Life, Life – Ryuichi Sakamoto & David Sylvian

Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Sylvian, both my very favorite artists, collaborated again on this video – the music, poem and time-lapse photographed images of New York City. Meditative and beautiful.

How did I miss this by almost three years? It was released in 2017 when Sakamoto’s “async” came out. And I just discovered this video. See bottom of page for more music.

Don’t forget you can enter full screen. More immersive on headphone. Hope you enjoy it as much as I (Chris) do.

 

music by Ryuichi Sakamoto
voice by David Sylvian
poem from Andrei Tarkovsky’s father,
the famous Russian poet Arseny Tarkovsky.
video by Cameron Michael

The text of the poem:

And this I dreamt, and this I dream

And this I dreamt, and this I dream,
And some time this I will dream again,
And all will be repeated, all be re-embodied,
You will dream everything I have seen in dream.

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To one side from ourselves, to one side from the world
Wave follows wave to break on the shore,
On each wave is a star, a person, a bird,
Dreams, reality, death – on wave after wave.

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No need for a date: I was, I am, and I will be,
Life is a wonder of wonders, and to wonder
I dedicate myself, on my knees, like an orphan,
Alone – among mirrors – fenced in by reflections:
Cities and seas, iridescent, intensified.
A mother in tears takes a child on her lap.

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Apparently, the press release for the album states that async was a soundtrack for an imaginary Andrei Tarkovsky film (who made Solaris), and there is a track named Solari.

“async” was released in 2017, his 16th solo album but the first after 8 years and a battle with throat cancer. Mindful of his mortality, in the track “fullmoon”, Sakamoto included the author Paul Bowles reciting “Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well, …” which came from Bowles’s book – “The Sheltering Sky” that was also made into a movie. Sakamoto wrote the soundtrack and won a Golden Globe award for Best Original Score. See our earlier post (here) about this book which Chris read during the Morocco trip.

 

Some of you may remember their collaboration from 37(!) years ago – “Forbidden Colours” for the 1983 movie Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence also known as Furyo. It won a BAFTA award for Best Film Music.

 

As a bonus, here is another collaboration by the two – “World Citizen” from 2003.

A slightly different version of “World Citizen – I won’t be disappointed” was included in the soundtrack for the 2006 movie “Babel” by Alejandro González Iñárritu.

A version of “World Citizen” remixed by Taylor Deupree appeared in Sakamoto’s 2006 album “Bricolages”.

 

They have more collaborations – I will let you discover them.

 

Olympics Museum, Lausanne

Closer to home …

Earlier this year while the 2018 Winter Olympics games were being held in South Korea, we went to visit our town’s most famous tourist attraction – the Olympics Museum (Le museé Olympique).

The museum is located on a slope facing Lac Leman, not far from downtown Lausanne. We took a city bus to get there.

The museum houses permanent and temporary exhibits relating to sport and the Olympic movement. With more than 10,000 artifacts, the museum is the largest archive of Olympic Games in the world.

The museum was founded on 23 June 1993, on the initiative of then-president of the IOC Juan Antonio Samaranch.

After 23 months of renovation between 2012 and 2013, the Olympic Museum re-opened on 21 December 2013. Outside the museum is a park filled with sculptures.

The permanent exhibition is organized into three major themes on three separate floors: Olympic World, Olympic Games, and Olympic Spirit. A visit begins on the third floor, where the Olympic World part of the exhibition informs visitors of the history of the ancient Olympic Games and the rebirth of the modern Games in the 19th century.

Highlights include a display of Olympic torches, as well as a video documenting major moments in the history of opening ceremonies history.

The second floor focuses on the Olympic Games.

Mascots from previous games.

Models of stadiums – Bird’s nest from Beijing 2008

Sporting equipment for a variety of sports are on display as well as the more than 1,000 video clips of Olympic Games events and athletes which can be searched and viewed at individual viewing stations.

The uniforms.

On demand are video clips of so many dramatic and magical moments.

The final part of the permanent exhibit covers the Olympic Spirit, where visitors are invited to experience being in an Olympic Village and they can test their balance, agility, and mental skills with interactive exercises.

