i took the above video with my digital camera. the song is “Nantes” by Beirut. most of the video consists of a 45 minute giant elephant ride that Kourtney and i took. the first part of the video features a bunch of french high school students riding some prototypes for a giant marine carousel that they are planning to build.
Les Machines was created after founding artist, François Delarozière split up with Royal de Luxe, a company responsible for this shit.
ok. so yes i am in france (nantes, to be exact) and i will be posting pictures of france soon. but i wanted to share with you a walk i took through the venice canals in venice beach, california.
i was just in Los Angeles with big dance theater to workshop a new piece at the getty villa (which was awesome). we stayed in marina del rey, which is right next to venice beach. i remember the first times i visited california when my cousin lived there, and how enchanted i was with venice beach. i was super psyched to see an actual street called “electric avenue” and swore, if i ever moved to california, i’d call venice my home.
now, walking along the venice beach waterfront, i feel a little grossed out. the dirty, hippy aesthetic that interested me so in my youth just seems passé to me now. the beachfront is like a combination of the jersey shore and the east village - two locations that i would prefer to have separate. but there’s still hope. set a bit back from the beach is a quiet canal community. the homes are stunning and a peaceful plot of land on a canal filled with ducks in the middle of a bustling metropolis sounds like just the ticket.
my boyfriend nathan worked on the window displays at bergdorf goodman, which were just unveiled this week. they’re truly phenomenal. i highly suggest getting out to the store and checking them out in person. make sure to go at night.
the store is located on fifth avenue between 58th and 59th (in manhattan).
the other day there was a lot of racket outside my apartment in stuyvesant heights brooklyn. it was, what i learned from a worker, a milling machine on chauncey st.
here’s the flatbed truck that delivered the machine.
and here’s the machine in action. the milling machine tears up asphalt from the road and deposits it into a dump truck.
so last week, nathan and i went to the high line, which, as some of you may know, is a brand new park / greenspace built on the old high line railway that runs from the meat-packing district to 34th st…
and i texted.
but seriously…
this place is amazing. i’ve read about the construction of this “park” for years, and am so glad that it was executed with such specificity and attention to detail. we initially wandered into the meat-packing district to view the amazing video installation in the standard hotel by marco brambilla and ended up strolling down the six bock promenade that comprises the semi-completed once-elevated-train-turned-wildflower-bonanza.
so i’ve been back in the city for almost a month now from my european adventure, and one of the things i’ve been attempting to do now that i’m back is to take advantage of the various cultural events and sites that give nyc it’s “best city on earth” moniker.
one such thing that i read about from abroad was the pedestrianization of times square. i had heard that they closed broadway and put out some lawnchairs. i thought that this endeavor would be approached with some kind of artistry or tact, rather than the random placement of cheap lawn chairs scattered amongst orange-coned off asphalt areas.
now i know that it’ll probably look real nice when they finish all the construction and plant some trees, but right now, it’s like a tailgate party that never ends.
so i’m back in new york, actually, finally, but i decided to retro-post some more pics from my day in geneva, last thursday. above is a view of lake geneva from saint pierre, a big ole cathedral on a hill.
you know me. i like taking pictures of random industrial design in various places. like this wonderfully simple color combo of terrace shades on this apartment building.
i am a huge nerd. i love physics. specifically theoretical physics. specifically string theory and the quest to discover a T.O.E. (theory of everything). science today is extremely close to unlocking the secrets of the universe and the place on earth that is making the greatest contribution to this quest is CERN, the european center for nuclear research.
CERN is home to the brand new large hadron collider or LHC - the world’s largest particle accelerator. basically they shoot protons around this 27km long ring buried 100m underground until they reach 99.9% the speed of light (!). then they smash them into each other and observe the results. it was a total dork-dream come true to visit this place, and even though i didn’t get the tour that i had tried to book months in advance (seriously) i still had a great time visiting ‘microcosm’ - this exhibit that explains the history of CERN and what they’re trying to find.
and i got to play with things like this ! :
yep, that’s a geiger counter. this is what it reads when detecting radiation from a watch made with radium in the 1950s. that’s high, btw.
when particles smash together, the various detectors that are set up track the trails and energy emitted by the smaller particles that compose them. protons are made of quarks, for instance, so when two protons collide they emit quarks - and a whole bunch of other interesting things. above is picture of the methods they used to map particle paths in the 70s. basically using a big overhead projector.
here’s a photo of a photo of what that looks like printed. and a physicist (with awesome 70s hair) observing the results (in the 70s).
i came back to lyon just in time to partake in this crazy electro music festival called les nuits sonores. it basically takes over the whole city and turns everything into a techno party. above is a picture of the street in front of alexandre’s apartment.
