Month: June 2007

[Image: Iceland’s Vatnajökull glacier].

The Guardian tells us today about a “unique work of art” that “invites viewers to phone a glacier in Iceland – and listen to its death throes, live, through a microphone submerged deep in the bitterly cold lagoon.”
The weatherproof microphone thus “relays the splashes, creaks and groans as great masses of melting ice sheer off and crash into the water.”

[Image: Iceland’s Vatnajökull glacier].

You just have to call the following number: +44 (0) 7758 225698 (a British mobile phone – non-Brits, beware huge long-distance fees!) to “make direct contact with the polar icecap.”
However, the article warns us: “Only one caller at a time can get through: [artist Katie] Paterson recommends the small hours of the morning.”
So, if you’re extremely rich and cursed with insomnia, you can always lull yourself to sleep, sitting up at 3am near the kitchen window with your telephone pressed hard against your ear, listening to the groan of distant glaciers…
I tried to get through a few hours ago, but dialed the wrong number – connecting instead to the subterranean roar of Mt. Hood.
Perhaps there should be a telephone directory for natural phenomena.

(Thanks, Alex! Earlier on BLDGBLOG: To eavesdrop on breaking glaciers from within and When landscapes sing: or, London Instrument).

[Image: Turning The Place Over by Richard Wilson; image via the Daily Mail].

In a project that “will astonish the commuters of Liverpool,” sculptor Richard Wilson has turned part of a building’s facade inside-out.
As if learning from Gordon Matta-Clark, Wilson sliced an “egg-shaped section” out of the building’s facade – “fixing the eight metre diameter piece on a pivot” so it can spin.

[Image: Turning The Place Over by Richard Wilson; image via the Daily Mail].

The “rotating facade” will thus “reveal a glimpse of the interior” – for the low, low price of £450,000.

(Thanks, Nicky!)

[Image: A glimpse of Chizhevsky Lessons by Micol Assaël; image courtesy of ArtForum].

Named after a Russian scientist “who explored the correlation between solar activity and historical events,” Chizhevsky Lessons is an art installation in Basel, Switzerland, by Micol Assaël.
The gallery it’s displayed in looks a bit like an empty room. You do see a series of copper plates hanging above you in space, and there’s a triangle, attached to wires, hovering alone in the center, like a Modernist chandelier.
But aside from those somewhat occultish pieces of interior decor, the place looks perfectly normal.
Still, it doesn’t feel right:

Upon entering, one first senses a disquieting buzz sound, followed by a tickling of the skin as one’s body hair stands on end. It’s the loaded atmosphere that precedes a thunderstorm, but re-created artificially with a cascade generator, a transformer, copper plates, and, hung three meters above the floor, a thin wire net that fills the room with negatively charged ions. One cannot help but experience an immediate physical reaction…

Sure, it’s basically just a huge science experiment – but I can’t stop myself wondering what a slightly less powerful, much more well-hidden model could do for you.
If you installed it in, say, a corporate board room: the CEO looks down upon her minions with derision and rage – because they didn’t finish the monthly report. As she speaks they hear a disquieting buzzing sound, followed by a tickling of the skin as one’s body hair stands on end…
It’d be like the Greek myths, reenacted through 21st century technology. The divine encounter: install six of these in St. Peter’s.
Or, for that matter, install one, secretly, in your bedroom – and wait for the sparks to fly.

(Thanks again to Dan Polsby!)

[Image: The Brooklyn sludge slowly surfaces… Photo by Jeff Riedel for New York Magazine].

The largest oil spill in American history is apparently: 1) in New York City, 2) nearly a century old, and 3) beginning to re-surface under Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
An article in New York Magazine this week dives head-first into the spill, asking us to “imagine a viscous tar-colored blob stretching amoebalike through the Earth.” This viscous blob is really “ten million gallons of toxic gunk trapped in the Brooklyn aquifer,” made of “gasoline, solvents, and associated poisons bubbling up from the very ground.” These associated poisons include naptha, from which napalm is manufactured.
The subterranean Brooklyn blob represents “more than a century’s worth of spills, leaks, and waste dumped by oil companies” – and it’s “pooled into a vast underground lake, more than 55 acres wide and up to 25 feet thick.”
Not only has it infiltrated the region’s water supply (don’t worry: they pipe water in from the Catskills), but it means you can set the soil on fire.

[Image: A map of the subsurface blob; illustration by Jason Lee, courtesy of New York Magazine].

Worse, thousands of people now live on top of it…
From the article:

No one really knows what the consequences of Greenpoint’s oil spill have been – or will be. It’s like the dust from 9/11, the chemicals dumped at Love Canal, the nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, or even global warming. Do we ever really know their costs? Perhaps twenty years from now epidemiological studies will reveal a link between living in Greenpoint and dying of cancer.

Though it seems the cancer rate may already be on the rise.
In any case, I could go on and on – or you could just read the whole article. It’s not a life-changing read – and it’s conclusion is strangely anticlimactic – but the very idea of a black tarry blob drifting beneath the streets of New York is far too awesome to resist.

(Thanks to Dan Polsby for the tip!)

