November 09, 2005
Elevator Pitch
This week's assignment is to create an elevator pitch for our final project. My inspiration is Momento Transmission and being here at ITP. In answer to the questions:
What are the keywords to describe your project?
History, Folksonomy, Tapestry, Continuity, Memory
What is the general scope of ideas?
The general idea is to try to explore the space that is between a museum and a school as it reflects on ITP. ITP is short on space but not short on ideas so this exploration could happened in the space least used, the one above our heads.
What parts of the general scope are specifically covered by your project?
The project would metaphorically push older ideas up while newer ideas would exist on the ground level. The area above our heads would be a physical manifestation of the older blogs and projects on the itp stage web server. Older projects are catalogued in a museum type environment (above our heads) while the oldest projects are pushed out through the roof (disposed).
How to introduce your project?
The project gives a physical volume and dimension for all the work that happens and has happened here at ITP. It creates a concentration on the process allowing for new ideas to be developed from the discarded tentacles of older projects. A person experiencing this project would just have to look up. The audience would be anyone who is interested in what we do here.
What does your project provide that other similar projects do not provide or provide differently ?
There is nothing like this here right now because of the glut of information and lack of space. Stage.itp was hacked last year and all the data was lost. Our spatial projects are thrown out on a weekly basis. Using the (unused) space above our heads, we could create a history of what happens here, we could tell stories.
What are the resources available to you today for this project?
I'd need access to the ceiling and Red's approval but other than that there are plenty of projects here that are never shown. If they are shown, they are shown to a select group of people or are shown very briefly on the floor. People would be happy to give their work to an elevated gallery.
What are the missing elements for your project?
Design. The projects above would have to be visible. It should be clear what is going on up above. The individual project authors' vision should be clear.
How do you plan to provide these element?
I would work with others in our class.
Posted by mb2811 at 07:45 PM
November 05, 2005
Fortunte Teller
This week in spatial design we had to build the physical manifestation of the data we collected last week for our labyrinth. Since my data from last week was so straightforward and well, data driven, I wanted to build something more abstract for this week. I printed up the visio maps and made paper fortune tellers out of them. Like this one:
Each fortune teller gave the user an opportunity to take a different path in the labyrinth. I then strung a number of fortune tellers together to expand the labyrinth.
Jean-Marc had sent us this email a few days before this friday's class:
Please note that Nina Freedman will be our guest critic on Friday. Nina will review your labyrinth projects. She is a NY architect with interest in community driven architecture, sustainable architecture, research and spatial explorations with technology. Nina collaborated on national and international projects with Richard Meier, Renzo Piano and Paul Rudolph, while at the Architectural Association, in London, she studied with Peter Cook, formerly of Archigram. She is currently with H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture (www.h3hc.com ), formerly, Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates.
Nina had some interesting feedback for my work. I did my best to try to keep my process labyrinth from being a linear progression but she said that this gives it the appearance of randomness. It lacks a coherent structure. To improve on that, she suggested some other media to bring everything together. Possibly sound from the pictures to give the piece a connecting spine.
I'm going to large print last week's work and maybe put it up @ the show. I could only double it inside because Visio would not save very large resolution/size files. I need to learn Illustrator.
Posted by mb2811 at 03:09 AM
November 01, 2005
The Shape of Space
In The Shape of Space, Minsky hypothesizes how we, as newborns learn to sense the space around us, with an eye towards crafting artificial intelligence algorithms to do the same. How do we figure it out and put it all together? Where is the prime mover for the development of our relative understanding of our surroundings. How is it that individuals come to the same collective understanding about what is and isn't?
What I find most interesting is the how we consistently mistake truth for our imagination. When we have seen an object from a single perspective, we imagine what it looks like from other perspectives and 'recognize' it from said perspectives. We do this using learned information about perception and space. This power of imagination allows us to function but closes us off to worlds and possibilities that we will no longer allow to happen. Real breakthroughs appear when we recede and let go of those assumptions. When we think like a child, again.
Posted by mb2811 at 02:46 AM
The Library of Babel
Borge's The Library of Babel describes a labyrinth containing a finite set of all the books ever written and all the books ever to be written. By generating all combinations of a set of alphabetic characters, the Library's contents guarantee a super set of all possible information. All predictions into the future, including a visitor's personal post mortem biography, exist somewhere in the Library.
