i saw it for the first time a few years back and still remember how initially confused i was. maybe i blocked it from my mind to prevent nightmares. then this morning i, for some reason, had a flashback to that very day of discovery and actually got annoyed with myself for not writing about it sooner. anyway, better late than never. we’ll start the photos from afar and then get closer with each picture as i want to make the experience as creepy as possible for you.

žižkov television tower, žižkov, prague

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that last photo’s the clincher for me - creepy as hell - and the fact that there are 10 of these huge crawling babies permanently attached to a television tower in the czech republic really does make me happy. not since watching the tripods as a kid have i been so affected by a 3-legged structure.

on to the facts.

the tower itself, sans faceless toddlers, was built in the mid-late 80s and stands 216 metres tall. even without the babies it’d be a strange looking beast, but that didn’t deter the geniuses in charge of the tower from permanently attaching david cerny’s sculptures to its legs - in 2000 they were added as a temporary installation but the public loved them so much that they were kept for good.

on that note, i’d like to personally thank the people of prague for having incredible taste. this tower is a work of art.

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As I imagine is the case for many deputydog readers, I’m fascinated by anything that goes above and beyond the norm. Having hosted experimental radio for nearly a decade, I’ve had opportunities to hear many truly strange sounds. These are a few standouts of the unlikely and just plain odd recordings I’ve come across. All are beautiful in their own ways– I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

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How about an album featuring all-ice instruments? That’s the setting for Norweigan percussionist Terje Isungset’s 2002 disc “Iceman Is.” Recorded entirely within a studio constructed of ice (and kept at 17°F!), Isungset and sculptor Bengt Carling constructed a harp, trumpets, percussion instruments, and horns– all from ice. The result is as you might guess: fragile, organic, otherworldly. The best part is that Isungset recently re-released “Iceman Is” through his All-Ice label.

Link to All-Ice label page: http://www.all-ice.no/

If ice isn’t enough, there’s always Jamie Drouin and Lance Olsen’s “Snow:Field” double album, featuring recordings of the artists “interactions” with a field of snow. The second disc contains the remixes, for real.

Link to Lance Olsen’s blog, with sound samples of Snow:Field: http://www.lanceolsen.ca/index.php?itemid=143

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Not a fan of cold weather? Join Glenn Weyant sometime– if you don’t mind raising the ire of the US border patrol. Weyant’s “Sonic Anta” project documents his aural explorations of the US/Mexico border, literally playing the border itself with chopsticks and a cello bow. Never heard a virtuoso of corrugated fencing and barbed wire? Now’s your chance.

Link to Glenn Weyant’s Sonic Anta sound page: http://www.sonicanta.com/music.html

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Don’t think you have to freeze or sweat to death finding amazing music. Tom Johnson didn’t have to look any farther than the nearest piano to realize tremendous possibilities in sound. In fact, he played all of them– for his 1986 composition “The Chord Catalogue,” Johnson listed the 8,178 chords possible in a single octave. Starting with the 78 two-note chords, and continuing through to the single thirteen-note chord, Johnson reveals a set of natural facts under what listeners ordinarily think of as music. Think this sounds too simple? At present, Johnson is the only person who has mastered playing it.

Video of a performance of Tom Johnson’s “Failing: A Very Difficult Piece for Solo String Bass”:

Link to “The Chord Catalogue” score: http://www.editions75.com/FreeScores/TheChordCatalogue.pdf

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Surprisingly, “The Chord Catalogue” doesn’t take much more than an hour to play. For those interested in loooong recordings, Masami Akita’s “Merzbox” may be just the ticket. Akita, well-known to fans of the harsh noise genre as Merzbow, is remarkably prolific– with full-length individual releases numbering well into the hundreds. The Merzbox, however, is still a jaw-dropping acheivement. Comprised of 50 separate CDs (or 52 for original limited edition buyers), the Merzbox takes a little over 2 days to play end-to-end. And it’s a punishing 2 days; full of Merzbow’s full-tilt white noise blasts, endless loops, distortion, and feedback. For noise fans, the Merzbox is a wonder that keeps on giving. For everyone else, it’s a nightmare in a box.

