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ezio@gsapp

This is my blog while at the MSAAD program of the GSAPP of Columbia University. 1st post came with my arrival at NYC. e-mail: eb2283@columbia.edu, ezio@otn.gr, ezioblasetti@gmail.com 

Monday, August 08, 2005

10:41 PM - Interim Review Notes






moving towards the end of our semester / Keller's studio, it gets interesting to see how our projects evovle and potentialy are translated to architecture (not that I'm implying that we haven't been designing the whole time...;)

Tony's notes are coming up from the Review as a comment
ps thanks


Blogger ezio said...

Dave Pigram (pre-specialized):

getting script for a turtle and modifying it to work within a volume, dying when it leaves the volume. the parameters added are starting, turn, random motion, distance between points, branching, scale control, etc. There are very controlled and uncontrolled branching possibilities. The script can be expanded for existence between various containers. Next steps, run the script through animation editor so you can edit it real time, have the object t exist outside the cavity, avoid redundancy.

Ed Keller:

the story about asking for a reward based on a chess board (exponential reward). This is the interesting promise of the project in relation to outbreak. The inverse is the law of diminishing returns; Lyme disease control (80% infection of ticks), however if you control one section of the infected population, if over the course of the year you diminish that by 80%, it isn’t a linear gain, it is a larger gain. In terms of the turtle, have the turtle respond to a similar condition where the turtles depend on another ‘outside’ source for continued population. What are the turtles seeing as an outside vector or communication system? One of the strongest aspects of the project is the pre-specialization; it immediately says your idea of pre-specialization presupposes a state of matter or set of criteria. It’s potential could critically engage the prespecialized modernist project because it can scale shift, become a universal model for the way that matter behaves. The vacuum is boiling, literally where nothing exists, is boiling; argument for black holes. What is born next to a black hole is being consumed and being emitted. You can take the argument of prespecialization is a sideline argument concern the universe as a whole. There is a formal densification (splinter in foot) relation to the project. (or pearls). It seems like you are doing that, but it is really important that the growth of the ‘cyst’ grows in terms of program as well as spatial. Organizational structure has to grow as well. You aren’t just growing new bone, but doing something more. Even if you haven’t discovered the answer, you have to take a risk and say that this is what the project is pointing at…sometimes when I run the turtle system it gives me a formal solution, sometimes it giving me this. Not the single answer, but the suggestion that it can grow for economic response, formal response, biological response, communication response, etc.

(Discussion of the spring functions and their current importance to the project.)
(the double skin environment and the relationship to the carbon fiber spider)

W. Dorian Bybee:

trying to connec silencio to the media in the midterm. start with diagram of theater, this became a paradigm for seeing the situation. an idea of a self-referential system, conscious/unconscious situation, where things are representations of each other, the audience watches the actor, the actor watches the crowd, the stage as filter between the two. interpretation as also a factor. as far as the stage itself, it also has a system involved (director and intentions). this is possibly a model for seeing all things (universal model) because it builds in complexity, variety, opportunities. perfection because of imperfections. filter as entropy or unintended external forces…they add something to the stage. architecture has been the actor (prevailing cultural ideals), the stage is limitations of technology (cultural, religious influences to the actor), the audience (population). Instead of architecture as product, can the actor engage as the unintended external forces (the stage rather than actor). site is unimportant as long as it has opportunities. Intent of model: take media of all types, and use it as recognizable media to make statements about alternative medias (not literal or obvious). Infuse meaning, but unprogrammed, abstract and forces people to reinterpret. Deprogram media and create something beautiful. Instead of being critical, move to the middle and bridge the gap between extremes. abstract a media screen until it cannot be understood anymore. the desire is for people to reprogram the media, the more abstract, the more people are able to become subjective (massive subjectivity).

EK:

There is a very deep political strain in Empire that you can later research. Agamben, etc. Massive subjectivity; however, just brush by with a passive reference. What is important is that you recognize the lineage of uses of abstraction in art and architecture; historically, from Pollack’s Abstract Expressionism, Holbine’s “Ambassadors” painting with blob at their feet, where the oblique form becomes a skull, the allegory cannot be read literally, but only through slightly hidden content. How is abstraction dealt with; a moment of agency on the part of the viewer; once you know where the skull is you can say that you have seen it, but not really until you are an active agent. There is a point at which abstraction is no longer abstract, but becomes real, and then the data can become abstract again, but the original intentions is gained. Foucoult’s arguments about “painting” in which the painter is standing in front of a canvas you can’t see, but looking at you; it is possible to assume that you are a large mirror and that you are the painter. This is a construction of a different kind of agent-viewer. You can take this argument out of art and into film, text-messaging, etc. You don’t have to remain in the filmic world. Modernism, as a vocabulary, was trying to do the same thing, but by working with formal archetypes, how can mass subjectivity could be constructed; now that we are beyond that, where is mass subjectivity precipitated in your project? Is it between media? Some visual,non-visual theater? Really quick crash course research in the painting realm Rosyln Krass the Optical Conscious, Weber vs. Plato on thetocracy. Basic studies of theater typologies as very important because they all create very different viewing experiences. Lord of the Rings and the fifteen year old case study. The function of the typology analysis is to show where the typology is contingent on many conditions, not just to show the typologies and how they work. The next step is balancing the design of a screen and the theatrical interface (building).

(discussion of meaning, content, media, scaleshit, abstraction, etc.)
(examples of abstraction become pertinent).


Abdullah al-Shamsi:

Quick review of previous presentation. Looking at Transparency International as a method for reviewing corruption in the UN. The source of corruption and how to counteract corruption. Organizational goals review, how a virus can contribute to these goals. How transparency is achieved; organizational , data, employee transparency. Discussion of data types: General, Employee Related, Secretive, Time Sensitive. Discussion of text and legibility. Image of skin of building inflated with an organization (virus). This spreads from envelope into the UN building. Video effect. Section through the red section, with specialized functions and general functions, between which is streaming data,

(discussion if it is possible to remove the formal qualities of the red object and its relation to the skin, or vise versa to remove the red object entirely and simply leave behind its ‘results’)

EK:

It is possible to create an organizational structure like a magnetic field, you move a magnet in a field, the information changes, but the residue is left behind, not the magnet. A body passes through an object, a change is made, but how much of the product is left behind that carries the aspect of change. Importance of internal programmatic change rather than building skin manipulation.

(discussion of formal versus spatial operations…can you create a system without the red object.)

Matias Honoratio:

Awareness as approach to the position of the project. A non-physical system that still has a point of production. The program itself is related to the relationship of sequences taken from movies. How can I achieve an organization system like a film director. Colonization was the last operation described through the shelter project. There is a process of taking over territories. There is a relationship between production and consumption; the idea was continued of working with drug routes because they offer an important approach to intervention between the producer and the consumer. The decision was made to change the scale and produce (project 5) which is concerned with trade because it implies the close relation with the object. What is the consequence of the material? What is the marketplace? Markets on Wall Street or the ultra-physical street market? This market place should be placed within drug routes to alter production and consumption relationships to produce awareness. What object is traded? This has not been decided. What is the opposite of the drug relationship? Extreme awareness? It is impossible to actually know the drug routes, but criminology can be studied, and implications can be made for understanding the routes. The area studied is between Harlem and the Bronx because of Highway 95. The road can take you all the way to the Key West. The work is being conducted within the open strips of park in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. Relationships between street and park are used to define sites of operation where a market can be delivered. How to work with infrastructure at the same time. Abstract operation to physical operation, diagram into physical design; what is the strategy? Take the natural process of fungal infection and how a spore can produce an infection. How can an alien agent can be deployed into a different field, but at the same time how the field reacts in order to produce a symbiosis between the infection and the living subject. (necrotic areas) Territory deployed with cellular structure (Lost Highway) with universal units of experience distributed over the entire field. Next; the cells will die at some points reacting to the positions of the marketplace. One attractor is able to produce an affect over multiple units; you will define and kill the park in order to produce a matched zone for the markets, which will act as shelter. In two words, the field will react with the void. Three formal strategies that define topographical operations for a unit.

EK:

The relevance of the Bilbao Effect and the way interventions work with ‘problemmatic space.’ Is it possible for interventions to contain hostile space? (Pompidou Centre). Do you want to bring in a fabric with the Bilbao Effect or do you want to have difference built into the system? It is also that you are not introducing standard productive value, but drawing from a series of catalysts from “Lost Higway”; you are not producing a comfortable situation right off, but an intensification that may be considered unproductive. Parc de la Villette and its edge conditions as being both positive and negative. You have to define how this provides more health in the system.

(discussion of whether or not the project is used to pacify or reinforce the existing nature of the park…also, how can you work with your environment to produce a balance between darkness and the typical market condition.)


