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Ed Keller said...
__ LEAH
film: La Haine :: does it matter? It's not the fall but the landing
film: Battle of Algiers :: relationship of individual to mass
energy transfer; personal choice: entropy like model; possible loss of individual, but information/energy is transferred to collective
tracking changes in awareness in Battle of Algiers: transfer to collective
film: 4 Days in September :: kidnapping, but forms a cyclic system
film: Battle of Algiers: mapping of changes in system over time and coincidences between events and overall state of the system
also: mapping of casbah vs. french quarter, the border crossing
checkpoint/border/inbetween zone
conditions of control: constant surveillance; congestive points, priviliged acess, etc
hierarchies of control/flows plus ID of materials that work [and how]
Borders: moments of pause in the environment
film: Joint Security Area-barrier area Korean DMZ
US and Mexico border; wall conditions; Google Earth view of station
comments
CHRIS: any border have insurrection?
LEAH: any border is representative of points of clashing
that place where one can clearly see the conflict.
power relationship, one side can have upper hand... not the moment of
insurrection but has tension
CHRIS: can create easier than other situations?
Can you find a way to define how any border might be more prone to conflict than any other situation? What about former EU borders, countries that recently become members...
Drive from Romania to Germany, interesting how on the same highway leaving Rom. border which is very tight; then Hungary less stringent then nothing at Germ/Austria
EZIO: materiality of border, and how you can manipulate that threshold: but also you have to define what kind of intensity and what magnitude allow for insurrection to happen. So, there are rules for trespassing, but also rules for what kind of intensities, etc. And that is the entropy.
ED: need to be taking strong position about what you feel is an insurrection and what value can be gained from one. it seems that a general model of the concept of insurrection could apply across many scales and systems. EG phase transitions in material systems.
Also taking a position vis. said insurrection with specific materialities in mind would help to articulate the project. What border conditions become real catalysts for a change of the system?
___________
____CHRIS B.:
every insurrection contains degrees of uncertainty
Evasions...evasion has a system of inlligence embedded wiithin- unlike escape
Scale variations within insurrections.
Looking at micro level- system in an individual.
films: PASSENGER, MULHOLLAND DRIVE
what power reaches beyond evasion
split of person, forces causing extensive strain; splintering
avatar: can be an it, not just a he / she
film: PASSENGER-- timeline- 3 stages of a self insurrection
splits, the forces which allow character to develop and make evasions
Locke become Robertson- event in film, postbox, memories of prev. life
notation showing areas of compression, foreshadowing
film: MULHOLLAND DRIVE: an insurrection that occurs without awareness
'entropic system that terminates as it splinters inward'
modeled as a closed system
also model of a machine- bending moments, shimming materials- a dynamic system
REAL SITES: also studying
Pentagon 9/11, also Waco Texas, Columbine
comments
LEAH: how did you construct the 3D graphs?
decisions, etc?
CHRIS: figural way to understand knotting process
ED: yep. there's a difference between a general 'image' of a type of system,
vs. a diagram/scripted model.
CHRIS: either way, no matter who is responsible, it's still an insurrection...
IVA: so, is the conspiracy theory like the split personality in Mulholland Drive? [laughter]
EZIO:
not sure yet how the forces diagrams are used yet in other situations outside film analysis. I think that would help you abstract the rules of your system.
CHRIS: Maybe diagram is not so much a mapping but a grid to snap the rules onto.
ED: yep. you have to be able to abstract the rules so they can apply to other systems
Right now you have a map of certain events in a timeline but you haven't chosen how those events could
be changed to change the overall outcome; or, what components of any given event would have to be changed.
Also, the drawings are functioning primarily as analysis tools, not generative or predictive tools.
__________
___IVA:
Pressure. moments of insurrection or reaction to pressure; behaviors
-stepping out of system
film: THX1138... system where means of control work/consume/sedation/TV/church
_trigger/catalyst: Love, only possible after stopping sedatives
_punishment/prison/escape
_cost benefit analysis: cost of chase exceeds benefit of capture....
film: BRAZIL
split of personality, under pressure a system shears
compression shear
split
schizophrenia
--fear, terror, terror as game
-- the fly effect [as opposed to butterfly effect]
--'extraordinary rendition'
--escape out of system [only mental]
-modes of insurrection METAMORPHOSIS: KAFkA
-- reference points are lost
transition like a gas under pressure can become liquid
inversion of El Lissitzky- burst out/burst in
white army insurrection, the 'red wedge'
Possibly applying all these within another system such as a tectonic plates fault area. Also considering pressure valve. Insurrection happens when there is no possibility for an escape.
