8.4.11

make it a great wknd

to stimulate everyone's start of weekend, , , ,
the incomparable janet... ms. jackson if ya nasty. (from janet's design of a decade: 1986-1996. her best years.)


*video as inspiration/starting point for the collective's next photoshoot
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14.3.11

collective bloggin' through a ggl doc.date and time NOW.

click the link above to access the document at any time to see who has been chatting about what.  you can use the boxes in the spreadsheet to have real-time conversations with whoever is online accessing the document.  or, you can respond later to what has been stated previously.
the idea is to create a spacial organization for the conversation.  As of now, there are no set rules.  As you have conversations, you can add new rules or modify existing ones.  Just list these decisions within the matrix itself!  Even if you have just a couple of minutes to try it out, go for it!  It will help a lot with the project!



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17.2.11

where's my purse?



it's time to pay a visit to LATENT CITY. it's the studio blog of the 3rd installment of the su soa's transdisciplinary media studio, a collaborative design studio that encourages the use of new techniques in digital media. this work is the result of the first workshop with mclain clutter, who developed these techniques along with mark linder in a past GIS workshop. what you see above is a TIN or TRIANGULAR INTERPOLATED NETWORK of data collected from census data in syracuse, ny.
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14.2.11


putting the fol[lie] back in the portfolio. this time, i'm playing games. this is an abusurd version of techniques for the new portfolio that will be equal parts work, play, and questions about portfolio-ness. think coloring book, think magazine, think look-book. Continue

one soon feels oneself shut in by impermeable layers of silence


preferable watch with no sound. this was a installation in reaction to reading light in japanese architecture by henry plummer.
i loved this book, here is an excerpt directly related to the work.

'the succession of thresholds, & their rapid arrival
& departure, are given added emotional impact by the alternation colors, the lavish reds echoed by complementary greens, just as the rising up of spring is echoed by the pulsing blood in human beings. each gate is a blood red birth of what is to come and the blood red death of what has been, forming a long chain of sudden initiations and sudden endings, flickering hot & coldso that a walk uphill is a blur of lifetimes....
the whole of life is an endless flow of resurrections, ceaseless yet always changing like a river, its separate moments impermanent & wave like, a series of footsteps along the Way.
whiteness purify & bleaching the retina, cleaning the imagination. This prelude refreshes the eye & heart with a numbingly while extinction of color, yet just at this empty moment reconnects us to the sparkling sea far in the distance. Every pore of space is inhabited with colred mist overflowing like vessells that can hold no more.'
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12.2.11

another snippet of long poem...

XIV. Biking Barcelona

I borrow a bicycle from my landlord who lives

in the apartment above mine, a single mother

with a little girl who feels sorry for me in one breath


and envious in the other. She says I should bike

up to Mont Juic, see the stadium, she says, maybe Miro,

but instead I decide to bike further into the city,


planning a route up to Gracia to see a Chillida sculpture

in Creueta del Coll , an abandoned quarry turned park,

because today I feel like moving in, towards something,


and I am tired of swimming in my own black pools

of rock. At first I am clumsy on the bike, which is large

and orange, a beach cruiser you might see older couples


use, biking side by side to town from their summer

rentals on the coast of South Carolina, but the sidewalks

of Barcelona are not the wide effortless walks


of Sullivan’s Island or Folly Beach. They are thin,

packed with people walking briskly to work, to lunch,

to H&M to shop, infinite black and white bodies,


women in suits, students grungy and unbathed flying

down the uneven pavers on skateboards, and there is me,

an American woman feeling large and out of place,


weaving the deep streets, black creeks ruled with buildings

rising up like cypress trunks, on an orange bike like a horse

I cannot tame. What a long road this is. The wheels clop


against deep ruts in the blacktop, and I hold my breath

clenched in my jaw as I weave through people in my way.

The smell of urine passes up from the stone gutters,


and dark stains seep down the sides of buildings

like the roots of a tree spreading across the ground.

There is a break in the thick wall, a garden caged


in the alley, and when I look in, it is black and loud

with the chattering of cats, lapping up stale meat

on broken chairs and abandoned couches.


They are thin-bodied beasts, multiplying like the hidden

faces of children peeking around a corner, prisoners

stalking each other in the dark. I smell dead fruit and blocks


of lamb rotting in a trash pile outside of the market,

my neck is burning, wet, and I am sweating through

my thin button-up blouse as I pass the MACBA, white


against a black ground, a blue sky, whose front square

has become a haven for skaters, the homeless young,

and students sketching furiously, or studying on flat,


minimalist benches under the hot Mediterranean sun.

A young homeless man approaches me from behind

and taps me on the shoulder. I loose my balance,


the bike sways, my basket rattles, and the weight

of my bag falls to one side. I am gasping for air,

and he is laughing hysterically, the sound of a crying


bird, his dirty face distorted, wormy in the sun.

He is wearing a dark winter coat inside out

although it is summer, and this makes him look


like a large bull hovering in the square, blocking

my path. He is yelling something I can’t understand,

a loud caw, to his audience of half sleeping homeless


men and women, piled against the white tile finding

shade from its protruding end, and two of them

are making out, their thick hands around each other,


tongues moving in and out of mouths crusted over

from heat and drool. I am a bloated body on display

choking on my own fear like a toy knife, tears


in my throat, I pedal faster, hearing voices,

a bit of wind, and the echo of his laugh

behind me, rising up into the cloudless sky.

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6.2.11

Find me the cheapest Monticello Roman Typeface suite and win a cookie (I will even mail said cookie). I must have it.  Continue

3.2.11

Tele-Evangelism Quote of the Day
I called on Jesus! I called on Jesus! Well, first, I called Charter, but then I Called Jesus! 02/03/11 9:38am, transgendered preacher to interviewer 


vote here: http://challenges.core77.com/contests/powers-of-10/ideas/623 Continue
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On more fun than you have time for.
Just google
lasers and cats.


