Swarm Light designed by Zaha Hadid. The perceived solidity of the object changes based upon proximity. How would this idea influence the movement of people if it were introduced on a building scale?
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—This weekend I was thinking about the idea of ‘swarm,’ and how it can be used to create an inhabitable space in between all of these living, breathing organisms. The space can then be changed based upon the visitors needs. Made up of living, (but ideally not self-aware) individual agents, the swarm space would respond to all stimuli occurring within it, i.e. music or movement.
Video of swarming.
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—In carefully looking at the underlying connections between all of the readings for today, I’ve found one central theme. This theme is not one thing. It’s not different things. It’s the thing. It’s about our mystical connection to the cosmos, to life, to the past and future that we all have but refuse to acknowledge. It’s about us being human, and not being man. It’s a return to nature, to organic thought, to pure life.
Our societies’ films, musicians, and architects are slowly realizing this. The films are investigating our origins and our nature, the music is getting more explorative of the self, and the spaces we create are more organic. There is a shift happening, and maybe this is the shift that the Mayans left traces of. Who knows? The information is out there. The changes are happening. We can either realize it, recalibrate our lives, and flourish, or continue this egotistical rampage that man has been on for hundreds of years and perish in our own creations.
This wall is constructed out of individually sculpted cardboard, much like the Albumin Crystals I showed in my last post. It’s strength in numbers, in layers, and the individual alone is dead. It’s about the good of the whole, not about the needs of the individual.
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—“I Love IIT, But I Still Don’t Like Rem”
By far, my favorite tone of writing that we’ve encountered with our readings this week. His cynically uninterested disposition to the world around him is particularly interesting. I found Nobel’s refusal to give Rem any praise at all, even when he’s praising his IIT building, to be hilarious. Here he is, this (to my knowledge at least) unknown writer, harshly critiquing one the most prominent Starchitects our generation has seen with this “I told you so!” attitude. Aside from his obvious resentment toward Rem, his description of the IIT was pretty fascinating…I’d like to visit it now. So maybe Nobel’s review failed. If his bashing of Rem and his work was supposed to keep the reader’s interest away from IIT, he didn’t succeed. I’ll probably be there in the next few years.
Drive Review
Drive is a movie with an inherent struggle between two very different states. This struggle is manifested perfectly in Gosling’s character, and described perfectly in the review. He’s always going back and forth between the quiet, “Mona Lisa” man and the ruthless barbarian killing machine that he unleashes only when necessary. My favorite part of the movie was the soundtrack, which transported me to another realm…another state of mind-this timeless, floaty universe of total safety and complete destruction. I guess that’s the theme connecting this week’s readings. The same idea is shown in “Melancholia” (two worlds colliding) and in the critique of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (the constant battle for prominence between art & architecture, and the relentless juxtaposition of “Lightfall” and those inside the space interacting with it).
Weeknd Album Review
My first exposure to the singer was outside of the restaurant I work at in Times Square. I was outside on a cigarette break and borrowed his lighter as he proceeded to tell me he had just finished recording some vocals for Drake’s coming album “Take Care” (there are music studios above our restaurant). Pretty cool dude, but not really into the tunes…if I’m sober. I agree with the review in terms of style and lyrical content. But for me, these aren’t sounds I can listen to while I’m on the train or doing homework. These sounds need my full, undivided (and amplified) attention. Laying down in a dark room with eyes closed as the Weeknd’s frequencies burst out of my KRK monitors is literally the only way for me for appreciate it.
This is an image that I have a certain fondness for, because of my obsession with toothpicks. I built all of my studio study models out of them for about a year. I was completely fascinated with the spaces I could create when using such a simple instrument combined with a complex catalogue of specific connections.
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These albumin crystals that form at the site of a wound help to limit blood loss and prevent foreign bodies (bacteria) from entering the body by hardening when exposed to air. This organic system is realized through the stacking and concentration of a single unit (the cell) to create a larger organism which in turn, is crucial to the survival of the even larger organism.
Viewing the scales of dependency through “Zoom”.
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Curating a lineage of modular aggregation & cellular composition present in architecture, interior design, film, and art in order examine the consequences of perception and distance in viewing these works.
