Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).

 

Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions

 

"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".

 

The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.

 

The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.

 

Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.

 

Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:

 

Wet with cool dew drops

fragrant with perfume from the flowers

came the gentle breeze

jasmine and water lily

dance in the spring sunshine

side-long glances

of the golden-hued ladies

stab into my thoughts

heaven itself cannot take my mind

as it has been captivated by one lass

among the five hundred I have seen here.

 

Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.

 

Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.

 

There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.

 

Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.

 

The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.

 

In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:

 

During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".

 

Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.

 

While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’

 

Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.

 

An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.

 

Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983

 

Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture

Main article: Commercial graffiti

With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.

 

In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".

 

Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.

 

Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.

 

Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.

 

Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.

 

There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.

 

The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.

 

Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.

 

Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis

 

Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.

 

Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.

 

Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"

 

Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal

 

In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.

 

Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.

 

Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.

 

Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.

 

With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.

 

Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.

 

Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.

 

Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.

 

Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.

 

Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.

 

Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.

 

Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.

 

The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.

 

I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.

 

The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.

 

Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.

 

Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.

 

In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".

 

There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.

 

Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.

 

A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.

By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.

 

Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.

 

In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.

 

A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.

 

From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

 

In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.

 

Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.

 

Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.

 

Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.

 

In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.

 

Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.

 

In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.

 

In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."

 

In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.

 

In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.

 

In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.

 

In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.

 

In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.

 

The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.

 

To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."

 

In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.

 

In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.

 

Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".

 

Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)

In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.

 

Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.

 

Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.

 

In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.

 

Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.

 

Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.

 

To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.

 

When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.

Photo by Matteo Cogliati.

While I'm without a scanner (my existing isn't ready to work with VISTA) I'm going to be doing quick Illustrator sketches of individual letters to fill out the sketch blog portion of my site (instead of the actual black book stuff I've been doing) Check out the progress at my blog. These are all supposed to be quick (< 30 minutes) and fun, so some will be better than others. I just hope they're interesting.

Photo by Matteo Cogliati.

Madampu Sankaran Namboothiri, popularly known as Madampu Kunjukuttan, is a Malayalam author and a screenplay writer. A prolific and versatile actor, a Sanskrit scholar, a teacher of repute, priesthood in a famous temple, National awards for the best screenplay in 2000 for the film " Karunam' and the Ashdod International Film Award for Best Screenplay for the film Parinamam (The Change) in 2003-- his life has been extremely colorful and eventful. He lives in the Kiralur village in the Thrissur district of Kerala, India, 77 years young.

Photo by Matteo Cogliati.

A1(M) Bramham 12/07/2018

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The Fokker D.VII was a German World War I fighter aircraft designed by Reinhold Platz of the Fokker-Flugzeugwerke. Late in 1917, Fokker built the experimental V 11 biplane, fitted with the standard Mercedes D.IIIa engine. In January 1918, IdFlieg held a fighter competition at Adlershof, and for the first time, front line pilots participated in the evaluation and selection of new fighters. Fokker submitted the V 11 along with several other prototypes. Manfred von Richthofen flew the V 11 and found it tricky, unpleasant and directionally unstable in a dive. On short notice, Platz reacted and lengthened the rear fuselage by one structural bay and added a triangular fin in front of the rudder. Richthofen tested the modified V 11 and praised it as the best aircraft of the competition. It offered excellent performance from the outdated Mercedes engine, yet was safe and easy to fly. Richthofen's recommendation virtually decided the competition but he was not alone in recommending it. Fokker immediately received a provisional order for 400 production aircraft, which were named D.VII by IdFlieg.

 

Fokker's factory was not up to the task of meeting all D.VII production orders and IdFlieg directed Albatros and AEG to build the D.VII under license, though AEG did not ultimately produce any aircraft. Because the Fokker factory did not use detailed plans as part of its production process, Fokker simply sent a D.VII airframe for Albatros to copy. Albatros paid Fokker a five percent royalty for every D.VII they built under license. Albatros Flugzeugwerke and its subsidiary, Ostdeutsche Albatros Werke (OAW), built the D.VII at factories in Johannisthal [Fokker D.VII (Alb)] and Schneidemühl [Fokker D.VII (OAW)] respectively. Corresponding aircraft markings included the type designation and factory suffix, immediately before the individual serial number.

 

Some parts were not interchangeable between aircraft produced at different factories, even between Albatros and OAW. Each manufacturer tended to differ in both nose paint styles and the patterning and layout of their engine compartment cooling louvers on the sides of the nose. OAW produced examples were delivered with distinctive mauve and green splotches on the cowling. All D.VIIs were produced with either the five-color (“Fünffarbig”) or, less often, the four-color (“Vierfarbig”) lozenge camouflage covering, except for early Fokker-produced D.VIIs, which had a streaked green fuselage. However, these factory camouflage finishes were often overpainted in the field with colorful paint schemes or insignia for the Jasta or for a specific pilot, making identification during aerial combat easier.

 

The D.VII entered squadron service with Jasta 10 in early May 1918. When the Fokker D.VII appeared on the Western Front in April 1918, Allied pilots at first underestimated the new fighter because of its squarish, ungainly appearance, but quickly revised their view. The type had many important advantages over the Albatros and Pfalz scouts. Unlike the Albatros scouts, the D.VII could dive without any fear of structural failure. The D.VII was also noted for its high manoeuvrability and ability to climb, its remarkably docile stall and reluctance to spin. It could "hang on its prop" without stalling for brief periods of time, spraying enemy aircraft from below with machine gun fire. These handling characteristics contrasted with contemporary Allied scouts such as the Camel and SPAD, which stalled sharply and spun vigorously.

 

Nevertheless, several aircraft suffered rib failures and fabric shedding on the upper wing. Heat from the engine sometimes ignited phosphorus ammunition until additional cooling louvers were installed on the metal sides of the engine cowling panels, and fuel tanks sometimes broke at the seams through high G loads and a twisting, wooden airframe. Aircraft built by the Fokker factory at Schwerin were noted for their lower standard of workmanship and materials. But despite some faults, the D.VII proved to be a remarkably successful design and a true fighter benchmark, leading to the familiar aphorism that it could turn a mediocre pilot into a good one and a good pilot into an ace.

 

In September 1918, eight D.VIIs were delivered to Bulgaria. Late in 1918, the Austro-Hungarian company Magyar Általános Gépgyár (MÁG, Hungarian General Machine Company) commenced licensed production of the D.VII with Austro-Daimler engines. Production continued after the end of the war, with as many as 50 aircraft completed.

 

Richthofen died days before the D.VII began to reach the Jagdstaffeln and never flew it in combat. Other pilots, including Erich Löwenhardt and Hermann Göring, quickly racked up victories and generally lauded the design. Aircraft availability was limited at first, but by July there were 407 in service. Larger numbers became available by August, by which point D.VIIs had achieved 565 victories. The D.VII eventually equipped 46 Jagdstaffeln. When the war ended in November, 775 D.VII aircraft were in service, and they were outfitted with various, ever more powerful engines, but the aircraft remained outwardly virtually identical. Some late production machines had a rare BMW IIIa 6-cyl. water-cooled in-line piston engine fitted. It had a continuous output of 137.95 kW (185 hp), but also an emergency rating of 180 kW (240 hp) at low level that gave the aircraft a top speed in level flight of 200 km/h (124 mph; 108 kn) and a phenomenal rate of climb (four times as good at low altitude as the early machines and still twice as good at higher altitudes), even though at the risk of engine damage.

 

After the war, the Allies confiscated large numbers of D.VII aircraft after the Armistice. The United States Army and Navy evaluated no less than 142 captured examples and used them in what would today be called “aggressor” units for dissimilar air combat in training and for the development of indigenous military aircraft. Several of these aircraft were re-engined with American-built Liberty L-6 motors, which were very similar in appearance to the D.VII's original German power plants and hard to tell apart. France, Great Britain and Canada also received numbers of war prizes, but these aircraft did not enter active service. Other countries used the D.VII operationally, though: the Polish deployed approximately 50 aircraft during the Polish-Soviet War, using them mainly for ground attack missions; the Hungarian Soviet Republic used a number of D.VIIs, both built by MAG and ex-German aircraft in the Hungarian-Romanian War of 1919; the Dutch, Swiss, and Belgian air forces also operated the D.VII. The aircraft proved still so popular that Fokker completed and sold a large number of D.VII airframes that he had smuggled into the Netherlands after the Armistice. As late as 1929, the Alfred Comte company manufactured eight new D.VII airframes under license for the Swiss Fliegertruppe.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 6.95 m (22 ft 10 in)

Wingspan: 8.9 m (29 ft 2 in)

Height: 2.75 m (9 ft 0 in)

Wing area: 20.5 m² (221 sq ft)

Empty weight: 670 kg (1,477 lb)

Gross weight: 906 kg (1,997 lb)

 

Powerplant:

1 × 137.95 kW (185 hp) BMW IIIa 6-cyl. water-cooled in-line piston engine with a 180 kW (240 hp)

emergency only rating at low level, driving a wooden 2-bladed fixed-pitch propeller

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 189 km/h (117 mph, 102 kn) at normal power

200 km/h (124 mph; 108 kn) at emergency power

Range: 266 km (165 mi, 144 nmi)

Service ceiling: 6,000 m (20,000 ft)

Rate of climb: up to 9.52 metres per second (1,874 ft/min) at emergency rating

Time to altitude:

1,000 m (3,281 ft) in 1 minutes 40 seconds

2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 4 minutes 5 seconds

3,000 m (9,843 ft) in 13 minutes 49 seconds

4,000 m (13,123 ft) in 10 minutes 15 seconds

5,000 m (16,404 ft) 14 minutes 0 seconds

6,000 m (19,685 ft) 18 minutes 45 seconds

 

Armament:

2× synchronized 7.92 mm (0.312 in) LMG 08/15 "Spandau" machine guns,

firing through the propeller disc

  

The kit and its assembly:

My fifth submission for the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com, and a very simple one, since the kit was built OOB. Inspiration came from a profile of a captured Albatros D.III in USAAC markings, unfortunately without further explanation. However, the aircraft sported a garish paint scheme, including bright green and even pink, so that I assumed that it would be not only WWI booty, but also in some operational use, since the paint scheme/camouflage did not look like a German pattern, but rather like an American design, similar to the aircraft operated by the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) in continental Europe, just with bright colors.

