StoryCubes

playful cubes for storytelling, brainstorming ideas or playing games in three dimensions

Community & Events

Diffusion engaging with the community, online and out in the world.

Residencies

an ongoing programme enabling residents at Proboscis studio to create eBooks and StoryCubes for their own projects.

Learning, Schools & Education

eBooks & StoryCubes created for learning and educational purposes

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Browse the collection of Diffusion Shareables: eBooks & StoryCubes

Articles tagged with: urbanism

Home » City As Material, Dodolab, eBooks, Featured
Professor Starling’s Thetford-London-Oxford Expedition
Submitted by on May 30, 2012 – 6:40 pm3 Comments

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About : In February 2012 England was graced with a visit from the perambulating Canadian scholar, Professor William Starling of DodoLab, who is conducting research into the disappearance of the European Starling specs in contrast to the continued expansion of its North American cousin. An expedition of inquiry was mounted by members of DodoLab and Proboscis, visiting Thetford in Norfolk, central London and Oxford, where great murmurations of starlings were known, until recent years, to gather. These three books comprise their investigations, observations and musings.

Published in the City As Material series, May 2012

Authors : Leila Armstrong, Lisa Hirmer, Andrew Hunter, Giles Lane, Josie Mills & Hazem Tagiuri

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Home » Short Work
If London Were Like Venice by Somers L Summers
Submitted by on May 23, 2012 – 6:13 pmNo Comment

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About : found on the extraordinary retronaut site, a mad vision of London flooded and become Venice, from 1899.

First Published August 1899, Harmsworth’s Magazine

Sourced from retronaut & Forgotten Futures

No comment so far

Home » City As Material, eBooks
Sketches in the City by Radhika Patel, Mandy Tang & Hazem Tagiuri
Submitted by on May 25, 2011 – 11:15 amNo Comment

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About : An offshoot of City As Material, Sketches In The City is an occasional series of observational expeditions in various locations across the capital. Mandy, Radhika and I sketch, take photographs and write poems and prose to form a collaborative eBook with underlying themes. Focusing mainly on people and interactions in public places – places that shape, and are in turn shaped, by the people in them – we’ve produced two books so far, and are working on a third.

Sketches In The City was our first attempt, created as a result of visiting the busy Victoria and Waterloo train stations – places which reveal an interesting insight of the human character when bored or stressed. Highlighting the material we collected on the day, this tidy scrapbook was an playful experiment with little interpretation or narrative, letting us take the time to view hectic environments from a different perspective than usual and refine our creative processes.

Sketches In The City: British Museum showcase the unique architecture and exhibits in the British Museum, looking at how visitors observe and interact with them and one another, as well as their grasp on the intangible knowledge that exists amongst that which we can see and touch.

Published May 2011

Radhika Patel is a marketing assistant at Proboscis. Having completed her Future Jobs Fund placement with Proboscis (Nov 2010-April 2011) she is working on developing new marketing strategies.

Mandy Tang is a creative assistant at Proboscis. Having completed her Future Jobs Fund placement with Proboscis (July 2010-Jan 2011) Mandy’s work is focused on visual notation and illustration of projects, ideas and activities, as well as developing a special StoryCube game, Outside the Box, for encouraging outdoor play.

Hazem Tagiuri is a creative assistant at Proboscis.Having completed his Future Jobs Fund placement with Proboscis (July 2010-Jan 2011) Haz’s work involves blogging on bookleteer.com about zine culture; assisting with planning and running the City As Material project and working on a research project with the University of Cambridge.

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Home » eBooks, Featured, Transformations
Systems/Layers by Nurri Kim & Adam Greenfield
Submitted by on March 21, 2011 – 12:57 pm6 Comments

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About : Around the world, urban form and metropolitan experience are being transformed by the presence of networked computation. The urban fabric and discrete elements in it are newly empowered to capture, process, transmit, display and even act on information. At the same time, our daily tactics of doing and being — practices of citying that have remained invisible throughout recorded history, and have generally been lost to that history — are now being rendered explicit and gathered up by that same network.

Nurri Kim and Adam Greenfield of Do projects have run “walkshops” devoted to exploring these transformation and their consequences in cities worldwide. Through the Transformations series, they offer Systems/Layers, a quick guide to running a walkshop for yourself, covering the particulars of choosing a terrain, knowing what to look for, recruiting participants, and promoting your event.

