Elsewhat

Years and years ago I designer a weather app called Skyline. Little of it exists on the internet anymore, but the core idea of the app was to present an hourly forecast as a series of icons which would rise and fall with the temperature, giving you an easy-to-read graph of the day ahead. I don’t believe we were the first to ever present a daily forecast this way, we were the first I know of to package a whole app around it.

App developer Carrot recently launched a new version of their Carrot Weather app, which has what I consider the best version of this concept yet, and the best overall weather app I know of for iPhone or iPad (it also runs on newer Macs, though it’s a bit less good there). It’s got good data, presented well, and it looks pretty.

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Here is a new Montréal-only mailing list I have high hopes for. Community Service chronicles upcoming art and design events in the city. I’m happy to have a non-social-media-based way of getting news about art events.

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A couple of quick pics snapped in Queens, New York, during my trip there last week.

Taken in Mile End’s very picturesque skate park.

I make a point on this blog of never worrying about my posts being ‘timely’. I post whenever I find something, and don’t much care if something is 2 days or 2 decades old (I also don’t track visits or incoming links in any way, but that’s another story). Sometimes, though, I luck into something relatively current, like my visiting artist Jenny Holzer‘s Lightline show at the Guggenheim on its 4th day.

The main attraction was the immense video screen that sent scraps of words flowing up the helix of the Guggenheim’s inner hall, in a reworking of the artist’s own 1989 show in the same space.

Skywriting was done outside the show, though I don’t know if it was related to the words inside. The shape echoes the work, though I don’t know who Alejandro is, and couldn’t angle myself to read more than this small excerpt.

And lastly, a bit of a spoiler, the very final words at the top of the Guggenheim:

This cable car was initially built in 1976 as a temporary commuting option for residents of New York’s Roosevelt Island (a 147 acre island on the East side of Manhattan, previously known as ‘Welfare Island’). The addition of a subway station on the island in 1989 turned the cable car into more of a tourist attraction rather than a commute option for locals. Luckily, they still run it, and I made a point of riding on it when I was in New York this week.

This whimsical installation was made by American artist Toshiko Takaezu, who realized that she could dry her pottery on hammocks without distorting their shape. Seen at The Noguchi Museum in Astoria Queens.

From British podcast studio Tortoise comes a podcast series about the social media storm surrounding Amber Heard and Johnny Depp. Something hit me very wrong regarding the online hate Amber received, especially considering that Depp was found to have been abusive in a dozen incidents in a 2020 court case in England.

What comes to mind when you think of Amber Heard? Liar? Survivor? Narcissist? Millions of us watched the celebrity trial of the century, Depp v Heard, in 2022. Amber Heard lost and Johnny Depp was vindicated. But what if Amber was actually the victim of an organised trolling campaign? What if the online hate against her was manufactured?

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I’m planning a solo trip to Nee York City this week, and on my list of activities is visiting the Brooklyn-based museum dedicated to Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi. As well as being an artist and designer (he designed this iconic coffee table) Noguchi was a frequent collaborator with Buckminster Fuller, who has appeared on this blog numerous times. Noguchi worked on the Dymaxion Car, which was Fuller’s somewhat ill-fated concept car which never saw wide production.

Pictured here is a fountain from Noguchi’s Expo 70′ installation. Photos via Noguchi’s archive.

Old friend of Elsewhat Bird and Moon cleverly looks at real bird names and comes up with birds which don’t exist, but which are implied by the real ones.

Visit Bird and Moon for bird comics and more →