Edward Burtynsky’s Oil

What vintage airplanes have to do with Chinese bridges and tire retirement.

As we revisit the Gulf oil spill on its first anniversary, its gruesome and deep-running consequences are more uncomfortably palpable than ever. And no one exposes the underbelly of this oil economy more viscerally than environmental photographer Edward Burtynsky. In his 2009 book, Oil, he explores the scale and reach of these politicized resourced through a decade’s worth of images from the world’s largest oil fields, refineries, auto plants and freeway interchanges.

State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) oilfields, Baku, Azerbaijan, 2006

Image: Edward Burtynsky /Courtesy HASTD HUNT KRAEUTLER, New York / Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto

Nanpu Bridge interchange, Shanghai, China, 2004

Image: Edward Burtynsky /Courtesy HASTD HUNT KRAEUTLER, New York / Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto

Alberta oil sands, Fort McMurray, Alberta, 2007

Image: Edward Burtynsky /Courtesy HASTD HUNT KRAEUTLER, New York / Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto

Oxford tire pile, Westley, California, USA, 1999

Image: Edward Burtynsky /Courtesy HASTD HUNT KRAEUTLER, New York / Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto

Aircraft Maintenance and Regeneration Centre (AMARC), Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Tucson, Arizona, 2006

Image: Edward Burtynsky /Courtesy HASTD HUNT KRAEUTLER, New York / Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto

Images via The Guardian

In 1997 I had what I refer to as my oil epiphany. It occurred to me that all the vast, man-altered landscapes I had been in pursuit of for over 20 years were all possible because of the discovery of oil and the mechanical advantage of the internal combustion engine.” ~ Edward Burtynsky

Burtynsky offers a fascinating closer look at the Oil project in this short but powerful 2009 TED talk:

Gripping and post-apocalyptic, the images in Oil reveal many facets of our petroleum lust with unprecedented breadth, depth and intimacy.

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Writer’s Block in Stop-Motion, Shakespeare-Style

What Romeo and Juliette have to do with William Shatner and modern justice.

395 years ago tomorrow, the great William Shakespeare took his last breath. Shakespearean Tragedy (A Comedy) is a lovely Claymationesque animated short film about Shakespeare’s writer’s block by 24-year-old Jerusalem-based animator Anna Cohen, exploring something we have an ongoing fascination with: What is creativity, and how do we overcome the obstacles in its way? After previously hearing from the very real Scott Belsky, Rainn Wilson, Kurt Andersen, Stefan Sagmeister, Steven Johnson and Isaac Asimov, it’s time we heard from imaginary-Shakespeare:

Bonus points for the Spakespearean facepalm, no?

Here are a few more intelligent ways to commemorate the iconic playwright:

• How To Read Shakespeare, part of Simon Critchley’s excellent How To Read series on the Western classics
• Approaching Shakespeare — fantastic free iTunes U course from Oxford University
• How to Think Like Shakespeare — ambitious BigThink series featuring a number of video interviews with and articles by cultural critics, neuroscientists, theater directors and more
• A Thousand Times More Fair: What Shakespeare’s Plays Teach Us About Justice — fascinating new book by Kenji Yoshino, incredibly timely in the cultural context of today’s global politics; TNR has a thoughtful review
• William Shatner on Shakespeare vs. new media

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The Language of Graphic Design

100 years of visual communication on a silver platter.

Visual communication, like all communication, relies on a sophisticated and deeply encoded language to relay its message. That language is design and though it’s wildly ubiquitous, most people are proficient at best. Out this month, The Language of Graphic Design: An Illustrated Handbook for Understanding Fundamental Design Principles offers fluency on a beautiful silver platter by dissecting the building blocks of this language and examining its ABC’s — definitions, functions, and usage — through visually-driven case studies spanning the past 100 years.

The Language of Graphic Design isn’t a design textbook — it’s a thoughtful look at the syntax and lexicon of this language that speaks to us daily, crisply written and visually driven in away that makes it equal parts visual reference and semantic study.

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