Published March 2011 in the Diffusion Transformations series

Nurri Kim, co-founder of Do projects and author of Tokyo Blues (2009), is an artist who is interested in exploring the narratives hidden in the ephemeral routines of everyday life. You can see her work at nurri.com.

Adam Greenfield, managing director of New York City-based urban systems design practice Urbanscale, is author of Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing (2006) and the forthcoming The City Is Here For You To Use.

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Home » City As Material, eBooks, Featured
City As Material, An Overview by Giles Lane & Hazem Tagiuri
Submitted by on February 24, 2011 – 2:15 pm2 Comments

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About : This eBook presents an overview of 5 City As Material events run by Proboscis in Autumn 2010 and the collaborative eBooks created by the participants : Streetscapes, River, Skyline, Underside and Sonic Geographies. It is the 10th eBook in this initial series (other individual books were created by Tim Wright, Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Ben Eastop & Simon Pope) – which will be published in a special limited edition slipcase set (using bookleteer’s Short Run Printing Service) in Spring 2011.

Published February 2011 in the City As Material Series

Giles Lane is the founder and director of Proboscis. He is an artist, researcher, designer and teacher and leads many of Proboscis projects including bookleteer.

Hazem Tagiuri is a writer and Creative Assitant at Proboscis.

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Home » City As Material, eBooks
River Gap by Ben Eastop
Submitted by on January 19, 2011 – 2:40 pmNo Comment

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About : I live and work on a barge at Bow Creek. This ebook tries to sum up my fascination with the partial disjuncture between the land and a floating vessel – both connected and disconnected at the same time, creating a one-step removed relationship with the city. You can see this ‘gap’ expressed all along the river – interrupted glimpses between buildings and riverside structures that both obscure the river and provide moments of promise.

Published January 2011 in the City As Material series

Ben Eastop is an independent art consultant and curator working predominantly in the public realm. He has worked collaboratively with a range of institutions, local authorities, museums, architects and commissioning agencies, with both emerging and well established artists and arts practitioners.

His work has ranged from permanent and temporary commissioning, to cross-disciplinary research projects and site-specific events, often in challenging and unconventional locations. He is co-founder of a new London based agency, Difference Exchange www.differenceexchange.com which seeks to use the notion of difference as a driver for collaborative, international projects linking contemporary art with academia and industry. River to River is an international, inter-disciplinary research project in partnership with TrAIN research centre examining cultural responses to climate change and the socio-political implications of globalisation as defined by rivers.

Recent projects have involved experiential engagement with specific landscapes, seeking to unfold new understandings of the social and political meaning of landscape resulting from human intervention. In partnership with artists and curators, these projects have evolved a hybrid practice, blurring the boundaries between artistic production, curation and event management in which the audience is seen as an essential element of a new work. Projects include Grain, with Tim Eastop and Andrew Dodds. www.grain244.com

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Home » City As Material, eBooks, Featured
Deep City by Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino
Submitted by on December 20, 2010 – 8:33 am2 Comments

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AboutDeep City was born first as a photo-montage and script for the Microsoft Social Symposium of early 2010 on “smart cities”. When I was 19, I was accepted in an architecture course, chose product design instead but stayed fascinated by cities and their ability to shape us and our understanding of the world. The eBook is a further exploration a year after that talk, to try to extract the individual elements we see in cities over and over again, to help me develop some sort of vocabulary for the cities I know and love, building blocks that make them all melt into one another. I used the photographs I have been taking in the cities I have lived in and visited for the past 5 years or so.

Published December 2010 in the City As Material series

Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino is a product & interaction designer interested in the potential of smart & connected objects (sometimes known as the internet of things). She runs Tinker London, a design studio in East London, talks about emotional robots for Lirec.eu and works on her own projects at designswarm.com

*** made with bookleteer.com ***

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Home » City As Material, eBooks, eNotebooks
City As Material : Sonic Geographies eNotebook
Submitted by on December 6, 2010 – 2:18 pmOne Comment

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About : a notebook designed by Haz Tagiuri for participants in the Pitch In & Publish : City As Material event on Sonic Geographies to use to collect notes and ideas, paste in pictures and cuttings.

Book a place at Sonic Geographies (Friday 10th December) – check out the planned route.

