99% Invisible

Episode 54- The Colour of Money

Wed, 16 May 2012 16:09:00 -0700

US paper currency is so ubiquitous that to really look at its graphic design with fresh eyes requires some deliberate and focused attention. So pull out a greenback from your wallet (or look at a picture online) and really take it in. All the fonts, the busy filigree, the micro patterns…it’s just dreadful.

Even though paper currency itself, just idea of money, is a massive, world changing technology, the look and feel of US paper money is very stagnant. Richard Smith is the founder of the Dollar ReDe$ign Project and in an article in the New York Times, he pointed out five major areas where the design of US currency could improve: color, size, functionality, composition, and symbolism.

The worst aspects of the design of the greenback are illustrated in this video by Blind Film Critic Tommy Edison.

It just so happens that Australian currency addresses each and every one of the points made by Richard Smith. Tristan Cooke and Tom Nelson of the blog Humans in Design are big fans of all the design innovations in Australian money. Aussie polymer notes are varied in color, get larger with each denomination, are more durable and are generally considered better and easier to use than US currency.

But there are some interesting reasons why the greenback is the way it is. David Wolman, author of The End of Money, explains that the legacy features that make US paper money look stale and anachronistic are meant to convey stability and timelessness. Since the US economy is so important in the world economy, why mess with it? Some fear that changing the design of the currency significantly (or eliminating the penny) could undermine the faith in the federal reserve note.

Even though Tristan and Tom are fans of the Australian polymer bills, they share Wolman’s view that the more interesting future innovations are not going to have anything to do with physical cash. Clever user interfaces that help us manage our money better, while providing even greater convenience, are getting more refined and accepted. So that ugly $20 in your wallet may never actually get prettier and more functional, it’ll just be gone.

Extra: Below is the 2010 winner of Richard Smith’s Dollar ReDe$ign Project, submitted by Dowling Duncan.

Mark Lukach wrote a very kind piece about the show for The Awl...

Mon, 07 May 2012 09:14:39 -0700

Mark Lukach wrote a very kind piece about the show for The Awl (which is a favorite site of mine). Cheers, Mark!

If you have a friend who won’t listen because they still think the program is about Occupy, this might finally do the trick. Spread the word! Thanks.

Episode 53- The Xanadu Effect Download, Embed, Share…PLUS...

Tue, 01 May 2012 15:25:00 -0700

Episode 53- The Xanadu Effect

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What happens when we build big?

Julia Barton remembers going to the top floor of Dallas’s then-new city hall when she was teenager. The building, designed by I.M. Pei, is a huge trapezoid jutting out over a wide plaza. Julia found the view from the top pretty fantastic, especially when munching on a Caramello bar from the City Hall vending machines.

But once she went to a protest in the plaza below. And those same windows, now hulking over her, made her feel small, and the whole event insignificant. Texans have a fondness for big structures—big arenas, big houses, big freeways. Julia wasn’t sure if their hidden message wasn’t simply this: I’m important, you’re nobody.

For people who distrust the big project, Edward Tenner’s 2001 essay “The Xanadu Effect” is some comfort. Tenner, a visiting scholar at Princeton University, ponders the ways in which obsession with bigness can presage hard times for a business or even a nation. Tenner named his essay not for Olivia Newton-John’s anthem or even the Coleridge poem, but for the palace Xanadu built in the movie “Citizen Kane.” That Xanadu, of course, was based on a real-life palace that newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst built in his waning days of empire:

On its 24,000 acres were a 354,000-gallon swimming pool, a private zoo and four main buildings with a total of 165 rooms. Along with other such extravagances, the estate helped send Hearst into trusteeship late in life. The cavernous halls of Welles’ gloomy cinematic Xanadu seemed to filmgoers — as the real, happier building must have appeared to many Hearst Corp. public investors — the very image of the pride that goes before a fall.

The downside of the Xanadu Effect has seen itself play out in other places—the Empire State Building, for example, was conceived in the 1920s but completed during the Great Depression, when it was known as “the Empty State Building.” Tenner’s not arguing that big things shouldn’t be built; he’s saying bigness is a gamble. It pays off when it it uplifts people, gives them a sense of grandeur and purpose. It fails when it crushes them or just makes life a pain, as in the big-built city of Moscow, where pedestrians have to scurry under the wide avenues in tunnels:

(Above: A pedestrian tunnel in Moscow. Credit: Veronica Khokhlova)

On a recent reporting trip to Russia for PRI’s “The World,” Julia travelled to Sochi, Russia’s southern-most city and upcoming host of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Sochi is Europe’s biggest construction site right now, with Xanadu-like ice-palaces going up right on the Black Sea.

