This article is co-written by RJ Evans and A. Abrams
If you got boring stuff... at least make a groovy fence around it
Well, spiders weave webs, and we humans can't seem to get off our fascination with building fences, hedges, borders and all kinds of restrictive and limiting structures. Some are clearly necessary (like this one guarding peace and quiet of a system administrator) -
...while others can be a nuisance and pretty ugly to look at.
So we decided to dig up a few better examples to start off the "Fence Glorification" Revolution world-wide (or something like it).
You'll see the bursts and splats of human creativity lavished on gates and fences - sometimes even making them more interesting than the actual stuff they enclose. Let's start with -
If you can't help thinking that some cannibal family (from a place where the hills have eyes) built this - and even start calculating how many victims these guys could have devoured over the years - you can stop scaring yourself. This fence is located in Missouri and probably just reflects the owner's love for traveling.
This Fence Ain’t Going Nowhere
What a weird, haunting sight... Yes, we get the hint: "the locked fence is locked". Or maybe the previous fence got stolen and the owners refuse to take any chances? Seen north of Chinatown in New York. Update: Look closely, and you'll even notice children faces on these locks... the plot thickens.
If Doc Brown from "Back to the Future" had a white picket fence, then this is the one you can imagine him having! Constructed in Sonoma, perhaps the owner wished to show to the world their own carefree take on life. The world turns and greets with a smile another harmless eccentric, then turns away and mutters "Irretrievably barking mad" under its breath.
"A tidy fence is a sign of a sick mind"
You know the saying -"A clean desk is a sign of a sick mind". Now extrapolate it toward the whole business of erecting fences. There must be geniuses living behind this one (somewhere in Austin, TX)
Someone with a dual fetish for fairground horses and unloved mannequins must have been responsible for this fence in New York. A strange combination by anyone’s reckoning, this fence is at once funny and strangely disconcerting:
You notice this fence goes on pretty much forever. No shortage of bras in New Zealand... (or at least in Cardrona, Otago Province).
This is more proof, if you needed it, of the bizarre but often sublime human ability to demonstrate daftness on a massive scale. In 1999 four bras were inexplicably left on the fence. By the next year there were two hundred. Now this rural fence in the middle of nowhere is festooned with the things and has become a huge tourist attraction.
If an idea is good then a variation on a theme often works too - witness a Shoe Fence:
You have to hand it to our friends from New Zealand. They have an idea. It works. They stick with it. What are they going to throw on a fence next? (my vote is for more bras, of course)
You have probably seen the pictures of webs created by spiders after scientists had administered various amounts of illegal substances to them. One shudders to think what the perpetrator, sorry builder, of this fence had ingested before he had the cunning plan of creating this beauty in which to keep his sheep! Located in Crinan in Scotland.
Something about this fence figure... is not quite right
There is a doll inside this thing somewhere (silently screaming).
Russian Cheburashka (their version of a hobbit) makes his appearance, again:
Speaking of Russian fences, what kind of logic is this? At least it's carefully locked -
This gate says "Russia"... It's tightly locked and yet not even a fence in sight. There is a deeper meaning to this picture, which becomes a symbol in itself (especially if the rest of the fence was stolen and turned in for vodka) -
This is only a sample of the weird fences around the world. There are many more (check out for example, toothebrush Fence, or the Musical Fence, on which you can actually play like on musical instrument...). Even your own short drives into backcountry might uncover some wonders of local creativity - certainly a welcome change from an endless stream of featureless, utilitarian fence designs.
In the first years after WW2, when Holland (and other west-european countries) were littered with old malfunctioning aircraft bombs, some people build fences out of (loaded!) bombs
The brick children emerging from the brick wall isn't really a fence per. se. Its a sculpture here in Charlotte NC. I will admit I did find it a bit creepy at first glance, but its actually quite cute.
The scottish sheep fence is obvious to me. He had literally hundreds of 2 foot boards, a sheep can easily scale/jump a 2 foot fence so he did the next best thing and just stuck them all together.