 

When I checked options for a different aircraft to apply this idea to, I came across the common Fokker D.VII and the fact that a lot of these aircraft had been captured and tested/flown by the USAAC – and then the weird scheme started to make sense, and this what-if model was born.

 

The D.VII kit is the ESCI offering, which was released in 1983 but is actually a mold from 1968. I thought I gave it a chance, instead of the Revell kit, which dates back to 1963 and is rumored to be not a pleasant build. The bet and newest one in 1:72 is probably the Eduard kit, which also has the benefit of offering optional parts for various production versions.

 

As a small biplane model, the ESCI kit is a simple, straightforward affair, and no major conversions were made, I just added a pilot figure, because the ESCI kit lacks one as well as any interior detail except for a kind of tub that it molded into the fuselage halves. IIRC, the figure I used comes from a Revell biplane, and I had to chop the legs off to make it fit into the D.VII’s tight cockpit. However, this solution had the benefit that I did not have to worry about any interior details.

Another weak point of the ESCI kit is that it lacks some finer details like the boarding ladder or handles at the tail. These were scratched with thin wire. Overall fit is also not the best – PSR on the fuselage halves, and on some visible ejection markers (e.g. under the single-part wings) and sinkholes. Esp. the integral cockpit tub with its rather massive walls left visible dents in the flanks that had to be filled! On the other side, the fabric structure on the wings and the fuselage is nicely reproduced, and the cowling is apparently from a late production D.VII with additional/bigger air scoops, so I decided that my model would also be one of the final machines with the uprated BMW engine.

 

A problem that cannot be blamed on the mold but rather the specific 2nd hand kit I bought is that the stabilizer was missing – it had probably detached from the sprue long ago, and slipped through the box lid, gone and eaten by some carpet monster… ☹ I had to improvise and decided to cut a replacement stabilizer from 1mm styrene sheet. I used the painting instructions (which are almost 1:72 scale) as benchmark and tailored a piece of sheet into shape, sanding away the edges for some light curvature and also added some shallow grooves to mimic the rib structure. Not perfect, but I also did not want to spend too much time on this. As a bonus, though, I added the (tiny) rudder levers of the tail surfaces and the ailerons, which originally are also not part of the ESCI mold. These were later, after painting, outfitted with wires during the final rigging process with heated sprue material – thankfully the D.VII does not require too many strings, just some wires between the landing gear struts and on the tail.

  

Painting and markings:

The funnier part, with many, really bright colors united in a tiny space – almost like an anime movie prop! I stuck to the original Albatros benchmark and applied scheme, colors and markings truthfully to the D.VII. Paints/tones became, as a guesstimate, Humbrol 155 (Olive Drab), 7 (Light Buff), 47 (Sea Blue) and a mix of 200 (Pink) with a little 68 (Purple), maybe at a 5:1 ratio, for a deeper tone. The contrast between the colors is pretty strong and aircraft looks very individual!

The wing struts were painted in black, the interior in a light olive drab tone. The engine was painted with Revell 99 (Aluminum) and treated with grinded graphite for a more metallic look, and the propeller was painted with a streaky wet-in-wet mix of Humbrol 71 and 113.

 

The roundels come from a Hobby Boss F4F, and since they have a rather odd style with a kind of dark blue border, they suit the model pretty well, because these roundels were introduced around 1920, so that deviations from the later, “classic” look appear plausible. The tactical code comes from an RAF Gloster Gladiator and the BuNo on the fin were created from a post-war Spitfire code.

 

A light black ink washing was applied, and some light post-shading was done, in order to emphasize edges and the boxy form of the aircraft with its fabric-covered surfaces. After the decals had been applied, I also added an overall light dry-brushing with khaki drill (Humbrol 72) and light grey (Revell 75). Finally, the model was sealed with matt acrylic varnish (Italeri), final bits were assembled and the rigging was added.

  

A simple build, but a very colorful one – hard to believe that there were aircraft in real life that actually looked this way! But the small D.VII now really stands out among “seriously” camouflaged biplanes in my collection, a very picturesque model. BTW, I am also surprised how effective the camouflage is, at least in the air - despite the garish colors!

Photographer: Nick Tulinen (nicktulinen.com)

 

My little niece has a surprising reaction to the very sight of my cousin. If she sees him make eye contact, even from across the room, she bursts into tears. SO funny.

Photographer: Nick Tulinen (nicktulinen.com)

SOCHI, RUSSIA - FEBRUARY 08: Ashley Wagner of the United States reacts to her score after competing in the Figure Skating Team Ladies Short Program during day one of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics at Iceberg Skating Palace on February 8, 2014 in Sochi, Russia. (Photo by Darren Cummings/Pool/Getty Images)

SAO PAULO, BRAZIL - FEBRUARY 15: Ethan "Ethan" Arnold (L) and Brendan "BcJ" Jensen of Evil Geniuses react with excitement after victory against Team Heretics at the VALORANT Champions Tour 2023: LOCK//IN Groups Stage on February 15, 2023 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. (Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games)

Photographer: Nick Tulinen (nicktulinen.com)

North West London.

The wet sack was full and warm with fizzing action

Sun dew rose away in vaporous seed pods reacting

to chemistry, Chronos and restrained by nocturnal seizure

Star Grains sown in the rain, greet the dawn

Now that Summer is coiled in amber, Autumn:

Softly Rotting in flesh-eating stone and thick-slime waters

conceals Spring presence and the risk of existence.

 

Down the shoreline, ripped-up seasons stranded lay wasted

Hard basalt and fire-slates from old oceans before.

Wood from pathetic fences, each of us free to trespass

into the snarling torment of water betraying Boudicca

gullies full of curling muscular crystaline watery swarms

Mud like you wouldn't believe, blood that you couldn't see

Each of us free to trespass and greet the dawn.

  

Zaku bustia betea eta beroa zen ekinaldi lazgarriarekin

Eguzkiaren ihintza hazi lurrunezko leketan erreakzionatzen joan zen

kimikari, Chronos-i eta gaueko bahiketek eutsi zioten

Euripean landatutako izar aleak, egunsentia agurtzen dute

Orain udara lotan dago, udazkena:

Leunki usteltzen haragia jaten duten harrietan eta lohi lodiko uretan

Udaberriko presentzia eta existitzeko arriskua ezkutatzen ditu.

 

Erribera hartan behera, urratutako denboraldiak alferrik galtzen ziren

Aurretik ozeano zaharretako basalto gogorra eta su-arbelak.

Hesi patetikoen egurra, gutako bakoitza aske uzteko

Boudicca traizionatzen duen uraren oinaze zurrunbilotsuan

kiribildu muskuludun kiribildu urak dituzten kiribilak

Sinetsiko ez zenukeen lokatza, ikusi ezin zenuen odola

Gutako bakoitzak egunsentia urratu eta agurtzeko aske.

 

Third Version

The wet sack was full and swarming with action

Dew of the sun reacted with the steam of Chronos,

Chemistry and the Night held them back

Star-grains planted in the rain greet the dawn

Now summer is Amber autumn asleep:

Gently rotting away in flesh-eating stones

and thick muddy water

hides the presence and danger of Being; in the spring.

 

Down on the shoreline, torn seasons were wasted

Previously-hard basalt and slate-fire from the old oceans.

The wood of pathetic fences to free each of us

In the turbulent torment of the water that betrays Boudicca,

gullies full of curling muscular brooding swarms

Mud like you wouldn't believe, blood that you couldn't see

Each of us free to trespass when greeting the dawn.

   

Quality of life: from safe food to data protection

 

What does quality of life mean for you? Safe food? Accessible medical care? Breathable air and clean environment? Strong consumers’ rights? Or knowing that your data and privacy are safe? European Parliament holds improving of the quality of life in the EU high on its agenda. Read more here and follow 4th ReACT conference on quality of life on 23 January in Rome live!

