Art visual np2

MANIFESTO MANIFESTO MANIFESTO MANIFESTO MANIFESTO October thematic will be tackling the way we (architects and others) are able to express a vision thanks to words via a manifesto. We thus proposed a certain amount of people we admire the work to write a small text expressing the involvement of their work. We don't have much answer yet but it will be probably coming during the month... We hope that hopefully it could create a very interesting corpus...

Tomorrow (Thursday 1st of October) will be celebrated the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China on Tienanmen square. You think that this kind of gigantic event is constrained by the same uncertainty of the weather than your garden barbecue, well this is not true anymore. To know more you can read this New York Times article about how China's government is trying to control the weather by using technology to make "pregnant clouds" give birth of rains before their arrival on Beijing. Chemical rockets and plane full of dry ice, salt and silver iodide are being used to that purpose.

A little post for our talented friends of Ecole who just released their website. Ecole is a Paris based young office founded by Max Turnheim and Nicolas Simon, both architects, in 2008, joined afterward by Gala Collette-Turnheim , photographer and graphic designer (author of the superb Wonderland below, assembling the entire Lewis Caroll's book on twelve panels) and then by Aure Delaroiere and Geraldine Lucas, architects as well. The office shares his time between architecture, industrial design and graphic design...Good luck to them for the future !

dpr-barcelona is apparently a new blog which motto is b eyond books/between art, science and architecture and although there are not a lot of articles yet, I definitely recommend to read them especially the one on Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin, the paper architects...

The easy way to distinguish people who are using the net to self-publish themselves and other who are using it to communicate ideas is pretty much observable in the generosity of the information. Lebbeus Woods is definitely part of this second group and he published two weeks ago a storyboard/synopsis about a movie he wrote called Underground Berlin. You can see it on his blog and read this Underground Research Station under Berlin being explored by Amelia and Leo and you may even notice the famous experiment chair that was used by Terry Gilliam in 12 monkeys...

Last year, I was walking around and I stopped totaly randomly in front of The Drawing Center in SoHo. The ongoing show at this time (june 2008) was about the Endless house of the Austrian architect Friederick Kiesler . It's a reflection of the house as continuous surface. “What are you my colleague architects and engineers doing? How do you use your super power given to you by the universe? Why do you remain routine draftsmen, cocktail sippers, coffee gulpers and making routine love? Wake up, there’s a new world to be created within our world.” (Frederick Kiesler). check this out: more: here and here .

AVATAR 's (Advanced Virtual and Technological Architecture Research) work will be exhibited in Bartlett starting tomorrow (September 29th) evening. AVATAR is a research laboratory about the influence of technology on architecture design ,lead by Neil Spiller and mixing Bartlett students and professors such as Nic Clear , Marcos Cruz , Tobias Klein , Bob Sheil or Yorgos Loizos . " ...Narratively and aesthetically, AVATAR considers itself uniquely skilled and positioned to posit new aesthetic systems and codes of representation for architecture, interior design, multimedia design and graphic design. The most important paradigm shift sustained by new media and technologies, with their consequent ubiquity, is that of the liberation of the user from stylistic and spatial dictates of aesthetic fascists like architects, politicians and planners.. ." Neil Spiller, 'Radical Experimentation as Research', 'Protoarchitecture', AD, 2008. Tuesday 29 September - Satu

Peter Greenaways's 1987 Belly of an architect is in the direct line of Zoo and The cook the thief his wife and her lover in the fascination he seems to have for the image and...food. The architect is Stourley Kracklite, American who comes to Rome to organize an exhibition about Louis-Etienne Boullee, his object of extreme fascination. The movie depicts the process of his paranoia supported by the dramatic setting of Rome (and especially of Victor Emmanuel II's monument/the typewriter).

