Post-Crit+Summaries

=Post-Crit Summaries/Comments:= This page is for us to post observations, thoughts, links, etc. that may have come up after a day of desk crits. My hope is that by posting them all here, rather than emailing specific comments to each student, we will be able to broaden the discussion by increasing the studio's general awareness of what's going on.

Feb. 5th, 2007. George's comments:
Just quick notes on a few themes that came up today: - **choosing a site as a limit or seed for starting to work...** (Arta) - danger of falling for a beautiful site but then losing the potentially broader 'site' to which the project could be applied - advantage of reacting to specific conditions as a test bed for an idea that will eventually engage a broader terrain.


 * - network gravity vs. field gravity is a kind of paradox or permanent cycle** -- (Arta) -- each will eventually produce the other, and the order will swing back and forth. Is this good or bad? Can it be hacked? If it's applied to artists colonies and gentrification, what real-world elements actually generate or enact the forces of network and field gravity?

- **Importance of timing... of time signatures**. Ilir, Mia, Larry... - patterns of activity, if condensed to varying intensities over time (a 'time signature' of some kind, like a sound wave), can be productively and provocatively translated across scales and material - a phenomenon like a 'flash point' in a moment in NYC traffic might very well contain a lesson for brownfield redevelopment. - at the same time this translation must be understood to be a thought experiment -- it will depend on many specific differences, and will thus only control or influence certain aspects of the project.

- **Grand Central as a study of traffic patterns** and the way social spaces sort themselves out of the traffic into varying degrees of publicness, restfulness (time spent there), and observation (who sees what/whom). - the station is a sorting machine for commuters, etc., and also a source of a certain kind of turbulence in the flow, perhaps -- permits 'eddies' like the cafes, waiting areas, spontaneous mid-floor groupings, etc.? - important information system: the trainboards, etc. - note how the NYC city street grid is deformed in order to accomodate the station. - strange to try to characterize or understand the commuter or 'in transit' experience of New Yorkers through such an iconic space... how much of what happens here is "typical"? - At the same time, if you are in Grand Central, you must address it's role as an iconic public space, and why this is so. Difference between Grand Central and Union Square subway station... qualities of space that lead to a sense of "being part of something larger"... an ambient pride? What aspects of Grand Central could be phrased in terms of ambience? Or do commuters bring the ambience with them? - measurements from different frames of reference... moving commuter, stationary commuter (waiting tensely for the train, or sitting calmly on the moving train), stationary observer (tourist has cafe above the crowd, muses on workaday life...). - Paul Virilio's "Negative Horizon" (book) has some interesting material about relative frames of reference... "Dromoscopy", etc.

-**Conflict of craft/local knowledge and "high technology"**... (Ryan) some extremely focused technical output of energy-intensive processes is inserted into a set of networks where expertise is distributed differently -- more in the human beings themselves, less in their tools ('technology'). What is the result? - 'mobile production unit' as a kind of computer, as a 'black box' machine of some kind. - 'time signature' of the deployment and removal of the mobile construction unit would seem to be very relevant. - 'Roman Operating System' is not a great example because it's too pre-planned, it's a kit of parts that is imposed on any local conditions (within some limites, presumably). The more organic growth of certain medieval towns, farm formations, land zoning in 17th c. Quebec (Google "Seigneurie System") would be a better precedent. There, certain elements (fortresses, gates, docks, ploughs) were highly-developed technical objects (i.e. had a lot of incremental ingenuity baked into them), whereas other parts of the system were loose and subject to more rapid change, always feeding off of or relating back to the hard-tech. objects. -Manuel Delanda's Thousand Years of Non-Linear History has a section called "Geology" (if I remember correctly) that gets into some of this with regard to medieval cities.