 

In the past few years, European parliament worked on wide range of rules to improve the quality of life in Europe: ensuring safe and accessible medicines and medical treatments, strengthening passenger rights, enabling consumers to buy clearly and correctly labelled food, cutting CO2 emissions and preventing other environmental pollution, but also making sure that privacy of European citizens is protected and their data safe. Read more in our Top Story.

 

Three of those topics: environment, health and food and the “European way” to protect them are to be debated during fourth ReACT conference “Cutting Quality of life: past, present and future” that takes place on 23 January in Rome. Chef Carlo Cracco, climatologist Riccardo Valentini and Professor Michele Mirabella present their points of view and debate them with the audience. Conference is moderated by geologist Mario Tozzi. Follow live and comment #Reactroma via links on the right.

 

ReAct Roma is the fourth in a series of five interactive conferences on subjects vital to the EU, ahead of the European elections in May 2014. They take place in different European cities where opinion leaders will share their ideas about today's issues. Previous events were dedicated to jobs and employment (15/10 Paris), EU in world (14/11 Warszawa), EU and finances (5/12 Frankfurt). The fifth event will be about EU and economy and will take place on 20/2 in Madrid.

  

Streaming ReACT Rome, 23 January 19:00

www.europarl.it/view/it/react.html

 

ReACT Rome: web site in IT

www.europarl.it/it/react.html

 

This photo is free to use under Creative Commons license (CC) and must be credited: "© European Union 2014 - European Parliament" (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons license). For HR files please contact: webcom-flickr(AT)europarl.europa.eu

U.S. Air Force Airmen take cover behind a wall during a “Shoot, Move, Communicate” training course Feb. 16, 2012, at Joint Base Charleston, S.C. The training teaches Airmen to react to a hostile shooter by using cover and effective communication to maneuver and engage the target. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class George Goslin)

Photographer: Nick Tulinen (nicktulinen.com)

 

Quality of life: from safe food to data protection

 

SPAGHETTI ALL’UOVO, AGLIO, OLIO E PEPERONCINO

di Carlo Cracco

 

Per la pasta all’uovo:

kg 1sale grosso affumicato

gr 250zucchero

n 12tuorli d’uovo

 

Per l’aglio affumicato:

n 1 ½ testa d’aglio

lt 2latte

sale

 

peperoncino

olio extravergine

prezzemolo fritto

  

Impastare il sale con lo zucchero , mettere i tuorli d’uovo a marinare per circa 4/5 ore, dopodiché sciacquare sotto l’acqua corrente.

Prendere i 12 tuorli marinati e metterli tra 2 fogli di carta da forno e con l’aiuto di un matterello stenderli in modo uniforme formando uno strato sottile.

Togliere dalla carta e passare la sfoglia nella trafila per spaghetti.

 

Far bollire l’aglio con il latte e ridurre della metà.

Passare il tutto a maglia fine e tenere da parte.

In una padella, mettere un goccio d’olio, aggiungere gli spaghetti e poco peperoncino.

Saltare per un paio di minuti e servire in una fondina con alla base la crema d’aglio.

Finire con il prezzemolo fritto e un goccio di olio crudo.

 

-------------------------------------

What does quality of life mean for you? Safe food? Accessible medical care? Breathable air and clean environment? Strong consumers’ rights? Or knowing that your data and privacy are safe? European Parliament holds improving of the quality of life in the EU high on its agenda. Read more here and follow 4th ReACT conference on quality of life on 23 January in Rome live!

 

Streaming ReACT Rome, 23 January 19:00

www.europarl.it/view/it/react.html

 

ReACT Rome: web site in IT

www.europarl.it/it/react.html

 

This photo is free to use under Creative Commons license (CC) and must be credited: "© European Union 2014 - European Parliament" (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons license). For HR files please contact: webcom-flickr(AT)europarl.europa.eu

Reactable in performance, live at the Stone Church in NH.

The group is called Bastinado, with a didgeridoo player and the Reactable guy.

Also, laser beams! Watch out!

Lovebytes - Digital Spring.

 

UNQUIET : Art and music events at Sheffield's Central Library

Sat 24 March 11am-4pm

Sheffield Central Library, Surrey Street, Sheffield.

 

Sheffield Central Library provided the venue and inspiration for a spree of artistic interventions, impromptu performances and creative workshops:

 

Sheffield Library's documentation from Unquiet (requires Flash):

   

Reactable

The Reactable is a revolutionary new electronic musical instrument, designed to create and perform the music of today and tomorrow. It combines state of the art technologies with a simple and intuitive design, which enables musicians to experiment with sound, change its structure, control its parameters and be creative in a direct and refreshing way - unlike anything you have ever known before.

 

Juxtavoices

Juxtavoices is a large 'antichoir' under the direction of composer Martin Archer and writer Alan Halsey. The group includes many familiar faces from Sheffield's leftfield music, poetry and visual arts scenes. Although the group performs structured scores, no fixed pitches are ever notated, and the group uses improvisation to shape the detail of the scores as the music progresses. Both trained and untrained voices are included. As well as playing "normal" concerts, the group is to be found in various unexpected public places, and at poetry / text events. For this event, Juxtavoices have created 2 special pieces for performance: one in suitably hushed tones inside the main library, and one utilising the rich acoustic of the adjacent stairwell.

 

20Hz by Semiconductor

05.00 minutes / HD video installation / 2011

20 Hz observes a geo-magnetic storm occurring in the Earth's upper atmosphere. Working with data collected from the CARISMA radio array and interpreted as audio, we hear tweeting and rumbles caused by incoming solar wind, captured at the frequency of 20 Hertz. Generated directly by the sound, tangible and sculptural forms emerge suggestive of scientific visualisations. As different frequencies interact both visually and aurally, complex patterns emerge to create interference phenomena that probe the limits of our perception.

 

20Hz is a Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.

Audio Data courtesy of CARISMA, operated by the University of Alberta, funded by the Canadian Space Agency.

 

Co-commissioned by Arts Santa Monica + Lighthouse for the Invisible Fields Exhibition at Arts Santa Monica, Barcelona. 2011-2012. Supported by the British Council.

 

Catalyst

This sound installation in the Lending Library presents a series of collaborative works by a number of Sheffield based writers and sound artists.

 

In 2011 composers from the University of Sheffield Sound Studios (USSS) were asked to produce a work drawing on Brian Eno's concept of 'ambient music' - music that could be subtly diffused into the atrium space at Bank Street. These compositions were played throughout the day and the writers spent an hour free-writing in response to them. These initial responses were then developed into poems by the writers and then were recorded reading their poems. These sound recordings formed the source material for a new series of compositions - in some cases settings of the poems themselves, in others more abstract manipulations of the source material.

 

Catalyst is a collaboration involving Bank Street Arts' Poet in Residence Angelina Ayers; writers on the MA Writing at Sheffield Hallam University; Bank Street Arts Resident sound artist Ian Baxter and fellow composers working from the USSS.

 

Animation/Pixilation Workshop

Children's Library session beginning 11am, 12pm, 2pm and 3pm (4 x 45min workshops)

Age 6+ Free. Book in advance / places are limited.

To book a place email - kidsandteens.library@sheffield.gov.uk

or tel. - 0114 273 4734

 

Come and have a go at animating...Yourself! Pixilation is an exciting form of animation where everyday objects and humans are the made to do extraordinary things such as disappear into walls, change into other people, fly, get eaten by black holes and ice skate on carpets!

 

In this workshop you'll learn how to make use pixillation to create animated films. You and your parents or carers will also find out how to film animation at home using your home computer, a webcam and free software. No experience or equipment necessary - just bring yourself! The workshop is led by Melvyn Turnan - you can see his films at www.melmation.com

Places are very limited, so please book in advance to avoid disappointment.

 

Sssh! There's going to be a FREE secret film show for kids at 1PM, somewhere in the Library...

 

Are spy pigeons and lost mechanical aliens your kind of thing? Do you know a cat who belongs to Simon? (or is it a Simon who belongs to a cat?)...

 

You can only find out the secret location for this screening when you collect a free golden ticket from our information desk in the Winter Garden. Make sure you get there early, it's first come first served and there are only a few places available for this extra special, hush hush event for those in the know. The films are suitable for any age but children must be accompanied by an adult.

 

These films are 100% guaranteed to totally amaze you... here's a sneak preview of what you will see...

 

The Lost Thing by Andrew Ruhemann & Shaun Tan (Passion Pictures, Australia 2011). This film won an Oscar for best short animated film in 2011. A boy finds a strange creature on a beach, and decides to find a home for it in a world where everyone believes there are far more important things to pay attention to.

 

Pigeon Impossible by Lucas Martell. This amazing bagel bite-sized adventure was 5 years in the making. It's the tale of Walter, a rookie secret agent faced with a problem seldom covered in basic training: what to do when a curious pigeon gets trapped inside your multi-million dollar, government-issued nuclear briefcase?

