Blog discoveries for February

Game Criticism

Press Pause to Reflect
   » "If This Is an Open World, Why Are All the Doors Closed?"

Links

Laughing Squid

Interesting Choice

I've got a new project in the works. Announcing Interesting Choice: A Webseries As You Like It, a crowdsourced narrative where the viewers decide what happens. In this five(-plus?)-week class project, collaborators Brian Bernhard, Christy Sager and I will be producing a weekly webseries, with each new episode followed by a poll where you are invited to vote on what happens next.

Follow along and join in at http://www.interestingchoice.com.

Our first video will be going up first thing tomorrow morning. Stay tuned!

Blog discoveries for January

Game Developers

In the Games of Madness
» "How Gameplay and Narrative kill Meaning in 'Games'"

Game Industry

New York Gamedev
» "A new year, a new decade, and a new blog!"

Drink

Art and Tea
» "Saturday Morning Tea"

Blog discoveries for November

Game Criticism

Critical Distance

Game Developers

Click Nothing
   » "On Auteurship in Games"

Ludus Novus
   » "Six Months of Games"

New York

Loungerati
   » "Barfly's Beat: TNT - Hendrick's Gin"

Blog discoveries for October

Game Developers

Critical Smack
   » "Stochastic Thoughts: The Trials of Hardcore PC Gaming"


Design, Tech, Advertising

Notebook


Nude & Erotic Art

Yimmys Yayo


New York

Cultural Capitol
   » "On the Salon at the Players Club (and Brian Newman @ Duane Park)"

Blog discoveries for September

Arts, Ephemera, Curiosities

Hunting Lodge
   » "Anatomical Diagrams of Mythical Japanese Monsters"

sinfonia de aleatoriedades
   » "Automatas, autômatos, etc (não sei escrever o nome correto, ajudem.)."


Art Collections

tiny dreams

Blog discoveries for August

Art and Science, Anatomy

Photo Synthesis
   » "The Beauty of Night Rockets"

Science, Humanities, Culture

The Frontal Cortex
   » "Ketchup"

Maps, Graphs, Data Aesthetics

Flowing Data
   » "Choose Your Own Adventure — Most Likely You'll Die"

Art Collections

Daily Art Muse
   » "jennifer trask: flourish"

Artists

Drawing Life by Fred Hatt
   » "Meanings of the Nude"

Blog discoveries for July

Art History, Old Books, Vintage Style:

My pet arts

Science, Humanities, Culture:

MadSilence
The Popular Uncanny

Design, Tech, Advertising:

2experts Design

Nude & Erotic Art:

Au carrefour étrange

Characters:

Romantoes

More sizzle than steak

More art project than genuine cookery, Fancy Fast Food is a collection of recipes for turning fast food items into attractive facsimiles of gourmet meals, like this "Spicy Chicken Sushi" made out of Popeye's chicken.

Via Consumerist.

Blog discoveries for June

Arts, Humanities, Culture:

PAUVRE PLUME

Art History, Old Books, Vintage Style:

ephemera assemblyman
The Flapper Girl

Fashion:

Easy Fashion
FABULON
Nothing Elegant
The Sartorialist
Urban Style

Design, Tech, Advertising:

Words and Eggs

Art Collections:

the art of memory

Nude & Erotic Art:

THE NAKED IN THE ART

Food:

The Museum of Food Anomalies

Into the underground

City of Ember is a new favorite blog. Taking inventory of the world's tunnels, bunkers, cellars, caverns, and other dark subterranean locales, like the catacombs under Paris, the lavish Wielicza Salt Mine, or Darvaza, the Door to Hell in Turkmenistan, it's like a lushly-illustrated travel blog for the underworld.









The Entrance to Hell is a great Flickr photo pool full of mysterious portals.











Take your own plunge into the underground in CHASM, a very simple but satisfying game in which you must pilot a ship through a deep, narrow tunnel. The only thing I could have wished for was an option to reverse the Y axis, as my fighter pilot instincts inevitably kicked in whenever things got hairy and I'd plunge straight up or down into a wall, completely intending to go the opposite direction. May you fare better than I.





Under New York is an urban exploration site dedicated to exploring the dark, abandoned parts of the city. Most of the sites involve the metaphorical underside of the city, but there are quite a few interesting subterranean expeditions under Tunnels & Bridges. While the pictures are small and too few, there are a few gems — most taken looking back at the world above.

Arte y pico award

A ways back, Capitán Langstrump of the excellent Pildoras Crumelus stopped by to graciously bestow the Arte y pico award, from the blog of the same name, on Blue Tea. My silence on the point up to now was not an indication of refusal, but more like arriving a little late to the acceptance ceremony. So start the music, here I am (huff, puff).





