An Interactive Map Shows Just How Many Roads Actually Lead to Rome

in History, Maps, Travel | May 7th, 2018

…he went away, and pass­ing through what was called the house of Tiberius, went down into the forum, to where a gild­ed col­umn stood, at which all the roads that inter­sect Italy ter­mi­nate.”

- Plutarch, Life of Gal­ba (XXIV.4)

No one can give you exact direc­tions to Mil­liar­i­um Aureum (aka the Gold­en Mile­stone). Just a few carved mar­ble frag­ments of the gild­ed column’s base remain in the Roman Forum, where its orig­i­nal loca­tion is some­what dif­fi­cult to pin­point.

But as the image above, from inter­ac­tive map Roads to Rome, shows (view it here), the mot­to Emper­or Cae­sar Augus­tus’ mighty mile mark­er inspired still holds true.

All roads lead to Rome.

To illus­trate, design­ers Benedikt Groß and Philipp Schmitt worked with dig­i­tal geo­g­ra­ph­er Raphael Reimann to select 486,713 start­ing points on a 26,503,452 km² grid of Europe.

From there, they cre­at­ed an algo­rithm to cal­cu­late the best route from each point to Rome.

(It beats typ­ing a street address into Google Maps 486,713 times.)

From afar, the result­ing map looks like a del­i­cate piece of sea let­tuce or an ear­ly explo­ration in neu­roanato­my.

Zoom in as tight as you can and things become more tra­di­tion­al­ly car­to­graph­ic in appear­ance, names and spa­tial rela­tions of cities assert­ing them­selves. A bold line indi­cates a busy route.

In a nod to map lovers out­side of Europe, the mobil­i­ty-obsessed team came up with anoth­er map, this one geared to state­side users.

Do you know which of the Unit­ed States’ nine Romes you are clos­est to?

Now you do, from 312,719 dis­tinct start­ing points.

To help them in their labor, the cre­ative team made good use of the Graph­Hop­per route opti­miza­tion tool and the Open Street Map wiki. In their own esti­ma­tion, the project’s out­come is “some­where between infor­ma­tion visu­al­iza­tion and data art, unveil­ing mobil­i­ty on a very large scale.”

Buy a poster of the All Roads Lead to Rome map here. Or view the inter­ac­tive map here.

via Arch Dai­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Lon­don Time Machine: Inter­ac­tive Map Lets You Com­pare Mod­ern Lon­don, to the Lon­don Short­ly After the Great Fire of 1666

Watch the His­to­ry of the World Unfold on an Ani­mat­ed Map: From 200,000 BCE to Today

An Inter­ac­tive Map of Every Record Shop in the World

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Wednes­day, May 16 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Studio Ghibli Releases Tantalizing Concept Art for Its New Theme Park, Opening in Japan in 2022

in Animation, Film, Travel | May 2nd, 2018

When you watch an ani­mat­ed film, you vis­it a world. That holds true, to an extent, for live-action movies as well, but much more so for those cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ences whose audio­vi­su­al details all come, of neces­si­ty, craft­ed from scratch. Walt Dis­ney under­stood that bet­ter than any­one else in the motion-pic­ture indus­try, and none could argue that he did­n’t cap­i­tal­ize on it. When they found­ed Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, Hayao Miyaza­ki and the late Isao Taka­ha­ta — in the fine 20th-cen­tu­ry Japan­ese tra­di­tion of bor­row­ing West­ern ideas and then refin­ing them near­ly beyond recog­ni­tion — took Dis­ney’s delib­er­ate world-build­ing a step fur­ther, painstak­ing­ly craft­ing a look and feel for their pro­duc­tions that amounts to a sep­a­rate real­i­ty: rich, coher­ent, and, for the mil­lions of die-hard Ghi­b­li fans all around the world, immense­ly appeal­ing.

In a few years, those fans will get the chance to enter Ghi­b­li’s world in a much more con­crete sense. Dis­ney’s insight that his audi­ence would beat a path to an amuse­ment park based on his stu­dio’s movies led to Dis­ney­land, Dis­ney World, and their glob­al suc­ces­sors, two of which, Tokyo Dis­ney­land and Tokyo Dis­ney Sea, now rank among the five most vis­it­ed theme parks in the world.

