barrelmaker.us » Urban Culture

Rollin’ down to the bay

John Cooper — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 20:11:16 +0000

My workmate alerted me to this article about an incredible piece of kinetic sculpture, a model of San Francisco constructed entirely of tooth picks. The artist’s name is Scott Weaver. The piece is entitled Rolling through the Bay. Weaver playfully narrates this short video which illustrates the sculpture in action.

It’s things like these that give me hope and fill me with optimism and wonder about humanity.

Scott Weaver’s Rolling through the Bay from The Tinkering Studio on Vimeo.

Detroit Music

John Cooper — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 03:59:07 +0000

Today I read a nice wrap up of this year’s Decibel Festival on xlr8r.com. Didn’t make it to the festival this year so I was kind of keen on seeing what I missed. While I knew numerous names at the show this year like Zomby, Quantic, Bonobo, Amon Tobin, there are always so many musicians with whom I’m unfamiliar. So even reading reviews after the show bears fruit.

One of the sets that sounded great was by a young Detroit musician named, Kyle Hall. Clicking on the article link brought me to Hall’s website, Wild Kyle Oats on which I found this gem of a movie (short film – 19mins) about Detroit and it’s electronic music scene.

The highlight for me comes at roughly 5 minutes in, when “The New Dance Show” with host, R.J. Watkins, is being discussed. Mind-blowing moves. Totally rad. I mean my sister and I had “Soul Train” when we were growing up, but this show takes the cake and eat it!

Real Scenes: Detroit from Resident Advisor on Vimeo.

Rain City Super Heroes

John Cooper — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 21:59:42 +0000

This is definitely the coolest news story of the week! Totally made my day today. Kick Ass in real life, right here in our city!

Go get em Phoenix Jones!

Urban Spaces

John Cooper — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:55:57 +0000

Learned something new via Twitter today. I’m finding that the channel can lead to some interesting places on the web…if the quantity of these suggestions comes at a completely overwhelming pace.

I digress…This is a movie clip studying the question of what makes a successful well-used urban plaza. It is a pretty fascinating take on both urban design and urban sociology. And the fact that it is quite old, really doesn’t detract from this interest, nor does it make the findings irrelevant today.

William Whyte worked for the New York City Planning Commission and began filming, recording, and making observations about people in the urban landscape. Wikepedia says, “these observations developed into the “Street Life Project”, an ongoing study of pedestrian behavior and city dynamics,” which led him to pen many books on these subjects.

Enjoy this segment from the companion film to his book The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1980).