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About

"written photography of the cityscape. and else. current city: Los Angeles. next city: unknown. this is federico's blog. when asked "what do you do besides blogging?" federico responds: "a bunch of stuff". this blog documents some of it. and the city, yes. always the city."

Recent

"the recent past, haunting fading presence"

Archives

self portrait. monday. Monday, June 29 |

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look to the future Saturday, April 25 |



and this is how i spent my saturday afternoon.

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the fix Tuesday, April 21 |


from my friend dave.

the stickers are here! Friday, April 3 |

i just got a new batch of stickers. i created a simple web page (http://urbansoil.net/hands) but i'm leaning towards scarce content. it has a gif image with things some friends wrote on the skinny sticker but i don't have much more. no manifesto, not so much into explanations. i guess this one is very graphic, very straight forward. any comments, ideas?

3 artists Monday, February 2 |





3 artists i'm excited about these days. i'm happy to have met two of them in person. joe linton, who recently started posting his drawings online (finally) at handmaderansomnotes, lots of interesting commentary about technique and process. eduardo recife who recently updated his website misprintedtype, his work is sooo great (yes, three o's). and michael napper, at mixedmedia, who's been cranking these beautiful pictures that make you wanna listen to black metal while watching Brothers Quay films.
by the way, i cropped their images without permission. apologies.

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gliders of life Monday, January 19 |


i think this is one of those things were science meets art meets technology meets hacking meets playing. i'm so awestruck. the image above depicts the top screen of a nintendo ds running a homebrew application called glitchDS which is described by the makers as "a FREE homebrew Cellular Automaton music sequencer for the Nintendo DS. It’s perfect for creating IDM and Glitch style loops" (i sprinkled some wikipedia links for jargon clarification). but that doesn't begin to describe the elegant implementation and the fun it is to play with the thing. i had seen and had been amused by Conway's game of life but this is the first time i see someone/something using it for music creation. quite impeccable. take a 70's abstract model of life with deep philosophical implications and turn it into a pattern generator for triggering sound samples hosted in an early XXI century game console with a touch screen interface.
so lovely. i have gliders on my eyes.

you are the media, the street is your canvas Saturday, January 17 |

i wrote about the beautiful book "recipes for disaster" and the way it came to me some time ago. one of the lines of experimentation that came from that book was the asphalt mosaic technique, also known as "Toynbee-tiles" (named after mosaics found in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania).
in brief, this is a way of creating permanent mosaics in asphalt by placing some kind of material on the road and allowing traffic to embed it over time. pretty much in the same fashion that random objects like keys and other pieces of metal get embedded on the road.

our first try was this "earth in flames". we followed the directions from the crime think article (web version here) except for the crack filler (instead we used henry's brand roofing repair tar) but the results were pretty good. it takes months for the thing to be visible since the layers of roofing paper have to be peeled away by traffic. the placement of this piece was somewhat unintentional too; we put it a few feet away from the crosswalk but the cars making a left turn and accelerating moved it on top of the white line.
it takes certain amount of patience once you install it but once it comes out it can last for many years. the downside of this particular location is that eventually the white line might be repainted by the city. lesson learned: don't put your mosaics on the turning lane.

now, if you are not the kind who wants to wait long for visible results here is another technique.
my work has been giving me access to a bunch of discarded roofing materials so i've been experimenting. there is this thing called modified bitumen (industry people call it "mod bit") that is used mostly on flat roofs. it's asphalt mixed with polymers then applied to a fiberglass or polyester mat and covered on one side with an even coat of gravel. there are two kinds, one is applied with a torch and the other one comes with a sticky underside protected with thin film that can be peeled, hence called "peel and stick", that's the kind you want, unless you want to be torching stuff on the side of the road. it comes in long heavy rolls so probably you don't want to buy it, it can be found in the dumpsters of roofing contractors or solar companies (check your yellow pages). i have found pieces left over in construction sites or even left on roofs (check your roof if you have access). if you live in a place with a friendly handyman he might have pieces laying around for repair work.

the material can be cut in any shape you want. you can use special roofing blades (they have a hook at the end) or tin-snips or even regular razor knife (the gravel on top will kill the edge pretty fast). but be careful, the stuff is somewhat sticky and hard so don't get cut. to place it just peel the back and put it on the road near a sidewalk or crosswalk but make shure cars will go over it so other people don't feel compeled to remove it (believe me, they do) and it gets flattened quickly. choose a light section of road because the gravel will dissapear and you'll be left with a nice black shape.

