The Disintegration of Gary, Indiana

Artist / photographer David Tribby has documented decaying and abandoned theatres, schools, and churches in and around Gary, IN.

A slideshow of Mr. Tribby's work can be found at his Flickr page.

He also has a book available: Gary Indiana | A City's Ruins.

Phantom Images of the Everyday

I love love love the "City of Shadows" series of photographs by Alexy Titarenko. Long-exposure shots of St. Petersburg, Russia that turn dreary urban scenes into fantasickal landscapes populated by billowing shadow-creatures.

At my first glance, the photos called to mind the "smoke monster" from the TV series "Lost." (Is that still a show?) But considering the nature of the photos - single still frames documenting the inevitable passage of time - I wonder if this is how a Tralfamadorian might see the world.

Read more at BLDBLOG (a site you should have bookmarked anyway). According to Titarenko's site, a book of the series was published, but I have yet to locate a copy for sale online. So it goes.

Dead Can Dance

I first heard Dead Can Dance over a winter semester during which I lived on campus. Winter Session students were housed in a high-rise dormitory so sparsely populated that many of us had entire floors to ourselves. The one class I was taking wasn't all that demanding - a Phys. Ed. credit I needed to graduate - so I spent a good bit of time either walking the campus grounds or up on "my floor" reading and listening to music. A good friend who managed a record shop slipped me a free copy of  "Into the Labyrinth" over Christmas break saying, "I'm pretty sure you're going to like this." She was right, to say the least; I just about wore out the tape during the first few weeks I owned it. I still have that cassette, but "Toward the Within" has since become my favorite album, and "Rakim" is still my favorite track.
Fun fact: Brendan's singing "in tongues" for most of the song.

Sand Animation by Ksenia Simonova

Something is Coming

I posted about this on Facebook a few months back, but it fits well here, and one purpose of this blog (the only purpose so far, in fact) is to act as a storage facility for the creepy/beautiful stuff I find on the web. The animation is great, and reminds me of demoscene reels I've seen. But more about them later. For now, enjoy:

They will come to town | "Something is coming" | Filmakademie Baden-Würrtemberg from Pamela Ross on Vimeo.

Unique Quay Brothers Exhibit in NYC

"Dormitorium: Film Decors by the Quay Bros." is an exhibit running through October 4, at The Parsons School for Design in New York.

From the exhibit web site:

"The exhibition combines rarely seen, collaboratively designed miniature décors from some of their most prominent works, as well as continuous screenings of excerpts from several of the films."

The combination of the miniatures and films is, I think, a great idea, allowing visitors to experience the décors, which are beautiful by themselves, and then to see them in context within the strange, oddly moving films for which they were designed and built.

Exhibit information:
Gallery hours: Daily 12:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. and late Thurs evenings until 8:00 p.m. Closed all major holidays and holiday eves.

More information can be found at The Parsons School web site.

Photo by: Flickr User Astropop

Stages of Decay

Stages of Decay is an online exhibit of pictures by New York artist Julia Solis. Since I work for a theatrical contractor, I see a lot of theatres and auditoriums in various stages of neglect. Some are miraculously well-preserved for their age and some are almost unusable. But I haven't had the mis- (good?) fortune to find myself in any spaces quite like the ones documented here:

http://www.abandonedtheaters.com/

The Flash-tastic website prevents me from linking to any of the actual photos. I would imagine that this is by design. Trust me, though, it's worth the trip.

The Cat Piano

The Cat Piano from PRA on Vimeo.

A short, surreal film with narration provided by Nick Cave. I won't bother with a synopsis - it's only eight minutes long fercryingoutloud! - just watch it. I'm particularly fond of the film noir lighting and the excellently fluid movement of the characters.

Hieronymus Bosch Papercraft

The website Glue² chronicle has some lovely creepy/beautiful papercrafts for all you crafters out there. (Also good for scene designers needing a break from yet another white model.)

http://guru2.karakasa.com/Hieronymus%20Bosch_menu_e.html

If you're interested in creepy/beautiful and don't know Hieronymus Bosch I strongly urge you to head to your local library and check out a book of his works. If your library doesn't have any Bosch available, shame on them. But you, beloved reader, can start at this Wikipedia article and work out from there. "The Garden of Earthly Delights" is required viewing and also the inspiration for some of the papercraft works.

The fish-bug-tower thing from "The Temptation of St. Anthony" (above) is probably my favorite of the bunch, though.

Creepy, Yet Beautiful

This is the post in which I'm going to try to explain what I think I'm doing here. Over the past few weeks I've been thinking about and exploring an aesthetic I've taken to calling creepy/beautiful. The problem is, I'm having a really hard time expressing to others what, exactly, the creepy/beautiful aesthetic is.

So, the purpose of this blog is to serve as a repository of things I find online and elsewhere that seem to fit my idea of creepy/beautiful.

Hopefully, others will join in with comments, links, and suggestions of things that fit their own idea of what creepy/beautiful is. If not, well at least I'll have a site where I can dump all of my ideas.

Some possible definitions I've gathered so far. Creepy/beautiful:

• is the soundtrack to that dream that sticks with you all the way through your morning shower.
• captures the emotions felt when sitting alone at a window in your house in dim lighting, watching a thunderstorm and drinking a glass of wine.
• is what you listen to on your way home from the party...at dawn.
  

These are all attempts to describe creepy/beautiful music, but they at least start to get at the emotional content of the aesthetic. I'll post more as I get them or, more likely, come up with them on my own.

(photo: cover art from the Dead Can Dance album, "In the Realm of the Dying Sun.")