The area of the Japan­ese cap­i­tal already offers an acclaimed Ghi­b­li expe­ri­ence in the form of the Ghi­b­li Muse­um, but in just a few years the city of Nagakute, a sub­urb of Nagoya, will see the open­ing of Ghi­b­li’s own ver­sion of Dis­ney­land, a theme park filled with attrac­tions based on the stu­dios beloved films.

Sched­uled to open in 2022 on the same plot of land used for the 2005 World’s Fair (where the house from My Neigh­bor Totoro was then built and still stands today), Ghi­b­li’s theme park will greet vis­i­tors with a main gate rem­i­nis­cent, writes Kotaku’s Bri­an Ashcraft, of “19th-cen­tu­ry struc­tures out of Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle as well as a recre­ation of Whis­per of the Heart’s antique shop.”

It also includes “the Big Ghi­b­li Ware­house, which is filled with all sorts of Ghi­b­li themed play areas as well as exhi­bi­tion areas and small cin­e­mas,” a Princess Mononoke vil­lage, a com­bined area for Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle and Kik­i’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice called Witch Val­ley, and the Totoro-themed Don­doko For­est. Will Stu­dio Ghi­b­li’s theme park rise into the ranks of the world’s most vis­it­ed? Nobody who has yet vis­it­ed their world, in any of its man­i­fes­ta­tions thus far, would put it past them.

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li has released some basic con­cept for the new theme park. You can get a few glimpses of what they have in mind on this page.

 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Films of Hayao Miyaza­ki Work Their Ani­mat­ed Mag­ic, Explained in 4 Video Essays

What Made Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Ani­ma­tor Isao Taka­ha­ta (RIP) a Mas­ter: Two Video Essays

Watch Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Char­ac­ters Enter the Real World

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch Choirs Around the World Simulate the Rainstorm in Toto’s “Africa” Using Only Their Hands

in K-12, Music, Travel | April 20th, 2018

The Los Ange­les-based choir, Angel City Chorale, above, cap­tured the Internet’s imag­i­na­tion in a big way with their 2013 cov­er of Toto’s 1982 hit, “Africa,” in which the group’s 160 per­form­ers cre­at­ed a real­is­tic-sound­ing thun­der­storm using only their hands.

Delight­ful! And more com­mon than you may at first think.

The Chorale acknowl­edges that they owe a great debt to Sloven­ian vocal group Per­petu­um Jazz­ile’s thun­der­ous 2008 ren­di­tion. Stage­hands accus­tomed to cre­at­ing cred­i­ble thun­der­claps by wav­ing wig­gly sheets of alu­minum back­stage may want to switch to hun­dreds of feet hop­ping up and down in uni­son, as heard at the 1‑minute mark, below.

Go a bit fur­ther back to find an actu­al African choir’s fin­ger-snap­ping, thigh-smack­ing “Africa.”

The Kearsney Col­lege Choir is based near Dur­ban, South Africa, and they appear to have been the first to open this num­ber with the now-famous rain­storm effect. Its mem­bers are school boys rang­ing in age from 13 to 18. The video below shows them per­form­ing the tune in the 2008 World Choir Games, an annu­al com­pe­ti­tion that will be tak­ing place on their home turf this year.

Inter­est­ing­ly, there’s not that much rain in the orig­i­nal. Over the years Toto’s song­writ­ers, David Paich and Jeff Por­caro have made var­i­ous state­ments about its origins—a guy trans­fixed by images of suf­fer­ing Africans on TV, a lone­ly mis­sion­ary, a vis­it to the 1964 World’s Fair’s Africa pavil­ion …

There’s a bit of rain to be seen in the very 80’s offi­cial music video, but noth­ing that rivals the choirs’ spec­tac­u­lar down­pours.

If you’re moved to whip up a tem­pest of your own, Jbrary’s chil­dren’s librar­i­ans, Dana Hor­rocks and Lind­sey Krabben­hoft, have cre­at­ed an instruc­tion­al video that shows just how sim­ple the effect is to mas­ter. The real trick is enlist­ing 100s of friends to do it at the same time.

Buy Per­petu­um Jazz­ile’s “Africa” CD and vocal arrange­ments here.