Ian :

Addressing West Nile Virus and emergent diseases. Members of the organization: CDC in concert with convict rehab and networks not normally accessible by normal organizations. Hard data about organizations, ways to have architectural enhancement. There is usually a response to create an architectural unit, and there is a back end zone to create as well. Operative diagrams with meridians and nodes. The linear model distributed inot a non-linear model. West Nile Virus is a loop system between birds and mosquitoes which can eventually infect humans and other mammals. New York is an important node on the West Nile Meridian. Redefinition of meridians based on migration routes, global transportation routes, and other meridians. Roosevelt Island as the spot to attract more birds. Creation of strands relating to elements that react to conditions. Ideas of topography and landscapes that are useful for environment and activities. Landscape, research lab, intervention space, etc. The architecture is crisis response and then transitions into something else.

EK:

The homeopathic concept; breed mosquitoes and then release an unfertile strand of virus into the world. There are possibly sinister ways to incorporate prison populations into the mosquito testing conditions. You have to have a very careful discussion of how these variables are related. Stopped on red image because it has reference to a texture condition that can point you to a way to design the facility. A generic condition can be designed through specific textures that suggest variation. The specificity of more detail is what needs to be done. The idea of the meridians is still really good, it just needs to be fleshed out; the ideas of the bridge has potential, there are other elements to be taken further- migration patterns, blockage creation, blockage removal, etc. Show how everything you are designing is contributing to the general moves. What happens when you perform acupuncture on someone with an amputated leg; here is a diagram of a health arm/ here is a diagram of a blockage in the arm, here is a diagram of a city/ here is a diagram of a blocked city, other examples. There is an implication of blockage and freeflow, now there needs to be additional specificity.


Ersela Kripa:

This is the schizophrenia framework; definition of fragmentation and using it as a method to get back out to schz. Schz as just a beginning thought; picked to building programs, library and slaughterhouse and attempt to see how various elements can be infused within each other. A library redefined as a node (information ) within biopower. Slaughterhouse diagram spliced with library program. The library literally put in the middle of slaughterhouse operations to produce some sort of affect on environmental issues (in general terms). General Manhattan Block used to see roughly defined programmatic spaces inserted within a generic system. The deeper you get into the program, the more scale shifts you get; global effects seen from deeper penetration into the library. Stacks of the library layered with different types of information; how can information radiate out to global views rather than local views. Sketches of homocentric views, inverse views that remove perception of self within it, or alternative fields of vision and fragmented space in which continuity of program is shifted.

(discussion that it would be interesting to see the entire process of Monsato, farmer, hamburger store all within the span on one block). The library as the potential to display this process without it being actualized.

EK:

The overlap of the slaughterhouse and library at one point is problematic and unworkable; you’d have to trick people into going to it. Or, otherwise it isn’t so extreme; in NY the trendiest part of the city is to go and eat or live in the slaughterhouse. So people can coexist with awful and be comfortable. There are interesting programs that are more than flow charts but diagrams of programs, each has important autonomies that make good/bad archetypes. Even if the library is just a storage place for information, the more specific you get into library, the more dynamic it gets. You can buy terabytes of storage and compare that to the Library of Congress. What is the purpose of library? Fast forward to 200 GB iPods in which everyone who goes to the slaughterhouse gets some portion of information given to them. You can possibly evaporate one of the programs entirely without having all the hardware that you normally associate the library with.


Ezio Blasetti:

Everything you want to do has already been done if you look at the Internet. The first constitution is being written in Wiki (Iranian). What kind of democracy can you do after that? Explanation: A network will be designed comprised of devices that have operators: large society of bloggers who are willing to share information. Yet, the interest is creating unexpected relationships between users. Using simple rules, various types of information can be united? The simple rules are the basis for everything, but they have to be editable in the future. The Rector Street Bridge starts with void and ends in a small park which answers to the river. I am about ready to design a cell which is the simplest structure that can be responsive to display of information. This structure has two bending interactive pieces of plastic. You have USB inputs, any person can plug into into the system, once plugged in, the information is automatically shared. It has four speakers in four corners of a tensile volume that has smoke in the center. Images are constantly projected onto the smoke (smoke because of its thermodynamic implication). The display on the smoke is similar to the superimposed information that you see from the midterm video. Hundreds of images produced on the smoke in order to produce a type of pertinent static. Once you have the information plugged in, people are able to see the information through the net, once a person navigates through this information, it creates links in between the personal information. Personal information>Links in between them. There is a spring model between them. Pieces of information get a specific space. First rule- spring model of information related ot each other, Second Rule- once a person is participating in the static, the structure should be able to recognize small parts of its display that is observed that a pattern emerges. The person in the physical space is in a way stopping the movement of the information. These patterns are the only thing that should be recorded.

