November 04, 2005
Small Architectural Tour
Jean-Marc gave us a quick architectural tour of lower Manhattan, closest to Tisch. The building of the city were put in the context of the ideas we are playing with in spatial design.
We started out with the long, narrow buildings right across the street from the school. The ones that look like they might be out of the Triplets of Bellville. When they were built, the city stopped at the church in Union Square, everything north of that was farm land. The buildings were constructed in an old world style, where builders were taxed by the number of window. More windows meant more potential retail revenue, you could show more stuff to sell. The settlers here wern't taxed by each window but the custom remained.
Every building looks different depending on where it's inhabitants immigrated from.
The buildings are an "irrigation system of money". The first few floors are plain and purely for function. Industrial containers for stores and factories. The buildings are most ornate at the top where the owners usually lived. In this way the owners could pay for their habitation upstairs through the commerce downstairs. With this system, the renter had a direct relationship with the land owner. In the city's current incarnation, a couple of large, anonymous banks own all the land.
Down broadway is a skyscraper built by Cass Gilbert. It wasn't possible to build a skyscraper until after the elevator invented and the one in lower Manhattan was built soon after that. I think the one we saw was the Woolworth Building. The skyscraper was initially developed as a gothic church to bind the stretch of broadway to the other church in Union square but after it was built they realized it was a testament to the church of capitalism and not christ.
The subways are built in a vault, you can see it in how broadway has an arc to it. In the early 20th century people realized that utilities should be underground. The street became an abstraction instead of the only place to be. Now there was a down and an up instead of just a "there".
A lot of the basements of the buildings on Broadway extend under the road.
The subway went underground and there is very little concrete separating us from the vault underneath. Since the subways were also a utility, they are lined with tile, like a bathroom.
Also, in a tight city like Manhattan, you are always saving on space. You can see that in the 8th street N/R stop, where one side of the entrance is a building so you don't need railings on both sides. You can use a building as railing.
If you take a right at the N/R, you can see a small building which is a prototype of a skyscraper. It's more even, flat, straight and is more of an engineering feat than the buildings around it. No other buildings on that street have such a flat facade.
We moved down to Astor place, where the opera house used to be. The large building to the right is the Cooper Union School which was picked up and moved from the Bowery to realign the architecture of the city.
The Bowery used to be much more dangerous only twenty years ago, cities change quickly. NYU gave away housing with ridiculous leases in the eighties because no one wanted to live in Manhattan and now these people can lived their indefinitely with ridiculously low rents.
The big note/clock on the wall is from when the Fischer store was there, the Virgin Megastore of its time. People would buy sheet music there. Now the sign is a national landmark.
The building across from Cooper Union looks like it belongs in an Italian piazza. It was a prototype but the style never took off. It was too ornate, too old world.
Along Lafayatte you can see the pre depression opulence and the post depression practicality. In the parking garage, design is done on the cheap accentuating the interplay of brick arrangements.
There is an interesting building, the Bayard-Condict Building on Great Jones St built by Louis Sullivan. Sullivan was a mentor of Frank Lloyd Wright's. One of the first skyscrapers, it surges and looks to only be stopped by its roof. It isn't industrial and it doesn't announce itself, it's almost a building as poem.
Posted by mb2811 at 06:45 PM
September 29, 2005
Spacial Design: Week 3 Movement
As i'm working through the weekly projects I need to remember that the design process isn't a hit and run. It's important to remember where I am coming from and to reuse elements from previous projects.
The reading is Stanislavsky. Before Stanislavsky, acting was something just anybody could do. Actors would practice in hiding so that their secrets of technique would not be revealed. Stanislavsky's revolutionary ideas are the ones we take for granted. You may be a terrible actor but if you are a human being you should be able to learn how to act. You are an artist because you are human, you are in charge of your own destiny and can learn new things. The human experience is rich enough for you to relate to others, living is art.
We followed with a long discussion of Marey who studied motion pre-cinema. He used many methods, including multiple exposures on the same emulsion, to map out motion. With our technology it is much easier to emulate his work using video capture and frame by frame playback.
In studying and analyzing motion, look for something benign. The most common motions are the most interesting.
Think of Barneys like a gallery and consider Issey Miyake. He reminds me of a Will Self novel. His designs show the history of the motion of the cloth before it was turned into the garment.
Muybridge is a contemporary of Marey.
Posted by mb2811 at 03:10 AM
September 20, 2005
Week 2: Spacial Design
Bill Viola
This week's assignment is to consider perspective and to read Bill Viola. ITP is a descendant of Bill, his experimentation in the sixties with television and video is what we are doing now with new technology. Now people get video but they don't get ITP, interactive media. Viola is the grandfather of what we are doing in 'spacial design' and overall at ITP.
Forty years ago, television was a purely broadcast medium, there was no forum to react or re appropriate. Viola started by placing magnets on a television screen to manipulate the image, to make it his own. He came from an analog world and was the first to create video installation. He was one of the first to take cameras outside the studio. What was important was to create a relationship with the viewer instead of to reach a mass audience. The individual was what was most important. The viewer would be up against the television, crawling through a tunnel with televisions, a religious experience.
More importantly, Viola is an artist who writes. Reasons for knocking on an empty house. He writes texts about himself and the creative process. We must make him our Picasso (if Picasso did video).
This Week
Think about a place in terms of perspective, about what you can actually see. Consider obstacles, put your back against something and think about what you can see. Think about the physical space in between and what is around your line of sight. Turn your neck but not your body. Think about other people. The short, the tall, the fatigued, the wheel chair bound. What do they see? Think about throwing things, giving a physicality to the space. Not just a here and a there but also the in between.
Paleolithic and Magdalenian people lived thousands of years ago but we can recreate their environment by their trash cans. Their line of sight and how far they threw the bones of the animals they ate. Embrace and consider the everyday spaces you ignore.
Moments of Perspective
Link to different perspectives, especially Kieesler playing around with the concept of gallery space.
Posted by mb2811 at 01:19 AM
September 09, 2005
Spacial Design Week 1: Notes
My goal for this class is to explore and think critically about the third dimension. There are insights and perspectives everywhere of one cares to explore. For example, Manhattan, a metropolis on an island, has a culture of density. People find personal space in a crammed city and feel like kings when they are riding in a cab at four in the morning.
Light
There are two assignments. First, visit the noguchi museum. Of interest: the Japanese consider shadows independent of light, their own entity. They aren't a consequence of light but instead are complementary to light.
Secondly, create a box made of foam and push pins to analyze light. Videotape as you move a light source of your box to analyze how the light moves. Film the set as well as the shadows. Bring the model only if you want to. Consider:
Supplies
Otherwise
Urtech on Lafayette between 11th and 12th
Pearl Paint on the West side of Canal Street
Across from Pearl is Industrial Plastic
Home Depot / Lowes (Brooklyn)
Posted by mb2811 at 11:38 PM