I’ve been blogging off and on here for about five years, but it’s been mostly “off” rather than “on.” I decided to “take a geographic,” so to speak, and start a new blog in a new location. Curvirostra will remain open for archival purposes, but I’m not sure if I will continue to post here.
If you enjoy my writing, please take a look at my new blog at adrienneadams.com. My goal is to post weekly there for as long as I can find something interesting to say. Thanks for stopping by 😉
Images from the Minimal Maps project by Michael Pecirno.
“Minimal Maps is an ongoing project that explores how richly-detailed single subject maps can give us new imagery to understand our landscape. The data is accurate for the year 2014 and explores the American (lower 48 states) landscape as a whole entity. The project is a continuation of the work began in 2012 while at Archework’s Chicago Expander Workshops, where I was a research fellow.
“The data provided by the USDA is incredible and includes a tremendous wealth of information that makes up the composition of America. By pulling this data and extrapolating specific categories I’ve been able to produce a number of unique and explicit maps that aim to push us away from the ubiquitous and low-resolution (regarding information content) physical and political map.”
Prints are available at michaelpecirno.com/minimal-maps.
Shrublands of the US // Minimal Maps project by Michael Pecirno
Grasslands of the US // Minimal Maps project by Michael Pecirno
Cornfields of the US // Minimal Maps project by Michael Pecirno
A nice two-fer of posters.
By Chelsea Wirtz, Seattle illustrator // via The Stranger.
Japanese poster // via Gurafiku.
“In a dive” by Coveredinsevindust.
Released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.
by Robinson Jeffers, 1925-26
Four pelicans went over the house,
Sculled their worn oars over the courtyard: I saw that ungainliness
Magnifies the idea of strength.
A lifting gale of sea-gulls followed them; slim yachts of the element,
Natural growths of the sky, no wonder
Light wings to leave the sea; but those grave weights toil, and are powerful,
And the wings torn with old storms remember
The cone that the oldest redwood dropped from, the tilting of continents,
The dinosaur’s day, the lift of new sea-lines.
The omnisecular spirit keeps the old with the new also.
Nothing at all has suffered erasure.
There is life not of our time. He calls ungainly bodies
As beautiful as the grace of horses.
He is weary of nothing; he watches air-planes; he watches pelicans.
We’re big fans of Werner Herzog, not the least because of his commentaries. Here, someone has brilliantly accommodated his words into images that seethe with an emotional conundrum, forcing the viewer to animate one’s soul in questioning one’s purpose for watching.
Curvirostra 