Since yesterday’s weather was soul-enhancing, to be dramatic, I decided to unload the small stack of tickets in my backpack and distribute them in the parking lots near the University of Windsor. I seem to be getting more and more sly with handing these out, which I’ll attribute to practice. It seems I’ll be able to continue handing tickets out for most of the summer, judging by how relentless the CUPE strike has been. Stay tuned.
So, back to the old sly-as-can-be ticket dispensing! It was a beautiful day, so handing out parking tickets was more of a joy than a chore. I’ve been letting my intuition and somewhat-extensive automotive knowledge guide me in choosing the cars I feel are “fuel efficient.” This Toyota Corolla (pictured) averages about 7L/100km, whereas the Dodge Viper (your average over-achieving American sports car, pictured below), averages around 14L/100km. Thanks to all of you who don’t mind sacrificing speed for fuel efficiency!
Broken City Lab met in December of last year to visualize, create, and link our goals for 2009 and created a large mind map to help with this process. One of the ideas brought up at this time was the following: create parking tickets that resemble those distributed by City of Windsor or University of Windsor Parking Service officials, but spin the ticket information in a way that compliments the owner of the vehicle instead of notifies him or her of impending fines. The first series of tickets display the message “operation of fuel efficient vehicle” in the space where “parking violation” or something similar would usually appear. I’ve posted the initial ticket design and two examples of the types of vehicles receiving these tickets. This will most likely be an ongoing process that I will complete throughout the summer, but since the City of Windsor Parking Services is currently on strike, these tickets should appear slightly confusing to the vehicle owners.
As I stumbled on the work of Richard Galpin, I wondered about the possibilities of creating hand-made or photographic experiments with Windsor’s architecture to help understand and interpret Windsor’s architectural setting. I believe that these types of activity could help us design projects involving commentary of our physical surroundings. Here are a few words to describe Richard’s working process.
“Richard Galpin’s complex art works are derived from the artist’s own photographs of chaotic cityscapes. Using only a scalpel Galpin intricately scores and peels away the emulsion from the surface of the photograph to produce a radical revision of the urban form. The artist allows himself no collaging, or additions of any kind – each delicate work is a unique piece made entirely by the erasure of photographic information.”
Pardon me for being a little behind the times, but John Baldessari‘s “California Map Project” from 1969 strikes a chord of creativity in me. Maybe we could find a way to blend the scale of this project with the plausibility of our Google Earth rooftop idea. Basically, John Baldessari took a map of California (bottom right) and went to the places where the map letters “California” would be located, and spelled out the letters in rocks or other ways.
From the artist – “Photographs of letters that spell California and of the map used for locating the site of each letter. The letters vary in scale from one foot to approximatly one hundred feet, and in materials used. The letters are located as near as possible within the area occupied by the letters on the map. The idea was to see the landscape as a map and to actually execute each letter and symbol of the map employed on the corresponding part of the earth. It was an attempt to make the real world match a map, to impose a language on nature and vice-versa.”
The National Theatre in London, England completed another reiteration of living architecture display, this time a temporary grass covering consisting of some 2 billion seeds. Imagine covering the face of one of our parking garages with grass and leaving a concrete message sans grass.
“National Theatre‘s Lyttelton flytower (“flytower” is a part of a theatre above the stage), which is the artists’ largest exterior work to date, is the embodiment of Malevich idea in architecture, only it’s green and alive (though for a limited time). Sponsored by Bloomberg and produced by Artsadmin, this $100,000 “living’ installation has transformed the well-known London landmark into a vertical green marvel.” Continue reading “National Grass Theatre”
This short film was shot by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt at the NASA Space Sciences Laboratory, UC Berkeley, California, USA. I do not think this project needs any description from me, so I’ll present you with the link to the main site where footage can be found. The following is a summary of the goal of this project.
“The secret lives of invisible magnetic fields are revealed as chaotic ever-changing geometries . All action takes place around NASA’s Space Sciences Laboratories, UC Berkeley, to recordings of space scientists describing their discoveries . Actual VLF audio recordings control the evolution of the fields as they delve into our inaudible surroundings, revealing recurrent ‘whistlers’ produced by fleeting electrons.”
It seems I keep running into projects that attempt to visualize pollution levels. I’m not sure what intrigues me about this particular project, but I do connect with it on some level. I might just be drawn to projects which use real-time or near-real-time data. Here is a summary this project’s purpose.
“Eclipse is an interactive artwork that alters and corrupts appropriated photographs of United States national and state parks based on real-time Air Quality Index readings from the web (AQI or particle pollution data is available from airnow.gov). Eclipse was commissioned by Turbulence.org and was created by Cary Peppermint and Christine Nadir, who produce ecoarttech.net.”
Now wouldn’t this be a good idea for some of Lebel’s windowless rooms? This light transmitting concrete was developed in 2004 and is called LitraCon. I’m not having a very easy time thinking of many applications for this recent invention, but I’m sure it could save on lighting costs for rooms in which activities would be carried out during the day.
“Litracon is a combination of optical fibers and fine concrete. The glass fibers lead light by points between the two sides of the blocks. Because of their parallel position, the light-information on the brighter side of such a wall appears unchanged on the darker side. The most interesting form of this phenomenon is probably the sharp display of shadows on the opposing side of the wall. Moreover, the colour of the light also remains the same.”
I’m not sure if anyone visiting this blog has seen this specific project, but from an ecological standpoint, this house seems quite easy on its surrounding flora and fauna. I also think it’s quite elegant and well designed. Compartments are integrated into the home for trees and surrounding soil doesn’t look like it’s been modified much. I’d imagine this type of structure would only be inhabitable in tropical-type regions. Nonetheless, where do I sign?
“This house by Hiroshi Iguchi is part of the Fifth World project which aims to promote eco friendly, sustainable architecture. The house takes natural elements and blends them all into the design of the interior. Warm, natural materials are used. Wood for the floors, light, traditional Japanese panels for compartments and white canvas to protect the interior from excessive heat. Even more, some of the trees were literally incorporated into the house, by letting them grow up to the sky in between the walls of the house.”