Panspermingham
Nov. 18th, 2006 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusThe Future Systems-designed Selfridges at the Birmingham Bull Ring Centre is a bit like an alien spore that's landed from space. Especially if you go there early in the morning, before it opens, revealing its true purpose -- the vending of disappointingly mundane rows of beige sweaters hanging on hangers.
Or is its futurism already retro, in a 1998 Forever sort of way? (The building was designed in 1999, and opened in 2003.) You know, blobby like my Swatch phone was that year, iconic like every Gehry building was that decade, magazine-cover photogenic in a way we've started to scoff at, especially when there's a bathetic contrast between the glam spore shell and what's inside. Here it's a pod selling tat. In Seattle, Frank Gehry's Experience Music Project puts a blob around pious exhibitions dedicated to the genius of Eric Clapton. Sheffield's National Centre for Popular Music stuck a blob around Alanis Morissette sales figures. Blob bathos, baby!
But never mind, whatever rubbish is inside, blobs are always spores from space. And when you start thinking about what's from space, you begin to realize that everything in Birmingham has descended from the sky rather than wriggling up from the grass roots. The church that stands opposite the blob, for instance, what is its spire but a long stone finger pointing out into space in the vague direction of a supernatural deity? And me, I've arrived in a plane to give a lecture here. I'm from space too.
When you think about it, even the industrial revolution which gave this town its core identity was really a series of tools falling from the sky, rather like the bone the monkeys in "2001: A Space Odyssey" threw up in the air -- and which came down as waltzing spacecraft. The spinning jenny, the steam engine, they must have seemed like spores when they arrived, changing everything.
The brands in and around the Bull Ring Centre are all international ones; they're spores that have blown in on the wind. There's the Apple Store -- that's blown in from America. There's Muji; that's from Japan. Only in the rather shabbier Pallasades Centre, above Birmingham New Street Station, do local-looking stores appear. But head out a bit further and you'll find more spores -- all the stores of Handsworth have dropped down onto this Midlands city from Amritsar, Mumbai and Delhi. Direct flights to all those cities leave from Brum daily. The poor, too, are airborne spores here.
It was in South India, in 2001, that a mysterious red rain began to fall. According to BBC reports this week, more and more scientists are convinced this rain contained spores -- the seeds of extraterrestrial life, capable of travelling through space. The belief that humans -- and all life on Earth, even in Birmingham -- began with just such a rain is called "Panspermia". So welcome to Panspermingham.
Or is its futurism already retro, in a 1998 Forever sort of way? (The building was designed in 1999, and opened in 2003.) You know, blobby like my Swatch phone was that year, iconic like every Gehry building was that decade, magazine-cover photogenic in a way we've started to scoff at, especially when there's a bathetic contrast between the glam spore shell and what's inside. Here it's a pod selling tat. In Seattle, Frank Gehry's Experience Music Project puts a blob around pious exhibitions dedicated to the genius of Eric Clapton. Sheffield's National Centre for Popular Music stuck a blob around Alanis Morissette sales figures. Blob bathos, baby!
But never mind, whatever rubbish is inside, blobs are always spores from space. And when you start thinking about what's from space, you begin to realize that everything in Birmingham has descended from the sky rather than wriggling up from the grass roots. The church that stands opposite the blob, for instance, what is its spire but a long stone finger pointing out into space in the vague direction of a supernatural deity? And me, I've arrived in a plane to give a lecture here. I'm from space too.
When you think about it, even the industrial revolution which gave this town its core identity was really a series of tools falling from the sky, rather like the bone the monkeys in "2001: A Space Odyssey" threw up in the air -- and which came down as waltzing spacecraft. The spinning jenny, the steam engine, they must have seemed like spores when they arrived, changing everything.
The brands in and around the Bull Ring Centre are all international ones; they're spores that have blown in on the wind. There's the Apple Store -- that's blown in from America. There's Muji; that's from Japan. Only in the rather shabbier Pallasades Centre, above Birmingham New Street Station, do local-looking stores appear. But head out a bit further and you'll find more spores -- all the stores of Handsworth have dropped down onto this Midlands city from Amritsar, Mumbai and Delhi. Direct flights to all those cities leave from Brum daily. The poor, too, are airborne spores here.
