El Ateneo in Buenos Aires

The chances of me getting more than a couple of minutes at a time to sit down and write a final post for the recent South American adventures is pretty low, so I'll drip feed it here to the blog as and when I have a moment. I'm currently spending my days in the library in Santiago working on a couple of different calculations which never made it quite from mind to hand to paper on the trip and finally it's time to sit down and get them rather more organised.

Anyway, I was lucky enough, after the conference in Buenos Aires, to have a weekend to explore the city and so I headed for the famous Ateneo bookshop, renowned as one of the most beautiful in the world. It is indeed stunning, set in an old theatre, but I have to admit that had it been a second hand bookshop it would have been infinitely more pleasant with the combined aroma of old books and the exuberant architecture. As it was, the old surroundings rather clashed for me with the bright lights and buzz of the commercial enterprise. Still, I browsed for a while before sitting down with some Marquez and a coffee. I rather wish I'd gone for Borges now as I still struggle quite a bit with Marquez's Colombian Spanish and complex phraseology.

Anyway, worth checking out if you're in the area though I discovered some rather less commercial bookshops with very nice cafes in the Palermo area of the city which I think are even nicer places to spend an afternoon.

Night and day in Pudong

Another couple of shots from Pudong. The first from the Jinmao tower, a five shot panorama of the bottle opener, a Japanese designed building which gives fantastic reflections of the surrounding architecture.

Apart from stitching together the panorama, tweaking the levels, and applying an unsharp mask, this photo is unaltered - no HDR, no saturation manipulation:

And secondly from an evening on the Bund. We went to a bar on the roof of one of the old buildings to pay extortionate prices (My can of tonic water cost me around 4 quid!) but to get a fantastic view over the river and to the sky scrapers on the other side.

A fifteen second shot set up on the ledge of the building:

More to follow.

Shanghai heights

Arriving back yesterday after around 72 hours of marginally interupted travel meant that I was never going to get anything terribly productive done. Today has been suprisingly smooth, given the mosquito buzz filled slumber I got last night but I'm now flagging.

I did take the opportunity yesterday to go through a few photos from Shanghai, though I'm yet to go through my eclipse photos in the detail they need yet.

I was in Shanghai for around five days before heading West for the eclipse and had a good length of time to do all the very touristy things which I've never had a chance to do there before (last time I was in the city for 24 hours for a wedding). This included a trip to the top of the Jinmao tower, China's second tallest building, just next to the tallest building, the bottle opener (depending on who you ask - if you ask anyone in China they will tell you that the Taipei 101 is the tallest building in China).

From the top you get a good sense of the scale of this city of 20 million and the amazing variety of architecture, in the skyscrapers, in the Bund and in the burgeoning sprawl which goes on into the haze of rippling heat and smog-filled air.

From the inside the Jinmao tower is spectacular. Around half way up you'll find a hotel which can be peered at from the observation deck around the 80th floor and the seeming helix of mezzanine levels is hypnotic:

Looking out you also get a series of stunning views, of the river:

and of the buildings around:

One of my favourite views takes in this triptych of the sharp edges of the Jinmao, the towering reflection of the bottle opener, and the swathe of the city into the distance:

All photos can be clicked for larger versions.



During the many hours of traveling over the last few days I was able both to read a great deal and also to make some plans for myself for the next few weeks and in general for the next year. For now there are things which I need to get finished in the coming days and so I'll get on with processing the rest of the photos either when the current tasks are finished or when jet-lag means that my brain is too mushy to do anything more academic.

DNA++

When architects go wild! Take three spiral staircases and tangle them together in a convent in order to stop the marauding bandits from marauding away with your nuns.

In the museum of the Pobo Galego.

Olympic Gold

Toomanytribbles has been shooting some amazing architecture photos in Beijing recently. I took this shot last year in Beijing of the Bird's nest Olympic Stadium:

Somehow it's taken on a rather more finished look which TMT captured in this stunning photo:

Check out more of her photos at her Flickr site here and on her blog here.

You set 'em up...

You've got to love the Chinese method of demolition (taken from my balcony window).