Interesting optical illusion painted on the ceiling and walls of the stairwell leading down to the Olympic Spirit section.

Olympic medals are also on display. These were from the Winter Games of 1972 from Sapporo, Japan.

We had a lunch buffet which included some Korean dishes while watching the games on the big screen.

There was so much to see. One could spend days here. It was for us a very nice Sunday indeed.

Objection! Protest by Design at Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein

IT and I visited the Vitra Design Museum at Weil am Rhein in April 2016. It is a beautiful, well-designed (duh), starchitect-built campus – more about this place in future posts. From 26.02 – 29.05.2016, in a free-standing gallery next to the museum,  the exhibition titled “Objection! Protest by Design” was held.

The exhibition presented a number of objects that was spawned by the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement 雨傘運動 in Hong Kong that took place between 26 September 2014 and 15 December 2014. Much of what I wrote below came from the Vitra-distributed exhibition guide.

In a reaction to proposed changes in the electoral process in Hong Kong, spontaneous student protests erupted in Hong Kong. The protesters created numerous informal and improvised physical structures, graphic images, digital art, and online networks; protesters used the umbrella that gave the movement its name to protect themselves from the police.

“Broken” by Jonathan Mak. Notice the fractured leg and an off-balance star and the tiny umbrella beneath it.

There were two large “tables” which were overlaid with a large scale birds-eye view of the streets in Hong Kong.

Protesters were highly organized in their occupation of three main heavily trafficked protest sites: Admiralty, Mong Kok and Causeway Bay.

Do click on the map below here to see in details the Admiralty site.

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A large number of installations (barricades, means to cross the expressway median), first aid stations, study areas, press stands and camp sites appeared in the 8-lane expressway and two shopping districts to become voices and means of protests.

The appearance of these installations were recorded and mapped, and shown on these two tables.

Mong Kok

A number of barricades were set up to create a safety zone in order to make a defined space for resting. They were recreated here by 3D printing.

The Lennon Wall was created by students and social workers with Post-Its on a wall of a stair leading from a street up to a pedestrian footbridge in Admiralty.

They invited people to write down their hopes and reasons for staying in Admiralty after the police tried to disperse the protestors with tear gas.

At the end of the occupation, the Wall was taken down and parts of it were preserved.

The exhibition wanted to show how design not only shapes and define products, but can also function as an agent of change in politics, communications and social innovations.

I hope the people of Hong Kong all voted and voted wisely today.

Our 600th post !

We are caught a bit off guard when the admin page of WordPress indicated that our next post will be the six hundredth (600th) that we published. As previously said several times, we are surprised that the interest in keeping up this blog has not fizzled out over the last 5 years. True it is, that we are still living in Europe and away from our friends and families, the primary reason for starting the blog. But we also find that this blog is a convenient medium to capture and frame memories of our time in Switzerland and our travels, and it became a habit and a hobby (at least for Chris).

The blog was launched on November 4, 2009. The first trip ever reported here was our visit of Playa de Carmen, Mexico in November 2009 (click here to see). We had not yet left the US at that time but were starting to pack our belongings and worried about the move.

Fast forward to now, posts on our quick tour of three cities – Taormina, Siracusa (Ortigia) and Catania – on the east coast of Sicily, taken during Easter, are under preparation now. Our most recent visit to Berlin and Copenhagen earlier this month has not yet been written up. Most of the photos are still in Raw format.

Since March 2013, we have been posting a series of photos on Facebook, one a day except Sunday and Thursday when the blog is updated. There is no theme – just something random and per se visually interesting. They are essentially pictures that did not make the blog for some reasons. We gave each a serial number, a minimally-worded title and a mention of where it was taken (to the extent we could remember the location). But we wanted to share them with the readers here too – so we started showing 5 of them in a post – somewhat irregularly. This is the first of the series – #1 – “the history of cool” –  Munich.

So far we have shown about 150 of them here, but on Facebook, we are at #444 – there is a backlog of almost 300 random photos! On days when we are not writing the blog, these photos could keep the blog going for a while. This is #443 – “dark 3” – Taormina.

