Thought on Final projects

so far things are coming along well for me. I think the discussion on tuesday was very helpful in condenscing my thoughts on how to present my ideas. i had a question however about movement and motion...what are we trying to answer in this final project? So far, we have pretty much allowed our own personal thoughts and interests to lead us in whatever direction we like..I have been trying to deciede what direction i want the physcial aspect of my pieces to take and I am having a hard time decieding is the idea to use the readings to create soem sort of new understanding of body, landscape, image, or are we using the first projects to sort of draw a conclusion..? these are really just my own personal musings..aslso, i agree with the idea of learning how to the the live video feed, that soudns great. i plan on taking the class again next quarter and I am still very much interested in Motion capture and the possibilities of learning how to use that sort of equipment.

Also, to adriana, when are you planning yur performance and how many performers do you need?

Another Thought...

I propose that we learn how to have wireless live video feed. So one could be outside and project inside. Aswell, multimedia that uses the world wide web. These are a few things Im interested in. I know that Accad can help give us the oppertunity to accomplish many of these desires.

looking for swing...

My other idea is to create a solo perfomance by using a swing.
Do you have any idea about how I could find one and place it in EMMA studio?

The presence of time in the space

Do these pictures remind you of something???...

Hello everybody,

I think that I would like to propose a different answer than the one that I have done for assignment #2 (=site-subjective study: exporing the subjectivity and psychology in the relations between image-body-landscape)
My knot on that it is the video editing and probably not only that...
I would like to use that so familiar to us place and do an "imaged journal" about how does this place change or stays the same until our final week of exams. I would like to film that place different times per day and almost every day.
Also, I will need performers, who are going to repeat their performance during that lenght of that time. My goal on that it will be the exploration of their physicality and their intention.

Barb's Knots

At the start of the quarter we were asked to think about our growing edges. I believe I wrote that I would like to learn about videotaping--because I have not worked with video in the digital age. I am curious about not only using the camera, but also how one edits video, etc. I don't know how much I will use this resource in the future, but I'd at least like to have a little hands-on experience.

For the same reasons as above, I would also like to know more about sound engineering.

Another "knot" for me is the desire to possibly revisit projects 2 and/or 3 to strengthen and develop them for future performance. (#2 was my solo with urn in a mountain setting. #3 was the "scale" piece that Cris and I did together with props and two spaces: the inner "home" space and the outer "away" space.) I equally desire to set out on a whole new project, but have not yet settled on my "inspiration." I did spend all afternoon reviewing favorite poems and ideas from the book "Topophilia" in the hopes of finding a light bulb moment. So far the phrase that keeps coming to mind is: . . . the search for inspiration holds me firmly in its grip . . .

Are any of you revisiting past projects, or are you moving on to fresh new soil? So many possibilities, so little time. This is ever one of my major Struggles!

Barbara

gps

I am also interested in using gps and having a workshop on it. Here is a website that I found : http://locative.x-i.nett. I thought it was very interesting.

gps anyone?

i know that herb and i are interested, anyone else?

I'm not only curious about using GPS receivers
and portable units, but also the output... graphically and
statistically. the interfaces, in relation to how they translate to
images and charts, as well as which units and companies do this best,
interest me greatly.

For workshop?

I am interested in learning how to use audio. Import, export, layering, and manipulations. If this does not happen as a workshop, anyone who knows anything about such things could you please enlighten me? I am highly interested in learning.

More Andera...

Zitel's work explores areas of consumption and consumerisism. By creating these multiple spaces and places viewers are able to interact and respond to minimal life style living.

A-Z 1995 Travel Trailer Units

On October 23, 1995, three teams set out from San Diego, California to test-ride a group of travel trailer units designed by the artist Andrea Zittel. With the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as their final destination, each trailer would arrive in Northern California on Halloween, a week and some 1,600 miles later. Uniform in their exterior and overall build, the design for the three trailers was based on the look of a dark green station wagon with wood paneling. Working with a recreational vehicle manufacturer, Zittel's intention from the start was that each interior would be customized by its drivers. Reflecting the needs and tastes of each team, the altered living spaces reflect the life, values, and whimsy of each team. In a brochure published by AZ Administrative Services - the artist's quasi-fictional company - the manufacturer promises, "our trailer design won't overshadow your options."

