Pigeons, Parakeets, Rats, Toads: A Residency at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris

Under the welcoming guidance of biologist Anne-Caroline Prévot and the Centre des sciences de la conservation, I'm developing project about the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle's "invisible" urban fauna. The loud parakeet from India, the protected toad from North Africa and the problematic rat from Norway all enjoying one of Paris' oldest parks.... More to come!

Coverage of my Shanghai Urban Fauna Walk (in Mandarin) in The Shanghai Daily's Weekend Edition

Xie xie everyone for coming out under Shanghai's grim weather for urban animal mapping and talking

London Urban Space (so many hats)

Montreal: Pigeons Everywhere

Phillips Square, Montreal, 1960s

Dominion Square, Montreal, Québec, Canada, ca. 1950. From CSTMC/CN Collection.  

"Ilha das Flores": A Tomato, Thumbs and Pigs for a Short Explanation of Capitalism

Isle of Flowers (or Ilha das Flores in Portuguese) is a 1989 Brazilian short film by Jorge Furtado. Following a tomato from garden to dump, it delivers dry narration, witty editing and eclectic visuals for an unexpectingly cruel message.

The Rare and Popular Art of Google Books

Since my blog post on scanned fingers in Google books to question the medium/message dichotomy I found this wonderful little tumblr: called the Art of Google Books, it archives Google's virtual library's best incidents.

p.44-45 of Sketches of Young Gentlemen: Dedicated to the Young Ladies by Charles Dickens, Hablot Knight Browne (1838).

p. 270 of A Popular History of Reptiles (1843)

p. 22 of Cunningham's textbook of Anatomy by Daniel John Cunningham and Arthur Robinson, 1918.

Things and Happiness

Boris Vian et sa La complainte du progrès (1956) (The lament against progress). Le frigidaire, l'évier en fer, le tabouret à glace, l'armoire à cuillère, un four en verre, la tourniquette pour faire la vinaigrette, le canon à patate, les draps qui chauffent, ou l'arrache poulet et le bonheur sera à vous?

Vacuuming The Cosmological Threats of Dirt: Simulated Pigeon Shit in Las Vegas

Las Vegas' strip is an accumulation of anything's simulacra displayed in such a way that it can fit in a perfect picture frame. Wonderfully consumable, a Barthesian wonderland and very stimulating for four days, Las Vegas' simulacra is never dirty - tacky but never dirty - and always honestly thought-out, so it becomes very exciting when dirt is included in the equation.

After taking a cab from a convention center filled with electronics to Paris where I had a drink in a plastic-Eiffel Tower, I walked through a Hector Guimard-themed Casino to wait for a car to take me to Venice. Behind twenty other humans waiting for motorized saviors at the Paris (there's an unsaid ban against walking in Vegas), I noticed fake pigeon dung covering the Victor Baltard-inspired marquee. This isn't anecdotal.

As mentioned before, like the rest of Vegas, nothing is here by happenstance, everything is the result of recent thought-out and human-powered decisions. The water like every carpet and every tree was selected and transported by a group of rational humans less than thirty years ago. It is the most honest, and arguably rational, materialization of a late 20th century cultural phantasma composed of all and any signs and simulations. So seeing man-made fake pigeon dung in Vegas is very very meaningful. Perhaps it represents the American stereotype of Paris which includes more pigeon dung than the one they have for Venice (where there is no fake pigeon shit). Or perhaps Paris' train stations are the only ones worth reproducing for a hotel in Vegas hence the inclusion of its pigeons... 

Whatever the possible reasoning this instance adds an exciting new dimension to my research on pigeons and dirt as "matter out of place": the fact is that the matter signifying the presence of dirt (the pigeons) on the Las Vegas Paris' marquee is 'clean' (it isn't actual shit, but paint) and so beyond matter or context, this sanitized representation of dirt authenticates simulacrum by vacuuming any of the cosmological threats implied by the actual things it signifies.

And this is what is so charming about Las Vegas.

What Average Americans Are Doing: Sleeping, Eating, Working and Watching Television

This is how an average American over the age of 15 spends his or her 24 hours of daily existence (based on 2008 statistics). Playing with the different categories of Americans makes for a good fifteen minutes of entertainment and brain workout trying to figure out why, on average, at 8:50pm as many as 55% of the 65 or over are watching television while at as little as 8% of the 18-25 are socializing. 