 

Love Over Goldfish by Janet Jennings and Jon Harrison. Have you ever seen a movie that is upside-down from beginning to end? Well the star of this film has, he's lived it! He's a goldfish and this is his life story. Love Over Goldfish was filmed in Sheffield, see if you can spot any familiar locations (but don't get a crick in your neck;)

 

Thanks to all the staff at Sheffield Libraries for hosting this event.

 

Special thanks to:

 

Emma Croft, Sarah Hogan, Martin Dutch and Andrew Milroy at Sheffield Libraries, Martin Archer and Juxtavoices, Ian Baxter (Catalyst), Sergi Jordà (reactable), Sheffield University Sound Studios, Passion Pictures, Lucas Martell, Flatpack Festival, Amber and Joab Harrison

 

Technical wizards: Darren Chouings (Prism), Melvyn Turnan (Melmation), Richard Bolam (RB Digimedia).

 

Lovebytes 2012 - Digital Spring

A Festival of Art, Science and Technology

22-24 March

Sheffield UK

 

www.lovebytes.org.uk

Boston is the capital and most populous municipality of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city proper covers 48 square miles (124 km2) with an estimated population of 685,094 in 2017, making it also the most populous city in the New England region. Boston is the seat of Suffolk County as well, although the county government was disbanded on July 1, 1999. The city is the economic and cultural anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area known as Greater Boston, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) home to a census-estimated 4.8 million people in 2016 and ranking as the tenth-largest such area in the country. As a combined statistical area (CSA), this wider commuting region is home to some 8.2 million people, making it the sixth-largest in the United States.

 

Boston is one of the oldest cities in the United States, founded on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by Puritan settlers from England. It was the scene of several key events of the American Revolution, such as the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Siege of Boston. Upon U.S. independence from Great Britain, it continued to be an important port and manufacturing hub as well as a center for education and culture. The city has expanded beyond the original peninsula through land reclamation and municipal annexation. Its rich history attracts many tourists, with Faneuil Hall alone drawing more than 20 million visitors per year. Boston's many firsts include the United States' first public or state school (Boston Latin School, 1635), first subway system (Tremont Street Subway, 1897), and first public park (Boston Common, 1634).

 

The Boston area's many colleges and universities make it an international center of higher education, including law, medicine, engineering, and business, and the city is considered to be a world leader in innovation and entrepreneurship, with nearly 2,000 startups. Boston's economic base also includes finance, professional and business services, biotechnology, information technology, and government activities. Households in the city claim the highest average rate of philanthropy in the United States; businesses and institutions rank among the top in the country for environmental sustainability and investment. The city has one of the highest costs of living in the United States as it has undergone gentrification, though it remains high on world livability rankings.

 

Boston's early European settlers had first called the area Trimountaine (after its "three mountains," only traces of which remain today) but later renamed it Boston after Boston, Lincolnshire, England, the origin of several prominent colonists. The renaming on September 7, 1630, (Old Style) was by Puritan colonists from England who had moved over from Charlestown earlier that year in quest of fresh water. Their settlement was initially limited to the Shawmut Peninsula, at that time surrounded by the Massachusetts Bay and Charles River and connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus. The peninsula is thought to have been inhabited as early as 5000 BC.

 

In 1629, the Massachusetts Bay Colony's first governor John Winthrop led the signing of the Cambridge Agreement, a key founding document of the city. Puritan ethics and their focus on education influenced its early history; America's first public school was founded in Boston in 1635. Over the next 130 years, the city participated in four French and Indian Wars, until the British defeated the French and their Indian allies in North America.

 

Boston was the largest town in British America until Philadelphia grew larger in the mid-18th century. Boston's oceanfront location made it a lively port, and the city primarily engaged in shipping and fishing during its colonial days. However, Boston stagnated in the decades prior to the Revolution. By the mid-18th century, New York City and Philadelphia surpassed Boston in wealth. Boston encountered financial difficulties even as other cities in New England grew rapidly.

  

Revolution and the Siege of Boston

 

Many of the crucial events of the American Revolution occurred in or near Boston. Boston's penchant for mob action along with the colonists' growing distrust in Britain fostered a revolutionary spirit in the city. When the British government passed the Stamp Act in 1765, a Boston mob ravaged the homes of Andrew Oliver, the official tasked with enforcing the Act, and Thomas Hutchinson, then the Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts. The British sent two regiments to Boston in 1768 in an attempt to quell the angry colonists. This did not sit well with the colonists. In 1770, during the Boston Massacre, the army killed several people in response to a mob in Boston. The colonists compelled the British to withdraw their troops. The event was widely publicized and fueled a revolutionary movement in America.

 

In 1773, Britain passed the Tea Act. Many of the colonists saw the act as an attempt to force them to accept the taxes established by the Townshend Acts. The act prompted the Boston Tea Party, where a group of rebels threw an entire shipment of tea sent by the British East India Company into Boston Harbor. The Boston Tea Party was a key event leading up to the revolution, as the British government responded furiously with the Intolerable Acts, demanding compensation for the lost tea from the rebels. This angered the colonists further and led to the American Revolutionary War. The war began in the area surrounding Boston with the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

 

Boston itself was besieged for almost a year during the Siege of Boston, which began on April 19, 1775. The New England militia impeded the movement of the British Army. William Howe, 5th Viscount Howe, then the commander-in-chief of the British forces in North America, led the British army in the siege. On June 17, the British captured the Charlestown peninsula in Boston, during the Battle of Bunker Hill. The British army outnumbered the militia stationed there, but it was a Pyrrhic victory for the British because their army suffered devastating casualties. It was also a testament to the power and courage of the militia, as their stubborn defending made it difficult for the British to capture Charlestown without losing many troops.

 

Several weeks later, George Washington took over the militia after the Continental Congress established the Continental Army to unify the revolutionary effort. Both sides faced difficulties and supply shortages in the siege, and the fighting was limited to small-scale raids and skirmishes. On March 4, 1776, Washington commanded his army to fortify Dorchester Heights, an area of Boston. The army placed cannons there to repel a British invasion against their stake in Boston. Washington was confident that the army would be able to resist a small-scale invasion with their fortifications. Howe planned an invasion into Boston, but bad weather delayed their advance. Howe decided to withdraw, because the storm gave Washington's army more time to improve their fortifications. British troops evacuated Boston on March 17, which solidified the revolutionaries' control of the city.

  

Post Revolution and the War of 1812

 

After the Revolution, Boston's long seafaring tradition helped make it one of the world's wealthiest international ports, with the slave trade, rum, fish, salt, and tobacco being particularly important. Boston's harbor activity was significantly curtailed by the Embargo Act of 1807 (adopted during the Napoleonic Wars) and the War of 1812. Foreign trade returned after these hostilities, but Boston's merchants had found alternatives for their capital investments in the interim. Manufacturing became an important component of the city's economy, and the city's industrial manufacturing overtook international trade in economic importance by the mid-19th century. Boston remained one of the nation's largest manufacturing centers until the early 20th century, and was known for its garment production and leather-goods industries. A network of small rivers bordering the city and connecting it to the surrounding region facilitated shipment of goods and led to a proliferation of mills and factories. Later, a dense network of railroads furthered the region's industry and commerce.

 

During this period, Boston flourished culturally, as well, admired for its rarefied literary life and generous artistic patronage, with members of old Boston families—eventually dubbed Boston Brahmins—coming to be regarded as the nation's social and cultural elites.

 

Boston was an early port of the Atlantic triangular slave trade in the New England colonies, but was soon overtaken by Salem, Massachusetts and Newport, Rhode Island. Boston eventually became a center of the abolitionist movement. The city reacted strongly to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, contributing to President Franklin Pierce's attempt to make an example of Boston after the Anthony Burns Fugitive Slave Case.

 

In 1822, the citizens of Boston voted to change the official name from the "Town of Boston" to the "City of Boston", and on March 4, 1822, the people of Boston accepted the charter incorporating the City. At the time Boston was chartered as a city, the population was about 46,226, while the area of the city was only 4.7 square miles (12 km2).

 

19th Century

 

In the 1820s, Boston's population grew rapidly, and the city's ethnic composition changed dramatically with the first wave of European immigrants. Irish immigrants dominated the first wave of newcomers during this period, especially following the Irish Potato Famine; by 1850, about 35,000 Irish lived in Boston. In the latter half of the 19th century, the city saw increasing numbers of Irish, Germans, Lebanese, Syrians, French Canadians, and Russian and Polish Jews settling in the city. By the end of the 19th century, Boston's core neighborhoods had become enclaves of ethnically distinct immigrants. Italians inhabited the North End, Irish dominated South Boston and Charlestown, and Russian Jews lived in the West End. Irish and Italian immigrants brought with them Roman Catholicism. Currently, Catholics make up Boston's largest religious community, and the Irish have played a major role in Boston politics since the early 20th century; prominent figures include the Kennedys, Tip O'Neill, and John F. Fitzgerald.

 

Between 1631 and 1890, the city tripled its area through land reclamation by filling in marshes, mud flats, and gaps between wharves along the waterfront. The largest reclamation efforts took place during the 19th century; beginning in 1807, the crown of Beacon Hill was used to fill in a 50-acre (20 ha) mill pond that later became the Haymarket Square area. The present-day State House sits atop this lowered Beacon Hill. Reclamation projects in the middle of the century created significant parts of the South End, the West End, the Financial District, and Chinatown.

