japan

Japanese Spaghetti Junction

Takaosan Interchang

This monstrous highway interchange, that connects Route 20 with the Ken’odo, is known as the Takaosan Interchange. is located in Sagamihara, Japan. Photographer Benjamin Lee’s arial capture of the structure emphasizes the incredible feat of engineering needed to accommodate the unique constraints of heavy mountainous terrain and dense city. This view gives a vantage point of the 12-way interchange that you’d not otherwise get from a car window. The junction contains 6 separate tunnel entrances, a river, and a toll all booth nestled in steep valley hills. I wonder how well Siri could handle this?

Amazing Grace On The Matryomin Sounds Strangely Wonderful

A matryomin is an unusual instrument. It’s a cross between a miniature, pitch-only, theremin and a matryoshka doll (a Russian nesting doll). The instrument has a cult following in Japan.

This video shows a matryomin ensemble called “Da” at the auditorium of Jiyugakuen Myonichikan in Tokyo on 22 Jan. 2011. The ensemble consisted of 167 musicians playing Amazing Grace. It sounds wonderful – in a strangely creepy sort of way.

Recently the ensemble group Da broke a world record for the “Largest Matryomin Ensemble” by gathering over 277 musicians in concert.

via youtube

Here is a link to the mp3 if you want it: Amazing Grace by Da

P-Chalk-A-Cha



PKN vol 1 audience / stage right, originally uploaded by INV/ALT.

Last Friday, me and about 150 other folks went to Denver’s first Pecha Kucha Night. Pronounced “P chalk-a-cha”, and Japanese for “Chit Chat”. Pecha Kucha’s are held in cities from Amsterdam and Auckland to Venice and Vienna. The event was organized by locally by Jaime Kopke, Angela Schwab (both of whom have great blogs that are in my feed-reader, are they in yours?), and Brian Colonna.

The rules of the night, as explained on the official Pecha Kucha website, are as such:

Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each – giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show.

It’s a a way for architects, designers, artists, writers, and plain-old, ordinary, people to share their work in a concise and rapid fire format. It’s like show and tell for adults, with beer.

It was such a packed house lots of people had to sit on pillows on the floor. And the despite the overload of hipsters in the audience, the presenters were excellent – some of my favorites being Steve Silber’s “Greeting”, Claire Martin read a series of obituaries about interesting but unsung people, Kent Corbell displayed a knew audio frequency that is supposed to fuck with your chakras and make you all emotional (it kinda worked), Andrew Novick talked about his love for pi, and Scot Lefavor was a no-show, maybe next time.

Speaking of next times, the next Pecha Kucha night will be Monday, July 14th. If you want to share your creative project at the next event shoot an email over to pechakuchadenver@gmail.com

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