a social exchange :: reference

Unlike the static, labelled, fragmented, and contained space of...

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 12:37:36 -0400

Unlike the static, labelled, fragmented, and contained space of the West, the Japanese understand space in relation to time; it is an “emptiness or void that gains its form only in relation to unseen boundaries created by the activities performed in it.” Like the form of a stream, the form of spaces in a house is the result of process patterns. In fact, Kikutake Kiyonori has said that form is not merely the visible delineation of a space but is rather the total consideration of space plus function. Ma is constantly awaiting or undergoing transformation by the availability of physical components and potential uses.

This spatial philosophy implies fluidity and multivalence, by choreographing programme, space is imbued with time and is enriched.

Excerpts from Ritual and Space by Fred Thompson

"Be utopian. We want to build new worlds where fiction is reality and games form new grounds for..."

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 11:57:00 -0400

“Be utopian. We want to build new worlds where fiction is reality and games form new grounds for democracy. We want to encourage creativity, reflection and renew social behaviour. If space is made by dynamics of exchange, then everyone can be the architect of our world. Experiment. As architecture expands into an interdisciplinary field, new tools can be explored. our current recipe: marinate construction with video, music graphic design, photography and gastronomy, without forgetting to leave room for interaction, freedom, informality and unpredictability. Our projects are always in movement, based on interaction between people and their environment. We are here to incite you to be conscious of your environment. React and act.”

- studio EXYZT’s manifesto

"The city we love is that in which anything is possible, where there is still space for spontaneous..."

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 03:21:39 -0400

“The city we love is that in which anything is possible, where there is still space for spontaneous social, cultural and economic games. A city that resembles those who create and inhabit it. We defend the idea of architecture not as a simple act of design and build but as a tool that needs to be combined with other skills and practices to create new forms and strategies of building and living in the city.”

- alex romer, nicolas henninger, sara muzio on the southwark lido

southwark lido: changing the setting, changing politics Do...

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 03:03:00 -0400

southwark lido: changing the setting, changing politics

Do unexpected places create an impetus for unexpected encounters?” with this question Catherine Fiesschi opened her talk on inhabiting spaces and using them differently. “If we come out of our comfort zones does that entail that we find new words, new ways of engaging relationships?” Can we preserve public space and rethink ‘the public’ at the same time? We should think of enhancing the public, private, or political identity by using the space differently.

Southwark’s Lido shows how, within the context of an architectural festival, a physical temporary installation can create opportunities for overlap, encounters with the unexpected. It shows on a small scale how one can respond to real needs, and work within a real existing space. Architecture is here no more than a means, as the bar, the sauna and sundeck are. The objective is to create “space” and “place”; a real place where visitors, neighbours, politicians and artists mingle, meet, enjoy, talk, discuss and create – by doing so – public space again.

Dimitri Messu & Véronique Patteeuw

nytimes essay: relating to the city through the experience of architecture

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:56:24 -0400

nytimes essay: relating to the city through the experience of architecture:

‘I did not know until I came to New York how intimately you can relate to your streetscape and how personal and grounding experiencing architecture can be.’

‘It is hard to predict where the eye will focus and find meaning in this restless on-going spectacle of a city, but to make an intimate connection with the streetscape is a way of putting down roots, of asserting your presence in the world.’

New York State of Mind by Elizabeth Hawes

green screens » a technique for allowing two separate...

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:27:29 -0400

green screens » a technique for allowing two separate images to be composited together. green screens allow you to be one place and show that you’re somewhere else, creating a virtual environment in physical space.

THE URBAN LANDSCAPE POLE DANCE, Solid Objectives - Idenburg...

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 05:49:16 -0400

THE URBAN LANDSCAPE POLE DANCE, Solid Objectives - Idenburg Liu

Conceived as a participatory environment that reframes the conceptual relationship between humankind and structure, Pole Dance is an interconnected system of poles and bungees whose equilibrium is open to human action and environmental factors. Throughout the courtyard, groups of 25-foot-tall poles on 12 x 12-foot grids connected by bungee cords whose elasticity cause the poles to gently sway, create a steady ripple throughout the courtyard space. Each grid contains a number of playful activators, such as hammocks, pulls, misters, and rain collecting plants. An open net covering the entire scope of the grid system provides shelter and stabilize the movement of the poles, preventing them from exceeding a predetermined maximum pivot. A generous series of multi-colored balls move above the net offering mutable shade and the appearance of a communal game. Dropping down at two points, the net surrounds a pool and a sandpit.