All the useful information in the world has been generated for the library but the problem is it lacks context. The books, shelved arbitrarily, possibly by the location of the characters on their pages do not give any insight into their truth or validity. They exist as is and it is up to the reader to give them value. This arrangement is maddening to the library's visitors and employees.
The library is visited both by official censors and truth seekers. Both will fail. The censors can never truly destroy any information they deem dangerous because another, slightly different (maybe with just an extra comma), version of the same book exists somewhere else in the library. The truth seekers find the truth but they never know if it is the truth that they are looking for. There are many answers in the library but it's up to the visitor to match the answers to the questions.
Borge's essay is a timeless reflection on the value and weight of information, on the subjective perspective that defines truth. His essay could easily be applied to the current emerging medias, where everyone can publish their own book of potentially meaningless alphanumeric characters. I would also say that the essay is hopeful. There is a certain beauty to a labyrinth of true answers, indestructible and unhindered by self interested.
Posted by mb2811 at 01:55 AM
October 28, 2005
Labyrinth as Process
This week for spatial, we are collecting data for our labyrinth project. Since I have been wholly immersed in physical computing for the past three weeks, I thought that the process that my group went through to build our breathable plushy would be a great fit for the labyrinth project.
There are two maps. One for the observation phase and one for the implementation phase. The second one is a continuation of the first. In the three weeks that we spent on this project, we travelled down many interconnected paths to our final destination. We backtracked, turned down certain directions and accepted others. The maps above are the raw data for the paths we traversed. In the maps, as our ideas become more solid, I start using more photos and less clipart.
Since we are considering labyrinths, these are not linear maps. One could be dropped down in the middle of either of them and then travel through the tunnels of process.
I'd also like to thank Min who taught me a thing or two about documentation. I wouldn't have believed that so much happened so quickly if it wasn't all blogged.
Posted by mb2811 at 05:34 AM
October 20, 2005
"At times some birds, a horse, have saved the ruins of an amphitheater"
Borges describes a fantastic world, through the conventional device of an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia has entries for weather, Paris, mammals and Uqbar. Uqbar is a place, a nation in the fact that it can appear in an encyclopedia under 'nation', but that's where the comparison ends. Uqbar exists in collective minds, in platonic forms, in perception and understanding, and Uqbar ends when nouns and definitions and when objective understanding are involved.
Uqbar's true nature is in realm of possibility. Borges opens me up to the fantastic, to the potentially possible, to the unexplainable becoming real. The jarring part of the reading, outside the quantifiable nature of Uqbar as a 'nation' placed in an encyclopedia, is the story of someone on Uqbar dying. Maybe that was the use of a conventional word in an unconventional sense. The people of Uqbar never die and they were never born. Somewhere they exist and someplace else they cease to exist and yet they always are.
For me, this was a meditation on perspective and direction. What is, what is not and what could be might easily be switched around.
Posted by mb2811 at 11:35 PM
Geodesic Domes
Min and I played around with geodesic domes, candy, toothpicks and metal wire. The marshmallows were too gooey and not stale enough to work with, but the gummy candy and metal wire worked out well. As long as you build out exact, duplicate nodes, it's very easy to just explore and see what kind of structure develops.
Posted by mb2811 at 09:11 PM
October 15, 2005
Rodchenko
The Rodchenko reading wasn't so much a reading as it was a dry narrative of Rodchenko's career. Though there wasn't much to read, the photographs of his work pointed to a clear vision of simplicity and structural integrity. It's as if he was stripping away every-thing, maybe even the thing itself to show the foundations.
That's why it was difficult for me to do this week's assignment. Every time I put something together, it seemed to be too much. I was overdoing it, providing to much detail or context and not exposing the underlying structure. My end result should have been viewed as a starting point, a foundation for many directions but I felt that my attempts were creating too much interference. The raw structure was no longer available.
I decided on a minimal structure composed of the hammer and sickle communist logo. Rodchenko's career is intertwined with the 1917 communist revolution. At the same time, I took the hammer and sickle apart so they would loose their combined imagery and rearranged them into an abstract structure. There are three columns, each comprised of two hammers and one sickle. The three components of each column are on pivots and can be titled in either direction. A movable structure, which with one turn conveys a different idea, moves away from the particular and into the realm of the abstract. It becomes a starting point for an idea. An opening, not a closing.