(Above: Big Ice Palace. Credit: Julia Barton)

All the construction—including billions of dollars of infrastructure—is good news for the Russian state and shoring up its presence in the Caucasus. It’s not necessarily good news for the locals. Julia interviewed a Sochi resident, Alexei Kravets, who’s been in a stand-off with authorities about the fate of the home he built by the Black Sea.

(Above: Alexei Kravets. Credit: Julia Barton)

Kravets’s court case to save his home has been standing in the way of a new railway complex. Construction workers have been throwing rocks through his windows, scraping his walls with backhoes, and hauling away his storage units. Kravets has been confronting them on film:

It’s a dramatic example of big vs. small, but this type of conflict often happens in the face of massive development. Edward Tenner says beyond just governments or private developers, we all need to think more carefully about the costs and benefits of building big.

“Bigness is a strategy that just about always fails, unless it succeeds. Or you could say it always succeeds except when it fails. And there really is no one way that you can regard it. You have to see it as a very powerful, easy-to-misuse, but also tempting way to go about things in life,” he says.

Notes:

Julia Barton produced another great story from 99% Invisible about the Unsung Icons of Soviet Design. An all-time fav.
More audio from the Russian protest Julia attended on her own podcast, DTFD.
Julia’s story for PRI’s The World: Sochi 2014: Building Boom for Winter Olympics Leaves Some Behind

Episode 52- Galloping Gertie Download, Embed, Share… Even...

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:27:00 -0700

Episode 52- Galloping Gertie

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Even during the construction of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the deck would go up and down by several feet with the slightest breeze. Construction workers on the span chewed on lemon wedges to stop their motion sickness. They nicknamed the structure Galloping Gertie.

The original Tacoma Narrows Bridge design by Clark Eldridge was pretty conventional for a suspension bridge, but it was later modified by Leon Moisseiff to be slimmer and more elegant. The most notable change was that the 25 foot lattice of stiffening trusses underneath the bridge on the original drawings, were replaced with 8 foot solid steel plate girders. The new solid girder along the side in Moisseiff’s design made for a much lighter and more flexible bridge— it also caught the wind like a sail— but they didn’t know that. Moisseiff’s design was also 2/3 the price of the original Eldridge design and that fact ultimately won the day.

Motorists who used the bridge found out first hand why it got the name Galloping Gertie, and during the four months while the bridge was open, many traveled from far away just to ride the undulating waves as they crossed high above Puget Sound. The thrill ride didn’t last long.

On November 7, 1940 stiff winds caused the road deck to twist violently along its center axis. The center span endured these brutal torsional forces for about an hour and finally gave way.

The collapse of the twisting suspension bridge is one of the most dramatic images caught on film.

I talked to John Marr from the seminal zine Murder Can Be Fun for this story and I’d like to give a shout out to Alan Bellows of Damn Interesting for independently suggesting Galloping Gertie as a show topic and publishing a great, much more detailed account of the disaster on his site.

Special thanks to Benjamen Walker for the audio of Kathryn Schulz. That interview originally aired on his show Too Much Information in the episode called “Mistakes Were Made.”

Thanks also to Steve Burrows (from the Pyramids episode) who talked me through the basics of aeroelastic flutter and vortex shedding. Those explanations for the bridge failure were a little too unwieldy for the episode, but I’m glad I now know it!

Possibly more Roman Mars than you require

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 10:59:47 -0700

Hi Team! A bunch of interviews I did over the past couple months all came out at once last week, so if you want to hear all about me and the show go listen.

Hear how Ray Suarez inadvertently got me started in radio (twice)! Hear about my early days in plant genetics! Hear about how I’m basically nonfunctional in real life and require radio to be a complete person!

Design Matters with Debbie Millman

The Conversation Hub with Marc Vaillancourt

SoundCloud Speaks – #2 with Evan Tenenbaum

Thanks to Debbie, Marc, and Evan for talking with me. It was really fun (and frightening) to be on the other side of the mic.

-r

Episode 51- The Arsenal of Exclusion Download, Embed,...

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:56:00 -0700

Episode 51- The Arsenal of Exclusion

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(Above: The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion, illustration by Lesser Gonzales. Click image to go to another site with a larger image.)