CHRIS: Kafka, in all his works is interested in the idea of escape. Particularly in
AMERIKA, the whole story is a system of escapes and evasions. Or, 'Letter to my Father', ultimately character cannot deal with pressure of a situation.
ED: you need to model all these ideas with something more visual/abstract- for example how the fly effect becomes related to a concept of pressure. All the ideas are very clear but you have not formalized them in any way. I use the term formalized in an abstract sense- not SHAPE, but formal logic, which does indeed have a shape, but only in that the shape of the system is able to index some aspect of the behavior of the system. ElLissitsky example is a good one- that is almost purely semiotic even though
by changing the direction there's a vague implication of change of performance.
_________
__ INGRID
definition: insurrection
insurgo - to rise up; increase in power or force
guerilla- from spanish, little war
Case studies: three kinds of guerillas
__Spain: independence from Napoleon
__Artistic Guerilla
__Marketing Guerilla
SPAIN: Napoleon conquering Spain
good at open field battles
Juan Martin Diez, farmer become Guerilla
in open field two defeats, then moves to river area.
diagrams of battles; pressure people were suffering: lack of money, no control,
and moral pressure; with small amount of pressure can produce a rebellion
How a trajectory of army can be altered, due to forces of group in the territory and the intensity of the territory itself.
Ultimately Napoleon withdrew, because the local knowledge of the territory gave them great advantage.
ART GUERILLAS: guerilla girls
MARKETING GUERILLA: focused attacks on consumers, not using big display of force, not using TV adverts, but doing location specific events.
Mapping in NYC: how to express the territory. Art galleries in Manhattan.
Marketing : identified most public spaces in Manhattan
final abstract diagrams:
boundaries the guerillas have to trespass to reach a territory
start by changing scale of boundary [economic, physical, political]
degree of twist indexes reaction between subject of attack and guerilla
comments:
EZIO: How do you draw these last diagrams- the deformation?
INGRID: twist, four boundaries in column, then twist according to different levels of force. Taking into account different attacks; each deformation looks to Napoleon like
it had not so much effect, but then in the end the army was very demoralized.
LEAH: so definitions are based on the attacks?
INGRID: and on the knowledge of the situation, the advantage.
LEAH: so for the art guerilla, and marketing- how did you decide their knowledge of the territory?
EZIO: go back to the map of SPAIN
I think it would be more complete, the diagram, if you also mapped the territories that Napoleon won, so we could see the other way it works.
You have identified for the three different cases , the factors that allow for a nomadic strategy to be deployed. This is exactly a knowledge of territory and strategy over territory.
And to map the rest of the actual map- it's important, you need to map the whole of the map to see how a strategy can operate in other areas. You can see for example the places that a guerilla tactic would take advantage of.
NEFELI: the territories in the 2nd/3rd case are mental.
INGRID: yes.. but how do you express the mental territory.
ED: there needs to be a correlation between some of the techniques your case studies use to engage their territory, and a clear definition of those techniques both in a real world sense, but also an abstract sense. We haven't seen an up close map of a specific territory with ideas of how a change in that territory /landscape would change the outcome of a given scenario.
Also, the marketing/art world actions are not described with much precision yet. Probably that can be continued in the second part of the semester but for now a very clear articulation of descriptive geometry/mapping is necessary so that a set of maps/drawings can be reapplied in a new context- such as NYC
_______________
___ NEFELI
film: Paradise Now
Palestinian friends recruited as suicide bombers
path of each character towards their individual paradise
Real borders: 1949 Israeli borders
change of Palestinian borders from 1946-2000
Dictionary of border types
the line and the characteristics of the line- density, width, slope, curve, gap etc
traces of meaning
4 key scenes from the film
mapping mental/physical border, fear/love and memory
geometrized interactions; changed border materials
'mind the gap' into the earth
bringing real facts into the discussion.
looking at world events, but also collecting soil, plants, population density, maps of wars, economic activity and transportation
SO: how can real life and documents effect this interactive system.
comments
LEAH: how did you decided to make the lines shape?
NEFELI: parallel lines, horizontal lines with different width: physical border
line crossing it is mental border
ED: it is like a combination of a language and a map. Representationally it is an interesting notational system. Perhaps it needs to be more diagrammatic to be legible.
EZIO: it is an indexical problem. To solve it: either you make thousands of iterations of your system...which then gives it meaning, thru repetition- or you add indexicality to your system immediately.