I'm currently re-reading JGB's Crash so I thought I could share some quotes ! (picture from David Cronenberg's movie) " Vaughan unfolded for me all his obsessions with the mysterious eroticism of wounds, the perverse logic of blood-soaked instrument panels; seat-belts smeared with excrement, sun-visors lined with brain tissue. For Vaughan, each crashed car set off a tremor of excitements in the complex geometries of a dented fender, in the unexpected variations of crushed radiator grilles, in the grotesque overhang of an instrument panel forced on to a driver's crotch as if in some some calibrated act of machine fellation. " " Trying to exhaust himself, Vaughan devised a terrifying almanac of imaginary automobile disasters and insane wounds, the lungs of elderly men punctured by door handles, the chests of young women impale by steering columns, the cheeks of handsome youths pierced by the chromium latches of quarter-lights. For him these wounds were the

Here is Marksor 's diploma project in the Ecole Speciale d'Architecture presented in june 2009. For the second time of boiteaoutils' life, I want to apologize for presenting one of our project here, which is somehow a way of hijacking the readers' interest. I just want to say that I am the one who wanted to publish Martial's project and he did not ask for anything... Now that those things are said, I'd like to introduce this project which proposes to use Paris' "intramuros" railway to increase density of the city. He takes advantage of this site for using digital manufacturing machines on trains to operate each structural element which can thus be as specific and non standard as desired...

L'enjeu Capital(es) Les metropoles de la grande echelle A huge event on October 1st and 2nd will take place at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Including the following personalities who will take part of 2 hours debats : Pier Vittorio Aureli (DOGMA), Peter Eisenman, Luca Galofaro (IaN+), Vittorio Gregotti et Bernard Tschumi . Andrea Branzi, Adriaan Geuze (West 8), Neven Sidor (Grimshaw Architects), James Wines (Site) et Ken Yeang (TR Hamzah et Yeang) . Hernan Diaz Alonso (Xefirotarch), Ben van Berkel (UN Studio), Yusuke Obuchi et Theo Spyropoulos (AADRL) Makoto sei Watanabe et Alejandro Zaera-Polo (FOA). Rem Koolhaas (OMA-AMO), Kengo Kuma, Brendan MacFarlane (Jakob+MacFarlane), Thom Mayne (Morphosis) et Dominique Perrault. Those lectures/debats will be live projected in several french schools of architecture and on internet. link to the events site : here

17/09 Kathryn Gustafson architecte paysagiste américaine, agence Gustafson Porter Landscape, 19 h. www.gustafson-porter.com 21/09 Mimi Hoang, Eric Bunge architectes américains, 19 h. www.narchitects.com 24/09 Cédric Libert architecte, agence Anorak, Bruxelles, 19 h. www.anorak.be 01/10 Atelier Bow-Wow agence d’architecture japonaise, 19 h. www.bow-wow.jp 08/10 Carine SMuts architecte, CS Studio, Le Cap, Afrique du Sud, 19 h. 22/10 AUTOUR DE FUTURA 2000 graffiti artiste américain, 19 h. www.futura2000.com 29/10 Han Tumertekin architecte turc, agence Mimarlar, 19 h. www.mimarlar.com 05/11 Kresimir Rogina & Vinko Penezic architectes, Croatie, agence Penezic&Rogina, 19 h. www.penezic-rogina.com 12/11 Karsten Huneck et Bernd Trümpler architectes, OSA Londres, 19 h. www.osa-online.net lectures start at 7PM. École Spéciale d’Architecture 254 boulevard Raspail 75014 Paris

Here is a lecture of Slavoj Žižek Ecology as a new opium for the masses (referring to Karl Marx's consideration for religion) about the system we're living in and what makes ecology being the new level of capitalism which is proving once again how much adaptive it is. This lecture was held in November 2007 in the Tilton Gallery (NYC). 2/10 - 3/10 - 4/10 - 5/10 - 6/10 - 7/10 - 8/10 - 9/10 - 10/10 Thanks Eduardo !