It was in South India, in 2001, that a mysterious red rain began to fall. According to BBC reports this week, more and more scientists are convinced this rain contained spores -- the seeds of extraterrestrial life, capable of travelling through space. The belief that humans -- and all life on Earth, even in Birmingham -- began with just such a rain is called "Panspermia". So welcome to Panspermingham.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
1986 Forever...
Date: 2006-11-18 05:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-18 05:17 pm (UTC)What if these extraterrestials are socialists from another planet!?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-18 05:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-18 05:23 pm (UTC)I'm not aware of any serious support for that. Odd-coloured rain's between reported often and for a long time. In the Eighties, Reagan's cronies to claimed that yellow rain in south-east Asia was Soviet chemical warfare. As far as I know it turned out to be beeshit, and this could well be too.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-18 05:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-18 05:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-18 06:02 pm (UTC)boy...
Date: 2006-11-18 06:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-18 06:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-18 06:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-18 07:08 pm (UTC)What really struck me about this was how you usually talk about international capital cities (Berlin, London, New York, Tokyo) which have a distinct identity from their host countries. Cities like Birmigham still have an international aspect (immigration and trade being the big ones here) but they're still anchored/tethered to the national culture in ways that the capitals aren't. (And they're smaller.)
So, thanks for the brain food!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-18 08:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-18 08:46 pm (UTC)I think this metaphor of spores is rife with critical possibility! You may have spawned - or, Panspermiated? - a new phrase du jour for me. I thank you, and curse you all at once.
Blob bathos, baby!
Why did that have to be so funny?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-18 09:24 pm (UTC)remember moscow?
... with love
http://mnog.livejournal.com/8718.html
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-18 10:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-18 10:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-19 02:33 am (UTC)In the late 1700s, five gifted inventors and amateur scholars in Birmingham, England, came together for what one of them, Erasmus Darwin, called "a little philosophical laughing." They also helped kick-start the industrial revolution, as Jenny Uglow relates in the lively The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World. Their "Lunar Society" included Joseph Priestley, the chemist who isolated oxygen; James Watt, the Scottish inventor of the steam engine; and Josiah Wedgwood, whose manufacture of pottery created the industrial model for the next century. Joined by other "toymakers" and scholarly tinkerers, they concocted schemes for building great canals and harnessing the power of electricity, coined words such as "hydrogen" and "iridescent," shared theories and bank accounts, fended off embezzlers and industrial spies, and forged a fine "democracy of knowledge." And they had a fine time doing so, proving that scholars need not be dullards or eccentrics asocial.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-19 02:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-19 02:55 am (UTC)The Copyrighting of Public Space (http://newurbanist.blogspot.com/2005/01/copyrighting-of-public-space.html)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-19 03:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-19 04:39 am (UTC)The idea of getting thrown out for snapping a picture with my little camera for personal use does not sit well with me :/
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-19 05:43 am (UTC)public space also dissapeared, though it arguably never really existed here as such in the firt place. the whole world is becomming like japan (what is it ? rhizomic eiffel tower-ism ?), maybe japan can become more like the world now.
on a tangent , in napoli last year i was struck by how sensible the old architecture for living was and how ridiculous the eiffel-towerized plazas are. europe's got some serious dillemas, japan's comparatively free.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-19 06:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-19 07:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-19 11:17 am (UTC)I've only ever been there once (it's only 100 miles from here - I've no excuse). As a kid, I went to see a motor show. It was a very alien spectacle - gleaming machines arranged at weird angles around a massive room.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-19 11:44 am (UTC)It's almost certainly the people of Birmingham who came up with the phrase "the lunar men" for these eccentric Johnny-come-latelys, though. That perception -- of a visitation, rather than a mere visit -- is the local response. Spores!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-19 11:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-19 02:09 pm (UTC)When I think of retro futurism, I think of the 1950s, but there is a distinctively 90's variety of dotcom/high-tech influenced futurism that most certainly is dying. I'd call it retro if it was cool enough yet to be notable, and presumably collectable or otherwise given a premium by anyone.