Pole Dance includes an audio device that measures the motion of eight of the fiberglass poles and converts it to sound, which is audible in the courtyard and streamed live in 3d on poledance.so-il.org. In the passive state, movement is generated by wind moving the poles or net structure. As the audience begins to interact with elements of the structure by pushing, pulling, or shaking the poles or moving the balls or the net, modulated tones are generated, which have been specifically composed to blend with the sonic environment and bring harmony to the soundscape in and around MoMA PS1.

http://ps1.org/news/view/56/

the quality of the drawings that christo does for his &...

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:52:32 -0400

the quality of the drawings that christo does for his & jeanne claude’s projects - such as the gates in central park - involving fabric and the landscape are just so nice.

Et Sick In Infinitum (End is Forever) series; artist, Alastair...

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 09:18:10 -0400

Et Sick In Infinitum (End is Forever) series; artist, Alastair MacKinven

seen at the Saatchi Gallery, Newspeak: British Art Now exhibition

‘The scale of these works give the gallery a disorientating effect, overlaying MacKinven’s painted architecture on the experience of real space: as the viewers move around in the gallery their paths replicate the maddening maze in the images… These paintings were originally installed with handrails and grab bars that highlighted the viewer’s performance as they unwittingly took on the roles of Escher’s famous figures, eternally pacing a go-nowhere path and its metaphor for time’s passage and aging.’

Installation for 300 speakers, Pianola and vacuum; artist, John...

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 09:03:00 -0400

Installation for 300 speakers, Pianola and vacuum; artist, John Wynne

seen at the Saatchi Gallery, Newspeak: British Art Now exhibition

‘It uses sound and sculptural assemblage to explore and define architectural space and to investigate the borders between sounds and music. THe piece has three interwoven sonic elements: the ambient sound of the space in which it is installed, the notes played by the piano, and a computer-controlled soundtrack consisting of synthetic sounds and gently manipulated notes from the piano itself… this piece draws on notions of obsolescence and nostalgia, combining early 20th c technology and culture with a vast collection of recently discarded hi-fi speakers… The piece is site-specific, but it also carries traces of its own history: some of the synthetic sounds were created in response to the light industrial ambience of the work’s original location, some in response to its new site. THe mountainous formation of speakers, inspired by the recycling plant from which they were rescued, functions both visually and as a platform for the projection of sound, creating, ‘a soft balance between order and chaos, organization and its rupture’.’

a day out: as seen from the back left seat of the car [i...

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 04:10:00 -0400

a day out: as seen from the back left seat of the car

[i hadn’t been for a drive in a car in ages (almost forgot what it feels like) and as it also felt like summertime, i kept sticking my head out the window - so this is a result of that, snapshots of a day experienced through the motion of a car.]

on a sunday out to the english seaside we happened to see Antony...

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 03:55:00 -0400

on a sunday out to the english seaside we happened to see Antony Gormley’s Critical Mass sculpture installation on the roof of the modernist De La Warr Pavilion. set under the sky, against the blue sea it was quite impressive - though the feeling of discomfort and unease that was generated through the juxtaposition of living humans moving through the heavy, motionless body forms made me not want to linger around them but instead return to the ground and the water.

‘When applied to social issues, Critical Mass usually means the necessary level of density within a collective that allows for something transformative to happen…. There is also reference to the fact that most of us in the western world co-exist within carefully constructed urban matrices where the spaces between us are as significant as the walls that contain us.’

http://www.dlwp.com/WhatsOn/ExhibitionDetail.aspx?EventId=1188

The Pink Ghost was a ‘sculptural transformation’ of...

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 06:45:54 -0400

The Pink Ghost was a ‘sculptural transformation’ of the centre of the square with a ‘preservation’ stance. Made of pink epoxy, the installation enveloped four trees and a streetlight to a height of 2.5 metres and covered the entire surface of the small central square. While the covering work was being done, the architects cleverly ‘slipped’ about 20 chairs and five coffee tables under the resine, to turn this exterior urban space into an ‘interior’ lounge/salon situated outside, in a way that raises questions about the status of public space in the city.

