Constellations
Un-named constellations in Harry Beck's cosmos. See also the project that led to this - an attempt to map the stations on the London Underground that are 500m apart or less: the same constellations in front of the London tube map (and the same again, with the tube map faded out).
But perhaps this could also be Invisible Cities Illustrated #3: Thekla, with the stars its blueprint:
Those who arrive at Thekla can see little of the city, beyond the plank fences, the sackcloth screens, the scaffoldings, the metal armatures, the wooden catwalks hanging from ropes or supported by sawhorses, the ladders, the trestles. If you ask, "Why is Thekla's construction taking such a long time?" the inhabitants continue hoisting sacks, lowering leaded strings, moving long brushes up and down, as they answer, "So that its destruction cannot begin." And if asked whether they fear that, once the scaffoldings are removed, the city may begin to crumble and fall to pieces, they add hastily, in a whisper, "Not only the city."See also Invisible Cities Illustrated #1: HN30 and Invisible Cities Illustrated #2: Trude/Ersilia.If, dissatisfied with the answers, someone puts his eye to a crack in a fence, he sees cranes pulling up other cranes, scaffoldings that embrace other scaffoldings, beams that prop up other beams. "What meaning does your construction have?" he asks. "What is the aim of a city under construction unless it is a city? Where is the plan you are following, the blueprint?"
"We will show it to you as soon as the working day is over; we cannot interrupt our work now," they answer.
Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. "There is the blueprint," they say.
Nb: you can pop-up a bigger version here.
This work and commissions are for sale.
Medium: Digital file, A?, 2003. Edition of 25.
© copyright Rod McLaren 2003
(Invisible Cities is © Harcourt Brace & Co, 1978.
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1972 (translated 1974), New York, Harcourt Brace & Co, 1978. ISBN 0-15-645380-0)