finding the way

Public Art Instalations

2006-11-01T16:02:00.000-05:00

Siren
Reuben Fisher

"Reuben Fischer followed with a film piece, choosing to block off the main gallery space, instead using the foyer to present the work. A super 8 film segment was looped and screened behind the closed gallery door, onto a piece of perspex, and viewed through a peephole. The film contained a time-lapse record of a bright red flower opening. The image was seductive with the luscious colourings and the ‘come hither’ unfuling of the flower taking hold of the viewer, much like the siren’s effect on unwary sailors. The peephole was also a fisheye lens, obscuring the image and creating an illusion of depth. The voyeuristic nature of the work was repeated in both the viewing through the peephole and the viewing of those viewing through the peephole."

Peek
Rebecca Hackemann

"Peek is a storefront installation of the artist's stereoscopes, which make certain participatory demands upon the viewer, to gaze into the twin eyeholes to see the art—and when facing the images contained inside, one is also called upon to read the messages that accompany them, putting together the separate elements of a complicated esthetic event that is both imagistic and linguistic at the same time. Each of the collages in her stereoscopes is part quandary and part parable."

More Precedents

2006-10-25T14:03:00.000-04:00

Pippilotti Rist at PS1

The little misterious and magic hole in the floor. I need to discover what is the magic inside my peepholes. I found also a very funny space in myspace in which a review of Art in Odd Places is posted. Mikki (according to her profile 100 year old and Brooklynite) says:
"Today I went to the East Village to for the Art in Odd Places [these projects are amazing !!!] show. This combines three things that I love: maps, weird art installations, and walking around. So great. You just download the map and then look for the little (sometimes big) artworks. LIKE A F******G TREASURE HUNT BUT WITH ART! Sumakshi Singh made these beautiful pieces, reflections that he inserted into the world. He painted them on cast resin and then put them underfoot.

Like a little window into a world just a membrane away, so tiny and so huge. They are obviously a lot like that Pippilotti Rist piece at PS1, but they also remind me of these paintings that Mary Temple makes, shadows of things that aren't there. She paints them in latex onto walls. They are so mournful and spooky and yet somehow exciting and hopeful because they let you know that there are things you haven't seen yet, and great mysteries still out there.

Reflexions

2006-09-28T23:23:00.000-04:00

So far, I feel happy with the general concept but I know that I really need to think about the content of the videos. Do I want to tell stories, do I just want to see people doing their daily and maybe boring activities, do I want to reveal secret of the city?

Today I realized that I also have the problem of the “installation”. I definitely want to bring the private to the public space so I want to install the piece in a public space and I think this is clear. But then I had the idea of doing something interactive (the interactive door project that I proposed in which you choose a location to see the video of this specific location).

But when talking today with Adam (My thesis teacher) he told me that he doesn’t see my piece as something necessarily interactive. He thinks that is more an installation in a public space with a lot of small doors (also told me about the idea of doing a kind ok sculpture as the interface full of different kind of doors) and a bunch of videos behind which you can watch. I know that when thinking of interactivity it is very important to have a compelling reason for that other wise it doesn’t make any sense but my feeling is that if I do not have interactive component I feel that I am missing something…

The other point is that, do not ask me how, I am going to end up doing an art piece instead of a design project (which I find interesting and maybe healthy for my brain, but I little bit scary. ) I feel I am absolutely more a designer than an artist and I am kind of scary to enter into a realm that is kind of unknown for me

This is the end of my psychoanalysis session today.

More References

2006-09-28T13:47:00.000-04:00

I presented my project last week and it seems that I am in the right track. I am going to desing an a project that allows people to explore the private life of the city. ( Using peepholes / wall cracks as interfacaces and video as content). My concern now is HOW to formalize the project but more than that is WHAT is going to be the content of the videos. I need to start experimenting and recording some videos in order to figure out what stories do I want to tell.

I started doing some small experiments videotaping friends and trying to see what is more interesting. I found out that video without sound is much more complelling that having both because it generates a lot of curiosity. Having a still image and sound it is also another choice.

I have been looking at different projects / artist / and experiments that deals with the idea of “spying and looking at people's private daily events”.

Shaun told me about feeds for networked security cameras. I was looking at a parking lot and it was really nice when I could see some cars moving. It made me think how exiting it would be if I can so something in real time, but I guess this would be another story.

Chris Sugrue who graduated from Parsons did a set of experiments for her thesis related to vision tracking. Re-Gaze explores relationships between vision and imagery. It emerges from an investigation into the human visual system, eye tracking, visual illusion, and studies in psychology and cognitive science. Within the installation, the visual fixations and eye movements of an individual cause a sequence of images to react, form and respond to being seen. This interactive process of viewing engages the audience with a dialog about the public and private, voluntary and involuntary manifestations of looking and seeing. Vision tracking: Used computer vision techniques to develop create C++ system to track human eye movements.