“Cities exist to bring people together, but cities can also keep people apart”
- Daniel D’Oca, Urban Planner, Interboro Partners.

Cities are great. They have movement, activity and diversity. But go to any city and it’s pretty clear, a place can be diverse without really being integrated. This segregation isn’t accidental. There are design elements in the urban landscape, that Daniel D’Oca calls “weapons,” that are used by “architects, planners, policy-makers, developers, real estate brokers, community activists, neighborhood associations, and individuals to wage the ongoing war between integration and segregation.”

Daniel D’Oca is an urban planner with Interboro Partners, an architecture and design firm based in New York City. Over the past few years, D’Oca, along with colleagues Tobias Armborst and Georgeen Theodore have been cataloging all the stuff inside of a city that planners use to increase or restrict people’s access to space. They’re publishing their findings in a book called The Arsenal of Inclusion and Exclusion: 101 Things That Open And Close the City (Fall 2012).

D’Oca took our own Sam Greenspan and Scott Goldberg on a tour of Baltimore to demonstrate the subtle ways different neighborhoods are kept apart.

Interboro Partners described more weapons in the Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion in a great Esquire article.

(Above: Daniel D’Oca shows Sam Greenspan the iron fence at the site of the former Hollander Ridge housing project on the Baltimore County line. Credit: Scott Goldberg)

(Above: The residential parking permit zones on either side of Greenmount Ave. Permit only parking keeps non-residents, including students from nearby Johns Hopkins, from leaving their cars in the neighborhood.)

Episode 50- DeafSpace Download, Embed,...

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 19:47:00 -0700

Episode 50- DeafSpace

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(Above: Plans for LLRH6, or Living and Learning Residence Hall by LTL Architects / Quinn Evans Architects. Notice the blue walls that provide the best contrast for seeing American Sign Language.)

The acoustics of a building are a big concern for architects. But for designers at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, it’s the absence of sound that defines the approach to architecture.

Gallaudet is a university dedicated to educating the deaf and hard of hearing, and since 2005, they’ve re-thought principles of architecture with one question at the forefront: how do deaf people communicate in space?

Unlike hearing people, the deaf have to keep sightlines in order to maintain conversations. So when deaf people walk and talk, they’ll lock into a kind of dance. Going through a doorway, one person will spin in place and walk backwards to keep talking. Walking past a column, two deaf people in conversation will move in tandem to avoid collision.

Spaces designed for the hearing can also give the deaf a great deal of anxiety – when you can’t hear footsteps from around the corner or behind you, you can’t anticipate who or what is around you.

Robert Sirvage is a deaf designer, researcher, and instructor at Gallaudet, and in collaboration with Hansel Bauman — who is not deaf – and a group of staff, students and architects, they’ve developed a project called DeafSpace. Reporter Tom Dreisbach took a tour through the new building at Gallaudet that is incorporating the innovations of DeafSpace to create an environment more pleasing to everyone, both hearing and deaf.

(Above: The SLCC or Sorenson Language and Communication Center by SmithGroup Architects)

NOTE:

Thanks to some amazing people who responded to my cry for help on twitter. This episode and the last few have been transcribed for the deaf, hard of hearing, and people who just like to read along with the radio. Look for the “Transcript” link at the top of the post. We’re working our way back through the catalog.

Hooray to @bbhorne @redtwitdown @e_ramirez @nijabird

You guys are amazing! Follow them and heap praise on them.

Episode 49- Queue Theory and Design Download, Embed,...

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 19:14:00 -0800

Episode 49- Queue Theory and Design

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Transcript

In the US, it’s called a line.

In Canada, it’s often referred to as a line-up.

Pretty much everywhere else, it’s known as a queue.

My friend Benjamen Walker is obsessed with queues. He keeps sending me YouTube clips of queue violence. This preoccupation led him to find a man known as “Dr. Queue.” Richard Larson is a queue theorist at MIT and he talks us through some of the logic behind the design of queues.

Whereas US companies like Wendy’s and American Airlines once prided themselves on their invention of the single, serpentine, first-come first-served queue, more and more companies are instituting priority queues, offering different wait times for different classes of customers.

Benjamen Walker is the host and producer of Too Much Information from WFMU. TMI explores the issues and conflicts of life in the digital era and regularly features some of the leading sages of the information age as well as original fiction and radio drama. It is very important that you subscribe to this podcast. He is also the host and producer of The Big Ideas, a monthly philosophy program from The Guardian UK. Again, it’s just too good to miss. Don’t be a dummy!