 

After the Great Boston fire of 1872, workers used building rubble as landfill along the downtown waterfront. During the mid-to-late 19th century, workers filled almost 600 acres (2.4 km2) of brackish Charles River marshlands west of Boston Common with gravel brought by rail from the hills of Needham Heights. The city annexed the adjacent towns of South Boston (1804), East Boston (1836), Roxbury (1868), Dorchester (including present-day Mattapan and a portion of South Boston) (1870), Brighton (including present-day Allston) (1874), West Roxbury (including present-day Jamaica Plain and Roslindale) (1874), Charlestown (1874), and Hyde Park (1912). Other proposals were unsuccessful for the annexation of Brookline, Cambridge, and Chelsea.

  

20th Century

 

The city went into decline by the early to mid-20th century, as factories became old and obsolete and businesses moved out of the region for cheaper labor elsewhere. Boston responded by initiating various urban renewal projects, under the direction of the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) established in 1957. In 1958, BRA initiated a project to improve the historic West End neighborhood. Extensive demolition was met with strong public opposition.

 

The BRA subsequently re-evaluated its approach to urban renewal in its future projects, including the construction of Government Center. In 1965, the Columbia Point Health Center opened in the Dorchester neighborhood, the first Community Health Center in the United States. It mostly served the massive Columbia Point public housing complex adjoining it, which was built in 1953. The health center is still in operation and was rededicated in 1990 as the Geiger-Gibson Community Health Center. The Columbia Point complex itself was redeveloped and revitalized from 1984 to 1990 into a mixed-income residential development called Harbor Point Apartments.

 

By the 1970s, the city's economy had recovered after 30 years of economic downturn. A large number of high-rises were constructed in the Financial District and in Boston's Back Bay during this period. This boom continued into the mid-1980s and resumed after a few pauses. Hospitals such as Massachusetts General Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Brigham and Women's Hospital lead the nation in medical innovation and patient care. Schools such as Boston College, Boston University, the Harvard Medical School, Tufts University School of Medicine, Northeastern University, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Wentworth Institute of Technology, Berklee College of Music, and Boston Conservatory attract students to the area. Nevertheless, the city experienced conflict starting in 1974 over desegregation busing, which resulted in unrest and violence around public schools throughout the mid-1970s.

 

21st Century

 

Boston is an intellectual, technological, and political center but has lost some important regional institutions, including the loss to mergers and acquisitions of local financial institutions such as FleetBoston Financial, which was acquired by Charlotte-based Bank of America in 2004. Boston-based department stores Jordan Marsh and Filene's have both merged into the Cincinnati–based Macy's. The 1993 acquisition of The Boston Globe by The New York Times was reversed in 2013 when it was re-sold to Boston businessman John W. Henry. In 2016, it was announced that General Electric would be moving its corporate headquarters from Connecticut to the Innovation District in South Boston, joining many other companies in this rapidly developing neighborhood.

 

Boston has experienced gentrification in the latter half of the 20th century, with housing prices increasing sharply since the 1990s. Living expenses have risen; Boston has one of the highest costs of living in the United States and was ranked the 129th-most expensive major city in the world in a 2011 survey of 214 cities. Despite cost-of-living issues, Boston ranks high on livability ratings, ranking 36th worldwide in quality of living in 2011 in a survey of 221 major cities.

 

On April 15, 2013, two Chechen Islamist brothers detonated a pair of bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring roughly 264.

 

In 2016, Boston briefly shouldered a bid as the US applicant for the 2024 Summer Olympics. The bid was supported by the mayor and a coalition of business leaders and local philanthropists, but was eventually dropped due to public opposition. The USOC then selected Los Angeles to be the American candidate with Los Angeles ultimately securing the right to host the 2028 Summer Olympics.

 

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston

  

BERLIN, GERMANY - DECEMBER 11: Gambit Esports reacts after their victory match at the VALORANT Champions Semifinals Stage on December 11, 2021 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Wojciech Wandzel/Riot Games)

 

Photo by Matteo Cogliati.

Photo by Matteo Cogliati.

Quality of life: from safe food to data protection

 

What does quality of life mean for you? Safe food? Accessible medical care? Breathable air and clean environment? Strong consumers’ rights? Or knowing that your data and privacy are safe? European Parliament holds improving of the quality of life in the EU high on its agenda. Read more here and follow 4th ReACT conference on quality of life on 23 January in Rome live!

 

In the past few years, European parliament worked on wide range of rules to improve the quality of life in Europe: ensuring safe and accessible medicines and medical treatments, strengthening passenger rights, enabling consumers to buy clearly and correctly labelled food, cutting CO2 emissions and preventing other environmental pollution, but also making sure that privacy of European citizens is protected and their data safe. Read more in our Top Story.

 

Three of those topics: environment, health and food and the “European way” to protect them are to be debated during fourth ReACT conference “Cutting Quality of life: past, present and future” that takes place on 23 January in Rome. Chef Carlo Cracco, climatologist Riccardo Valentini and Professor Michele Mirabella present their points of view and debate them with the audience. Conference is moderated by geologist Mario Tozzi. Follow live and comment #Reactroma via links on the right.

 

ReAct Roma is the fourth in a series of five interactive conferences on subjects vital to the EU, ahead of the European elections in May 2014. They take place in different European cities where opinion leaders will share their ideas about today's issues. Previous events were dedicated to jobs and employment (15/10 Paris), EU in world (14/11 Warszawa), EU and finances (5/12 Frankfurt). The fifth event will be about EU and economy and will take place on 20/2 in Madrid.

  

Streaming ReACT Rome, 23 January 19:00

www.europarl.it/view/it/react.html

 

ReACT Rome: web site in IT

www.europarl.it/it/react.html

 

This photo is free to use under Creative Commons license (CC) and must be credited: "© European Union 2014 - European Parliament" (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons license). For HR files please contact: webcom-flickr(AT)europarl.europa.eu

Quality of life: from safe food to data protection

 

RISOTTO CON ACCIUGHE E LIMONE,CACAO

di Carlo Cracco

 

240 gr. Carnaroli del Pavese

45 gr. burro

1 piccolo scalogno tritato

½ bicchiere di vino bianco secco

½ l acqua

50 gr. mascarpone

 

50 gr. pasta d’acciughe

la buccia grattugiata di 1 limone

50 gr. cacao puro

1 pizzico di sale

 

Temperare il cacao stendendolo in un foglio, mettere il sale e il peperoncino. Far asciugare e “coppare” con uno stampino rotondo dal diametro di 2,5 cm.

In una padella soffriggere lo scalogno con il burro, unire il riso e tostarlo leggermente.

Sfumarlo con il vino bianco secco e continuare la cottura aggiungendo piano l’acqua. Aggiustare di sale e pepe.

Mantecare fuori dal fuoco con il mascarpone.

Spalmare la pasta d’acciughe sul fondo del piatto, distribuire la buccia del limone, versare sopra il risotto e appiattirlo.

Finire con il disco di cioccolato.

 

-------------------------------------

What does quality of life mean for you? Safe food? Accessible medical care? Breathable air and clean environment? Strong consumers’ rights? Or knowing that your data and privacy are safe? European Parliament holds improving of the quality of life in the EU high on its agenda. Read more here and follow 4th ReACT conference on quality of life on 23 January in Rome live!

 

Streaming ReACT Rome, 23 January 19:00

www.europarl.it/view/it/react.html

 

ReACT Rome: web site in IT

www.europarl.it/it/react.html

 

This photo is free to use under Creative Commons license (CC) and must be credited: "© European Union 2014 - European Parliament" (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons license). For HR files please contact: webcom-flickr(AT)europarl.europa.eu

Lovebytes - Digital Spring.

 

UNQUIET : Art and music events at Sheffield's Central Library

Sat 24 March 11am-4pm

Sheffield Central Library, Surrey Street, Sheffield.

 

Sheffield Central Library provided the venue and inspiration for a spree of artistic interventions, impromptu performances and creative workshops:

 

Sheffield Library's documentation from Unquiet (requires Flash):

   

Reactable

The Reactable is a revolutionary new electronic musical instrument, designed to create and perform the music of today and tomorrow. It combines state of the art technologies with a simple and intuitive design, which enables musicians to experiment with sound, change its structure, control its parameters and be creative in a direct and refreshing way - unlike anything you have ever known before.

 

Juxtavoices

Juxtavoices is a large 'antichoir' under the direction of composer Martin Archer and writer Alan Halsey. The group includes many familiar faces from Sheffield's leftfield music, poetry and visual arts scenes. Although the group performs structured scores, no fixed pitches are ever notated, and the group uses improvisation to shape the detail of the scores as the music progresses. Both trained and untrained voices are included. As well as playing "normal" concerts, the group is to be found in various unexpected public places, and at poetry / text events. For this event, Juxtavoices have created 2 special pieces for performance: one in suitably hushed tones inside the main library, and one utilising the rich acoustic of the adjacent stairwell.