Published December 2010

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Home » City As Material, eBooks, eNotebooks
City As Material Underside eNotebook
Submitted by on November 23, 2010 – 11:46 pmOne Comment

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About : a notebook designed by Haz Tagiuri for participants in the Pitch In & Publish : City As Material event on Underside to use to collect notes and ideas, paste in pictures and cuttings.

Book a place at Underside (Friday 26th November) or the last event of this series, Sonic Geographies on December 10th.

Published November 2010

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Home » City As Material, eBooks, eNotebooks
City As Material : Skyline eNotebook
Submitted by on November 8, 2010 – 8:56 pmOne Comment

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About : a notebook designed by Haz Tagiuri for participants in the Pitch In & Publish : City As Material event on Skyline to use to collect notes and ideas, paste in pictures and cuttings.
Includes a photo essay by Skyline’s event special guest, Simon Pope.

Book a place at Skyline (Friday 12th November) or one of the other forthcoming events, Underside & Sonic Geographies.

Published November 2010

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Home » City As Material, eBooks, eNotebooks
City As Material : River eNotebook by Proboscis
Submitted by on October 28, 2010 – 11:46 amOne Comment

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About : a notebook designed by Haz Tagiuri for participants in the Pitch In & Publish : City As Material event on River to use to collect notes and ideas, paste in pictures and cuttings.

Published October 2010

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Home » City As Material, eBooks, eNotebooks
Streetscapes eNotebook by Proboscis
Submitted by on October 1, 2010 – 5:36 pmOne Comment

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About : a notebook designed by Haz Tagiuri for participants in the Pitch In & Publish : City As Material event on Streetscapes to use to collect notes and ideas, paste in pictures and cuttings.

Published October 2010

*** made with bookleteer.com ***

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Home » Dodolab, StoryCubes
Icons of Rijeka StoryCubes by Andrew Hunter
Submitted by on May 3, 2010 – 9:00 amOne Comment


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About : Icons of Rijeka Storycubes – Set of 4
This set of four storycubes present a selection of images of signs and tags photographed by Andrew Hunter during research visits to Rijeka (Croatia) in January and April of 2010 while preparing for a public DodoLab program in the the city in the summer of 2010. The cube set compliments the Icons of Rijeka ebooks also available through Diffusion. A limited edition of these cubes will be printed for DodoLab’s June residency and for participants in the Musagetes Café project in Rijeka.

Published May 2010

Andrew Hunter is Director of DodoLab and Adjunct Faculty and Researcher at Waterloo Architecture Cambridge (University of Waterloo). DodoLab is an arts-based creative research program that employs experimental and adaptive processes to spark positive change and resiliency. Led by Andrew Hunter with Lisa Hirmer, DodoLab’s focus is the complex relationships between people and their surroundings and how communities define, and are defined by, their environment. DodoLab puts the creative process at the heart of confronting social and environmental challenges and exploring barriers to adaptation and resiliency. DodoLab is based in Cambridge, Ontario, and is a program of Musagetes and Waterloo Architecture.

Andrew Hunter continues to also work as an artist, writer, independent curator and educator. He has produced exhibitions, site projects, publications and writings for institutions across Canada in the United States and Europe. He has produced a distinct body of work on Canadian art and culture consistently emphasizing a broader vision embracing social and environmental issues and exploring nationalism, myths and popular culture. Collaboration has been central to Hunter’s practice for many years as his projects regularly include the commissioned and collaborative contributions of other creative practitioners, students and family members.

*** made with bookleteer.com ***

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Home » Dodolab, eBooks
Icons of Rijeka by Andrew Hunter
Submitted by on April 29, 2010 – 7:27 amOne Comment

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Icons of Rijeka Book 1 A4 | US Letter PDF 2.3Mb
Icons of Rijeka Book 2 A4 | US Letter PDF 2.5Mb

About : Icons of Rijeka (books 1 and 2) presents a selection of images of signs and tags photographed by Andrew Hunter during research visits to Rijeka (Croatia) in January and April of 2010 while preparing for a public DodoLab program in the summer of 2010. The publication includes a brief text by Hunter reflecting on the process of engaging with and reading the city through both official signage and graffiti.
Published April 2010

Andrew Hunter is Director of DodoLab and Adjunct Faculty and Researcher at Waterloo Architecture Cambridge (University of Waterloo). DodoLab is an arts-based creative research program that employs experimental and adaptive processes to spark positive change and resiliency. Led by Andrew Hunter with Lisa Hirmer, DodoLab’s focus is the complex relationships between people and their surroundings and how communities define, and are defined by, their environment. DodoLab puts the creative process at the heart of confronting social and environmental challenges and exploring barriers to adaptation and resiliency. DodoLab is based in Cambridge, Ontario, and is a program of Musagetes and Waterloo Architecture.

