Re: Exploring and Decoding Urban Ruins

From: QueeneMUSE@aol.com
Date: Tue Jun 06 2000 - 12:22:22 MDT


In a message dated 6/6/2000 11:08:32 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
jwilson@eisnor.com writes:

>
> Is anyone out there drawn to abandoned overgrown fenced in piers, rotting
> warehouses, broken windows and rooftops?
> Do you see a part of yourself in the decay?
> A part of your mortality?
> Can you feel the atomic universe expanding?
> Molecular bonds weakening?
> Entropy pushing forward?
> [I assume this came out the "mold" thread. ']
No I don't feel any of those things, but I love to look at "accidental urban
art", like a really rusted truck holding hoses, pumps, wires and cables.. it
thrills me no end to find beauty in the entropic world... spontaneous art..
like a huge rusty drain pipe left discarded in the middle of a field of
wheat... oh.. it looks like a dinosaur.. or a cement tower, made like
sculpture made by an mad industrial artist... or a tower to Ogun, the
African spirit of Iron... of Industry...

Actually, one of the more beautiful art forms is decaying technology. There's
even a book out about it, called "DEAD TECH". Bunkers, scrap yards, old
factories... beautiful. Leave your bike outside for a winter and come back to
admire the delicate embellishments that have evolved along it's tire rims and
mud covers... Entropy creates amazing variations of patterns: rust, peeling
paint, grass and plants covering cement and brick... make the most startling
and exquisite abstract patterns.
And then there is the question: Who lived here? Who worked here? What stories
do these moldering and charming ruins hold?

The interesting thing about America is, besides the Anasazi, there isn't a
lot of really ancient stuff. So our history is told in the remnants of the
industrial revolution and it's clunky, dusty machines.
I like to listen to techno music because it sound a lot like those old
chains, railway tracks and industrial wastelands...

I image those heavy metallic beasts clanging off into the past, being
replaced by a mix of the virtual, the digital, the biological....



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