The readership of this blog has stabilized at around 50-70 views per day. Apart from posting a link in Facebook, Twitter and Google+ each time a post goes public, we made little attempts to drive up the statistics. We also signed up Pinterest but have not seen much changes (perhaps we are not leveraging the site properly). But other people have pinned our photos on pinterest.  So if you do not feel like writing a comment, pin a photo.

Recently, we noticed that the page view of one of our posts in April on eating durian on the street of Petaling Jaya (click here to see) has gone through the roof (more than 120 views last week alone and maintaining the momentum). It must have caught the attention of certain netizens in Malaysia (as reflected in WordPress statistics), and got linked to an index or a popular site.

The reigning champion of page views is still our first post on HSBC’s poster ads as seen around major airports in 2010 (click here). Its two siblings are receiving decent traffic too.

This blog has changed its theme (a WordPress term for the overall look and feel of the blog) only once which happened within the first month of its launch. So the appearance remains constant for the last few years and it is getting a bit aged. But we are hesitant to change to a more modern theme as it could affect somewhat unpredictably the old posts. More experimenting is needed (if we have more time).

One day we might want to make a book (or several books) using these photos, like the ones we did for Yellowstone National Park and Iceland back in 2007.

We have been buying books showing photos of a city “then and now” or aerial views of an area.

Before signing off, we want to thank our readers for their interest and support, and Susie who has been responding to our posts consistently and ranks No. 1 with the highest number of comments.

Your feedback is important as it is the only way we know someone is reading the blog. So please comment, like, retweet, follow, clip, subscribe, pin, bookmark, repost or do some good old-fashioned word-of-mouth. In the meantime, we will continue to share words and images of our adventures.

Cheers.

Two and a Half Minutes of Art

Film and TV titles design is an art form. However, many such works have been overlooked, ignored, or forgotten. Unlike a trailer which contains actual footages, film title is often created separately from the film itself. Title art grew in 1940’s out of Hollywood studios’ desire to present a more complete list of credits and using better quality artwork to distinguish their productions from others.

Here is a brief history of film title.

 

Title design has to inform (who worked on what), entertain (otherwise no one will pay it any attention), and impress (set the tone if it precedes the main).

 

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

 

The James Bond franchise defined a very distinct and iconic  style for presenting its credits.

Casino Royale

 

These are two of my favorite anime TV series, both by Shinichirô Watanabe (渡辺 信一郎), and each accompanied by a great soundtrack and title sequence.

Samurai Champloo

 

Cowboy bebop

 

I (Chris) seldom watch a film more than once, unless it is so good or so opaque that it warrants a second viewing. But for film titles, I can watch it several times in a row and then come back and watch it again several months later.

Stranger than Fiction – End sequence

 

Here is another remarkable film about type – no CG was used in this film !

 

I am a fan of the web site – The Art of the Title – which does a really good job of presenting interesting new as well as old title designs. Check it out!

Constant Change by Hong Kong at the Triennale

Hong Kong participated in the Salone d’Onore at La Triennale di Milano. The exhibition is called Constant Change – a theme that is very Hong Kong-esque given its historical and demographics background.

 

 

I was genuinely, pleasantly surprised. The red lamp shades were used in the street market by butchers to make the meat looks redder and fresher. Have not seen them for years  – I really did not expect to see them in a museum in Italy.

 

 

The exhibition has a decent web site, go here and explore. Try the app too.

 

The curator said this about the show:

Hong Kong is a disjointed city. The parts of the city are not coherent, … Hong Kong appears disjointed but when you look at it street by street, it is actually harmonious in its own way. It is just totally different from any city in Europe. Hong Kong is always changing and it changes so fast. That’s why you get inspired. It looks to the future rather than the past, …

 

… When you walk the streets of Hong Kong, you can see what happened twenty years ago and what may happen in the next twenty years. It appears a very modern city, but at same time it’s full of contradictions: it’s crafty and digital, traditional and breaking tradition – all at the same time.

