A Photographic Interlude (part II)

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More to follow

Life Imitates Art

A few years ago, a videogame was released. You might be the least bit familiar with it; it’s name was Bioshock. This game featured a level called “Arcadia”, which you may also be familiar with. For those not so enlightened, a brief description/synopsis is to be found below:

Bioshock, for non-gamers, is/was a very popular action/horror game. Its fictional world was Rapture, a libertarian utopia / art deco metropolis built miles under the sea (near Iceland) sometime after World War II. By the time the player discovers the city in 1960, it has disintegrated both socially and structurally as the result of a bloody civil war fought between the supporters of city founder Andrew Ryan and the legions of smuggler/con-man Frank Fontaine (under his alias “Atlas”). Oh, yes, before I forget: large swaths of the city’s population have been driven to extreme mental instability by “Adam”, a naturally-occurring substance that, when refined, renders the human body and genome quite malleable – at the cost of being tremendously addictive and disfiguring to both body and mind. As a whole, the game’s narrative largely serves as a rhetorical kick to Ayn Rand…when she’d never really been standing on two feet to begin with. The Arcadia level takes the player to the source of Rapture’s food and oxygen; an improbable undersea garden/forest created by the brilliant biologist Julie Langford.

Rapture, in its architecture, is modeled after something of a dreamlike, ideal Manhattan – merely submerged. How intriguing, then, that there are plans now being put forward to transform an old, abandoned, subterranean tram terminal into…an improbable underground park, supplied with light by way of fiber-optic “remote skylights”!

Somehow, I doubt that the developers were particularly influenced by Bioshock, but it would be interesting to know if they’ve ever seen the game, or even heard of it. In the game, the attitude expressed toward science, art, and industry by the denizens of Rapture (before the calamity) was that of “because we can!” or “because it’s there!”, and while there is a certain amount of that ethos embedded in this project, it carries as well the hallmarks of necessity. Building a park underground in New York isn’t just a testament to the technological power of humankind; as the article linked above notes, it’s essentially the only kind of project that can create new parkland in a metropolis so crowded. It’s an interesting juxtaposition, I think, between these two worlds that are at once so close – and yet so far.

A Photographic Interlude (Part I)

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Here is a Delicious Thing You Can Make!

I’m working on a more substantial post for the moment, but while I do that, how about I share a recipe for this food I just made (up)?

Ingredients (per person to be served):

• 1-1.5 cups dry pasta – I used Spaghetti, but honestly anything goes.
• 100-150g old cheddar cheese – probably nothing too upscale, we’re just gonna melt it down
• 1-2 Tbsp each flour and butter or margarine
• at least 2/3rds of a cup of milk, probably more to be safe?
• black pepper and hot chili powder to taste
• one-half of a medium-large onion
• one half of a head of broccoli, cut into florets and then cross-sectioned into about 4 pieces per floret (less if smaller, more if larger) DO NOT DISCARD THE STEM IT IS DELICIOUS USE IT IN SOMETHING ELSE.
• one half of a zucchini, cut into thin strips
• three to five mushrooms, quartered
• three modestly-sized cloves of garlic
• probably too much olive oil
• Light beer (Pilsener, Hefeweizen, etc.) or white wine.

How You Do It:

First, you know how to boil noodles. Do that about 15-20 minutes before you think everything else will be done. Don’t make the same mistake as me and start boiling the water too late. Have a glass of beer or wine to drink while you’re cooking.

The first thing you’ll probably want to do is find a frying pan of proportional size to that of the meal you are setting out to cook. Next, add olive oil generously, and apply just a touch above medium heat. In a couple minutes, you want a hot layer of oil about 1-2mm thick covering the bottom of the pan. This is excessive, but delicious. Next, chop the onion and fry it until it’s starting to smell good. Since all stoves are unique and evil in their own way, I won’t give you a numbered setting. Cook it so the onion sizzles a lot, but doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan or burn. Then, once it smells delicious, add the broccoli (chop it while the onion fries, but do stir the onion every so often). After another few minutes, add the zucchini and then the mushrooms in much the same fashion. Finally, add the garlic and fry for about 30 seconds, again, time isn’t so much important as smell: when you can smell the garlic, take the whole thing off the heat and cover it so it stays warm.

Now, it’s time for cheese sauce. We need to make something called a roux. Begin by melting the butter in the bottom of an appropriately-sized pot (only you know how many people you’re feeding). Then, slowly add flour and whisk this mixture together. Once you’ve got a paste going on, start adding milk very slowly (whisking briskly all the while). The goal here is to create a sort of creamy, thick liquid. It should offer some resistance to stirring, but should not be like glue. Once this has been achieved, begin grating cheese into and (you guessed it) whisking the mixture some more. Add milk along the way to maintain a thick, but still liquid consistency. The ideal cheese sauce will vary from person to person, so honestly just make something you’ll find appetizing: if you want it really gooey and stringy, use more cheese and less milk. If you think that’s gross, make it more of a liquid. Remember that once you take the heat off, this stuff starts to congeal something fierce, so don’t worry if it looks runny in the pot when you’re making it. Add black pepper and chili powder to give it some kick. Again, once it’s ready, remove from heat and cover.

The noodles should be done (you timed that right, didn’t you?). Put them in a bowl or bowls, and then top the noodles with the mixture of delicious, fried vegetables. Apply cheese sauce as desired. Now, you’ve been drinking on an empty stomach while you were cooking, so when your palate encounters the triple threat of protein-fat-carbohydrate, it will taste like ambrosia.

YOU’RE DONE (NOW DO DISHES)

PS oops I forgot to take a picture of this stuff. Maybe next time.