In a recent post by Jett Loe, over at the delightful Letter to America, Jett suggested that, due to his frequent bouts of wandering through Belfast's urban landscape, he could safely describe himself as a flâneur - a detached, but observant, stroller of the streets (a 'botanist of the sidewalk').
Well, a flâneur-tastic new blog/site called Kind i Like (lovingly set up and maintained by my darling girl…*plug*) invites urban wanderers everywhere to acknowledge the odd, amusing, and (occasionally) disturbing "Things that look like people" that surround us every day. As the site's mission statement explains:
They're all around us… but not everyone notices them. I speak not of the spirits of the departed, but rather of the human faces, features and forms that peer out at us from the world we have made (and the one we inhabit). From electric sockets to Mother Teresa-like Danishes we are surrounded by objects and shapes that simply beg to be anthropomorphised.
As Cat says to Levi in Peter Blegvad’s wonderful Leviathan: "You humans project your own image onto everything! Why can’t you just let things be themselves?" Well, if you’re the kind of person who agrees with 'Cat' then this site is probably not for you. If, however, you just can’t help but humanise the 'stuff' you see everyday (whether man-made or natural) then please make yourself at home - you're among friends.
There are only a few images in the archives at the moment (the site is a mere 6 days old after all), but once the contributions start dribbling in then the fun will begin in earnest. I've already found it impossible to go for a stroll without constantly searching for goodies to anthropomorphise….it’s strangely addictive, even though most of the objects I've spotted have been located inside. Can one be a housebound flâneur? If so then I'm definitely up to the job…
Enjoy.
Hooray- I have a backlog of mobile phone shots of surprised looking sockets and such like and now at last have somewhere to put them.
How do we feel about things that look like fictional things?
May 5th, 2006 at 2:41 pm[Flickr Link]
Good stuff Simon. They shall find a happy home at last.
Love the pac-man pic and am sure that Jess would too. Is Pac-Man a ‘person’? Should he be included? These are the vexing questions the site must deal with…
Send it in anyway…I reckon it’s got a good chance of making the cut.
May 5th, 2006 at 2:45 pmI’ll only include your Pac-man shot if we can have another of Mrs. Pac-man in mourning.
Send on your photos to jess@kind-i-like.com
May 5th, 2006 at 2:49 pmComedian Dave Gorman (his full name) has a similar (erm, identical) thing on the go over at Flickr called; “I see faces”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dgbalancesrocks/sets/1336953/
May 5th, 2006 at 4:10 pmAh well. It’s hardly surprising someone’s thought of the idea before. Jess’s thing is a daily blog (as opposed to merely a bit on someone’s flickr account) and (given that she has a domain name) can expand in different directions. It’s not limited to faces either as the fat, little pot chap demonstrates.
http://www.kind-i-like.com/page/5/
No competition.
May 5th, 2006 at 4:35 pmI liked the fat little pot chap. He has presence.
May 5th, 2006 at 4:44 pmHe does. He’s a robust character - not one of your namby-pamby, delicate pots. He means business, gets the job done etc, etc.
May 5th, 2006 at 4:49 pmBy the looks of him you’d have a fight on your hands every time you needed sugar for your tea.
May 5th, 2006 at 4:57 pmGreat, there’s some excellent ones over at the Flickr site. I’ll add in a link to those. Thanks!
May 5th, 2006 at 7:40 pmYou should also set up a sister site that contains ‘people that look like objects’. I have a potato that looks like Alice Beer, in fact i have a whole sack of potatoes that look like Alice Beer.
May 6th, 2006 at 7:40 pm