Black Machine

I slept restlessly last night,
I dreamt of black helmets
Dark steel machines,
gliding over grey fall roads,

Bending, arching around
Long orange pail yellow
dead turns, nothing

The growl of the machine
the lean into the turn
the stillness of my hand,
Holding the throttle

I drifted into midnight
with this meditation
in my mind, Drifted,
Midnight meditation, mind

Black Helmets
Black Gloves,
Black Machine

The eve of winter with
Falls first frosts on
Tall golden grasses
Knatted with blowing
Leaves lurching into
Corners past cornfields

Windless wind, stillness
at steady speeds of
Racing yellow lines
blinking past my
eyes close into midnight
mindless sleeping resting
into turns, banking turns

The throaty tune thundering
behind me into the pale
frosty morning of
a fall day

A black helmet
A black Machine

Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich Chapter 1

 I have started reading Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich, this time beginning with chapter one two watersheds. Illich’s main arguments in this book seem to pertain directly to education and medi-care, both of which exist, and are justified, as he argues, for their own sake by their own bureaucrats. He also references the de-professionalization of medi-care in china in the 70s and makes the argument that wholesale institutional change is actually possible.

It is possible to see that the education, and certification of medical professionals is self-serving, and that those tools, which were previously used wholesale by the society have been undermined and degraded. With specifically medicine Illich talks how miracle cures have been valued more than healthier lifestyles, the argument he is making I think is actually the argument that just treating a symptom of lets say heart disease due to obesity will not fix the problem or cure those who are ill, instead it usually just prolongs the suffering of the disease, (pessimistic right now) Illich is arguing however that we look at the causes of the diseases, like obesity and try to understand how it comes into existence, as a result of our jobs not providing the cardio vascular exercise that we need, or as a result of high carb high sugar diets as a result of the agro industrial complex pumping out corn based corn syrup over sweet products for mass consumption effectively fattening the entire population.

Illich refers to each technology / or institution as having two watersheds, the first is when the break through becomes a service to the general population, the second seems to be when that institution or invention becomes a detriment. Illich illustrates this concept with the automobile arguing first the it was service, allowing us to cover a great distance in a short amount time,  (here referring to the train/steam engine) and then the car began to exist for its own sake. Where it created the new distances to be traveled, for want of a highway.

Finally to round off the argument Illich, on page 8, talks about the standard reaction to a dissatisfaction with the system, or a failure for it work was the idea of more “further technological and bureaucratic escalation” if it didn’t work then lets do more of it, here is a quote

“While evidence shows that more of the same leads to utter defeat, nothing less than more and more seems worthwhile in a society infected by the growth mania. The desperate plea is no only for more bombs and more police, more medical examination and more teachers, but also for more information and research. The editor-in-chief of the bulletin of atomic scientist claims that most of our present problems are the result of recently acquired knowledge badly applied, and concludes that the only remedy for the mess created by this information is more of it. It has become fashionable to say that where science and technology have created problems, it is only more scientific understanding and better technology that can carry is past them. The cure for bas management is more management. The cure for specialized research is more costly interdisciplinary research, just as the cure for polluted rivers is more costly nonpolluting detergents. The pooling of store of information, the building up of a knowledge stock, the attempt to overwhelm the present problems by the production of more science is the ultimate attempt to solve a crisis by escalation.”

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.

The Kite - AKA- Hawk Eye

            The Kite is a 3.5m2 Double Parasled Kite. Its made from Blue Nylon, and Fiberglass Spars. I downloaded the Basic Pattern here http://www.kites.org/tmr/parasled_engl.htm  Lindsey and I cut the pattern while adding seams where necessary and with her instruction and expertise took turns sewing it all together.  Lindsey’s prior experience with shirt sleeves helped greatly because planning all the seems was complicated involving flipping it inside out over and over again. We used scrap canvas and a tarp grommet kit to reinforce the tie points, then a simple swivel clip was used to attach it to 200lb kite line. We then improvised two very simple tails on the road. These are made of two strong nylon ribbons and are attached with safety pins to the end cells of the kite. The ribbons worked well to stabilize the kite in flight, with them in place and a little experimentation with the leads we were able to get the kite into stable flight. It pulled great in high-winds to a point where both hands were needed to hold the reel. After a few minutes of stable flight and some good lift we would attach camera and rig.