ED: right now it is a very personal language. The clarity both to an outside audience, but also I think to you as the 'author' is not yet
at the level it needs to be. It is 'representing' concepts you have used to analyze the scenarios in the film, but not yet providing you with a set of alternative scenarios, and alternative materials/landscapes/rules for the project. You need to match each of the 'diagrams' up with 'real world' components, which your drawings near the end start to do by showing the stills from the film.
___________
___KARLA
definitions of insurrection: momentary emotive action
bifurcation
film: City of God
tracing character history- Tender Trio, little Ze
trajectory of violence and level of memory in the film. Abstract
relationship of violence to memory over time.
fluctuations and relationship between violence, habit and emotion
flow map: insurrection behavior.
Event > emotion > memory, instinct > habit > behavior > insurrection
different paths yield different kinds of insurrection
_analysis of scenes for kind of memory present, type of space, violence
structures
_idea of access to memory; violence and habit as a conditioning effect on
access to memory
how to interfere with habit to change behavior; changing type of insurrection
CHRIS: interesting thread , capturing image
captured memory can be an artifact, a point of reference
photography for Rocket
ED: issue of modernism's goals, faith in the 'instrument' and the problem of will, choosing as an act beyond the guarantee of any instrument.
ED: is there a good insurrection or bad?
KARLA: yes- in relation to violence
NEFELI: ... the outcome of the situation...
EZIO: how do you define that?
KARLA: it seems that the violence in this situation isn't leading anywhere?
EZIO: how you value the result.
LEAH: most of the characters come back violently but without a reason...
But here many are acting without the memory. Maybe there is a difference between violence with a reason and violence only thru habit.
CHRIS: Maybe it would be interesting if violence could be swapped out for something else. Example of Sandbags; what if sandbags became something else, if the bags were filled with something else.
LEAH: reason for violence goes back to idea of memory. Ned lost his memory and
then perpetrated acts of violence.
ED: there is a longer discussion here which could take a more general position about what kinds of memory should be
preserved, and what they might be able to do if they are preserved. You could also propose a social structure [imaginary? utopian? dystopian? real? ] that could maintain ALL of its memory, thus developing a totally different relationship to time/history/ and ethical/moral structures. Starting with the general models of different types of memory which you pull from the film, you should be able to reapply these ideas to new sites. Can a park have a kind of memory, if so what kind? How about a downtown area? or a library? or a slum?
__________
___CHRIS J.
instinct = insurrection
taxonomy of insurrections
personal/social then much more granular breakdown
central 'mass' held between instinct and reason
larger sphere is threshold of civilization
held in equilibrium
forces which we have invented as a culture
film: CLOCKWORK ORANGE, other Kubrick films
breakdown of trajectory thru film, action/training/untraining of Alex
1977... July 13 NYC Blackout; 25 hours
timeline analysis/breakdown of local insurrection/looting in NYC [bedstuy]
arrests; all holding areas, jails completely filled within hours
examples of citizen action/vigilante etc
tactics the police were able to use
Contrast with 1965 blackout which was totally calm
consequences of the looting- emergence of Rap music?
and Ed Koch's legacy...
comments:
ED: check the blog from 'interdictor' [???] done during Katrina hurricane.
But there is also the question of instinct=insurrection.....!
EZIO: you have a very precise analysis, and you are building up from first line, but:
why? There are points where this makes perfect sense but I am troubled because you are almost making a claim that 'animals' are in constant insurrection....
CHRIS: well... no, claim being made that our nature... humans are in the same boat as nature, but we have invented for ourselves a set of ethics. Saying humans are just like animals is tricky....
many people will say we are not like animals because we have society...
but we can see that even animals have superfluous behaviors....
EZIO: still from what you have, you could expand the concept of insurrection away from the human context, because what you are describing now- the quality of insurrection only applies to human context, and you already have capacity from diagrams to expand that beyond the human. What does it mean in a much more general manner?
ED: the idea of the blackout also suggests the famous concept of the 'temporary autonomous zone' that P. L . Wilson has developed. His pseudonym is Hakim Bey.
this deals with the very general issue of what the potential for insurrections is- at any scale- but it also suggests that there may be a nature/nurture question here in play, as per what kind of insurrections can be possible in any given system.
your taxonomy of insurrections is much too anthropomorphic- also, you need to try to activate the different kinds of insurrection according to a more diagrammatic set of tools. Right now they are categories, and categories are just opinions. They don't go anywhere or do anything, per se: they just provisionally describe boundaries. In this sense, a diagram [as we have discussed diagrams in the studio] could potentially go beyond such 'opinions' and become autonomous, behavioral, and tendentious in the way it reveals something about reality- about the behavior of systems.