...I love New York...This Friday (September 25th) and Saturday (September 26th) will be held an amazing conference in Columbia University about Cities and the New Wars . It is organized by The Committee on Global Thought and Saskia Sassen . Check the schedule out: Friday, September 25, 2009 1:00pm - 6:45 pm Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall 1:00 - 1:30 Introduction Saskia Sassen Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Member, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University. 1:30 - 3 Geographies of Terror Chair: Saskia Sassen Arjun Appadurai Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University Stephen Graham Professor of Human Geography and Deputy Director of the Centre for the Study of Cities and Regions, University of Durham. Jessica Stern Professor of Law and Affiliate, the Belfer Center's International Security Program, Harvard University. 3-4 War and Displacement Chair: Elazar Barkan, Center for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University. Les

This saturday (september 26th) will be held a very cool architecture day in the Storefront for Art and Architecture celebrating BLDG BLOG book . For people who still don't know Geoff Manaugh , here is his iconeye manifesto . Here is the schedule — 3:00pm: Karen Van Lengen — 3:30pm: Jace Clayton (live interview) — 4:00pm: Richard Mosse Interview with BLDGBLOG — 4:30pm: Mason White InfraNet Lab — 5:00pm: Patrick McGrath (live interview) Interview with BLDGBLOG — 5:30pm: Lebbeus Woods Interview with BLDGBLOG — 6:00pm: Alan Rapp — 6:05pm: Geoff Manaugh — 6:30pm: Drinks — 8:00pm: End

Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler will be presenting their robot that we don't introduce anymore (for uninformed people or Harvard students , you can see R-O-B work on this former post ) at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in NYC between September 30th and November 15th. The installation will not be set at the storefront itself, but rather in the public space on Pike Street between Division Street and East Broadway. We will then see if after several year, this robot learned from its experience or keep on doing the same thing over and over again...

Remember this funny gentleman who was talking about the Insurrection coming few weeks ago ? Here he is again, helping us to understand how communism ideology is spread all over the place in New York and even more since Obama is President of the US. Thank you Fox News for this History of Art which could be digested by this great sentence from Mr. Glenn Beck saying that "really beautiful things can come from very ugly places" ! For you to avoid his crazy zoom in zoom out on Diego Rivera's fresco at the Rockfeller Center (which by the way was immediately destroyed) here it is in a big format.

What is the French Ministry of National Identity really about ? This part of the Immigration ministry pretend to promote French Identity... But what the f... is this identity ? Here is the official text written on the official site about the ministry's goal: 4. Promouvoir notre identité. L’identité française est à la fois l’héritage de notre histoire et l’avenir de notre communauté nationale. La Constitution de la Ve République, à son article premier, affirme que "la France est une République indivisible, laïque, démocratique et sociale. Elle assure l’égalité devant la loi de tous les citoyens sans distinction d’origine, de race ou de religion". La promotion de notre identité est une réponse aux communautarismes et vise à préserver l’équilibre de notre Nation. L’immigration, l’intégration et l’identité nationale sont complémentaires. Elles sont même intimement liées. C’est parce que la France a une identité propre dont elle peut être fière qu’elle a les moyens d’intégre

Le Carceri d'Invenzione is a serie of etchings drawn by Giovanni Battista Piranesi between 1745 and 1750. It creates a fictitious environment of prisons, an eligible Kafkian of Borgessian space lighten by a very intriguing light coming in those subterranean labyrinths.

Third and last interview for this SWARM thematic. This one is of Roland Snooks from Kokkugia . Roland speaks about his research about multi-agent strategies in his studio and in the schools he is teaching (Columbia, Pratt, Sci-Arc, UPenn, RMIT...) You are using swarm/network intelligence as a process of creation. Would you say that it is a form of loss of control from the architect ? If it is the case why would you think it is relevant in our era ? Designing through complex systems, in particular through multi-agent design methodologies, does not represent a loss of control in the design process, however the nature of design and authorship changes. It is a shift from invention of form to the orchestration of processes. Within highly volatile algorithmic design processes topology and dimension are not directly controlled, however the formal and organisational characteristics, which are tied to the internal behavior of the algorithm are controlled through an iterative desi

