Bill Fontana>

A project from earlier in the year which used the sounds of the river Thames to lead you around the unused spaces in the bowels of Somerset House where you come across 17th century grave stones among other things.

The London Nobody Knows

Great documentary about london with James Mason wandering. You can find the whole film here.

Map Repository

Great list of London maps from the last 600 years, including links to The Crace Collection and the Guildhall Library if you scroll down the page.

Mapback

Produced by dell books in the 40's mapbacks had a back cover illustrating the places the action within the book takes place. An interesting way of blending narrative and related imagery.

Four Corners Books - 'Familiars' series

Many of you are interested in books - so I thought I'd draw attention to the publisher 'Four Corners' and their 'Familiars' series - where classic texts are re-interpreted by contemporary artists and illustrators. For example in 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' (Oscar Wilde) - a story about male vanity - the text is published in its original magazine format - alongside ads featuring über-cool looking 70ies men smoking Gitanes. In 'Dracula' the artist James Pyman returns to the original text to find lots of quiet moments in between the clichéed blood and gore.

A refreshing reminder that as illustrators you don't have to illustrate plot or characters - the text is already busy dealing with this - you could reinvent, reimagine - look sideways at what is happening just outside of the scene, think about prequel or sequel, focus on secondary characters, displace or rearrange......

http://www.fourcornersbooks.co.uk/

Tim Hunkin tells us about the car, nice combinations of live footage and animation to explain processes, ways of making and thinking and the technological 'leaps' that make the car what it is today. There is something reassuring about an engineer in a corduroy jacket, no?

part 2:



part 3:

JIGGLING ATOMS

The fantastic Richard Feynman describes energy transfer and jiggling atoms.