Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Urban rhythms 4: speed and memory
See here for introduction to the urban rhythms series.
London is an urban patchwork that has been worked and reworked. It continues to evolve. Unlike cities such as Paris or Bath where the urban forms of their centres has been frozen in London a succession events such as the Great Fire and the Blitz have prompted new additions and repairs. The new sits alongside different layers of the past. The city also acts as a repository for objects from other times and other cultures. Institutions, such as the British Museum, British Library, National Gallery or the Natural History Museum, gather information, memories, artefacts and art from previous eras and cultures. The past is invoked in the present.
Newer technologies of connection, network our immediate locale with more distant events. Download times get faster. News coverage is proliferate, often the media will release a story before it has actually happened: ‘Today the government will announce…’ SMS messages tell us of busy traffic we will meet in the future and should try to avoid. The future is implied in a more intense present.
We try to live in the midst of this, somewhere between slowness and speed; striving to get things done whilst trying to find some peace and quiet, hoping to reconcile the ancient with the future. Ironically we also spend much of our time in inbetween states. Our average commuting time is 45 minutes each day.
The Slow movement, originating in Italy, aims to counter the rush of contemporary living. It embraces slower food, slower travel, slower schools, slower living,… a whole slower approach to life, taking our time to enjoy and appreciate. Similarly the Long Now Foundation exist to ‘provide counterpoint to today's "faster/cheaper" mind set and promote "slower/better" thinking.’ Whilst Carl Honoré praises slowness James Gleick thinks fstr. On 5 September 2001 Buchardi Church in Halberstadt, Germany, began playing a piece of music by John Cage entitled ‘organ2/ASLSP’. The piece lasts for 639 years.
presence | acceptance | balance | creativity | accountability | hospitality
image: Chris Oakley, The Catalogue
tags: rhythm of life, moot, London, urban, urban rhythms, speed, memory
London is an urban patchwork that has been worked and reworked. It continues to evolve. Unlike cities such as Paris or Bath where the urban forms of their centres has been frozen in London a succession events such as the Great Fire and the Blitz have prompted new additions and repairs. The new sits alongside different layers of the past. The city also acts as a repository for objects from other times and other cultures. Institutions, such as the British Museum, British Library, National Gallery or the Natural History Museum, gather information, memories, artefacts and art from previous eras and cultures. The past is invoked in the present.Newer technologies of connection, network our immediate locale with more distant events. Download times get faster. News coverage is proliferate, often the media will release a story before it has actually happened: ‘Today the government will announce…’ SMS messages tell us of busy traffic we will meet in the future and should try to avoid. The future is implied in a more intense present.
We try to live in the midst of this, somewhere between slowness and speed; striving to get things done whilst trying to find some peace and quiet, hoping to reconcile the ancient with the future. Ironically we also spend much of our time in inbetween states. Our average commuting time is 45 minutes each day.
The Slow movement, originating in Italy, aims to counter the rush of contemporary living. It embraces slower food, slower travel, slower schools, slower living,… a whole slower approach to life, taking our time to enjoy and appreciate. Similarly the Long Now Foundation exist to ‘provide counterpoint to today's "faster/cheaper" mind set and promote "slower/better" thinking.’ Whilst Carl Honoré praises slowness James Gleick thinks fstr. On 5 September 2001 Buchardi Church in Halberstadt, Germany, began playing a piece of music by John Cage entitled ‘organ2/ASLSP’. The piece lasts for 639 years.
presence | acceptance | balance | creativity | accountability | hospitality
image: Chris Oakley, The Catalogue
tags: rhythm of life, moot, London, urban, urban rhythms, speed, memory