Down­load Angel City Chorale’s “Africa” sin­gle on iTunes or CDBa­by.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play a Delight­ful Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

Feel Strange­ly Nos­tal­gic as You Hear Clas­sic Songs Reworked to Sound as If They’re Play­ing in an Emp­ty Shop­ping Mall: David Bowie, Toto, Ah-ha & More

What Makes This Song Great?: Pro­duc­er Rick Beato Breaks Down the Great­ness of Clas­sic Rock Songs in His New Video Series

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, April 23 for the third install­ment of her lit­er­ary-themed vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Genius of Harry Beck’s 1933 London Tube Map–and How It Revolutionized Subway Map Design Everywhere

in Design, History, Life, Maps, Travel | April 9th, 2018

The sub­way is a mar­vel of engi­neer­ing, and so is the mod­ern sub­way map.

For the first 25 years of its exis­tence, Lon­don Under­ground rid­ers relied on a map that reflect­ed the actu­al dis­tance between sta­tions, as well as rivers, parks, and oth­er above­ground phe­nom­e­na.

As design­er Michael Bierut observes in the video at the top, the rad­i­cal­ly revised approach it final­ly adopt­ed in 1933 proved so intu­itive and easy to use, it remains the uni­ver­sal tem­plate for mod­ern sub­way maps.

The brain­child of Har­ry Beck, a young drafts­man in the Lon­don Under­ground Sig­nals Office, the new map is more accu­rate­ly a dia­gram that pri­or­i­tized rid­ers’ needs.

He did away with all above­ground ref­er­ences save the Thames, and replot­ted the sta­tions at equidis­tant points along col­or-cod­ed straight lines.

This innovation—for which he was paid about $8—helped rid­ers to glean at a glance where to make the sub­ter­ranean con­nec­tions that would allow them to trav­el from point A to point B.

The for­mer senior cura­tor of Lon­don Trans­port Muse­um, Anna Ren­ton, said in an inter­view with The Verge that Beck’s design may have helped per­suade city dwellers to make the leap to sub­urbs ser­viced by the Under­ground “by mak­ing them look clos­er to the cen­ter, and show­ing how easy it was to com­mute.”

It’s not Beck’s fault if ser­vice falls short of his map’s effi­cient ide­al, par­tic­u­lar­ly on nights and week­ends, when track work and ser­vice advi­sories abound, ren­der­ing such com­mutes a night­mare.

The appeal of sub­way map-themed sou­venirs is also a tes­ta­ment to the visu­al appeal of Beck’s orig­i­nal design, espe­cial­ly giv­en that such pur­chas­es are not lim­it­ed to tourists.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­mat­ed GIFs Show How Sub­way Maps of Berlin, New York, Tokyo & Lon­don Com­pare to the Real Geog­ra­phy of Those Great Cities

A Won­der­ful Archive of His­toric Tran­sit Maps: Expres­sive Art Meets Pre­cise Graph­ic Design

The Roman Roads of Britain Visu­al­ized as a Sub­way Map

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, April 23 for the third install­ment of her lit­er­ary-themed vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A Vending Machine Now Distributes Free Short Stories at Francis Ford Coppola’s Café Zoetrope

in Life, Literature, Technology, Travel | April 6th, 2018

I loved the idea of a vend­ing machine, a dis­pens­ing machine that doesn’t dis­pense pota­to chips or beer or cof­fee for mon­ey but gives you art. I espe­cial­ly liked the fact that you didn’t put mon­ey in. — Film­mak­er Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la

Thus­ly did film­mak­er Cop­po­la arrange for a free Short Edi­tion sto­ry vend­ing machine to be installed in Café Zoetrope, his San Fran­cis­co restau­rant.

The French-built machine is the per­fect com­pan­ion for soli­tary din­ers, freely dis­pens­ing tales on skin­ny, eco-friend­ly paper with the push of a but­ton. Read­ers have a choice over the type of story—romantic, fun­ny, scary—and the amount of time they’re will­ing to devote to it.

After which, they can per­haps begin the task of adapt­ing it into a fea­ture-length film script. Part of Coppola’s attrac­tion to the form is that short sto­ries, like movies, are intend­ed to be con­sumed in a sin­gle sit­ting.