The award is passed from blogger to blogger and honors blogs for "dedication, creativity, community, joy, and above all, art". With those criteria in mind, here are my choices for the next five honorees:

Florizelle for Le Divan Fumoir Bohémien

John Coulthart for { feuilleton }

Tellurian for hanuman

Xenmate for a near life experience

Marion for Mapping the Marvellous

For those who wish to accept the award, here are the rules:

1. You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributes to the blogging community, no matter what language.
2. Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his/her blog to be visited by everyone.
3. Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her/him the award itself.
4. The Award winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of “Arte Y Pico” blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.
5. To show these conditions.

My thanks to Capitán Langstrump for the honor. I hope you'll find something of interest among my choices for the next round -- which is the point of the whole thing, after all.

Spots and shadows

This image spooked the hell out of me.

So now I'm linking to the article at Damn Interesting where it came from, about a fellow called Charles Bonnet and the things his grandfather saw and the curious hallucinatory phenomenon to which he gave his name, not only because it is, as always, a damn interesting read, but because I wanted to be able to spook you all with that picture, too.

Blog to book

Wonderful news. One of my favorite blogs is now a book.

Plenty of bloggers go into print, but this one is special. BibliOdyssey is both learned and visually intoxicating, and I applaud peacay's breakthrough into the ink-and-paper world to bring forth what is certainly a substantial and informative book in addition to just being full of gorgeous pictures.





I'll crib peacay's own blatantly promotional paragraph to describe the offering:

The book (like the site) covers a very wide spectrum of styles, time periods and subject matter. You can expect everything from astronomy to zoology and from Art Nouveau to the Renaissance, in something reminiscent of what I call a multi-post (except on steroids and growth hormone and with better grooming habits and no noisy computer fan in the background). I like to think that the trajectory of the book aims somewhere roughly between our internet users' penchant for a concentrated package of beguiling ephemera and as an introductory overview of the cultural wealth accessible from web archives for luddites.

Here's the book available from Amazon.

It just pleases me that this sort of thing is going on, and I'm delighted by BibliOdyssey's success. I don't have my copy yet, but Christmas is just around the corner, you know.

Story pictures

It's not often I give a whole post to a single blog, but I just found this one and it's so magical that I don't want to wait to share (besides which, I'm not sure what I'd group it with). It's called Things Look Like Things, with the tagline Blogs and photos as fable, fairytale, fiction and fact. It's a sort of photoblog of Flickr selections showing not just simple resemblances, but also poetic transmutations and dreamy narratives, with titles like "What a Bat Might Dream" and "The Planting and Harvesting of Cupcakes". (It turns out that quite a lot of things look like cupcakes.)

I almost wish I hadn't scrolled down to the bottom of the page to the older posts that include text, because the newer ones fare much better without it -- the caption and a sequence of images are all that is needed for these miniature epics.

Shown below are two of the shorter series, "Sometimes We Rise" and "Blue Eyes".

Thinking Blogger Award

Loyal reader Princess Haiku has honored Blue Tea with a Thinking Blogger Award, which is passed on by meme and bestowed by recipients on blogs thought to cultivate and inspire thought.





As a purveyor of minigames and pretty pictures, I think I'm more likely to make you go "Ooh" and "Ahh" than "Hmm", but I am flattered all the same, and I can certainly think of five more worthy honorees to pass it along to. So here, then, are the Five Blogs that Make Me Think.

1. Dream Tree. A thoughtful and poetic blog about fantastic, dreamlike art -- my kind of aesthetic -- and other ephemera. Regular features include a Science News roundup, and the exquisite Wunderkammer series of articles showcasing the origins and history of rare and unusual objects and artifacts.

2. Damn Interesting. Mini history lessons and briefings on strange, surprising, little-known events and phenomena from times past. Perfectly titled.

3. The Huge Entity. Essays and meditations on philosophy, consciousness, history, technology, religion, and other "excruciatingly large things". Wide-ranging and far-reaching.

4. Next Nature. A link blog highlighting trends, products, projects, research, discoveries, and arts that challenge and redefine the boundaries between human and nature.

5. Apothecary's Drawer. An eclectic blog exploring diverse topics in arts, science, and culture, with brief, link-riddled posts that manage to be both fascinating and informative.

I don't expect all of the above to participate, but if you recipients do wish to acknowledge the award and nominate others, here are the rules as given by the originator:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award'.

Most of these honorees are culled from the "Science, Tech, Humanities, Culture" group in my blogroll, which is where I keep most of the Heavy Thinkers, and to which I direct you if you would like to discover more delightful blogs in this vein.

Now, back to the pretty pictures.

Coziness in a cup

In need of a good place for a cup of tea and a think? Look no further.

There's something about this blog I really like. It's just a collection of pictures and brief commentary about a series of pubs and cafes -- the decor, the atmosphere, the patrons, and, of course, the tea. There's nothing fancy about them, just a bunch of simple, cosy establishments. The tone is thoroughly cheerful, contented, and as British as the Queen.

How many millions of happy cups of tea must these little pots have served. Warm and worn.

All the sandwiches present and correct. Cheese. Ham. Cheese and ham. But look at that tempting cakery. Must have some of those.