Bill Viola and his Sleepers, a video installation in which seven black-and-white monitors showing unedited recordings of various sleeping faces are positioned in metal barrels filled to the brim wit water, the soft light from the video screens diffusing in the room, the viewer is confronted with an almost Kafkaesque nightmare of unconscious alienation. Interesting quote about images vs sound that is one of my concerns while doing videotaping people: “ the spectator has to pass through the silent, but optically very ‹loud› electronic flow of data, in order to reach a dark space”.

Dieter Roth: «Solo Scenes».
A video-installation (here in the gallery Hauser & Wirths, Zurich) with 128 videotapes presented alternately on at least 40 monitors. The tapes demonstrate Dieter Roth´s everyday life and were recorded from 3rd March 1997 to 28th April 1998 in Bali, Iceland and various places in Basel. The following animated stills render the idea of the work.

Tenement Museum
Interesting and lovely on lines tours to see emigrants’ houses.
I will go to check how are the real tours (The Confino Family Apartment: This "living history" apartment is based on the Sephardic-Jewish Confino family from Kastoria.

Ellen Harvey
The paintings were the work of well-known artist Ellen Harvey. Documented here are both the works and Harvey's diary-like experiences of painting illegally throughout the city. The narrative of her “beautification project” is both provocative and hilarious. It touches on serious issues, such as who is allowed to make art in our society and what distinguishes art from graffiti, while never losing touch with the frequently comical reality of creating a contemporary art project on the streets of New York.

Peepholes
Project made at ITP that use a peephole as an interface to allow a person to look through a keyhole in a door in one space and view inside an old living room in another space. In the old living room, there is an old console television; the eye of the person that is peeping into the room is displayed on the old TV. They were inspired by the constraints of privacy in our world today and by the idea of how we see the world and how the world sees us.

Jonas Dahlberg
Finding one's bearings - on Jonas Dahlberg's intermediary spaces
Discovered that from his windows he had an unimpeded view into his neighbour's house on the other side of the street. The wall in there was decorated with an arsenal of weaponry. This threatening image in his existence prompted the artist to furnish his own apartment only as far as the zones that the other man in turn could not see. See other works.

Marcel Duchamp
Given:1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas.

Conflux

2006-09-16T23:39:00.000-04:00

Looking at Conflux I found some very interesting projects !!!
Planning to go tomorrow to "experience" some of them.

Free Money Release by Sal Randolph.
Search the streets and sidewalks of Williamsburg for lucky envelopes containing money.

Have a Seat
Caroline Woolard. Public seating in an unused space: the stop sign post.

Artistic Souvenirs from Brooklyn
Suvi Aarnio
A collaborative project with the aim of studying the unknown, public realm through personal, site-specific experiences and transforming them into artistic souvenirs.

The Former Resident Project
Rachelle Viader Knowles
Stories of Brooklyn from former residents, on-line and as one off fridge magnets on the streets... follow the map, find a story... take it home.

Tell Tales - a City Guide
Rupert Hartley
Tell Tales – a city guide is a collection of extracts from literary novels descriptive of places. The extracts have been grouped into scenes, gazes, walks and detours to select, create and document city walks.

Brooklyn Mud Map
Hugh Davies, Analogue Art Map
To navigate Brooklyn for two days using only maps drawn by Brooklynites upon request for directions.

Huston's Museum for Missing Places
Eric Leshinsky
Lecture

Lynch Debord! About Two Psychogeographies
Denis Wood
Lecture

Killing the Fathers, or: If You Meet Jane Jacobs On The Road...
Adam Greenfield
Lecture: Reimagining urbanist thought for the age of ambient informatics.

Experimental Tourism

2006-09-16T22:54:00.000-04:00

Looking at Conflux projects I found that there is actually an Experimental Tourism researcher called Joel Henry who directs Laboratory of Experimental Tourism at France (Latourex).

Wikipedia defines ET a novel approach to tourism in which visitors don’t visit the ordinary tourist attractions (or, at least not with the ordinary approach), but allow whim to guide them. There are a number of approaches, some of them more interesting that others but all are related to the idea choosing destinations not on their standard touristic merit but on the basis of an idea or experiment. It often involves elements of humor, serendipity, and chance. Although I am not thinking on creating exactly "a tour like those" and I am not sure if I would be willing to take them, some examples related to the idea of learning from locals and following people which I is related to what I am looking for in some way:

Barman's knock - visit a bar, ask the bartender where their favorite bar is and what they drink there. Visit that bar, do the same with the bartender there, and continue.
Random micro-travel - meet up with friends in a cafe on a Saturday morning. Put your house keys, name and address in an envelope. Mix up all the envelopes and redistribute them randomly
Spend the weekend at the address in the envelope you are given, keeping all the appointments (lunch, brunch or dinner) made by the usual occupant.
Travel-Pursuit - follow some friends when they go on holiday and don't let them out of your sight. Take lots of photos of them using a tele-photo lens. On their return home, welcome them with a slideshow of their holiday.

Also the Lonely Planet published The Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel , which formalised and developed many of Henry's ideas. And an article in CNN about the subject.