EK:

It is possible that small component objects could be low-tech or affordable in the sense that the objects can be a highly distributed, non-horded information network. Crucial question between computer hardware and easily edited components distributed. Question of editibility?

(discussion: what is the intent of the project? drift and not having reasonable links, but having unexpected results. Imagine a whole society working on democratic issues, maybe the next step is not having logical sequences but having experimentation of interaction)

Possibly read “Pattern Recognition” because it describes how branding works. The protagonist surfs culture to come up with a value recognition. There is the suggestion of hacking into a culture through intuition, but there is a suggestion that you can do so with some sort of contemporary cultural techniques. One of the subtexts is the character being obsessed with a footage that is slowly released; the author is showing the emergence of an overnight culture coming into contact with an older paradigm of culture. It seems that the project is sited in the same place, and we are looking for an urban infrastructure that can have as spatial and participatory. Socially ordered space and patterned space. There might be some computational understandings with Alexander’s “Pattern Language.” The danger is that you don’t just want a display system for an online network; it should become or constitute a social space itself. Walrus like node display that is interactive. Locative media changes the way drift takes place in the city. How do you legitimize the link between information in a totally virtual environment and a space like a room. It is completely up to you, as a a designer, to link the disembodied data with a physical space (yellow arrow project). The tags, which relate to information that can be seen if you call on it, is a dynamic thing within the real project.

Moving beyond the theater to creation of a network universal. The key factor is how do you come up with a filtering system which will enable people to see everything, or how do you come up with hierarchical filters. One of the major things is Content; how seductive is the content. If you have the content and the infrastructure, people will participate in the infrastructure. You’ve finished the project, now you produce content; or produce some visualization storyboard runs for the project.

Santosh:

Continued fight with Voronoi diagrams. Voronoi placed within the site, working with pedestrian movements, and addition of pedestrians into a closed volume. Then, a three-dimensional study, using possibilities form site and allow them to have more interaction and dynamism. Form created from voronoi, each with points, each point has its own edges, when the edges are connected, and then the edges are created into surfaces. Colors related to programmatic content. This method is developed further to produce more and more complex environments. The first intention with Voronoi was to create form, but the static form requires a second step; how to allow program to get inside the generated form. (genetic sequencing). Programs with different domains that can identify with others. Once you enter the system, you see what is available in your community. Once you enter, you don’t just see the local network, but the global network. The user groups are derived from the user, like in a chat room. These internal functions would create an interactive exterior interface on the façade. How will the user groups function with the program?

EK:

So the Voronoi is the display of information. The display function will work well if you can scale radically out. Eames’ Power of 10 is an excellent example because it goes from humans on a picnic blanket to the universal. If your program can do that, you can aggregate things. Your project is similar to Ezio’s, but you have already designed the filters. You already have a bias to the genetic sequencing. Relationship to the porn industry. Once you have a bias towards a genetic modifier, you start to form groups (without Fight Club humor). There are so many more implications to what this means. If someone has a unique genetic trait, insurance may not help you. Or you can be discriminated against, but if you found other people like you you could form a separate group. The other crucial aspect is how you can guarantee the truthfulness of participants. Guaranteeing that people belong is vital to the importance of the project (retinal, DNA testing, capillary testing…). White paper on Encryption; trusted referee network reference. Verification and Identification. Voronoi is based on an averaging of distance, but you are using shifting position. (Ebola).


Roland Snooks:

The actions and attributes that a drifting flock of desire agents have. Display or die, mutate, or composite. Attribute that they have: each agent contain information about material, façade perforation, program, level of alien or imported information, amount of drift, amount of cohesion, amount of spatial seeking. Deposit form or negative form; how does the system of convection operate at this level? Simulation where different levels of color move across cells. Next thing: what if the agents aren’t making individual cells, but there is some assemblage (surface tension models). One action is to mutate, and another is to inherit. There is a conduction between agents. Two agents, alien and local, each share characteristics such as geometry and tessellation. Tesselation is not randomly placed, but related to curvature of the surface. Façade perforation: agents contain information regarding perforation and the surface responds appropriately. Still interested in the idea of depositing geometry and subtractive structure on existing building (cellular version of the alien). Alternate experiment with façade perforation of a building and how the agents might adjust the building. Intentions: test the object in four scenarios; mullion distortion when one program interacts with another; creation of bridges or links; façade that begins to shift towards other architectural elements; looking at the way agents actually act rather than where they go. Positioning the project; the process obviously deals with drift; the reason this is interesting is because the sitationists describe appropriation of use in the city that is not described; attempt to create a non-described architecture.



