I left Vienna this morning heading to Berlin but not before heading over to the first district, sneaking up onto a rooftop and taking this panaramic shot of the city. Unfortunately it wasn’t the clearest of days, but it’s a pretty good feel for what’s going on anyway. Click the above to gigantify it, as it’s massively embigenable.

After a month of talking about it I finally walked over to the MuMoK today and checked out the China - Facing Reality exhibition and I’m totally pissed I didn’t go earlier. I’m definitely going back again soon and if you haven’t seen it I highly recommend swinging by and checking it out before closes in Feb next year. Two things I was blown away by were a 13,500 piece installation by Fang Lijun on the first floor of the exhibit, and the paintings by Zeng Hao on the 8th floor. Unfortunately today was school day or something so in addition to the hundreds of screaming kids running around the joint there were also extra security guards being extra observant. I say that’s unfortunate because I wasn’t able to steal a snapshot of Lijun’s installation but I’ll be going back for sure and hope to get one then. It’s hard to describe but awe inspiring to see. 13,500 golden blobs mounted on different length rods and lined up making something that feels a bit like flowing fields of some kind of crop, corn or wheat, but upon closer inspection are individual faces. It’s rather impressive. Anyway, go see it yourself.

One of my first projects here at the Museumsquartier is working with monochrom and presenting the work of Scott Blake [myspace] at the quartier für digitale kultur here in the Museumsquartier. Wednesday evening Scott will be showing some of his new works and talking about the theory behind it all. Here’s a short blurb from the MQ website:

“scott blake takes barcodes and turns them into art - art that is simultaneously pop and op, intellectual and personal, minimal and ocular. he employs the black and white symbol of standardization and efficiency - to craft a subversive style of digital pointillism. large-scale iconography of celebrities examines the relationship between the individual and the media commodity - the human being and his or her adaptation to pixilated, simplified cultural symbol.”

Today we drove out to Stockerau to get some amazing vegan food at Schillinger and stopped by the Leeburg Tumulus in Großmugl. Here are a few photos I snapped around and on top of it. Of course it’s an extremely old burial mound and the largest in central Europe. If this was really built around 600-500 B.C. then it’s pretty insulting that someone put up a crucifix on top of it, as without even wondering what religion the people who are buried there might have subscribed to you can rest assured it wasn’t Christianity since that wouldn’t even be founded for almost a millennia.

One of my favorite things about traveling is stumbling across local holidays and observances that you’d never hear about outside of that area. Chicago has Sweetest Day and it seems that Vienna has Buy Shit Saturday. I accidentally walked into this without even knowing about it this morning, but apparently this is a time honored tradition where this major shopping street is blocked off and every single person in Vienna is required to walk around from shop to shop, form crazy huge unorganized queues, and of course buy shit. I’m also under the impression this is some kind of local secret because all the Vienna locals I know who I asked about it denied it’s existence. Of course the photos I took don’t lie, see for yourself.

When I was in Tokyo earlier this year a few friends and I organized a photowalk around a few parts of the city with the goal of creating a pool of creative commons licensed images of the city. We had almost 20 people on the walk, some locals and some visitors and the photos taken that day (including the one above that I snapped in Harajuku) are amazingly cool. Better yet, they are all available for other people to use thanks to CC. I was thinking it might be cool to do something like that here while I’m in Vienna as well. I know there are some existing photowalk groups already in town and maybe this is something they’d be interested in helping out with? It’s a fairly simple idea, map out a rough route, grab cameras and go. Afterwards post them all to Flicker using a similar tag and license (we used attribution/non-commercial/share-alike). It was a fun thing todo during the day, but also is helping build a resource of images that other people can use when they need something representing the city. Would anyone be interested in doing something like that?

In case you missed the Roboxotica conference at the Museumsquartier last week but are interested in hearing some of the talks that were presented you can now download mp3s of all the talks directly from monochrom now. In German are talks by Thomas Ballhausen, Kerstin Ohler and Alexander Edelhofer. I also presented in English along with Jens Ohlig, Cory Doctorow, David Fine and Bre Pettis. Enjoy!

When I decided I was going to come to Vienna and spend a good chunk of time here the thing I heard over and over again from friends who live here (as well as those who don’t) was that it would be next to impossible to be vegan in Vienna. I’ve been vegan for almost 15 years so I’m not planning on changing my diet based on a trip, but I was little concerned that Vienna might be the first place I’ve been to that didn’t have plentiful vegan options.

Luckily this has turned out to not be the case at all. I was searching on Tupalo and found Rupps. After reading a few reviews I was hooked and rounded up the posse and headed there straight away. Here’s a few pics I took while there but the combo vegetarian/vegan restaurant & Irish whiskey bar is pretty mind blowing. I can see myself spending a lot of time there in the coming weeks. I had the Schnitzel and the Apfelstrudel. The latter of which was amazing. They had a ton of vegan options that I can’t wait to go back and try out. No english menu but the stall all seemed happy to speak to speak to me, of course I was giving them money but still. It’s located at Arbeitergasse 46, which is just a short tram ride from where I’m staying at the Museumsquartier so yeah, I’ll be there again soon. /swoon

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