the plane in the picture above, seen here at nasa’s dryden flight research centre in california, is called the shuttle carrier aircraft and as you may have guessed is used to carry space shuttles (piggy-back style) should they land at this base. i mention this purely to give some sense of scale as the number 270 next to it is part of the largest compass rose on earth.

this one…

the compass has been painted on the bed of an enormous dry lake next to the research centre and measures a whopping 1.21km in diameter. according to wikipedia, ‘it is inclined to magnetic north (around 13 degrees east of true north) and is used by pilots for calibrating heading indicators’. next to the compass, also painted on the bed of the lake, are some of the longest runways on earth. you can see a couple of them in the next photo.

the size of this thing is amazing. check it out on google maps here - you can still make out the compass rose from quite a distance. also check out this page on flickr. a guy who works at the base has added some interesting notes to an aerial shot of the area.

if all the square’s skyscrapers had been anything like the examples below that skyward respite would’ve been absent. no doubt in a decade that will have changed as property owners latch on to the idea of media facades and join the race to wrap the largest number of LEDs around a building as possible.

in the meantime, here are 6 of the most illuminated buildings on earth.

1. national library of belarus

photo sources: left / right

the new national library of belarus was built in 2006 in minsk and revealed itself to be housed in a 23-storey diamond shaped building, each of the 24 panels covered in glass. during the day the surrounding light causes the building to ’sparkle’, at night the library turns into an enormous video screen due to 4646 colour-changing LEDs planted behind the glass. for more technical info go here and watch the clip below for a sample of the night’s lightshow.

2. electrabel power station

photos’ source

note: i realise it’s not a building as such but it just had to be included.

in december 2005 the electrabel power station in drogenbos, belgium was given an exterior makeover by magic monkey. 8,032 individually controllable rgb LED pixels’ were added to the cooling tower, each with the ability to change colour up to 30 times per second. the effect is incredible and surely a first on such a structure. if i had to live next to a horrible, belching cooling tower it’d be this one. for more photos and some video of the tower in action, go here.

3. aurillac multi-purpose hall

photos’ source

this stunning multi-purpose hall was designed by brisac gonzalez architects and built in 2004 2007 in aurillac, france. throughout the night the upper portion of the building, clad with glass bricks containing fluorescent lights, slowly changes colour. it’s nice to see illumination of this scale done tastefully, although i’m yet to see any video of the lights in action. i could be horribly wrong. more info here.

4. agbar tower

photo source

the agbar tower in barcelona, a.k.a. “el supositori” (the suppository), is a phenomenal skyscraper in barcelona that looks like something that’s either just landed or is about to leave. the building’s 4500 LED lights cover the building and each night the lightshow takes place. its architect jean nouvel said of the building, “this is not a tower, a skyscraper, in the american sense. It is a more an emergence, rising singularly in the center of a generally calm city. unlike slender spires and bell towers that typically pierce the horizons of horizontal cities, this tower is a fluid mass that bursts through the ground like a geyser under permanent, calculated pressure”. for technical info, go here.

5. uniqa tower

photos’ source

in 2006, vienna’s uniqa tower was transformed. over a period of 5 weeks a whopping 180′000 LEDs were fitted to the building’s exterior by LED specialists barco, the company also responsible for comcast’s ridiculously expensive video wall earlier this year. for a taste of the animations the building has to offer, watch the clip below. for more technical info, go here.

6. dexia tower

photo sources: top / bottom

dexia tower in brussels boasts 150′000 LEDs on its exterior and that in itself is impressive, however it’s the building’s annual light-related events that really wow the crowds. late december 2006 the facade transformed into an interactive display, allowing th public to control the animated lighting via a touchscreen opposite the skyscraper (see video below). earlier this year the building changed colour every evening depnding on the weather forecast for the following day. for more info go here.

this is just a small selection of such buildings. if you’re looking for more, follow these links…

nait5

interactive architecure

LEDs magazine

needless to say, i started looking into it, and the fascination was warranted. from the looks of it there’s some kind of race on between wineries across the globe to seek out super-architects willing to design their ultra-funky wine production facility. here are some of the best i’ve come across.

note: just for the record, i am completely uneducated when it comes to wine itself. to prove it, i like my white wine medium-sweet and my red wine topped up with coke and ice (i believe it’s called a calimocho). i can think of no reasonable defence.

