MonthApril 2013
In the comic Mister X written by Dean Motter Psychetecture is art and science of altering people’s consciousness through architectural design (it’s also the source for the name of my soundscaping project Psychetect).
It turns out there are at least a few people out there studying just that:
For thousands of years, people have talked about architecture in terms of aesthetics. Whether discussing the symmetry of the Parthenon or the cladding on the latest Manhattan skyscraper, they focus first on how the buildings look, on their particular surfaces and style.
Today, it turns out, the real cutting edge of architecture has to do with the psychology of buildings, not just their appearance. Recently, scientists have begun to focus on how architecture and design can influence our moods, thoughts and health. They’ve discovered that everything—from the quality of a view to the height of a ceiling, from the wall color to the furniture—shapes how we think. […]
But spaces can also help us to become more creative and attentive. In 2009, psychologists at the University of British Columbia studied how the color of a background—say, the shade of an interior wall—affects performance on a variety of mental tasks. They tested 600 subjects when surrounded by red, blue or neutral colors—in both real and virtual environments.
Full Story: Wall Street Journal: Building a Thinking Room (warning: This story is by disgraced journalist Jonah Lehrer.)
Original Paper 1: Effects of the Physical Work Environment on Physiological Measures of Stress
Original Paper 2: Blue or Red? Exploring the Effect of Color on Cognitive Task Performances
KMBC reports:
Kansas City police uncovered an underground suburb used by the homeless on the city’s northeast side.
“This one kind of goes back, and that’s deep,” Kansas City police Officer Jason Cooley said.
KMBC’s Haley Harrison reported that a homeless outreach group said it was unlike anything they’ve ever seen. The subterranean refuge has caves and tunnels.
Full Story: KMBC: KCPD uncovers subterranean suburb on northeast side
(via David Forbes)
As Joshua Ellis notes, this sounds quite a bit like the underground squats in Las Vegas he covered for Las Vegas City Life in 2002.
A couple weeks ago I linked to Odyssey Works and Videogames Adventure Services, two services that promise to provide interesting and/or exciting experiencing, including kidnapping. Here’s another company:
I had to fly all the way to Detroit to get kidnapped. Extreme Kidnapping is a company operated by Adam Thick, an entrepreneur and convicted counterfeiter from Oakland County, Michigan. Thick founded Extreme Kidnapping in 2002 after being inspired by the old David Fincher movie The Game. (SPOILER: It was all a game!) For $500, Adam and his crew will abduct you at gunpoint and hold you hostage for four hours. A thousand bucks gets you ten hours, along with a bit of customized sadism. GQ was curious to see what $1,500 would buy me.
If it strikes you as obscene that people would pay to be kidnapped at a time when it happens routinely to other people for real, the fact is that we live in an age when a normal life simply isn’t enough for many Americans. If you watch enough movies and TV (as I do), you end up yearning for a life that is more cinematic than blissful. Experiences are the newest, hottest luxury items. I looked at it like I was paying for a memory implant, Total Recall-style. But the one thing that didn’t make sense to me was how Adam could pull off the trick of making a kidnapping feel real when his client knows it’s not.
Full Story: GQ: What It’s Like To Be Kidnapped
Artist Rian Hughes is putting together a show at Orbital Comics to criticize pop artist Roy Lichtenstein and celebrate his original sources:
“Pop artist Roy Lichtensein currently has a show on at the Tate. While the public is intimately familiar with his work, what they may be unaware of is how closely many of his images were “appropriated” from comic artists like Irv Novick, Russ Heath, Jack Kirby, John Romita and Joe Kubert, who received no fee or credit.
Is this an act of brilliant recontexturalisation? The elevation of commercial “low” art to “high” art? Art world snobbery? Artistic licence? Cultural annexation? Gallery shortsightedness? Or something else?
This show is a chance for real comic-book artists (and other “commercial artists” – illustrators, designers etc) to ask these kinds of questions and share their views, via their work.Every interested comic artist (or illustrator, graphic designer or other “commercial artist”) should “re-reappropriate” one of the comic images Lichtenstein used, and rework it, using some of their ‘commercial art’ drawing skills, to warp and twist it into something interesting and original, and in the process to comment on this type of appropriation.
The IMPORTANT thing to stress is that you’d be going back to the source material and re-reappropriating (sic) Coletta, Novick, Kirby et al – NOT copying Lichtenstein, as we don’t want copyright issues from the Lichtenstein estate …see this as a celebratory, positive show which aims to get the point across that the original artists deserve credit and respect …As suggested by Dave Gibbons, money raised from selling prints or originals will be donated to the Hero Initiative, which helps down-on-their-luck comics veterans: http://www.heroinitiative.org/ Again, a nice way to Give Back the Art.”
The show is accepting submissions.
Full Story (and many more images): Robot 6: Comic artists razz Lichtenstein with the Image Duplicator show
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