05.Feb.2012 Dairy River Volume 9!

More exciting news from Takery.  Some very influential individuals have persuaded Takery to run for public office under the Homework Helpers Party.  According to the Homework Helpers website, “[t]he Homework Helpers Party is devoted to helping.  America has a lot of homework and America needs a lot of help.”  But Takery needs your help.  There are several other candidates.  Skunkfoot, obviously, always.  But now the emergence of another powerful contender: Skunkfish.  Whereas Skunkfoot has reached mythic, massive proportions, Skunkfish is microscopic, almost invisible.  Takery has prepared the following talking points for his first debate.  Let us know if you have any questions for him!!!

Publication Date: February 5, 2012.

Yelling as Sublime
-Steve Wright

On Completing Gilles Deleuze’s Logic of Sense
-Ari Berenbaum

A Study in New Pioneering: a Study in the Empirical Identification of New Frontiers
-Andrew Wasson

Pink Paper
-Tammy Stone

My Kracken McKraken
-Richard Grzela

20.Nov.2011 Real people doing real things

We’re looking forward to our next volume, which we anticipate publishing on or around December 15.  We’ve received some great submissions, so we’re excited about enlarging the DR family.

Also, file under people doing real things:

(1) Lucas Blalock’s show xyz at Ramiken Crucible in NYC runs until December 23.  It is truly awesome.  Make sure you check it out.

(2) Long-time DR contributor known to some as “the Bruise” has created a mobile app called “Form Fiction.”

(3) Listing this third as to avoid any claim of bias, the exceedingly cool acrylic abstract work of Elizabeth Herbert-Wasson.

(4) Released earlier this fall, Ben Rubin’s rich, imaginative, and profound When Comes What Darkly Thieves.

(5) Interview with John Crouch about Cape & Chalice in QRD.  Also note Wizzerds / Club 7″ split release last spring.

I know that there are a lot of other people doing real things.

02.Oct.2011 Streetlight ads

I recently sifted through some archived volumes of Street and Highway Lighting (1957-1963) as a part of the research project on cobrahead streetlights.   I found a number of great ads, which I uploaded to the Handbook.

There have been several erroneous reports that Dairy River is a dairy.  Consider these rumors dispelled.

Also, we’ve been receiving many great submissions, so a hearty thank you is extended to everyone who has shared your work with us!  We’re currently sifting through the entries and we’ll get the acceptance letters out ASAP.

10.Sep.2011 Dairy River Vol. 9

Takery here.  We recognize that it has been quite some time since we published an issue.  We’re OK with that.  We went on a tacit hiatus to recharge our creative batteries.  DR cannot be stopped though.  Regardless of how tacit we were able to make our hiatus, DR just keeps rumbling back.  All across this land, pens are being applied to paper, print archives are being consulted, codes are being decoded, and at least one person is asking the question, “Who is the Boss Tweed in your life?”  That’s right folks, we’re back.  Prepare for DRV#9.

06.Mar.2011 Taxonomies

The compilation of the Handbook has generated some discussion about different taxonomies of modern life.  Perhaps taxonomy is not the best way to put it, because taxonomy seems to imply some sort of nested classification system.  I don’t think we’re there yet.  But more like just a classification system.

A number of widely-encompassing and relatively fine-grained classification systems actually already exist.  For a long time we have celebrated the Dewey decimal system as serving this purpose.  I came across yet another, even more particulate, classification system the other day: the Trademark Acceptable Identification of Goods & Services Manual.  Basically, if you register a trademark with the Patent Office, you have to denote the applicable goods and services and you can only pick from this list.  This list, however, contains more than 30,000 entries, so there is much to choose from.

The first good on the list is “chives” with subcategories of fresh, raw, or unprocessed.  I’d like to work through the list and spotlight each good.  Like, what are chives, what characteristics make the best chives, who has taken it to the next level with chives obsession, and so on.  I think it would be a fruitful project.  I’ve got my hands full with the Handbook and what not, but if anyone wants to the be the editor of Dairy River: Goods & Services step up: dairyriver@gmail.com.

With the Handbook, I e-mailed Cooper Lighting about the origins of the OV25 model back when it was a Westinghouse, we’ll see if they get back to me.  I don’t see why they wouldn’t, it’s free publicity.  Conflicted about whether to move on from Streetlights or not.  I think I’m going to see it through to another level of completion before moving on.