 

The center piece is an immersive multimedia show playback-ed on six giant screens.

 

 

Six synchronized sequences of images ran concurrently in a loop, accompanied by a soundtrack whose propulsive, almost droning rhythm and melody really matched the images and held the piece together. I do not know who made the soundtrack. It was good. I am a Philip Glass fan and generally liked this style of music. I was really glad that the soundtrack sounded new and fresh.

 

 

From time to time, a QR code appears and the viewers are encouraged to scan it with a smartphone which opens an app and provides more content and interactions. I did not try it but it sounded like a good idea (very 21st century !).

 

 

They served visitors instant coffee in little cups. They had a reason for doing it but I forgot …  White letters and words on the floor reproduce those signages found on Hong Kong’s streets.

 

 

The multimedia show is bookended by poster art by local artists and examples of work created by local design craftsman – zinc metal boxes for letters, mahjong tiles, etc.

 

 

It says “Not, Perfect”.

 

 

The audiovisual sequences featured the famous Star Ferry which shuttles between Hong Kong Island and the tip of the Kowloon peninsula. The ships are bi-directional – they do not have to make a U-turn after docking.

 

 

Growing up in Hong Kong, I travelled on those ships thousands of times and remember those chairs really well. The wooden back support, hinged in the middle between the front and back legs, can be tilted to a different position. Depending on the direction of the sailing, the seated passengers can all face forward and do not have to travel backwards.

 

 

“Change is the only constant. That is perhaps the most forthright statement – trite as it may seem – to describe Hong Kong.”

 

This is the 500th blog post !

 

The five hundredth post !   500th !

Can you believe it ? Frankly, I find it hard to believe that this blog has been continuing thus far.

 

 

Except in the first few months after the launch of the blog, there are usually 10-15 photos per post. Roughly, there must be nearly 5,000 uploaded photos now. What is sustaining it ? The blog must be serving some purposes – a way to stay in touch with families and friends, a public photo album, a kind of travel diary, or a creative outlet. Well, the photos on this blog has been pinned on Pinterest many times (particularly my picture of the Duomo in Milan).

 

Over the Loire

 

The maintenance of a personal blog is very much a 21st century hobby. According to WordPress’s statistics, the blog has managed to attract on average in the last year about 50 views per day. And I receive comments from you guys once in a while. You know who you are and thank you very much. With your comments, I know someone is reading and responding to the content, and it is not just some random hits sent by a search engine because of a key word match.

 

Sunrise at Mount Teton

 

I will continue with the blog but also start thinking about changing something. Possibly a different layout theme ? Perhaps I may post less frequently but write better and pick fewer but more striking photos, possibly in a larger format. Another change could be to diversify the topics. It has become very travel-oriented because photos are easy to accumulate and we enjoy traveling. In the beginning, it was a bit food-focused (food porn was “in” at that time). There were also some music-related posts and even one or two product reviews.

 

Chez Ron & Betty

 

Unfortunately, it takes time to make these changes and I don’t have much time to spare. May be I will stick with something minor – like adding a Pin it button or a share button for FB.

 

 MOMA, NYC

 

Any way, thank you for visiting and come back again. Do leave me a comment.

 

Buenos Aires ? (I cannot remember)

 

Cheers to more adventures !

 

The Art of Film Title

One of us (Chris) have always liked motion graphics and animation. Film title design is a prime example of this type of art.  They are designed to introduce a movie to the audience, set the tone, and at the same time give credits to the actors, director, producer and the crew. In some movies, there is so much creativity poured into making it that it can be more thrilling to watch than the movie itself.   Like music or music video, it can be enjoyed multiple times. Before youtube and vimeo, it would be difficult to find in one place a collection of opening or closing titles, other than owning all the films in its entirety.

One of the better known and much imitated example is the title sequence designed by Kyle Cooper for the movie “Se7en” (1995, David Fincher directing Bratt Pitt, Morgan Freeman, and Gwyneth Paltrow). Watch it on full screen.