How about filling in the comments with stories of good and bad queue design? I know you have stories.

UPDATE: Podcast/RSS feed back up, for now

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 18:46:00 -0800

After 15 hours of downtime, the podcast is available again.

I’ve talked to PRX and we’re working on getting the show moved over to a more reliable host. It may be a painful transition, but I’d hate to keep growing the program and have it not be available for long stretches like this. I’ll let you know what happens.

Thanks for your patience, everyone!

Episode 48- The Bathtubs or the Boiler Room Download, Embed,...

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 14:06:00 -0800

Episode 48- The Bathtubs or the Boiler Room

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(Above: The Bather: 1869, by Peter Waddell. “The Senate bathing facility, pictured here, boasted of tubs carved from single blocks of Carrara marble. Minton tiles covered the floor. In 1869 a city newspaper published a description of one of these luxurious bathing chambers, noting that ‘when not in use, it is always open to the inspection of visitors.’ Here a senator is surprised by two misinformed visitors.”)

In 1869, the bathtubs in the basement of the US Capitol building looked something like the painting above. Here they are today:

(Above: Andrea Seabrook showing us the baths today. Credit: Sam Greenspan)

The Senate bathing facility has since become a maintenance room—a maintenance room that happens to have a marble bathtub carved from a solid block of Italian marble. Sitting on the steps to one tub is our guide, NPR Congressional Correspondent Andrea Seabrook. In the eight years she’s been reporting on Congress, Andrea has made it a point to get to know the whole Capitol building. “The members of the House Republican Caucus—and sometimes the Democrats—meet in the basement for their closed door secret strategy sessions,” Andrea says. “And it’s really good place to get a tip from members that you know about what’s going on.” One day, after getting the info she needed for her story, she decided to press further on into the depths of the Capitol. “I have this habit of walking into any door that’s unlocked…You start poking around, going into doors…you find the coolest things…” she says. During one of these explorations, she found the marble bathtubs.

(Above: Andrea does some fact-checking in the tub. Credit: Sam Greenspan)

The bathtubs were installed around 1860 during the expansion of the Capitol. DC is known for its swampy summers, and legend has it that senators could be banished from the chamber if they were too smelly. But lawmakers—like most Americans at the time—didn’t have indoor plumbing at home. They needed a place where they could wash up. So, the Architect of the Capitol ordered six marble bath tubs, each three by seven feet and carved by hand in Italy, to be installed in the Capitol basement—three on the House side, three on the senate. Today, only two tubs remain on the Senate side, in a room which now stores the building’s heating and cooling equipment. But evidence of room’s former grandeur remains.

(Above: The Minton tile has been covered over with gray industrial paint. Credit: Sam Greenspan)

(Above: Look closely and you can still see the egg-and-dart molding through the tangle of duct work. Credit: Sam Greenspan)

Web Bonus!

Sam says: “After exploring the basement, Andrea took me to another hidden part of the Capitol—the attic. The attic has roof access, which means that it’s been trafficked by decades-worth of Congressional Pages, who are charged with changing the flags that fly over Congress. And the Pages, like most teenagers, wanted to leave their mark.”

Monday on 99% Invisible...

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 10:14:00 -0800

A mystery guest leads our own Sam Greenspan on an unsanctioned, exploratory mission through the depths of the US Capitol Building.

“I have this habit of walking into any door that’s unlocked…You start poking around, going into doors…you find the coolest things…”

Episode 47- US Postal Service Stamps (Press Play...

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:26:00 -0800

Episode 47- US Postal Service Stamps

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Transcript

Somebody might be able to do a great painting that’s 20 x 30 inches, but you take that down to 1 x 1.5 inches, and it’s a challenge to make it work.

-Ethel Kessler, Art Director for USPS Stamp Services

Stamps design takes, on average, a year to a year and a half, from conception to execution. Unfortunately, most of the stamps we encounter on a day-to-day basis are the rather predictable flag, bell, and love stamps, but there are some really fantastic commemorative stamps, which are supremely functional and affordable tiny works of art.

To determine what should go on a US stamp, the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee combs through nearly 50,000 suggestions per year offered by the general public. Once the subjects are chosen and approved by the Postmaster General, they are assigned to a handful of art directors to be designed.

