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October 31, 2005
Paul Shirley NBA blog
ESPN.com - NBA - Shirley: No Apostle Paul
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Parc de la villette essay
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Shigeru Ban is not your average architect.
Guardian Unlimited | Arts features | Material guy
houses out of sand, beer crates, even paper
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October 30, 2005
Derrida Notes
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October 28, 2005
Ten faces of innovation - IDEO
The Learning Personas
Individuals and organizations need to constantly gather new sources of information in order to expand their knowledge and grow, so the first three personas are learning roles. These personas are driven by the idea that no matter how successful a company currently is, no one can afford to be complacent. The world is changing at an accelerated pace, and today's great idea may be tomorrow's anachronism. The learning roles help keep your team from becoming too internally focused, and remind the organization not to be so smug about what you “know”. People who adopt the learning roles are humble enough to question their own worldview, and in doing so they remain open to new insights every day.
The Anthropologist is rarely stationary. Rather, this is the person who ventures into the field to observe how people interact with products, services, and experiences in order to come up with new innovations. The Anthropologist is extremely good at reframing a problem in a new way, humanizing the scientific method to apply it to daily life. Anthropologists share such distinguishing characteristics as the wisdom to observe with a truly open mind; empathy; intuition; the ability to "see" things that have gone unnoticed; a tendency to keep running lists of innovative concepts worth emulating and problems that need solving; and a way of seeking inspiration in unusual places.
The Experimenter celebrates the process, not the tool, testing and retesting potential scenarios to make ideas tangible. A calculated risk-taker, this person models everything from products to services to proposals in order to efficiently reach a solution. To share the fun of discovery, the Experimenter invites others to collaborate, while making sure that the entire process is saving time and money.
The Cross-Pollinator draws associations and connections between seemingly unrelated ideas or concepts to break new ground. Armed with a wide set of interests, an avid curiosity, and an aptitude for learning and teaching, the Cross-Pollinator brings in big ideas from the outside world to enliven their organization. People in this role can often be identified by their open mindedness, diligent note-taking, tendency to think in metaphors, and ability to reap inspiration from constraints.
The Organizing Personas
The next three personas are organizing roles, played by individuals who are savvy about the often counter-intuitive process of how organizations move ideas forward. At IDEO, we used to believe that the ideas should speak for themselves. Now we understand what the Hurdler, the Collaborator, and the Director have known all along: that even the best ideas must continuously compete for time, attention, and resources. Those who adopt these organizing roles don't dismiss the process of budget and resource allocation as “politics” or “red tape.” They recognize it as a complex game of chess, and they play to win.
The Hurdler is a tireless problem-solver who gets a charge out of tackling something that's never been done before. When confronted with a challenge, the Hurdler gracefully sidesteps the obstacle while maintaining a quiet, positive determination. This optimism and perseverance can help big ideas upend the status quo as well as turn setbacks into an organization's greatest successes—despite doomsday forecasting by shortsighted experts.
The Collaborator is the rare person who truly values the team over the individual. In the interest of getting things done, the Collaborator coaxes people out of their work silos to form multidisciplinary teams. In doing so, the person in this role dissolves traditional boundaries within organizations and creates opportunities for team members to assume new roles. More of a coach than a boss, the Collaborator instills their team with the confidence and skills needed to complete the shared journey.
The Director has an acute understanding of the bigger picture, with a firm grasp on the pulse of their organization. Subsequently, the Director is talented at setting the stage, targeting opportunities, bringing out the best in their players, and getting things done. Through empowerment and inspiration, the person in this role motivates those around them to take center stage and embrace the unexpected.
The Building Personas
The four remaining personas are building roles that apply insights from the learning roles and channel the empowerment from the organizing roles to make innovation happen. When people adopt the building personas, they stamp their mark on your organization. People in these roles are highly visible, so you’ll often find them right at the heart of the action.
The Experience Architect is that person relentlessly focused on creating remarkable individual experiences. This person facilitates positive encounters with your organization through products, services, digital interactions, spaces, or events. Whether an architect or a sushi chef, the Experience Architect maps out how to turn something ordinary into something distinctive—even delightful—every chance they get.
The Set Designer looks at every day as a chance to liven up their workspace. They promote energetic, inspired cultures by creating work environments that celebrate the individual and stimulate creativity. To keep up with shifting needs and foster continuous innovation, the Set Designer makes adjustments to a physical space to balance private and collaborative work opportunities. In doing so, this person makes space itself one of an organization's most versatile and powerful tools.
