— Another monolithic composition. Should probably try some other color combinations, but I’m just digging the red right now. Perhaps because I’m working almost exclusively to a soundtrack of Taylor Swift’s Red at the moment. It’s GREAT.
— I’m very gradually reading Gotham, the gargantuan first volume of Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace’s epic history of New York City. One particularly enjoyable tangent is contextualizing the text with deep google-dives into maps, paintings, and other visual accounts of the city, such as this wonderfully zoomable view of the city from 1761.
— Artsy’s Jacqui Palumbo looks at Carrie Mae Weems’ landmark Kitchen Table Series of photographs. Discovered via Isabelle Baldwin’s twitter, always a good source for threads on photogram history and Hasselblad envy.
— For those of you with a hankering for cinematic pastelcore, Present & Correct has resurrected the Wes Anderson Palettes Twitter account.
— “Our sounds bore a striking resemblance to heavy industry– in particular the 15-ton drop hammers which could operate seven days a week, in 16-hour shifts. These created deep sonic ricochets that bounced off Sheffield’s hills. The sound became a continuous heartbeat while I slept; this subconscious hypnotic rhythm stayed with me and began to show up in the music.” Cracking look at the late-eighties Yorkshire bleep scene. Throwing some Tricky Disco on right now.
— It’s that day again, so here’s Richard Wilkinson’s Star Wars insects.
— Helen Barrett on the London districts nobody knows. Where are NoHo, Midtown and Brain Yard? When property developers “place-brand,” the result can be incongruous, inappropriate— or just laughable.
— Rewatched The Lego Batman Movie the other day. It just looks… right. This brief look at the making of it is worth a watch. Every CGI brick was made with unique scratches, thumbprints, dust, dents, the works. Incredible what they did with characters that have only nine points of movement. Straddling digital and stop-motion techniques, it’s weirdly one of the most realistic-looking CGI movies around.
— Bank Holiday Bin Day Challenge, in which my unofficial biographer Stephen Collins continues to document the mundanity of my day-to-day existence.
This was originally posted on Meanwhile, a Substack dedicated to inspiration, fascination, and procrastination from the desk of designer Daniel Benneworth-Gray.
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Collage by the author.