in the span of just a few days, 2 places that are close to me will never be the same.
after coming back from a friends’ birthday, karin, adam and i found ourselves standing outside camden station, just beyond the camden lock, watching blooms of smoke hit the sky. we had to make a lengthy detour to get home. looking at my phone when i reached my bed, i realized that i missed an sms from the neighbors. all it said was “camden is on fire!“.
Namdaemun gate in Seoul, South Corea is the oldest piece of history in the country. i have been working on a project with the city involving the ancient city walls, and the south gate once marked the entrance to the old city. recently opened to the public again, its burning marks a major blow to the historical commodity of the culture and nation. this also forces us who are working on the project to rethink the relevance of our proposals after such a tragic event.
no matter how far we have progressed, no matter how far technologically has advanced, no matter how morally enlightened we may become, fire always wins.
in the timespan of one month, karin and i have managed to move from rotterdam to london to berlin and back to london… it’s like deja vou all over again. this morning we made peace with our ghosts in berlin, dragged a total of 70kg (not including carry-ons) of closet skeletons onto a plane and touched down in stansted airport at 7am, only to be greeted by the venerable tradition of the british cue. oh how i miss you, british cue.
above is a joiner that karin made of our old back yard, below is a picture of our new one.
it’s hard to draw lines. no, i don’t mean lines that make drawings. i am talking about the virtual lines and psycho-geographical boundaries we make for ourselves and the world around us. now that kairn and alex have joined me in rotterdam, our internship is in full swing. it seems like we have been working on this together for months already…
on order for us to digest the massively huge amount of data that AMO has produced over the years, we came up with a simple but effective way to quantify the ideas, concepts, themes and typologies. here is a short video that we produced during our first week of research. enjoy!
fitting that the final project for the first year of my MA degree involves working with fellow worshippers of the mightiest of all the of pantheon of gods, King Pendopoo. joining karin, alex and i on this final project is violeta and niki; video artist and scenographer, respectively.
the brief for this particular project involved generating sustainable and lasting dwell time within Granary Square, which happens to be the largest area of contingent public space in Kings Cross. this space is also important because it will link public, private, business and residential areas all together. i should probably also mention that Granary Square is situated directly in front of the site of the new Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design building which will finally bring all 4 campuses together under one roof.
The purpose of our proposal is to generate emotional durability within the social-geographic community known as Kings Cross Centre, focusing on the office worker and the cyber-slacking generation. Our proposal is a hybrid community building system consisting of three elements that are developed to engage members of the Kings Cross populace.
In order to generate sustainable desire to participate in the initiative, the proposal uses two easily accessible digital platforms that are facilitated with an essential third physical layer. The first digital platform is packaged in the form of a web-based, online community using Web 2.0 concepts. The second digital platform is packaged within the widely accessible platform of digital mobile phone technology to provide a personal, “always on”, portable interface device. we looked at accelerometer technology and other emerging technologies that would facilitate more intuitive game-play.
some other inspirational research included the Pacmanhattan geo-centric game:
Both digital platforms are used as interface to the physical “playground” of Kings Cross Centre for interaction with the various games and social networking systems. think Web 2.0 + Nintendo Wii + mobile phones using a physically real and unique space (Granary Square / Kings Cross Centre) as playing field; kinda like a giant Dance Dance Revolution game, er something…
imagine office workers getting a little exercise in the morning before work by playing a short game in the square with their phone:
or spending their lunch break virtual fishing with their phones by the canal:
and then meeting in the evening to play dating games or larger, league tournaments:
in terms of learning outcomes, the great thing about this final project is that we were not limited by technology when it came to proposing our ideas. we worked together quite smoothly which was proof that karin, alex and i could collaborate together successfully.
i hope this is a sign for things to come when the three of us collaborate together again for our up-coming joint internship at the Office For Metropolitan Architecture this summer in rotterdam.
for another perspective from one of our tutors, please check out his blog entry about the project here.
a few weeks ago i had a taste of life in rotterdam while working for the V2: Institute for Unstable Media. called in by my good friend and colleague danja, i had the opportunity to work in the “hack” department of the V2 Lab during this years DEAF07 and V2 25th anniversary events.
most of the work i did was of a technical nature, and involved climbing up to the tops of buildings fixing yagi antennae (all hail the mighty zip-tie!!!) to throw network accessibility wirelessly between the various locations of the festival. some buildings i am proud to say i stood on the roof of include Witte de With / TENT, NAi and of course the V2 building proper.
we also had to lay down quite a bit of patch cable (we were dropping CAT-5e like spidey slings web) and also deployed numerous wireless hotspots, computer terminals and workstations for visiting artists and other tech-monkee-ish jobs. even had a chance to VJ along side danja at unDEAF… that was cool.
