building_space_with_words is featured on Caught in the Act: Art in Brooklyn, on
Brooklyn Independent Television (Time Warner 56 and Cablevision 69). It was premiered on October 28 at 10 pm.

For the next month, it will repeat every Monday & Wednesday at 2pm & 10pm.

It’s also on their website:

http://www.bricartsmedia.org/community-media/brooklyn-independent-television/caught-in-the-act

on the relationship between virtual and physical space… when the “nomad” finds a home - “virtual” yet “real”.

“I soon realised that the site would evolve into some parallel living space, some sort of lateral existence in connection with a different world, through the lens of design. (…)”

See “behind the scenes” at  http://www.bazartropicando.com/home_works.html

Thanks to one of my students,  I read this recent NY Time article reviewing a book by Andrew Lih, The Wikipedian Revolution and compares Wikepedia to a city (referring also to the History in the City by Lewis Mumford):

“[…] Like a city, Wikipedia is greater than the sum of its parts; for example, the random encounters there are often more compelling than the articles themselves. The search for information resembles a walk through an overbuilt quarter of an ancient capital. You circle around topics on a path that appears to be shifting. Ultimately the journey ends and you are not sure how you got there.Wikipedia articles can send you down unlikely alleyways in two ways. First, there are links that direct you to the same article in another language, a trippy experience that sheds light on a culture. Spend time in German Wikipedia, and you find jazz musicians likeThelonious Monk with articles far longer than those written in their own language; you may also come upon odd areas of deep interest, like “pecherei,” the extraction of resin from trees — no English equivalent provided — and 15 different tools needed for the job.Second, at the bottom of most articles, there are the categories — impromptu neighborhoods, or perhaps civic organizations, that bind together the virtual encyclopedia. […] 

Mumford elaborates: “Even before the city is a place of fixed residence, it begins as a meeting place to which people periodically return: the magnet comes before the container, and this ability to attract nonresidents to it for intercourse and spiritual stimulus no less than trade remains one of the essential criteria of the city, a witness to its essential dynamism, as opposed to the more fixed and indrawn form of the village, hostile to the outsider.”The marvel of Wikipedia — and cities — is that all the intercourse and spiritual stimulus don’t make living there impossible. Rather, they are exactly what makes living there possible.  […]”

Of course I found the comparison between the virtual space of Wikipedia and the physical space of a city a compelling comparison. I also found interesting the comments on the role of social practices (trust, behavior, etc.) which once again highlights the discussion we had about the intertwining between social and physical spaces. Last, I could not be insensitive to the description of the journey through Wikipedia similar to a journey through a maze!

al

Really happy to have made it to the centre of the maze to experience BSWW. The space that has been built is a beautiful and comfortable space. With a wonderful soundtrack too. Al and Aileen, it’s fantastic milena

Published a few days ago in the NY Times (and thanks to Yasmine’s blog), there was an article about Grand Central the new Google application:It was intended to solve the headaches of having more than one phone number (home, work, cellphone and so on): Having to check multiple answering machines. Missing calls when people try to reach you on your cell when you’re at home (or the other way around). Sending around e-mail at work that says, “On Thursday from 5 to 8:30, I’ll be on my cell; for the rest of the weekend, call me at home.” And having to change phone numbers when you switched jobs or cities. Many notions come to mind: mobility, neo-nomads, technology, digital cities, but also space and the intermingling of physical and virtual space. I remember the time where you would never ask someone when calling her “where are you?” as the number you dialed told you where the person was - at home, in the office, at X’s house. The cell phone changed the practice and the usual “Hi, how are you?” became “Hi, where are you?”. You still knew where the person was if you were calling her on a land line and she picked up the phone. Grand Central promises to blurry the frontiers between physical and digital even more by eliminating any clues of location.  al 

I could relate something from the movie “The Matrix”. A virtual world and how things happens inside. I liked it and interested in research on this new idea on depicting virtual interactions in to physical world…I will do some more analysis and come some other time to understand in detail and see how ideas live in this virtual world…

Yesterday was the opening night and things went very well… It was a great party, thanks to Liz DiNapoli…

It was very nice to see people going through the maze, to see the text reflecting on them, enveloping them, diffusing through the different layers of fabrics. Someone told me that it was hard to read and I agreed and replied that we did not aim people to be able to read. Text was for us  a material, a texture. The panels are not screens; they are support for diffusion… they are the invisible structure for the text to “materialize”.