The first team, comprised of Zittel and fellow artist Charles White, transformed their unit into a swank lounge sporting salmon-colored upholstery, souvenir globes, and rounded wooden shelves. Taking a detour to the Biosphere in Arizona - a space-age ecological experiment in sustainable living - Zittel's miniaturized house on wheels became like a stylish, distant relative to the scientific project. Traveling on to Death Valley and Yosemite, Zittel and White's trailer became it's own experiment in living as it passed through some of the most desolate landscape in the Western hemisphere. The second trailer was driven by Todd and Kristen Kimmell, co-editors of a travel and recreational vehicle lover's magazine "Lost Highways Quarterly." Bringing their 2-month-old baby along for the trip, the Kimmell's outfitted their trailer with a diaper-changing table. Basing their modifications on the design of traditional 1930s and '40s mobile home layouts, the Kimmell's trailer included a ballerina-shaped table leg, a face carved into the kitchen cabinet, and vintage Liberace records on the walls. With trailer in toe, the family set a course through Palm Springs - a city known for its historical collection of trailer design. The third "A-Z 1995 Travel Trailer Unit" was driven by the artist's parents: Miriam and Gordon Zittel. Accustomed to tight quarters, Zittel's parents live year-round on a 31 and a half-foot sailboat. Decorating their trailer in a nautical style, the couple's weeklong home included a porthole bathroom mirror, potted plants, novels, and snapshots of the family on a sailing trip. Retracing their 1960 honeymoon drive on Highway 1, the Zittels explored an aspect of their youth in the midst of their retirement. Each team's trailer reflects a nostalgic interest in the past and an American ideal of self-sufficiency. Whether visiting a national park, taking a baby on its first road-trip, or dipping into a romantic moment from the past, each team used the travel trailer as an opportunity to explore companionship and exercise personal decisions.

art21

This Place is My Place – Begehrte Orte (Desired Spaces)

The exhibition This Place is My Place - Begehrte Orte (Desired Spaces) combines works by seven international artists who explore the economic, social, political, and cultural impact of globalization. According to Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt’s seminal workEmpire, we are in a new phase of capitalism characterized by postmodern lifestyles, postfordist relations of production, and methods of sovereignty based on the society of control. Against the backdrop of these developments, national boundaries are increasingly being relativized by the economic activities of transnational corporations. The appropriation of space takes place both concretely as the seizure of territory, and symbolically through the expansion of spheres of influence.

The following questions are central to the exhibition This Place is My Place -
Begehrte Orte (Desired Spaces): How do artists today relate to the phenomena described?

How, for instance, do they react in their work to the politically or economically motivated
occupation of land? The art projects presented in the exhibition explore, among other
things, the impact that transnational corporations have on local cultural and
economic systems, and the migratory movements induced by globally operating concerns. Some of the works examine the ways in which architecture and urban planning in the megametropolises have changed, and how this effects the social situation of their inhabitants. Thus, for instance, architectural hybrids resulting from the collision of different architectural languages and economic resources are to be seen in the exhibition. The confrontation between cultures and between economic systems is also reflected in those installations that deal with news coverage in the media. The deliberate use of cliché and the manipulation of how events are presented reveal more about the intentions behind film and newspaper reports than about the reality of the events in question. The distinction between fiction and reality collapses in these works to provide a fitting illustration of the equivocal relations that characterize our age.

This Place is My Place - Begehrte Orte (Desired Spaces) is a comprehensive exhibition and presents works in the media of film, photography, installation, and murals. It embraces the entire 1,000 m2 of the main exhibition hall on the upper floor of the Kunstverein.

