bought to life in the facades of these homes. This juxtaposition to their current state adds another level of poignancy to the collection, mirroring the desolation of heavy industry and car production in Detroit and Michigan. They also demand you dig deeper into Detroit architecture.

A dig round Flickr and the blogsphere reveals a plethora of sets and posts dedicated to capturing the city decay. Flickr especially shows off the majestic Art Deco buildings built in the flush of the car boom. While the numerous blogs serve as honest, angry and hopeful public service announcements  for the city. Refusing to let it’s plight fade from view, these efforts, as a collective, show how well the internet can act as a mobiliser of action in real time. Their voices from the trenches give you hope that the city might yet find it’s own redemption. Unfortunately, the near future of Detroit is as bleak as it is for many industrial cities around the globe, unable, or unwilling to deal with a transitions in industry and labour markets, an anachronism in a fiercely competitive, globalised world. You can only hope that the city makes it through, and that the bold, quintessentially American attitudes that these buildings represented will flourish once again.

Downtown Detroit

On the better never than late blog, I followed a link to a huge thread based on the evolution of the Manhattan skyline from the 20′s to the 70′s, through photographs and postcards and illustrations. There are some truly amazing views to behold and sides of the city I have never seen. (The ones of the World Trade Center under construction are very poignant and you would imagine.) I’ve selected a few of my standouts, but take a peek at the whole set here.

The Standard NYC – October 2008.