Lastly I have that freakin mattress that the sculpture was made from! Its like almost antique and its one of the first boxsprings with uncovered coils. The frame is exceptionally strong, In fact I only kept it because my plan was to cut it in half and put hinges on it to make a crazy chair/couch. Of course mine has no rust. Nice pics/idea.
the magnets on the car reducing weight by 50%. hehe. lets see.... traction on the road reduced by 50%. hence stopping, turning, and traction have been reduced by 50%. thanks for making the world an unsafer place.
also as for having less weight doesn't mean it has less mass. so it will still take the same energy to accelerate.
no if you changed the polarity of the magnets so that it pulls you into the road you would gain traction and could stop much sooner. say by 50%.
The link to the North Korea pictures had to be the creepiest lot I've seen in a while... especially the four-lane highway with one car and one bike... and that's it. The movie theatre with the leaders' pictures nailed up where the movie screen should be was creepy too... and the pics of the people... I haven't seen so many scared eyes in a long while. :( Lips smiling, eyes terrified. Eep.
Guy in the glasses is Anatoly Vasserman, champion of the "What-Where-When" TV show, one of the smartest guys in ex-USSR. He is A.K.A. Onotoley, icon of the hackers attacked VKONTAKTE.RU (russian clone of facebook).This photo was uploaded to the all hacked groups with caption "Onotoley is raging".
Now if only someone could figure out a way to attach four of these things together with some kind of carriage in the middle ... now THAT would be something.
Have you checked out the Bombardier company's concept unicycle? Hydrogen cell for power, anime styling. Good pictures at http://www.gearbits.com/archives/000336.html
I can't imagine who would want to live in a place like that. You would never own your bit, only rent it, and you couldn't do anything serious to personalize it. Talk about the Neighborhood Association from Hell. Of course, I wouldn't mind if large numbers of other people went to live in one and left the real land open for people who appreciate it.
I highly recommend anyone interested in it to do check out arcosanti if they find themselves north of phoenix.
Sure, the project has mostly stalled in a larger sense, but is still self supporting. One thing the pics don't capture is the experience of being in those buildings, very unique, and very refreshing in a sense. It was early summer when I visited, very hot out, and yet quite cool and comfortable inside, without any AC on. The internal distribution of thermal energy and movement of air felt much more fresh and alive than the artificial cold tomb-like experience of most of Phoenix's large buildings that time of year.
Aesthetics aside, Soleri has a gift for creating true living spaces.
Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket... Having an entire city in one structure leaves the entire population very vulnerable to a variety of disasters: fire, epidemic, power failures, enemy or terrorist attack, etc., not to mention the attendant problems of utilities, waste disposal, emergency evacuation, and maintenance. Some ideas look a lot better on paper than in reality.
They aren't such a clever idea, 1 million people crammed in, what if a bomb goes off in a very important place, you could have up to 1 million casualties!
I've always thought that Solari's megacities were to some extant a reactin to Frank Loyd Wright's Broadacre City; a vison of continent ecompassing sprawl. PT: actually his vision was a bit more heterogenous. The exteriors aren't very uniform because building really only provides a concrete slab and basic infrastructure. Everything else would be built by the individual "condo-owner."
These are all grand ideas that lead to something bigger. While the concerns raised by the commenters here are all valid, these represent the first step in being able to colonize other worlds once they are determined to be able to sustain life, or we have developed the capacity to make other worlds sustain life.
Arcologies like this provide us with an opportunity, built on Earth, to discover the flaws, problems, logistical hurdles and potentials for disaster that exist in the designs prior to building them in space and sending them, fully loaded, to another world, or building them on that world. If they can be made stable in an environment that is already relatively stable, they have passed the first step towards being able to support human life elsewhere in the universe. It is only a few more baby steps to design them in such a way as to be able to survive elsewhere and/or travel there under their own power and land safely.
To those who dismissed the idea's based on fear filled sentiments, I am profoundly sorry. A bomb can cause 1 million casualties due to the close proximity of the living quarters? Damn, all it takes is a bigger bomb, which you know each country is always developing and the benefits of being spread out are lost, and the cons are all thats left. Destruction of natural ecosystems around the entire world have been destroyed based on people wanting to own "their" piece. At least with arcologys nature has a better chance of surviving. And humans still just have human problems, like thinking you need more than you have. Americans wake up to the world your part of please.