The juggling club I went to last week has this week been shut down by the government. They need the space for another faceless skyscraper so we are going to be on the move tonight to look for another place to play.

Art for the people

I've written recently of the Bird's Nest and in the past about the new CCTV building. Recently from Toomanytribbles came this video of the Ren Building, currently under construction in Shanghai which looks like fun.


I spoke in the above post on the CCTV tower about the odd dichotomy of the freedom to build outlandish buildings as the government spends a lot of their time making a statement to the rest of the world. There's some truly hideous architecture in Beijing but there's also some startling and attractive buildings going up around the city.

Closing chapters

It's a little past 7am here in Tokyo. I'm in the office and have managed perhaps 2 hours sleep, so I'm feeling a little weary but the early morning light is filling the room and I'm not going to manage any more. I must point out that my current situation is completely down to my own frugal state. The university funded me for a generous number of days and simply because of possible flight times I had a few days over at the end. I try and avoid talking money on the blog but the idea of spending almost a week's wages on a night in a cheap hotel doesn't appeal very much - I'd much rather spend the money on good food; just my personal set of priorities in life.

Today is my last full day in Japan and depending on how I'm feeling in a little bit I may do some more exploring, though there aren't many major tourist sites left to see. Yesterday I took a morning walk around the Shinjuku area which is home to many government buildings along with plenty of shopping and the red-light district. The architecture is a mixture of very stereotypical modern Japanese high-rise with some great little alley-ways filled with noodle bars and run by the local Yakuza (The area I've been staying, Ikebukuro, is also one of the largest Yakuza areas). So, a few of snaps from Shinjuku:


A good tip is to skip going up the Tokyo tower, which is expensive and head to the Metropolitan Government Offices which also has a great viewing area and is free.



(The photo which looks like it's been taken with a fish-eye is a panorama of three shots tied together using ArcSoft Panorama Maker which I found online yesterday).

After some lunch in one of the local soba restaurants I hopped to the other side of the city with a couple of students from the department to go to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo (MOT). The museum is an exciting and well designed space with very good lighting, showing some of the best of modern Japanese art. Currently the temporary exhibits are also excellent with a collection depicting the idea of the individual in today's digitised society, and an amazing collection of work by Hiroshi Nakamura. I wish I could find more online to link to but have had little luck.

Sayaka Akiyama records her journeys in a scrap/map format on homemade paper, fabric and any other materials which are relevant to her particular travels (be it within a single building or a more distance trip). She has a series of perhaps 20 or 30 maps created from her time in Barrow-in-Furness in 2004. I find it hard to believe that Akiyama hasn't been heavily influenced by Peter Greenaway's short film A Walk Through H: The Reincarnation of an Ornithologist which is filmed almost in its entirety as a voiceover describing the mysterious journey of Tulse Luper showing a series of maps through H. This is a rather hypnotic film and the DVD of Peter Greenaway's early short films are intriguing if not always fully comprehensible.

Among the other interesting works at the gallery I would advise looking out for Daisuke Nakayama who has some haunting and rather pessimistic views of the digital age and Yuri Shibata whose "Material Color works involve the harvesting of some natural material (hair, kudzu, etc.) to be ground into pigments and made into paint. The resulting paintings are both of and by their subjects. One cannot conceive of a more completely representational art form". Sounds cliched but the work is actually rather fine.

In comparison the Chinese contemporary art scene often feels less polished but consequently more visceral than the Japanese scene which has been growing pretty steadily since the 1940s. The Japanese work seemed knowingly clever whereas the work in Beijing feels more reactionary, which is no surprise.

I've recently discovered artWALK Beijing which looks like a great resource and I'll be going to the next meet-up if at all possible.

I'm really looking forward to getting back to Beijing now, though I've had a great time out here. I have three or four projects to work on and really want to push them forward quickly. This whole trip has been immensely valuable, from the serenity of Kyoto to the frenetic but stimulating atmosphere in Tokyo, both of which have been useful for my work in different ways. When I get back I'll have to prepare some lectures for an upcoming workshop to introduce AdS/QCD which will be more detailed than my previous seminars. I also have a friend/collaborator turning up in a few days and several friends and family booked up to head out. It don't stop!