There are loads guidelines to help stamp subject selection, but one of the big rules recently changed. In 2012, the first living person will be commemorated on an official USPS stamp.

If you were the Postmaster General, whom would you pick? This is a question that comment sections are made for!

Julie Shapiro, Artistic Director of the Third Coast International Audio Festival, produced this episode. Julie spoke with Terry McCaffrey, the retired manager of stamp development for the USPS Stamp Services Office, and Ethel Kessler, an Art Director who’s been working with Stamp Services for over 15 years.

Episode 46- Vulcanite Dentures, or When Patent Violators Strike...

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:54:00 -0800

Episode 46- Vulcanite Dentures, or When Patent Violators Strike Back

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Transcript

(Above: Vulcanite dentures with gold inlay, ca. 1880)

Before the 1850s, dentures were made out of very hard, very painful and very expensive material, like gold or ivory. They were a luxury item. The invention of Vulcanite hard rubber changed everything. It was moldable, it could be precisely fitted, and it was relatively cheap. Everyone began making dentures with Vulcanite bases. But in 1864, a long disputed patent application, originally filed in 1852, was awarded and then acquired by the Goodyear Dental Vulcanite Company. It was an outfit created to collect fees, or very often, sue dentists who already used vulcanite, and there were plenty of dentists to go after.

The person in charge of pursuing the violators was Josiah Bacon, the treasurer of the Goodyear Dental Vulcanite Company. The patent was enforced with extreme prejudice, despite the protestations of the US dental profession.

To quote the secretary of the Goodyear Dental Vulcanite Company, Ernest Caduc: “Many dentists…relying upon the secret nature of the business, prefer to steal this property rather than buy it…”

It all came to a head on Easter Sunday in 1879. A Vulcanite denture patent violating dentist named Samuel Chalfant went to settle his business with his pursuer, Josiah Bacon, in his San Francisco hotel room. Chalfant brought a gun.

A print version of this story originally appeared in the fanzine Murder Can Be Fun by John Marr.

Notes:

This American Life #441: “When Patents Attack!”

Episode 45- Beauty Pill’s Immersive Ideal (Press Play...

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:05:00 -0800

Episode 45- Beauty Pill’s Immersive Ideal

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(Above: Chad Clark under the “Abbey Road” window. Photo credit: Jon Pack)

Beauty Pill is band I really like from Washington DC. They have released two EPs (The Cigarette Girl From the Future and You Are Right to be Afraid) and their last album, The Unsustainable Lifestyle, came out in 2004.

In the interim, the singer/guitarist/producer for Beauty Pill, Chad Clark, got very sick and nearly died. That can be enough to make anyone stop making music, but in Clark’s case, he continued to make music, but he just never felt the need to release a record or play live. His music was just for him and his friends, and that was OK.

But a strange confluence of opportunity, desire and architecture knocked Beauty Pill out of their unforced exile. The curators at a new multimedia art center called Artisphere invited Chad Clark to come in and do something musical in the space. While they were showing him around, he saw the angled, 2nd floor window overlooking the Black Box Theater and it reminded him of the window in Abbey Road Studio 2, made famous by The Beatles. Months later, the Black Box Theater was transformed into a very public recording studio, capturing the sounds and energy of the band, onlookers and guests over the course of a couple weeks.

They called the project Immersive Ideal.

(Above: The fully immersed Beauty Pill. Photo credit: Nestor Diaz)

WORLD WIDE WEB PREMIERE! Beauty Pill was gracious enough to let us post one of the finished songs from the Immersive Ideal session. The first sound you hear in “Afrikaner Barista” is a metal dogbowl, spinning on Chad’s kitchen floor. This is a recurring texture in the new music. The dogbowl appears in many different forms, often digitally treated to be unrecognizable. “I’m kind of proud of this,” says Chad.

Beauty Pill finished their experiment in hyper-public music making last summer. Now, they’re putting their entire process—and final product—on display in the very same space where they made their new album. Through Sunday, Jan 22, the Artisphere’s Black Box Theatre is full of images, sounds, and other multimedia wonders in a user-controlled environment. It might very well be the most thoroughly documented presentation of a band’s creative process, ever.

Sam’s note:

As a former DC resident, I know that Washingtonians can be loathe to hang out outside the city proper—especially if it’s to go somewhere in Northern Virginia. But think of it this way: Metro’ing down to Rosslyn takes less time than trying to find parking in Adams Morgan. And this is worth it.

