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ezio said...
GSAP midreview - (ed thx for the notes :)
INGRID 2.36
parasite drag
turbulent flow around flying body
how to move in a territory which is the flow itself
flight envelope
diagram of flight variables
drag= errors in system
becoming conscious of errors makes a system stronger...
PARKS in NYC- Manhattan- supposed to be playgrounds
however many children play in streets
also # of children who have access to park
intensities in parks; boundaries to break
not only working in territory/space
also mental space, space of habits
in long run creating more than park, and also works against
already created habits of consumerism
GAMES
create something that breaks the useful condition inside the park
ANALYSIS
Guerilla practices
War / art / marketing
Spanish War independence against Napoleon
diagram of territory, movement thru space, local tactics of resistance in Spain
the boundaries that the guerillas had to break to repel napoleon
__ Also Guerilla girls
movie: bottle, flow
PRO INSURRECTION
against how things are - attacking as a guerilla would change consciousness
______
2.52
critics:
CHRIS: what are you planning to do to make this a guerilla playground
INGRID: attack some of the parks in NY to create new structure, different pplay furniture
not in all the parks, of course as it is not a massive strategy but only focused points.
KARLA: so, what is the agenda, how do the tactics emerge- this isn't clear yet
INGRID: by producing a new structure within the parks, this would make people think
if their usual way of behaving is just a mere habit....
KARLA: seems like the form right now is premature. For example how do you know it is a
thing on the site- why not a subtractive process, instead of additive?
WHen you put up the map of spain and we see the trajectories, the first thing
i want to know is how you translate that to a scale that has poignancy for your work in
NYC.
INGRID: well, it isn't a direct importation. I was studying mountains, rivers... and in Manhattan
was not physical territory but was more flow territory. Economic/consumer-
KARLA: but so far, though you have this idea in your mind, it isn't clear yet how you are
addressing those variables.... how you qualify and quantify these issues
what are the obstacles or conduits that are relevant in the territory of play in NYC
that compare to the performance of the guerilla tactics. How can your project find a path
of stealth intervention, which is actually different than the image montage of the
furniture in your image of the playground.
CARLA:
this means also that youhave to be able to define what 'park' is in manhattan, and this comes
from how you set up terms for defining attack/defense, etc.
RAOUL: conceptually, i really like what you are doing, but thinking about the bird- flying
is play- breaking away from ground. It's about mastering the eddies, friction, drag.
This is similar to Napoleons army trying to contain Spain. And, to note your images- many maps,
film clips even- is birdseye- is about control- seeing everything at once, which is actually contrary
to guerilla work, which is invisible-
How could you reconcile that with an intervention of play in parks- the image of the kids taking over
the street, that is about a nested kind of control. THey have rules for a game, which is nested into the
plan of the city, but you'd never see this game in a plan of the city.
How can you represent this in such a way that you can allow play to happen....
INGRID: disagree about representational point... Guerillas will know what is going on.
But yes, the children are guerilla children in the city. The street has more textures and territories that
they can apply their game than a park.
RAOUL: there may not be planned places, but there are still children and they do play.
Also: you've used a grid often. Plane representations; you've used the plane, to talk about
speed for instance.
INGRID: I used the grid for speed, because there is a difference between speed and velocity
for instance. I represent speed as an expanded plan, because is a gradient.
MATHAN: there are a ew things that you talked about- you are trying to conjure something and you haven't quite
yet.
The bird image suggests what is invisible. We get to see the flows.
the image of kids playing: also suggests that there is something invisible going on here and the kids
can see something that we can't in the landscape.
Everyone seems to be aware of the spatial dynamic they are
and the landscape image: this is just a view where there is a potential for something invisible- nothing IS happening
but we know that an event DID happen there. All these images begin to suggest that you are interested
in things that are invisible- and that you can propose a discrete intervention, slipped into the city without
anyone noticing.
SO. the image I had a problem with is the one where you montage a person into the proposition of the playground,
because all the work before leads to the forces that can take place that allow people to interact with a space.
If NYC has a lack of public space or playgrounds, then you are suggesting that you can insert forces back into
the city to create playground where there may be one missing.
INGRID: Force are not tangible ones. What are the games like now? problem of needing
'brand names' to play. I would be interested to see how corporate brands introduce new behaviors,
habits for children.
RAOUL: children had a landscape they were playing in... [ in the image]
so, how do you address that? they have something...
and it is physical, or at least a set of rules.
DEAN: I would say it isn't about the kids, but more about people in general who are
conditioned by the frameworks of the way they live. Their collective memories are much less
than an adults.... perhaps this project is geared toward those who can comprehend what the insurrection
is doing. Could be something more subtle and would change over time to adapt to its conditions. I don't know
if it is really for kids. That might be a jumping off point.
What are the mechanics , the vectors, the forces, the ideas. The kids could be one of those.