the mushroom above has been in place for about six months and the stars are a week old so the gravel is not gone yet. i still like the initial look, instant satisfaction, they are like asphalt stickers.

sometimes the color of the road matches the sticker too well and it's not so visible once it has lost the gravel coating:

turning cars can also damage your designs, so choose your placement wisely:


if you try the mod bit sticker technique i'd love to see your pictures, please leave a link in the comments. thanks to Yuki for co-creating these, watching out for incoming cars and taking the close up pictures above.

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2009 gets retro but new Tuesday, January 6 |

im absolutely fascinated with the work of Paul Robertson lately. animations in the style of oldish videogames - a sort of decade specific machinima. a work of genius. it's funny to think that it has stronger resonances on a very specific generation with very particular tecnological habits. i wonder if this stament is true for most art deemed genius.

anyway, i cropped the image to the right from his piece Kings of Power 4 Billion % (awesome title) which is like brutal-excessive anime fermented in old arcade games and filtered through a discordian text for a very nice retrofuristic bouquet.
download it from his website for a nice resolution, it doesn't play as well in youtube.

i found out about this through offworld which is a recent subdivision of the classic good old boingboing, it's mostly about gaming and gaming-derivative arts. i wasn't so into it initially but i must say i've found a couple of very exciting things there: like the marvelous game world of goo (you can download a very cool free demo) and the nascent music scene coming out of the korg DS-10 software for the nintendo ds.

meet the orange revolver Monday, December 15 |



a quick cicuit bending weekend project we decided to test sunday night.  i'm particularly happy with the placement of the jack.  may all toy guns become "musical" instruments.

the more i work the less i care Friday, November 14 |

here is a mental snapshot: its 5:45 am, friday, the last day of a pretty long workweek , i'm ready to go, ready to endure the last day of work.  and what i feel is hate, hate and despair, despaired hate. abstract hate.  i don't hate anything in particular, i just hate it all.  the hate is located between my throat and my stomach.   the despair a little deeper in my chest.
it will all burn out by midday, like that Los Angeles Fog that makes you think it's going to be a grey day, rainy day, lovely dark day and it just goes away before noon under implacable sunlight.
it's a temporary state.  it's the transition between sleep and activity.  it's a passing moment.  later on i will convince myself that it is not that pointless.  there is money to be saved, time off to be bought.  i will mentally pat myself in the back and say: "it is OK to sacrifice the present for the future.  It's OK, this time it's OK."  
quality of life can go down the industrial sewer for a while.  sell your life force for the best price you can get -you are lucky because someone is willing to buy, so they say.  live in this insatiable america and it's spirit will clog your pores.     the economy thrives on fear, and hate, and despair and lack of...   

it is  a good morning to be alive.

red and white Sunday, November 2 |


this is my favorite piece of information for the week.  taken from the amanita muscaria article on wikipedia:
Fly agarics appear on Christmas cards and New Year cards from around the world as a symbol of good luck. They also function as Christmas tree decorations, derived from their ectomycorrhizal relationship with coniferous trees. The ethnobotanist Jonathan Ott has suggested that the idea of Santa Claus and tradition of hanging stockings over the fireplace is based centrally upon the fly agaric mushroom itself. With its generally red and white color scheme, he argues that Santa Claus's suit is related to the mushroom. He also draws parallels with flying reindeer: reindeer had been reported to consume the mushroom and prance around in an intoxicated manner afterwards. Until the 20th century the red-and-white Santa suit familiar today was not firmly established, although Saint Nicholas, on which Santa Claus is partly based, was always depicted in red (see also: Origins of Santa Claus). One scholar researching possible links between religious myths and the red mushroom notes, "If Santa Claus had but one eye [like Odin], or if magic urine had been a part of his legend, his connection to the Amanita muscaria would be much easier to believe."
Ott also speculates about Santa's bag of toys. According to historians, ancient Siberia was one of the first civilizations to use fly agaric in practice.[citation needed] The Siberian hut, or yurt, is equipped with a smokehole at the top. Ott suggests that a shaman entered the yurt through the smokehole with a sack of mushrooms in his hand, to be placed in stockings over the fireplace where they could be dried for celebratory use.
so this upcoming christmas amanita muscaria mushrooms all around!

