Archigram was a 1960s avant-garde architectural group formed in London. Their hypothetical projects were futurist, anti-heroic and pro-consumerism that drew inspiration from technology in order to create new realities. Their most popular project was "Living Cities" but their coolest was "Walking Cities".

The Walking City is constituted by intelligent buildings or robots that are in the form of giant, self contained living pods that could roam the cities. The form derived from a combination of insect and machine and was a literal interpretation of Corbusier's aphorism of a house as a machine for living in. The pods were independent, yet parasitic as they could 'plug in' to way stations to exchange occupants or replenish resources. The citizen is therefore a serviced nomad not totally dissimilar from today's executive cars. The context was perceived as a future ruined world in the aftermath of a nuclear war.

Above text from Wikipedia

Official Site
 

Images sourced from:

Crestock.com  | I Am The Gorgon! | Barney Russel | Zeca Meyer | LP Cover Lover

                   I -
    in my own reason
find reasons to discuss
               About
             a friend -
whose tires on his car
            Need air -
                Like
     my car and tires
           need air -
                He -
       as it is his way -
     tires and gets mad
               so I
          in my way -
      say - what is what
            I can say -
  like fill those mothers
          and lets go -

- John Altoon

Untitled poem from Altoon Papers

image sourced from Wolfgang's Vault

That poem was published in Semina Culture, a book that was published by DAP and Santa Monica Press. NYU held an art show with most of the works published in the book and it truly sucks to be you if you missed it.

Set during the Beat era and centered around the Los Angeles art scene, Semina was a hand printed free-form poetry zine that was published in 9 issues from 1955 - 1964. Some might say that the end of the Semina scene was the end of West Coast Bohemia.

The guy who ran this racket was Wallace Berman, (who's one of the people on the Sgt. Peppers Cover) and he ran with a group of artists and poets like: Taylor Mead, Charles Bukowski, Dennis Hopper, Allen Ginsberg, Diane DiPrima, Alexander Trocchi, Dean Stockwell, Jean Cocteau, Antonin Artaud, William S. Burroughs, Toni Basil (of the song "Hey Mickey") and loads more. These people helped form the Beat culture in and around LA and San Francisco.

Berman died in a car crash in Topanga Canyon in 1976. His son runs Tam Tam Books.

Images sourced from Beat Museum & Design Boom & Steven Fama

Images sourced from Horses Think & Daylights Magazine

Stan VanDerBeek is an artist, filmmaker, collagist and master illusionist. He studied at Cooper Union then went to Black Mountain College where he rolled with John Cage, Buckminster Fuller and Merce Cunningham. He went on to work with Claes Oldenburg & Allan Kaprow.