ADAM:
you should be more specific about what/who the guerilla is. Is it really the kids, or whoever is playing,
or the project itself....? One suggests the invisible, the choreographed, the appropriation of space, but nothing
material has to manifest, but the other situation looking at the project as guerilla, means you DO need to add
something to the urban landscape. You should be clear as possible about these two options.
for this to be productive on your terms you have to unpack what the guerilla is in different situations.
DYLAN: clearer motive will give more direction to the project. If the tactics were clear enough that the kids could
mount an insurrection, it would be great starting point.
Rules, but also material, say the surface of the park. The diagrams of boundary ... but when you go from image of
air turbulence and you show slide of ground, then guerilla tactic at one scale taking place at other scale, so the moment
for the event to happen , depends on an ability to read topography at different scale.
________
3.16
CHRIS J.
Movie
[EK: Music on Soundtrack- got to go. ]
analysis: clockwork orange
insurrection between characters. dynamic of continuous change.
graph of fear and violence
model to understand the characters' nature. Alex, for example.
Insurrection threshold. Civilization. Also, individual tumult.
turbulence, internal forces
NYC blackout and Riots
IMAGE of storm
metaphor of precipitation. humidity, pressure changes
equilibrium forces changing
INSTINCT=INSURRECTION
white blood cell as insurrection
is anti insurrection a paradox?
walling off central park idea...
libido and destrudo
life and death instincts
scheme to mitigate between the two instincts
sociability test
compress 5th avenue to very small space
planes of mirrors to mitigate
plan to develop a series of different exercises
scripts to create a logic to mitigate between libido/destrudo
3.40
RAOUL
the grid means something to me in this case but this takes me to levels of analysis.
Insurrections within insurrections.
You've shown that in several ways. but then you focus on the individual and I wonder why,
instead of the social or the organizational.
CHRIS: well, because it all starts with us. Social insurrections can't happen without us.
you can see instinct in all systems.
ED: instinct carries many implications....
can you learn from the non anthropomorhpic systemic behaviors
RAOUL:
there is a real power to looking across levels of analysis
Even if you start with an individual... but when you look across levels you can start to
recognize patterns...
CARLA: you are trying to do an arch/urban project so your degree of analogies have to be
very specific. Every time you open up a degree of analysis that only gives you more scales that
you don't understand, it might open up to an end that is very vague.
the summer studio is very good to open up that way, but also should teach you - how can you
now do a thread to focus, such that you know exactly what you are doing.
It seems that you managed to confuse yourself as to what insurrection means. The first thing you
need to do is be clear what kind of insurrection you want to deal with. Riots are very different,
can be unfocused. A warm moment to turn something out without constituting something
new, but an insurrection has more direction. You as an architect have to look into these examples
more to see what the focus/agenda of the insurrection is.
The idea is that you do know which side you are on.
The notion of strategy, even if a failed strategy, should exist.
The way you present, you must present to yourself better. If you are showing density
your diagram should not 'write' that but should draw that out.
This can help explain how that focus point is made in many ways, thus allowing you
to constitute an argument. Perhaps to find something you have not seen before.
You have a lot of material and can think very broadly but now must cut some edges.
CHRIS: in terms of focusing- these follies- maybe 10-
CARLA: well we can see insurrection in everything but the studio perhaps aims
to see the deep spatial strategy of one, the political social motivations, etc.
DEAN: taking a position and a very deep slice in the position
you are beginning to apply before the deep slice, but you have to take
this and make it your own.
You can take something as far as you want to take it in a studio like this.
You might be happy/surprised/inspired but until you take it to that level
you won't get anything out of it.
The most successful projects have real commitment, no matter how outlandish
or even against the moral fiber of the person whos doing it.
DYLAN: everything is there in the project
go back and look at the exmples you have, the level of analysis isn't fully developed.
you are caught up with certain ideas. If you drop the idea of instinct, and pick up insurrection,
consider clockwork orange.
Insurrection that happens apart for instinct, two forces against one another, and the question is qho will win
the individual coming up against ths system, there is possibility for the system to reorganize itself.
Same as blackout. The city is a network which has its own will.
At those two scales you have the framework to argue for an insurrection which isn't just physical.
ADAM: the most successful projects are the ones fully committed to an idea and play them out
regardless of the consequences. Now, watching your presentation, i would encourage you
to go back to the film you made, and use that as a way of getting to a territory of operation. The central
park idea I am not so sure about.
Maybe it is interesting on some level. but in the film- perhaps in the bottom right frame of the film-
define a territory that you could make an insurrection/antiinsurrection.
RAOUL: also focus on the temporal dimension as well.
_____________
4. 05 MAURIZIO
WTO/GENOA
A No ni nomadic
mobile 'rooms' with technology
with cloaking features
a public device
like public bicycles in Copenhagen
----
KARLA: who is providing the network?
Does it make a difference? if it is public, or municipality, or?
DEAN: so it isn't an access point, it's not about the internet-
you are actually talking about a unique dataset that is NOT the internet.