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Then I discovered this web site a few years back – the Art of the Title – that is dedicated to this art form. In the beginning, it only posted the opening title itself – I even donated a clip, don’t think they ever used it.  Now, many of the pieces are posted on their site with “the making of … ” which includes interview with the artist about the design, planning, etc. – just like the bonus materials on a DVD.

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Saul Bass is one of the most celebrated classic movie title designer. To celebrate the release of the long-awaited book Saul Bass: A Life In Film & Design, the folks behind the Art of Title put together a brief visual history of some of Saul Bass’s most celebrated work. Click here or watch below. Don’t forget to switch to HD and full screen.

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Another example which features strong graphic design is the sequence for “Catch me if you can” (2002, Steven Spielberg directing Leo DiCaprio). Love the use of arrows and parallel lines here.

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Nowadays, the production values behind video games rival those of movies, Deux ex: Human Revolution is a game I am currently playing.  It has one of the best looking high-tech title sequence for a video game.

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There are many many more enjoyable pieces of artful designs out there. I will post some of them here from time to time.

Want to see the 2011 Emmy nominations for outstanding main title design (Game of Thrones, Rubicon, Broadwalk Empire and others) ?  Click here.

Henri et Tournée du Chat Noir

My friend Karen from NY reposted this youtube video on Facebook – Henri – le chat noir – the french existential cat. It is hilarious.

This video is getting viral now – at least according to Forbes’ “mon-dieux-save-us-from-the-existential-cat-video“.

Notice the graphic at the beginning of the video.  It is inspired by this 1896 poster from Paris for a cabaret started by Rodolphe Salis. This poster also appears during the video.

The creator of the Tournée du Chat Noir poster  – Theophile Steinlen – happened to be born in my neighborhood in Lausanne, Switzerland.

This is the original Henri video.

There is a restaurant that is named Au Chat Noir at the location where presumably Steinlen was born or lived.

Sue bought this Chat Noir handbag hook (I think in Spain not France). She should use it at the restaurant.

Henri has a facebook page – Henri, le Chat Noir. I look forward eagerly for more of Henri’s ennui.

There was a little behind-the-scene video about Henri but it seems to have been taken down, presumably to preserve the mystique.

Electron Festival 2012, Geneva

Electron is a four-day festival that ran from April 5 to April 8, spanning the Easter weekend of 2012. Below is this year’s poster – the city in the background is Geneva.

It is an annual electronic cultures festival that included workshops, contemporary art exhibits, concerts, conferences and parties. These events took place at various venue in the center of Geneva and continued with music acts which finished at 4am each night. One can buy a day pass or a festival pass which allows entrance for a day or 4 days.

We went on Good Friday, checked out a few DJs playing sets in the park where people were having drinks, skateboarding, etc. –  a nice way to spend an afternoon.

Cycloïd-E Black Box was an incredible piece of art  – a mobile sonic sculpture. The thing made with five stainless steel tubes, each one hinged at the end of another, each with a loudspeaker at the end blasting noises, and swinging and waving about in a darkened room like a giant metal snake – very menacing and mysterious.

We saw it in the basement of a theatre. The segments move independently of each other, sometimes folding themselves up, sometimes extending fully.

If its base can move, it will become a very scary robot, something right out of the pages of 1960’s sci-fi novels. It will fit right into Patrick Mcgoohan’s The Prisoner.

No photo can do this piece of art justice. It is the highlight of the festival for me. Experience it with my video here.  I found another video of it online, embedded it at the end of the post.

Later on, we saw Mike Ladd vs Thavius Beck at the Rez in L’Usine.. They were energetic and made the most watchable performance. Most of the time, they were bashing their keyboards facing each other, a bit of rapping in between. Follow the link to find their youtube videos.

Cristian Vogel  at the Palladium. Interesting stuff, strung it together well but somehow did not seem to work up the crowd (possibly too early, his slot was before midnight). For the curious, follow the link for youtube videos.

Opuswerk at the Palladium – not bad but not great, house music.

Light year – they sounded more mainstream, electropop, played at the Zoo in L’Usine.