(Above: The control room “window” brought in by Devin Ocampo. Photo credit: Nestor Diaz)

Other Notes:

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” You guys know this quote, right? There’s some debate in house. (I contend the joy garnered by those who recognize offsets the mild confusion experienced by those who don’t.)
Beauty Pill member Devin Ocampo (also of the awesome Medications and Faraquet (R.I.P.)) provided one of the more talked about aspects of the Artisphere “studio” design. He constructed a wood frame “window” in the lower theater space to separate the musicians from the engineer, referencing the control room glass window that would normally be there.
I almost named my first radio program “Smart Went Crazy,” which was the name of Chad Clark’s band before Beauty Pill.

(Above: Chad with guitar. Photo credit: Jon Pack)

Episode 44- The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (Press Play Above) Download,...

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 20:09:00 -0800

Episode 44- The Pruitt-Igoe Myth

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The Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis became most famous at the moment of its demise. The thirty-three high-rise towers built in the 1950’s were supposed to solve the impending population crisis in inner city St. Louis. It was supposed to save the urban poor from the indignities of the downtown slums that lacked natural light, water and fresh air. And for a short while, it worked. It was a housing marvel.

But when conditions started to decline, everything got very bad, very fast.

It got so bad, only two decades after it was built; the housing authority blew it up. The image of the first Pruitt-Igoe controlled implosion circled the globe.

The implosion footage became the unassailable proof that Modernist architecture and federal housing just didn’t work.

Chad Freidrichs is the director of the new documentary The Pruitt-Igoe Myth and in the film he examines all the reasons people cite for the demise of Pruitt-Igoe.

In this episode of 99% Invisible, we focus on the popular idea that the architecture was to blame.

Trailer for The Pruitt-Igoe Myth:

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is distributed by First Run Features and is screening at the IFC Center in New York City starting January 20, 2012 and will roll out across the country to coincide with the 40 year anniversary of the implosion in March 2012.

Aerial view of the massive thirty-three building project:

Notes:

The Pruitt-Igoe architect, Minoru Yamasaki, has the great misfortune of having another one of his designs forever remembered at the moment of its destruction.

99% Invisible featured on How Sound

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 15:59:03 -0800

Rob Rosenthal does a really fantastic program called How Sound (nee Saltcast) about the “backstory to great radio storytelling” and I am this week’s guest. If you want to make radio stories like mine, (or Ira, or Joe Richman, or The Kitchen Sisters) go download & listen to all of Rob’s episodes. Each episode is a fascinating DVD commentary/master class for public radio stories. I love it. Subscribe!

Rob has also taught most of the best young producers in the field and is currently running the Transom Story Workshop. Want to go from 0-60 in eight weeks? Go learn how to make radio right with Rob Rosenthal.

Episode 43- The Accidental Music of Imperfect Escalators (Press...

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:48:00 -0800

Episode 43- The Accidental Music of Imperfect Escalators

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“There’s a secret jazz seeping from Washington’s aging Metro escalators - those anemic metal walkways that fill our transit system…they honk and bleat and squawk…why are you still wearing those earbuds?”

-Chris Richards, “Move along with the soundtrack of Metro’s screechy, wailing escalators” The Washington Post, 01/14/11

Ever since the industrial revolution, when it became possible for products to be designed just once and then mass produced, it has been the slight imperfections and wear introduced by human use that has transformed a quality mass produced product into a thing we love. Your worn blue jeans, your grandmothers iron skillet, the initial design determined their quality, but it’s their imperfections that make them comfortable, that make them lovable, that make them yours.

And if you think that a “slightly broken” escalator can’t be lovable, then our own Sam Greenspan would like to introduce you to Chris Richards. Chris Richards is a music critic for the Washington Post, and after years of ignoring the wailing and screeching of the much maligned, often broken escalators in the DC Metro, he began to hear them in a new way. He began to hear them as music.

Notes:

This story was adapted from one Sam Greenspan produced for his podcast, Whisper Cities, which tells stories of overlooked places and the people who find them.
The designer of the first DC Metro stations was Harry Weese. Weese’s “Jailhouse Skyscraper” in downtown Chicago was profiled in 99% Invisible #26 by Dan Weissmann. The Metro ceilings may be brutalism at its best.

If you don’t get the “Culs-de-sac” joke, listen to this episode.
Radio producers Alex Van Oss and Charles Maynes also created their own Ballad of the DC Metro for Podstantsiya, a Moscow-based podcast and audio collective. (The site in in Russian, but the radio feature is in English.)