Short Edi­tion, the Greno­ble-based start-up, has been fol­low­ing up on the public’s embrace of the Café Zoetrope machine by send­ing even more short sto­ry kiosks state­side.

Colum­bus Pub­lic Health just unveiled one near the children’s area at its immu­niza­tion clin­ic, pro­vid­ing Ohio kids and par­ents from most­ly dis­ad­van­taged back­grounds with access to free lit­er­a­ture while they wait.

Philadelphia’s Free Library won a grant to install four sto­ry dis­pensers, with more slat­ed for loca­tions in South Car­oli­na and Kansas.

Part of the allure lays in receiv­ing a tan­gi­ble object. You can recy­cle your sto­ry into a book­mark, leave it for some­one else to find, or—in Coppola’s words—save it for an “artis­tic lift” while “wait­ing for a bus, or mar­riage license, or lunch.”

A café patron described the cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance of watch­ing her cousin read the sto­ry the Zoetrope machine picked out for her:

The scene seemed archa­ic: a woman frozen in con­cen­tra­tion, in the mid­dle of a buzzing crowd, read­ing from a line of print instead of scrolling through Insta­gram, as one might nor­mal­ly do while sit­ting solo at a bar. 

“When peo­ple ask [if] we have wifi for the kids,” Café Zoetrope’s gen­er­al man­ag­er told Lit­er­ary Hub, “We point to the machine and say, ‘No, but you have a story—you can read.’”

Those with­out access to a Short Edi­tion sto­ry vend­ing machine can get a feel for the expe­ri­ence dig­i­tal­ly on the company’s web­site.

Scroll down to the dice icon, spec­i­fy your pre­ferred tone and a read­ing time between 1 and 5 min­utes.

Or throw cau­tion to the wind by hit­ting the search but­ton sans spec­i­fi­ca­tion, as I did to become the 3232nd read­er of “Drowned,” a one-minute true crime sto­ry by Cléa Bar­reyre, trans­lat­ed from the French by Wendy Cross.

French speak­ers can also sub­mit their writ­ing. The vend­ing machines’ sto­ries are drawn from Short Edition’s online com­mu­ni­ty, a trove of some 100,000 short sto­ries by near­ly 10,000 authors. Reg­is­ter­ing for a free account will allow you to read sto­ries, after which you can tog­gle over to the French site to post your con­tent through the orange author space por­tal at the top right of the page. The FAQ and Google Trans­late should come in handy here. The edi­tors are cur­rent­ly review­ing sub­mis­sions of comics, poems, and micro fic­tion for the Sum­mer Grand Prix du Court, though again—only in French, for now. 

Short Edi­tion hopes to start con­sid­er­ing oth­er lan­guages for vend­ing machine con­tent inclu­sion soon, begin­ning with Eng­lish. For now, all sto­ries being dis­pensed have been trans­lat­ed from the orig­i­nal French by British lit­er­ary pro­fes­sion­als.

Bon courage!

via Lit­er­ary Hub

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 19 Short Sto­ries From Nobel Prize-Win­ning Writer Alice Munro Free Online

Napoleon’s Kin­dle: See the Minia­tur­ized Trav­el­ing Library He Took on Mil­i­tary Cam­paigns

Dis­cov­er the Jacobean Trav­el­ing Library: The 17th Cen­tu­ry Pre­cur­sor to the Kin­dle

Behold the “Book Wheel”: The Renais­sance Inven­tion Cre­at­ed to Make Books Portable & Help Schol­ars Study (1588)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, April 23 for the third install­ment of her lit­er­ary-themed vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Pre-Flight Safety Demonstration Gets Performed as a Modern Dance: A Creative Video from a Taiwanese Airline

in Comedy, Dance, Life, Travel | March 23rd, 2018

Tai­wanese air­line EVA Air’s pre-flight safe­ty video is a gen­uine odd­i­ty in a field lit­tered with cre­ative inter­pre­ta­tions.

Ten years ago, air­lines were straight­for­ward about com­ply­ing with the Inter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion, the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion, and oth­er gov­ern­ing bod­ies’ require­ments.  These instruc­tions were seri­ous busi­ness. Chil­dren and oth­er first time trav­el­ers paid strict atten­tion to infor­ma­tion about tray tables, exits, and inflat­able life vests that jad­ed fre­quent fly­ers ignored, con­fi­dent that most take offs and land­ings tend to go accord­ing to plan, and the over­whelm­ing num­ber of planes tend stay in the air for the dura­tion of one’s flight.