One of the venue was Le Commun at the BAC (Batiment d’Art Contemporain) – where the music by Eliane Radigue – “Trilogie Adnos” was performed.  She is a legend of classical electronic music of France, heavily influenced by Tibetan meditation.  The piece was at least 75 minutes of warm, undulating electronic background noise with some notes sprinkled here and there.  It was played in a darkened room where many people lied down on the platforms (cushion provided) or the floor to meditate or fall asleep.  It was very relaxing. At the end of the performance, she appeared personally to greet the audience.

A sculpture at the bar just outside Le Commun.

Here is somebody else’s video of Cycloid-E on Youtube – a much more professional job. The sounds produced by the sculpture in this video is different from the one we heard. They used several cameras here. Enjoy the performance.

Quentin Tarantino versus Joel and Ethan Coen

A brazilian law student created a mashup of films by Quentin Tarantino and films by the Coen Brothers.  Try the HD and full screen options. Enjoy !

Dir.: Joel and Ethan Coen:
Blood Simple (1984)
Raising Arizona (1987)
Miller’s Crossing (1990)
Barton Fink (1991)
Fargo (1996)
The Big Lebowski (1998)
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Burn After Reading (2008)
A Serious Man (2009)

Dir.: Quentin Tarantino:
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Jackie Brown (1997)
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
Death Proof (2007)
Inglourious Basterds (2009) <-  did you know about the deliberate spelling errors ?

Even More Different Values of HSBC

This is the third and last batch HSBC’s ads that I have gathered.  Just more examples of the juxtaposition of three different images and one word, or three different words and same image.  The other two posts are here: The Different Values of HSBC, and More Different Values of HSBC.

Disclaimer: I do not have an account with HSBC.  Nor do I own shares in JWT who created the ads, or its marketing giant parent WPP.

To see my first attempt in creating a panel, click here.

More Different Values of HSBC

My earlier post about HSBC’s ads that appeared in airports in 2008/2009 continues to receive viewings, according to blog stats.  Apparently, someone out there is interested in them. So, here are some more ads from the same campaign, more examples of using three images and a word, or a single word and three different images, to provoke a reaction.  A link to the earlier post is here: The Different Values of HSBC.

I have added another post with more from the same series: Even more different values of HSBC.

To see my first attempt in creating a series of “same image, three words”, click here.

Louis Vuitton / Super Flat Monogram

Here is another anime made for LV by Takashi Murakami.  My earlier post about his anime and LV is here: Super Flat First Love.

This one shows one of TM’s cute character (a bamboo-chewing LV panda ?) swallowing a young Japanese girl whole and transporting her to a world of dancing LV monograms.  It graphically shows how LV wants to indoctrinate a whole generation of future customers.  The programming is relentless. Luxury has no physical meaning anymore, it has become carefully-packaged, manufactured symbols.

The accompanying music is by Fantastic Plastic Machine – a Japanese band that I like.  Pictures below were taken at TM’s exhibition held at the Brooklyn Museum in 2008.

 

If exotic sculpture is not your cup of tea, Louis Vuitton created this window-display in New York City which is based on a Solari information panel.

 

Louis Vuitton / Super Flat First Love

While I was uploading my Louis Vuitton/Solari video on Youtube for an earlier post, I discovered a series of anime by Takashi Murakami that involves the LV trademark monogram.  The anime are all breezy, magical, and cute.

Last year, the Brooklyn Museum put on a retrosepctive show of Takashi Murakami’s work.   The show titled “© MURAKAMI” introduced a cast of trippy, infantile and erotic characters.  The bubble-head character with its 10 or so stretching hands, reminding me of a Indian-buddhist deity, was three-storey tall.  The life-size female robot folds herself into a spacecraft like a transformer toy (as seen in different poses in the back).

The show also illustrated the seamless juxtaposition of fantasy art and luxury merchandising.  Separate from the museum souvenir store, a counter was installed in the middle of the exhibition space for selling LV/TM special edition handbags and accessories.  How can the Japanese (and anime fans) not fall in love with this brand ?

 

For another video of this series and more pictures from the LV/TM exhibition, go to this post on the Louis Vuitton Superflat monogram.