A few shots of making the Kite.

Lindsey plotting the pattern

Learning to Sew

The Kite in Flight 

John Ruskin

We want one man to be always thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a gentleman, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be gentlemen, in the best sense. As it is, we make both ungentle, the one envying, the other despising, his brother; and the mass of society is made up of morbid thinkers and miserable workers. Now it is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity 


John Ruskin, The Works of John Ruskin ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (39 vols.) (George Allen, 1903-12) vol. 10, p. 201

Cedric Price - The Fun Palace

The Fun palace: An unenclosed steel structure, fully serviced by traveling gantry cranes the building comprised a 'kit of parts': prefabricated walls, platforms, floors, stairs and ceiling modules that could be moved and assembled by the cranes.

Cedric Price's central thesis was that a building should (I think he meant would) only last as long as it is useful.

"Choose what you want to do - or watch some else doing it. Learn how to handle tools, paint, Babies, machinery, or just listen to your favorite tune. Dance, talk or be lifted up to where you can see how other people make things work. Sit out over space with a drink and tune in to what's happening elsewhere in the city, Try starting a riot or beginning a painting - or just lie back and stare at the sky."

 -Cedric Price via Design museum

The Kite Rig

Here it is in all its glory.

Its made almost entirely of scrap aluminum bent, drilled, and bolted together to make a camera rig that can pan and tilt. The Camera is a Cannon Power shot loaded with a CDHK intervalometer script which allows it to act as a time lapse camera set to take a picture every 5 seconds. I have a 2 channel Traxxis 2215 receiver with a 27 mhz crystal which controls the two servos.

The large gears were custom made on the laser cutter downstairs, the smaller ones were salvaged from an old Tyco RC car that I had lying around.  Then I used key rings and fishing swivels to attach the suspension to the strings. 

Close up of the Receiver and Power supply. 

This is the blocking used to quickly attach the rig to the kite string. 

Abstract - Revised

Hack / Renovate/ Reuse

Since the advent of human evolution we as a species have made technological innovation our primary survival technique. Over the last one hundred thousand years humans have used technology to exploit and over come almost every aspect of the natural world, we have become a species of inventors and makers. The making of complex tools can be traced back to the first forms of ritual and could have led to the development of language as a means of managing the manufacture of tools over complex supply lines in early human history.[1] This development of technology gave birth to civilizations, cultures and cities.

In the last two hundred years the fabrication of tools has evolved into a massive manufacturing industry that puts the user at odds with the maker. This conflict has led to capitalism, globalization and a civilization based on an unsustainable cycle of mass production, consumption, planned obsolescence and mass disposal, where we continue to convert precious natural resources into refuse. This self-destructing cycle has also led to a number of distressing socio-economic situations including the growing wealth gap, the deskilling of workers world wide, increasing proletarianization, as well as a global state of unhappiness and ignorance.[2]

The thesis explores the design, and manufacture of complex tools within our contemporary civilization. These tools range from industrial buildings through to robotics and computer programming. However, the thesis will examine these tools through the lens of the current global Do-It-Yourself movement, a movement based in the ideas of reskilling, collaboration, re-use, renovation, invention and repair, in order to frame open-source practices and collective invention as a conduit toward individual autonomy.

The thesis will then extend the lessons of the desktop DIY movement towards an open source architecture and urbanism. Where the residents are in charge and capable of making the places where they live. This extension will allow the thesis to re-examine the role of the architect as facilitator, mediator, coordinator and teacher within the emerging open source culture. In this culture, the maker is also the user and the collective becomes the inventor and benefactor.

---

[1] Taylor, Timothy. The Artificial Ape: How Technology changed the course of human evolution. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. P 139

[2] Gautier, Julien. Manifesto 2010. October 5, 2010. http://arsindustrialis.org/manifesto-2010 (accessed September 13, 2011).