[Image: A glimpse of London’s LightHive, by Alex Haw, on display last week].

An installation called the LightHive closed last week at the Architectural Association in London.
Designed by architect, actor, theorist, and writer Alex Haw, the hive functioned as a new form of “luminous architectural surveillance,” somewhere between sculpture, optical device, and high-end interior decoration – an immersive chandelier, if you will.
According to the UK-based ArtsHub, Haw’s LightHive “pushes CCTV into another dimension.”

[Image: Preliminary point-cloud study for the LightHive, executed by Marc Fornes].

Specifically, the hive consists of “a surveillance network” – connected to nearly 7.5km of LED wiring – that “records the movement of people through the building” (where “the building” is London’s Architectural Association in Bedford Square).
The LightHive then “transmutes the energy into bursts of light, which create an ‘immersive form of 3d CCTV’.”

[Images: Glimpses of the LightHive, an indoor constellation aware of those who view it. Image one, two, and three – and a lot more here].

From a description of the exhibition:

The space thus operates like a 3D X-ray of the building’s activity, a kind of constantly updating surround-light CCTV, a spatial model of the entire School’s performance fluctuating over the course of hours, days and weeks.

I’ll admit to being a tad unclear about how the ensuing displays of light manage to represent – or not – the presence of human beings; but I love the idea.

[Images: The LightHive as digital model (by Marc Fornes) and material execution].

I love just thinking about the possibility that, say, all the lights in Bloomsbury, from desk lamps and bathroom fixtures to fluorscent bulbs at the nearest Pret a Manger, might someday act as a huge sensory mechanism, responding and dimming in response to the passage of people in the streets. Or parts of Tokyo light up, LightHive-like, illustrating in real-time the level of pedestrian traffic down the King’s Road (or 5th Avenue, or Kastanienallee).
Or install one of these things in the International Space Station, to register human movement through the back rooms of Mission Control, far below…
Anti-gravitational light sculptures in space.

[Images: 7.5km of LED wiring plus “a last view of the lush multicoloured universe of RS232 DMX cables” required for the LightHive].

In any case, this would not be the first time Haw has explored the artistic application of surveillance technology.
His 2005 film CCLTV, for instance, took a long look at “the astonishing density of CCTV positions along the Euston Road” in London; and Haw wrote an article for AA Files a few years back on the increasingly Panoptic use of surveillance cameras in the greater London area.

[Image: From CCLTV, a film that exposes “the astonishing density of CCTV positions along the Euston Road”; directed by Alex Haw].

Loads of more info – including some technical specifics – about the LightHive can be found over on Marc Fornes‘s site.
And if you managed to see the hive itself in action last week, let me know how it was…

(Thanks to Alex Haw for the tip).

As if tapping into a rival spiritual tradition, Pope Benedict XVI will soon become “the first pontiff to harness solar power to provide energy for the Vatican,” according to the BBC. “The deteriorating cement roof tiles of the Paul VI auditorium will be replaced next year with photovoltaic cells to convert sunlight into electricity.”
The BBC’s all too short news item goes on to report that the Vatican “is considering placing solar panels on other buildings although St Peter’s Basilica and other historical landmarks will not be touched.”
But why not touch them?
Solar-powered cathedrals lining the bombed-out fields of Europe! How much more spiritually energizing can you get than plugging directly into that ongoing hydro-helium reaction in space? Teaching theology by the contained light of solar flares – astral disasters captured flashing, as power surges down consecrated halls of painted saints. Frescoes gleam.
Christianity meets Mithraism in architectural form.
John 8:12 – I am the Light of the World – taken literally. In fact, the whole book of John is arguably about the solar power industry.

In any case, are solar panels the new stained glass windows?
And might Christianity be subtly transformed by this encounter with the celestial realm? Apollonian light burning where there once were candles?
After all, Christianity has been turning its doctrinal face away from the stars for far too long.

Imagine this heaving, propulsive thing lighting up cathedrals and prayer books! Shining in libraries and guiding pilgrims through churches, casting shadows in the courtyards of monks. Christendom should have been solar-powered all along – installing astronomical monstrosity at the very heart of the Catechism.
Seriously, though, do the metaphoric implications of the Vatican going solar outweigh any sort of practical message we might otherwise gain from this bit of news?
Isn’t solar power a major doctrinal shift for contemporary Christianity?
Can everyday technology truly embody religious ideals?

(Earlier on BLDGBLOG: In space, no one can hear you pray and The Heliocentric Pantheon: An Interview with Walter Murch).

[Image: The Postopolis! closing party kicks off; photo by John Hill of Archidose].

Well, I’m back in Los Angeles, after one of the longest and most surreal days of my life, flying nearly sleepless across mountains and canyonlands mere hours after saying goodbye to everyone at the Storefront, leaving New York before the music had ended, as the print-outs of our blogs were literally blowing off the walls and whole tubs’ worth of ice – emptied of at least three hundred beer bottles within minutes – melted into rivers across the sidewalk, and before it even seemed possible that Postopolis! had really come to an end – but there it was: the whole thing was over, already something from yesterday, and now last week, and so I’m in Los Angeles again with no real proof that it ever happened, except for some bookmarks and some photos and some business cards I picked up along the way and this almost painfully happy nostalgia for every aspect of it, feeling more like a ghost who invisibly revisited the east coast, passing through the neutron star of New York City, Manhattan, a now artificial island so dense with structure that it bends the lives of those around it; but there we all were for a week, hanging out and talking about space, time, and architecture in the sweat and heat together.