Link for Merzbox: http://www.xtr.com/catalog/XLTD-003/

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Then again, isn’t 2 days a little… short? Try locating a copy of Farmers Manual’s DVD “RLA,” which compiles every available recording of the improvisational electronic music cooperative’s performances into over 3 straight days of listening fun. It’s quite possibly the longest-playing single disc available so far. Since its 2003 release date, many more hours of performances have been located– hardcore fans can download them free from the band’s “RLA” website to keep their collection up-to-date!

Link to Farmers Manual RLA wiki, with legal downloads: http://rla.web.fm/twiki/bin/view/Rla

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Sometimes, the strangest recordings are also the most familiar. Take, for example, the “mic-in-track” recordings accidentally made available during Napster’s heyday. During this time, a default setting to name saved audio recordings as “mic-in-track” resulted in the ability of Napster users to download masses of such recordings, often to comical end. What did they hear? If you said “kids unaware anyone would ever hear them being silly with a microphone,” you’d mostly be spot-on. The Evolution Control Committee has a nice section of “mic-in-track” downloads, for the morbidly curious.

Link to “mic-in-track” recordings (scroll down): http://evolution-control.com/culturejamming.html

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DaveX blogs about experimental music and sound art at Startling Moniker. In addition to hosting a long-running radio program of the same; he is a professional, licensed raconteur.

the enormous 34m ( not ft as i previously put. excuse my ignorance) diameter shiny ball pictured above goes by the name of ‘la géode’. this stunning metallic structure houses a 1000m² hemispheric imax screen at the ‘cité des sciences et de l’industrie’ in paris. it was designed in 1983 by french architect adrien fainsilber and then realised by engineer gérard chamaillou. it’s apparently one of the largest geodesic domes on earth.

seeing this beauty brings to mind what must surely be the most aesthetically incredible planetarium in the world: l’hemisfèric in valencia…

photo sources: (clockwise from top) 1, 2, 3

known by many as ‘the eye of knowledge’, l’hemisfèric planetarium was the first building to be finished as part of valencia’s city of arts and science, a complex designed by super-architect santiago calatrava who is the genius also responsible for, amongst others, the turning torso in sweden and chicago’s upcoming supertall skyscraper, the chicago spire. ‘the eye’ even blinks (albeit quite slowly) by way of hydraulics to reveal the spherical planetarium inside, the reflection of this in the surrounding pool of water cleverly resulting in the illusion you see above.

photo source

walking towards the ‘house in the clouds’ in suffolk for the first time can be a confusing experience if you approach from the right angle as the otherwise normal-looking home appears to either float above the trees or perch on a non-existent hill behind the surrounding greenery.

what you’re actually looking at is the top of an old 30′000 gallon water tower, brilliantly designed 85 years ago by architects who were asked to disguise what would have been an ugly 70ft high blot on the landscape of thorpeness - the village who benefited from its water storage capabilities until 1977.

photo: flickr user slim_boydim. click here for larger version

the water tank was removed in 1979 and since then this lanky house has been renovated on a few different occasions, the result being a 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom home containing a total of 68 steps from top to bottom. the interior itself is very nicely done and can be seen at the building’s own website here where it seems you can also book a room and experience the place first-hand. you can also spy on the residence via google maps here.

a search for video of the house took me to the charming little clip below, featuring a song about a train journey which passes the building - at around 45 seconds you can just make it out in the distance. not great but the song’s so pleasant that it just managed to calm me down after a shit day at work.

sources: 1, 2, 3

before today i didn’t realise this building existed but it’s so fucking incredible that as soon as a photo of it flashed before my eyes it instantly rocketed to the top of my non-existent ‘favourite buildings’ list. there are so many reasons to love this beauty that it’s hard to know where to start. it’s got 13 floors which, to me at least, makes it a skyscraper. it’s entirely made of wood, thus making it a wooden skyscraper. it was made by the fair hands of a single crazy russian man (nikolai sutyagin - pictured bare-chested above), thus making it a homemade wooden skyscraper.