What about the ones that don’t though? There are times when a too-cool-for-school busi­ness trav­el­er seat­ed next to an emer­gency exit could spell dis­as­ter for every­one onboard.

Vir­gin America’s 2007 ani­mat­ed safe­ty video, below, was the first to recap­ture pas­sen­gers’ atten­tion, with a blasé nar­ra­tive style that poked fun at the stan­dard tropes:

For the .0001% of you who have nev­er oper­at­ed a seat­belt before, it works like this…

The cocky tone was dialed down for more crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion, like how to assist the child in the seat next to you when the yel­low oxy­gen masks drop from the over­head com­part­ment. (Imag­ine the may­hem if indie ani­ma­tor Bill Plymp­ton had been in the pilot’s seat for this one…)

The irrev­er­ent approach was a hit. The FAA took note, encour­ag­ing cre­ativ­i­ty in a 2010 Advi­so­ry Cir­cu­lar:

Every air­line pas­sen­ger should be moti­vat­ed to focus on the safe­ty infor­ma­tion in the pas­sen­ger brief­ing; how­ev­er, moti­vat­ing peo­ple, even when their own per­son­al safe­ty is involved, is not easy. One way to increase pas­sen­ger moti­va­tion is to make the safe­ty infor­ma­tion brief­in­gs and cards as inter­est­ing and attrac­tive as pos­si­ble.

For a while EVA Air, an inno­va­tor whose fleet includes sev­er­al Hel­lo Kit­ty Jets, played it safe by stick­ing to crowd pleas­ing schtick. Its 2012 CGI safe­ty demo video, below, must’ve played par­tic­u­lar­ly well with the Hel­lo Kit­ty demo­graph­ic.

…looks a bit 2012, no?

A few months ago, EVA took things in a direc­tion few indus­try pro­fes­sion­als could’ve pre­dict­ed: mod­ern dance, per­formed with utmost sin­cer­i­ty.

Chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Bulareyaung Pagarla­va, a mem­ber of Taiwan’s indige­nous Pai­wan com­mu­ni­ty, and a small crew of dancers spent three months trans­lat­ing the famil­iar direc­tives into a vocab­u­lary of sym­bol­ic ges­tures. See the results at the top of the post.

You’ll find none of the stock char­ac­ters who pop­u­late oth­er air­lines’ videos here—no sneaky smok­ers, no con­cerned moms, no sleepy busi­ness­peo­ple. There’s bare­ly a sug­ges­tion of a cab­in.

Unfet­tered by seats or over­head bins, the bright­ly clad, bare­foot dancers leap and roll as they inter­act with 3D pro­jec­tions, behav­ior that would cer­tain­ly sum­mon a flight atten­dant if per­formed on an actu­al plane.

Does it work?

The answer may depend on whether or not the plane on which you’re trav­el­ing takes a sud­den nose dive.

In “No Jok­ing,” an essay about air­port secu­ri­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ottawa pro­fes­sor Mark B. Salter writes that it is “dif­fi­cult to moti­vate pas­sen­gers to con­tem­plate their own mor­tal­i­ty.” The fash­ion for jok­i­ness in safe­ty videos “nat­u­ral­izes areas of anx­i­ety,” a men­tal trick of which Freud was well aware.

What then are we to make of the EVA Air dancer at the 4:35 minute mark, who appears to be falling back­ward through the night sky?

Would you show a jet’s worth of trav­el­ers the mod­ern dance equiv­a­lent of Air­plane 1975, Fear­less, or Snakes on a Plane before they taxi down the run­way?

Mer­ci­ful­ly, the nar­ra­tor steps in to remind pas­sen­gers that smok­ing is pro­hib­it­ed, before the dig­i­tal­ly pro­ject­ed dark waters can swal­low the writhing soloist up.

There’s also some ques­tion as to whether the video ade­quate­ly address­es the ques­tion of tray table oper­a­tion.

