transition 2 >

Currently experiencing transition between topics...please stand by...

this is my new favorite way to waste time...
ArtificialOwl

edward tufte: WAVEFIELDS
making "...statistical graphics worthy of the human eye-brain system"

HOUSES
^this is wierd, it's a font that is all floorplans of houses.

the narrative as architectural expression

When making an architectural proposal, it is important to make renderings to convey a sense of what a space will be like to be in, as a person. (duh) It's common for architects to put people in thier renderings. People... at wierd impossible scales...from different lighting conditions, different dpi's, resolutions- groups of people next to other groups of people pilfered from a variety of source images with drastically different original ambient conditions. I wouldn't want to be one of these rendering people, torn from thier natural photographic environment, lazily traced with a lasso and forced into occupying some theoretical plaza with dimensionally alien strangers, awkardly posed, carrying on a conversation with no one. What a sad and awful existence. The point is, the images are taken out of context and therefore removed from the story that can be read from all the subtle information originally surrounding it. That's one advantage that a cinematic expression of architecture can have: a narrative. Some of the most beautiful and lucid architectural expressions are in film. Not only because of the movement through a space, but also because characters help to explain a fundamental dimension of an architecture that is performative as opposed to temporally static renderings. I think this is important. this is one of my favorite renderings ever ( not godzilla - below) mostly for the content i will admit (give me a cactus and a pink building and i'm happy) its by labtop who make these incredibly beautiful renderings, i love thier work. but i am so disturbed by the presence of this little man in a purple suit sitting behind the cactus. it seems like he was just stuck in there last minute for scale or something. its sort of related to this topic of narrative as architectural expression, because i just keep thinking if was more enveloped in the scene, his presence wouldn't disrupt the fantasy so much. if he was engaged in some kind of narrative within the frame it would make more sense. i guess thats my point.

"GUILLAUME BIJL, I LOVE YOU" - Taryn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mESmd-Yx4o4




WTF?

"We Are Here! We Are Here! We Are Here!"

Olivo Barbieri is an artist from Italy who lives and works in Milan. His work 'focuses' on architecture and urban environments, industrial /post-industrial landscapes, transportation infrastructure and stuff like that. Barbieri takes aerial photographs using a tilt-shift lens, and that produces the effect of making the very large look very small. A cityscape will look like a model of a city. Cars look like model cars. People look like scalar figures. His work has an instant 'cool' factor, because you as the viewer have that special moment when you realize...it's not so small at all! An accessible gimmick like this in the art world is enough to get you some props at the local biennale, but I think this work is not so easily dismissed. I think the images are really beautiful and I would like to use this technique myself for architectural projects. A friend of mine said that he thought they 'looked like someone's memory'. I think that might be because the images take a huge public space and make it intimate and personal - a little distorted and saturated. Not sure. They are quite beautiful though, compositionally speaking, and even after the initial "Oh, right", I still keep staring.

Top Left: Site Specific New York, Above: Site Specific Las Vegas 05, Site Specific Las Vegas.

new semester, new font...

this blog was originally a workspace for an independent study course that i was taking last fall. the course is over, but i still have this blog, and i'm not willing to part with it yet, so the theme of the blog is going to radically mutate into a more open-ended 'current issues in architectural representation' theme. that way i can continue exploring some of the ideas that came up in the fall as well as bring new topics to the table. i still need a new name for it though and i am willing to entertain suggestions. some of the themes i would like to discuss are 'film as architectural expression', and, 'cad vs hand drawing', amongst others. OK GO!