 

 

Louis Vuitton / Solari di Udine

We went to see the christmas tree at Rockerfellar Center and the windows of Saks Fifth Avenue a few nights ago.  As we passed Louis Vuitton’s New York flagship store on the corner of Fifth Ave and 57th Street, I noticed something flickering in the shop windows.  What caught my eye was the flipping of rows of tiny black tiles each with white lettering, and at the end of each row, a roving light.  LV has put a functional Solari flight information display board in each window.  Apparently, they are relanuching their City Guides and had the building and store front decked out in a travel-inspired theme.  It is not at all christmas-y, unlike all the other stores up and down Fifth Ave.  Well, for those who can afford LV luggage, it is unlikely that they would be craning their necks to read the board, as they would be waiting in their first class lounge, or more likely flying on their own Gulf Stream.

I bet these boards must have appeared in dozens of movies to help depict the sorrow of separation or the anticipation of loved ones’ arrival.  Like a towering travel deity, making destinations appear and disappear, announcing delays and last calls, it literally spells out the fates of travellers standing beneath it.  As if to counter the traveller’s anxiety or boredom, it makes a strangely soothing, mesmerizing “tsktsk” sounds as the tiny tiles flip in tandem to form its message.  It is the sound of information being delivered.  I remember one of these display boards in Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong, while I was waiting to board a flight to the UK many years ago.  It appeared in the background of a few yellowed 3″x5″ photographs of me and my classmates who came to see me off at the airport.

These electro-mechanical wonders of the past were manufactured by an Italian company, Solari di Udine SpA, since the late 50’s and must have cost quite a bit to install and maintain.  They are all but replaced by LEDs and flat panel displays. Apparently, a version of it is included in the collection of Museum of Modern Art.  I wonder how much LV had paid for these, or if they were recycled from airport junkyard, and what would they do with them once the ad campaign is over. – C

The Different Values of HSBC

“Different Values” is a series of print ads created by JWT for HSBC in 2008.  They were seen at US airports, mostly inside a ramp. I love its relativistic, Rashomon-like qualities. In the examples above, they had three different images and one word, or three different words and same image; a fourth panel shows the HSBC logo and slogan.  Earlier versions did not identify the bank but show two images and two keywords, each with opposite meanings.

The ads turned heads because of its boldly-framed, focused imagery and simple text, which makes one smile.  I assume the bank wants to illustrate its sensitivity to the diverse background of potential customers.  Aimed at travelers and immigrants, one don’t need much English to understand the message.  I think people may remember the cleverness of the ad but wonder how well they will connect it with HSBC.

N.B.  This post is a perennial favorite here.  For those interested in more HSBC posters, visit these two posts on this blog: More different values of HSBC and Even more different values of HSBC.  Enjoy.

Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. I am going to try make a few, and if they look good, I’ll post them here.  – C

Well, I gave it a go.  To see my first attempt in creating a panel, click here.

Jet Lag / Lost In A Moment

I am reading “Pattern Recognition” –  a sci-fi-ish fiction by William Gibson.  His style in describing all things near-futuristic can sometimes be abstract, to say the least. But it surely beats something that reads like a fanboy’s wish lists of next-generation gadgets.  The main character is a media consultant who is psychologically “allergic” to certain popular trademarks.  Here is how he describes her jet lag after flying from New York to London on an assignment :

She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien’s theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can’t move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.

I am going to post more about the book when I finish.  It started slow but now it’s getting exciting.

Lost In A Moment is a song that I think will go really well with the paragraph (and the above photo which I took in Iceland which happens to be in the middle of the Atlantic).

¤  Listen to an excerpt of the Strange World mix of the song by clicking the link below.  Press play in new window.

Lost In A Moment – Shrift

The song has also been used in a youtube video made by a couple of guys sitting in a kaiten-zushi bar (conveyor belt sushi) in Tokyo.  They put the video camera on the conveyor belt and turned it on while it slowly pans around the restaurant.  Truly mesmerizing. One of my all time favorites.  Enjoy.