Rent a Tourist
Hypothesis: Explore the working life of the city and learn about the locals by renting yourself out to help with daily chores.
Apparatus: Paints or pens to make a sign, a sales pitch and a device to draw attention to yourself (eg loudspeaker, red flashing light).
Method : Stand in the main square or plaza with a sign advertising yourself as a tourist 'for rent'. If you have time, consider handing out a flyer that lists your possible duties. Avoid dark alleys, backstreets etc which could lead to confusion over your, ahem,'job description'.

Opus Turisticus
Hypothesis: Undertake a journey inspired by a work of literature, art, cinema or music.
Apparatus: A list of inspiring works of art with suitably far-flung titles.
Method: Compile a list of literature, art, music or cinema with a travel theme. For example, A Passage to India, The Burghers of Calais, 'One Night in Bangkok' and Leningrad Cowboys go America. The title will ideally contain a specific location, but it doesn't have to; for instance, Serge Gainsbourg's cult pop tune 'Sea, Sex and Sun' is presumably evocative enough to inspire some interesting adventures.

Bureaucratic Odyssey
Hypothesis: Infiltrate a city and the lives of its inhabitants by navigating its bureaucratic system.
Apparatus: Red tape; a briefcase and a hurried air of self-importance could also help.
Method: Take a tour of places known for their administrative function rather than their tourist interest: waiting rooms, social services offices, town halls, police stations. Avail yourself of the facilities (photocopiers, brochures and magazines, for example) and sample the gastronomic delights on offer (coffee machine, water cooler etc).

Ariadne's Thread
Hypothesis: Let Ariadne lead you through the labyrinth of a new city.
Apparatus': Ariadne', ie a friend, a friend of a friend or an Ariadne chosen at random from a phone directory. (Note: it's not necessary that s/he be called 'Ariadne' - Shane, Chuck, Heiko or Marmaduke will do just as well.)
Method
1) Find a telephone. 2) Contact 'Ariadne'. 3) Ask for her list of 10 favourite places in the city (or as many as she is wiling to share). Note: these do not have to be sites of tourist interest, but simply places that are meaningful to her. 4) Plot these places on a city map and draw a line between them. This is your Ariadne's Thread. 5) Follow it.

The Idea

2006-09-11T14:26:00.000-04:00

I think that finally, after a hard process I have something that I dare to call an IDEA. Yesterday when thinking and thinking about the idea of having access to the privacy of places and being pretty convinced that this is something that I would like to explore as a topic, I went for a walk and I thought:

- I could display projections in the buildings facades showing what is going on inside.
- Or, I could design and adventure to get that strangers invite people to their houses to have dinner and tell them “secret stories”.
- I also could challenge people to violate the law and try to find the way o getting into private places to discover some of the “secret of the city”.
- Or create a tour where you have to follow a person until you discover something interesting.

But what I am going to do with that and how I am I going to do it?

Then, when thinking of how ambitious I was being with the idea of having huge projections over Manhattan buildings facades to make private lives public, and also let people to interact with them, I move my eyes closer to the ground and I found an interesting mailbox that was obviously more approachable than a façade and, why not more private, prohibited and intriguing.

Then I had the idea of using mail boxes as a platform to let people get into the privacy of a city and explore it through that experience. I found some interesting analogies between private building and mailboxes: their facades are very familiar to us and totally public. We can see them, touch them and even take pictures and videotape them but we can not see what is inside.

I also found something very interesting about mal boxing in the US. In Colombia the mail service is a disaster and, of course we do not have mailboxes on the streets. When you send as letter by the regular mail you never know if the addressee is going to receive it so people do not trust in mail as they do here. Here mail boxes are every where, some times you can see more mail boxes than public phones and, they are exposed to every one. (If we had mail boxes in Colombia with lost of important information, and especially checks and money orders on them I am almost sure that the vandals would work hard in order to do whet should not be done.)

I see them as a symbol or representation of something very public and accessible but on the other hand very private and prohibited::: Inside a mailbox are people private lives ::: It could be also seen as a kind of “confession place” where everyone deposit his privacy and is sure that just the right persons is going to have access to it. I also liked how in a mailbox the idea of traveling is involved. I like the idea of privacy and secrets of people all mixed together, traveling through the city in order to rich its final destination.

It also brings about the questions of how could I create a relation between emails and mailboxes to design an experience for travelers?

Ok, but going back to the core idea of foster people to get into the privacy I will try to formulated my new (more specific) research questions related to the idea of how to create alterative ways for people when exploring public spaces with out make them feel overwhelmed by thousand of instructions.

1) I want to explore the idea of how to create an experience for people to allow them to “get into the private and prohibited” of a city and get more enriched, and more self- exploratory, experiences. I want to make people to discover by them selves.

Because…
a) I want to find out if we can have deeper experiences looking and spying at the “real life” of a city than following the instructions of a tourist guide.
b) I want to find out how the city itself and its “every day life objects” can be used as interactive platforms to design alterative experiences” for tourist and no locals.

To summarize or to repit myself again and again:
I am working on the idea of creating a “tourist experiences” for people which involves having to get into the privacy (people life and private spaces) to have an enriched experience in the city. So far the mailboxes seems to be a good alterative to play with this ideas.

... Also keep thinking about how to use buildings facades.
... And telephones? Public devices that allow people to have private conversations.