Hmm, Cloud Computing

Cloud computing suggests that the nature of personal computers will change due to remote storage of data. Individual pcs wont actually have much storage capacity - well they could but why would you need to? Since all of your stuff: work, music, movies, photos, software, grocery lists, etc., will be stored in a beautiful virtual cloud of data known to many as 'the internet'. My life is kind of like that already. I dont actually keep much on my own computer, only stuff that I want to keep out of the public (rick astley mp3's) its just easier to keep stuff in some mysterious location and google apps are way too convenient. So then a pc would lose a large part of its program or content, and is more like this, conceptually speaking -

















just an access point or window into a larger thing. Does that make it more like furniture or something? And then what happens when you do THIS???!!!
well, let's not go there. Its just kind of interesting to think about what your computer would look like if it were designed specifically with cloud computing in mind. I would like to know what Steigler would think about cloud computing as an infinitely abstracted model of the 'note to self'. It reminds me of one of my favorite Wittgenstein thoughts from Philosophical Investigations that talks about an obtuse triangle. (I dont have the book with me so I dont have the exact quote right now, but I'll try my best to sound like a mediocre German translation...) 'If you take a drawing of an obtuse triangle and cut it out of the paper, pick it up, turn it over in your hand, and put it back down again, you end up with the mirror image yes? In the same way, if you take a glove for the right hand, brought it into the 4th dimension and replaced it back into the 3rd dimension, the glove would then fit on the LEFT HAND...
As you could imagine, this totally blew my mind when I was 15, lying on my bedroom floor listening to Pink Floyd, high, pondering the strange little gloves that floated around in the air peeling the posters off the walls before they melted... Ah Nostalgie!

I guess I'd better start wrapping this thing up soon. But, the more I read on this topic, the more sources I find and it keeps getting more interesting. For instance, I have a whole new reading list for the next week ( like, as if thats going to happen during finals, pffff) that includes the likes of Mcluhan, Felix Ravaisson, Manuel Delanda , Boudoin and of course more Adorno, amongst others. I've opened up a whole can of philosophers. But i think that I have found enough to support the original proposal, or at least to start talking about the subject without sounding like a complete moron. If I remember correctly, the original proposal was to investigate if there is a larger social and cultural signifigance to the aesthetics and design of commonplace technological devices like laptops, wherein we can find the opportunity to quantify an individuals' agency with technological devices as defined by Steigler and exemplified by activities like the Maker's Faire. The significance being, the degree of user-consciousness, situated in the current condition that is massive industrial externalisation of memory/ collective knowledge. Ehchem. The proliferation of this ( hold on I'm going to make a new word here) hypermnemotechnology ( aaahahahaha) means it is essential to analyze how the physical interface affects agency, how the marketing strategy slash social/cultural associations affect agency and the relationship between those two things. More...

Would your conversations be different if this was your phone?

( referring to the last post...) I like this idea for a couple of reasons. This is like a model of the transition from an industrial to knowledge based economy. Essentially, photography was a major step towards the commodification of images; the contemporary manifestation of this is the commodification of intelligence. Elizabeth's observation is consistent with Steigler's discussion of the industrial externalization of memory for this reason. It could be said that Apple computers jumped the gun in the aestheticization of the externalized memory/ knowledge, and in fact has instigated the process of commodification* of the mnemotechnical device. ( I have yet to make a Bourdieu post about aesthetics and social class, but it's coming don't worry) And again, to draw a comparison to the other laptop option, the generic pc. The nature of its assembly as a product is in most cases so fractured and rhizomatic that it is resists comprehensive commodification as a product. Steigler insists that it is our duty to become increasingly assertive agents of our own humanity (whoa) in dealing with the industrial externalisation of memory. This is because of the level of complexity and sheer capacity of commonplace technology, where we now witness this externalization at a totally crazy huge scale. So the question I would like to propose is: what effect does the commodification of this technology have on our ability to remain concious agents, as desired by Steigler, when the aim of the culture industry is usurp our agency?

*commodification as situated in Adorno and Horkheimers ideas outlined in 'The Culture Industry'

My very good friend, who I will refer to as 'E.K.', shared an insight with me the other day as we were drinking some very fine turkish coffee in a neighborhood diner. E.K said that it had occurred to her that, just as painters and the public ceased to be interested in representational painting at the advent of photography, so too are people now not interested in rational thought at the advent of the computer....

HMMM..............