 

20Hz by Semiconductor

05.00 minutes / HD video installation / 2011

20 Hz observes a geo-magnetic storm occurring in the Earth's upper atmosphere. Working with data collected from the CARISMA radio array and interpreted as audio, we hear tweeting and rumbles caused by incoming solar wind, captured at the frequency of 20 Hertz. Generated directly by the sound, tangible and sculptural forms emerge suggestive of scientific visualisations. As different frequencies interact both visually and aurally, complex patterns emerge to create interference phenomena that probe the limits of our perception.

 

20Hz is a Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.

Audio Data courtesy of CARISMA, operated by the University of Alberta, funded by the Canadian Space Agency.

 

Co-commissioned by Arts Santa Monica + Lighthouse for the Invisible Fields Exhibition at Arts Santa Monica, Barcelona. 2011-2012. Supported by the British Council.

 

Catalyst

This sound installation in the Lending Library presents a series of collaborative works by a number of Sheffield based writers and sound artists.

 

In 2011 composers from the University of Sheffield Sound Studios (USSS) were asked to produce a work drawing on Brian Eno's concept of 'ambient music' - music that could be subtly diffused into the atrium space at Bank Street. These compositions were played throughout the day and the writers spent an hour free-writing in response to them. These initial responses were then developed into poems by the writers and then were recorded reading their poems. These sound recordings formed the source material for a new series of compositions - in some cases settings of the poems themselves, in others more abstract manipulations of the source material.

 

Catalyst is a collaboration involving Bank Street Arts' Poet in Residence Angelina Ayers; writers on the MA Writing at Sheffield Hallam University; Bank Street Arts Resident sound artist Ian Baxter and fellow composers working from the USSS.

 

Animation/Pixilation Workshop

Children's Library session beginning 11am, 12pm, 2pm and 3pm (4 x 45min workshops)

Age 6+ Free. Book in advance / places are limited.

To book a place email - kidsandteens.library@sheffield.gov.uk

or tel. - 0114 273 4734

 

Come and have a go at animating...Yourself! Pixilation is an exciting form of animation where everyday objects and humans are the made to do extraordinary things such as disappear into walls, change into other people, fly, get eaten by black holes and ice skate on carpets!

 

In this workshop you'll learn how to make use pixillation to create animated films. You and your parents or carers will also find out how to film animation at home using your home computer, a webcam and free software. No experience or equipment necessary - just bring yourself! The workshop is led by Melvyn Turnan - you can see his films at www.melmation.com

Places are very limited, so please book in advance to avoid disappointment.

 

Sssh! There's going to be a FREE secret film show for kids at 1PM, somewhere in the Library...

 

Are spy pigeons and lost mechanical aliens your kind of thing? Do you know a cat who belongs to Simon? (or is it a Simon who belongs to a cat?)...

 

You can only find out the secret location for this screening when you collect a free golden ticket from our information desk in the Winter Garden. Make sure you get there early, it's first come first served and there are only a few places available for this extra special, hush hush event for those in the know. The films are suitable for any age but children must be accompanied by an adult.

 

These films are 100% guaranteed to totally amaze you... here's a sneak preview of what you will see...

 

The Lost Thing by Andrew Ruhemann & Shaun Tan (Passion Pictures, Australia 2011). This film won an Oscar for best short animated film in 2011. A boy finds a strange creature on a beach, and decides to find a home for it in a world where everyone believes there are far more important things to pay attention to.

 

Pigeon Impossible by Lucas Martell. This amazing bagel bite-sized adventure was 5 years in the making. It's the tale of Walter, a rookie secret agent faced with a problem seldom covered in basic training: what to do when a curious pigeon gets trapped inside your multi-million dollar, government-issued nuclear briefcase?

 

Love Over Goldfish by Janet Jennings and Jon Harrison. Have you ever seen a movie that is upside-down from beginning to end? Well the star of this film has, he's lived it! He's a goldfish and this is his life story. Love Over Goldfish was filmed in Sheffield, see if you can spot any familiar locations (but don't get a crick in your neck;)

 

Thanks to all the staff at Sheffield Libraries for hosting this event.

 

Special thanks to:

 

Emma Croft, Sarah Hogan, Martin Dutch and Andrew Milroy at Sheffield Libraries, Martin Archer and Juxtavoices, Ian Baxter (Catalyst), Sergi Jordà (reactable), Sheffield University Sound Studios, Passion Pictures, Lucas Martell, Flatpack Festival, Amber and Joab Harrison

 

Technical wizards: Darren Chouings (Prism), Melvyn Turnan (Melmation), Richard Bolam (RB Digimedia).

 

Lovebytes 2012 - Digital Spring

A Festival of Art, Science and Technology

22-24 March

Sheffield UK

 

www.lovebytes.org.uk

REYKJAVIK, ICELAND - MAY 24: YNG Sharks' Gabriel "gaabxx" Carli reacts at the VALORANT Champions Tour 2021: VCT Masters Reykjavík on May 24, 2021 in Reykjavik, Iceland. (Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games)

wall that took far to long....

i think we both lost interest...

plus work runs our shit :)

mine anyway

 

character and backy by react

letters by me

React, Respect, Intersect was created by two professional artists and a team of youth artists as part of the Groundswell Community Mural Project’s flagship Summer Leadership Institute (SLI). SLI teams spend seven weeks during working with artists and community-based organizations, learning job skills and creating public art throughout New York City. This mural depicts a utopian environment where vehicular traffic, pedestrians of all ages and abilities, bicyclists, skateboarders, and animals respectfully share the street. It focuses not only on traffic and pedestrian safety education, but also site-specific themes and cultural diversity.

 

The safety education focus of this mural was informed by workshops lead by NYCDOT Safety Education. The artists and youth artists researched safety issues near the mural site which influenced their final design. Speed of vehicular traffic, high levels of carbon dioxide in the air, and the need for all modes of transportation to respectfully share the streets are just a few of the themes beautifully integrated in to this mural.

 

NYCDOT Urban Art Program, Special Project

React, Respect, Intersect by Yana Dimitrova and Adam Kidder

Presented with NYCDOT Safety Education and Groundswell Community Mural Project

East 5th Street in Kensington, Brooklyn

www.nyc.gov/urbanart

abbygoldstein.com/

 

Photo by Matteo Cogliati.

April Doster, left, reacts to the dinner comments by her husband, Rubin, while she helps her daughter Hailey, 7, with a box top project in the kitchen of their Palmyra home on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019.

Lovebytes - Digital Spring.

 

UNQUIET : Art and music events at Sheffield's Central Library

Sat 24 March 11am-4pm

Sheffield Central Library, Surrey Street, Sheffield.

 

Sheffield Central Library provided the venue and inspiration for a spree of artistic interventions, impromptu performances and creative workshops:

 

Sheffield Library's documentation from Unquiet (requires Flash):

   

Reactable

The Reactable is a revolutionary new electronic musical instrument, designed to create and perform the music of today and tomorrow. It combines state of the art technologies with a simple and intuitive design, which enables musicians to experiment with sound, change its structure, control its parameters and be creative in a direct and refreshing way - unlike anything you have ever known before.

 

Juxtavoices

Juxtavoices is a large 'antichoir' under the direction of composer Martin Archer and writer Alan Halsey. The group includes many familiar faces from Sheffield's leftfield music, poetry and visual arts scenes. Although the group performs structured scores, no fixed pitches are ever notated, and the group uses improvisation to shape the detail of the scores as the music progresses. Both trained and untrained voices are included. As well as playing "normal" concerts, the group is to be found in various unexpected public places, and at poetry / text events. For this event, Juxtavoices have created 2 special pieces for performance: one in suitably hushed tones inside the main library, and one utilising the rich acoustic of the adjacent stairwell.

 

20Hz by Semiconductor

05.00 minutes / HD video installation / 2011

20 Hz observes a geo-magnetic storm occurring in the Earth's upper atmosphere. Working with data collected from the CARISMA radio array and interpreted as audio, we hear tweeting and rumbles caused by incoming solar wind, captured at the frequency of 20 Hertz. Generated directly by the sound, tangible and sculptural forms emerge suggestive of scientific visualisations. As different frequencies interact both visually and aurally, complex patterns emerge to create interference phenomena that probe the limits of our perception.

 

20Hz is a Semiconductor work by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.

Audio Data courtesy of CARISMA, operated by the University of Alberta, funded by the Canadian Space Agency.

 

Co-commissioned by Arts Santa Monica + Lighthouse for the Invisible Fields Exhibition at Arts Santa Monica, Barcelona. 2011-2012. Supported by the British Council.

 

Catalyst

This sound installation in the Lending Library presents a series of collaborative works by a number of Sheffield based writers and sound artists.

 

In 2011 composers from the University of Sheffield Sound Studios (USSS) were asked to produce a work drawing on Brian Eno's concept of 'ambient music' - music that could be subtly diffused into the atrium space at Bank Street. These compositions were played throughout the day and the writers spent an hour free-writing in response to them. These initial responses were then developed into poems by the writers and then were recorded reading their poems. These sound recordings formed the source material for a new series of compositions - in some cases settings of the poems themselves, in others more abstract manipulations of the source material.