Rather, it reminds me of the late 60's / early '70s futurism -- egg chairs and the like -- which have finally become retro.
That said, there's nothing in 90's futurism that I am aware of that really strikes me as being particularly worthy of special interest yet. Right now, it all just looks kind of sad, really.
The Metreon (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/24/BUGSVHDITS1.DTL) in San Francisco is a good example of this kind of failed hightech/dotcom futurism. It started with a lot of conceptual exhibits regarding the integration of art and technology, only to find that the artistic, creative elements didn't pay and didn't draw particularly large crowds, and that the only noteworthy success were the movie theatres instead.
Innovation and design has given way to commerce, and Sony sold the place to a mall manufacturer. Upstairs exhibits are gradually being replaced by additional movie theatres, while much of the ground floor seems to be a constantly changing series of marginal businesses, many of which, unsurprisingly, vend mundane rows of (designer) beige sweaters, or something to that effect.
It's odd / sad that the S.F. Bay Area can't maintain the kind of inertia for a place like the Metreon, which is basically a counterpart to Tokyo's Sony Store.
It's indicative of a failed, inefficient infrastructure in the S.F. Bay Area and in much of the U.S. -- a kind of urban suburban blight. Instead of densely populated cities linked with easily-accessable public transportation and wired with inexpensive fiber optical internet access, there's sprawl, with malls every few miles and the promise of a Starbucks/Blockbuster/Borders/Noah's Bagels shopping plaza within walking distance... not that anyone actually walks.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-19 02:53 pm (UTC)Sharkitecture
Date: 2006-11-19 03:35 pm (UTC)"The Metreon itself is mostly just a big silver box. Go buy a silver flip top lighter from the tobacco shop of your local mall, write METREON in real small letters on it, and hold it at arms length. You will have the essence of the architectural experience that is Metreon... Do not bring blind people here or they will get hurt. I guess angles and edges are stylish because they, aesthetically, poke you in the eye at every turn in this place..."
In other words, this is "sharkitecture" -- think Zaha Hadid, whose proclivity for aggressive angles turns everything she touches into a shark. Odd, because she herself is shaped like a nice curvy pod.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-19 07:35 pm (UTC)What I find annoying about contemporary architecture, buildings like the Gerkin in London, for example, is that the whole shape and style of the building makes the statement. The days of the decorated facade, of a team of semi-anonymous artisans creating beauty, are over, it seems. The architect takes all the credit. And has to work on such a huge scale, like some Texan imperialist ...
Then again a large problem in reconstruction is the use of older facades and the guting of interiors. In the public imagination, a building is its facade.
Re: Sharkitecture
Date: 2006-11-19 07:52 pm (UTC)Makes you long for the past, really.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-19 08:27 pm (UTC)Point taken about exotic buildings with mundane innards. Always a bit dispiriting. Speaking of the relationship between inside and outside...Ever hear of the architect James Rose (http://www.jamesrosecenter.org/)? I rather like the home (http://www.jamesrosecenter.org/jamesrose/ridgewood/index.html) he made for himself--inspired by his stay in Okinawa during WWII: "I wanted the spaces flowing easily from one to another, divided for privacy and for convenience." Rose wrote in 1943. "I wanted the arrangement flexible and varied. Most of all, I wanted all this integrated with the site in a design that seemed to grow, to mature, and to renew itself as all living things do."
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-20 01:07 am (UTC)http://www.oestilete.com.br/site/default.aspx?situacao=9&id_modulo=11&id_item=1677
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-20 09:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-20 09:30 am (UTC)Everett Gibson's team at the Lunar and Planetary Institute found what they believed where micro-fossils in ALH84001, a martian meteorite collected in Allan Hills in the Antarctic. That's still pretty controversial though :) Life on another planet doesn't necessarily say anything one way or the other about panspermia though.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-20 10:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-20 11:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-20 11:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-20 12:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-20 07:05 pm (UTC)Your discourse is fascinating of course and Momus's "Fallen Out of the Sky" interpretation of Brum is super.
This being said, "When the anthropologists arrive, the gods leave the island" (metraux)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-20 07:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-21 04:30 am (UTC)my spot (http://www.myspace.com/zzberlin)