The concept of individuation used by Steigler is largely constructed by Gilbert Simondon, who was part of the generation of French philosophers earlier than him. His writings also influenced Deleuze to some degree. Simondon is criticised by Steigler for not bringing the discussion of individuation and technicity(?) together in a comprehensive manner. BUT, Simondon does have all kinds of other off-the-wall stuff to say about robot slave armies and the like - this could possibly be just a mutation from when it was translated - I hope that's not the case. I had a hard time in isolating the best part of this essay so I have included a link to the whole thing that I found online, ( oh yes) and, a link to some definitions of the terms he uses.

From:
"On The Mode of Existence of Technical Objects"
by Gilbert Simondon

"Culture is unbalanced because, while it grants recogniton to certain objects, for example to things aesthetic, and gives them thier due place in the world of meanings, it banishes other objects, particulary things technical into the unstructured world of things that have no meaning but do have a use, a utilitarian function. Faced with such a marked defensive negative attitude on the part of a biased culture, men who have knowledge of technical objects and appreciate thier significance try to justify their judgement by giving to the technical object the only status that today has any stability apart from that granted to aesthetic objects, the status of somthing sacred. This, of course, gives rise to an intemperate technicism that is nothing other than idolatry of the machine and, through such idolatry, by way of identification it leads to a technocratic yearning for unconditional power. The desire for power confirms the machine as a way to supremacy and makes of it the modern philtre ( love potion). The man who wishes to dominate his fellow creates the android machine. He abdicates in favor of it and delegates his humanity to it. He tries to construct the thinking machine and dreams of being able to construct the willing machine or the living machine, so that he can lag behind it, without anxiety, freed from all danger and exempt from all feelings of weakness, while enjoying a vicarious triumph though what he has invented. In this case, then, once through an imaginative process the machine has become a robot, a duplicate of man, but without interiority, it is quite evidently and inevitably nothing other than a purely mythic and imaginary being."

http://nsrnicek.googlepages.com/SimondonGilbert.OnTheModeOfExistence.pdf
http://fractalontology.wordpress.com/2007/11/28/a-short-list-of-gilbert-simondons-vocabulary/
http://speculativeheresy.wordpress.com/2008/10/06/translation-chapter-1-of-simondons-psychic-and-collective-individuation/

It's 4am...
Disindividuation...liquidated desire...libidinal economy...oooh, Exciting!

From: 'The Disaffected Individual in the Process of Psychic and Collective Disindividuation'
'The Hypermarket'
by Bernard Stiegler


"The political economy of spiritual value is that of the libidinal economy—where value is in general only worth something for one who desires it. It is only worth something inasmuch as it is inscribed in the circuit of desire, of one who only desires what remains irreducible to the commensurability of all values. In other words, value is only worth something inasmuch as it evaluates what has no price. It cannot, therefore, be completely calculated: there is always a remainder, which induces the movement of a différance, through which alone can be produced the circulation of values, that is, their exchange—value is worth something only to the extent that it is inscribed in the circuit of individuations and transindividuations which can only individuate singularities.



But in the hyperindustrial political economy, value must be completely calculable; which is to say, it is condemned to become valueless—such is its nihilism. The problem is that it is the consumer who not only is devalued (for he is evaluated, for example, by the calculation of his “life time value”) but who equally is devalorized—or, more precisely, he is disindividuated. In such a society—which liquidates desire, desire which is, however, energy, libidinal energy—value is what annihilates itself and, with it, those who, evaluating it, are themselves evaluated. This is why it is society as such which appears finally to its members, themselves devalorized (and melancholic), as being without value—and this is also why society fantasizes its “values” that much more noisily and ostentatiously, “values” which are only deceptions, compensatory discourses, and consolations. Such is the lot of a society which no longer loves itself."

Phew, what a downer! I feel compelled to provide some entertainment. Here's one of my favorite Dylan Moran clips! :)

Foucault talks about the notion of 'Biopower'. It is the extraction of a model from a condition and the re-application of this model onto another subject as a means of categorization and greater understanding of conditions through a reduction of complexity. An example of this would be almost any medical diagnosis. This idea in philosophy doesn't necessarily have negative connotations but does act as a model to describe the use of reduction of complexity to assert power in an abstract sense.