The Storyteller captures our imagination with compelling narratives of initiative, hard work, and innovation. This person goes beyond oral tradition to work in whatever medium best fits their skills and message: video, narrative, animation, even comic strips. By rooting their stories in authenticity, the Storyteller can spark emotion and action, transmit values and objectives, foster collaboration, create heroes, and lead people and organizations into the future.
The Caregiver is the foundation of human-powered innovation. Through empathy, they work to understand each individual customer and create a relationship. Whether a nurse in a hospital, a salesperson in a retail shop, or a teller at an international financial institution, the Caregiver guides the client through the process to provide them with a comfortable, human-centered experience.
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October 27, 2005
liquid wood
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material explorer
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Shayne Dark - artist home page
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October 26, 2005
brainwaves and plants
Miya Masaoka : Interdisciplinary : Pieces for Plants
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UpStarts: Andrew Maynard
Archinect : Features : UpStarts: Andrew Maynard
6.
About how much of a role would you say marketing plays in the early years of a practice? What outlets are best to use for reaching the public?
Marketing is essential. Market your arses off kids! Marketing is fundamental because it is your only opportunity to say to the world "this is what we do and what we want to do in the future." If you don't loudly dictate the path that you wish to take from the outset then clients or other external factors will generate your trajectory. Once your practice has an image and a direction it is very hard to steer it in any other direction. I'd say that we aimed at 80% marketing/positioning and 20% fee paid work in the first 3 years. We are now 3.5 years old and have only just begun focusing more on paid work. Our patience in the first few years has given us a trajectory that we really like.
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Art History Club
The Art History Online Reference and Guide
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Context of Theatre, Play, Ritual – and Life
Action becomes Art: "Performance" in the Context of Theatre, Play, Ritual – and Life
Action becomes Art: “Performance” in the Context of Theatre, Play, Ritual – and Life
Action becomes Art: “Performance” in the Context of Theatre, Play, Ritual – and Life
Göran Sonesson,
Department of semiotics,
Lund University
in Visio 5, 2, Automne 2000: Les arts de l’action/Action Art, van Mechelen, Marga, & Sonesson, Göran, (eds.)
If modernism, particularly in the visual arts, is characterised by the ever recurring transgression of the norms set up by earlier periods (cf. Sonesson 1998a), then, of course, the most radical way to abolish the art object, is to turn it into something which is no longer even an object : that is, an action. In the process, creation may or may not overstep the border between art and life. And it may or many not redistribute the parts played by creator and audience. In any case, it certainly refuses to abide by the limits assigned to painting by Lessing, which, at least in some respects, have seemed to be valid for much of the history of visual art : it already becomes some kind of “moving painting ” which Lessing only thought possible in the theatre and which later semioticians have claimed to have discovered in the cinema (cf. Sonesson 1988, to be published b).
What today is known as “ performance ” or “ action ” seems to cover an bewildering variety of phenomena. The first step from object to action was undoubtedly taken by the Dadaists, although one may take different views of the importance of their contributions: for while they may not have abandoned narrativity completely, they were certainly concerned more with presentation than representation. Later, in the 1950ies, similar phenomena were codified under the name of “happening” by artists more or less associated with “Action Painting”. There was an almost immediate incidence on the theatre, as testified by such groups as the Living Theatre and the Open Theatre (cf. Jotterand 1970: 57ff); there is at present nothing new in the return influence, although it may have taken new forms. In many ways, the art of action is comparable to another invention of the Dadaists, the ready-made, which is an “ relic ” (that is, an index) of an action (minimally of the act of putting it where it can be seen by the audience). In fact, both the ready-made and action art are expressions of what I have elsewhere called the outward-going tendency of Modernism, which aspires to include ever more domains of reality within the sphere of art, as opposed to the inward-going tendency, which reduces art to its barest characteristics, and which critics such as Greenberg and Fried tend to identify with Modernism tout court (cf. Sonesson 1998a). Indeed, even more than the ”happening” , which is a codified, and thus restricted, art form, the “ performance ” of the contemporary art scene seems to overstep all boundaries : to life, to ritual, to play, and to the theatre.