MAURIZIO: can also be a storage of music, ebooks, etc. If I take this device and stay with
it for one day, I can leave in the storage...
DEAN : so it is not a network, really...
This is where I see the biggest opportunity and flaw in the project. It seems too much
to build a second 'internet'.
CARLA: A public, highly anonymous cybercafe? Or a cross between a confessional
and a cybercafe?
DEAN: it seems very voluntary right now, but could it be involuntary? would it be collecting
and absorbing information that is not volunteered? And would that help the project?
Hurt it?
ED: anonymizer, TOR, scanner darkly 'scramble suits'
CARLA: there are many different ways that in different places the concept of
public works.
Also the commercial path that helps your system to grow. Also I am worried about
anonymity.... some cells may have operated that way, but others depended on
knowing others in the 'group'. Not sure what each of these cultures are able to create.
RAOUL: two different thoughts.
in earlier maps you showed the grid, and how people blocked off physical communication
between structures- then moved to cellphone activity... and what is very important in the cellphone
is who communicates with whom. Yes, the surveillance camera has to be in place, but the important
thing is how communication patterns are emerging.
And: who occupies the grid. You show Seattle and Genoa... is the insurgency coming from locals, or
is it endogenous, and imported in?
If you deal with who owns the network, and who pays for it? public, private? agencies?
borrowed?
and you showed a slide of the panopticon. There are the points of viewing, but you see the mechanism
also.
you need to articulate these issues.
DYLAN: it would be interesting to see these games play themselves out in a real physical space.
So for example in your case, the phones are the 'scramble suit'. There is a potential for a physical
manifestation to be used either way. Or a voting booth.... which has been coopted by larger forces, and
there's a suspension of disbelief in terms of trusting the outcome of an event.
Can you come up with a spatial intervention which allows larger forces to believe in it or not?
DOUG:
one of your early slides dealing with tech/comm and techniques. One proposition here
that there is a relationship between the hardware present in the tech frame, but also the
socialization patterns. How confession, or voting as principle operates. They all have thinly
veiled hardware.
to the extent that your diagrams only map the locality it hasn't been able to see the
social patterns and how they are being altered.
Also issue of total anonymity. Too much can be dangerous.
Anonymity is a powerful site for you to explore.
example of Godard film [title]about cells with anonymity, locations begin to
erode, multiple passports and currency.[ in film]
KARLA: in the seattle genoa comparison, you haven't gotten to the level where
you really analyze what the difference was. If the project is- and in a way there's been
a linear extension from the density mapping vs. network model- then the fact that these
diagrams weren't critical or analytical of the network system-
this has led to the red dots moving thru the city streets without the larger connections
that are implied in the project.
There is a latent potential of understanding- which hasn't yet been mined.
DYLAN: the diagrams seem to erase things in terms of morphology.
So when you start off at the larger scale there are still buildings, but when you
zoom in, the buildings fade.
ADAM : don't underestimate the power of the graphic techniques, because different
line weights can actually force you to unpack the implications of all the
systems, and get you to think really precisely about all the events, and communicate
what you need to about these events.
___________________
4.43 CHRIS B.
halo, objects disappearing
evasions
mulholland drive, passenger
film analyses
---
project -- systems of insurrection need decoys to operate
act as consultant to other projects in the class.
------
5.05
KARLA:
have you defined who or what you are evading?
you talk about decoys- they have a specific purpose, so what is yours?
CHRIS: there is no agenda...
KARLA: but toward what end.
CHRIS: It isn't about the outcome of the insurrection,
but a focus on the method....
KARLA: OK, but what is the method?
you've taken this graph of the film and imported it into times square, but to what end?
Evasion of what? of life as it currently exists?
DEAN:
you're addressing the documentation, but KARLA's asking you a different question.
But the means to an end is really important...
bringing the diagram to the site is one thing, which we should focus on, but theres a program
at play here which we can't really see. What does the project bring to the context.... you have to ask this
CHRIS: things one doesn't see, and then tacked onto that is an insurrection.
RAOUL: it was very compelling, but I have the same question.
I saw a lot of analysis, and in the bounds of a fiction
but I wonder about the generative aspect. WHen it comes away from the fiction,
what are the boundaries.... this is an issue of research and design. Of course as you depict
something it IS generative, but....
your intuiition of attaching to other peoples' projects makes sense, but what after that?
CHRIS:
the ability to not understand a situation, and then make it come to life.
How do implied [unseen] actions begin to generate a space?
ED: specific techniques!!!!!!
KARLA: Also if you are going to engage your colleagues' projects, you are going to have to be precise!
you have mixed agendas that have to be clarified, rigorously focused.
You talk about unpacking things that are unseen, but you talk about evasion, decoys, etc.
These can coexist... you could produce something that is a decoy in a way and then on another
front reveal something hidden in the city, which sounds beautiful, but you haven't specified enough
and how to engage in other peoples' equally complex projects.....
