Unexplored island

One thing is getting clear to me, i'm mapping what i like and interests me, so i'm getting back to Alexandra mir's maps illustration (she also has some great instalation projects such as first woman on the moon and Gravity)

At Her 2006 exhibition there's a series of 32 drawings on the subject of Islands; political, geographical and mythological.

Treasure Island, marker on paper 150 x 180 cm, 2006

Island of the Dead (after Arnold Böcklin), marker on paper, 200 x 200 cm, 2006

The Palm, marker on paper, 200 x 200 cm, 2006

Cities & Desire

by Italo Calvino from 'Invisible Cities'

"At the end of three days, moving southward, you come upon Anastasia, a city with concentric canals watering it and kites flying over it. I should now list the wares that can profitably be bought here: agate, onyx, chrysoprase, and other varieties of chalcedony; I should praise the flesh of the golden pheasant cooked here over fires of seasoned chery wood and sprinkled with much sweet marjoram; and tell of the women I have seen bathing in the pool of a garden and who sometimes - it is said - invite the stranger to disrobe with them and chase them in the water.

But with all this, I would not be telling you the city's true essence; for while the description of Anastasia awakens desires one at a time only to force you to stifle them, when you are in the heart of Anastasia one morning your desires waken all at once and surround you. The city appears to you as a whole where no desire is lost and of which you are a part, and since it enjoys everything you do not enjoy, you can do nothing but inhabit this desire and be content. Such is the power, sometimes called malignant, sometimes benign, that Anastasia, the treacherous city, possesses; if for eight hours a day you work as a cutter of agate, onyx, chrysoprase, your labor which gives form to desire takes from desire its form, and you believe you are enjoying Anastasia wholly when you are only its slave."

via

Ricky Allman romantic intentions. watercolor, ink, pencil on paper, 22x30", 2006

photo via

fictional floor plans

Artist Mark Bennett drew floor plans for the homes of TV and movie characters. Bennett also published a book of fictional floor plans. Link to a gallery. Link to another gallery. via neatorama and J-Walk Blog

The Addams Family Home Floor Plan 1995

Home of Norman Bates , (near) Fairvale, CA (Psycho) 2004 Drawings, Watercolors on paper.

Home of Uncle Owen / Aunt Rue and Luke Skywalker, A Universe Far, Far Away (Star Wars) . 2003 India ink on paper 76.2 x 106.7 cm

"Return to Paradise"

What would really happen if London went back to nature? How would it look in 5, 50 and 500 years from now? How would nature take control again?

A scary/crazy/yet trying not to be apocalyptic/fantasy of future - read on

via Do or Die - an ecological direct action magazine - that was occasional published in the UK from 1992-2003

THE FLIGHT

of

The Old Woman

who was

TOSSED UP IN A BASKET

Sketched & Etched

by ALIQUIS

'There was an old woman tossed up in a basket

Nineteen times as high as the moon.

And where she was going I couldn't but ask it

For in her hand she carried a broom..'

Go on Reading

The Moon-Voyage

"Have you ever seen the moon?" a professor asked one of his pupils ironically.

"No, sir," answered the pupil more ironically still, "but I have heard it spoken of."

"In one sense the jocose answer of the pupil might have been made by the immense majority of sublunary beings. How many people there are who have heard the moon spoken of and have never seen it--at least through a telescope! How many even have never examined the map of their satellite!"

"Looking at a comprehensive selenographic map, one peculiarity strikes us at once. In contrast to the geographical arrangements of the earth and Mars, the continents occupy the more southern hemisphere of the lunar globe. These continents have not such clear and regular boundary-lines as those of South America, Africa, and the Indian Peninsula. Their angular, capricious, and deeply-indented coasts are rich in gulfs and peninsulas. They recall the confusion in the islands of the Sound, where the earth is excessively cut up. If navigation has ever existed upon the surface of the moon it must have been exceedingly difficult and dangerous, and the Selenite mariners and hydrographers were greatly to be pitied, the former when they came upon these perilous coasts, the latter when they were marine surveying on the stormy banks...."

read on here: Jules Verne;The Moon-Voyage; Chapter XI. Imagination and Reality.

The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello

The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello is the first of three short films and a planned feature film set in the steampunk world of Gothia - a Victorian mechanical floating archipelago of densely overlapping scaffolding, floating dirigibles, masses of cogs, iron trusses, fine lacework, elaborate mechanical contraptions and pronounced noses. Jasper Morello, Aeronaut of the 3rd Royal Cartographers, and his Journal Recording of the Mysterous Predicament Involving the Lost Airship, Hieronymous. watch trailer

Set in a world of iron dirigibles and steam powered computers, this gothic horror mystery tells the story of Jasper Morello, a disgraced aerial navigator who flees his Plague-ridden home on a desperate voyage to redeem himself. The chance discovery of an abandoned dirigible leads Jasper through unchartered waters to an island on which lives a terrifying creature that may be the cure for the Plague. The journey back to civilization is filled with horrors but in a shocking climax, Jasper discovers that the greatest horror of all lies within man himself.

via gravestmor

City of Dreams

retro look at space, inspired from the science fiction cover artwork by Frank R. Paul on the Nov 1929 issue of Wonder Stories mag.......... photo credit to Calum Tsang and Allan Bedford, boat stud credit to Chris Magno....... thanks guys. don't miss the Buzzword Cities

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The World in the Moon

At some time between 1764 and 1772, the printmaker Filippo Morghen , a Florentine based in Naples, issued a curious set of ten etchings under the title ‘A Collection of the most notable things seen by Sir Wilde Scull, and by M. de la Hire, in their famous voyage from the Earth to the Moon.’ Details from these prints follow below.

via