Another cult complete with a saintly founder who enjoys his own opulent private quarters (with desert swimming pool) while his acolytes do all the drudgery trying to get his unwieldy designs to work.
He nowadays passes his time making styrofoam models for the trademark wind chimes. Incidentally, his eco-friendly minions directly invest molten metal into the styrofoam sending gouts of poisonous black hydrocarbons into the otherwise pristine high-desert skies.
"Thinking globally but acting locally." What a crock!
Mainly someone said this seems like putting all your eggs in one basket - well think about it this way: Earth = One Basket. We need to spread out and this is a logical primer.
Next to the guy who said leave land to the people who appreciate it. The point of this is to give everyone the opportunity to appreciate land not divide it up and fence it off and 'customize' it.
There will never be enough land to go around and some of the best land is taken by people who assume they have a right to keep it from everyone else.
There's a candidate for the Darwin Award in the first picture of the wheelbarrow BBQ!
First, the heat of the fire will most likely cause the wood frame to start smoldering or burst into flames. Second, the wheelbarrow is not stable and is likely to tip over. But the worst offense is the uncapped gas can in the background...
The clip belongs to the film Animals are beautiful people, from the same director of TGMBC. It's a great film, but it's been known for a while that this scene and several others were actually staged and/or manipulated for dramatic effect.
The American Eagle is the remains of an F-104 Starfighter fuselage, an aircraft which was also powered by a J-79. What? No-one is impressed by a fact a brief google search would have revealed? Fine, be glad we're living in the future, rather than in the book-laden, internet-free past.
Thank you for publishing my pic and linking to my photo blog.
But you got a couple of things wrong. The village is called "Planina v Lazu" and the mountain on the right looking down on it is "Slatna". The picture was taken from "Prvi Vogel" which is 2181m high.
Thanks again and be sure to check out more pics on my blog.
"QUANTUM SHOT" #468
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18 Comments:
I have never seen mattress springs used like the last photo. Such a whimsical figure. I love it.
The padlock fence is probably one of the variants of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_padlocks
Thank you Shadoglare - good catch!
In the first years after WW2, when Holland (and other west-european countries) were littered with old malfunctioning aircraft bombs, some people build fences out of (loaded!) bombs
May one contribute other fence pix? How 'bout fence made of live woven cactus? Pls advise how best send pix?
elve - great piece of info, wish there were any pictures of it...
Iodefinition - please send the pic to abramsv@gmail.com
Is that the mattress sculpture outside ReUse Industries (the salvage store) in Ames, Ohio?
It certainly looks like it.
The brick children emerging from the brick wall isn't really a fence per. se. Its a sculpture here in Charlotte NC. I will admit I did find it a bit creepy at first glance, but its actually quite cute.
Vortex house in houston:
http://www.treehousebydesign.com/blog/images/vortex_house.jpg
Also, beer can house in houston:
http://www.instablogsimages.com/images/2008/01/02/beer-_can-house-1_6648.jpg
Amazing how poorly researched this post is. Did you not notice the faces on the padlocks?
The "danger of drowning" fence is probaly concealing an old well.
2 things
The scottish sheep fence is obvious to me. He had literally hundreds of 2 foot boards, a sheep can easily scale/jump a 2 foot fence so he did the next best thing and just stuck them all together.
Lastly I have that freakin mattress that the sculpture was made from! Its like almost antique and its one of the first boxsprings with uncovered coils. The frame is exceptionally strong, In fact I only kept it because my plan was to cut it in half and put hinges on it to make a crazy chair/couch. Of course mine has no rust. Nice pics/idea.
Years agao there was a fence outside of Oklahoma City that had Catfish heads on each of the posts. They were in various stages of decomp.
What I like about the sheep fence is that it looks like the SHEEP built it to keep the FARMER out of their hair...
Cheburashka has nothing to do with hobbit.
awesome
cheburashka is not a hobit :) it is a stuffed toy, refer to his self-titled song for more info ;)
"cheburashka is not a hobit :) it is a stuffed toy, refer to his self-titled song for more info ;)"
cheburashka is a caracter of russian childrens story. Hi is a frend of Crocodyl Gena.
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