Things to look at

Shopie Calle
The rear window
Following
Watched and Measured

Questions and Privacy

2006-09-11T01:32:00.000-04:00

Reading the Thesis Readings has been actually very useful to understand the process of making questions from a topic. It helped me to organize my ideas a little bit. Even if this is not exactly what I am going to end up doing, I wrote this Research questions while doing the readings:

1) I want to explore the idea of how to create alterative ways for people when exploring public spaces with out make them feel overwhelmed by thousand of instructions. I want to allow them to have less stressed, more enriched, and more self- exploratory, experiences. I want to make people to discover by them selves.

Because…
a) I want to find out if we can discover more when we do not follow instructions
b) I am trying to find out how signage could be used in an alternative way to create different experiences for people.
c) I want to find out how a building can be transformed in order to reveal hidden information.

In order to Understand
What is the information that people is looking for… which kind of experiences is a tourist or a Museum’s visitor looking for?

Although the last sentence maybe was not a coherent rationale it really opened my mind to think of the idea of what is that I would love to find when visiting a place? What is what I would like to do that I consider would enrich my experiences?.

I have been thinking about something that has been in my mind since the last four days: the idea of having access to the private and prohibited.
1. Enter in prohibit places. See what in behind “do-not-enter-doors”.
2.“Meddle” into stranger’s lives.
3. Have the chance to observe closer how people live and knowing their houses. Knowing what they eat, what they read, why the fight”

Always as a tourist we are send to visit the “public places” in order to know what is supposedly more important and relevant about a place. There are thousand of tourist guides about how to do that.
I remember having this curiosity about looking at the non-public since a long time ago. Remember when I went to Rotterdam that I love that there were a lot of first floor apartments and they did not have curtains so you can see the houses inside.

Also remember when I went to Yale University; the thing that I really wanted to do more was to enter into classrooms in which the entrance seems to be “ not permitted”. I actually remember better entering into those rooms that walking through the university campus.

How, using technology, could I have access to the private and make it "public for me"?
What could I (and people) could obtain from this experience? What secrets could be revealed? How it can help me to have a more exited experience in a place?

Books

2006-09-11T00:36:00.000-04:00

Books and Authors that I want to read. If lucky I will have time to read at least 25%.

- Escape from freedom
- Jane Jacobs
- Wayfinding
- You are here
- The paradox of choice
- Malcom Gladwell: the tipping point
- In the bubble: John Thackara
- Installation Art in the New Millennium
- Learning from Las Vegas, Robert Venturi
- Delirious NY, Koolhas
- The ethics of architecture, Karsten Harries.
- Information Anxiety 2, Saul Wurman
- Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents
- Place: a short introduction, Tim Cresswell
- Digital Ground : Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing, Malcolm
McCullough

Movies

- The game
- Alice in the cities
- After hours

First week

2006-09-10T18:03:00.000-04:00

This week I presented my almost-never-ending how/why chart with my vague and huge ideas to the class. It seems that I did a lot of thinking but I have to ground mi ideas a lot. Adam suggested me to address questions like “what kind of experiences do I want people to have” and what is the real why for my interest in reveal hidden information about places and make people experience public places in alternative ways.

I have several ideas to work on:
1. The idea of “guiding” people in the city without give them instructions.
How can I guide some one without guide it him ?
The idea of make them trust in randomness to find more interesting things that when following a tourist guide. It could be done in a Museum, a neighborhood or any public space.
The idea of let people to choose what is interesting for them by following his own experiences and finding their own discoveries while doing “something” “somewhere” in the city. Like kind of “create your own adventure” or a scavenger hunt.
Things to look at regarding “alternative city tours”:
- GLOWLAB
- CONFLUX
- BLASTTHEORY
Blast Theory is renowned internationally artists' who explores interactivity and the relationship between real and virtual space with a particular focus on the social and political aspects of technology.
I find specially interesting the projet "Can You See Me Now?" a game that happens simultaneously online and on the streets. Players from anywhere in the world can play online in a virtual city against members of Blast Theory. With up to 20 people playing online at a time, players can exchange tactics and send messages to Blast Theory. An audio stream from Blast Theory's walkie talkies allowed you to eavesdrop on your pursuers: getting lost, cold and out of breath on the streets of the city.
And also liked "Kidnap" in which the winners had the chance to be kidnapped. The whole process was broadcast live onto the internet. Online visitors were able to control the video camera inside the safehouse and communicate live with the kidnappers.

- JANET CARDIFF'S
Cardiff has gained international recognition for her audio and video "Walks" in which visitors, while listening to a CD walkman or watching the screen of a camcorder, follow the artist’s directions through a site, and become involved in the stories embedded in Cardiff’s recorded instructions and suggestions. Voices, footsteps, music, sounds of cars and gunshots make up a fictional soundtrack to an actual walk through real indoor and outdoor spaces. "...The development of the audio walks came about through a totally serendipitous experience. I happened to press rewind while walking and taping in the field, and when I replayed it, listening with my headphones, I was fascinated by the layering of the past onto the present. It had a strange quality of creating a new world, blending together the physical and the virtual. I was also very excited by how my recorded body walking and talking created such an intense physical presence for me, as if there were another woman that was part of me but separate..."
- GEOCATCHING
- COME OUT AND PLAY
- PDPAL
- Podcast with testimonies about People visiting Museums in NY.