[Images: The Storefront for Art and Architecture; photos, top to bottom, by Nicola Twilley, Dan Hill, and BLDGBLOG].

And it was a blast.
All of which means I’ll start posting again here, about Postopolis! itself – and the speakers who came through, and the city, and the people I met, and the weather systems that pass through Manhattan seemingly detached from the planet – and about regular old architectural news, from the private skyscraper of a man in India to the Italian fate of urban rubbish, soon enough.
But I just want to say a huge thanks, first of all, to my fellow Postopolitans: Dan Hill of City of Sound, Jill Fehrenbacher of Inhabitat, and Bryan Finoki of Subtopia – I already miss you! How strange to spend nearly nine hours a day with someone, for an entire week, only to leap onto an airplane… and wonder if you’ll ever see them again.
All the more reason to host Postopolis! 2 next year.

[Images: (top) Jill Fehrenbacher and Dan Hill watch one of the speakers; (bottom) Bryan Finoki cools off by a fan. Photos by Nicola Twilley].

But I also owe a huge thanks to the staff of the Storefront for being there, and for setting up the place, and for slapping our logos onto the facade, and for finding us all a place to stay (more about our hotel soon – specifically the plumbing).
To my wife for the help, for the photos, and for putting up with my jangly nerves.
To everyone who attended – the audience was at least half the point of putting this thing together, and your questions, comments, complaints, flashing photo bulbs, and laughter were a huge inspiration.
To DJ /rupture and N-RON for vibrating all of southern Manhattan Saturday night with giant triangular slabs of bass blasting out and downward from the Storefront on Kenmare Street.
To all our speakers, for coming out in 1000% humidity to deliver un-air-conditioned speeches through sometimes squealing microphones as dumptrucks rattled by blowing air horns – the event would literally have been nothing without your participation! It was also great to meet so many people with whom I’ve been in email contact for months, if not years, and to realize that all those people out there on the internet, sending you things, are real: you can shake their hand, and have a glass of wine with them, and laugh.
And, of course, most of all, I owe a gigantic thanks to Joseph Grima, Director of the Storefront for Art and Architecture, who came up with the idea for Postopolis! in the first place; who invited me and everyone else out there to New York City to attend; who made all the ends meet administratively, spatially, technically, and financially; and who put up with the goofy, adolescent nervousness I know at least I personally experienced several times each day.

[Images: (top) Joseph Grima peers out through the facade of the Storefront for Art and Architecture (photo by Nicola Twilley); (bottom) Joseph Grima, photographed by Dan Hill].

Thank you, Joseph!
Finally, thanks to the BLDGBLOG readers who didn’t really care about Postopolis! and who don’t live anywhere near Manhattan, yet who sat through all these more or less content-less updates while the event spun on. Regular posts will continue shortly.
More soon – but, seriously, thanks again to everybody involved with Postopolis!
I had a sleepless and amazing time, and I already miss everything.
But now I’m home.

[Image: Looking down at the desert of greater Los Angeles, with Postopolis! already far too far behind us; photo by Nicola Twilley].

(PS: If you’re looking for more photos and some video feeds of the event, don’t miss all the stuff up on YouTube or BLDGBLOG’s Postopolis! Flickr set and the public Postopolis! Flickr pool).

[Image: Bryan Finoki talks to Michael Kubo, North American editor of Actar books, through an opening in the facade of the Storefront for Art and Architecture… Photo by Nicola Twilley].

After having an entire post deleted this morning by Blogger, I only have time to get today’s schedule up before the day really begins. In any case, it’s already 1:30 on the last day of Postopolis!, and my logo on the front of the building now says BLDG B OG, turning me into an ad for toilets – but hey. City of Sound is now City f Sound… And so on.
A bit of news, meanwhile: Mark Wigley and Beatriz Colomina, scheduled for appearances today, have both inconveniently relocated themselves at the last minute to Lisbon and Montreal, so we’ll have to try to rope together some kind of phone interview with them.
Which means the schedule looks like this:

2:00pm: Live telephone interviews with Mark Wigley and Beatriz Colomina
3:30pm: Keller Easterling
4:15pm: Randi Greenberg answers questions about Metropolis magazine, online journalism, and architecture blogs
4:40pm: A group discussion about Archinect school blogs with Archinect school bloggers – turning into a converation about Archinect itself with some Archinect editors
5:15pm: Blogger open house with George Agnew, Alec Appelbaum, Abe Burmeister, John Hill, Ryan McClain, Miss Representation, Enrique Ramirez, Chad Smith, and others to be announced
7:30pm: Closing party with lots of free booze and some live sets by DJ /rupture and N-RON

More soon!