Posted by mb2811 at 06:25 AM
Motion Model
I've fallen behind a little bit on my notes. This was my project from two weeks ago, a three dimensional model of an apple being cut in half. The two sides of the apple are represented by sticks cutting through the center of each slice. I used chopsticks which were much cheaper than art supplies. The knife is made out of metal wire because it is not really there, it's the instigator of the cascading motion. The knife handle is superfluous for the motion but it does help show what is going on. When documenting pure motion it isn't always clear what is happening because you are documenting the movement and nothing else. The position of the blade is correct because the knife gets lower into the apple as it slices, but the handle doesn't fit in. I feel like it destroys the concept of time and makes this a stagnant model.
In class we moved into the constructivist. Jean-Marc told us about the history of the Smithsonian and discussed the conflict between a museum and a school. A museaum collects while a school must always create to make room for what's next. It's positive if you consider a school is about the process, not the result. We are here to learn, to create and make way for whomever comes next.
He also compared ITP to the Bauhaus. Maybe?
Posted by mb2811 at 06:12 AM
September 30, 2005
Rigidity of Fear
Stanislavsky's writings bring us back into and remind us of the wonder of our bodies. His exploration of motion continues a general push in this class to explore the beauty and power of the every day. The fantastic is very near at all times, magic and power. There is an encouragement to empower ourselves with what we have, to not feel like the answers lie elsewhere. The human experience is so strong that it affords us the ability to do absolutely anything we want. The process only requires effort and a re-connectedness. We have to move back from the distance we have created from our bodies and our minds.
The essay discusses how to undo the damage but it doesn't address how people end up the way they do. Not only their posture and their constricted way of walking but their general outlook. Is this like a subcounsious Harrison Bergeron? Is it that we have lost a context for our inner strength and run away from its power? Is it that it is not encouraged?
I also love the idea of the unbroken line that connects and is the definition of art. It's the connections between fragments which create meaning and beauty.
Posted by mb2811 at 02:19 AM
September 29, 2005
Apple Slice
For the first half of the motion assignment I decided to try to map out the motion of an apple being cut in half. The slice of the knife sends the apple halves in opposite directions. Curved, they end up wobbling back and forth until finally settling.
My knives are so dull that the force required to cut the apple in half sent the apple halves flying. I had to first cut the apple in half and then put the slices back together to simulate an apple being cut in half. Also notice that I covered the apple in thumbtacks to accentuate reference points.
The final segment, from release to no motion, lasted a little over four seconds. I had 16 sheets of plastic which came out to about eight frames a sheet. I proceeded to hold my sheets of plastic to the monitor and trace the apple. Lined portions are the outside of the apple, clear portions are the inside of the apple. As I proceeded I realized some segments were more interesting than others so some of the plastic sheets are less than 8 frames apart.
Below is a photo of the final stack of plastic sheets. I haven't figured out how I am going to spread them out but even flat on each other the motion is visible. Neat.
Posted by mb2811 at 02:24 AM
September 23, 2005
Bill Viola Reading
Bill Viola's "Statements" (1989 & 1985) overlap nicely with Marshall McLuhan, who I am reading for 'communications lab'. In my first few weeks @ ITP, i've found that there is a heavy overlap in all my classes, a strong common undercurrent that is driving all we do and everything we are striving for.
Viola mediates and zooms in on the conceptual delineations we take for granted until they fall apart and show themselves for what they really are, arbitrary. In different words, mimicking McLuhan, he is proposing a "medium of sense" which he calls experience. The true beauty is not in manifestations or implementations of experience but in experience as experience. Just as McLuhan isn't interested in light when it is used to perform brain surgery Viola isn't interested in hearing or vision, but the unified raw material that we call sense.
It may not be too far fetched to say that ITP as ITP is the medium, the true vision of emerging technologies. Classes and floor collaborations are only useful in that they allow us to travel back up and see the unified, originating whole.
Posted by mb2811 at 02:17 AM
Perspective Model
Updates: After talking about the model in class, some ideas:
- the box i used to take the model on the mta as part of the piece. a three dimensional postcard to the future. fifty years from now you would go to a place and open boxes to see what things looked like. or even now sending a 3-d postcard.
