Lev Manovich

Business Week:
World’s Best Airports 2009

In the annual survey of airport service quality by Geneva-based Airports Council International (ACI), Asian airports—Seoul, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Nagoya, Japan—won four of the five top spots. Nova Scotia’s Halifax was the only non-Asian airport to be included in the top five:

1. Seoul

2. Singapore

3. Hong Kong

4. Nagoya, Japan

5. Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada) (1st in North America)

6. George, South Africa

7. Zurich, Switzerland (1st in Europe)

8. Guayaquil, Ecuador (1st in Latin America)

9. Tel Aviv, Israel (1st in Middle East)

10. Port Elizabeth, South Africa

11. Southampton, England

12. Cancun, Mexico

13. Abu Dhabi, UAE

14. Ottawa (Canada)

15. Cape Town, South Africa

16. Porto, Portugal

17. San Jose, Costa Rica

18. Doha, Qatar

19. Austin, Tex. (3rd in North America; first US airport in the list)

20. Beijing Capital International, China

21. Taipei, Taiwan (also ranked no. 1 in the world among airports serving between 15 million and 25 million passengers annually).

José Joaquín de Olmedo International Airport was named after after a famous Ecuadorian poet and the first mayor of the city of Guayaquil.
Ranks: number 8 airport in the world; the best airport in Latin America and the Caribbean in terms of service quality.

From:
english.kbs.co.kr

date: Friday, November 14, 2008 16:11:02

DMZ to Become Worldwide Environmental Attraction
Reports find the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating South and North Korea has a well-preserved ecology, containing organisms even on the verge of extinction.

A joint inspection team comprised of officials from the Ministry of Environment and various other organizations completed comprehensive research of the DMZ for the first time in 50 years.

Around 180 organisms, 13 of which are national treasures or rarities, were discovered.

The team said the DMZ could become a worldwide attraction with its combination of wetlands, grasslands, valleys and organisms.

The government plans to use data gathered from the research to create an ecological park near the heavily fortified zone, after which Seoul will request UNESCO designate the area a biosphere reserve.

( Reported by KBS WORLD Radio. )

photo by hiro oshima

JOB VOYAGER

A striking interactive visualization of the shift from pre-industrial to industrial to service/knowledge society using US census data.
Source code is available.

“The historic city of St. Petersburg in Russia will soon be home to the tallest and supposedly ‘greenest’ tower in Europe. The UK-based architectural firm RMJM was given a go by the Russian gas giant to build the new Gazprom Neft headquarters in the former Russian capital.”(Via archinect.com.)”The main tower ‘is to rise at least 300 meters (985 feet) into the sky and symbolize the growing power of the firm. It is also to be situated just opposite the famed 18th century Smolny Cathedral on the Neva River in historic St. Petersburg.”(Via bldgblog.)

what: article.subject: why “newly developed world” (Asia, Eastern Europe, Middle East, etc.) embraced design even more than “old west.”written: Fall 2007.download PDF: Designing Shanghai

The index for Indian Art is published by Economic Times (Bombay). “The ET Art Index is based on average Square Inch Rate (SIR) of works of art of India’s top 51 artists. Weights for liguidity and historical significance of each artist have been considered to arrive at index values. The index was developed keeping in mind the growing interest in Indian contemporary at across the globe and the need to track its perforance vis-a-vis other asset classes like equities, gold, and real estate.”

“The year 1997 has been taken as the base year for the purpose of calculating the base values. This year was a turning point in the history of the Indian Contemporary Art, according to experts, in which, among other issues, the first professional auction was held by an Indian organisation, HEART. The base value has been converted into 100 to obtain the index figures.

On a Compounded Annualized Growth (CAGR) basis, ET Art Index gave a return of 47.8% since it’s inception in Jan 01, 1998. From a level of 100 on Dec 31, 1997 the index value stood at 2513.1 on March 22, 2006. During the same period, BSE Sensex gave a return of 14% on a CAGR basis. The significant movement of the ET Art Index started in the year 2003, which was also the beginning of the boom period for the Indian equity market.”

Yamini Mehta, the head of Modern and Contemporary Indian Art for Christie’s in New York.

From an article in ECONOMIC TIMES (Bombay),
1 Oct, 2008, 1230 hrs IST, IANS:

“KOLKATA: Till five years ago, Indian artists shared space with their western counterparts in shows abroad to lend prestige to their portfolios. Today, artists from the West are finding it commercially viable to work and exhibit their canvases in India in a reversal of the trend.”

Continued

Tyeb Mehta’s “Mahisasura” sold at Christie’s auction in London in September 2005 for USD $1.6 million.

Siggraph 2008 Los Angeles - expo floor

Energy, money, and cultural innovation has been gradually moving from the West to Asia - a shift which manifests itself in a variety of ways. Not everything is as dramatic as Olympics 2008 opening - sometimes we can see this shift revealing itself in details.

Take SIGGRAPH, an annual trade show, conference and a festival for 3D computer graphics and animation technology. In 2007 edition (San Diego) I noticed a significant increase in the numbers of visitors from Asia - which was understandable given the fact that China, Thailand, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and other Asian countries have been investing considerably in building creative industries in their countries, in addition to being an “animation factory” for Hollywood.

I saw the same trend at SIGGRAPH 2008 which is taking place in Los Angeles this week. Add to this that beginning this year, there will be a new convention SIGGRAPH.ASIA (which will take place in Singapore in December). But here is the list detail which I found very telling. At the trade show many companies run non-stop demos of their software or hardware. A typical demo may last 30 min and will involve somebody demonstrating some application features, or digital designers explaining how they used the software in some latest production.

At the large INTEL booth, I noticed that each day last 2 hours of the shows were in Japanese and Korean - without any English translation. Here was a major conference in US geared first of all at US visitors - and yet it now added sessions for non-speaking Asian visitors. Interesting..

August 8, 2008:
China invents new ARCHBODY MEDIA:

ancient ritual and spectacle + 20th century mass ornament + early 21st century architecture + digital media

Moscow’s rapidly growing skyline will soon feature an eye-popping new addition:
Crystal Island, which will be the world’s biggest building when completed.
Sir Norman Foster’s mountainous 27 million square feet spiraling ‘city within a building’
will cost $4 billion and it is scheduled to be built within next 5 years.
(Via inhabitat.com.)