Curator: Yilmaz Dziewior

"Of Other Spaces"

Foucault talks about two types of arrangements: utopia and heterotopia, in his article “Of Other Spaces”. These arrangements are of special interest to him- they are endowed with the unusual quality of being connected with all other spaces but in such a way that they either abolish or reverse the groups of relations they shape. I was mostly drawn to his example of gardens as the oldest forms of heterotopia, as microcosms of species, and as the smallest parcels of the world in their totality.
Gardens were always optimistic reflections of the world, the liminal spaces between the known and unknown, matter and aether. As Foucault says they are capable of juxtaposing in a single real space several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible. Gardens have the power to put different spaces and locations, mutually not joinable, into direct relations, in an actual location. The garden is a microcosm that represents symbolic perfection in its heterogeneity.
Another one of Foucault’s statements that was of particular interest to me was that heterotopias are real, actual spaces that represent a kind of reversed arrangements in relation to utopias: locations outside all locations. They begin to function at the moment when the link between time and space begins to break down and we must find a sort of order or purpose in the world surrounding us.

Spaces converted

The Lippard book mentions a few examples of historical buildings turned into something new, with a new use. A few other readings have also made reference to these spaces converted into new uses. In the landscape architecture world, there is a growing movement (much linked with the environmental movement) of taking abandoned, forgotten places and converting them into something new, so as to reflect on the past while celebrating the present.

One example of this is Gas Works Park in Seattle. It used to be a coal gasification plant owned by the Seattle Gas Co. in 1962. From the plant use, the soil and groundwater became contaminated with polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons and petroleum (tar). Richard Haag, in collaboration with a bunch of other activists, historians and politicians, capped the site, started bioremediation and converted the site into a new use.

Now the site has a big hill popular for kite flying, a childrens park and trails and paths walking right through that piece of industrial history.


Another example is the Landschaftspark in Germany redone by Peter Latz and Associates. They preserved all the machinery and industrial fascination, while cleaning up the contamination and adding human life. You can now experience underwater diving in the old water gasholder, children's rock climbing among the wreckage, nature trails, a highwire experience, and several German festivals that are held on the historical site.

Last week during our discussion, I mention the name of Pina Bausch, a German Postmodern choreographer.

She was an important persona of dance, because she combined dance and theatre in a new art form which is called Dancetheater (or in german tanzthetater). Tanztheater is not dance, not theatre but an art form that takes advantage of the whole human body, of what a body can do, like dance, speech and chanting. Pina Bausch crossed the boundaries between love song, film, ballet, revue, circus and social dance.
Her work do not to tell specific stories, but it expresses the human condition, it talks about psychological and sociological compulsion and constraints as love and angst, how people try to deal with them, the tension between the sexes, the struggle for self-identity… Her work implies political and social critique…

If you ever have the chance to see her work, don’t miss it!!!

these other spaces...

I would like to share with you some thoughts about t h e s e o t h e r s p a c e s…

First of all I feel especially lucky that I had the opportunity to read that text, because it is just like a new window was opened.

Foucault’s thoughts, made me think of the spaces that we exist in them as alive. Spaces have life, that’s why they change over the time according to our needs. Heterotopia, that mythic and in the same time real space, transforms. It is a f l o a t i n g p i e c e o f s p a c e that d e s i g n a t e s, m i r r o r s and r e f l e c t s the society and the individual. It is heterogeneous, because it is consisted from many different relations between culture and society through time….

Heterotopia: medical definition

I would like to take a moment to relate Foucault's philosophies and terminologies to outside sources. Foucault's concept of heterotopia is difficult to grasp at first, but he does a wonderful job of explaining all aspects of how he views the word. Today heterotopia is used in the medical field. Medical Webster defines Heterotopia as such: misplacement or displacement, as of an organ; displacement of an organ or other body part to an abnormal location. I had a pre-med friend help me to understand this idea. Suppose a liver is displaced within the body, but is still able to function with the other organs. The liver is still a liver and has a concrete place, however it's function is projected within that space. The other organs interact with the projected liver, as if it was in its proper place. The body may reject the current concrete placing of the liver, sending out cells to attack the "intruder", but the projected place, where the liver should be, is left alone. The cells within that area interact as if the liver was in its proper place.

throughout all of Foucault's words, i find myself going back to the basic principal descriptions and examples of spaces. i am completely fascinated by the way the two main spaces are described.