Andrew Hunter continues to also work as an artist, writer, independent curator and educator. He has produced exhibitions, site projects, publications and writings for institutions across Canada in the United States and Europe. He has produced a distinct body of work on Canadian art and culture consistently emphasizing a broader vision embracing social and environmental issues and exploring nationalism, myths and popular culture. Collaboration has been central to Hunter’s practice for many years as his projects regularly include the commissioned and collaborative contributions of other creative practitioners, students and family members.

*** made with bookleteer.com ***

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Home » Community Projects, eBooks, Empty Shops Projects
Empty Shops Workbook by Dan Thompson
Submitted by on February 27, 2010 – 8:44 amOne Comment

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About : A practical, step-by-step guide to using empty spaces for arts and community projects – and while empty shops are a focus, the skills can be applied to other temporary and meanwhile projects. Produced by the Empty Shops Network with support from the Meanwhile Project and a-n magazine.

Published as a Diffusion eBook February 2010

Dan Thompson is an artist and writer with an interest in using redundant spaces which has taken in theatres, cinemas and empty shops. He has written widely about empty shops for arts and regeneration magazines. he is founder of the Revolutionary Arts Group and the Empty Shops Network.

*** made with bookleteer.com ***

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  • uberVU - social comments
    Social comments and analytics for this post... This post was mentioned on Twitter by proboscisstudio: new on #diffusion: Empty…
    Comment posted on 3-29-2010 at 22:26

Home » Anarchaeologies, eBooks, Events
Belo Horizonte Anarchaeology by Giles Lane
Submitted by on November 17, 2009 – 3:42 pm3 Comments

BH_anarchaeology_1_cover BH_anarchaeology_2_cover

BH_anarchaeology_3_cover BH_anarchaeology_4_cover

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About : Fragments towards an anarchaeology of Belo Horizonte is a series of eBooks created as part of Proboscis’ contribution to arte.mov festival and symposium 2009. Very simply the aim is to offer an outsider’s eye on some of the outstanding features of the city by going for a series of walks and photographing the things that seem particular to the city. The walks were done during gaps in the symposium programme over two days, so are a very cursory engagement with Belo Horizonte, its people and life. However, the patterns discerned and organised into thematic eBooks perhaps give a taste or hint of what could be revealed in a deeper anarchaeology.

Waves – captures some examples of the use of waveforms in Brasilian design: from motifs printed on city rubbish bins, to the ubiquitous wave patterns embedded into the pavements.

Corners – Belo Horizonte is Brasil’s first planned city, the central district laid out on a rigid orthoganol grid cut through by diagonal avenues. At many intersections there may be up to eight streets converging leading to numerous wedge shaped buildings, almost all with elegant curved corners.

Street Art – much of Belo Horizonte seems to be colonised by elaborate street art and graffitti, on a scale I’ve not seen anywhere else. Complex artworks are sometimes run the length of an entire city block or radically transform municipal features such as bridges and stairs. These are clearly artworks, not just random graffitti – some are clearly commissioned for private or public buildings, but most seem to be tolerated if not officially sanctioned.

“Fragmentos para uma anarqueologia de Belo Horizonte” é uma série de eBooks criados como parte da contribuição do Proboscis para o Simposio do Festival arte.mov de 2009. Muito simplesmente, o objetivo é apresentar um olhar estrangeiro sobre algumas das principais características da cidade, através de uma série de caminhadas nas quais foram feitas fotografias daquilo que parecia ser particular na cidade. As caminhadas foram feitas nos intervalos do simpósio durante dois dias e são, assim, um engajamento muito superficial com Belo Horizonte, sua gente e seu cotidiano. No entanto, os padrões eleitos e organizados nos eBooks temáticos talvez possam apresentar um sabor ou uma dica do que poderia ser revelado em uma anarqueologia mais aprofundada.

Ondas – capta alguns exemplos da utilização de formas de onda no design brasileiro: desde motivos impressos em lixeiras da cidade, até os padrões repetitivos de onda assentados como pavimento no chão.