 

Catalyst is a collaboration involving Bank Street Arts' Poet in Residence Angelina Ayers; writers on the MA Writing at Sheffield Hallam University; Bank Street Arts Resident sound artist Ian Baxter and fellow composers working from the USSS.

 

Animation/Pixilation Workshop

Children's Library session beginning 11am, 12pm, 2pm and 3pm (4 x 45min workshops)

Age 6+ Free. Book in advance / places are limited.

To book a place email - kidsandteens.library@sheffield.gov.uk

or tel. - 0114 273 4734

 

Come and have a go at animating...Yourself! Pixilation is an exciting form of animation where everyday objects and humans are the made to do extraordinary things such as disappear into walls, change into other people, fly, get eaten by black holes and ice skate on carpets!

 

In this workshop you'll learn how to make use pixillation to create animated films. You and your parents or carers will also find out how to film animation at home using your home computer, a webcam and free software. No experience or equipment necessary - just bring yourself! The workshop is led by Melvyn Turnan - you can see his films at www.melmation.com

Places are very limited, so please book in advance to avoid disappointment.

 

Sssh! There's going to be a FREE secret film show for kids at 1PM, somewhere in the Library...

 

Are spy pigeons and lost mechanical aliens your kind of thing? Do you know a cat who belongs to Simon? (or is it a Simon who belongs to a cat?)...

 

You can only find out the secret location for this screening when you collect a free golden ticket from our information desk in the Winter Garden. Make sure you get there early, it's first come first served and there are only a few places available for this extra special, hush hush event for those in the know. The films are suitable for any age but children must be accompanied by an adult.

 

These films are 100% guaranteed to totally amaze you... here's a sneak preview of what you will see...

 

The Lost Thing by Andrew Ruhemann & Shaun Tan (Passion Pictures, Australia 2011). This film won an Oscar for best short animated film in 2011. A boy finds a strange creature on a beach, and decides to find a home for it in a world where everyone believes there are far more important things to pay attention to.

 

Pigeon Impossible by Lucas Martell. This amazing bagel bite-sized adventure was 5 years in the making. It's the tale of Walter, a rookie secret agent faced with a problem seldom covered in basic training: what to do when a curious pigeon gets trapped inside your multi-million dollar, government-issued nuclear briefcase?

 

Love Over Goldfish by Janet Jennings and Jon Harrison. Have you ever seen a movie that is upside-down from beginning to end? Well the star of this film has, he's lived it! He's a goldfish and this is his life story. Love Over Goldfish was filmed in Sheffield, see if you can spot any familiar locations (but don't get a crick in your neck;)

 

Thanks to all the staff at Sheffield Libraries for hosting this event.

 

Special thanks to:

 

Emma Croft, Sarah Hogan, Martin Dutch and Andrew Milroy at Sheffield Libraries, Martin Archer and Juxtavoices, Ian Baxter (Catalyst), Sergi Jordà (reactable), Sheffield University Sound Studios, Passion Pictures, Lucas Martell, Flatpack Festival, Amber and Joab Harrison

 

Technical wizards: Darren Chouings (Prism), Melvyn Turnan (Melmation), Richard Bolam (RB Digimedia).

 

Lovebytes 2012 - Digital Spring

A Festival of Art, Science and Technology

22-24 March

Sheffield UK

 

www.lovebytes.org.uk

A1(M) Bramham 02/06/2016

(to see further pictures and read other information please go to the end of page!)

Flaktowers

Flakturm, Arenbergpark

Picture: Flakturm, Arenbergpark

 

The Vienna flak towers are six large, of reinforced concrete erected defensive and protective structures in Vienna, which were built in the years 1942-1945 as giant bomb shelters with fitted anti-aircraft guns and fire control. The architect of the flak towers was Friedrich Tamms (1904-1980).

Flakturm, Arenbergpark

Image: Terrace of the flak tower in Arenbergpark

 

The system of the Vienna flak towers consists as a whole of six buildings, three turrets, each with a Feuerleitturm (fire-control tower). The three bunker pairs are arranged in a triangle in the approximate middle of which the Stephansdom is situated. The towers are of different heights, but their upper platforms are in exactly the same altitude, so that an overall coordination of air defense was possible. The maximum operating radius of the four main guns (12.8 cm twin) of each tower was under ideal conditions 20 km. The smaller platforms of combat and fire-control towers were provided for 2 cm anti-aircraft guns, but they were never used in Vienna. In addition to its military crew the flak towers in Vienna served as makeshift hospitals, housed radio stations and partly war-relevant technical companies and offered on a large scale air raid shelters for the population.

 

Flakturm Augarten

Picture: Flakturm, Augarten

 

After the war, the Red Army undertook blasting tests in Gefechtsturm (flak tower with battle platform) Augarten, but a removal of the towers failed because of the proximity to residential areas. Nowadays, a removal of the towers would be possible, but now existing only an official decision as to the two anti-aircraft towers in Augarten from 5 April 2000 (GZ 39.086/2/2000) because all six buildings ex lege have been put under monument protection. Today, the towers are partially owned by the City of Vienna and partly owned by the Republic of Austria. There were repeatedly attempts to rebuild the flak towers and make it usable. The ideas range from depot for important backup data to a café or hotel.

 

Planning

Flakturm, Arenbergpark

Picture: Flakturm, Arenbergpark - Notstiege (Emergency flight of stairs)

Flakturm, Arenbergpark

Picture: Flakturm, Arenbergpark

Elevator shaft to the left, original instructions for lift usage right

 

After the battles of World War II also spread more and more to Vienna, Adolf Hitler ordered on 9 September 1942 the construction of flak towers in Vienna. The Air Force leadership provided for this purpose as building sites the Schmelz (Vienna), the Prater and Floridsdorf but Hitler rejected these places since the city center would not have been adequately protected because of the large distances. After discussions with Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) Baldur von Schirach, the final locations were determined. Instead of the Augarten, however, was initially the Roßauer barracks under discussion. The decisive factor for the choice of the places were on the one hand, the easy availability of the building ground and on the other hand the possibility to establish railway connections. The plan provided after the victorious end of the war to disguise the flak towers with marble and devote them as monuments to the fallen German soldiers. As with all the flak towers Friedrich Tamms was responsible for the planning, he was represented in Vienna by Anton Ruschitzka, construction management held Franz Fuhrmann from Vienna's city building department. The military leadership rested with Major Wimberger, which, however, had no mission staff. The material procurement was carried out by the Organisation Todt.

 

Construction

Flakturm, Arenbergpark

Picture: Flakturm, Arenbergpark

Emergency Exit Photo: Flakturm, Arenbergpark

 

With the construction of the flak towers the companies Philipp Holzmann and Gottlieb Tesch were commissioned, smaller firms being integrated via joint ventures. Since the availability of local workers due to conscription declined steadily, more and more prisoners of war, foreign and forced laborers were used in the course of the war. Cement was delivered primarily from Mannersdorf at Leithagebirge, to a lesser extent from Rodaun (situated in the outskirts of Vienna). The gravel stemmed from the gravel pits Padlesak in Felixdorf and Gustav Haager at Heidfeld at the Bratislava railway (Pressburger Bahn), about in the area of ​​today's airport Wien-Schwechat. Sand was delivered in ships over the Danube Canal, which is why in the area of Weißgerberlände sand silos of the United Baustoffwerke AG were built. In this area was already in 1918 a feeder track of the tram through the Drorygasse. Although this was already in 1925 shut down it was restored in 1941 and enlarged in the following year after the construction of a new silo to two tracks. For the then due to the excavation of the foundations coming up overburden, at the Kratochwijlestraße (then Weissenbachstraße) in 22 District was created a landfill, which also got a tram connection.

 

This report is based on an article in the

WIKIPEDIA - The Free Encyclopedia

and is licensed under the GNU license

Free Documentation Creative Commons CC -BY- SA 3.0 Unported.

On Wikipedia there is List of the authors Available .

de.wikipedia.org

 

The monstrous remnants of the "Third Reich"

District II (Leopoldstadt), anti-aircraft towers in the Augarten, tram line 31 from metro station Scots ring/Schottenring (U2, U4).

 

On 15 March 1938 gathered some 200 000 Wiener (Viennese people) on Heldenplatz in order to celebrate the "Anschluss" of Austria to the so-called fatherland Germany, something, since the end of the first World War I many had been longing for. Adolf Hitler himself appeared on the balcony of the Neue Burg and announced: "As leader and Chancellor of the German nation and the Reich I report before story now the entry of my home in the German Reich". Then he boarded a plane back to Germany, the rest, as they say, is history. A few years later the magnificent Heroes Square (Heldenplatz) was dug up to plant vegetables there, they needed food for the distraught people who suffered the privations in Hitler's zusammenbrechendem (breaking down) "millennial Reich".

 

Right: Gefechtsturm in the Augarten

In Leopoldstadt

Below: The Leitturm (control tower) in Arenbergpark

In III. District highway (Landstraße).