2. The idea of why using architecture and the public space it self, (not cell phones or any portable devices) as a platform for “reveals the hidden information”).
Things to look at regarding “interventions in architecture”
SHIMON ATTIE
By projecting historical photographs onto ruins and also including in his frame elements of contemporary Rome, Attie creates an environment in which time becomes visible and compressed rather than invisible and expanding, like our normal perception of time.
DAVID ROKEBY
Amazing work! I really liked "watch" and even more "seen". It is an installation, which captures the Piazza San Marco in Venice. Recording 30 minutes of video, it is manipulated resulting in different video projection. 1) What is moving is separated from that which is still. 2) It takes the first image (motion) as a source and feeds it back on itself at a delay of 1/2 a second. 3) The third projection traces the recent trajectory of each moving thing in the Piazza in a colour gradient establishing the direction of movement of each thing. R okbeyplays with the idea of perception in a very interesting way “.What is most interesting to me about this transformation of looking is that it invariably also involves a transformation of the apparent "meaning" of what is being watched.”
EVAN ROTH

3. What is that I want to create: a tool or a tour? Do I want it to be temporary (an event) or permanent ?

No space and no time

2006-08-28T23:13:00.000-04:00

Good article about Anish Kapoor trying to find a space in NY to locate an art piece. And this one about why do Americans have to work so hard at taking it easy .

If you cannot go to the mountain, the mountain goes to you

2006-08-23T10:44:00.000-04:00

Central Saint Martins: Narrative Environments

These are some interesting projects from the MA in Narrative Environments at Central Saint Martins in London. When I was thinking on doing a Masters degree this MA was actually one of my main options.

1. Interactive Storytelling Exhibitions: 'we apologise but this exhibit is not working'
Arlete Castelo
2. Hypetrace
Leandros Katsouris
3. Superposition and Collapse, Everyday Routine as Narrative
Interior Design, Product Design, Architecture
4. Spatial Diaries
Information Design Jona Piehl
jonapiehl@gmx.de
5. Look up, Look Down, Look Sideways
Interaction & Digital Media Design for Narratives Spaces
Pervasive Networks
Charles Ward
emailward@gmail.com
6. The EPS Traveller: [What a coincidence !!! a similar idea from the one I had for my moMa project]
Spatial Designer
Ming Jung-Wu
moonmincoco@msn.com

Random and non-sense thoughts at Siggraph

2006-08-23T10:24:00.000-04:00

At Siggraph I thought a lot or at least I tried to.I had a lot of non sense thoughts but I think if I write them down and process them maybe they will have more or at least some sense later.

- How the physical world is connected to the real and how each one “feeds” from the other.
- Look at something=pass by /vs./ Understand=looks closer
- In which ways can technology helps us to experience reality?
- Virtual reality => create a space that can not be created without the help of technology
- Design is about solving problems while art is about creating problems to solve.
“An artist negotiates chaos. An artist is concerned with expression and with articulating the sublime. Artists work in the realm of ethereal and the abstract. A designer is concerned with negotiating their inner-artist and presenting a structured order.
Designers are concerned with communicating concepts and articulating abstracts. Designers boil down ideas to their core. Designers are the foot soldiers. Artists are the 'blue sky" strategists. It's pointless to be so defined that you only do one thing, art or design. They inform each other. There should be one word that incorporates the artist and designer. Maybe that word is "inventor" or "creator," but those are loaded words too”.
Yuri Gitman (Interview: we-make-money-not-art)

Some questions and thoughts
1. What is that I wanted to do with my Thesis? To solve a problem? Which kind of problem? A problem about way finding or about how way finding could be used to solve “other problems”.
2. How can it be useful and benefit the community?
3. Goal: focusing on something very small and solving it in a very strong way.
4. How to push people to feel free and happy to get lost? How to create and interface where the
purpose is to get lost?
5. Main emotional states that someone mentioned in a lecture( related to my moMa project): happy sad angry fearful disgusted surprised

Siggraph

2006-08-21T11:38:00.000-04:00

What I consider most valuable about my experience at Siggraph was having the opportunity of swimming in the technology arena and learns about what was going on as much as I can. I could have a general idea about what is possible and what is not and when technology is really a medium and when is a purpose. My general overview regarding the art gallery was that almost every project was based on the idea of magic trick. Although there were a lot of interesting projects I found out that I saw more technological experiments that design or art projects.

Some of the projects that I liked:

1 Bubble cosmos:
Beautiful piece that consists of a bubble display system that projects an image onto a real bubble containing smoke and changes the sound effect and image when bubble burst.
Again, it was very charming: Is like a piece of magic, pure illusion.

2 Tablescape
This was one of the projects that I like most. It is a tabletop display where you can interact with physical objects. Although I had the feeling the some of its applications were not that interesting, the potential of the technology is very height. I found the modes of interaction very compelling (the interaction with physical objects) and I also liked the idea of changing an object on a scenario, (his characteristics or appearance) depending on the user input. I loved the animation where the interaction with the little blocks produces a conversation between animated characters. Other similar project that works with the same principle but applied to architecture was Deskrama.