If we take semiotics to be concerned with the way things mean, that is, how they mean, rather than what they mean, then there should be a place for a semiotics of the arts of actions, which precedes, and is presupposed by, any arthistorical reflection on the same phenomenon, just as a semiotics of ritual should go before its anthropology (cf. Sonesson 1999a). In fact, both the semiotics of “performance” and the semiotics of ritual, as indeed the semiotics of theatre, are concerned with basically the same issue : the way in which an action is differentiated from other actions by becoming a vehicle for some peculiar meaning, which is itself an action. What I want to do in the following is to situate “performance” (or at least some of its varieties, including the “happening” and some more recent avatars) in relation to ritual, theatre, play of different kinds, and everyday life. “Performance” will be considered to form part of the vast domain of a semiotics of spectacles. I will start with that kind of spectacle of which we know most, the theatre.
Theatre and ritual in the light of the Prague school
In the theatre we encounter actions which quite obviously are carriers of meaning, because they stand for other actions (or the same actions made by another person at another time and place). Scholars involved with the semiotics of the theatre, from the Prague school to our time, have repeatedly pointed to the polymorphous and multifarious character of what is known as theatre. Within the former circle, Jan Mukar&ovsky¤ developed during the 1940ies a model according to which theatre realises several functions at the same time, but always in such a way that, at different moments, some function or other dominates all the others, and thus overdetermines them, that is to say, that this element not only carries greater weight than they others, but also makes them subservient to its own purposes . These factors can be such things as the writtentext of the play, the work of the actor, the relation between the audience and the stage, etc. From this point of view, the Prague school goes much further than what is suggested by the customary references to what Barthes called the polyphony of the theatre and to Kowsan’s list of semiotic systems involved .
Two Swedish Slavic scholars, Olle Hildebrand and Lars Kleberg, have made an interesting attempt to develop this model, in part by isolating similarities and differences of these functions as found in the theatre, the sport event and the rite, and partly by considering some theories of the early Russian theatre vanguard from this point of view. What is important and new in their work, in relation to that of Mukar&ovsky¤ , is that they do not limit their study to internal relations in the theatre as a historically developing phenomenon, but also puts it in contrast to others phenomena which, in one way or another, appear to be similar to it. As I have shown in other contexts (Sonesson 1992b; 1998a), the resulting model is, unfortunately, not only insufficient but contradictory; but the main problem with it is, as wee shall see, that the selection of other elements with which the theatre is compared is quite arbitrary.
Kleberg and Hildebrand were really interested in the new tendencies of the Russian vanguard of the early 20th century. In one of his first texts, Hildebrand (1970) distinguishes the sport event, the ritual and the theatre by means of a cross-classification employing the dichotomies stage versus audience and expression versus content, where the sport event realises the first dichotomy, the ritual the second and theatre both. The first opposition is derived from Mukar&ovsky¤, and the second from Saussure and, more specifically, Hjelmslev. Put in terms more congenial to the Prague school approach, we have to do with the referential and spectacular functions, respectively (Figure 1).
Fig. 1. Comparison between theatre, ritual, and sport (according to Hildebrand)
According to Hildebrand (1978), ritual and theatre are united, in this particular sense, in the work of the Russian director Eivrenov, and, in particular, in his work “Harlequin the Saviour”. Since theatre is supposed to differ from ritual by adding one more category, stage versus audience, to that common to them both, expression versus content, is not easy to understand what, in this system of description, is peculiar to Eivrenov’s style. Perhaps this impression could be corrected by means of reintroducing the concept of dominant in the sense employed by Mukar&ovsky¤ : this would allow us to say that, although Eivrenov’s style, like any kind of theatre, embodies both dichotomies, it is expression vs. content, which is peculiar to ritual, which predominates. Or perhaps there is more to ritual than Hildebrand’s system permit us to say. Kleberg (1984:60s), for his part, speaks of Ivanov’s cultist theatre of in terms familiar to us from Hildebrand: “In theatre as an art form he was interested in a shift of emphasis from the ‘spectacle’ towards the cult. /---/ The abolishing of the dualism between actors and audience became a metaphor for the synthetic elimination of a series of other contradictions like Poet vs. Crowd, individualism vs. collectivism, etc.’ (p.60f). Here, the “shift of emphasis ” could be interpreted according to the Prague school concept of dominant, but the full meaning of this description remains unclear.
These definitions present us with a series of paradoxes. If ritual contains the opposition between expression and content, and if theatre then adds the opposition between stage and audience, then what can it mean when it is said that Eivrenov’s theatre units these oppositions? And if Ivanov’s theatre abandons the difference between stage and audience, which is supposed to differentiate theatre from ritual, then in what sense is his theatre still something different from ritual all over again? This suggests there is something more to ritual, and perhaps also to theatre, than the model indicates.