(picture credits:  Image by flicker user Bambo, published originally under a creative commons license)

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free a fear market Friday, October 31 |


my work life is driving a copper rod through the rest of my life.   i've been working for a growing company that specializes in certain kind of alternative energy, it has been almost a year since i started.  a good learning experience, brutal ten hour days (four days a week) and pretty ok pay. but now, after taking a few weeks off work it has been sooooo hard to readapt.  and add to that a temporary mandatory 50 hour workweek due to a deadline the company needs to meet with certain investor.   

life suffers without rest and i have been pretty vocal about it, althought i have not been doing it as long as my coworkers.  funny thing, i'm probably the one person that has the least at stake.   i've heard everything from "it suits me perfectly because i need/want the money" to "i haven't spent enough time with my children", "my relationships are in a state of accelerating decay".   
the arguments go back and forth.  some people want to support the company so they will endure the otherwise legal assault on their wellbeing and others are pretty unhappy although they won't say much.   i insist that this sort of thing is nothing new, workers have always been pushed to work more (and most of the time for less) and is up to us to stablish the boundaries.  if today we have 40 hour workweeks and some compensation it is not because of benevolent employers.  it has been a strugle for generations. 

but there is fear too.  unfair fear.   for this seems like another instance of many asuming the consecuences of risks taken by a few.  and people talk about the economic situation and how there is rising unemployment so even your peers will attempt to shut you down when you say you have to stand up and maintain your quality of life and wellbeing; they will say things like "well if you don't like it you know the options" or "there is a line of people outside waiting to have your job" or "that is the free market". yeah, right, it is the free market when it comes to people selling their life force directly but it is the state subsidized free market for those who are buying it.  
unfair fear, because those who say these things are just trying to value what they have, because the options are grim, because they have debt, children, stress, health needs, desires and the job provides for all that.  but the cost is too high, or should i say, the trade is too low.  and fear keeps it low.  fear keeps your salary low, your expectatios low, your head low.   free and fear are intimatetly related words.   there is only one letter difference.  free market:fear.   fear free market.  free a fear market.  market a free fear.  market, fear free.  market, f(r)ee: fear.

yeah, incomes of big investors rise and their companies boast unrivaled success as the shoulders of people on which it stands get congratulatory pats,   a carrot in the form of a competitive bunus program (who is faster, who is more efficient? yay...)  and the stick of unemployment.  a goverment installed safety net for the former and the hard cold cement for the latter.
and here we stand, with lame hopes of new heads of state, as if things were really going to change from the top down.  it is friday october 31.  gloomy L.A. afternoon.  i feel like i have a mask stuck to my face, so does everyone else - maybe the real monster hides behind and today people celebrate it by giving it a rest.

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still life in Capurgana Monday, October 20 |


this is a little stop motion animation Yuki and I made at my father's house near Capurgana (Colombia)

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back in(g) Saturday, October 18 |

back in L.A. back from colombia la loca, colombia la desesperada.  back into the city of angels where people talk more about things happening, about the presidents and the crisis and the state of the world.  who would have thought that L.A would be less superficial?   well, L.A. is less afraid, L.A. doesn't have a recent history of state paid snitches and paramilitary being reinserted into civil life and kidnapings and this and that.  ay, colombia la desenfrenada.  but there is also colombia the beautiful with oceans and green and mushrooms (some of that to come in this blog, this same channel).   
now i'm back in L.A. thinking about going back to work and reinserting myself into that life of making things for money (and as time goes by less and less for the pleasure of it).  but there are plans and things to do and a curiosity to satisfy. yesterday i saw a presentation by the beehive collective, guess what, the same people that made that beautiful plan colombia poster, because the universe is not frugal in meaningful encounters and in your face reminders of what life could be about.  anyway, i'm back in los angeles the warm, los angeles bonita, los angeles blue skies. i've been reading a lot in spanish and i'm enjoying it while it doesn't have that awkwardness that comes from living your life in english, thinking in english, eating in english, loving in english.  recommended book: babylon's whore, written by one of my favorite colombian mexican writers:fernando vallejo .   may the god of streed dogs bless us all.

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colombian street dogs Saturday, September 27 |








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