Esquinas – Belo Horizonte é a primeira cidade moderna planejada no Brasil. O centro da cidade foi colocado sobre uma grelha ortogonal rígida, cortada por avenidas em diagonal. Em muitos cruzamentos, pode haver até oito ruas convergentes levando a numerosos edifícios em forma de cunha, quase todos com elegantes curvas na esquina.

Arte de rua – grande parte de Belo Horizonte parece ser colonizada por uma arte de rua elaborada e por graffiti, numa escala que não vi em nenhum outro lugar. Obras complexas são, por vezes, do comprimento de um quarteirão inteiro ou transformam radicalmente obras municipais tais como pontes e escadas. São claramente obras de arte, não apenas graffiti aleatório – alguns são claramente encomendados para os edifícios públicos ou privados, mas a maioria parece ser tolerada se não oficialmente sancionada.
(tr. Renata Marquez)

Published November 2009

Giles Lane is an artist, researcher and teacher. He founded and is co-director of Proboscis, a non-profit creative studio based in London where, since 1994, he has led projects such as Urban TapestriesSnoutMapping PerceptionExperiencing DemocracyEveryday Archaeology; and Private Reveries, Public Spaces. Giles is a Visiting Tutor on the MA Design Critical Practice at Goldsmiths College (University of London) and is a Research Associate of the Media and Communications Department at London School of Economics. Giles was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2008 for his contribution to community development through creative practice.

*** made with www.bookleteer.com ***

3 comments - Latest by:
  • Giles Lane
    Thanks Renata, that's extremely kind of you. There's an other translation on the main Anarchaeologies site kindly provided by Diego…
    Comment posted on 11-23-2009 at 12:55
  • Renata Marquez
    translations for you "Fragmentos para uma anarqueologia de Belo Horizonte" é uma série de eBooks criados como parte da contribuição…
    Comment posted on 11-22-2009 at 21:34
  • uberVU - social comments
    Social comments and analytics for this post... This post was mentioned on Twitter by proboscisstudio: new on #diffusion: Belo…
    Comment posted on 11-17-2009 at 17:55

Home » eBooks, Featured, Urban & Social Tapestries
Measure Once, Cut Twice : a case study of Snout by Frederik Lesage
Submitted by on March 9, 2009 – 8:34 am2 Comments

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About : Measure Once, Cut Twice is an examination of how an arts organisation like Proboscis produces creative collaborative artworks – specifically their ‘participatory sensing’ project, Snout. The concept of cutting is developed as a means of understanding how objects, people, and practices temporarily come together to produce exceptional moments of social engagement.

Published March 2009

Frederik Lesage is a PhD candidate in the Media and Communications department of the London School of Economics and Political Science. His doctoral thesis deals with the collective construction of artistic conventions among artists who design and use information and communication technologies.

2 comments - Latest by:
  • Introducing the eBook Observer | bookleteer blog
    [...] began to take shape while conducting some research on a previous Proboscis project called Snout (read Measure Once, Cut…
    Comment posted on 8-26-2010 at 12:39
  • Mike Ipswich
    The pages in the pdf are not in sequential order and some of them are upside down. Is this…
    Comment posted on 10-17-2009 at 17:37

Home » eBooks, StoryCubes, Transformations
Marseille Mix – along the beach by William Firebrace
Submitted by on December 19, 2008 – 8:45 amNo Comment

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Aboutalong the beach – a disturbing but enlightening encounter. Sixth in a series of 6 eBooks and StoryCubes published weekly, feuilleton style.

Marseille Mix
My first encounters with Marseille were in the cinema, in films such as The French ConnectionLa Ville est Tranquille and Taxi. It seemed a strange place, dangerous, not conventionally beautiful, down at heel, but somehow attractive. I decided on the basis of this cinematic introduction that this was the city I wished to write about – exactly because it did not coincide in any way with what I considered to be a city, because of its defiance.

Marseille is an irreconcilable mix – of different cultures, different societies, different ideas about the planning, different images, different gastronomies. It evokes fantasy as much as objectivity. As a city it inspires dislike and fear but also pride and love.

It is not possible to investigate this city in a linear, coherent fashion, since the city is in no way linear or coherent.

Marseille Mix contains various methods of writing – narrative, essay, recipe, lists, conversations, chance remarks, and others. Sometimes it flows easily enough, sometimes it accepts the need for contradiction, disruption, lack of resolution. Of course the book is not really exactly like the city – it is a personal investigation, with its own points of view.

