2007.06.22 16:57
Anti-Starchitecture Chic
Is Johnson's published "anti-semite support of hitler" anywhere available online? Let's all see it.
2007.06.22 15:46
Interesting, under-the-radar sites in Philadelphia.
This may already be cliche, but a compare and contrast study of Philadelphia's four 'original' squares--Washington, Franklin, Logan, Rittenhouse--will open up all kinds of interesting issues. And then get adventurous and compare/contrast the four squares with Norris Square in North Philadelphia, which is the exact same size as the four 'originals'. (And if anyone gives you any trouble at Norris Square, just tell them I was baptised in St. Boniface Church there--that should provide all the protection you need.)
Otherwise, there's this interesting band of empty grassland running through Northeast Philadelphia. It's not exactly under the radar, it's under major electrical wires.
2007.06.22 15:18
Anti-Starchitecture Chic
Well, it looks like something is starting to sink in. So "being published" is what this is all really about. Good.
Just hit architecture with it and see what happens.
I've been hitting architecture with it for over a decade now. Generally, architecture pretends it's not happening, though all the while "appropriating" the hit ideas, and Architecture will definitely hit back if it has to.
Breaking the ice is the hardest part, but don't worry, that's already been done. What are you still waiting for?
2007.06.22 15:03
Anti-Starchitecture Chic
Haven't you heard, Zeitgeist is so yesterday!
2007.06.22 14:52
Anti-Starchitecture Chic
Here's what's going on:
1. The star system is shrouded with lots of myth. The reality has more to do with PR, paying a publicist, designer labeling business, etc.
2. What you are really "longing" for is to be "published" without having to be a starchitect.
2a. By all means do not self-publish! That will render 'publishing' obsolete and all standards would be lost in the process--so much for the reality of relativity. [But don't be fooled, it's more just that the powers-that-be want to keep holding the power--the devil wears Prada and takes best care of itself.]
3. If you really want to make a change within the field of architecture, make sure you bring lots of money to the table first.
2007.06.22 13:33
Anti-Starchitecture Chic
I understand your longing "for another way," but what exactly is that other way? And what exactly is the way that you long to be other than? The answer might just be in the most objective answers to these questions.
Otherwise, been busy celebrating Sebastian and Gordon's 64th birthday. Chop! Chop!
Like I said before, let go of the idiot myth, and look at what's really going on.
Kitsch, like taste, is completely relative anymore. Maybe that will actually sink in one day.
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2007.06.22 10:56
Anti-Starchitecture Chic
You know, maybe the best thing about architecture is its enormous potential of kitsch. Anyway, that's were the real entertainment lies. Oh, and as far as "fuck context" is concerned, don't be fooled. The only real context for architecture is money, and you can't really fuck that.
But oh how they try.
2007.06.22 10:24
Anti-Starchitecture Chic
Not that we're sexist out here, but we do like Philip's museum of architecture a lot better than Phyllis's. Virtual museum pieces all over the place in real 3D. I mean, who else has done that?!?
Q: what comes after museum?
A: pre-shrine.
Philip hadn't heard that joke until he died. Do you know what it's now like to hear Philip laughing constantly?
2007.06.22 10:12
Anti-Starchitecture Chic
Hey, give Philip Johnson a break! If only everybody used their money so well.
2007.06.22 08:58
Anti-Starchitecture Chic
It's funny when you read Nobel's article and watch The Devil Wears Prada in the same day. It's like soup d'jour becomes déjà vu.
fly buzz:
The Starchitect Wears Prada meets Oedipus Rex meets like, I don't know, The Ten Commandments for Driving? And by all means don't skimp on the montage!
So what's it called?
"Stop Hogging the Oxygen"
No, no, not the movie. What's the color of your hair called?
Oh, pure roots.
2007.06.21 23:31
Symphonatic
Initiatory death reinterates the paradigmatic return to chaos, in order to make possible a repetition of the cosmogony--that is, to prepare for the new birth. Regression to chaos is sometimes literal--as, for example, in the case of the initiatory sicknesses of future shamans, which have often been regarded as real attacks of insanity. There is, in fact, a total crisis, which sometimes leads to disintegration of the personality. This psychic chaos is the sign that the profane man is undergoing dissolution and that a new personality is on the verge of birth. (Eliade)
2007.06.21 22:50
Anti-Starchitecture Chic
Who needs stars when you can hang out with supernovas. This week it's Alexander Colin, Frederick Pepys Cockerell and Eudes de Montreuil. We're going to check out the fortifications at Jaffa. There's even talk of starting a "Sexism and the Star System in Architecture" book club. I'll tell you, eternity is bliss.
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2007.06.04 14:24
Archinect @ Postopolis!
metamechanic, maybe just follow your own advise, look at the game of ego and power the way you look at solving problems, if that's what you're after.
If I was really after ego and power, I wouldn't have spent the last 10 years concentrating my efforts on the rather dubious subject of virtual architecture. I'm really just doing what I'm meant to be doing. And I say that because what I do at this point seems to just happen naturally. No one's asking me to do what I do, and there's certainly no payment for it. And when I can't do anything anymore, that will just be the end of that.
Right now, I gotta go transplant some rose bushes and give the tomato and newly sprouted squash plants some food before the late afternoon rain.
2007.06.04 10:30
Archinect @ Postopolis!
Smokety, maybe blame it on reenactionary architecturism.
In 1999, I was asked to participate in an Alumni exhibit at Temple University's Department of Architecture. I submitted three panels "wallpapered" with printouts of pages of www.quondam.com.
The more things change, the more they stay the same?
