Wednesday, May 02, 2012
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Discerning Boundaries Artist Statement
Upon visiting the Austin Cary Forest, it was easy to become captivated by, and drawn to, the concept of fire. As a managed forest, there are distinct areas of man-made fires as well as completely natural fires. Amongst this blazing spectacle it felt natural to dwell on the differentiating types of fires and their borders. The invisible borders of man-made versus natural fires makes up the different sections of the forest. Through the use of characterization and color, this performance attempts to romanticize and fetishize these borders of the man-made versus the natural while bringing a certain beauty to light that is not ordinarily seen. The red symbolizes raw, uncontrollable energy while the black symbolizes power and control. The colors do not dichotomize good versus evil but instead discern the boundaries between the areas affected by lightning strikes and natural fires versus man-made, controlled fires. Each ribbon is a line and physical manifestation of the border and of physical data. As the ribbon is dragged, each blaze along the forest floor would become an aftermath that brings a cyclic nature of death and rebirth. The cyclical nature of the looped video emphasizes the continuity without a beginning or end. As time progresses, things become beautiful again but the difference between the two is shown through metaphorical devices of beauty, contrast, and an allure of the forest’s visible data.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Construction
These aren't the most explicit photos, but here:
Nat being creepy
Noel working on the first
Starting the second in the foreground
Nat measuring chipboard for the second
Also, when Natalie and I did mapping together, we mapped the paths of ants from a few holes next to Little, and that is what the above is
DeCerteau Questions
1. How is a city or any other landscape a text? There is the city and the concept of the city. Please define each and describe their relationship to each other.
A landscape is a text because we approach it in a similar fashion. We understand our relationship to a place through the text that comes up in our head. We assign words to physical objects we encounter and thus "read" through it. The city as a concept is that it is one's perception of a city. It is difficult for one person to understand the entire city as is. The actual city refers to the entire space and objects in it.
2. Why does deCerteau claim that the concept city is dying?
The concept of the city is dying because people are not aware of the city as a whole. They are limited by their coming and going.
3. How can focusing on the negative privilege a discourse?
Focusing on the negative allows for discourse because we question what has happened and how the negative was arrived at.
4. How does deCerteau relate the decisions we make when walking to speech acts?
This relates back to the idea that we "read" the city and think verbally. We verbalize our decisions in our head as well as out loud.
5. How does deCerteau define myth in the context of this chapter?
Our perception of the city is the concept of the city, and that it is not entirely factual and true to life. Therefore, this can be considered a myth in which people follow their own paths.
6. Examples of local authority?
When buildings become named, we can no longer assign a different place to it. It becomes a fixed location that we relate to and exist around.
7. What purpose/s could be served by eradicating stories and legends that inhabit places? What are the consequences of this? How is this related to walking?
A place without a story no longer elicits any emotional attachment. When we tell stories, we often start with, "This one time, We were at _______..." The place becomes special to us and it becomes an integral part of our space. When we eliminate the stories, it allows for a blank canvas, but we no longer relate to it the same way.
8. Is it possible to see memory as negative space?
Memory can be seen as a negative space in that it distorts reality and when we try and conjure up memories of a place, we find they are not always accurate, much like viewing a visual negative space.
9. In your own words, what does the practice of space mean?
We practice space in that we think critically and relate to the space. We practice space individually and form our own myths based on our life experiences.
A landscape is a text because we approach it in a similar fashion. We understand our relationship to a place through the text that comes up in our head. We assign words to physical objects we encounter and thus "read" through it. The city as a concept is that it is one's perception of a city. It is difficult for one person to understand the entire city as is. The actual city refers to the entire space and objects in it.
2. Why does deCerteau claim that the concept city is dying?
The concept of the city is dying because people are not aware of the city as a whole. They are limited by their coming and going.
3. How can focusing on the negative privilege a discourse?
Focusing on the negative allows for discourse because we question what has happened and how the negative was arrived at.
4. How does deCerteau relate the decisions we make when walking to speech acts?
This relates back to the idea that we "read" the city and think verbally. We verbalize our decisions in our head as well as out loud.
5. How does deCerteau define myth in the context of this chapter?
Our perception of the city is the concept of the city, and that it is not entirely factual and true to life. Therefore, this can be considered a myth in which people follow their own paths.
6. Examples of local authority?
When buildings become named, we can no longer assign a different place to it. It becomes a fixed location that we relate to and exist around.
7. What purpose/s could be served by eradicating stories and legends that inhabit places? What are the consequences of this? How is this related to walking?
A place without a story no longer elicits any emotional attachment. When we tell stories, we often start with, "This one time, We were at _______..." The place becomes special to us and it becomes an integral part of our space. When we eliminate the stories, it allows for a blank canvas, but we no longer relate to it the same way.
8. Is it possible to see memory as negative space?
Memory can be seen as a negative space in that it distorts reality and when we try and conjure up memories of a place, we find they are not always accurate, much like viewing a visual negative space.