26.Feb.2011 Handbook Status Check

OK, where are we on the Handbook?

Moving forward, making progress.  I’ve been stalled somewhat by the cold weather, because I want to get outside to take some streetlight glamor shots but traipsing around all day in the cold is not going to happen.   I also am intrigued by the idea of finding out the designer of the cobrahead streetlight, ala Pizza Hut roof.

So, bottom line is that I don’t want to move from the streetlight module just yet.

DR and the Handbook is always looking for collaborators, so if you have a special knowledge base and/or want to help out, e-mail us!

14.Feb.2011 Luminaires et al.

City Lights by Jakle arrived a few days ago and I’m clipping through it.  A very good introduction and overview to lighting technology, especially early lighting technology.  The thesis seems to be that streetlight engineering has been co-opted by the automobile establishment at the expense of Place (i.e. the unique sense of place that varied lighting can produce).  That’s what it seems like so far.

I also liked Jakle’s explanation of luminaire, which appears to be used in practice with some ambiguity:

In a broad sense, the term luminaire can refer to both the street lamp as light source and to its support and enclosure.  My focus is on the lamp surround.  In this narrower use of the word, the luminaire directs the light as it supports and protects the lamp, connecting the lamp to its energy source.  Luminaire design and positioning represented the very essence of streetlight application.

City Lights at 97.  The book seems light (ha, no pun intended) on more recent luminaires, like the Cobraheads.

Got me to wondering about the history of Cobrahead design — in more detail than just that GE and Westinghouse introduced similar models about the same time in the 50s.  Is another Quest in order?  Perhaps there was some sort of Chrysler-Empire State building like arms race between the two companies.

Coming soon, a New Pioneer field trip to try and originate some of our own photos for the Handbook.  I’m not crazy about using third party photos.  Been waiting for the weather to turn, perhaps toward the end of the month?

06.Feb.2011 Advanced Superbowl Metrics II

Here are the experts’ predictions:

Advanced Superbowl Metrics

Taking a break from developing an intensive taxonomy of our built environment and trying to understand its place in early post-modern thought, we turn to the Superbowl.  For our entertainment we developed a set of advanced superbowl metrics.  Feel free to add your own and/or play along.

UPDATED

Score at 5 minutes to play in the first half

Color of the punters shoes

Whether anyone refers to THE ohio state university

Time the first field goal is kicked

Time the last field goal is kicked

Ratios of vowels to consonants in the first td scorers name

How many commercials show a train in some form

Number of minutes, real time, between end of 2q and kickoff at 3q

Number of times the ball is purposely kicked

Number of different guitars played during halftime show

Color of liquid dumped on coach

Fake field goal or Safety

Who has possession at 2 to play in the 3rd

Most prominent color in commentator ties

Total number of personal fouls

# of TD celebrations involving coordinated dance moves

We’ll update with our expert predictions just prior to gametime.

The New Pioneer

File under “Foundations.” After AB’s comment on the Arcades Project, I decided to go back to peruse my copy, with a particular focus on the flaneur convolute, hoping to glean some insight on New Pioneering. I was rewarded by this gem, a quote from a French writer named Pierre Hamp:

The artist seeks eternal truth and knows nothing of the eternity in his midst. He admires the column of the Babylonian temple and scorns the smokestack on the factory. Yet what is the difference in their lines? When the era of coal-powered industry is over, people will admire the vestiges of the last smokestacks, as today we admire the remains of temple columns…Instead of waiting to visit the Bay of Bengal to find objects to exclaim over, the might have a little curiosity about the objects they see in daily life…To walk out your front door as if you’re just arrived from a foreign country; to discover the world in which you already live; to begin the day as if you’ve just gotten off the boat from Singapore and have never seen your own doormat or the people on the landing…-it is this that reveals the humanity before you, unknown until now.

This seems to underscore the core of the New Pioneer’s mission. Now, to what extent is the New Pioneer related to Benjamin and Baudelaire’s flaneur, that remains to be seen. To be sure, there is an element of wandering inherent in both. But it seems to me that the flaneur has an element of aimlessness that the New Pioneer lacks. There seems to be some vague underlying mission in the New Pioneer’s quest.