- don't be constrained by what the space looks like. it's all about what the lens sees. consider building a sphere so it's harder to see outside the space and putting mirrors on the ground so that there is more a wholeness and feeling of dimension.
- consider having someone voice over the space as you pan through it. the story of the space, tony talking about the block and growing up on it a la miranda july. or even take photographs of someone walking through the space so that they are in every shot. they are talking about themselves in the pictures.
For my perspective model I replicated the view from my stoop on 12th street in Brooklyn. I haven't spent much time on my stoop, i'm too busy running around, but people are out there all the time. Even as I write this I hear people on the stoop. It's a distinctly urban phenomenon that's new to me.
Some people live their lives from the stoop, in the same four block radius. The stoop and the view from it is their world. Personally, I think of it as a place you pass when you are coming home or going out into the world, not a place you stop.
For this assignment I thought I would slow down and stop on the stoop, take a look around. From the stoop I took photos all the way around. Since you are sitting you cannot see behind you and you cannot really turn your body, only your head. When you turn your head you are blocked off by the first floor apartment windows on both sides.
The model was implemented as an overlapping collage of two dimensional photographs. The cascade of fences, cars and building pass through the 270 degree arc. The street is blocked off my the buildings on the other side. You cannot see over them, the world from the stoop ends there. You can look up and see the possibility of some other place, but there is no actual manifestation, you are blocked off on all sides.
I'm excited to see what happens when we put a camera at stoop level. The photos look like a shtetl. Like they could be a set for an animation about ukraine before the war.
Posted by mb2811 at 12:54 AM
September 16, 2005
Light Box
For the first assignment, I built a light box. I cut holes in a foam core box and filled those holes with different colored gels. I took the pieces of foam core that I cut out and put them on pins inside of the box. I then shone an ikea desk lamp through the gels and recorded the light transition on a one chip camera that records to mini-dv. Anna did the camera work.
I did an ok job. The light changes did not appear too well on tape and I should have spent more time investigating the light and shadow transitions. I'm glad I took a camera out instead of just using the video option on my digital still camera. In class one of the neatest projects was a set that was actually a mirror reflection. The student filmed the reflection and to throw us off the trail he colored some of the mirror.
Posted by mb2811 at 10:17 PM
September 11, 2005
Noguchi Museum Visit
Reflections
This saturday, September 11th, I visited the Noguchi museum in Queens. The only cross town train to Queens from Brooklyn is the G which I have been told is best to avoid. I took the F from Brooklyn, which took me through Manhattan and back east into Queens. All roads here seem to lead through Manhattan like a star network cluster. To get anywhere reliably, you have to go through the center of the star.
The Museum is a still sanctuary situated within an industrial zone. The charm of New York, where the most wonderful thing can be hidden behind a pile of garbage. No one shopping at Cosco or fishing off the back pier had ever heard of the museum.
For me, the most enchanting part of the Museum was the first room and the outside garden. I've always enjoyed buildings that break the lines between inside and outside. Buildings that are turned inside-out, where the outside structure feels like you are inside and the "entering" makes you feel like you are coming outside. The first room, allowing nature to enter from all sides, helped the sculptures to become something greater than museum pieces. Without any barriers between the viewer and the piece (except for the 'do not touch the art' signs) the viewer exists alongside the sculptures.
The piece existing as is, without a roped of barrier, an artist statement or even a name leaves us with just the piece. The artist isn't meeting us half way with an artist statement or an idea of their personal intentions. We are alone with the piece and either it moves us or it doesn't.
With the initial experience in the front room, the rest of the museum was much less inviting. Although the pieces were powerful, they were enclosed within conventional walls, air conditioning and artificial light. Experiencing Noguchi's works as he intended them to be experienced is detrimented by the curators' attempt to preserve the pieces.
Noguchi's furniture on the second floor was very elegant, simple and functional. I especially liked the chair made of two wooden pieces at odds with each other. When an individual sits in the chair, the balancing structure that is the chair is reinforced as the individual is placing pressure on both pieces of wood in opposite directions.
Notes
Noguchi wasn't challenged by marble and moved onto granite and basalt. He sculpted by drilling small holes along the natural cracks of the rock. Then he would insert bamboo dowels and fill them with water. They would slowly expand and split the rock.
Posted by mb2811 at 10:53 PM