brilliant.

based in the russian city of archangelsk, ex-gangster nikolai originally intended the building to contain 2 floors but couldn’t help himself when he realised there was nothing to stop him adding more on top. nothing, that is, apart from the slow-off-the-mark local authorities who say that wooden buildings shouldn’t exceed 2 floors in height, the result being that the 144ft high building is now under threat of demolition, something which would be an absolute travesty in my opinion. slightly crazy but creative ex-gangster russian architects should be given free reign to build whatever they like.

this building is an absolute work of art.

there’s some low-quality video goodness to consume below.

sources: 1, 2

these guys are standing in one of the gigantic legs belonging to the ‘tallest structure ever moved by humans over the surface of the earth’: the 1/2km tall ‘troll a’ offshore gas platform in the north sea, owned by shell oil. with a total weight of 1.2million tonnes, the structure was built using 245,000m3 of concrete and 100′000 tonnes of steel (apparently the equivalent of 15 eiffel towers), the walls of its legs measuring over a metre thick.

following construction, over a period of 7 days, ‘troll a’ was towed from rogaland in norway to the troll gas field in the north sea - a total of 174 nautical miles.

the picture below illustrates the massive scale of the platform…

all pictures from statoil.

info sources: 1, 2, 3

maybe i live a sheltered life but i’ve never been more surprised by a public transport system than when i came across this little beauty. it’s called the carmelit, it runs underground in the citry of haifa, israel and it’s the country’s only subway system. due to the city being located on the side of mount carmel, the entire single track ‘funicular’ system has been designed to accommodate the incline, hence the strange stepped stations and diagonal trains. i’m told they’re more common at ski resorts which would maybe explain why i’ve never seen one before.

either way, it’s quirky and it’s brilliant.

there’s a video clip of the carmelit in action at the bottom, accompanied by a soundtrack featuring mr kanye ‘underbite’ west.

believe it or not there’s a website dedicated to all things funicular here.

watch…

i’m currently hooked on these structures so, hot on the heels of the first 5, here’s another bunch of amazing facilities and fascinating machines that have been created for research purposes. there are still plenty more so it probably won’t stop here. thanks for all the suggestions following the first 5.

1. large helical device, gifu, japan

the phenomenal photo above shows superconducting coils within the large helical device in japan, a machine which holds the title of ‘largest superconducting stellarator in the world’. these huge winding coils are used to generate magnetic fields strong enough to confine a plasma in the centre which needs to be heated to the point where a controlled nuclear fusion reaction will occur - 100 million degrees.

you can read more about the device here. a mammoth version of the photo is here.

2. odeillo solar furnace, odeillo, france

built in 1969, this brilliantly shiny oddity is the 8-storey high odeillo solar furnace in france: at present the largest on the planet. the 63 smaller mirrors on the hillside reflect the sun onto the huge parabolic reflector you see in the photos, this in turn reflecting the solar radiation very precisely onto a point just 18 metres in front of the parabola. using this method, temperatures can reach an unbelievably hot 3400°C. the incredible amount of heat generated by the furnace is used for research in many areas including high temperature solar engineering (advanced solar power systems, solar chemistry, etc.), photo-physics and chemistry applied physics. the official site is here.

3. atf fire research laboratory, maryland, usa

measuring a whopping 60ft x 60ft, this is the largest calorimetry hood on earth and is an essential part of the atf fire research laboratory. the hood needs to be this large in order to monitor and measure the heat output created by burning buildings underneath it. full scale houses have been specifically built, placed under the hood and destroyed in the name of research on a regular basis since the state-of-the-art facility was opened in 2003, and that’s just one of the 3 hoods in a lab which is so impressive that it’s visited by experts the world over.

official site is here.

4. ligo observatories, louisiana & washington, usa

the photo above shows ligo’s hanford observatory, one of 2 main facilities used by ligo to detect ‘ripples’ or gravitational waves in space-time. both of the observatories have an enormous l-shaped interferometer, each arm measuring 4km in length, with a mirror at each end. laser light enters the ‘arms’ from the corner of the l-shape and then bounces back and forth between each mirror a set number of times. the reason for this is better explained in the clip below.

for a simple explanation about both gravitational waves and ligo itself, watch the clip. to see the hanford observatory on google maps, click here. the ligo website is here.