Graph by Shan Carter, Amanda Cox, Kevin Quealy, Amy Schoenfeld found in The New York Times

Published: Dirt and Pigeons

I'm happy to say my passion for pigeons has finally seen its first material manifestation in this multi-faceted, pleasantly deep and particularly clean issue of On-Site dedicated to dirt.

Taste for Beer and Inclination for First Date Sex: Data on Dating

I recently discovered the most insightfully fascinating blog. Written by the good people behind OkCupid, on it they compress their users profiles' data into these simple graphs with powerful one liners: they objectify people, correlate oral sex and eating habits, and activity on twitter with masturbation probabilities. It's amazing!

My favorite so far links beer appreciation with the potentiality of sleeping with someone on a first date:

How amazing?

Weirdly the same day I heard about this blog, I finished an old New Yorker article on online dating that mentions it. In the article we learn about the science and math behind meeting a significant other, potential differences between the photo pauses that attract men versus those that attract women, the OKcupid founders' marital status, and the religious rigor behind eHarmony's experiments. About the blog we learn that the data is based on the analysis of 34,620 couples and that, according to its author, Nick Paumgarten, the blog's purpose "is to attract attention: the findings, like the quizzes [in its early days the site's four Harvard math majors founders attracted members through quizzes] are to lure you."

Not so sure about being lured by OKCupid, but totally lured by human beings.

Moving On But Where Are We Going?

There's a great ambiguity in this documentary which makes one unsure if Welles is making fun of those 'unprepared' for the future individuals or actually seriously serious about a future he describes as filled with contestant instant decision-making, en-temporary prepackaged knowledge, stressful technology, impermanent lifestyles, transient societies, disposable friendships and future shocked individuals.

In any case its relieving in some sense that before Google, facebook friends and Wikipedia people were already freaking out about change, in particular Oxford chemistry professors.

Consumer Data?

Your Phone Is Hungry

Modern Matters: the Parking Meter vs. the Human

I've been in Brazil's Bahia region for the past week or so now, and in addition to enjoying the beaches and indulging in caipirinhas I think I've come closer to understanding what 'Modernity' stands for - very roughly it goes something like this:

Here, in Bahia's regional capital Salvador, in dense areas a man will always rush to you as you are in the process of parking or while you are attempting to find a spot. As you park he will help (with hand gestures "a little to the left, the right, back, stop") and while you are away he will 'watch' your vehicle. But really nothing is required or set as to what his functions exactly entail. Sometimes you'll find him sitting next to your car, other times napping, chatting with friends or even washing your car after a rain. In exchange for this service he will ask for change. He can ask for 10 and you can easily bargain to 2.

In Montreal in dense areas when you park you are required to pay with your credit card a parking meter with a fix hourly price set by the city (an abstract concept embodied by elected humans that are hopefully clean). The parking meter does nothing that comes close to watching your car and you can't ease the pain of paying through bargaining with it, you can just grumble to yourself as you are paying a machine. But the rate is fixed and the money goes to the community's greater good.

Both are means of making money by taking ownership of the conveted public space. And both have questionable legitimacy and different pros and cons. In Brazil it's an annoying human that gives directions, a chance to practice your Portuguese and a smile, and in Canada it's a horribly annoying machine that hopefully feeds a fair bureaucracy that than feeds a human in need...

Salvador de Bahia, Brazil

Life-Changing Design: Before the String, Came the Tea Bag

The Smartest Thing - People Watching

This is an amazing 1979 ethnography (by William H. Whyte) with (pre-cellular phone) footage of urban spaces, aka it's a team that spent months people-watching and deconstructing social behavior to think of ways to build 'better' cities. It includes a bird lady, the art of chair ownership, girl watchers, people mimicking people and the power-dynamics of food.

A System: The Internet of Things

Sometimes it's nice to hear someone with a British accent make something you depend on, and willingly love to additively contribute to, check, and waste time on every day sound somewhat part of a contained and logical system progressively but surely making the planet (and humans) "smarter."

Add to that a little pyramidal graph - the DIKW - and tada you already feel better about facebook stalking, twitter indulging, emotional blogging, compulsive googling, paparazzi-like clicking, sensational YouTube marathons, apps-holic desktops and boredom caused by reading anything without an illustration more than two paragraphs long:

New Year Resolutions