makes you wonder how far an author can go...
thanks http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/10/little-billys-letter.html
1.11.10
Don't Believe Billy
In a break in his career with excess downtime, Bill Geerhart began to write letters posing as his inner child "Billy". He wrote to numerous people and groups asking simple but relevant questions in the voice of a child. These letters have been published in Little Billy's Letters: An Incorrigible Inner Child's Correspondence with the Famous, Infamous, and Just Plain Bewildered. Here is one letter and response:
makes you wonder how far an author can go...
thanks http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/10/little-billys-letter.html
makes you wonder how far an author can go...
thanks http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/10/little-billys-letter.html
29.10.10
Literary Tropes
Sometimes things are so obvious you can't see them. When I was told to mind my tendencies to figure out what I might be interested in for thesis and have the project naturally occur from there, I only looked at projects I worked or speculated on. One of the major decisions defining my coming years was the launching of an office and then of course naming it.
Synecdoche (si-NEK-duh-kee), while possibly not the best name to have people pronounce or help spread the word, defines our work so well. A work of simultaneous understanding, in how we work and what we work on. So its seems I've always been a bit more drawn to the connection of literary and architectural practice than I thought.
6 Literary Tropes
Metonymy
Irony
Metaphor
Synecdoche
Antanclasis
Allegory
25.10.10
Shifting Scenes
Monumental shifts in traditional frameworks of thought and theory lead to the creation of new paradigms. Operating across history, architectural periods, and text our work questions reality and fiction. The scale moves from the most concrete reality of the existence of a site to the shift in the author’s role in (re)defining the site, to the representation of a fictional narrative through image or text. Lines connect from the reality-fiction scale to methods of narrative and historical moments. When these lines intersect a fictional text is generated which operates in the narrative method and time period being traced. The map then sets up two types of operations, one revealing the placement of interests within the contexts of each other and multi disciplinary practice. The orbs reveal new possibilities through unexpected overlaps and new ways of thinking through a combination of practices.
Within the map, we have cited each of our own resources and how they tie to the overarching theme of the map. Each color notates each thesis within the over all map, red - Lisa Sauve and yellow - Jessica Mattson. This map was created by linking together arguments from two of the thesis. The tracing of history (Jessica) and the style of the narrative (Lisa). At these intersecting links a new mode of narrative is generated as an example how how the thesis might play out. A work in progress...
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius : Encyclopedic Operations
Through the discussions of our first group Paradigm Map, the shift away from a static map towards a mode of operations began. Working with an Encyclopedia as an artifact of truth and fact, we begin to questions its validity through moves of additions and subtractions to the datum. Each of these moves question specific topics towards each of our thesis and begin to reference people, projects and texts with (in)/out of the discipline that strengthen each thesis polemic.
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| Travelogues : Adding New Entries |
A short story by Jorge Luis Borges called "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" speaks of a bootlegged encyclopedia with an additional set of pages not referenced in the index. It contains the information for a country call Uqbar. The article in the encyclopedia references three books about the place, one which is discovered. Either this is an exceptional hoax with all the basis covered to back up the argument or a unique discovery that is usually missed. It begins to question the content, validity and truth of the author and book.
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| Perspective/Periodical : Layering Information |
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| Abandoned : Summarizing a Focused Definition |
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| Classification : Showing Similarities and Differences |
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| Japan : Removing Irrelevant Information |
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| Postage, Postage Stamp : Adding Artifact |
Other thesis in group project:
http://borderinglines.blogspot.com/
http://hypo-theses.blogspot.com/
16.10.10
A Narrative in Parallel Acts | Percy Beck Reveals “Nothing”
Percy Beck, caught beyond his own adventures and now permanently affixed to one place. While his network of people move about the world, he himself can only imagine through his lens these places and experiences. He could be called visually dyslexic.1
1. Percy was the name of my grandmothers cat whom I despised and this is my chance to keep that same rampant character tied down to one place. Beck was my great grandmothers maiden name in which I have only traces of links to her through stories, photographs and memorabilia.
Plead for something other than romantic postcards and lighthearted stories about the places and experiences these people exist within. He instead wants to feel the lifestyle of these places and the things walked by and forgotten. Begins to catalogue what is underneath the surface of these places. Through a new way of organization connects are revealed.2
2. My favorite postcard I ever sent was one that was only black, no imagery at all. On the back was a note printed on the top that read “black hills at night” and it made obvious both the humor and reality of the circumstance which I was relaying 700 miles away. This revealed more about the person and the place while leaving room for the imagination to fill in the rest
A cousin lives in Japan that is close to Percy’s age. His uncle is stationed there for two years in the Navy. Percy’s cousin has as much adventure as Percy did. When he hears of the request to grasp places under the surface he immediately knows a place to share.3
3. My cousin did indeed live in Japan for two years, he then moved to Hawaii with a 1970’s Volkswagen Bug with a driver shaft on the right side. He was known all over the island for this exact artifact from Japan. All I ever got from my Uncle was some artwork with my name in Japanese.
And on the story goes...4
4. An idea about the forming of a narrative.
Through tying together techniques of fiction, narrative, traces, and taxonomy the layers reveal nodes of inter-relations otherwise unable to unravel under the rational lens of architecture as the sole entity.