DOUG: if you don't take a stance... whatever it is 'agenda to reveal gender inequalities at a political level'
and you then look at all the different projects- the tactics would change from project to project as you affiliate, but the
intention/agenda would be clear.
That could be a clever strategy to reinforce your position. And get you to what RAOUL was getting at in
terms of abstract language of analysis....
you are revealing that analysis taken to a far extreme can lead to a paralyzing condition.
Likewise when you migrate diagrams into other milieu....
for example in the passenger Mr Locke had very specific intentions.....
RAOUL: the boundaries were implicit in the films you were looking at.
Where do you find that when you step out of film and start looking at something else.
DEAN: there's always a delicate moment where you start to let go of some
graphics and forms.... but for each one of the ten projects you'll be engaging for your
project, there'll be a different form.
Perhaps you can diagram your diagrams and create a toolset to approach each of the
projects in their sites.
MATHAN:
there is a great moment in the film- LaHaine- the DJ puts speakers to the windows
and mixes Piaf and KRS1. and the camera shot with camera flying thru the projects.
And they seem to go on forever. The audio tells us about the complications, issues with
police. But at same time we see the projects thru the visuals. This works as a montage,
and i was interested in that it is all to do with the editing.
You talked about the editing. You are looking at those diagrams in a 'Tufte' way, such that
they hold a truth. I suppose what you were looking at- with Mulholland drive-
people on the set thought they were filming a regular film, but what Lynch did is get in
and agitate in the editing.
We could see that as an insurgency.
When you place the diagram on the site, and talk about intervening in other projects-
the question is whether the surface you are creating is the act, or when you work with other
projects, are you the agitator?
CARLA:
techniques- all have strong purpose- camoflage for wildlife is so specifically objectified
and knows what it is looking at
with a broadcast, also has political protocol, connected to it that you can't put under the carpet
a lens looking at the sidewalk that broadcasts to the first page of all newspapers in the world
magnifies what is going thru it, but what makes it something that will ask people to participate in it.
it has to be a kit of parts, yes you have to diagram back where this comes from
moveable in terms of its ideas, mount and dismount in different ways to create typologies
of recognition, sampling, and broadcasting back. What are the tech niques you are dealing with.
I would never use the word evading, so far you never showed us an example that was about
evading, your work is about collecting and diffusing....
_____________________
5.27 NEFELI
movie
light as abstract boundary in the city
dynamics determined at night
light as spectacle in streetscape, or signal
or device to control crowd/flow
physical and mental border
physical borders have less power than the mental/abstract of 'lightscape'
borders: transform/territory/blur/invisible
film; border paradise now
mapping film, catalog of lines
fear, love and memory:
physical border and more complex mental borders
Real borders...
proposal for urban territory
abolishing a physical border: evacuate East river
drain part of the river, cancelling phys. border.
The real question is who organizes this new territory and how the two
sides meet each other.
Role of the water, and how to control in new landscape created.
Creation of a system of control in the new territory....
ADAM: is there a reason why it is advantageous to connect manhattan and queens?
NEFELI: the point was not to make connection, but in the scenario of experiment to
abolish border, create territory for insurrection creation
RAOUL: there is something interesting in the borders you are looking at,
when you speak of light i can see the border as a line [ not a membrane]
when you drain the river, you are creating new territory and I wonder if the
same language is appropriate in both conditions.
Issues of permeability come up
NEFELI: these diagrams could work in section and plan also
river: two separate lines shrinking or expanding space between two sides
DOUG: reframing ADAM's point:
why would you do this experiment there exactly.
on one level you don't need to drain the water to make a territory, water is a territory
by itself....
ADAM: the question comes because you are hinting at the idea that there's a syntax and threshold condition
what the difference is between a thick line or a dashed line
there is a nuanced way of thinking about deploying a set of border conditions.
At this point what we have to go on is that the connection between manhattan and queens/bklyn is important,
but what makes it important there?
this is also related to the importance of having an agenda.
GEORGE
given your early studies you are talking about light as a definer of boundaries- a very interesting, more
diffuse boundary. But maybe you can work on light/thru light.
You've chosen one kind of boundary but identified many kinds of boundaries.
the language didn't line up with the images for me. I couldn't say where a specific kind of boundary was.
Which was fine-for now- but you need to turn that into a tool, beyond being a register for the city....
The way you have mixed in time, forward/reverse, shift in scale, it's all there in the lighting.
when you made the movie, what were you thinking in terms of boundaries
NEFELI: main point is that light is a device to delete physical borders, to shape flow of crowd,
articulate borders
GEORGE: is light about creating/subverting? perhaps they are not just borders that can be built.
further in the project- it seems to get into personal and individual borders. but the people we see in the movie
seem to be going from light source to light- intoxicated by light, navigating, or just tripping on the light in the city-
you have already done research into an internalized sense of boundaries... maybe the east river is a decent
place to start, and then you 'mess it up'!
there are individual traces, psychic makeup in terms of borders....