From Atelier Van Lieshout...
I was just about to make this very same thing and then i discovered they did it first. hmph.


"Bonnefantopia, 2003

Inspired by Sportopia, Bonnefantopia was made for Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht. Despite the similarities with its noble predecessor, Bonnefantopia is more domestic and features both a kitchen sink and a cosy bed. Three fibreglass Michelangelo figures inhabit the installation: one is vomiting in the kitchen sink, another is hanging over the scaffolding, and the third is lying on the floor. While the historical Michelangelo slaved away on the Sixtine Chapel, these fallen followers show what happens when men become the slaves of machines or systems. "

^god this makes me so happy

Collection Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht

Zizek on Zombies (just because)
from: 'Madness and Habit in German Idealism:Discipline between the Two Freedoms'

"The shift from Aristotle to Kant, to modernity with its subject as pure autonomy: the status of habit changes from organic inner rule to something mechanic, the opposite of human freedom: freedom cannot ever become habit(ual), if it becomes a habit, it is no longer true freedom (which is why Thomas Jefferson wrote that, if people are to remain free, they have to rebel against the government every couple of decades). This eventuality reaches its apogee in Christ, who is "the figure of a pure event, the exact opposite of the habitual". [1] Perhaps, this Hegelian notion of habit allows us to account for the cinema-figure of zombies who drag themselves slowly around in a catatonic mood, but persisting forever: are they not figures of pure habit, of habit at its most elementary, prior to the rise of intelligence (of language, consciousness, and thinking). [2] This is why a zombie par excellence is always someone whom we knew before, when he was still normally alive – the shock for a character in a zombie-movie is to recognize the former best neighbor in the creeping figure tracking him persistently. (Zombies, these properly un-canny (un-heimlich) figures are therefore to be opposed to aliens who invade the body of a terrestrial: while aliens look and act like humans, but are really foreign to human race, zombies are humans who no longer look and act like humans; while, in the case of an alien, we suddenly become aware that the one closest to us – wife, son, father – is an alien, was colonized by an alien, in the case of a zombie, the shock is that this foreign creep is someone close to us…) What this means is that what Hegel says about habits has to be applied to zombies: at the most elementary level of our human identity, we are all zombies, and our "higher" and "free" human activities can only take place insofar as they are founded on the reliable functioning of our zombie-habits: being-a-zombie is a zero-level of humanity, the inhuman/mechanical core of humanity. The shock of encountering a zombie is not the shock of encountering a foreign entity, but the shock of being confronted by the disavowed foundation of our own human-ness."

*I Heart Adorno*

What follows is a brutal attempt at an interpretation of Adorno and Horkheimer's 'the culture industry', by an *architecture student*. My apologies in advance to smart people. In the event that you are a smart person reading this, you may wish to stop now and look at this instead.
























So the idea is - that western pop culture is in the business of transforming creative cultural expression into commercialized, standardized, easily consumable items that are mass produced, affordable and accessible to most people. This is BAD. (so says Adorno, but personally, i just couldn't LIVE without my kit cat clock! ) This is BAD for a couple of reasons. First of all, Adorno says that 'the culture industry' has undermined the working classes' will to overthrow Capitalism. Perhaps that would be okay if the standardized, mass-produced items of pop culture fulfilled actual needs, but really they are consumed in order to satisfy a desire created by the industry itself. OUCH. And on top of that, Adorno says that indeed there are actual needs, such as 'individual creative expression' and 'genuine happiness', and that the fulfillment of these things is never ever met because of the distractions of such convenient diversions! SHIT! It doesn't end there. The culture industry also rationalizes its existence based on its use value, where supposed benefit is derived from its utility, and THAT is the proof of the industry. And as we all know... " A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It's a proof. A proof is a proof, and when you have a good proof, it is because it is proven." - Jean Chretien.