1. dominus winery, napa valley, u.s.a. :: website

architect - herzog & de meuron

photo source

photo source left, photo source right

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2. bodegas ysios, rioja, spain :: website

architect - santiago calatrava valls

photo source top, photo source bottom

photo source left, photo source right

3. peregrine winery, queenstown, new zealand :: website

architect - chris kelly

photo source

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4. cantina petra, suvereto, italy :: website

architect - mario botta

photo source

photo source top, photo source bottom

5. bodegas lópez de heredia viña todonia, rioja, spain :: website

pavillion architect - zaha hadid

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photo source left, photo source right

6. weingut leo hillinger, jois, austria :: website

architect - gerner°gerner plus

all photos’ source

7. mission hill family estate, westbank, british columbia :: website

architect - olson sundberg kundig allen

photo source

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so that’s just 8 of the many superbly designed wineries on earth. special mention must quickly go to frank gehry’s recent addition to the marques de riscal winery in spain. he was commissioned to design a hotel to compliment the winery, the extravagant results of which can be seen in the video below.

i’ve included a link below to the book on amazon in case you were curious. it’s fascinating.

wine by design: the space of wine (interior angles)

the majority of people on earth take part in one of these activities on a daily basis so imagine the potential when you think that all of these actions produce energy which, in conjunction with technology already available, can be harnessed and used as a source with which to power the tv at your gym, power the streetlights as you drive, power subway ticket machines as you walk towards them or power a nightclub’s sound system as you dance. all of these examples have been realised to date, successfully.

admittedly it’s early days and to implement these technologies on a wide scale would take years but it’s an ingenious concept and one which would guarantee sustainable sources of energy for as long as we keep on moving.

1. the bridge

this is the sakura bridge in tokyo, one of many bridges on the area’s shuto expressway. what makes the bridge unique however is the fact that the vibrations caused by vehicles crossing the structure are converted by way of the piezo effect (the ability for some materials, more often than not crystals, to produce electricity as a result of mechanical pressure) and subsequently used to generate the electricity needed to illuminate the bridge. the metropolitan expressway company aim to utilise this technology across the entire network of roads, eventually negating the need for any other kind of external power source when lighting the roads.

2. the nightclub

the sustainable dance club premiered its electricity generating dancefloor in rotterdam, october 2006 and instantly recieved worldwide praise. using a dance floor embedded with piezoelectric elements enabled the organisers to harness the collective energy of everyone who stepped foot on it and divert the converted electricity to the club’s sound and lighting systems. understandably, initial results weren’t mind-blowing but as the technology develops so will the electrical output. the long-term plan is to install these floors in clubs worldwide.

3. the train station

earlier this year at tokyo station, a second experiment was carried out by east japan railway company in order to discover just how much electricity could be produced by the thousands of commuters passing through the building on a daily basis. from january through to march a power-generating floor, embedded with piezoelectric elements, was installed at the yaesu north exit’s ticket gates, concourse and stairs and the experiment was a success. the next aim is to install these floors ticket gates station-wide, the resultant electricity used to power all automatic ticket gates, ticket machines and electric displays.

4. the gym

and finally, the place we all love to avoid. last year a hong kong branch of california fitness called in inventor lucien gambarota to modify some of some of its cardio machines using the trusty old dynamo. these adapted machines were then hooked up to the gym’s lighting system, the result being a well-lit room as long as a serious amount of effort was made. following this trial, as you’ll hear on the video, plans are apparently afoot to introduce these modifications on a company-wide scale.

sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

the enormous steel ball you see in the photos (and the incredible video below) is the world’s largest ‘tuned mass damper’ and sits near the top of the world’s largest completed skyscraper on earth, taipei 101 in taiwan. the idea behind a tuned mass damper is quite simple: as a building sways (resulting from high winds, earthquakes etc), its tuned mass damper, essentially a finely tuned and ridiculously heavy pendulum, will move in opposition to the structure’s oscillations and minimise any movement. if that makes no sense, watch the crude gif below.

due to both the immense size of taipei 101 and the fact that it sits just over 600ft from a major fault line, engineers had no choice but to install one of this size at a cost of $4m. too heavy to be lifted by crane, the damper was assembled on site and hangs through 4 floors of the skyscraper. it can reduce the building’s movement by up to 40%.

image sources: 1, 2, 3

image source: wikipedia

now for an incredible video. on may 12th, as the horrendous earthquake occurred in china’s sichuan province, tremors were felt for miles, including in taipei 101. youtube user phuaalvin was in the building at the time and said that as the building started to shake, dozens of people ran to the damper to watch it in action. here’s the video he took…

sources: 1, 2

now for some clips…

here’s another video. skip to about 1:30 for some dancing action.