9. In your own words, what does the practice of space mean?
We practice space in that we think critically and relate to the space. We practice space individually and form our own myths based on our life experiences.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
And Artist Statement
Tentative title:
Forest Unfolding
Artist Statement:
This book is the process of deconstructing the forest into a series of layers. Successive layers present different visual components of the forest that are increasingly abstract, until the fantastical is permitted to permeate the reality of the images.
The book also references the visual history of maps, wherein the initial representation of a location of the forest is both more factual and more accurate than final layers whose more romantic illustrative qualities hark to positing of the unknown by earlier explorers and civilizations.
Forest Unfolding
Artist Statement:
This book is the process of deconstructing the forest into a series of layers. Successive layers present different visual components of the forest that are increasingly abstract, until the fantastical is permitted to permeate the reality of the images.
The book also references the visual history of maps, wherein the initial representation of a location of the forest is both more factual and more accurate than final layers whose more romantic illustrative qualities hark to positing of the unknown by earlier explorers and civilizations.
And Walking in the City Questions
1.
How is a city
or any other landscape a text?
There is the
city and the concept of the city.
Please define each and describe their relationship to each other.
A city is a text because it can be "read." By reading a city, I mean that it is understood in the mind's eye as something that has a spatial relationship to the viewer. They take visual ques from the surroundings they experience to understand the space in their head as text.
The concept of a city is that idea that the mind produces of the city. You have the place you live, you have the places you travel to. A person's experience of a city is not a whole picture of a city. It is their own perception, understanding, of that city. The city itself is the "whole." It is everything that constitutes the urban space, whether it be the architecture, the empty space, the wind flows, the people, etc. The operational concept being something that: produces its own space, strategic development of a system, and the creation of an universal, anonymous subject.
2. Why does deCerteau claim that the concept city is dying?
He claims this in the context that other realms are arising from the city that undermine the city's origins. He discusses the politics and procedures of the space.
3. How can focusing on the negative privilege a discourse?
By looking at the negative of things we question why it must be so, or why it has become negative. By questioning these things, we are able to determine the cause and affects of what has made a positive become negative. This provides a healthy banquet for discourse because it allows provocation, debate, and solution.
4. How does deCerteau relate the decisions we make when walking to speech acts?
He describes them in the framework of enunciation and the rhetoric of walking. We understand space as text, so we determine our decisions based on the "here" and "there" of the options, the pros and the cons.
5. How does deCerteau define myth in the context of this chapter?
He defines it in the realm of pedestrian practices. He describes these practices as a linguistic function and then discusses the inseparability of the spatial practice and the dreamed place. In his case myth pertains to the imagined state of being in the city, when a person is in reality in their own realm of existence.
6. Examples of local authority?
A discourse that allows free play but in a retained area. "It makes places habitable." It is a set of rules that help a person distinguish their locality and relation to it. Proper names as used on street signs are an example of a local authority because they define the playing ground (the location) of the space. It can no longer be a different place.
7. What purpose/s could be served by eradicating stories and legends that inhabit places? What are the consequences of this? How is this related to walking?
By eradicating the stories of a place, you remove the relationship to that place. Then, "there isn't any place special, except for my own home." Without the legends that unite people together at a certain space, people no longer heed the space or allow it to be part of the concept of their city. In this sense, as a person walks about his/her city, they are distanced a degree farther from their surrounding space.
8. Is it possible to see memory as negative space?
Sure. It is a localized area that individuals can share on the basis that they desire to do so. In a sense it is negative because it is a store, a mental library that is only accessible through exterior questions or internal desires to tell.
9. In your own words, what does the practice of space mean?
The practice of space should involve a provocation and questioning of the simultaneous complexity and simplicity of a space’s text and myth. This should lead to informing a person's perception of their own context within that space.
A city is a text because it can be "read." By reading a city, I mean that it is understood in the mind's eye as something that has a spatial relationship to the viewer. They take visual ques from the surroundings they experience to understand the space in their head as text.
The concept of a city is that idea that the mind produces of the city. You have the place you live, you have the places you travel to. A person's experience of a city is not a whole picture of a city. It is their own perception, understanding, of that city. The city itself is the "whole." It is everything that constitutes the urban space, whether it be the architecture, the empty space, the wind flows, the people, etc. The operational concept being something that: produces its own space, strategic development of a system, and the creation of an universal, anonymous subject.
2. Why does deCerteau claim that the concept city is dying?
He claims this in the context that other realms are arising from the city that undermine the city's origins. He discusses the politics and procedures of the space.
3. How can focusing on the negative privilege a discourse?
By looking at the negative of things we question why it must be so, or why it has become negative. By questioning these things, we are able to determine the cause and affects of what has made a positive become negative. This provides a healthy banquet for discourse because it allows provocation, debate, and solution.
4. How does deCerteau relate the decisions we make when walking to speech acts?
He describes them in the framework of enunciation and the rhetoric of walking. We understand space as text, so we determine our decisions based on the "here" and "there" of the options, the pros and the cons.
5. How does deCerteau define myth in the context of this chapter?
He defines it in the realm of pedestrian practices. He describes these practices as a linguistic function and then discusses the inseparability of the spatial practice and the dreamed place. In his case myth pertains to the imagined state of being in the city, when a person is in reality in their own realm of existence.