___________________
____ERIC
film: 28 Days Later
character types, relation types
film timeline with character changes, affiliations, changes of relationship
and evolving clusters
individual body / unit type characteristics: rulesets for interaction
[geometry/angle/radius of influence]
Analysis of one scene in film- movement thru
city to repel the 'infected'
Analysis of soccer hooligans behavior
ED: different rules for different hooligans?
what about rules for other forms of social body?
Protocol, controls... different crowd types
CHRIS B> predictability in crowd forms, also unpredictabilities. What would be
the unpredictabilities? If a crowd moves out of a stadium, into another context?
IVA: in my country there were people who would incite a crowd to clash with police.
But if there are individuals who incite the crowd the police can then act.
EZIO: it is interesting that you didn't change the behavior of the red dots-
zombies=hooligans...! But actually I don't believe that the hooligans have the same behavior as zombies... but about the simulation, you already have rigorous rules to set this up. I would question whether the red dots should have more rules put into them.
The interesting part of the sim. won't be red-white dots interaction, but the insurrection in the system is when structure occurs. The topology of relations that
gets built. If the insurrection argument if about group dynamics, of course there is an interaction between constructive and destructive force, but it is the randomness built into the moment they meet that you are after.
ED: you need to take the rules that you have been developing and play them- either in a simple programming environ, like
Processing, or in MEL/Maya- or you can set it up as a kind of board game with turns, which you can literally DRAW by hand or in illustrator. Perhaps you could set up a limit in that case of 100 turns. [100 layers in illustrator?? broken up into 10 super layers with 10 sublayers each?]
By the way if you did that you could export that as an animation out of illustrator into flash.
But, if you do something like that you have to rigorously "play" the system by the rules you have discovered. it would be a kind of super slow, manual version of the AI game of 'life'.
Similarly, you need to transport this set of rules to another context, as per my comment above- what if you export one crowd type to a new context, from a stadium to a park, etc etc.
________________
____YUNCHAO
Tianenmen square protest 1989 China
insurrection is revolution of imagination... creation of novel ideas, and series of interaction between anti/pro forces in various dimensions.
balance between predictable future, potential future
general diagram of insurrection
insurrection|space|protestor|government > imagination
balance between political and economic systems in China
analysis of tianenman square events
ED:
should look at other examples of public spaces as sites of control but also freedom.
[Fellini film: Amarcord]
LEAH: diagrams are very clear-
EZIO: the moments of insurrection and how does it take place in the city-
there is a sequence of history- of suppression- how does this come to an edge, a threshold and get declared to the country. but also: how does control from the gov't get declared to the public space before the Tianenmen square event, and then after it. You have to build that expression of public space for that event to happen.
ED: Also look at other precedents- the West 8 square project in Rotterdam.
Field Operations: DOwnsview Park project; and La Villette Park competition,
by Tschumi, or the project by OMA for Villette
Presentation is very good, very clear- must be much faster though and synthesized, not everything needs to be read on
each page.
If you look at the OMA competition project for La Villette, thing about the different bands of program and the different landscapes/materials. This project is quite radical in its landscape to program relationships. You should be able to start to infer what kind of new programs might emerge from such overlaps. Go back to your analysis of Tiananmen and see what you could change to possibly produce a different set of outcomes.
____________________
___MAURIZIO
SEATTLE/GENOA protests-- contrast the two cities
Seattle, Genoa: public space
protest area in Seattle was coincident with protests
protest area in Genoa was in other areas of city
movement of population in Genoa- EG immigrants leaving area.
SEATTLE/GENOA: analysis of the demonstrations
techniques of resistance and of police response
issue of communication and control
comments:
ED: need to see the same scale of the pictures you used, but you have to abstract that and make maps/diagrams at that scale... so that it is simultaneously an abstract practice and also a materialist practice. Also can you envision an insurrection which is fabulist, surrealist and not just quasi militant?
EZIO: be interesting to see your position... question: why were Seattle and Genoa important? What is your theory- what are the stakes ? What has driven to WTO manifestation?
And to relate that to the details you will be mapping. You can hope that what brings people to these kinds of events- and their behavior in the city- can connect to this.
ED: also, what about comparing some of the strategies and tactics from the two sites of analysis with
other sites, or with each other?
is there a way to produce a different outcome in the scenario by transporting one form of urban isolation
into another context?
this can connect back to the comment I made about showing on a material level and a mapping/diagram level the tactics that you showed in the boards when you had pics of the events.
Those pictures need to be analysed: what is operative in each one, how did it work, etc etc.