"Architecture, we hope, is first of all a field of knowledge, and only then of action. Our hope is..."

Thu, 27 May 2010 06:08:50 -0400

“Architecture, we hope, is first of all a field of knowledge, and only then of action. Our hope is rooted in the judgement that actions are most constructive when informed by an idea that fits into a larger understanding of ourselves and the world. When we design and build, we demand that they embody such an idea of human experience and how it is enabled by the conception, design, and construction of space. Our existing knowledge is important, because it is the structure of what is already here. Architecture, like other fields, reveals the structure of the familiar. It remains only for us to see this structure as though it has not been seen before, freshly, as though for the first time. This is, I believe, the task of architects.”

- Lebbeus Woods

Lebbeus Woods: architecture of energy

Thu, 27 May 2010 06:06:00 -0400

The first task of experimental works of architecture and art is to stake out new points of view on what already exists. The second task is to test them.

The energy-systems view of the city and its life have strong political implications, in particular, regarding prevailing ideas of identity and, its corollary, property. Individuals, in such a view, are identified not so much by what they ‘own’ or who they ‘are,’ according the social roles they play, but by what they ‘do,’ how they interact with others, including the inanimate systems in their environment. In the same way, buildings, public spaces, and other forms of property can no longer be identified according to building types set by pre-determined economic and functional categories, but by how they perform in a landscape shaped by complex interactions. What architects do with their own initiatives or those of others seriously impacts networks of interacting human and other energy flows, as well as the energies latent in the city. Their ways of thinking and working need to integrate this reality more than they do at present. In doing so, the role of the architect will be transformed into a more expansive and more complex one in the evolution of the urban landscape. The identity of architects—like that for whom they design—will be based on the depth of their mastery of particular skills and knowledge, but at the same time, on their agility in engaging an urban field of continually changing conditions.

http://lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/architecture-of-energy/

Tino Sehgal, artist

Sun, 23 May 2010 15:41:00 -0400

Tino Sehgal (b. 1976, London) constructs situations that defy the traditional context of museum and gallery environments, focusing on the fleeting gestures and social subtleties of lived experience rather than on material objects. Relying exclusively on the human voice, bodily movement, and social interaction, Sehgal’s works nevertheless fulfill all the parameters of a traditional artwork with the exception of its inanimate materiality. They are presented continuously during the operating hours of the museum, they can be bought and sold, and, by virtue of being repeatable, they can persist over time.

http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/past/exhibit/3305

…Is it possible to be both playful and profound? Tino Sehgal is wagering yes. The moral earnestness that underlies his work would be ponderous if unleavened by humor; the games would be just child’s sport if they did not illuminate serious matters. The mixture can confuse people. At a meeting that Sehgal, on one of his human-quarrying forays, held last May with the administrators of a Harlem after-school program, he was pressed to explain what he aimed to accomplish in the Guggenheim piece. “The real deal is what happens there,” he said. “The real deal is the conversation.” For an educator who was trying to wean children from the cycle of poverty, this was palpably an unsatisfactory answer. He asked Sehgal again what was his goal. “It’s a structure to have a conversation about people’s values,” Sehgal said.

A little later in the discussion, the man returned to his theme. “So I guess you’re saying your ambition is to change perception,” he said. “Is that correct?” And this time, Sehgal took the bait.

“That’s a very simple way of saying what I’m doing,” he said. “For the last two or three hundred years in human society, we have been very focused on the earth. We have been transforming the materials of the earth, and the museum has developed also over the last two or three hundred years as a temple of objects made from the earth. I’m the guy who comes in and says: ‘I’m bored with that. I don’t think it’s that interesting, and it’s not sustainable.’ Inside this temple of objects, I refocus attention to human relations.”

This time the man nodded in understanding, with an expression I recognized. He was seeing things from another perspective, as he participated in a conversation within a framework constructed by Tino Sehgal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/magazine/17seghal-t.html?pagewanted=all

Sights Unseen, Julia Spicer

Thu, 13 May 2010 04:09:06 -0400

Julia Spicer recorded her journeys through the centre of London using a camera concealed in her backpack, capturing images at random along the way. A fictional correspondence with a reclusive film maker acts as a framing device for the work - Spicer appears to be following routes and ground rules set by an elusive auteur as part of an initiative test. This test required Spice to ‘reacquaint’ herself with her environment. The resulting images, abstract and fractured as they are, covey the reality of our everyday experience of a city, at ground level and on the move. There are no grand vistas and considered views; instead there are glimpses of details and textures that we frequently see without registering them at all.