By overlaying what seem to be disparate parts from multiple sources through a technique not of notation, graphics or physical form but through the narrative that shapes them, the lens’ begin to obscure and reveal new connections that produce new ways of seeing what were once placed in solitude of their reigning characteristic. While things may have at once seemed irrelevant, now are emergent.
By bringing attention to the non-sites in the world of architecture it will reveal to the profession the broader context and discourse outside of itself. By acclimating ourselves with adjacent practices we are then able to handle new programs and social complexities that architecture has before been unable to deliver. These places situated for thesis are already once removed from architecture being cast out and neglected, this brings them back into the conversation not as a ruin but an active engagement to the ellipses of after the built form.
Through collecting information, stories, images, maps and histories about places and spaces that seem to have a blanket association with a single characteristic the less than apparent connections will begin to emerge to help understand new linking resources to aide in architectures approach towards the social, cultural and built world. The juxtaposition presented between sites, time, artifacts and stories can relay ideas of not one ideology but the synthesis of many.
The thesis may appear as a series of travelogues corresponded by the narrative of a character. The author does the work of the thesis while the travelogues aide in the background. A place where the author manipulates his stories and information to go not so far as fiction but adding and displacing facts to amplify the argument. These travelogues may be expressed in a series of photographs, artifacts (debris, remnants, materials), and texts that are then overlaid with the new approach to terrain, ruin, and traces /imprints of time and activity.
1. Percy was the name of my grandmothers cat whom I despised and this is my chance to keep that same rampant character tied down to one place. Beck was my great grandmothers maiden name in which I have only traces of links to her through stories, photographs and memorabilia.
Plead for something other than romantic postcards and lighthearted stories about the places and experiences these people exist within. He instead wants to feel the lifestyle of these places and the things walked by and forgotten. Begins to catalogue what is underneath the surface of these places. Through a new way of organization connects are revealed.2
2. My favorite postcard I ever sent was one that was only black, no imagery at all. On the back was a note printed on the top that read “black hills at night” and it made obvious both the humor and reality of the circumstance which I was relaying 700 miles away. This revealed more about the person and the place while leaving room for the imagination to fill in the rest
A cousin lives in Japan that is close to Percy’s age. His uncle is stationed there for two years in the Navy. Percy’s cousin has as much adventure as Percy did. When he hears of the request to grasp places under the surface he immediately knows a place to share.3
3. My cousin did indeed live in Japan for two years, he then moved to Hawaii with a 1970’s Volkswagen Bug with a driver shaft on the right side. He was known all over the island for this exact artifact from Japan. All I ever got from my Uncle was some artwork with my name in Japanese.
And on the story goes...4
4. An idea about the forming of a narrative.
Through tying together techniques of fiction, narrative, traces, and taxonomy the layers reveal nodes of inter-relations otherwise unable to unravel under the rational lens of architecture as the sole entity.
By overlaying what seem to be disparate parts from multiple sources through a technique not of notation, graphics or physical form but through the narrative that shapes them, the lens’ begin to obscure and reveal new connections that produce new ways of seeing what were once placed in solitude of their reigning characteristic. While things may have at once seemed irrelevant, now are emergent.
By bringing attention to the non-sites in the world of architecture it will reveal to the profession the broader context and discourse outside of itself. By acclimating ourselves with adjacent practices we are then able to handle new programs and social complexities that architecture has before been unable to deliver. These places situated for thesis are already once removed from architecture being cast out and neglected, this brings them back into the conversation not as a ruin but an active engagement to the ellipses of after the built form.
Through collecting information, stories, images, maps and histories about places and spaces that seem to have a blanket association with a single characteristic the less than apparent connections will begin to emerge to help understand new linking resources to aide in architectures approach towards the social, cultural and built world. The juxtaposition presented between sites, time, artifacts and stories can relay ideas of not one ideology but the synthesis of many.
The thesis may appear as a series of travelogues corresponded by the narrative of a character. The author does the work of the thesis while the travelogues aide in the background. A place where the author manipulates his stories and information to go not so far as fiction but adding and displacing facts to amplify the argument. These travelogues may be expressed in a series of photographs, artifacts (debris, remnants, materials), and texts that are then overlaid with the new approach to terrain, ruin, and traces /imprints of time and activity.
10.10.10
Astoria Park Diving Pool
 |
| © NYTimes |
 |
| © IrishNYC |
http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/AstoriaPark/highlights/8892
http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5091
http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5091
9.10.10
Where am I?
In the spring of 2009 I traveled to New Orleans to document the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina and its outcome four and a half years later. The context of the investigation was about the idea of a "natural disaster" and what it can actually mean to a city. Other than the brute force of the storm and the physical destruction that happened in the moments of its impact, the long term ramifications are as much a disaster and have been charged in the realms of social, political and cultural disrepair. Is nature then more than the earth, wind and sea? Human nature can then trace back to natural disasters of cultural and social unease just as much as the way hurricanes, tornadoes, avalanches, and earthquakes can disrupt our world.
This then led to the question of the aesthetics and outcomes of a disaster and the city. The freeways that split the black bottom neighborhood as well as the riots began to tear Detroit apart with just as much force as a category 5 hurricane. The outcome looks much the same. Of these four photographs, two are from New Orleans while the others from Detroit. The worn outcome of both cities with two very different starting trajectories leads me to wonder what are the tipping points of other sites that too end up with the same characteristics? When do the stories divert and when do they converge? So when both places end up looking so much the same, sometimes I wonder... where am I?
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