The Collapse of Globalism - John Ralston Saul

   It matters that we carefully identify these four categories of economic scholastics – the economists, the managers, the consultants and the propagandists – because they are central to how we deal with the collapse of globalism. It is important to point the finger accurately. Otherwise we will all resemble the citizens of a country coming out of a disastrous war – in 1919, for example – and leaving the architects of trench-warfare massacre in place.

   What is confusing to most citizens is that abruptly, as if out of nowhere, studies are announcing that half the world’s population cannot satisfy its basic needs. Or that over thirty countries are at risk of falling into genocide or that countries are in some way defaulting on their debts as if it were normal. Abruptly it seems that democracy, having been on the rise around the world for decades, is now in sharp decline. Suddenly the effects of deforming our measurements of inflation and employment and income over the last few decades are rising to the surface. As a result, it is now revealed that middle-class wages in the bottom tier have declined 30 percent in 30 years. These phenomena are not the sudden outcome of Globalization’s collapse. Rather, as it has collapsed, so people have begun to understand parallel realities in a different way. It is as if the disappearance of the economic inevitability of Globalization has revealed the self-evident: the world truly has contradictory tendencies. No longer is every question we face, from health care to education to culture, first dragged through and economic prism to ensure it is elevated to a Globalist context. Suddenly the obvious becomes clear: Globalization was just and economic theory, not a replacement for all concepts of internationalism. 

   But the obvious is merely observed, if it is not fully understood, if we don’t get a handle on the ideological process we have just been through, we may simply fall back into some marginally reformed version of the failed school. We might even find ourselves trapped in a whole new closed belief system,

           

-John Ralston Saul, The collapse of Globalism, 2009,  p289-290

Awesome animation - From Aurelie's blog

more from Jean Prouve at Aurelie's blog

 http://bare-minimums.blogspot.com/

Tinkering

I was looking lately for a definition of what it was I thought I was doing with my thesis and my spare time in the evening. I call it my tinker time, I know this sounds completely cheese, and tinker is one of those words that bring to mind, well, wasting time or playing around. So I looked it up:

tinker
verb 
a mechanic was tinkering with the engine fiddle with, adjust, fix, try to mend, playabout with, fool with, futz with; tamper with, interfere with, mess about with,meddle with.


This is close to what I was thinking however I still felt that it didn't get to the soul of what I was doing, yes it seems like I am tampering with things, my computer programs, or my stereo, or old headphones, or even the kite rig. when I tinker I also learn through a kind of haphazard scientific method of testing not fulling knowing or being able to predict if it will work or not. I came across a better definition in the book Getting Started with Adruino Here the author defines tinker in a way much closer to the way I see it.


Tinkering is what happens when you try something you don't quite know how to do, guided by whim, imagination, and curiosity. When tinkering there are no instructions - but there are also no failures, no right or wrong ways of doing things. Its about figuring out how things work and re-working them. 

Responsive Architecture - Living systems

Last Week I had the pleasure of attending two lectures regarding Philip Beesley's Hylozoic soil Installation at Riverside Design Gallery in Cambridge ON (but also in Salt Lake city, and last years Venice biennale). The Sculpture is elegant and wonderful to experience yet at the same time it is unsettling and surreal. I think that as an art piece, as an interactive installation, it is utterly fantastic, absolutely awesome and the collaborative model that is used to design, imagine, build, and expand the work is extraordinary. The nature of the design relationships that Philip has and maintains with his respective partners is what enables the high caliber quality of the work that the group continues to produce. But I don’t want to comment on the work as an art piece instead I want to reflect on the ideas and goals behind the work that are responsible for its higher meaning

During the lecture Philip and his colleges discussed the work as creating a synthetic life, a new emergent system and a living architecture, he described the space created as a fertile, nurturing installation, where the visitors experience is similar to that of walking through a great forest. The ultimate goals of the research and the installation is to find a way to grow a living, responsive architecture that can generate a symbiotic relationship with the user, all this in order to find a delicate sustainable equilibrium within nature.

This is when I begin to question the goals itself, the creating of a living, responsive architecture. Firstly, our technology continues to be our new nature, continuously disconnecting us from the nature we all ready have, so the creation of a new system of nature (through science, design, biology and technology) we would again disconnect ourselves from the nature we are ultimately to preserve, protect and nurture.

Levels of responsive architecture already exists, Climate control is the first step, a machine in the basement that automatically adjusts the temperature regardless of which windows you forgot to close. So a more responsive architecture would only work to make our relationship with nature even more obscure. The creation of a synthetic forest (Plastic fronds, leaves, cellular structures + emergent behaviors through the used of programmed responses) would only work to supplant the actual experience of walking in the forest. The effort and construction of a synthetic forest only works to devalue the real thing letting us believe that I would be possible to make that nature ourselves. Looking back to our primitive beginnings through an architectural lens we see a vernacular architecture that was a nurturing, responsive, and resilient. Tree canopies provided us with shelter, security, nutrition, and above all a connection, respect, and reverence of the natural world.

I know there is no going back to living in the trees, and seeming the only way out this mess of technological dependence is through further technological explorations. But I would like to offer a counter point to this seemingly unavoidable destiny and that is the idea and value of human participation and human input.

During the first lecture Racheal Armstrong talked briefly about wanting to discover a way in which we as humans are not purely extracting energy life from nature, but instead we are working with it, as part of it, working for a mutually beneficial relationship with it. One of the key words That Racheal said for me was work. Opening your own window when it is hot for a breeze is work, using your lawn for a garden is work, walking to the store and carrying your goods on you back is work, mending your own socks is work, knitting your own hat is work, raising and cooking your own food is work, repairing your tools, your house, your stuff, is all work and it is good for you and all of this work raises your interaction with your stuff, your architecture, your home and your environment. It raises your knowledge of those things, and it requires your participation. Only in this active participation with your own things, your surrounding environment, landscapes, and city can lead to a sustainable architecture and a meaningful relationship with nature. So in this light I don't want responsive living architecture that does my thinking and reacting for me, further distancing myself from the forces causes and changes that are taking place around me. Instead, I want flexible, fixable, high-quality architecture that I participated in, have knowledge of and that I am capable of maintaining, changing and nurturing.