geosocial.net

Went to Liverpool this morning and it is nice to see that the grandly entitled Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King (ie the catholic cathedral) has now had its main entrance, promenade and visitor centre completed.

Further afield I note that the real catalyst for contemporary architecture is Liverpool University with several new buildings of various sizes and dispositions.

Aldham Robarts Learning and Resource Centre, Mount Pleasant, 1994, Austin Smith Lord

I noticed the shadow’s of the trees against the plain white backdrop of the University of Liverpool’s Aldham Robarts centre, and it got me wondering whether some architects are actually able to plan certain shadow and light effects on the surfaces of new buildings. As an architect, this would be a wonderful area to explore - especially in this age where a building can be placed into a virtual world with sunlight and shadow.

Take this even further and you could plan certain shadows from various sculpted points in the landscape to reach certain parts of the building at certain times. Imagine also surfaces which react to slight variations in temperature and change colour or leave an imprint for a short time just like a pinhole camera.

Hang on - hasn’t this light and shadow trick been done before - Stonehenge?

More recently I was impressed by the way tree landscaping formed shadow effects on Tadao Ando’s screen in Manchester - see below..

View More Images of Liverpool

View More Images of Tadao Ando’s Screen

Multi-Touch Interaction Research [demo video] | pressure-sensitive, high-res, 36″x27″ rear projected
Jeff Han, you rock.

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Bet you thought you’d never see that genius graphic again, eh? Curbed loyalists will remember it as the winner of our summertime ‘Hoodwinked contest, which crowned RAMBO as our favorite new neighborhood name. And guess what? The nabe finally got some media play. In Time Out New York’s Public Eye column, which questions a passerby about his or her fabulous sense of style, suave artist Francis Estrada had this to say:

What neighborhood do you live in? I live in Rambo in Brooklyn.
What’s that? [Laughs] It’s “Right After the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.”
Apart from geography, how does it differ from Dumbo? It’s a neighborhood that’s hard to classify. If you live in Dumbo, people assume you’re an upscale, conservative young professional. In Rambo, you can be whoever you want. Rambo is limbo.

We’re hoping he meant the awesome party game by the same name, and not “a place or state of neglect or oblivion.”
· Public Eye: Francis Estrada [TONY]

a t m o s p h e r e presents a large cloud of information on a wide presentation screen that can be manipulated by three handheld devices mounted on plinths within the gallery space. The visitor takes one of the devices and physically moves it within a designated area, thereby manipulating the information presented both on the screen and the larger projection.

Architectural Record, in partnership with the Tulane School of Architecture, has announced two International design competions to propose new housing for New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The Dual competions are: 1. New Orleans House Prototype, open to current architecture students; and
2. High-Density on the High-Ground, open to everyone.

Participants in these competitions will design much-needed housing for the city of New Orleans. The first competition will generate proposals for a house prototype, variations of which can be replicated throughout the city. In this competition, the house prototype will be demonstrated as an affordable single-family home on a typical New Orleans lot. The second competition will generate a 140-unit housing community with mixed-use components on a high-ground site by the Mississippi River. Winning designs will be published in Architectural Record and presented at the 2006 AIA Convention and Expo. Selected submissions will appear on McGraw-Hill Construction web sites.

Design Objectives:
Participants are encouraged to consider the following issues:
• Climate, Geography and Culture of New Orleans
• Sustainability
• Pre-fabrication and/or Modular Systems

Important Note: While the competition welcomes visionary or hypothetical proposals, contestants are encouraged to consider that New Orleans faces a severe and immediate housing crisis, and is in need of practical, affordable solutions to this problem.

How to enter:
• Click on the link below for the entry form.
• Fill out, print and fax or mail in the form with the entry fees.
• All competition materials will be sent to entrants within two weeks after the entry form is received.