RAOUL: one has not substance, the other is a thing. I am not sure if that is important.
I see also in the diagram of lines- abstraction- or do you want to work with something more
substantive.
GEORGE: the light itself is not abstract, though there is abstraction.
MATHAN: when you reroute the river- where does the water going ?
NEFELI: was thinking of creating channels, and perhaps some regions are flooded in Manhattan
MATHAN: by clearing it alone it doesn't necessarily erase the border
we can look at it in plan, topography, shifts of landscape
but if you took the topography of the roofscapes- that in itself is still another
boundary- the more ephemeral boundaries of light- and that ephemeral quality
still exists as well. So the boundary that you have already described still exists.
Altho you take away a physical boundary I wonder how you address the others
that still exist.
NEFELI: I control the power of the phys- borders- but on the other side is the
mental border.
[fear love memory] but could be economical fear of manhattan, or the dream of
Queens for unity, or the way the memory of this side works.
Or what happens with the tunnels... or the memory of the soil of the river which is
drained.
If you forbid real estate; or come up with a dense place like many places in manhattan
Don't know yet how two sides meet, keep section? platform? Wall? Bridges?
DYLAN: could you accomplish these things without taking away the water?
Maybe you could look at Olafur Eliasson's work. If you are dealing with light.
Are you dealing with virtual or real? You could have an arch. intervention that
doesn't excavate the river.....
a lot of what you are saying is about occupying the border...
I am thinking of the bklyn bridge. it is exhiliarating... but that is a small space
things like the bklyn bridge were seen as destroyers of borders.... developing the
idea that there is a space there, in/on border in one meter/one mile that could be
a destination on its own is underlying this project.
MATHAN: I am still curious about what the motivations are to erase the border
For example I live in bklyn and think its the greatest!
people talk about being born in bklyn, etc. I am not sure that people would want to
merge the territories between
NEFELI: there may not be a need to connect the sides...
CARLA: obviously that bridge would really be a bridge as a new entity, even though
it is a new space. It wouldn't be any more how you can make two things encounter.
If you create something like that it would be how it as an island creates a new system
to all.
Your study of the lines of the border, you know well that if you adjust the sides of the line the entire
geopolitical condition would shift.
....
this is why the flow of the river is important to deal with.
With this you have cultural phenom. of course but the natural context
as well. If you would do something where you were thinking about the flow
of the river before the questions would be different
It is true that the light analysis is very integrated with your line analysis of the border.
____________
6.20 LEAH
la haine analysis
question of choice, is it futile?
how to land
battle of algiers
choice of individual and how that affects the masses
insurrection and entropic organism
energy transfer
individual choices, then change thru energy xfer
recognizing moments of conflict, and individ relation to mass
how is energy xfered into collective system
intensity vs. awareness
different border conditions
Movie:
border condition and what exists between two worlds
how can they come together, what does awareness do
'space of pause'
study of Joint Security Area film
border protocol
proinsurrection
insurrection is an organism
as entropic organic system tending towards death
what happens if things are equaled
looking for protocol sites in NYC
Park
Museum
Nightclub
Border potential: linkage/ transformative
----
RAOUL:
underlying the analysis in general: distinction between medium and message
in part you talk about energy flows
we can think about that as a medium, but you don't get to the idea of feedback
which is a message thing.
People may be bounded by borders, but there are consequences which depend on the
transmission of the message. You could call this out, which would allow you to address
feedback in a way you haven't managed yet.
GEORGE: is the border akin to the mob/crowd- doesn't matter what happens to the individual
but the cumulative effect?
LEAH: is phys. manifestation of outside forces/relations
GEORGE: i was interested in how you understood the movie. border has phenom. of flow.
But the motion and switching of all international border, is its own 'koyanisquatsi' moment.
Sometihng that could be given meaning and turned into something
transformative.
Maybe you need to look at a different scale of time. But the static images of people in
lines doesnt' get at what you are talking about as RE flow.
your graphics- some are very compelling but others not so.
the images end up being explainers instead of showing something really new.
CARLA: you have to find an example you are passionate about for the project.
what scale are you looking at, what do you want to preserve or not- what is the
form of a thing, what is the potential of the form-
The notion of the ecology around it, you have to choose that.
What do you want to bring to the site[s]. What problem are you trying
to resolve. For example when you show us the buffer zone, we know morningside heights
as one kind but we don't know what it is for you.
ADAM. Try to think about- borders- the way you spoke about them- the border doesn't
function until it's charged by the way it operates- the differences across the border
when you talk about the museum and the club, then I wonder what for you is charging the border
in those cases. Borders can operate at the scale between a wall/sidewalk/club interior;
or in a park; but how are you placing the border in its context.
RAOUL: levels of analysis... if you pick club/museum/park- there's a different level of analysis,
and the temporal dimension.
Things dissipate when a club closes, which takes place at a very different rate than
the park or a neighborhood.