6. Examples of local authority?
A discourse that allows free play but in a retained area. "It makes places habitable." It is a set of rules that help a person distinguish their locality and relation to it. Proper names as used on street signs are an example of a local authority because they define the playing ground (the location) of the space. It can no longer be a different place.
7. What purpose/s could be served by eradicating stories and legends that inhabit places? What are the consequences of this? How is this related to walking?
By eradicating the stories of a place, you remove the relationship to that place. Then, "there isn't any place special, except for my own home." Without the legends that unite people together at a certain space, people no longer heed the space or allow it to be part of the concept of their city. In this sense, as a person walks about his/her city, they are distanced a degree farther from their surrounding space.
8. Is it possible to see memory as negative space?
Sure. It is a localized area that individuals can share on the basis that they desire to do so. In a sense it is negative because it is a store, a mental library that is only accessible through exterior questions or internal desires to tell.
9. In your own words, what does the practice of space mean?
The practice of space should involve a provocation and questioning of the simultaneous complexity and simplicity of a space’s text and myth. This should lead to informing a person's perception of their own context within that space.
deCerteau Reading Study Guide Responses
Understand the middle two
paragraphs on p. 93 starting with “The ordinary practicioners…” How is a city or any other landscape a
text? Get an understanding of what might
be meant by the term, operations, and how it relates to the aspect of the city
that is not represented as “geometric” or “geographical.”
In this sense, it
seems like the city is a text in a sense that it is a body of lines predefined
by the author in which the following participants must follow, though they may
choose any order. Being on the street or ground-level looking up at buildings
would create a different experience than looking down on the streets from the
buildings or across.
The term operations seems to be described as what the
experience of a space is rather than what geometrically or geographically the
space is. I kind of think of the Austin Cary Memorial Forest in an
“operational” sort of way as the Memorial to the forester who died and other
foresters dedicated the space in his honor. It’s what the space is as a poetic
beautiful encapsulation of the good that Dr. Cary did for forestry while on
earth in another tract of earth.
There is the city and the concept
of the city. Please define each and
describe their relationship to each other.
The city=space (physical, mental,
and political), a sense of time that encompasses pasts and futures, and a
subject of the city. The Concept-city is more of a place for actions. If I had
to discern between the two I would call the city the setting and the concept of
the city the basis for the plot.
Why does deCerteau claim that the
concept city is dying? Make sure you
have a clear ideas what is meant by concept city before you try and answer this
question.
deCerteau claims that the concept-city is decaying in a
sense that what cities initially were are no longer the same. The invention of
the automobile and the creation of suburbs dismantled the concept-city and
created social stratification
How can focusing on the negative
privilege a discourse?
By focusing on the reciprocal, you privilege a yin yang
approach that incorporates a sense of balance and by noting cause-and-effect
correlations you can better understand the past and the future
How does deCerteau relate the
decisions we make when walking to speech acts?
You may first have to understand what constitutes a speech act. See bottom of p97.
The idea of how they relate has
to do with coherence. The paths aggregated together make a cohesive path from
one location to the next and responds from where we just were or the
accumulation of the previous pkaces. Speech in the same way is a coherent string
of language either immediately or over time responding to other speeches.
How
does deCerteau define myth in the context of this chapter?
Myth- a discourse relative
to the plce/nowhere 9or origin) of concrete existence, a story jerry-built out
of elements taken from common sayings, an allusive and fragmentary story whose
gaps mesh wit the social practices it symbolizes.
Understand
the notion of “local authority”.
Examples of local authority?
The
local authority seems to be an underlying text or motivation for the outward
actions to occur. The checkerboard was a really good example, but even the
kitchen acts a local authority. You don’t wash your clothes in the dishwasher
because the space is contextualized.
What
purpose/s could be served by eradicating stories and legends that inhabit
places? What are the consequences of
this? How is this related to walking?
Places
without stories and legends become non-spaces, nothings. It does not convey meaning
to the next generation. When I walked a certain path without any documentation,
I saw a black dog inside a fence, but when my roommate walked by later, she
didn’t see the dog. The Grim kind of represented the idea of the transient
nature of memory and tags on space, just as our Google Earth imagery isn’t
spread to the rest of the world.
Think
of place that you where you have spent a lot of time. “Walk” that place. Pretend that you are describing the landscape
to a person you know quite well. As you
“walk” and talk differentiate between the parts of the conversation that
describe what is currently there now and the parts of the conversation that
detail what is not longer present.
Walking
by what used to be a Shands building for the last two years and is now an
emptied lot and the Innovation Hub is an interesting memory that is difficult
to remain lucid, and each time I remember, I’m remembering the last time I
remembered it, not the actual memory, and it becomes distorted. The buildings
were once there, then there were demolitions, now, grass.
Is it possible to see
memory as negative space?
Memory
I see as positive space, a space filled by something concrete or coherent for
however short a time. Like using a flash drive to preserve memory, it is a
space.
In your own words, what does the practice of
space mean?
The practice of space is the idea of realizing one's own location in the world.
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