White mug. Brown tea. Yellow table. All is right with the world.

Fairy blogs

I discovered today that one of my longstanding wishes has finally come true: The Endicott Studio (publisher of the online Journal of Mythic Arts) now has a blog. It's edited by Midori Snyder with contributions from Terri Windling and the rest of the Endicott staff, and has all the articles, reviews, events, art, links, poems, news and tidbits about all things mythic and folkloric that I had hoped to see from the Endicott Studio. I am delighted.

While I'm at it, I should highlight some of the other myth/folklore/fairytale blogs I discovered when I thought there really should be some good ones out there and began to make a concerted search for them.

Cu Sith Myth is "a Blog of Ancient and Modern Myth" with articles, discussions, and links on topics from the meaning of old tales to current events, art, books, myth and society, and more. Wonderful stuff.

Myth Happens is a personal livejournal by sovay, aka poet and storyteller Sonya Taafe. There's always something fascinating from this blog in the heart of the mythic literary world.

Chaos and old nighties, the livejournal of nineweaving, is by turns personal, poetic, whimsical, and magical, just like a fairy tale. Everything she writes is steeped in myth.

Take me to your Leda (which I had on my blogroll for a long time as "Living in Legends and Lore" -- I had trouble deciding which was the title), is a great blog devoted primarily to classical and ancient mythologies, Graeco-Roman and otherwise. It hasn't been updated for a little while, but it hasn't yet reached my six-month cutoff, and I like it so I'm hoping things pick up again.

Jasminembla's personal blog wanders from film to art to literary experiences, all suffused with a heavy dose of the fantastic, mythical, and magical.

Living in Season is an illuminating blog full of real folklore -- principally plant lore and the rites and traditions of the changing seasons. In-depth, well-researched insights into the properties, histories, magical significance and folk traditions connected with common things we take for granted.

If you know of any other good myth or folklore blogs out there, please do share.

The aesthetics of decay

Abandoned Places is a group Livejournal with a little bit of everything. A lot of nice amateur work from urban explorers, and some professional work by serious photographers, too.




Decayed Machinery, another group Livejournal. Lots of rusty cars, and some industrial sites.




Lapsed Modernist is the photoblog of an urban explorer. Not only is the work excellent, but she has access to some really nice locations.




The Unconscious Art of Demolition, a Flickr pool. A superb collection of mostly exquisitely textured and weathered walls.





Medianeras, another Flickr pool devoted to the remnants of demolished medianeras, dividing walls.




More at El arte de las medianeras.




50 Grams of Urban Loneliness, a Flickr photoset. These places are not really abandoned, but they are lonely. And beautifully photographed.





The Ghost Signs Pool. The past fading before your eyes. (I'm quite fond of the first one, by the way: "Blue Ribbon Tea".)





Opacity is the urban ruins photography of Motts. Very shiny and professional, great compositions, and many wonderful locations. Hard to choose samples -- I just about closed my eyes and clicked. And clicked and clicked.
Via Dream Tree.






The stunning photography of Shinichiro Kobayashi. Many excellent photos of gloriously decaying places from all over Japan.
Via the nonist.




I'd just like to add that many of these photos reminded me of places I've been in games -- I'm sure I've seen this room somewhere in Nova Prospekt in Half-Life 2, and this place certainly is from some corner or other of Riven's Boiler Island.




Undercity.org is the work of Steve Duncan, "a guerilla historian in Gotham". There's actually not that much history about the photos (stories and articles are in a separate section), but his beautiful shots of moody subterranean places, like old mausoleums and miles of subway tunnels, are testament enough.
Via the nonist.





Photographer David Maisel, has, among other records of decay and ruin (such as his "black maps", aerial photos of environmentally impacted landscapes, and the "library of dust" containing the cremated remains of asylum inmates), an excellent series of photos of the crumbling asylum itself.
Via Pruned.




Modern Ruins, photographic essays by Shaun O'Boyle. Numerous photo essays, each exploring a specific location running the gamut from hospitals and asylums to small dying towns to industrial sites.





Modern Ruins, the photography of Phillip Buehler. Many industrial and military subjects, like factories and airplane graveyards. His work includes a selection of panoramas presented in QTVR. He also has a small collection of Street Fossils.
Via the nonist.





Also, the nonist with some links on the subject of decay: notable among them are two articles by Brian Dillon, "Down in the Dump", in Frieze, and "Fragments from a History of Ruin" in Cabinet.

New Scientist invites us to "Imagine Earth without people": Left once more to its own devices, Nature would begin to reclaim the planet, as fields and pastures reverted to prairies and forest, the air and water cleansed themselves of pollutants, and roads and cities crumbled back to dust. (You can also read the article at Archinect, where the page design is more soothing.)
I'm not really a fan of this sort of anti-anthropocentric naturist creed, but it is poetic, at least.
Via Side Effects, a blog about decay.

This book sounds intriguing; this book, which I spotted and flipped through in the MoMA bookstore, is a beauty.