MATHAN: the border is nothing but an outcome or manifestation of other issues. Very interesting
in that it has a reflective quality allowing a body to reflect on itself as well as outside relations.
I wonder what that leads to. Looking at your film, one thing- many arch. students tend to use
POV shots with much work in constructing film. Whenever we work with perspective, from Renaissance
fwd. etc- we've understood that perspective is privileged.
In fact many films are not set up as POV shots, but when you set one up this way we have to see
it subjectively. When we see a border we don't see it objectively.
So, you speak of a border as a thing, etc.
Now as you've done this already, looking at film structure- if you were to reanalyze your film
or remake it you might be able to be more objective.
DOUG: your analysis - you've done all the right moves- you have understood conceptual framework of
being on the border, etc.
now looking for sites with parallel relations
then we have the question at the end-
most borders though are really linkages and of course they can be transformative
and a 'nice' architecture looks for bridges
maybe the way the UN tries to resolve problems.
The proposition within the project should be to be wildly speculative. Even if
it is 100% subjective at least should not be passive.
you never get too close to people...
you don't go to a place where the unexpected occurs.
You don't want the everyday project.
Can you challenge what it means to go across the border.
Consider borders that are highly charged- they are also forms of linkages and
transform.
DYLAN
if you rephrase the context you are posing the question in- if anything the battle of algiers
is loaded with the notion of the border as transformative situation.
in another project looking at WTO: when police blockade, a group mindset can form
ADAM: that's where going back to the diagram work might be good to go back to.
The power of that kind of work is that it opens up these alternatives and relationships
so you don't end up migrating back to the easiest position.
________
6.50: YunChao
urban game of insurrection
tianenmen square- imagination refunction space
insurrection can make predictable future into a potential future
various forms becoming 'super agents' to control forces/events
insurrection as link for topological xformation political and economic
Tiananmen studies- urban features
MOVIE: Timesquare
Game of insurrection
order and balance:
set up new order
control balance of forces
To play game as anti insurrect
Delays in systems
CENTRAL PARK
intensity of maze
controling event from open system to closed system
to play game as pro insurrect need space shortcut
----
CARLA: what is missing in central park to do what you are saying right now?
YUNCHAO: is center of manhattan
location, locates the center. if there is conflict the central park will be a main stage.
CARLA: but, why is it not that right now?
YUNCHAO: the maze can slow down...
CARLA: why is it not a maze right now? Why central park is not a maze?
Why can't we consider it a maze.
YUNCHAO: first, because manhattan is very high density and the park has many years history
built to attract people from downtown to uptown
function is to relax people....
GEORGE: maybe the point is to look closely at the park- it's designed very much-
one of the most designed thing in the city...
you may be missing an opportunity to understand central park as already having
qualities of maze...
RAOUL:
why is it not a maze... first off: a very compelling project. But i was left wondering
about agency/motivation.
you showed imagination creating a disruption. Now for that to happen imagination had
to be decoupled from regular existence. you showed timesquare and how we are programmed by
and how to see that space. Central Park is already coded also.
is the essence of insurrection such that imagination has come loose from reality such
that it can double back and affect reality???
what circumstances would be necessary for this?
imagination gets loose from our knowledge of what central park is?
DOUG
in the 80s there was the infamous case of a wild pack of men in the park who attacked a woman.
This story captured the imagination of the public in terms of what it meant to occupy public space
in NYC in central park. One can see how those news articles construct the idea that NYC is a wild jungle.
this superimposes onto NYC the notion of the careful construction versus a place where anything
can happen- disparities are coupled together.
one professor's discussion of this was that it reveals the thinness that separates the tensions in NYC
and at any moment this can be blurred
maybe you can imagine that the thickness of imagination is what allows classes to continue
if there are maze like aspects in Central park, then why isnt the rest of the city doing that?
What other devices can you look at? Signs? Materials? Sidewalk heights? false buildings?
one way of looking at your project is that the city is gamed every day by everyone,
what your project intends would be to make NYC the ultimate gameboard
logic of ruleset needs to be very clear so that people can both play the game and also
subvert it.
RAOUL: you spoke of open systems.
If you assume that everything is connected it's hard to have an open system, but you
can have a 'more' open system.. this could be tied into your shortcuts
GEORGE: I am not sure you can simulate an insurrection
the idea of shortcut scares me... the 'man' already is telling me how to rebel
what would be interesting to me would be how the maze makes more explicit
the limits the system already has
the maze could distill people's situations of frustration or intensity... but to build the
insurrection into the game might already be undermining the idea.
You can't simulate the insurrection... you can make an argument for creating situations
which would create dialog or intensities that 'may' produce insurrection
you need to follow some scenarios/examples thru.
the 'master' is the city
MATHAN
if manhattan is the game, is central park the shortcut?
you want to complicate the space again or problematize it...
RAOUL: about the notion of agency...
and the girls dancing. how does a moment emerge in the system. A way a distributing
agency. Where does the agency rest?
