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Thursday, September 24, 2009

Boxing the Compass

The Pyramids, like great wily jackals hungry for time, just won't give up.

There's no need to go on repeating our take on their significance. Peruse any of our posts tagged "pyramids" and see what we're on about.

Light of Reason

In the picture on the right we have placed a pin upon the Météo France inverted pyramid fountain. Head northeast and you'll see a traffic circle decorated as a compass rose aligned perfectly north. Head in a northwesterly direction and you'll see a ray-shaped sidewalk whose point terminates in a green oval. We are finding that this "keyhole" or "eye atop the pyramid" design is itself becoming a common decorative motif wherever our pyramids are to be found.

What is interesting here is that the base of the triangle/ray you have the principal facade and entrance to the DSNA-DTI (Direction des Services de la Navigation Aérienne-Direction de la Technique et de l'Innovation), the French agency responsible for services relating to air traffic control, navigation, communication and monitoring. This includes training, software development, etc. The DTI is a cutting-edge research division.

For some reason they decided to pop a pyramid atop the entrance of this otherwise unadorned facade. From a side difficult to photograph, visible as it is only from a busy road, one can see it is a kind of three-sided pyramid. We find it weird that on their website, in their own photo of the facade taken from within the grounds, a tree obscures the pyramid. It's a bad angle.

And speaking of Météo France, we'd be remiss not to mention their logo, which, though not exactly a pyramid, is a triangle circling or set somewhere above the globe set against a square divided into light and dark halves. Perhaps an echo of the doctrine of opposites and the reconciliation thereof?

What is the red arrow point at? Where is it going? Squaring the circle or boxing the compass, the measurement's the thing.

4 comments:

  1. Gid, on the DARPA seal:

    "For a final alternate take on the image, consider the eye as the Sun, which, in addition to reinforcing the scientific and Egyptian mumbo-jumbo, means that this image shows the Earth orbiting the eye, which casts light on half the globe but leaves the rest of the Earth in shadow."

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  2. Re the DARPA Seal: Dat's whats I'm talkin' about!!! Seriously: you cannot shine the light of knowledge without casting the shadow of dominion. Or so I've been told.

    And re the Metro France Logo: Boy o' boy are there ever some great images associate with the Paris Metro! The map alone is a true beauty.

    But that Paris Metro symbol itself ... I'm not sure what to make of it. Off the top of my head, it suggests empregnation--the female round shapes being penetrated by the male linear body? This suggests, also, a sense of order being thrust into chaos. But I am probably just missing the, er, "point" ...

    Really, it's probably just an acknowlegement of the doomsday bomb dropping upon Earth isn't it? Come to think of it, isn't pregnancy just a typological example of this vision of the end?

    Just kidding--this is a Helium-3 gathering device that you Frenchies plan to drop on the Moon, isn't it?

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  3. That metro logo really looks like a woman's silhouette thrown back in ecstasy. Definitely something erotic going on there. I'm also reminded of one of those wolf howling at the moon paintings....you know the kind I'm on about?

    It's a strange logo though. Can't believe I never really did a double-take!

    This blog has some info:

    "I've been told that literally, it's a depiction of the region it serves: the circle is Paris, and the blue line is the Seine.

    But it seems to also be a kind of take-off on the London Underground symbol, you know, the circle with the line through it? Similar, but totally different.

    Also, it looks sort of like a person's face, pointing up, doesn't it? You know, in profile?"

    More than sort of IMHO.

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  4. (Actually the RATP logo, the org responsible for all public transport in Paris and he Île-de-France)

    Are we actually talking about the same logo?

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