Tuesday, March 10, 2009

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/theo_jansen_creates_new_creatures.html

I hope you can access this link: it is about amazing mechanical creatures. really beautiful.

Landscape Architecture #PP01-design.

Hmmm. So I need to do the philosophical work: where do I stand, what's my position and where am I going?

My first thought on this is that you develop a philosophical position through experience of the world and your practice in it. But then, in response to that, I say it is useful to formulate a philosophical position and to allow it to be refined by experience and practice. This, then, indicates an ongoing process of readjustment and refinement of the positon, kind of like the way that beetles fly in constantly recalculated right angles to reach their destination: always being a little bit out in their flightpath calculations so constantly readjusting their flight pattern at 90 degrees, therefore travelling ever smaller error tradjectories. Implicit in this is the very important notion that one is never starting from zero. Always you are coming from an already developed position, no matter how unaware of it you are.

So then my first position is this:
It is useful to have a position and therefor a primary destination. Allow your position to be refined through the external forces of the world and your own actions and practice.

This might then be applied to design practice thus:
Develop an initial design.
This will be based on what is known, previous design and first creative hunches. Once you have made a move, look at other work and look at Nature's solutions; seek opinions. All this will give information on how the form could be developed and/or reiterated.
To state a negetive of this: don't waste time being uncertain and experimenting for it's own sake just because someone else finds that a good way to design. (Only play games that you know the rules to.)
Allow new data to influence the form. Search for new information that will refine and change how design strategies might be applied in the future.

This brings me to the next point...

Monday, March 9, 2009

Sunday, March 8, 2009

these are some of the reasons i should feel happy:





sarah toa, god bless her, has given me the run of the top shed for a studio. i spent a couple days clearing it out, and took a serious load of very old shite to the tip, stuff still there from last time i cleaned the house, about ten years ago... but the bees i'm loathe to move because of the engulfing smell of wild honey. so now i've got no more excuses to do something creative:
apart from the abominably bad mood i was in today.
i have a number of reasons for feeling like shit: my right nostril was blocked (i'm usually more equananimous when it's my left nostril that's blocked,) i watched 'the devil wears prada' last night which has added itself to my list of all time unfavorite movies; and i seriously need to stop smoking.
i can't remember the rest of the reasons, or i'm not prepared to be so self-revealing in public.

hope you're all well out there in the blogosphere. i love that you all enjoy reading this. it'd be even cooler if you posted a few comments occassionally. it get's pretty boring typing for an audience of two.
(thanks sarah, sasch, welcome robin!) i don't care what you say, just let me know you're out there!

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

It’s good to be out of the city and away from uni, but as yet I don't have that peaceful camping feeling. In fact things aren't great with me. My head is a bit messy. I feel like the last 4 years has made a dark void deep inside me. I’m throwing lines across, like Spiderman, to build a web to cover the hole, and catch some memories and feelings. Meanwhile I feel very empty. And a little bit confused.
I keep stumbling into cracks in my memory.
I’m not quite sure when I left this town behind, whether it was last time I was here or way before that, and I’m not quite sure when now is. Time is a viscous fluid washing around me, sticking when maybe it shouldn’t.
I’m too scared to get a job. I want someone to tell me what to do. I think I want to work for some higher purpose...Anyone know any good nunneries - preferably ones where they don't have silly rules around sexual abstinence and you don't need to believe in god?

I’m not really up to much but fishing is the best balm.

Monday, March 2, 2009

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/farmadelphia.html#2834117739551769544