3 Tangibility and Phisicality
Talking about Physical objects that activated virtual environments, this was an idea that was everywhere at the exhibition. I assume that this is part of the tendency which aims to minimize the feeling of interacting with the virtual word. It is related to the idea of letting the user to manipulate the virtual through the real making him feel the experience “more true, more tangible”.

And talking about tangibility another great project was MRI, a tangible experience . Where physical objects are linked whit digital content: “Human Senses come first and computer technology stays in the background”.

I also liked the Shared space design and the Multi-Touch Interaction. The goal of these two projects is also related to the idea of “feeling and manipulated the virtual with your own hands”. Although I think there is still along way to go to achieve this goal, again the potential of the technology is very height. People using the screens seems to be very involved and while playing with it and I really had the feeling that I was manipulating virtual data with my hands.

And other project that I also found very interesting was Light Attack.

Light Attack is a media artwork, as well as social experiment, performed in public urban spaces. While driving through the city, an animated virtual character is projected onto the cityscape, exploring places ‘to go’ and places ‘not to go’, according to the popular Lonely Planet travel guide. I like the idea of creating a character, an ordinary tourist guide who travels around the city and specially the idea of public and private. It reminded me the work of Julian Opie. I also find interesting the question that rises from the project: property and privacy: how public is public space? How is ‘projection’, as a ubiquitous medium, changing the environment in which we live?

4. Lisa Erdman: Drugs to change you .
Very clever, good concept, very accurate graphics and also very simple. This project made me think of how much I like the way that I did last semester when adding some “sense of humor” to my projects and I also realized that Music is a very interesting component. Lisa talked about irony & satire as a way of express our ideas and state our concerns and ideas to society.

5 Herminia Wei Hsin Din
Exploring Educational games in Museums
Interesting talk about Exploring Museums through games.
Herminia pointed out that a Museum is a place that exhibit, collects, educates, preserves and “talks”.
Regarding Types of Museum Online Educational Games she mentioned
Role-play
Simulation
Creative Play
Puzzle and Mystery
Interactive Reference
Building Learning Resources
Visit :
Museums and the Web
The American Association of Museums

6 Also nice talked about teaching 3D modeling software through art using Hopper’s Nighthawks .

Berlin streets

2006-08-21T10:50:00.000-04:00

Recently I have been thinking about the idea of the tons of information that we receive everyday. It is impossible to grasp everything and it is very hard to process. Most of it is unnecessary and some of it, which it is very relevant, it is not shown. What is the information that we really need to know and when is the right moment to display it ?

A good, and very beautiful example of showing information just when is the right time is the Berlin's street signage project. What was hidden behind the street signs? What is the history of the city that is being reveled through the name of streets? Every night, when the sun is hidden and it gets dark, a series of old street signs appear on the floor showing the history of the names of the streets, which reveal the history of the city itself. (permanent vs ephemeral)

Interactive Spaces

2006-08-21T10:31:00.000-04:00

Those are some interesting projects related to interactive installation in cultural spaces. One of my thoughts, although they are not clear yet, is how to construct new ways of exploring museums and cultural centers moving out from the traditional experiences. What are people looking for in places like those? How can user have enrichment experience if they have the opportunity of exploring the place in an alternative way?

Knowledge Wells
InfoGallery
iBib
The Interactive Children's Library… (the idea is interesting but the project is not that good).

Museums and environments

2006-07-24T20:00:00.000-04:00

Last week I ended up going to a very interesting lecture at the NY Public Library. It was a lecture about the work of the architects and artists Herzog & de Meuron at the Moma. ( A curatorial proposal-instalation). Among other things and thoughts have reconceived the museum as an encounter between public and private space and as collaboration between architecture and art.

Herzog speaks of the new museum complex as a place where the world of art can express itself in the most direct and radical way- in spaces . . . that stimulate people to concentrate on the perception of Art. Their sensitivity to the needs of a museum as an arena for public interaction with ideas and as a place to foster the private experience of art makes it an ideal partner for the Walker Art Center’s expansion into the 21st century.

In the lecture given by the architect Nader Vossoughian, he pointed out the idea of a museum like the Moma seeing as something more than a space to exhibit works of art. He talked about the goals of H&dM when designing spaces. They do not design places as physical objects, they create environments.

Regarding the specify project at the Moma called Perception Restrained the lecturer also pointed out some experiences that the H&dM create in the Museum “to intensify the viewer experience, rendering it more memorable and personal than that of a conventional gallery setting.
1. Hiding the work of art in order to show more.
2. Fragmenting it in order to capture more attention
3. Disorganize it
4. Use of mirror in order to “personalize” the experience of users when looking the work of art. “ By obstruction and putting pressure on perception the viewing experience is intensified and becomes more enduring, more selective and more individual.