The ritual as spectacle
Going beyond these paradoxes, there arises a more fundamental question : which is the domain that theatre, the rite and the sport event divide into three parts? In other words, is there something that is common to these three types of meaning-endowed actions which they do not share with other types of actions? For clearly, theatre, ritual, and sport are all actions which seem to stand out from the mass of everyday actions, One could wonder why we should compare the theatre precisely with the rite and not, for example, with the circus act, the ballet (if these are not special cases of the theatre), the concert, the public lecture, or even with children’s play (i.e. with Piaget’s “ symbolic play ”), social encounters, markets, “live action role play”, – and indeed with “happening” and/or “performance”. Some of these cases may perhaps be rapidly discarded from the category of “ spectacles ” in the widest sense, since their dominant channel of perception is not vision but sounds and, more specifically, language. But if we are going to believe Hildebrand and Kleberg, ritual is even less of a spectacle, because it is not even offered up to perception.
Part of the problem is that the spectacular function, understood as an invitation to contemplate, is something too general, at least in two ways : in the first place, everything which is public (which is within the “public sphere”, in the sense of Habermas) is in some respects given to perception ; and, secondly, all works of art are, in a more specific sense, created in order to be perceived. The public sphere is obviously conceived as something which invites to perception when, following Goffman, for example, social life is seen as being divided into a stage and its “backstage”, separated, for instance, by the revolving door between the kitchen and the restaurant, or when, following Sennett, one opposes the theatrical character of public life until the XVIIIth century to the sentimentality of our time (which offers the spectacle to an inward, rather than an outward, audience), or when, with the situationists, one identifies the capitalist world order (which is, at the moment, all the world order which remains) with a “société de spectacle “ (cf. Sonesson 1995).
Without necessarily agreeing with any of these images of the world, we must nevertheless admit that many components of daily life exist in order to be perceived by others: this is true of all clothes and body decorations, not only different varieties of “piercing” and tattoos, which recently have become popular again, but also the more customary earrings and other adornments familiar in Western culture. To a greater degree, the medieval market stands out as a spectacle, even though Bakhtin was more interested in what was said than what was seen there; something similar can be said of the boulevards, the cafés and the passages in the capital of the XIXth century, as they were described by Baudelaire and Benjamin, just as in all latter-day capitals of Modernity, and it is valid already for the central square of the traditional village, and for popular festivals, both in the traditional sense of the term and as they have been reinvented during recent decades, in the form of tourist attractions promoted by the municipalities (Sonesson 1995).
Nevertheless, these phenomena are not spectacles, in any deeper sense, among other reasons because the spectacular function, also when it appears, is not dominant, or the visual modality is not ; or because the spectacular is only intermittently present, or also because it is symmetric. As far as the lecturer or another participant in the “public sphere” is concerned, it can be said that the visual modality is not dominant (except when the lecturer is also a celebrity, as were for instance Lacan and Barthes). In many cases, the spectacular function is not dominant or only appears temporarily, which can be said in minor or greater degree of many parts of the daily life. However, the at least potential symmetry of many spectacular situations may be a more fundamental factor. Mukar&ovsky¤, Hildebrand and Kleberg seem to imagine the spectacular function as an operation resulting in a division applied to a group of people, and separating those which are subjects and objects, respectively, of the process of contemplation; but, in fact, the subjects and objects of contemplation are often the same, at least temporarily. In the market, on the square, the boulevard, etc., observation is (potentially) mutual, but not so in the case of the sport event and the theatre.
As for the rite, it seems wrong to say that it has no spectacular function; in fact, frequently there is a division, just as in the theatre, between those which perform the rite and those who only participate, like for example, the priest in the Christian mass as opposed to the congregation : that is to say, there is a difference between those which only observe, and those which, in addition to observing, are also observed. However, there is probably nobody in the rite who is not a subject but only an object of observation, for also the officiator partakes in the experience of the rite; he performs it for himself, in the same sense in which he does so for the others (unlike the actor). Even if we consider rites of the type which seems to have been imagined by Hildebrand and Kleberg, where the difference between the officiator and the participants tends to dissolve in a collective trance (a more Dionysian than Appollonian kind of rite), there still remains a spectacular function of the participant without which the rite would lack any meaning. A correlate of this division is that different spatial expanses are normally assigned to the spectator and the observed, which offers the possibility of a transgression of limits between spaces independently of the respective subjects: and such transgressions are really what is often found in the work of Ivanov and Eivrenov, as well in more recent vanguard theatre, as for example the Living Theatre, Théâtre du soleil, etc. But there are also rites in which the space of the officiator is clearly separated from the space of the common participants; this also is true of the familiar Christian rites, particularly in their Catholic variant. But in these latter cases, the transgression of limits does not give rise to new forms of art, but to an act of sacrilege.