Published November 2008 in the Diffusion Transformations Series

William Firebrace is an architect, and teaches in various London schools of architecture. He has published one book, Things Worth Seeing (Black Dog 2001), has completed a second, Awake, and is now finishing a third, Marseille Mix, which should appear in 2009.
Unit 2, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

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Home » eBooks, StoryCubes, Transformations
Marseille Mix – turn down the heat by William Firebrace
Submitted by on December 12, 2008 – 8:45 amNo Comment

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About : turn down the heat – a gastronomic investigation. Fifth in a series of 6 eBooks and StoryCubes published weekly, feuilleton style.

Marseille Mix
My first encounters with Marseille were in the cinema, in films such as The French ConnectionLa Ville est Tranquille and Taxi. It seemed a strange place, dangerous, not conventionally beautiful, down at heel, but somehow attractive. I decided on the basis of this cinematic introduction that this was the city I wished to write about – exactly because it did not coincide in any way with what I considered to be a city, because of its defiance.

Marseille is an irreconcilable mix – of different cultures, different societies, different ideas about the planning, different images, different gastronomies. It evokes fantasy as much as objectivity. As a city it inspires dislike and fear but also pride and love.

It is not possible to investigate this city in a linear, coherent fashion, since the city is in no way linear or coherent.

Marseille Mix contains various methods of writing – narrative, essay, recipe, lists, conversations, chance remarks, and others. Sometimes it flows easily enough, sometimes it accepts the need for contradiction, disruption, lack of resolution. Of course the book is not really exactly like the city – it is a personal investigation, with its own points of view.

Published November 2008 in the Diffusion Transformations Series

William Firebrace is an architect, and teaches in various London schools of architecture. He has published one book, Things Worth Seeing (Black Dog 2001), has completed a second, Awake, and is now finishing a third, Marseille Mix, which should appear in 2009.
Unit 2, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

No comment so far

Home » eBooks, StoryCubes, Transformations
Marseille Mix – withstanding the gaze by William Firebrace
Submitted by on December 4, 2008 – 2:16 pmNo Comment

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Aboutwithstanding the gaze – a germanic literary diversion.  Fourth in a series of 6 eBooks and StoryCubes published weekly, feuilleton style.

Marseille Mix
My first encounters with Marseille were in the cinema, in films such as The French ConnectionLa Ville est Tranquille and Taxi. It seemed a strange place, dangerous, not conventionally beautiful, down at heel, but somehow attractive. I decided on the basis of this cinematic introduction that this was the city I wished to write about – exactly because it did not coincide in any way with what I considered to be a city, because of its defiance.

Marseille is an irreconcilable mix – of different cultures, different societies, different ideas about the planning, different images, different gastronomies. It evokes fantasy as much as objectivity. As a city it inspires dislike and fear but also pride and love.

It is not possible to investigate this city in a linear, coherent fashion, since the city is in no way linear or coherent.

Marseille Mix contains various methods of writing – narrative, essay, recipe, lists, conversations, chance remarks, and others. Sometimes it flows easily enough, sometimes it accepts the need for contradiction, disruption, lack of resolution. Of course the book is not really exactly like the city – it is a personal investigation, with its own points of view.

Published November 2008 in the Diffusion Transformations Series

William Firebrace is an architect, and teaches in various London schools of architecture. He has published one book, Things Worth Seeing (Black Dog 2001), has completed a second, Awake, and is now finishing a third, Marseille Mix, which should appear in 2009.
Unit 2, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

No comment so far

Home » eBooks, StoryCubes, Transformations
Marseille Mix – dangerous liaisons by William Firebrace
Submitted by on November 28, 2008 – 2:15 amOne Comment

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About : dangerous liaisons – some short and seedy criminal narratives. Third in a series of 6 eBooks and StoryCubes published weekly, feuilleton style.

Marseille Mix
My first encounters with Marseille were in the cinema, in films such as The French ConnectionLa Ville est Tranquille and Taxi. It seemed a strange place, dangerous, not conventionally beautiful, down at heel, but somehow attractive. I decided on the basis of this cinematic introduction that this was the city I wished to write about – exactly because it did not coincide in any way with what I considered to be a city, because of its defiance.