ED: necessity of the concept of the maze in other ways besides spatial.
CARLA: you have to conquer the imagination from both sides.
If you define two contrasting forces and they continnue even if they fight each other
it is not about ethical system, then you really have to define what each system has that is important,
what balance brings you forward. The architect is left to define the mechanism that allows them to fight
without winning.
you need more definition beyond what insurrection means...
there is a series of definitions now. you have a kind of insurrective way of how things are put forward.
Somthing that is collapsed has a lot of strength to provoke you, now youhave to define more what is in
the system that balances itself.
I asked by knowing how it is a maze and what is lacking, you can define a better one.... what works now
is thru a point of view but it might be to look for what is lacking.
DOUG
maybe the only way to design anything is to design both parts.
you have to build into your system the way for it to both destruct itself and to create itself.
errors built into the system:: how you produce agency?
DYLAN: in the Shining [film] there is a shortcut which is a different reading of the maze-
CARLA: the maze is about losing oneself/finding oneself
the problem of the maze in central park is about the one you can enter
________
7.27 ERICK
28 days later
insurrection infection communication
film analyses
Movie: camera/unit/host interaction
blur of video subject when interaction takes place
DEAN:
the analysis and technique are really beautiful. I wonder how you could approach
the project with multiple people/cameras. Right now it is very singular.
It is about a unique individual's interaction. Have you considered- after 'infection' occurs
other people take on the same role?
it could be an interesting exercise. if you roll out those scenarios it will be really valuable to
the project. There is a lot of feedback in there potentially.
DOUG. Ultimately the question is how you can scale up systems of communication
one is a question of how you scale them
singular/singularities/collective bodies/state/nation/crowds
the other question then is will your techniques change. Second set of questions
simply has to do with what the intentions of the project are.
In the infection... hooligans in a particular environ operate in this manner
already. riots when people don't know the causes are....
As CARLA pointed out earlier, the difference between the insurrection and riot is that the
riot is not organized and may not have any goal. Infection presupposes an intelligence.
How do you scale this, and develop the intelligence in different sites/systems.
DEAN also how do you respect the fact that when the infection happens
there are consequences.
maybe in some scenarios you don't let it play out.... looking at all the combos will
make it really rich.
The implication DOES have ramifications.
RAOUL: very elegant... like the idea of self experimentation.
but I look for rigor in your rules. So far it seems to be very arbitrary... you talk about
emotions and qualities, so what are emtions and qualities. This vagueness could be
a roadblock for you. .... somewhat problematic. obviosuly much effort went into this
but I'm not sure what you are presenting??
HERNAN:
but perhaps that is not a fair comment. The other two I saw were as arbitrary as this one, too.
RAOUL: yes, but understanding what the rules were is key.
HERNAN: the lack of rigor.... i only have one comment which can apply to previous two
The main problem- everyone is creating such a level of abstraction, there is no friction
yet. The studio is dealing with a real level of affect, and you have to produce a cultural
artifact. to make an effect, to use affect.
Also, the diagrams are presented in a sortof documentary way, which is of films
which are sort of fiction, and that is strange, I have a problem with that.
In this case, this is not arbitrary, but there is no friction.
There is no specific disciplinary knowledge of how to produce this. I honestly think
that we cannot be so naive that architecture will produce a better world, at best it
may simply be different.
I mean, it's 3/4 in the semester.... how many analyses of analyses can you do? !?!?!?
I am not saying you should do a building.... it's what is at stake for you.
The whole notion of producing a documentary of a fiction that doesn't have any intentionality,
that is very dangerous!
RAOUL:
the relation between research and design.... whatever the results of the research are, that IS design,
but how do you take it to the next step.... that's my reaction here. Where are the substances.
HERNAN: in my mind, what you each need to do- i accept that today architecture is what you want to
say what it is, but you have to take a stand as to what it is. It is dangerous to delay that. The mmoment
you take a stand .... if I point a gun, you are going to be scared, but if I point a DOG at you you will not be scared..
ED: depends which end you point...
HERNAN: architecture... has another level of sophistication which is pure artistic territory;
MATHAN: the comment about where this leads, comes back to an earlier point- stating fact rather
than fiction. it is not so much the event this is documenting rather is the film itself. So the mapping is
meant to be provocative, to bring to the fore the issues we want to be looking at....
HERNAN: yeah but in 28 days the relation between the characters is interesting, but
it's more interesting how the film is made- digital film, techniques of filmmaking...
so trying to make a fake fact out of something is troublesome.
ED: documentary and fiction distinctions, film theory legacy etc: but all in service to imagination
RAOUL: in this project it is that the project has little to turn over, traction, it is slipping away.
MATHAN: well, in editing when people were working in 50s, on KEMs, there was a spatial continuity issue.
back then it was thought that the role of the editor was to put the story together. but today we understand that
the editor might not have to deal with spatial continuity. Today editors might be mapping emotional continuity.
you talk about emotional continuity, but you show spatial continuity, and perhaps if you contest one with
the other, then we come back to issues we spoke of earlier... why do riots occur during protests, etc.
attempts to break spatial restrictions.