Schedule:
Questions Deadline - February 8, 2006
Answers Posted - February 15, 2006
Registration Deadline - February 1, 2006
Late Registration Deadline - February 15, 2006
Submission Deadline - March 1, 2006
Jury - March, 2006
Exhibition March 15-29, 2006

+ Designing the Future of New Orleans

Photos © Neil Alexander

This afternoon, I went to the local Sound Studio Noah to record vocals for two songs on my new album, tentatively titled néomarxisme II - De La Soul is Dead. My music is self-financed, created mostly in my bedroom on an iBook and a Mbox, and this would be a slightly interesting biographical detail if it weren’t for the fact that almost every single other contemporary musician records in his/her own studio - besides, of course, that growing army of hacky UK angular gloom acts inexplicablly rewarded with a never-ending supply of major label contracts and NME banner headlines. Also, my debut mini-album Kyoshu Nostalgia pretty much sounded like it was recorded on a laptop with a 0 yen budget, so I don’t really deserve any points for my thrift. But for this new project, I’m making efforts to improve the sound quality without increasing expenditures, and instead of recording vocals in my extremely street-noise drenched, echo-y room on Setagaya-ku’s Ambulance Alley, I’m throwing down the 1000 an hour to get some peace and quiet at the rehearsal studio down the street.

Sound Studio Noah is a chain of rehearsal spaces littered across Tokyo (and beyond, perhaps) that caters to amateur and semi-professional bands. The geography and architecture of Japanese life forbid the kind of dank garage practice I experienced in my teenage years, so everyone has to rent these spaces to really rock it. For a relatively modest fee, you get a room with space-age double-lock noise-proof doors, anti-echo padding, guitar amps, bass amps, a mixer, mics, and a PA - all professional quality. The small vocal booth today was eerily quiet, a certain form of freeter musician luxury.

Walking down daily to the train station area, I am always passing Noah’s customers carrying their instruments in gig bags and their effects pedals in specially-sized black cases with silver lining. (Throwing everything into a backpack is a big Orthopraxy Rock no-no.) My worry about these high-quality, low-price studios and the amazing avalanche of gear at your local amateur Japanese rock club is that it seems to breed a minor moral hazard. With enough money, practicing and gigging are painless - a little too easy, if you ask me. There is zero sacrifice required for the art, and that means the whole field is open to a lot of people who treat music as if it were a sporting event - practice, practice, practice, invite friends to the big event, play your songs only to your friends, go get drunk afterwards. I think 90% of the bands I see are having way more fun that the audience.

Now this is the dilemma of our era: making music is surely pleasant and we are blessed that almost everyone has a chance to make music of the quality they hear in the mass media. But do we all have the right to clutter the market (and ultimately the culture at large) with our creations? I know my mom likes eating bread that she has made in her own breadmaking machine, but I’m not sure she is obsessed with finding a distributor for selling her bread to a wider market. Why can’t indie music exist at that level? Why does the ease of making music not push players into seeing their actions as a self-rewarding activity unrelated to “getting a record deal” or “becoming a star”? Who thinks that being on a weekend football team will lead to being the next Joe Namath?

And don’t think that I am not pondering the same questions in regards to my own musical output: if I enjoy the act of making music, why do I get so starved for outside validation? Why can’t I eat my own indie bread? If this album creation is so enjoyable and costs me so little, why in the world do I put a price sticker on it at the end of the day?

Comments (23)

Via networked_performance

The official text of UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention tells us:

Article 11
2.On the basis of the inventories submitted by States in accordance with paragraph 1, the Committee shall establish, keep up to date and publish, under the title of “World Heritage List,” a list of properties forming part of the cultural heritage and natural heritage, as defined in Articles 1 and 2 of this Convention, which it considers as having outstanding universal value in terms of such criteria as it shall have established. An updated list shall be distributed at least every two years.
reference:http://whc.unesco.org/en/conventiontext/

In April 2005 the City of Kazan (Republic of Tartarstan, Russian Federation) hosted an expert meeting to define this three world more clearly.

In a Background Paper provided by ICOMOS it is written:

Criteria of Outstanding Universal Value

Each identification for the world list of monuments and sites of outstanding universal value in the sense of the Convention means - just as in individual countries the preparation of national or regional monument lists - documentation of monuments and sites or cultural properties on the basis of an evaluation following certain criteria. These criteria, however, may change from time to time and we should be aware of the change of values that this entails. For example, the so-called artistic value depends to a certain degree on the taste of the time; it is therefore not an absolute but only a relative value. Also in the past decades there have been changes in what the societies of the various regions of the world consider to be important within the chronological/regional framework of the history of humankind. This also finds expression, for instance, in the considerably expanded “modern” definition of monument.
While in our time there is a strong dominance of purely economic values, in former times there used to be fierce discussion about cultural value orientation, eg if we think of the famous querelle des anciens et modernes of the 17th century in France - the question whether outstanding universal values could only be achieved by imitating the Antiquity or if expressions of the creativity of one’s own time were also allowed.
reference:http://whc.unesco.org/temp/POL/ICOMOS%20OUV%20Paper%20final.doc