This is the second interview of the Swarm thematic about R&Sie(n) 's work and research. Interview Leopold Lambert / september 17th Short stories from an acephala body / f. Roche You are using swarm/network intelligence as a process of creation. Would you say that it is a form of loss of control from the architect ? If it is the case why would you think it is relevant in our era ? This notion has to be used carefully, to avoid a direct and reductive analogy between bird, ants and humans. The swarm intelligences work in the nature at the condition to reduce and limit the inputs, but contradictorily, humans are known to de-multiply inputs and outputs, between their perception and the illusion of their perception and the paranoia of the both… The first who introduce for me the politic hypothesis of Swarm intelligences was Ilya Prigogine in his book ''the end of certainty’, where his thermodynamic analyze showed the opposition between Newtonian and

Valerie Chatelet is the publication director of Interactive Cities , published in 2007 by HYX. You can download her own article from HYX website . You are using swarm/network intelligence as a process of creation. Would you say that it is a form of loss of control from the architect ? If it is the case why would you think it is relevant in our era ? Valerie Chatelet: What is pretty fascinating in emergent processes in human situations without any centralized or voluntary organization, is not really their intelligence, but much more their absurdity. We keep calling intelligence patterns which emerges at a superior level from the one where were taken the decisions, even when those patterns are fatal. We are the heir of a fascination for emergent processes which take their roots in the origins of computer science and simulation possibilities. This fascination is still persisting nowadays, in particular for the architects, by the omnipotence that provides the enormity of flux we potentia

Pratt lectures poster has been released for Fall 2009 semester. As observable we have Francois Roche coming on October 15th, Wolf Prix on October 29th and Geoff Manaugh on November 5th.

Here is the wholeness of the chapter called Swarm intelligence in Antonio Negri & Michael Hardt's wonderful book Multitude published in 2004. When a distributed network attacks, it swarms its enemy: innumerable independent forces seem to strike from all directions at a particular point and then disappear back into the environment. From an external perspective, the network attack is described as a swarm because it appears formless. Since the network has no center that dictates order, those who can only think in terms of traditional models may assume it has no organization whatsoever-they see mere spontaneity and anarchy. The network attack appears as something like a swarm of birds or insects in a horror film, a multitude of mindless assailants, unknown, uncertain, unseen and unexpected. If one looks inside a network, however, one can see that it is indeed organized, rational, and creative. It has swarm intelligence. Recent researches in artificial intelligence and

Before writing a post on Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's swarm vision in Multitude , here is an important event. Michael Hardt will have a public conversation with Neil Smith called The metropolis and common life tomorrow in New York following the publication of Hardt and Negri's new book called Commonwealth . Here is the introduction text: On Thursday, September 17th (7PM), at Abrons Art Center in the Lower East Side, Michael Hardt will be speaking on the publication of “Commonwealth,” his latest book co-authored with Antonio Negri. When Empire appeared in 2000, it defined the political and economic challenges of the era of globalization and, thrillingly, found in them possibilities for new and more democratic forms of social organization. Now, with Commonwealth, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri conclude the trilogy begun with Empire and continued in Multitude, proposing an ethics of freedom for living in our common world and articulating a possible constitution for our com

Netlogo is a computer software gathering a lot of various simulations of interactive behaviors following several moving simple rules. It is literally an experimentation laboratory since a lot of variants affect those behaviors in various combination. Obviously you can write you own script for it, but a large library of simulations is already available exploring the fields of art, biology, chemistry, computer science, earth science, mathematics, networks, social sciences and system dynamics. I particularly like this one, called rebellion which simulates a illegitimate authority (here in blue) suppressing agents of the rebellion (here in red) by putting them in jail (here in black) in front of quiet people (here in yellow). There are numerous variants to be set and observe the change of behavior.