2007.06.04 10:22
Archinect @ Postopolis!
metamechanic, I'm wasn't trying to evoke Derrida or Deleuze with "beyond inside", rather trying to relate my own behavior (as sometime critic) within the realm of architecture. Allow me to reference my own experience to explain where at least my de-territorialized behavior comes from.
Looking back, it started with learning and working with CAD in 1983, not within academia, but within a professional office (the first to introduce CAD in Philadelphia). I had a typical architecture background, but no computer background, then a week and a half crash course in Huntsville, AL, then big INTERGRAPH system arrives, and then told to make it all happen. Now I was very much in the territory of architecture, but, because of whole newness of CAD within architecture, a window to beyond the inside had opened up. Within two years I found myself employed by the Dean's Office of the Graduate School of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania. I have no Graduate degree, but they were paying me to be there. I ran a CAD consulting business for the GSFA (where the computer labs are now on the third floor of Meyerson Hall) to help offset the cost of their INTERGRAPH system. Again, very much right in the territory, but also a lot beyond it. Within three years of that I had my own CAD system and my own CAD consulting business--great while it lasted. Then the recession of 1990. Then an insular creative period where I used the CAD system in my basement to explore "un-built" architecture by constructing 3D CAD models of architectural designs that were never executed, and accumulated a sizable collection of models. That's when I really went beyond inside, exploring all this architecture that didn't even exist. And then in 1996 the Internet and the virtual...
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2007.06.04 00:08
Archinect @ Postopolis!
Not so much outside, rather, more beyond inside. Very much in the territory, but not within the normal restraints of the territory.
If you're in the fourth dimension, does that mean you can have your cake and eat it too?
2007.06.03 23:54
Archinect @ Postopolis!
I'd say a de-territorialized critic is even more dangerous.
2007.06.03 23:32
Archinect @ Postopolis!
...the real point is that there are not idiots constantly, let alone necessarily, participating within architecture threads throughout the Internet. Letting go of that myth kind of forces the issue of what really is being said.
2007.06.03 22:51
Archinect @ Postopolis!
As the real person that likely has more experience with "threads" than anyone else within this virtual discussion--starting in 1997 at architecthetics, then design-l, archipol, lt-antiq, duchamp bb board, artforum/talkback, and archinect, and the 3 volumns of QBVS are a testament to a good bit of all that--'lines of idiocy' are the most insignificant part of it all, and really not all the much of a frequent occurrence. Unfortunately, the real decay stems from most people finding/treating the whole past history of web logging as insignificant, that is, if they even know that there is such a history.
Postopolis, yeah, been there and done that long before last week.
2007.06.03 19:13
Archinect @ Postopolis!
765, I didn't say that the items you mentioned are where I see the dodging. I said the 'idiot' calling was. Whether you mind being called an idiot isn't the point, rather, where is the 'line of idiocy' and 'decay' in the Volume thread?
Nor is this thread drifting.
2007.06.03 18:46
Archinect @ Postopolis!
First off, lurking is lurking, and hardly participation.
I quickly scanned over the Volume thread before calling Wigley on the 'line of idiocy' and found no idiocy. In fact, the thread pretty much remained on topic. Yes, there was some satire, but no decay.
Personally, I see the 'idiot' calling as an all too common ploy to dodge real criticism, of which the Volume thread harbored a lot of.
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2007.06.03 11:51
Archinect @ Postopolis!
For Wigley's remarks to have any credence, some qualification is needed, but don't overlook the fact that Wigley did not even participate in the open Volume discussion (which already discounts his remarks as far as I'm concerned).
So who are the idiots? Again, qualify the statement to prove that there even were idiots?
Name calling is somewhat idiotic itself, isn't it?
2007.06.02 16:10
Archinect @ Postopolis!
Blog is shorthand for web log.
www.quondam.com has been web logging about architecture and virtuality since 21 November 1996.
from Quondam's current front page:
D. Diederichsen's review of Mike Kelley's (forthcoming) Foul Perfection in Artforum January 2003 contains a poignant Kelley quotation:
"Official art culture is much more effective in its control of history than Republican strategists, for it knows that the best way to treat contradictory material is not to rail against it, but simply to pretend it didn't happen."
I like this quotation because it provides a clear indication of what real/true history comprises.
2007.06.02 09:51
Archinect Book Club?
aml, your welcome. If you haven't yet, check out Design and Analysis--looks like a really good primer. Also, the selection of essays within Back from Utopia looks good. Personally, I hope to someday read all of Architecture Goes Wild.
holz.box, you sound a lot like the doubters I often encountered 24 years ago who were "on the fence" about whether CAD in architecture offices was a "viable reality" or not. I've been doing a lot of research utilizing google/books for several months now, and the offering are always getting better. Do I wish I could also download the pdf files and/or easily create my own text files from the offerings? Sure I do. But, you know, this is just the beginning.
2007.06.01 18:24
Archinect Book Club?
Why not pick one of the free online books from 010 Publishers?
Actually, I'm more interested in finding out how global this free offer via google/books really is. Is this available to European web users? South American web users? Asian web users?
Now I really don't regret selling my copy of Metacity/Datatown on eBay. I love using the screen save command.
2007.05.18 14:57
lost endings
I do remember the Dark Shadows remake. It followed the same exact storyline as the original. What was good about the original, however, was how convoluted the storyline got over time; ultimately an occult encyclopedia of sorts. The low production value of the original show also had its charm.
What I see in LOST is the same type of convoluted (complicated; intricately involved) storyline filled with clandestine, sort of encyclopedic clues. What seems somewhat unique to LOST though is its way of character development via real time portrayal and flashback. This operation manifests (at least) a double theater, which is a very fecund, indeed baroque, story-telling vehicle that is not often used.
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