This lecture made me think of the idea of working with Museums again. I realized that maybe my constant thinking about architecture and interventions ( that I still consider very interesting) is so broad and too ambitious and it isn’t let me focus on solving a more manageable problem. An specific problem could be related again with museum, and signage. I showed my Moma’s project to some people and they found it very interesting and with a lot of potential. I will try to think more in micro instead of macro.

Digital Art

2006-07-24T19:46:00.000-04:00

I have been reading Christiane Paul’s Digital Art and I have found it a very useful book. It is like having a quick navigation through the history of digital art. Although it is pretty basic I like how the author describes some of the characteristics of the digital art. (It is participatory, dynamic, and customizable). I am really interested on the idea of customization of information and also on how it can enrich experiences for users, especially in the signage and information design filed.

I also found very interesting the work of Jeffrey Shaw and more specifically the Legible City project . “In The Legible City the visitor is able to ride a stationary bicycle through a simulated representation of a city that is constituted by computer-generated three-dimensional letters that form words and sentences along the sides of the streets. Using the ground plans of actual cities - Manhattan, Amsterdam and Karlsruhe - the existing architecture of these cities which is based on actual maps, entirely consist of texts, which are projected on a large screen in fort of the user. Traveling through these cities of words is consequently a journey of reading; choosing the path one takes is a choice of texts as well as their spontaneous juxtapositions and conjunctions of meaning.”

This project also reminded me find that the idea of “representation” is a subject that I am very interesting in and how it has been always my concern during all my work with signage. What I like about Shaw’s project is the idea of navigating the city through its representation giving the user a different approach and a different reading of it. The city is a map of the city made by words.

It this case, the representation of the city with text is equivalent as the act of “translating the characteristics of the hypertext into architecture, and representing a city using a different codification”.

I also like the idea on how this projects deals with the idea of customization. In this case, the reader-walker constructs his own narrative while choosing a path in the virtual city.

I also found other interesting projects on Digital Art book that create virtual environments and sensations on a space that doest exist; virtual architectures that change and respond to the user inputs. ( Erwin Redl, Polar Project, among others) .

Zaha Hadid and architecture

2006-07-12T18:58:00.000-04:00

I went ton see the Zaha Hadid exhibit at the Guggenheim with my friend Eniko who studies architecture at Pratt. The exhibition was good and I reinforced my interest and passion for architecture. Most of her projects were just experimental and were not built. There were a lot great mock-ups where all the spaces seem to be so designed that there was no room for placing anything else. When looking at the mock ups I just had a thought about how could be a signage for a building like those. I had the idea that it would have to be almost invisible. On the contrary that I have always thought –than signage has to be hug and very visible- in this case I changed my mind. Not in the sense that it would have to be small and discreet but in the sense that just should be visible when someone needs it. Could be in the walls, in the floor or in the ceiling but would only show up when someone requires the info. I also remembered the signage project for in Mexico’s Electric Central and it was made with projections on the walls. I am going to find more information about it.

Portability and others

2006-07-12T13:44:00.000-04:00

The other day I was walking with my friend Alejandro doing my “thesis homework” that consist of visiting as much of art and design as possible. I found a very funny intervention in a public space called Portable Architecture by Kim Holleman, It consists of a living park environment housed within an 18’ x 8’ x 7’ travel trailer and was part of the exhibition “Portable”.

It reminds me in some way Datacity Project because of the idea of portability. Datacity is a prototype of an interactive display system that provides contextual information to users as it travels with them through the New York City skyline. (Made by students at ITP). It is an attempt to give the users access to the information regarding the city in real time. What I found interesting about this is the idea of the City as a Museum and how a mobile vehicle acts as the interface that explains the exhibition. I also found interesting the idea of having the information available but just being displayed in the moment that the visitor asks for it.

I also went to the new museum and I saw a very interesting exhibit called Still Men Out there by the video Artist Björn Melhus : “In a darkened space, three circles, each consisting of five monitors, are arranged, with a sixth in the center. Melhus declines to use any ‘pictures’ in this one. Instead, an impressive sound collage comprised of original quotes by members of the government and actors from Hollywood movies are backed by the pseudo-heroic music of the crusades and ‘illustrated’ with the various monochrome colors of the monitors.“

What I found interesting about it was the idea of creating sensations without any images. Just using light and sound, a “cinematographic environment” was created and it was strong enough for the audience to have a “mental image” of what was happening behind the screen.

Julian Opie's Work

2006-07-12T12:50:00.000-04:00

Here in NY at the City Hall and in Boston at the river I run into Julian Opie’s work. Suzanne and Julian walking. At the beginning I found them interesting because they were like “icons” walking and I am very attached to those kinds of representations. Then I realized the animation was really accurate, and simulates a real person walking. I found Opie’s work interesting as an intervention in a public space and my interpretation was that he was trying to focus on the importance of walking become this act an “icon” that characterize pedestrian cities as New York, Boston or Tokio. “… the figures appear to walk endlessly 24 hours a day with mesmerizing ease, evoking the strength of Boston as a pedestrian-friendly city.”

He is inspired by mass-media and by the technological and commercial visual bombardment of our world to create representations of different object in the city: people, trees, roads, cars, and buildings. Most of his work is always placed in public spaces such as museums and galleries to billboards, hospitals, airports etc.