5. arecibo observatory, arecibo, puerto rico

the arecibo observatory in puerto rico contains the largest curved focusing dish on earth and is used for 3 main research purposes: radio astronomy, aeronomy and radar astronomy observations of solar system objects. the dish has been set in a depression between some hills and, to compensate for its fixed position, the receiver can be repositioned as it sits 450ft above ground. the observatory’s incredible appearance resulted in a cameo in goldeneye’s final scene.

the official arecibo site can be found here. also, the gigantic structure can be seen clearly on google maps here.

sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

otherwordly structures, massive machines, surreal technology….

some incredible beasts have been constructed in the name of research and below are 5 of the most immediately intriguing. there are plenty more out there which will be highlighted in the near future as i’m making this a series of sorts. let me know if you have any in mind for the next collection.

on to the brilliance…

1. super kamiokande detector, kamioka observatory, japan

an old favourite on the intertubes, this 50′000 ton cylindrical ‘ring-imaging water cerenkov detector’ can be found at the kamioka mozumi mine in japan - 1′000m underground. clever people built the machine to detect neutrinos, proton decay and cosmic rays: this is done using the 12′000-ish photomultiplier tubes (extremely sensitive light detectors) visible on all walls of the ‘ultra-purified water-filled’ tank. to offer further explanation would reveal my scientific ineptitude. instead, go here for a nicely simplified explanation and here for some incredible hi-res photos large enough to incapacitate the average pc.

2. benefield anechoic facility, california, usa

first of all (in case you don’t know) an anechoic chamber is a room which has been filled with sound absorbing materials in order to minimise all reflections from internal surfaces, thus making the space echo-less. more commonly these rooms are used to test and research sound equipment due to the lack of any such interference affecting the equipment’s output. the benefield anechoic facility you see above is the largest anechoic chamber on earth and, rather than using acoustically absorbent materials, is filled with radiation absorbent materials in the form of 816′000 foam cones designed to minimise the reflection of radio frequency signals. to read more, look here.

3. the z machine, sandia national laboratory, new mexico, usa

the z machine is the largest x-ray generator on earth and is believed by many as the key to understanding controlled fusion.

‘the z machine uses a short burst of intense electricity - only a few 10 billionths of a second long - that forces an ionized gas to implode. the process is called a z-pinch because the pulse creates a magnetic field that squeezes particles in the vertical direction, which math books usually label as the “z-axis.” at the center of the z-pinch, in the space of a small soup can, gas particles race at each other at a million miles an hour. the collisions result in X-rays and extremely high temperatures.’

in 2006 the machine unexpectedly produced plasmas with temperatures in excess of 3.6 billion °f. that’s hotter than the core of our sun.

a very brief video tour…

4. very large array, new mexico, usa

arranged on an enormous y-shaped set of tracks on the plains of san augustin is the ‘very large array’, a collection of 27 radio antennas used primarily by astronomers around the world. each antenna weighs 230 tons and can be moved by way of the 3 13 mile long tracks, giving a total of 4 different configurations, the data from all 27 antenna can then be combined to give the resolution of an antenna whopping 22 miles across. the 2nd picture, from google maps, gives you some idea of the scale of the observatory.

the direct link to the vla on google maps is here. the vla website is here.

5. large hadron collider, cern, switzerland/france

the large hadron collider, when completed very soon, will be the largest particle collider on earth, one of the intentions being to recreate the slightly hot conditions that occured immediately after the big bang, in turn resulting in the observation of the ‘god particle‘. the huge circle in the 1st photo is the location of the lhc tunnel, located approximately 100m below ground and measuring 27km in circumference. in the tunnel are 2 parallel tubes, each carrying protons in opposite directions at near the speed of light using the surrounding superconducting magnets. to carry on with this explanation could take days and a lot of mistakes so you should continue reading about this mammoth machine here.

sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5