A few people ask us about the structure and why we chose to use this “structure”: a maze “floating” from a web structure. Part of it was because of the experience we were trying to convey: we explored many materials; we thought at one point of having a stand alone structure (in plexiglass or glass) but we thought it would then become a form of its own - a sculpture - instead of just being the support for the words. We wanted the fabric to disappear behind the words. We also responded to the structure of the building: we could not touch the ceiling or the floor; there were symmetrical ledges…

Another thing that occurs to me yesterday listening to people was how the installation conveys an idea of lightness and of materiality. It made me think of the discussions we had about virtual space and the fact that virtual space is not immaterial, but in fact it is deeply material. In a similar manner, the light structure of the maze requires the wired structure.

As Laura’s noted in her post (thanks for the nice pictures!), it was amazing to see people constructing the space through their posts. One more step toward collaboration!

From a personal perspective, it was really neat to see an idea that I had a bit more than a year ago “materialized” and it was as I “wanted” it to be. Aileen and I had this big smile Tuesday night when we were nearly done and we stayed in the space with. Yet, the form could have been enacted differently (through different materials), but the experience could be the same.

And that’s the experience, the environment, that we created that mattered to us… and the questions it raised.

Thank you to all the members of this blog and for their great conversations and insights (and we hope this will continue) and thanks for all the visitors…

al

we are in a cultural shift in terms of our definition of private space. the notion of private may or may not have ever existed in “reality”. Despite this, the idea of a private space is becoming more and more ambiguous in an electronic context. How this will play out in relation to our own identities remains to be seen.

Hi,

Milena was telling me yesterday that she found interesting that the blog “seems to be taking a turn for physical space…and urban environments which is really interesting too”.
My first reply was that I liked the idea that the discussion was evolving and taking its own path. I also highlighted that for me while issues about physical space were coming up, it did not mean that the “virtual space” topic has disappeared, but it was discussions about online communication, mobility, etc.

Moreover, the two last posts by Yasmine and Claudia were for me about practices, perceptions, and not so much physical space per se: How do you keep a sense of home (place, identity) when you’re away, on the way? What is home if it’s not the physical house that one might associate with home?

Yet, Milena’s comment made me reflect on the evolution of our conversation and I wondered whether we have taken another path (which is not a problem in itself) forgetting the original question:

How to interpret the metaphor of the virtual space that so many people use? is it a metaphor or an oxymoron? Are some of the affordances of physical spaces (affordances which are not only material but also social) reenacted in online (virtual) spaces? Or do these spaces have completely different affordances / dimensions? (more…)

Reading  Yasmine Abbas’ Thursday post (Jan 29) on Neo-Nomad, I discovered two architectural projects that I find really interesting and which also resonate with previous discussions about Kolb’s and Alexander’s work.

Pachube by the architect, Usman Haque. Here are few quotes from a long interview:

My focus as an architect has always been to consider what I’ve called the “software” of space (sounds, smell, light, temperature, electromagnetic fields, social relationships, etc.) rather than the “hardware” (floors, walls, roof, etc.) as it has traditionally been considered. The image (above) really sums up why I think this is important.

Pachube is: “A web service that enables people to tag and share real time sensor data from objects, devices and spaces around the world, facilitating interaction between remote environments, both physical and virtual.“

One of the strands of thought Pachube evolved out-which was one of the starting point of this conversation:

” the geographical non-specificity of architecture these days as people live their lives in constant connection with people in remote spaces”

Yasmine mentioned the project New Babylon by  the Dutch artist Constant Nieuwenhuys as an inspiration to Pachube. Usman also refers explicitly to New Babylon, which is a visionary architectural proposal for a future society.

Thanks Yasmine for these two pointers!

al