'first is the utopia' Foucault speaks about these sites that have 'no real place' these places of viewed perfection. the other are heterotopias, or at least named that by Foucault. he speaks of these heterotopias as places that do exist, yet counteract and contradict the representation of the real space.

when he goes into his description of the mirror as a 'placeless place'. he begins to reveal just how he thinks. this virtual place, that does not exist, is the only way to witness his own existence, removed. his example in this section (3rd page second paragraph) is jarring, to that it flawlessly relates your experience to your reflection, both in a point of view personal, and removed.

to relate this, the mirror is the technology of the past. everyday we are so used to video cameras, televisions, computers and interaction with such things. our reflection and image are nothing new to us. we are so immersed in such imagery, that we don't stop to examine it. this 'placeless place' is in front of us more often than not, yet we don't realize the affect technology and access have on our reaction. this 'virtual point' that Foucault dwells on, we see simply as an image, a screen... and no longer a place or space of experience or position of counteraction.

-Z

Places with a present

This article was interesting, in that most of it the author spent ranting and degrading artists that create site-specific local art. She had some very pointed views on artists who make art for money, stating "...a profoundly local public art has not caught on in the mainstream because in order to attract sufficient buyers in the current system of distribution, art must be relatively generalized, detachable from politics and pain (not to mention ugliness)." Lippard believes that place specific art should be created by local artists not out-of-town artists that are paid to come in and create a place specific piece. I think in general she is annoyed with place specific art that does not take into account the people who live in this place and the history from their point of view. Which to a point is understandable, but there should avenues of exception. Suzanne Lacy describes a spectrum of artist's roles from private to public as experiencer, reporter, analyst, and activist. But to make an effective art of place, an artist must be all of these things (Lippard pg. 278).
-images of Suzanny Lacy's 'underground' and 'doing time'
I found this writing to be interesting, especially since Lippard obviously feels so passionately about this topic. It is a nice change from the relatively objective writing from before.

Claws and Gnaws at Us...

“The space in which we live, which draws us out of ourselves, in which the erosion of our lives. our time and our history occurs, the space that claws and gnaws at us, is also, in itself, a heterogeneous space.”

In thinking about Foucault and Of Other Spaces, I have begun to realize the importance of the many spaces I have occupied. These six principles have in a way created relevance to my past and formed an understanding and an inquiry of who I have become.

Foucault gives us many examples; I will share like wise from a personal point of view. I grew up in a dysfunctional family, which in return made it possible to move more than 25 times before I left permantly at the age of 17. Never had I experienced “home” or “place.” Constantly I was directed to uproot which gave me the sense and desire of travel. It enabled me to never direct myself to call a “place” or “space” home. When the opportunity came to leave, I moved once again to a temporal space, in habiting a small bedroom. I paid 200 dollars a month. The constant recycling of ideas about movement made me unpleasant in one place. Before long, I was traveling, living out of my car and moving from one place to another. I had no set destination I had no set rules. I was, in fact, placeless. And the moment it became a place, became the moment I left.

I have continued throughout my life to live this way, and yet at a very constant I carried a desire to have “place.” To be able to create home and something I could possibly root myself in. I married a few years back and can now see the desires coming to life; however, my constant to move is still within me.

These spaces, and places I have been created my history, it has helped me to gain a larger perspective about my practice as an artist and about the concepts I wish to act upon. My current work is the derivative of this fascination of place, of space that is left behind. Not like the fairgrounds that Foucault speaks of, or the forest that hosts the annual Rainbow family gathering, but the space that wants to be known, a place that I can begin to call home.

Foucault has a wonderful way of examining these intricate ideologies about the heterotopias. “The ship is the heterotopias par excellence. In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates.”

manipulating memory/down to earth:Land use

SURFACE & EVENT

Lippart’s
PART II – manipulating memory

Nostalgia is a way of denying the present as well as keeping some people and places in the past, where we can visit them when we fell like taking a leave of absence from modernity.