Read­ers, what do you think? Does this new video make you feel secure about tak­ing flight?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sta­tis­tics Explained Through Mod­ern Dance: A New Way of Teach­ing a Tough Sub­ject

Artist Nina Katchadouri­an Cre­ates Flem­ish Style Self-Por­traits in Air­plane Lava­to­ry

NASA Puts 400+ His­toric Exper­i­men­tal Flight Videos on YouTube

Col­or­ful Maps from 1914 and 2016 Show How Planes & Trains Have Made the World Small­er and Trav­el Times Quick­er

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How the Fences & Railings Adorning London’s Buildings Doubled (by Design) as Civilian Stretchers in World War II

in Design, History, Life, Travel | January 26th, 2018

Lon­don is a par­tic­u­lar­ly rich des­ti­na­tion for vis­i­tors with an inter­est in World War II:

Win­ston Churchill’s under­ground War Rooms…

The Roy­al Air Force Muse­um…

Blitz-spe­cif­ic walk­ing tours…

…and the scab­by steel fences/railings sur­round­ing a num­ber of South Lon­don hous­ing estates?

These mesh-and-pipe bar­ri­ers look utter­ly unre­mark­able until one hears their ori­gin story—as emer­gency stretch­ers for bear­ing away civil­ian casu­al­ties from the rub­ble of Luft­waffe raids.

The no-frills design was intend­ed less for patient com­fort than easy clean up. Kinks in the long stretch­er poles kept the injured off the ground, and allowed for easy pick up by vol­un­teers from the Civ­il Defence Ser­vice.

Some 600,000 of these stretch­ers were pro­duced in prepa­ra­tion for air­borne attacks. The Blitz killed over 28,000 Lon­don civil­ians. The num­ber of wound­ed was near­ly as high. The man­u­fac­ture of child-sized stretch­ers speaks to the cit­i­zens’ aware­ness that the human price would be ghast­ly indeed.

”I am almost glad we have been bombed,” Queen Eliz­a­beth “the Queen Mum” told a friend after Buck­ing­ham Palace was strafed in 1940. ”Now I feel I can look the East End in the face.”

Born of com­mu­ni­ty spir­it, it’s fit­ting that the stretch­ers con­tin­ue to serve the com­mu­ni­ty, replac­ing more orna­men­tal fences that had been uproot­ed for scrap met­al as part of the war effort.

Few neigh­bor­hood res­i­dents, let alone tourists, seem aware of the fences’ his­to­ry, as evi­denced in the video above.

Per­haps the recent­ly formed Stretch­er Rail­ing Soci­ety—for the pro­mo­tion, pro­tec­tion and preser­va­tion of Lon­don’s Air Raid Pro­tec­tion Stretch­er Railings—will change that, or at the very least, put up some plaques.

See pho­tos of the stretch­ers in action, then fol­low the Stretch­er Rail­ing Society’s map to their present loca­tions.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

31 Rolls of Film Tak­en by a World War II Sol­dier Get Dis­cov­ered & Devel­oped Before Your Eyes

The Stag­ger­ing Human Cost of World War II Visu­al­ized in a Cre­ative, New Ani­mat­ed Doc­u­men­tary

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Smartify, a Shazam for Art, Lets You Use Your Phone to Scan, Identify & Learn About Major Works of Art

in Art, Data, Museums, Travel, Web/Tech | January 15th, 2018

Not so long ago, art muse­ums were known as tem­ples of qui­et con­tem­pla­tion, despite dai­ly inva­sions by rau­cous school groups.

Now, the onus is on the muse­ums to bring the moun­tain to Mohammed. Those kids have smart­phones. How long can a muse­um hope to stay relevant—nay, survive—without an app?

Many of the muse­ums who’ve already part­nered up with Smar­ti­fy—an app (Mac-Android) that lets you take a pic­ture of art­work with your phone and instant­ly access infor­ma­tion about them—have exist­ing apps of their own in place: the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art in New York, the Her­mitage in St. Peters­burg, Amsterdam’s Rijksmu­se­um, to name a few.