IUCN (The World Conservation Union) states concerning the concept of outstanding universal value:

OUV is thus the central construct of the Convention and IUCN considers the following issues are relevant in defining its meaning:

• Outstanding: For properties to be of OUV they should be exceptional. IUCN has noted in several expert meetings that: “the World Heritage Convention sets out to define the geography of the superlative – the most outstanding natural and cultural places on Earth” (Thorsell, 1997);
• Universal: The scope of the Convention is global in relation to the significance of the properties to be protected as well as its importance to all people of the world. By definition properties cannot be considered for OUV from a national or regional perspective; and
• Value: What makes a property outstanding and universal is its “value” which implies clearly defining the worth of a property, ranking its importance based on clear and consistent standards, and assessing its quality.

reference:http://whc.unesco.org/temp/POL/FINAL%20IUCN%20Background%20Document%20for%20Kazan%2004.04.05.doc

In Paragraph 49 of the Operational Guidelines the issue is described:

Outstanding universal value means cultural and/or natural significance which is so exceptional as to transcend national
boundaries and to be of common importance for present and future generations of all humanity. As such, the permanent
protection of this heritage is of the highest importance to the international community as a whole. The Committee defines
the criteria for the inscription of properties on the World Heritage List.
reference:http://whc.unesco.org/archive/opguide05-en.pdf

The topic offers a wide field for forther discussion. The importance for UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention is immense.

Tatar part of Kazan in the early 20th century.(reference: Wikipedia, GNU)

Via Worldheritage Forum

Written by Camille Dodson

Leah Buechley and Nwanua Elumeze have recently developed a light-shirt that plays the ‘game of life’ with cool blinking patterns. The lights come on and animate vibrantly, captured by me on video1 & 2 . The shirt also has an button for interacting with the lights, adding a blinker to the center of the shirt’s grid to change the animating automata.

At a recent demoing session I attended, people gathered around Leah to watch the show and learn about the development of this cyber-fashion wear. After viewers had played with the display for a bit, Nwanua pulled out his pda, revealing the wireless programming capabilities of the shirt. Users were excited to draw new patterns and watch ‘life’ grow and change. Behind the Scenes Look at this Magical Garment Leah has sewn 140 LEDs onto the shirt in a tight grid pattern, using a needle and conductive thread. Each row connects back to the AVR Microcontroller that runs the show. Coded with the language C, this computer chip performs the rules of life and updates the display. If you want to learn how to make your own fabric based light-grid, Leah has full instructions on her site - www.cs.colorado.edu/~buechley/ Nwanua joined in on the project by adding more interactivity with his drawing device. He created software for his PDA (Palm Zire) that interfaces with the user and the shirt. Infrared light transmits the data, one bit at a time, to the shirt’s reciever. He wrote his part in C with help from prc-tools, a free-to-use communication protocol that lets the PDA’s infrared port talk to the crystal-less, funky-time clock in the reciever. A shoutout to Mike Eisenberg, the Computer Science Professor at CU who runs this Craft Technology Lab and acts as advisor to these young graduate students. The goal of this research lab is to create new craft techniques that incorporate high-tech devices. And with that, there’s hope that teachers can educate men and women equally, in the art of engineering and mathematics. University of Colorado at Boulder, USA

GFPixel is a “painting” made of genetically transformed bacteria. The organisms are cultivated in about 4000 Petri-dishes that are arranged as a portrait. Like on digital screens part of the bacteria produce the green light – the Green Fluorescent Protein-gene is switched ON and in the other part the GFP-gene is switched OFF.

The works plays with the border between living world and the digital world, the portrait seems to be digital but it lives and dies during the exhibition.

A work by Austrian media artist Gerfried Stocker and molecular biologist Reinhard Nestelbacher. More images (click “Gallerie und Details”)

GPF Pixel can be seen at Medialab Madrid until April 2, as part of an exhibition of the most outstanding projects of digital culture which have won prizes in recent years at Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria.

edushi.com provides interactive maps of various Chinese cities. Instead of a standard map or satellite image, it features an oblique representation of the street layout, along with 2.5 dimensional looking buildings (there is a term for that technique, but I do not remember which one).

Shangai on Edushi.com

Via Cartography.

Via A Daily Dose of Architecture