“Symbolic play ” and agôn
Another sense in which the spectacular function seems to be too general derives from the fact that all the works of art, not to say all signs, require a spectator/receiver in order to exist, and in this way they could all be said to be offered up for perception. This is made explicit in the situation of communication as it is described in the Prague school model, in which a receiver is called upon to transform an artefact into an object of perception by means of the process of concretisation. If we limit our considerations to that of the dominant visual modality, we can say about visual art that its rests on a division of something into the part which its observed and its observer. In fact, a division of this kind characterises all those locations which form part of the process of circulation of the art work, such as museums, galleries and other places of exposition. The ready-mades presuppose this condition in order to function: they may be objects which are originally not public or semi-public (home furnishings, such as irons) or perhaps public, but not visually displayed (the urinary), which are then placed in a position of contemplation.
The theatre, the sport event and the ritual are all sequences of conduct which are offered up for contemplation. In this they are different from the common art work, which is not a piece of behaviour but a static thing, at least in its expression. The theatrical act is composed of conduct, as much in its expression as in its content; the sport event and the rite are, too, at least as far as their expression is concerned. In this sense, Eco’s (1975) description of the elementary theatrical situation is not particularly enlightening: an alcoholic who is sleeping on a bank over which the Salvation Army hangs a banderole about the dangers of drinking alcohol. This scene has a static character which puts it much nearer to the contemplation of an object: it is a “tableau vivant”, which, from the point of view of life, is rather clsoe to death.
That aspect of the semiotic function which Piaget calls “symbolic play” can be seen as a predecessor to both theatre and the rite (Sonesson, 1992a). Here there can be no doubt that both expression and content are sequences of behaviour (what the little girl does with her puppet is the same thing as what her mother does with her little brother). At the same time, however, it seems that in symbolic play there normally is no audience which does not also take on the function of actor. In the previous argument we have arrived at a revised characterisation of ritual as something in which the spectator’s roll is granted to all the participants, whereas the actor part is not necessarily distributed to all of them. On the contrary, in play it seems that all those presents are as much participants as onlookers.
Piaget’s “symbolic play” only corresponds to one of the four types of play that Callois (1968) distinguishes: mimicry or simulacrum. The other play categories are agôn or competition, as for example football; aléa or chance, as in lottery; and ilinx or vertigo, as in organic states. These other types of play do not seem to have any semiotic function. We can identify the “sport event” of Hildebrand with agôn, but there is nothing in Callois’ classification that corresponds to ritual, if we do not take it to be something purely Dionysian, as Kleberg seems to do, in which case we can identify it with ilinx. This latter may possibly correspond to Malinowski’s conception of “phatic communion” (which is transformed into a communicatory function by Jakobson). But to reduce ritual to ecstasy does not seem to be a way to do it justice.
It may seem that some of the spectacles that we have mentioned previously, as for example the circus and the ballet, should be understood as cases of agôn, just like the sport event, and therefore does not rest on some division into expression and content. This seems to be true in particular about many circus acts which contain an element of progression. However, as Paul Bouissac (1981) has shown, this progression can turn out to be illusory: the acts are organised one after another according to what seems to be a gradual increase of difficulty, whereas the true part of effort may very well be the opposite. Already in the fact that it is important for the acts to look difficult there is an element of signification, a difference between expression and content. And in the same sense, I think it can be said that classical ballet also is endowed with meaning (completely independently of such pure element of imitation which it often contains), because it is fundamental that the acts look easy (that is to say, easy for those who execute them).
From this it may be seen that the circus act and the ballet have something in common with the theatre and the symbolic play: their value is in the act as such, in all its details, as it is perceived and/or is experienced. On the contrary, the sport event and all kinds of agôn only derive their value from that which they obtain, and this is , in a sense, also the case of the rite; they are instrumental acts, means to a goal (even if they, as play, do not have their goal outside their own sphere). Theatrical action is an expression which is defined in relation to a content; agôn and rite are defined in relation to their use. These groups of actions differ between them as what Greimas (1968) calls gestures and praxis; the former serve to interpret the world, they latter to change it. As praxis, the rite is of course something of a paradox: it does not change the world materially (in any case not fundamentally), but in some kind of “spiritual” way. It could be said that what it changes in the world is its interpretation.
