Archive for September, 2007
The MediaArchitecture conference held last week at Central Saint Martins in London was an enjoyable 2 days with an excellent lineup of speakers that generated a very critical and forward thinking discussion to the relationship between media-technologies, Architectural Design, media-content design, and the increasing possibilities of interaction that they can provide. While the conference itself was not focused specifically on interaction, I was pleased to see it being discussed in all the panels to varying degrees by people including Joachim Sauter (GER) of Art+Com , Andrew Shoben (UK) of Greyworld, Rogier van der Heide (NL) of Arup, Jan Edler(GER), of Realities United and Els Vermang (BE) of LA[bau] to name just a few. At the beginning of the second day of the conference, I began the Image/Architecture panel hosted by Kathrin Kur of flunk by talking about the fundamental aspects of interaction, and historical precedents in architecture, and then followed it up with I have to admit a rather muddled explanation of more contemporary research. Since the event was crammed full of good stuff I’m going to take a few days to cover the panels. My congratulations to the whole team who organised event and a special thanks to Peter, Kathrin and Gernot for inviting me to participate.
September 24th, 2007
Video by Honda
Its always interesting seeing how large scale commercial industries have tapped into the ideas of sensory and actuator rich environments. By chance I came accross an entertaining advert by Honda, that asks what if "things knew when they weren’t be used, wouldnt we save a whole load of energy." Of course we are used to systems that hibernate when they haven’t been activated in a while but Honda looks at some of the more unlikely parts of our built environment that could sense and respond to human activity. I personally think there’s more that can be done with these kind of reactive technologies so that they don’t just act with fixed behaviours, but none the less I think its a nice piece of film that I thought I’d share.
September 22nd, 2007
There seems to be so many events going on at the moment. Here’s one in Brussels that looks like its going to great if your interested in audiovisual art and architecture. ‘spectr|a|um’ by Lab[au] will be an evening of performances on the 145 m high Dexia Tower, from which 4200 windows will be enlightened by internationally renowned musicians and artists. Below you’ll find the lineup and here’s the location
‘spectr|a|um’ _ audiovisual lounge – Nuit blanche Brussels, 29.09.2007
September 21st, 2007
An Evolutionary Architecture by John Frazer is a fascinating book that has been out of print for some time. Fortunately it has been made freely available on the web to download and I recommend anyone who’s interesting in interactive and parametric design in architecture to have a look. The book written in 1995 proposes a fundamental change in practice … ‘The role of the architect here, I think, is not so much to design a building or city as to catalyse them: to act that they may evolve.’ – Gordon Pask in his foreword.
Most of the book concentrates on the work of Diploma Unit 11 run by John and Julia Frazer (with Pete Silver and Guy Westbrook) between 1989 and 1996, but includes formative work by the author dating back to his diploma prize-winning project at the AA in 1969 and related research work at Cambridge University.
Introduction
View pages from the book
Exhibition
Download PDFs
Introduction (15.5 mb)
Section 1 (29 mb)
Section 2 (26 mb)
Postscript (7.5 mb)
Appendices (7.5 mb)
September 20th, 2007
Congratulations to Usman Haque and his team on the second successful flight of his ‘Burble‘ project. Here are a few photos of the event which was held in london over the weekend.
Thanks to Joe for the Photos
September 19th, 2007
The exponential development of new technologies increases possibilities of art interventions in urban space: mobile and wireless technologies, geo-localisation or geographical information systems, sensors and long-range interaction systems, digital technologies. They generate new artistic practices by the interaction with urban environment and flux, communication, mobility concepts and participation with residents. As the first step of a large European project led by Dédale on the topic of "Smart Cities" , a one day conference organized at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris invites French and international research actors in cultural sector, urban development and architecture to take part. Artists’ and architects’ collectives among the most innovative in Europe will come to present a selection of committed and original projects: Raumlabor (Berlin), Exyzt (Paris), LAb-[au] (Brussels). During a talk called “PlayGreen” artists, landscape architects and architects will share their reflexions on the nature’s role in the city. With the participation of Coloco collective (Paris) and Richard Reynolds (London) representing the Guerrilla Gardening international project.
Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris | 26 sept. | 14h > 18h
Further Details
September 18th, 2007
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