one of the more mundane tasks i had to perform at the festival was to monitor audio and video live-streams that were being cast on the DEAF07 webpage. this involved sitting and watching and listening to lectures… which isn’t so bad until you realize that you have spent the entire day sitting in a dark hall staring at 4 or so monitors while outside it is immaculately sunny and 25 degrees.
what i did enjoy the most was getting to spend time with some sorely missed friends. sabruno and danja were kind enough to let me stay at their place during the duration of my contract with V2, and even though i was pretty tuckered out by the time we got home from work, we still managed to have that cozy feeling. eating good food and sitting in the twilight of the setting sun over the vista of rotterdam’s skyline, on top of bruno and danja’s building, drinking beer and fixing bikes, is my minds’ eye of the netherlands quintessential.
thanks to danja and bruno for putting up with me while i was in rotterdam and i can’t wait to come back this summer with karin and alex to begin work with OMA/AMO… w00t!
Lucky for me I am on break now and have some time to prepare for the next term. Part of the requirement of the 1st year of my MA is to participate in a professional internship.
For the first time in the history of the course, Karin, Alex and I are applying as an R&D team collectively for our internship. Our course director refers to us as “the 3 for 2 deal”, we hope to continue our collaborative strategizing and development that has been fostered at the course and contribute to a creative organization we could be happy to work for.
One of our dream companies that we have collectively approached is the Office of Metropolitan Architecture, also know as OMA and their alter-ego, AMO.
We have prepared a portfolio for them based on our past work, and details on a new collaborative work we specifically developed for the OMA application. We have bound and printed 5 copies of the book so far but if you would like a copy, let me know and we can work something out ;^)
A little more about OMA: OMA is the architecture firm of Rem Koolhaas and was founded in 1975 along with Elia Zenghelis, Madelon Vriesendorp and Zoe Zenghelis. They are the architecture firm responsible for some of the coolest buildings and interiors, and have published books as their brainy thinktank alter ego, AMO.
In order for us to meet the deadline of application, Karin, Alex and I had to produce and publish a book in less then 5 days. In the end we had it bound before jumping onto a plane to do a re-branding project in Benidom, Spain. The final assembly of the package was done on a sunny beach on the Mediterranean. Our cover letter was written on a postcard addressed to our Oma, which happens to be German and Dutch for grandmother. There were a lot of grandmas out and about in Benidorm, BTW. Now cross your fingers. Thanks!
with the winter break on the cusp of conclusion (i hope everyone had a good and safe holiday this year), i managed to mozy on down to the internet today to check my mail, get some slash and do that internet do. so with a laid-back saunter, here begins another year of amateurish participatory dabbling into this web2.n0 sh!zznat.
that sweet spot between xmas and new years (also known as the busiest time in the box office film industry) plays host to the chaos communication congress brought to us by the chaos computer club, where many of those same box office hits were being torrented, i might add or so i hear. This year was the 23rd annual itineration of the event and was also the most visited one in the history of the congress with +4200 visitors.
There were geeks and nerds everywhere and i was one with the hurd, club mate in hand. people where fully maximizing the volume of the space. i even got a chance to sleep in saal 1 on 2 chairs (i hear that animation students have a special affinity to the sleeping in 2 chairs style) just to get a hard line into the switch, only to wake up with people on mass sprouting from all around me to set up temporary hack-stations as lectures reconvened.
This year i was fortunate enough to participate as a herald for the congress, which basically meant i had an opportunity to steal a few words from the guest speakers, if only for the sake of introducing those in a proper and un-fugly like fashion to hundreds of people.
There were some good people present and i had a chance to see some friends sorely missed. Martind of desktop.de fame was organizing the heralds for the congress this year and showed me the ropes of being a herald. My old collaborator and comrade b1nary.k0a1a was there too, and got to meet some new and interesting folks.
The most interesting talk of note this year for me was Lawrence Lessig’s presentation – On Free, and the Differences between Culture and Code. It was the first time i had seen him live. He apparently has a distinct style of presentation. All i have to say is that he is definitely a powerpoint/keynote expert. Check out the google video stream below and judge for yourself at 400×326 pixels-per-inch of glorious resolution:
For my second time around i have to say that i love this congress more and more. I look forward to next year and will remember to again, bring more hard drives!
every year the chaos computer club holds the chaos communication congress in Berlin, Germany. this is a great time for hackers of all disciplines to finally come together in an actual, physically shared space (as opposed to a virtual one, although i have seen some second lifers about) to discuss, teach and learn from one another within the community.
last friday saw the premiere opening of MAKE: minimum wage. thank you to all who came to lettuceat and enjoyed the art, performance, company, wine and peanuts! the show will be on for around a month so mozy on down to liverpool street if you would like to check it out. btw, we are still looking for contributions, themes and ideas for the next MAKE so if you would like to do something with the space, let us know here.
