-- Main.gsteel - 02 Nov 2005
Jon's notes from Monday 31st October 2005
Level 6 Appleton Tower
Our discussions were sparked by two presentations of architectural
projects inspired by last year's Future Academy project, placing a
project in Constitution Street, or possibly in Narnia. In these
sketchy notes, no distinction is made between speakers. I hope they're
still useful in some way.
Project 1: a building for people to enjoy the contents of boxes,
stored, transported, unfolded.
Project 2: a park-site, shielded from satellite surveillance, filled
with boxes above the ground, for people to enter and experience.
Project 1
Boxes of various sizes, stored in a wall. Site specific because the
building (containing the wall) would vary, depending on site.
What is in the box? Educational, inspirational objects and activities?
Tools? Very small galleries?
Moving the boxes is Real motion in a Real space, quite unlike the way
that information flows to our desktop and laptop. A box arrives,
unfolds and reveals something else - a type of transformation.
What materials are the boxes made of? How will the materials age?
We can imagine using the boxes for our personal stuff. That's a bit
like lockers, storing our things as we move about a building. On a
bigger scale, we could have copies of Our Box in different
cities. That would be a home from home.
But perhaps having identical cubes is a bad thing?
If it's My Stuff, private property often needs a kind of uniqueness,
so identity of cubes (multiple ones for me, or similar ones for all)
is badÉ
Why would we want to be mobile?
To avoid routine - but somehow remain at home? Think of all those
chain hotels, promising a home away from home, familiarity amongst the
unfamiliar.
Some people want stability, some people want difference. Some want a
mixture of both. Mobility isn't the comfy hobbit hole.
Perhaps we (Studiolab) should meet in different places? After Mark
Stefik's Internet Dreams, some of us can be wolves (information
foraging out and about), others spiders (stay put, let the information
come to us). And we can take those roles in turns.
Learning is not just about readings, and so on as in traditional
libraries; it can be about using and generating objects and tools. So
the things in the boxes can be catalysts for change.
If things are mobile, they can get lost - you need memory to find
things. Sometimes elderly people function well in their own kitchens,
but can't function effectively when moved to a new unfamiliar
place. Where is my stuff?
A compromise: retain mobility, but create permanent place for plugging
inÉ
Books sent out and read and left serendipitously. Send the book out,
and let it be redirected to the next interested person.
How could all your stuff be mobile? A car? A trolley? A caravan Ð it
has wheels, it is a home? Consider the stealth caravan.
The alternative is not to take stuff to different places, but to
travel lightly and survive in place. All you need is your passport and
your credit card. Just buy everything else when you get there.
Commodities (shampoo, fords) are just the same stuff. Like information
and our laptops: anything can be on the same screen - bible, news,
pornography, whatever.
Recall the chameleon. It is of the place, but it changes. Its idea of
a place is informed by us (our international network, our knowledge of
particular places). We don't act the tourist, we start from the people
we really have - a personal perspective. The chameleon need not
believe the tourist brochures, and turn tartan when in
Scotland. Recall macrolab turning from solar to wind power when in the
dark windy wilds of Scotland.
Maybe what's special about mobility is the romance. The enviable thing
is just passing through.
Is mobility really romantic? Is it sustainable?
The Hopi were mobile for a very long time; they made it sustainable.
Romany people are mobile, but not valued by static communities. Why do
static communities tolerate tourists? They bring money, that's why.
Make the studiolab a train - a Messerschmitt.
Project 2:
A future academy in a different world - on a different map.
A park filled with cubes. Cubes have things in them, like video,
games, toilets. They could be cargo boxes from planes. A library
without books, instead download onto your paper device. Mirrored
boxes that disappear.
Why would people come there? For experience. For information. For
shock. What about the satellites? Closed circuit surveillance, not
open circuit. Why is that better? Those who enter the space are
choosing to, looking at themselves and each other - narcissistic or
exhibitionistic.
We're getting used to seeing ourselves not just in the mirror, not
just in frozen images ...
Simple studiolab would be a shed, minimal. Minimal isn't primitive,
whatever that is. The key point is: no prior rules for use? A
designated space where you don't have to meet all health and safety
regulations. A shed without rules. Unhealthy and unsafe space.
Hakim Bey temporary autonomous zones
http://www.hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html
In some eastern cultures, we can accommodate the old and the new. We
would be better not to look out and make new places all the time. Keep
the house the same, add gadgets on top of the home.
We need to get out to avoid solitude. Left to our own devices, we'll
tear ourselves apart. We must escape and engage.
For next time, we'll be bees from a hive. Split into subgroups, work,
re-unite, (dance?) and compare notes. Our own catalysts: conversations
pieces. They can start discussion, they can capture a part of the
discussion, they are part of the process but a product themselves, and
something we can show people and talk about, even if they missed a
meeting.