Why save things and what should be saved?, Kevin Lynch
We need to save things in order to remember to avoid the mistakes of the past and to be proud about what we achieved previously. Saving things makes us live again in our mind something that will never return.

1.Thessaloniki, Arch of Galerius(remains from the Roman Era)

…I would like to share with you what the time decided to save until today in my town in Thessaloniki, Greece.

All these monuments are remains of the most important eras of the history of Thessaloniki. There are there to reminds us of our story and where we are coming from.

During my studies in the Department of Architects’ Engineers, I attended mandatory restoration courses that taught us how to keep alive the monuments of the past. This is something that happens when you give a new use to an old monument so as to make a dialogue with the present. By means, that you shift something to useful, to something
2.The hippodrome at the Roman agora in Thessaloniki.

that answers to the needs of the present.

Below, are sitted the points that I would like to discuss with you during the class…

Poverty is a wonderful preservative of the past. It may let restoration wait as it ought not to wait, but it will keep old things as they are…the living occupy the past. Jonathan Daniels

When does history “start” or “stop”?

How distant the past must be to become valuable? Kevin Lynch

3.Thessaloniki, Byzantine city walls

Time collage: over time, houses become pastiches.

Distinction between history and memory. History is the science of learning about the past, while memory is personal, can create art and it is not being taught from anybody. Memory lives alive in our mind.

While monuments are often sterile pronouncements of the obligation to honor a truly dead past that occupies only a static place in the ongoing present, they can also recall the dead in order to make the survivors responsible to the living.
4.Thessaloniki, Eptapyrgio Entrance (remains from the Byzantine era)

Is it more important to preserve the sites of pleasure or pain?

HOW WE UNDERSTAND SPACE IS AFFECTED BY HOW WE UNDERSTAND TIME

...We need to remember our past but not to forget to live in the present while preparing the future…

and finally, how manipulated is our memory???

5.Street in Thessaloniki ‘s Old Town Ano Poli (remains from the latest Ottoman era)

PART III – down to earth: Land use

Pollution has no boundaries and it doesn’t settle in one place. Johnson

Constance Dejong

Minnesota Gateway Landmark
Collaboration between sculptor Constance DeJong and Antoine Predock Architect
Minneapolis, Minnesota
2005

Planets, stars, in fact all cosmological phenomena visible to the unaided eye in the night sky, are hidden from view in the light of day. Within the monument focused at the day chamber, one is presented with an inversion of the day’s light into stellar constellations. The sun rays, cast upon the overhead Cor-Ten plane, are focused through perforations and form points of light that reproduce and refract the day sky as it appeared on the founding date of the University. This date, February 25, 1851, is contained within the context of a historic human scale and through the expression of the monument’s design, is drawn into the vast scale of celestial time. The position of the represented constellations and its animate nature derives from the sun’s path over the course of the day.

The pattern mapped on the chamber's lid duplicates the founding date’s sky at noon, 45º 7' N, 93º 38' W at 830' above sea level. Aligned to the sun's position, the chamber orients itself to the local Meridian and its peak with the sky’s Zenith, the stars’ Magnitude varying from 12 to –2.

As day becomes night, the exterior Cor-Ten planes project the night sky of the founding date using lighting from within the structure. The West and East Blades juxtapose the night sky of the founding date with the present sky, acknowledging the University of Minnesota’s inception and continuing vitality as an institution of learning. While the Magnitude of the constellations along the blade is slightly greater than that of the vision of the unaided eye, -2 to 6.5, the Milky Way reaches to Magnitudes of 12. Each blade revolves 180º within its planar surface, from Meridian to Meridian, with a maximum local Altitude of 20º, allowing the gaze to change on approach as if to realign with time past.

I have found her work to be extremely interesting, and i thought it related to our readings. She has done many locative media projects as well as things that relate with place and situation. This is just one of her collaborative projects; she is an artist that prefers to collaborate when she creates a work.