These insti­tu­tion­al apps pro­vide vis­i­tors with an expand­ed view of the sort of infor­ma­tion one com­mon­ly finds on a muse­um card, in addi­tion to such prac­ti­cal­i­ties as gallery lay­outs and cal­en­dars of events. More often than not, there’s an option to “save” an art­work the vis­i­tor finds captivating—no word on what this fea­ture is doing to post­card sales in muse­um shops, so per­haps print isn’t dead yet.

Giv­en all the muse­um apps free for the down­load­ing, for whom is Smar­ti­fy, a “Shaz­am for art,” intend­ed?

Per­haps the glo­be­trot­ting muse­um hop­per eager to con­sol­i­date? Its devel­op­ers are adamant that it’s intend­ed to com­ple­ment, not replace, in-per­son vis­its to the insti­tu­tions where the works are housed, so arm­chair muse­um goers are advised to look else­where, like Google Arts & Cul­ture.

Per­haps the biggest ben­e­fi­cia­ries will be the small­er gal­leries and muse­ums ill equipped to launch free­stand­ing apps of their own. Smartify’s web­site states that it relies on “annu­al mem­ber­ship from muse­um part­ners, in-app trans­ac­tions, adver­tis­ing and data sales to rel­e­vant arts organ­i­sa­tions.”

Ear­ly adopters com­plained that while the app (Mac-Android) had no trou­ble iden­ti­fy­ing famous works of art, it came up emp­ty on the less­er-known pieces. That’s a pity as these are the works vis­i­tors are most like­ly to seek fur­ther infor­ma­tion on.

One of the devel­op­ers com­pared the Smar­ti­fy expe­ri­ence to vis­it­ing a muse­um in the com­pa­ny of “an enthu­si­as­tic and knowl­edge­able friend telling you more about a work of art.”

Maybe bet­ter to do just that, if the option exists? Such a friend would not be ham­pered by the copy­right laws that ham­per Smar­ti­fy with regard to cer­tain works. A friend might even stand you a hot choco­late or some pricey scone in the muse­um cafe.

At any rate, the app (Mac-Android) is now avail­able for vis­i­tors to take for a spin in 22 dif­fer­ent muse­ums and gal­leries in the UK, US, and Europe, with the promise of more to come.

Those whose knowl­edge of art his­to­ry is vast are like­ly to be under­whelmed, but it could be a way for those vis­it­ing with kids and teens to keep every­one engaged for the dura­tion. As one enthu­si­as­tic user wrote:

As a child­hood Poke­mon fan and avid art fan, this is a dream come true. This is like a Pokedex for art lol. If you ever watched the ani­me, Ash Ketchum would scan a Poke­mon with his Pokedex and get the details of its name, type, habits, etc. This app does that but instead of scan­ning mon­sters, it scans and ana­lyzes art work then gives you the load (sic) down about it.

Those with Inter­net pri­va­cy con­cerns may choose to heed, instead, the user who wrote:

Be aware, they want to gath­er as a “side effect” your pri­vate art col­lec­tion. I just want­ed to try it out with some of my art pieces (Gün­ther Förg, Richter, etc) but it does­n’t work if you don’t give them your loca­tion data. Be care­ful!

 

Muse­ums and Gal­leries Whose Images/Art Appear in Smar­ti­fy as of Jan­u­ary 2018

USA:

J. Paul Get­ty Muse­um

Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art (LACMA)

Lagu­na Art Muse­um

Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Pho­tog­ra­phy

Freer | Sack­ler Gal­leri­es­The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

The Met Clois­ters

 

UK:

The Bowes Muse­um

Mid­dles­brough Insti­tute of Mod­ern Art

Ben Uri Gallery

The Wal­lace Col­lec­tion

Roy­al Acad­e­my of Arts

Nation­al Gallery

Sculp­ture in the City

 

Europe:

Rijksmu­se­um

Rijksmu­se­um Twen­the

Lit­tle Beaux-Arts

Museo Cor­rer

Museo San Dona­to (MPSArt)

The State Her­mitage Muse­um

The Pushkin Muse­um of Fine Arts

 

Down­load Smar­ti­fy for Mac or Android.

via Dezeen

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google’s Free App Ana­lyzes Your Self­ie and Then Finds Your Dop­pel­ganger in Muse­um Por­traits

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

Where to Find Free Art Images & Books from Great Muse­ums, and Free Books from Uni­ver­si­ty Press­es

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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