Marseille is an irreconcilable mix – of different cultures, different societies, different ideas about the planning, different images, different gastronomies. It evokes fantasy as much as objectivity. As a city it inspires dislike and fear but also pride and love.

It is not possible to investigate this city in a linear, coherent fashion, since the city is in no way linear or coherent.

Marseille Mix contains various methods of writing – narrative, essay, recipe, lists, conversations, chance remarks, and others. Sometimes it flows easily enough, sometimes it accepts the need for contradiction, disruption, lack of resolution. Of course the book is not really exactly like the city – it is a personal investigation, with its own points of view.

Published November 2008 in the Diffusion Transformations Series

William Firebrace is an architect, and teaches in various London schools of architecture. He has published one book, Things Worth Seeing (Black Dog 2001), has completed a second, Awake, and is now finishing a third, Marseille Mix, which should appear in 2009.
Unit 2, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

1 comment - Latest by:
  • Jay Fluck
    This has got some great reviews so I will download and check it out thank you. :)
    Comment posted on 11-7-2009 at 17:58

Home » Publishing on Demand, Transformations
Transformations
Submitted by on November 21, 2008 – 4:08 pmNo Comment

why are we who we are?  what do we want to become?

Transformations is the latest series of Diffusion commissions curated by Proboscis. Proboscis is commissioning a diverse range of writers, artists, performers, thinkers and makers to respond to two questions from different perspectives, why are we who we are? and, what do we want to become?

As we get into the swing of the 21st Century our notions of identity, personal and societal, are subject to new arrays of emerging pressures and responsibilities. Our aspirations for change and growth are being re-thought as we grapple with the growing awareness of environmental changes which may already be beyond our control. How have we reached this point? Where do we go from here?

Transformations seeks to address these fluid notions of identity and aspiration by commissioning works that subtly reflect on individual identities, urban identity and pharmaceutical, biological and technological interventions. Over the next few years we will be inviting selected contributors to add their voices into this mix – through essays and artists books (eBooks) as well as in three dimensions (StoryCubes).

Add Your Voice
For the first time we are experimenting with a new approach to selecting works for this series – publishing as a conversation. Readers are invited to submit their own proposals for the series (through the comments section of this site) – we will provide accounts for the Diffusion Generator (soon to be re-launched as Bookleteer) for readers to become authors and create their own eBooks or StoryCubes,  the best of which we will publish as contributions to the series. We are not asking for quick responses, but for measured and considered contributions to the series – putting an eBook or a set of StoryCubes together is significant creative act. Get in touch if you are inspired by the works we have selected and published so far and have a proposal for a work of your own.

The Contributions

Sponsorship Opportunity
We are seeking a sponsor for Transformations who shares our ethos of collaboration, public authoring and creating cultures of listening. Please contact us for more information.

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Home » eBooks, StoryCubes, Transformations
Marseille Mix – ideal city by William Firebrace
Submitted by on November 21, 2008 – 1:41 pmOne Comment

Download A4US Letter PDF 405Kb
StoryCube A4 only PDF 752Kb

Aboutideal city – a personal tour of the destruction and reconstruction of the city. Second in a series of 6 eBooks and StoryCubes published weekly, feuilleton style.

Marseille Mix
My first encounters with Marseille were in the cinema, in films such as The French ConnectionLa Ville est Tranquille and Taxi. It seemed a strange place, dangerous, not conventionally beautiful, down at heel, but somehow attractive. I decided on the basis of this cinematic introduction that this was the city I wished to write about – exactly because it did not coincide in any way with what I considered to be a city, because of its defiance.

Marseille is an irreconcilable mix – of different cultures, different societies, different ideas about the planning, different images, different gastronomies. It evokes fantasy as much as objectivity. As a city it inspires dislike and fear but also pride and love.

It is not possible to investigate this city in a linear, coherent fashion, since the city is in no way linear or coherent.

Marseille Mix contains various methods of writing – narrative, essay, recipe, lists, conversations, chance remarks, and others. Sometimes it flows easily enough, sometimes it accepts the need for contradiction, disruption, lack of resolution. Of course the book is not really exactly like the city – it is a personal investigation, with its own points of view.

Published November 2008 in the Diffusion Transformations Series

William Firebrace is an architect, and teaches in various London schools of architecture. He has published one book, Things Worth Seeing (Black Dog 2001), has completed a second, Awake, and is now finishing a third, Marseille Mix, which should appear in 2009.
Unit 2, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

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