i’m told that to see it in action, in person, is breathtaking. i’m also told that the screen cost a whopping $22million to design, construct and install.

for that money, you get the following…

1. the largest four-millimeter LED screen in the world, measuring 83.3ft x 25.4ft

2. 10 million pixels mounted in a seamless flat array - that’s 5 times the resolution of high-definition tv

3. an automated control room, home to 27′000 gigabytes of information, six dx-700 led digitizers, seven encore video processors and three matrixpro routers

wow.

at least we now know where some of the bandwidth charges are gonna go.

sources: 1, 2

this has to be one of the smartest ideas i’ve seen in a long time.

last year a mr peng yu-lun devised a system which, when implemented at mrt stations, will negate the need for trains to stop or decelerate at all when approaching the station itself. the idea, as you’ll see in the video below, is to have a seperate designated carriage for people wishing to board or alight the train which waits at the platform. the carriage then attaches to the train as it passes underneath and eventually rests on the roof until the next stop approaches and the carriage detatches and comes to a halt. have a look at the clip.

one advantage that immediately springs to mind is a presumably huge energy saving due to the fact that the main train would no longer have to stop and start on a regular basis.

i came across this video by complete mistake today on a chinese version of youtube and subsequently spent what seemed like a lifetime trying to find related information that wasn’t in taiwanese. if anyone can translate the audio i’d be grateful. the only written info i could find was from the ‘taiwan headlines’ website, which can be read here.

just when you think you’ve seen every type of bridge possible.

this is the sky bridge in langkawi, malaysia, a stunning cable-stayed bridge which actually curves around the single support column from which it’s suspended, 687 metres above sea level. completed in october 2004, the structure relies on an 87 metre high support column to hold the weight of the deck, this weight distributed through 8 load balancing cables attached to its head.

whilst the upsides are incredible views and a testament to engineering brilliance, the downside for gephyrophobiacs is that you’re seemingly placing all your trust in a single, relatively thin lattice tower which also happens to be standing at an angle. of course this is essential for the bridge to stay upright (a quality i always look for in a bridge) but visually it couldn’t be more frightening.

all in all, a unique feat of engineering.

sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

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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.

photo source: ian iong

approximately 3′000 years ago the people of cordillera took on one of mankind’s most impressive landscape modification projects in order to farm effectively on the surrounding mountainsides and slowly transform the region into what some now call the eighth wonder of the world. due to the sheer scale of this farming system it’s hard to disagree: the rice terraces of the philippine cordilleras, if laid out end to end, would stretch halfway round the globe. if this ingenious feat had been accomplished in recent times the clearly enormous task would have seemed more than impressive, however the fact that it was completed thousands of years ago without the use of modern apparatus and machinery takes the terraces and integrated irrigation systems to a whole new level.

photo source: dudz torres

the idea behind field terracing is simple and something not unique to the philippines: carve horizontal ledges into hills, essentially creating thousands of small walled fields from base to peak in which to grow crops and retain much needed water. however, in the cordilleras region this has been applied to an area on an elsewhere unseen scale: approximately 10′360 square kilometres. entire mountains, sometimes thousands of feet high, sculpted like blocks of wood. that itself is incredible. then you have the irrigation system: the natural streams and rivers of each terraced mountain and its forests have been diverted using a huge and complex arrangement of canals, sluices and taps, the same water is then pushed to the highest terraces using miles of wooden piping. when the terraces fill up they overflow and start to fill the terraced field below, and the cycle continues until the entire mini-waterfall covered mountain is carrying an immense weight of water.

photo source: ian iong

the rice terraces are, understandably, a huge tourist attraction and have attracted attention and money from across the world. however the tourism is also thought to be responsible for the start of what could be a slow death of the terraces for a couple of reasons. firstly, the new generation of locals see the hospitality industry created by the terraces as a far more appealing line of work than the constant farming and attention needed to sustain the terraces themselves. secondly, water isn’t as readily available as in the past due to the effects of an earthquake in 1990 and the new demand for water itself from the tourist industry.

for that reason unesco has placed the terraces on a list of world heritage sites it believes to be ‘in danger’ in hope of starting a successful rehabilitation of the world’s most incredible agricultural engineering system.

sources: 1, 2, 3