ED: issue of technical control here, and the key issue is whether each person is AWARE of what
they are doing in their projects. it is not important the position, per se, but VERY important that you are aware of
what you are doing and clear how it is working in your project.
GEORGE: perhaps even in the faces- the glances- there is something there....
HERNAN: bottom line, there shouldn't be an analysis of your own film... it's like you analyzing
what just happend after having sex.....
DEAN: yeah, but what about Pisarro and Cezanne, who would paint their own paintings over and over....
HERNAN: the analysis of his own film, it looks like the film analysis. Also, in Cezanne, it was a total methodological
thing...
DOUG: when you are shifting milieu, you are building a methodology. Erick: you arent' getting closer to
this. How can you leverage a set of skills. In Leah's project there were border conditions that could get reconstructed.
But in this project you are reinstating the same set of values. Also, beyond making fictions, architecture has to make a
polemic... regardless if it is boring and repetitive or radical in polarizing conditions.
So in response to what hernan said earlier, your project does have to produce a difference.
DYLAN: I could almost say that if you go back to 28 days- you are dealing with emotion and content- your diagram of 28 days later
will be much richer simply because you couldn't repeat that density of experience.
_________
8. 07 KARLA
memory structure, feedback loops, dream image in city
MOVIE: carousel/child/rabbit
insurrection: momentary emotive action
analysis of city of god
character development
diagram of the paths one might take through memory
different films dealing with feedback loops and memory
all about eve
femme fatale
blowup
'the device IS memory'
protocols
city as open system
ANTI insurrection
insurrection that is performed is unconscious habit, which is being challenged
Grand Theft Auto vidGame
tools: deformation, absence, etc.
various intervention strategies in the project
video/installations/variations etc
---
GEORGE:
interesting that you say habit is the insurrection.
Taking habit as a target can be interesting
But i am confused by the movie... the carousel is a device of habit
but you were showing scenes in reverse order... there was a framing-
not a question here of diagramming your own movie but considering what needs to
sit there and spin- taking any banal sequence and developing it...
DEAN; what would you like feedback on. you have a micro manifesto at the end on dualities-
which seems great- but I'm not sure what you want feedback on. You set up the project proposals
of wild ideas of where it could go.
KARLA: having trouble translating those into something meaningful.
making the leap from quick proposal to something that plays out
DYLAN: I appreciate the clear rules and that you took a stand
you say you are fighting against habit... will you break every distinct
circulation path in the city, wont' that reinforce....
It seems there needs to be a more sophisticated set of rules.
Not just that it's a reinscription
DEAN I wonder if you could benefit from tapping into your fellow students' projects
to ask how you could install a range of dualities in their project...
RAOUL: I am not sure these are dualities. If you found some you'd have a tension
you could work with.
CARLA: it is difficult to see in these rules specificity. You kind of need a gardener. Someone
who knows how to react to exactly what the city needs.
to enforce allergies that exist. Something that a gardener would do. Cutting the tree at
the right moment. Objective, but about a habit related with seasons, etc.
A character who has an allergy that cannot see, replaces on thing with another....
DEAN: one thing I would do- remove yourself from what you are comfortable with.
Your proposal and film based on smaller/more intimate spaces- how about much larger
spaces, thinking about that scale.
ADAM
something like that could be helpful , the dualities could become rules of operation
but you need a field in which you can operate.
HERNAN: just cheat! the only way to deal with the ruleset, invent new ones by the end.
Noone will remember except Ed, who's taking notes..!
Truth today will be something next day.
The project won't be judged on those terms...
And less text.... SHOW IT, don't describe it...
Imagine you lived by the rules you create for yourself...
one doesn't follow them, or one tries
GEORGE: how about the friction between habit and rules. One makes a rule
to create habit or work with it.
Stance is against habit, you need to work on the goals.
RAOUL: are you passionate about any of this- the expanded depth of field, etc?
KARLA: i am about the possibilities- yes- but I don't know if I am attached to the rules
i have set up.
RAOUL: well find something you are- whatever the rules are, dig in and find something
that is interesting....
HERNAN: if you want to play a game opposition is a less interesting way to go.
If things are low, don 't go high- go lower.....
RAOUL: The first step is to find something, blow it out, but then get to the substance of it.
DOUG: you're getting this kind of feedback because you are not showing the potential.
This is a scary point in aproject, the points of inflection that dictate the structure of your project
are so open, they invite any form of criticism.
There's a level of passivity in the presentation of the information
and also, haven't said 'this is the stake with which my project will be argued....'
the way you constructed the film can yield more operational techniques....
the proposition that Hernan framed in the previous review- Erick's analysis of
28 days- what are the techniques in the film that you can use
ED: issue is of precision in memory value- definition of why loops and recursion are valuable.....