"landschaft mit haus" on Flickr

A series of illustrations that, to me at least, look like an Edward Hopper landscape realized on an Atari 2600. This is not a bad thing - these are amazingly beautiful minimalist works. Take a few minutes to click through the series and see if you don't find yourself feeling the "melancholic contemplation" the artist talks about.

Urban Decay on Flickr

I've spent the past two weeks working on a steampunk(ish) production of The Canterbury Tales and haven't even been updating Twitter or Facebook. I've got some posts for C/B brewing, but they'll take a while to get up at this rate. In the meantime, please enjoy this slideshow from the Urban Decay pool over at Flickr:

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.