 

The already existing and sometimes bombastic Viennese architecture the occupiers seems to have pleased, no major buildings were added during their reign. On 9 September 1942, however, Hitler decreed that the city center of Vienna like in Berlin and Hamburg should be protected by some huge flak towers, three pairs should form a defensive triangle, St. Stephen's Cathedral was the center. 1943/44, the German troops began the construction of two flak towers in the Augarten and defaced in this way Austria's oldest still existing and in 1712 laid out baroque garden. Another pair of flak towers emerged in Arenberg Park in III. District (Landstraße), a third near the Mariahilferstraße (in Esterházypark and in the courtyard of the barracks Stiftskaserne) in the VI. resp. VII. District (Mariahilf/Neubau). The towers have been made of almost indestructible, 2.5 to 3.5 meters thick reinforced concrete and were self-sufficient, and they possessed their own water and power supply, first aid station and air filters if it should come to a gas attack. Each pair of flak towers contained a big, provided with a heavy gun flak tower and a smaller control tower for communication. The first is either a square tower in the style of a fortress, like the one in the Arenbergpark (neunstöckig - nine storeys), 41.6 meters high, 57 meters in diameter) or a round tower, in fact, sixteen -sided, as in the Augarten Park and the yard of the Stiftskaserne Barracks (zwölfstöckig - twelve storeys, 50.6 meters high, 43 meters in diameter). The heaviest artillery gun (105-128 mm) was standing on the roof, on the projecting balconies below there were lighter guns (20 to 30 millimeters). The Leittürme, from which the air defense was coordinated, were all rectangular (neunstöckig - nine storeys, 39 to 51.4 meters high, 24 to 39 feet long) and equipped with a lighter gun, they possessed communication devices and searchlights on the roof. Toward the of the war the towers only just were functional. They also served as air-raid shelter for the people in the area and each tower had space for 30 000 people. In the event that the war ended with a victory, the architect, the builder of the Reichsautobahn Friedrich Tamms, already had prepared designs to dress up the towers with black marble plates in which the names of the dead German soldiers should be engraved in gold letters. So the towers would also have been victory and war memorials (and thus in a strange way similar to the Mausoleum of Theodoric in Ravenna or the Castel de Monte in Apulia).

In the bureau of an architect of Berlin were even found plans to demolish the Jewish Quarter in the Leopoldstadt and to build a huge Nazi forum. Today, however, there is in Leopoldstadt again a thriving Jewish life and the flak towers are frozen monuments to the darkest times of Viennese history (in fact, the Russians tried to destroy the tower in Augarten with dynamite, which later on was mistaken for the vandalism of a few schoolboys, by mistake a forgotten weapon depot setting on fire).

In a famous quote Hitler Vienna compared with a pearl, which he wanted to give a socket. Towards the end of war, however, this socket only consisted of bombed-out buildings and abandoned flak towers, silent witnesses of the delusion of their builder. As a result, only the Leitturm was used in Esterhazy Park, and today in it the house of the sea (Zoo - Haus des Meeres) is accommodated. Outside there is a climbing wall with 25 different routes, and the vertical wall and the projecting balconies give a perfect imitation of an overhanging cliff of 34 meters of height. A conservatory (or biotope) with a miniature rain forest along with monkeys and birds has been added on one side; it is entered through a door that only with difficulty could be broken in the two and a half meters thick reinforced concrete, but this also ensures a uniform temperature for aquariums and vivariums in the tower.

The stable temperatures also have the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) brought to take advantage of the flak tower in Arenberg Park as a magazine and occasional exhibition space; in the meantime it is known as Contemporary Art Tower (CAT).

A former air-raid shelter at the base of the Leitturm in Esterhazy Park now contains the Museum of Medieval legal history: the history of torture

 

Excerpts from

Duncan J. D. Smith; Only in Vienna

A travelling guide to strange places, secret places and hidden attractions

Translated from English by Brigitte Hilzensauer

Photographs by Duncan JD Smith

 

"The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with asphalt". Karl Kraus (1874-1936)

Vienna is certainly one of the greatest and also the most homogeneous capitals in Europe. And it is one of the most fascinating. The overabundance of travel guides that are out there to buy, presents the not too demanding visitor a magical (and easily accessible) abundance of museums, churches, palaces and culinary venues, and they recount the history of the city since the times of the Romans over those of the Habsburg Empire to the present.

 

Courtesy

Christian Brandstätter Verlag mbH

The publishing service for museums, businesses and public authorities

www.brandstaetter - verlag.at

Total, totalitarian, dead

Picture: Flak tower in 1943 /44, Augarten

 

At the zero point of the knowledge about the progress of the world stands since 11 September 2001 "Ground Zero". The debris field of the World Trade Center was used as a metaphor, which for its part marks a zero point. "Ground Zero" is called the area that lies in the center of a nuclear explosion. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki this area has been explored, the experiments that began with Albert Einstein's warning of a nuclear policy of Nazi Germany, were successful beyond measure. The name for the nuclear program, "Manhattan Project". With the beginning of the new millennium "Ground Zero" is real returned to where it had once taken its nominal starting point. The skyscraper obviously is able to stimulate the imagination of physicists, ballistics and aeronauts. In the skyscraper the obsessions of the 20th century are concentrated, self-sufficiency and utopia become one in the sky billowing tower. It is the exalted and the sublime. It provides a beacon, of the construction as well as of the destruction.

As the World Trade Center each of the Viennese "flak towers" come along as pairs: One serves as control tower, the other as a flak tower. The central component is the platform, it was needed in high altitudes in order to have a clear field of fire over the city. The tower architecture, which thereby became necessary, one used for bunker systems, no fewer than 40,000 people should here find shelter. For other facilities there was also space: the Gaupropagandaleitung (Regional propaganda direction) for example, the radio station, a munitions factory. At three locations in the city - the triangle that they abzirkelten (encircled), took in Vienna's historic center - in the years 1943/44 had established an own self-contained world, with it corresponded an outside, the world of total war. The flak towers gave this world the architectural icon.

On 14 February 1943, the British Air Force had carpet bombings on German cities announced after it adversary those commitments to civility, just in war of some validity, namely to protect non- military targets, long ago had abandoned. It was a strategy that should give World War II a decisive turn. The Germans had their production concentrated on weapons with immediate penetrating power, especially on fighter planes and tanks. The Allies, however, swore on sustainability, on long-range bombers that now more and more were used. Against such so-called "flying fortresses" should prepare the city's flak towers.

On 18 February 1943 already, the Nazi regime had reacted propagandistically. Joseph Goebbels delivered in the Sportpalast (Sports Palace) those infamous speech in which an unleashed crowd at the top of its voice loud the hysterical question "Do you want total war?" applauded. From then on, the action would no longer overridingly occur on the fronts. Now, as Goebbels put it, the "phalanx of the homeland" was at stake. The war would be carried to the cities. In their midst, in the urban milieu that would now lose all nonchalance and any worth of life. Also, and just that is what the flak towers stand for: their comfort is the security wing, their promise the ammunition depot. They guarantee offensive and defensive in one. In this hard as reinforced concrete alignment, imagined the regime each of every Volksgenossen (member of the German nation).

The flak towers are the architecture of total war par excellence: monumental exclamation marks for military preparedness, towering icons of the resistiveness, uniform archetypes of a technical, an instrumental progress, to which the Nazi state with due atavism was always committed. Furthermore, comes to some extent the domestic political effect: The flak towers are citadels against the own population, reduits in the face of a psychological and social situation, which solely by forced violence, by martial law and concentration camps could be overmastered.

The prototype of the flak towers built up in Berlin, as well as their principle was conceived in the capital, especially by Albert Speer, the Minister for the war economy. But as a kind of urban identification mark they stand in Vienna, and also for this the logic of total war can be used. It is the logic of destruction, the so-called "Nero-command", which after Hitler's disposal would have provided the destruction of all remaining infrastructure in the German Reich. It is the logic of a perverted Darwinism, which would have applied the dictum of unworthy life in the moment of defeat on the own population.

In one of his table talks in May 1942, Hitler blustered about the "huge task to break ... the supremacy of Vienna in the cultural field ...". The hatred toward the city of his youth was notorious, and one may assume that the flak towers, whose placement the "Führer" personally ordered, the enemy, in a manner of speaking, definitely should stake out a target area. Because naturally, the towers would increasingly attract attacks on themselves. But they have the war unscathed as hardly another building survived. That they are standing for the long shot, the totalitarism this very day is clear. To eliminate them, would mean to turn the city with them in rubble.

www.wien-vienna.at/index.php?ID=1236

Last week we gave two teams of Theatremakers from the Open Exchange Network the opportunity to create a piece of work at the Exchange. It’s a chance for them to explore and develop the way they make work. Using the illustrated children’s book THE RED TREE by Shaun Tan as inspiration, the focus of this REACT is to create an age specific piece for children aged 10 and under. #RXREACT

Stand still, here comes the santa

Part of Lovebytes at the Central Library - 24 March 2012.

 

Lovebytes website www.lovebytes.org.uk

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