When I work in signage projects my first step is always to find out what are the characteristic of the place that make it to be unique. This is my starting point. I just have the thought that was interesting how Julian creates an installation that was representing an specific characteristic of a place, in the case, the city itself.

SAUMA

2006-07-01T17:25:00.000-04:00

Last week I went to SAUMA at the Courtyard gallery. It is an exhibition about contemporary design from Finland. I found four interesting pieces.

Graphic concrete
This method in which graphics can be printed on the concrete, gives the possibility to have the graphics embedded on the walls. I like the idea of the design being part of the building and not something that is added as an external element.

I also liked Title Toy, a modular electronic game for tangible LED game titles.

City Wipeout was an interface that allows users to wipe in a city picture everything but the advertisement. Although the results were not that smart the concept and the modes of interaction have a lot of potential.

Air Urban olfatoty installation is a set of three bubbles that contain the smell and some videos that reveal personal experiences of three cities. Again, good ideas with not that good final results.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer Work

2006-07-01T16:15:00.000-04:00

Last Spring I went to a lecture at the Guggenheim to see Rafael Lozano-Hemmer work. As I have told his thoughts and his work were amazing. I was reading an article about "calming technologies" and in the back of the article I wrote some comments about the lecture. He explained some of his projects and I really liked how simple and how complex they were at the same time.

I had some thoughts about them.

How images (projections) can transform architecture?

How the identification of a building could be the building itself?

How a label can become the object that it is identifying? (Calvino, City and Signs). I have forgotten how important was this book while I was doing my college thesis and how pleasant was to reinforce that while doing the box project.

“SUBTITLED PUBLIC consists of an empty exhibition space where visitors are tracked with a computerized infrared surveillance system. As people enter the installation, texts are projected onto their bodies: these “subtitles” consist of thousands of verbs conjugated in third person and they follow each individual everywhere they go. The only way to get rid of a subtitle is to touch someone else: the words then are exchanged between them.”

“1000 PLATITUDES Words commonly used to describe the generic globalized city are written with a created alphabet; --each letter of the alphabet was projected on a different building using the World's most powerful projector. Public housing projects, shopping malls, government buildings, industrial wastelands and corporate headquarters were transformed by fast tactical projections from the mobile platform, under the radar of potential regulators.”

“BODY MOVIES transforms public space of interactive projections. Thousands of photo portraits taken on the streets of the cities where the project is exhibited are shown using robotically controlled projectors. However, the portraits only appear inside the projected shadows of local passers-by” He talked about massive interactivity."

UNDER SCAN reminded me of major studio mid terms reviews when the critics said that when you create interactive installations you have to be very careful about the modes of interaction. They pointed out that these modes should be conceived in a way that participants cann't help to interact. And Lozano-Hemmer does it in a brilliant way. Here is the simplicity which I find amazing; people just have to walk and what could be more natural than walking?

VECTORIAL ELEVATION
The idea of having messages that are transformed into information that become light, three-dimensional light.

I also was thinking that I want to explore more the work of Christo and his landscape transformations.

He offered an amazing workshop called HUMO that consists of rapid deployment of strategic images to transform urban landscapes.

Initial goals

2006-06-28T15:46:00.000-04:00

When I was preparing my trip to Parsons I had in mind some ideas that I wanted to develop through my Master. Since I finished college I have been always concerned about how design can take place into architecture. I knew that I feel a strong passion about how large-scale graphics can transform a space and I have confirmed that while being here. I am also interested in how design can help people to understand the world and here I have had the chance to study more in deep the information design as a existent field; in Colombia it is just an emergent area of design and it is not ease to find not either people who work in the field nor material related to it. The combination of both subjects led me to focus on signage for about 5 years before coming here.

When I decided to come to Parsons one of my first thoughts was how through “new technologies” I could improve the work that I have been doing. I also aimed to discover how elements such as interactivity, sound and motion could become new tools for me and how they would let me to create more compelling design experiences.

Learning process

2006-06-28T15:21:00.000-04:00

During my process as a student here I have trying to absorb as much as I can from the insane bulk of information that I receive everyday. Sometimes I feel that my learning process has been so slow that I have not learn that much. Now, I am in a campaign for convincing myself that I did. Due to my knowledge about “new technologies” was pretty basic I started learning about web design (html, databases, action script) and most of the projects I had been doing are screen-based. I guess it was a good start to immerse in the field. I am still not sure about how much I have absorbed from classes in term of technical skills, but I feel I definitely have a better understanding of “new tech” possibilities and I am starting to fell that I am “on the filed”.

Although I feel surprised about all the possibilities of screen based project, -and I am saying that keeping in mind that I have still a log long way to go-, I don’t want move away from my initial goals. I do not have a specific idea about what do I want to do for my thesis, indeed I have to say that I am pretty lost, but I know some of my interest and domains.

Public Spaces / The city and the way people moves around it.
Environmental graphics
Interactive Design
Signage / Maps / wayfinding
Information Design

I hope this awareness can help me to develop my ideas and come up with a solid concept.