Nights in this City/ sheffield 1995/ rotterdam 1997 diverse letters and fragments relating to a performance now past

Tue, 11 May 2010 05:28:35 -0400

ROTTERDAM

My love,

We are making a guided tour for this city and in trying to determine the route we are helped by many people who live and work here.

We start by asking them questions like:where is the tourist centre of the city, where is a rich neighborhood, where is a poor neighborhood, where is an industrial area?

But these boring question get teh boring answers they probably deserve. We do not find what we are looking for. We switch to another tactic. Richard and Claire are talking to one of our helpers. They ask her:

If you had killed someone and had to dump the body where would you take it?

If you had to say goodbye to a lover where in this city would you most like to do it?

Where in this city might be the best place for a spaceship of aliens to land?

This is what you might call our geography.

Sincerely yours -

Tim

Rotterdam

My love,

It is ten to eight and we are still struggling to fix the on-board microphone.

What a strange project this is, with its audience and performers inside a bus - slipping through the centre of its cities and out of control - off the beaten track, playing always to the difference between on-route and off-route, centre and periphery, with versions of truth both legitimate and illegitimate.

In the end perhaps it is simply a guided tour of the unremarkable, of the banal made special. The text we’ve created - pointing out buildings, street corners, car-parks, patches of wasteground - is always overlaid with other texts - with the whispered or even shouted texts of other passengers (‘That’s where I used to work… That’s the place where…’) and the silent text of actions created by those living and working in the city as the bus moves through it.

Sometimes it seems as if all we have to do is gesture to the windows and ask people to look.

Sheffield

My love,

did I say we’re writing over the city?

Perhaps I forgot to stress how important it is that the city itself resists this process. That, where we talk of magic there is simply an ugly dual carriageway, that the streets themselves have their own stories, cultures, politics. There’s no authority to what we do - it’s all partial, provisional, and often simply wrong.

In the end the city tells its own story, asks our passengers for theirs, resists or concurs with the story we are making - all resulting in a complex dialogue, bringing focus to the different histories written in urban space - the official historical, the personal, the political, the mythical and the imaginary. How can these things co-exist? And to whom do they belong? Perhaps those are our questions.

Tim

"This is one of the concerns of performance art - the reinvention of the art of action which is the..."

Tue, 11 May 2010 05:18:32 -0400

“This is one of the concerns of performance art - the reinvention of the art of action which is the art of the exercise. The exercise is not a drill done for some more obvious purpose. The exercise is done for itself. Doing something for itself is a very deep purpose. The exercise is action. And without action nothing made can be begun.”

- Anthony Howell and Fiona Templeton, Elements of Performance Art

Video Shakkei: Post-Performance Drawings

Fri, 07 May 2010 14:44:00 -0400

Video Shakkei: Post-Performance Drawings:

Kreider + O’Leary

Video Shakkei: Post-Performance Drawings

A series of drawings, as word-and-image composites, reflecting on the process and practice of site-specific performance and time-based drawing in Video Shakkei - a series of 14 performances or ‘live drawings’ enacted in locations throughout the Kansai region of Japan. There are five pieces in total, each produced directly on a wall panel of approximately 3m x 5m and interlinked in a vertically ascending space.

Drawing from the Japanese practice of shakkei, or ‘borrowed landscape,’ we visited a number of carefully selected sites in Japan – from ancient Shinto spaces of ritual in Ise to the hyper-futuristic Umeda Sky building in Osaka – to perform a sequence of actions or ‘live drawings’ in response to the spatial and material qualities of each location. The actions were recorded simultaneously from differing points of view using two hand-held and two miniature high definition video cameras. Edited together as a series of filmic composites modeled on the multi-scaled architectural drawing, the result is a series of hyper-digitized, absurdly choreographed and poetically rendered filmic images of place relating the landscape or architectural space to performed event, and this to narrative sequence.