"We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living."
- Fuller quoted in: Elizabeth Barlow, 'The New York Magazine Environmental Teach-In', New York Magazine, 1970, available at; quote.
From http://www.spatialagency.net/database/buckminster.fuller
Saturday, 11 December 2010
Tuesday, 9 November 2010
_Restoration
Man | tree | structure | observation | scaffold | waiting | tending.
Image source: http://www.maerzgalerie.com/index.php?menuid=75
_Building as desire
1. Building [verb] as the performance of a drawing.
0. Drawing as record of trajectory of movement.
-1. Movement as desire.
[Inspired by: McNorton, John, ‘Choreography of Drawing- the consciousness of the body in the space of a drawing’, PhD RCA (2003).
[Inspired by: McNorton, John, ‘Choreography of Drawing- the consciousness of the body in the space of a drawing’, PhD RCA (2003).
Image source: http://www.aptumarchitecture.com/Dance.html
_Choreography as an Aesthetics of Change
CHOREOGRAPHY FOR BLACKBOARDS from Michael Klien on Vimeo.
“Choreography is not to constrain movement into a set pattern, it is to provide a cradle for movement to find its own patterns - over and over again – to prevent a body – whether bound by skin or habits from stagnation and enable lightness, a primal energy and possibilities only to be found once relations start dancing.”
Michael Klien, Book of Recommendations
_Aesthetics of Transition
...traditional oral forms and practices outlast the advent of writing and even the culture of print...
...hybrid or collaborative forms often emerge during times of media transition.
...contemporary experiments in story-telling are crossing and combining several media, exploiting computer games or web-based environments that offer immersive and interactive experiences that mobilize our familiarity with traditional narrative genres drawn from books, movies and television.
...processes of imitation, self-discovery, remediation and transformation are recurring and inevitable, part of the way in which cultures define and renew themselves. Old media rarely die; their original functions are adapted and absorbed by newer media; and they themselves may mutate into new cultural niches and new purposes: The process of media transition is always a mix of tradition and innovation, always declaring for evolution, not revolution.
We citizens and scholars do well to recognize such continuity principles and to remain skeptical of apocalyptic projections of gloom or glory.
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
_Material | Body | Space
Following a series of informal conversations last year, we have formed a collaborative working group between Architecture and Textiles at the RCA. Through regular cross-disciplinary studio sessions, we hope to create space to explore the overlaps in our interests, possibly working towards a network of site-specific proposals in the New Year. I am particularly interested in designing situations that encourage us to play more intuitively with our physical environment – very inspired this week by Pleated, Eva’s curtain-swing.
_Time | Framed
What does it mean to design the experience of the present moment?
I was gripped by a seemingly simple Dan Graham video and mirror work at the the MOVE exhibition, at the Hayward Gallery.
In Dan Graham’s Present Continuous Past[s] [1974] the visitor becomes both performer and spectator simultaneously. The installation consists of a room containing a two-way mirror, a video camera and a monitor. The mirror reflects present time, the camera records the mirror’s continuous reflection, and the monitor plays back the recording after an 8-second delay.
‘A person viewing the monitor sees both the image of himself eight seconds ago, and what was reflected on the mirror from the monitor eight seconds ago of himself, which is sixteen seconds in the past … An infinite regress of time continuums within time continuum is created.’ Dan Graham
[Text from MOVE: CHOREOGRAPHING YOU, Hayward Gallery, London]
_ApprenticeRCA | JOIN US
ApprenticeRCA is hosting two community events at our sites in Crouch End and Seven Sisters, North London. You are welcome to join us, to see the result of a week's focussed design thinking about the land, community, assets and vision for these two vibrant community sites.
05.11.10 | Dark Bonfire
6.30 pm Meet at Crouch Hill entrance to Parkland Walk
06.11.10 | Client Group Presentations
9.30 – 10.30 am Meet at Meadow Orchard, Park Road, N8
11.00 – 12.00 pm Meet in front of Wards Corner, Seven Sisters, N15
_Claimed land | Hornsey Police Station
Thank you to bctv and the newly formed Harold Road Community Garden group, for hosting a wonderful day of guerrilla gardening at the plot by Hornsey Police Station. Benches were restored, a raised bed constructed, and many plants were donated and planted. Fruit and vegetable areas were established, with a view to the plot becoming a productive and well-used community resource. [Photo courtesy Tam Neal].
_Incidental Painting
An area of rough new road surface attracts fallen leaves, whilst the smooth old road surface doesn’t. Simple and seasonal. [Westbourne Park Road, Notting Hill, London, 29 October]
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