EK:

You need to be careful about that last point; you need to make sure that all the variables are not just a happy medium between all values that are potentially subject to the drifting agents you describe. The drifting agent is an aesthetic agent which puts you in touch with something from a century before or forty years into the future. If your drifting agent has something to do with property value it could transform many things at one time; your change should not be predictable, but something that you will predict will be healthy. But the unexpected surreal encounter is also important. An incredibly beautiful mullion system does not necessarily change the value of the building. There are so many consequences to interactive building systems: not just aesthetic, but also structural, etc. There are some components that would have to do with zoning, legal issues, that you may want your agents to have and deposit. A mundane way of describing a project could create an incredible project.


Greg Derrico:

A series of formal studies based on the geometry of the disturbances produced form the film studies. Three iterations that break apart the strands or field of participants at the site. All of the disturbances originate in the staircase of a subway building, which is the initial rupture. There is a cross-breeding of programs and pedestrian activity within the park. The generic formal volume hasn’t yet taken on the characteristics of the landscape yet, but it is acting as a physical blender with various integrated components. Question how to relate the diagrams and disturbance in an appropriate fashion. Mapping strategy and blending between two objects worked well with two fields, but operating in the physical world doesn’t register the same way.

EK:

Some of the material used in the film analysis could become quite useful here. Camera movement, people movement, etc, used to create a map; you could use the same method , without translation of the film itself, could be applied to the park. Imagine drawing this room (300m) with Illustrator, you would create a very specific map for the area with the same set of parameters, but the final result would be completely different than the filmic analysis. Out of the hundreds of different kinds of maps, you need to find intersections and see which ones have to do with physical form and see how they intersect with other maps, etc. Doesn’t have to be rocket science, can be simple things like the type of table and the event it facilitates. Noise and other elements discussed don’t have to have mystical and theorized qualities. Don’t respect the site so much. Let your product sprawl out a little. Take ordinary objects with normal meanings and change the key features of that object. Find the surveillance object that has the important masking, camouflaging effect that relates to your project and make something interesting out of it that is not bounded by the site. Dazzling or duplication. Maybe you accept everything that you have done but expand the notion of site and apply it to the entire city; what does it mean ot “brand the city.”


Stephen Mueller:

Taking the idea of programming awareness, to build a machine applicable at large scale urban sites and small scale displays, a machine that would promote or deny awareness for multiple populations. Looking into organizations and typologies, I the urban environment that already deal with this in some way. How they deal with individual and individuals with the collective: Four categories: worship, entertainment, advertisement, education. Does the individual seek out something or does the environment seek out the individual. Diagrams which suggest a recombination system; looking for quantifyable data. All the vectors which have been mapped have been dispersed into a remapped linear progression that describes three dimensions. The only variable that describes their displacement is rotational. Displacement off the central axis as mapped and possibly important to the final strategy. This seems to be the best way to describe the diagram. Creation of a surface dynamic. Diagrammatic approach to how this could become spatial. Different stages described from one diagram into one object. Application of this strategy into infill sites within the city as places which can divert attention. Slot conditions with mechanized parking reused. Union Square framework. How to repopulate the grid.

EK:

You can say that people have been designing parks for a long time to produce awareness in the city; how do you differentiate how your project is going to work? How to define the conditions of the park? There are different circuits or inflections of awareness. People have been designing parks; there are many different design decisions. There are scale, landscape, program issues for parks that create a standards spectrum of residential, institutional, light industrial conditions that yields a vibrant park culture. The question is: what do you need to do to increase that level of feedback loops. How do you change the quality of the feedback loops in the park? Articulate very clearly what your project does to go one step beyond the existing system of the park. Then, use the metric of the landscape formation you have described to accomplish it. Parks might produce health, but that does not mean that they are aware of their own production of health. How does the device show people themselves transforming. People don’ t know that they are part of an evolving culture, but they don’t have to know.  


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