It was in a similar way that one of the members of the Prague circle, Jindrich Honzl (1982) described the difference between theatre and rite. Both, he said, are semiotical actions, which is why they are often confused, as for example by Wagner and his successors. However, while theatrical action represents a real act, the ritual act is a way of changing the world by imposing on it a religious interpretation. But Honzl also thinks that the rite, unlike theatre, does not, for those who believe in it, represent another action, but it is that very action. In the Christian communion, for example, the reception of the sacramental wafer and the wine is not a representation of the sacrifice of Christ but that same sacrifice once again. If this is true, the rite would not be an expression which points to another action as its content; rather, each ritual occasion should be related to its original act like a token to a type, or, more precisely, to the unit that has created the type; for it must obviously be question of that kind of type which is experienced as having been created from a particular unit located in time and space, as is the original of an art work to which all the reproductions point (Sonesson 1997b; 1998b). However, in this sense the rite is not so special: all actions are of this kind, at a greater or smaller level of organisation (and we will return to this point later). Moreover, contemporary anthropologists have claimed that explanations of this nature make the “primitives” all too naive: in actual fact, according to Douglas (1996), they only execute the rain ritual when they know that the rainy season is anyhow about to begin.
It is also no doubt a mistake to assimilate the rite without further ado to the instrumental actions, as we did previously. The principle of relevance of the instrumental actions is found in their objectives, not in their contents; an instrument may have any shape, as long as it serves its objective, and the runner can run as he wants as long as he arrives first to the goal. In the rite, the details of the action are, nevertheless, important, and in this it is similar to the theatre. To be relative to its objective, the ritual act must first be relative to the action which it repeats.
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Institutionen för konst & musikvetenskap
Institute of Art History and Musicology
Avd. för semiotik
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Avd. för konstvetenskap
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semiotic clearing house
Index of all files at this site
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Can Pictures Lie?
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October 25, 2005
art 505 mid semester journal
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October 20, 2005
Revised Artist Statement - October 2005
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October 19, 2005
Grants - archinect discussion
Archinect : Discussion Forum : Travelling Scholarships...
citizen
10/19/05 9:24
I've managed to score a couple of large grants (large for a grad student, puny for the real world). An application committee wants to hear, as Susan suggests, why you must pursue this inquiry, and why you can only accomplish this in Moscow, or Prague, or Iowa City. "I've always thought it would be interesting to study churches in France" probably won't cut it.
Second, the committee wants to hear what you will be doing from the day you land/arrive. "Week 1, I will locate and briefly visit the six structures I will document. Week 2, I will return and survey the first two in detail, preparing as-built plans and elevations..." will work better than the vague statement above .
Grant applications committees want to hear that the money will be well-spent by someone who knows 1) the purpose of their inquiry, and 2) the exact steps necessary to undertake it. Otherwise, let someone else who REALLY deserves the grant for legitimate research/ experience go for the grant. Don't muddy the pool.
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October 18, 2005
Rembrandt self portraits
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In security Artist Statement
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specialized body geometry
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rotterdamn furniture designer
Work - wouter Geense Design Studio
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October 17, 2005
hunter s thompson articles from espn
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Archive Tacid Design Knowledge
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rembrandt biography notes
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How Art has changed - Frieze
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Baroque Reenacted
Blogs Ya.com: Domus Artium 2002
The selection process for the works was largely born out of a number of “symptoms” proposed by Omar Calabrese to define our times: “Limit, excess, detail, fragment, rhythm, repetition, instability, metamorphosis, knot, labyrinth, disorder, chaos, distortion, perversion…” The majority of the pieces are notable for their scenographic qualities and their tendency to combine various media and supports in order to attain a strong visual impact.
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digital artist
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October 16, 2005
DI - architecture portal
Trends, Strategies, Research for Design Professionals :: DesignIntelligence
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Charles Jencks Interview
An Interview With Charles Jencks, Author of THE ICONIC BUILDING
"Cosmogenesis" has a 150 year history as a word. It is picked up by Teilhard, de Chardin, Thomas Berry and Harvard physicists. It has come to mean the universe as a continuous, unfolding event (i.e. a genesis, by a cosmic process lasting 13.7 billion years). This is the shift in worldview that sees nature and culture as growing out of the narrative of the universe. In a global culture of conflict this narrative provides a possible direction and iconography that transcend national and sectarian interests.
