Icons, Monuments & Planned Obsolescence

11.25.07

DEAD iPod!!!!!!

I think that my iPod may have just died. Damn planned obsolescence. I am having trouble expressing what this means. It was like losing a pet or a good friend that knew exactly what you like. I always thought of an my iPod as better than any anti-depressant, it was pure mood control. Now that it is gone I do not know where to get my fix.

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The apartment is amazing, a study in simplicity. It is located between what were two of my favorite U-bahn stations, Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz and Alexanderplatz, both named for communist figures. One a Tzar and the other a political radical in 1920's Berlin. This is the former East Berlin and the fernsehturm (tower) at Alexanderplatz is the most prominent monument to this fractured socialist past. The Berlin Mauer (Wall) is of course more symbolic, but very little remains (and I do not have a direct view of it from our courtyard). The fernsehturm at Alexanderplatz is now viewed as the symbol of a unified, young, changing Berlin (what an appropriate role for a TV tower). The fernsehturm is the brutalist style monumental equivalent to the Arch in St. Louis. The Arch is a minimalist sculpture composed of a three sided continuous metal surface, and symbolic gateway. Alexanderplatz fernsehturm is a giant bronze geodesic globe stuck onto a skyscraper sized concrete spike, an island held up for everyone to see. The construction of the Arch in 1966 was to commemorate a 175 year old frontier, its official name being the Jefferson Expansion Memorial, a retro-futurist signifier of when the new met the old, and where the East meets the West. Now, in Berlin, Alexanderplatz takes up this task.