Tag: Belgium

Futuristic Electronics of the Past

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As games like Cyberpunk 2077 and recent shows like Andor have demonstrated, the appeal of devices that were designed to be futuristic, but during eras now left in the past, is revealing a kind of desire for an alternate history—a world in which this became the future.

A dictaphone is a fascinating example—a sleek, technological device for an era in which one would have had a secretary to transcribe their dictations.

DG 501

Minitel terminals, in particular, speak to an alternative world that might have existed in place of the World Wide Web we experience now.

Minitel 2

Atelier NL Drawn from Clay (Soil Samples 2015)

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This array of clay samples on display at the Design Museum of Brussels was made from soils collected from around the Netherlands and Germany. Though the variety of tones are are of course interesting, I’m most drawn (as a materials scientist) to the varying amounts of shrinkage experienced by each piece upon firing. Differences in the microscopic structure of the underlying clay bodies prior to firing (e.g., amount of moisture) likely contributed to macroscopic differences upon firing.

Unless the original samples were different sizes. But given the rest of the homogeneous approach (even down to the identifying stamps in each), I’d be awfully disappointed in the artist if that were the cast.

Atelier NL Drawn from Clay (Soil Samples 2015)

Daniel Deusser in the Spotlight

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The camera hardware required to get a pin-sharp image of a horse galloping at the center of a spotlight in a darkened indoor stadium has never been more accessible, but it serves as a bit of a contrast to Friday’s post: At the end of the day, raw numbers of photons entering through a big aperture to a large sensor can’t be beat.

Daniel Deusser in the Spotlight

Even the Parking Garages Are Utopian in Belgium

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I commented previously that the Benelux countries look like the cinematic vision of utopia, but I was not perhaps ready for that to extend to structures like parking garages. When the option to be beautiful and interesting exists, the alternative seems a bit insulting.

Even the Parking Garages Are Utopian in Belgium

Simon Stålenhag Snack Bar

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The retro-futurist art of Simon Stålenhag places intimate, perhaps even old-fashioned scenes in the foreground of images with strange, alien machines in the distance. A lone pair of nighttime snackers waiting at a slab-sided friterie trailer in the environs of the authentically 1950s Atomium represented such a real-world manifestation of the phenomenon that I had to stop and capture the scene.

Simon Stålenhag Snack Bar

Jumping Action from the VIP

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Though dramatic shots of jumping horses are ubiquitous in the equestrian world, I think ones that present them in the context of the setting, alongside the audience and with a real sense for the space, are somewhat rarer. Kim Thiry ring Quick Silver can het Farasohof was in the Jumping Mechelen CSI2* right next to the VIP audience who could have reached out and touched the last jump in the course.

Jumping Action from the VIP

Turn and Burn

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This CSI5* speed class pushed riders to their limit; few managed the entire course with neither rail nor speed penalties. I was capturing photographs from the last turn in the course, where riders who were still jumping clean turning to blast down the final line to the finish. Watching them put on a final burst of massive speed was dramatic, as in this case with Hans-Dieter Dreher and his mount Jiniki.

Turn and Burn

The Atomium

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The scale of Belgium’s Atomium seems to be poorly captured in pictures—perhaps because it’s difficult to capture the structure and its surroundings together, or perhaps because the 102-m-tall structure so resembles something we might be more comfortable seeing at 10 m scale. The shrinking lines of sculptural lampposts helps a bit, but it’s night that I believe truly fixes the scale issue. See the band of red in the topmost sphere? That band is the array of full-length windows of the restaurant at the top of the structure, and the red light is the lighting inside.

The Atomium