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dream light - LED light thing
Vivid Effect | LED Lighting&Control
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computer driven design - fluid form vases
~ FLUIDFORMS ~ RE.EVOLUTIONARY DESIGN
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October 15, 2005
cool art technology videos
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Archinect : Discussion Forum : Phenomenology
Archinect : Discussion Forum : Phenomenology
Phenomenology
innov8rdi
Total Entries: 1
Total Comments: 17
10/09/05 12:28
I’m doing research from my thesis project and I’m really interested in studying architectural phenomenology. Specifically, the phenomenon of memory as an aspect of how we associate and become emotionally connected to the built environment. Do you have any ideas about some writings I could read or any thoughts in general? I think the biggest obstacle I’ll face is how to define phenomenology and how to actually test responses of visitors to spaces…
JG
Total Entries: 13
Total Comments: 287
10/09/05 13:44
From my bibliography
The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard
Introduction to Metaphysics by Martin Heidegger
Genius Loci by Christian Norberg-Schulz
Concept of Dwelling by Christian Norberg-Schulz
Anchoring: Selected Projects, 1975 1991 by Steven Holl
The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander
Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science by Alberto Perez Gomez
You don't have to define phenomology, it has already been defined. I also do not think that measuring one's repsonse to a building in phenomological terms is possible but good luck anyway.
rpsnino
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10/09/05 14:52
Juhani Pallasmaa and Zumthor also have some writings on this topic.
vado retro
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10/09/05 14:53
to the things themselves brotha!
melivt
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10/09/05 15:43
nicely translated summation of heiddeger, vado.
innov8rdi
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10/09/05 16:54
thank you so much for your responses - definitely helpful.
JG - did you study this subject? and how did you go about it?
architechnophilia
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10/09/05 16:55
JG list is somewhat...rudamentary. However still execellent reading. I might suggest, if I may be so bold, reading the any series (I think it is anyhow) huge discussion and write ups. Otherwise find a copy of Harvard's design journal (name?) that has an issue on monuments. It is written (most of the articles) from the phenomnological optic - very good reading. Used it alot when research the role of monuments and third world development through form.
abracadabra
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10/09/05 17:53
you can also check into Alain Robbe-Grillet. Jealousy (his 1957 novel) starts with a floor plan.
Janosh
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10/09/05 18:53
A caveat: the application of phenomenology to architecture need not take follow the examples proposed by Frampton and Norberg-Schulz. These two phenomenological regionalists take a very narrow reading of Heidegger and turned it into a doctrine.
If you are doing your thesis, I would suggest that you do all of the philosophical readings first before you get into the Architecture as Applied Phenomenology texts. Check out Ed Casey's Thinking About Place and Paul Carters "The Road to Botany Bay" for another perspective.
Janosh
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10/09/05 18:57
And should you become a Heideggerian, you will also want to read a couple of the numerous works studying the relationship between his philosophy and his Nazi party affiliation. Just so you know.
architechnophilia
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10/09/05 19:12
Michel Focoult as well particularly book 3 on POWER
darkred
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10/09/05 20:40
Do NOT finish your research without reading Henri Bergson! It seems by your description that you're more interested in Bergson's ideas in memory and duration than the very pointed definition of "phenomenology." My thesis started in a similar position, and ended with more Bergsonian and Deleuzian philosophy.
I recommend Deleuze's "Bergsonism."
mjh00c
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10/09/05 21:07
It is interesting that you made this post. I am in Level I MArch and we're reading a lot about phenomenology. We have done some readings from Bachelard as mentioned above which is a great source and Norberg Schulz. You might also read about semiology because they are very similar yet different-it might help you to get a better graps of the concept but hopefully it won't be confusing.
bzkr
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10/10/05 0:43
Inno,
2 must read books:
Matter and Memory
and
The man who mistook his wife for a hat
db
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10/10/05 3:37
Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception, as well as anything else by him. I find the M-P Aesthetics Reader still a great source and easy to follow, with nice explications and essays in support of 3 three of his essays on Phenomenology and Painting.
Juhani Pallassmaa's Eyes of the Skin (which someone has already mentioned) as well as Zumthor's Thinking Architecture (though good luck finding it!)
on perhaps a completely other side of it: check out poet Lyn Hejinian's Writing is an Aid to Memory and Charles Olson's writings on the Special View of History.
makeArchitecture
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10/10/05 4:17
My thesis started in a similar position, and ended with more Bergsonian and Deleuzian philosophy.
I recommend Deleuze's "Bergsonism."
--Is this kind of crap still fashionable in school?
French
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10/10/05 4:45
I'll add Michel de Certeau's "invention du quotidien" to the list. Very easy to read and very useful architecturally wise.