Also:

THANKS, RADIOLAB! For a brief shining moment, 99% Invisible was the #2 podcast on iTunes, and #1 in both the Arts and Design categories. Thank you so much for checking out the show. If you’re new here, never fear, you did not miss a thing! All the past episodes are available for download and are great (you know, as a body of work, some are better than others). You can subscribe in iTunes or here is the RSS feed if you use another podcast catching device.

If you appreciated Radiolab telling you about the show, do us a huge favor and tell everyone you know to listen and subscribe. If the response that Jad and Robert have gotten is any indication, they will thank you for it!

Finally:

Let’s hear it! What’s your favorite sound that you know other people hear as just noise? Please leave a comment below.

Radiolab presents 99% Invisible

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:46:00 -0800

I’m totally honored to be on Radiolab this week! Jad and Robert are presenting three full, uncut episodes of 99% Invisible along with an interview with yours truly.

Here are the original entries to each of the stories Radiolab featured:

Sounds of the Artificial World

Nikko: Concrete Commando
(Hear the original Nikko radio piece by Stephanie Foo for Snap Judgment. Buy Delfin Vigil’s zine describing his years long Nikko quest.)

The Feltron Annual Report

If you’re new here, welcome! I hope you enjoy the show. All the past episodes are available for download and are equally great (and short and evergreen). You can subscribe in iTunes or here is the RSS feed if you use another podcast catching device.

If you have any problem there, you can also listen and download everything on my Soundcloud page.

I need to give a big shout out to my home station KALW, to the American Institute of Architects | San Francisco, and the greatest sponsor in the world, LUNAR. If you like the show, they are the ones to thank.

Thanks again for stopping by.

-roman

Episode 42- Recognizably Anonymous (Press Play Above) Download,...

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 19:15:00 -0800

Episode 42- Recognizably Anonymous

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Anonymous is not group. It is not an organization. Rob Walker describes Anonymous as a “loosely affiliated and ever-changing band of individuals who… have been variously described as hackers, hacktivists, free-expression zealots, Internet troublemakers, and assorted combinations thereof.”

But when Anonymous came up against the Church of Scientiology, a small, non-hierarchical collection of Anons decided to take the disparate phrases, images and ideas circling around the 4Chan.org /b/ message board (where Anonymous has its roots) and combine them into a very engaging and effective “brand identity” (For lack of a better word. Is there a better word? I’d love to hear it. -rm).

The over-the-top, ominous voice of Anonymous was established in an online video and manifesto directed at the Church of Scientology:

The Anonymous logo is comprised of a headless man in a suit, with a question mark where the head should be, juxtaposed against a UN flag. All of these elements are freely interchangeable and can combine with other Anonymous imagery (see top illustration). According to Walker, the logo is “a cleverly subversive, and ironic, appropriation and exploitation of paranoia about Big Brother-style faceless power.”

And then there’s the mask. Appropriated from the graphic novel and movie “V for Vendetta,” the V mask (designed by comic book artist David Lloyd) has become the de facto public face of Anonymous, and it serves as such a powerful image that it has skipped over into other street protests like the Occupy Wall Street movement. Alan Moore, the author of V for Vendetta, has expressed his support of demonstrators exploiting the theatrical qualities of the V image in street protest.

In this episode, Rob Walker explores the origins of the meme-like images in the Anonymous “visual brand” and explains why these icons so powerfully define a phenomenon that eschews definition.

This piece was produced by me and Rob Walker based on his article “Recognizably Anonymous” in Slate.

Sam ID's himself, others wish to remain Anonymous

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:55:00 -0800

Greetings 99th Percentile! My name is Sam Greenspan (Ed note: See photo, center background. Not really.), and I’m the new guy helping out with the show. I’ll be contributing to the blog, occasionally telling stories on the show, and pulling all kinds of levers and knobs behind the scenes.

Roman is hard at work putting together this Friday’s episode—the story of how the Anonymous movement came to be known by the Guy Fawkes mask. (And trust me, it’s not what you think.)

To tide you over til then, check out this story that Carrie Kahn reported for NPR earlier this week about the Occupy movement’s use of the “people’s mic.” Even though the people’s mic was born out of a need—loudspeakers were banned in Zucotti Park—the Occupy protestors are finding that this call-and-response form of decision-making has become emblematic of their ideals.

What stories have you heard in the news that deal with design? Let us know!