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2.2.11

31.1.11

sound.city


documenting the character and diveristy of dt syracuse through sound mapping for this year's Transdisciplinary Media Studio (TdMS). using a sound/art/internet project called radio aporee. i'd encourage everyone use the search function to browse sounds of the places they've been/are/miss. you can set up an account with them (it's free, and fast) and begin to document your locals with sound. Continue

40 years of layered maps of St. Louis, from the late 1800s to the 1930s. If you zoom in, you can see how the streets seem to tumble over each other as each map tries to make up for the previous' discrepancies. For the first phase of my studio this semester, I'm mapping the engineering work the city funded over 100 years to change the River des Peres from a clean river into a veritable sewer that flows straight into the Mississippi.

The photos are samples of the industrial area that borders part of the river.

More to come!
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24.1.11

Form and Medium. [notes on the picture plane].

"...flattening out and pressing together the fictive planes of depth
until they meet as one upon the real and material plane which is the actual surface of the canvas;
where they lie side by side or interlocked or transparently imposed upon each other."


Greenburg. [Towards a Newer Laocoon]
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savannah flip book from Dylan K. H. Thomas on Vimeo.

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22.1.11

honorary collective correspondent alejandro has just relocated to buenos aires. 
already, he is scouting brutalism and other rarities for our analysis! 

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15.1.11

BOOKBOUNCE


I took a class last semester called Reconsidering the Margin: Creative Practice on the Fringe. The main thrust of the class was to ask what the relationship is between architecture and society, and whether marginal architecture (which challenges the definition of architecture as habitable structure) speaks more to marginal cultures than traditional architecture does. We considered "marginal cultures" to be minority cultures, ostracized sub-groups of majority cultures, activists, etc. Our readings covered discussions of the rise, fall, and current transformations of suburbia, and the writings of social and spatial theorists like Lefebvre, Soja, Jane Jacobs, bell hooks. It's the best class I've ever taken.

The last third of the semester involved proposing a project -- not necessarily architectural -- to improve a problem in a low-income community on the outskirts -- the margins -- of Saint Louis. We spoke with the mayor and other town leaders, who poured out their concerns about their small community, Pagedale.

My teammate and I focused on educational concerns. Children in Pagedale loose interest in reading as they enter middle-school, and their performance drops noticeably. By installing "branded" shelves throughout the community, we proposed to distribute age-appropriate books in dispersed locations, encouraging the process of discovery in learning. The project uses non-profit book-trading programs like The Book Thing in Baltimore as precedents for a book-trading program in the community that fosters involvement toward a long-term donation system.

Community members can sign in the books that they take or donate. A posted "Wish-List," compiled by Pagedale's middle school would include required books for classes, relieving any burden that some parents might have in purchasing their children's books. Start-up locations for the project include the middle school's front office, the post-office, and the local grocery store.
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13.1.11

quiet observance of a memory as it fades (final cut)

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it's going to be a gospel year. evidence #1
For some time, my principle meditations were devoted to the application of the analysis transcended from the theory of ambiguity. It involved seeing a priori, in a relationship between quantities and transcendent functions, which exchanges might be possible, which quantities could be substituted for that data, without the relationship ceasing to exist.  Evariste Galois to Auguste Chevalier, Paris, 29 May 1832. qtd. in Mulazzani, Marco, Luigi Moretti: Forms in Space
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6.1.11

a taste of my long poem...Prayers from Catalonia

XVIII.

When the night opens its maw, I need a cigarette,

and my neighbors aren’t home or won’t answer their doors

so I walk to the corner bar where I can get a drink


and change for the cigarette machine. I thought about calling you

and I almost did, but the act of picking up my cell phone

turned the inside of me into a hollow temple, my heart


the abandoned deity, and I held the phone in my hands

for a long time palming it as if it were cold to the touch,

and I stood in the hallway outside my apartment door,


bent over to make my shadow longer, counting

the floor tiles covered in darkness, but I couldn’t dial.

I wouldn’t know what to say anyway, that it’s been months


and it still feels like I’ve been bulldozed and buried,

that I weep for the thick scent of your neck, to trace

the base of your thumb with my fingers, to peel


my damp body from yours after sleep one more time,

but there are too many days of dry wind between us,

the flood that swept the seed away, there is you


crossing the room like a picture sliding down the wall,

you pulling away from me, and my body folding

farther from you. I take my pack of cigarettes back to my apartment


and open the wide window so I can sit on the ledge and listen

to the fights of lovers echoing in the courtyard. We used to do this

when we first started dating and I had an apartment downtown


with a wide window like this one. We’d lie still against each other

in my small bed and listen to the cars passing and people stumbling

home, some laughing, some fighting, and I’d fall asleep


to the sound of your breathing and the moving street. Now,

I try to imagine you with another woman, your chest wet

with the sweat of her thighs, the impression of her mouth on your heart.

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24.12.10

texFUR

So this is the material fringe project. A few sheets of newspaper are folded together then fed into a shredder creating varying lengths of fringe. They are then assembled together to create a sheet of varying fringe lengths that create a grade of fluff. The structure is just used as an armature. It is essentially a torqued tent frame.

The idea is to utilize material, color, texture and light to enhance sensibilities of space. It is more of a reaction to purist, Modernist ideas about material working from the "decor" of 80s postmodernism and into building cosmetics. Eisenman vs. Herzog and de Meuron.


Pictures coming soon. however here are some diagrams to keep you busy.


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