April 3, 2002

8:53 PM

Things Fall Apart.Particularly in urban environments. Individually, the moments of entropy-in-action caught here may not mean much; collectively, they recite a visual poem about decay. A slightly melancholy site for you insomniacs out there. (By the way, you have to scroll right to get to the thumbnails.)
posted by BT (8 comments total)

Cool Site. I liked the rusted garage mirror best, for some reason. Although, who ever maintains the Dag Hammarskjöld Tower is doing a half-assed job, man.
posted by jonmc at 9:12 PM on April 3, 2002

I like the idea of this site, especially as a antedote to News threads. But the pictures just aren't that compelling....
posted by ParisParamus at 9:18 PM on April 3, 2002

I love it! But I bet I wouldn't love it if I didn't live here.

Jesus, they could shoot a million things permanently in a state of "advanced entropy" in my apartment building.
posted by RJ Reynolds at 9:30 PM on April 3, 2002

I was hoping to see time-lapse photos of how each piece decayed over time. The static photos don' tell the whole story.
posted by dewelch at 9:51 PM on April 3, 2002

He says broken like it's a bad thing...can you imagine how terrifying New York would be if every piece of it was gleaming and immaculate?
posted by lbergstr at 10:30 PM on April 3, 2002

It's interesting that depending on where you are, old has a totally different context. I now live in Utah, where an "old" building is 100 years old. I grew up in a small town in New Hampshire that was around before the American Revolution with houses still standing from the early 1700's. Then, while living in Spain I walked on a bridge that some say Paul walked on during his travels to the southern peninsula. Compared to Europe, New York is still wet behind the ears.
posted by jaden at 11:49 PM on April 3, 2002

I thought the pictures were nice. It's fun to see photographs of things people wouldn't normally think of focusing on. It's a neat idea - though I agree with dewelch, and think it would be much stronger if there were several frames taken for each, over some period of time.

-Mars
posted by Mars Saxman at 7:30 AM on April 4, 2002

I wasn't that drawn in by the photos themselves. Maybe they should have been shown in context, with the thumbnails focusing on the broken part. The idea, though, fascinates me -- I like poking around, as much as I can legally, urban structures that have fallen into disuse, things that are too expensive to tear down or rebuild but need to be blocked off, and that sort of thing.

Merely neglected things, like a twisty rebar fence, though -- they're all over urban environments. I'm not sure it's as interesting, except in aggregate. Or context. A broken fence is more significant on Park Avenue than 187th St. in the Bronx.
posted by dhartung at 8:39 AM on April 4, 2002