Steven Ward
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10/10/05 5:42
two off-the-map reads that i found useful:
cultural selection, gary taylor
thinking through the body, jane gallop
i find that i can only ingest a limited amount of bergson, deleuze, etc., and that actually using this reading to any purpose is even tougher. if you can take a germ of something from that reading from which you can build an architectural question, then you've done something.
the books i've listed above are more pedestrian - but they help your brain start thinking about possibility for how memory can be an important aspect in the conception of and the longevity of a cultural artifact (taylor) and how developing a channel of mind/body thinking as a way to understand the phenomena around us (gallop) can be of use in moving forward.
so many of the philosophical/critical texts are about observation, understanding, and description of space, time, phenomena, etc. - and in that quest, they are very compelling and valuable - but they don't help you in forging a path forward. ultimately, there is a jumping off point that you yourself have to create by asking a question...
quondam
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10/10/05 6:30
Inside the Density of G.B. Piranesi's Ichnographia Campi Martii
It's all about the co-joining of memory (ie, mental reenactment) and architecture.
I wonder if Robbe-Grillet began Jealousy with a floor plan because that's how the ancient Roman art of mnemonics was taught? The Ichnographia Campi Martii is certainly Piranesi's greatest mnemonic floor plan.
Are people without good memories instinctually jealous of those that have good memories?
Does having a good memory also make for having a better phenomenology?
"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods."
JG
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10/10/05 6:41
arcitechnophilla, my list is a list of Primary Text's necessary for anyone who is beginning to study phenomenology and while "rudamentary" they are also fundamental to understand before you pick up a copy of a Secondary Text like Harvard's design journal.
rpsnino
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10/10/05 10:57
I second the Edward Casey writings - they are very accessible and super interesting.
galvanize
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10/10/05 18:58
Yes, Casey.
vado retro
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10/10/05 20:16
"to the things themselves" is attributed to husserl, the father of phenomonology and the teacher of heidegger.
innov8rdi
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10/10/05 21:33
i just wanted to say thanks to everybody. i've written down every suggestion and to my surprise, was able to find most at my school's library (i thought it was going to be much harder).
but there is definitely something exciting and motivating about having a list of books that aren't only things i really want to read, but some are things i might not have stumbled across on my own... at least not this early.
anyway - it's great. keep it coming!! :)
Steven Ward
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10/11/05 15:29
in undergrad we made up a stupid song about phenomenology.
we made up a lot of stupid songs.
we were tired.
quondam
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10/12/05 4:54
Daniel Birnbaum, "The Hospitality of Presence: Problems of Otherness in Husserl's Phenomenology" in Peter Weibel, Olafur Eliasson: Surroundings Surrounded.
I read Birnbaum's essay last night and it appears that Husserl would have benefited from the realization that all memory (both his 'primary memory' and his 'secondary memory') are by default mental reenactments. That Husserl ultimately saw perception and primary memory (ie, retention) as the same (ie, simultaneously present and thus together constituting the nature of presence itself) then unwittingly suggests that perception is also a mental reenactment of the phenomenon being perceived.
[My first philosophy teacher (in high school 1973-74) was big into Husserl. He occassionally went off on these tangents talking about his experiences at the Husserl center (or whatever it was called) somewhere in Germany (if memory/mental reenactment serves me correctly).
Otto King of Bavaria died eighty-nine years ago yesterday, so I wondered if anything coincidental or interesting might happen. I wasn't really expecting anything though because my mind was working 'elsewhere', yet it was the work on a new artwork regarding Marcel Duchamp that led me to recall that Otto's death date was yesterday--Duchamp died 2 October 1968. Finally, it was last night while watching E=mcsquared on PBS that I then recalled Art that is Otto and Einstein at Princeton 5 March 2000. One of my favorites.
In case you don't get it, Otto (the name itself even) supplies the symmetry, while Einstein supplies the relativity.
Edmund Husserl was born in Moravia. The Odds of Ottopia, I suppose.]
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The Public Art Fund is New York's leading presenter of artists' projects, new commissions, and exhibitions in public spaces. For over 25 years the Public Art Fund has been committed to working with emerging and established artists to produce innovative exhibitions of contemporary art for neighborhoods throughout New York City. By bringing artworks outside the traditional context of museums and galleries, the Public Art Fund provides increased access to the art of our time -dismantling any barriers to the accessibility of contemporary art - and provides artists with a unique opportunity to expand their artistic practice.
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