Time Log 5

Umm, what have I been up to this week?  A lot of intense work on my website, which is probably the reason I feel this way.  But asides from that I printed photos of the abandoned factory I visited last weekend, finished building the stick cube, finished assembling THE WALL (which now awaits spackling and painting), got an old set of rapidograph pens working so that I could try drawing on one of the printed photos, thought about the financial crisis and doodled it, and went hunting for abandoned buildings.  I’d post images but I haven’t downloaded them yet and I’m tired.

The buildings that used to be across from Two Wheel Tango are regrettably demolished which is too bad because they were awesome and I never got photos of them.  However, Sherri pointed me to a condemned house up near Dixboro and Joy Rd which I visited but will need to return to with my better camera and possibly at night.  On the way back from this building I drove down Pontiac Trail which happens to be practically lined with collapsing, worn-out buildings.  So, unlike a real-estate agent, I am extremely excited about this and will be making an excursion with my camera and tripod later this week.

I’m wrestling with what I intend to do with these buildings and images.  It is unsafe to go inside buildings with the level of collapse that I am interested in but I’m not sure how I feel about only having exterior information to work with.  Also, I wonder about what is gained from measuring and modeling a collapsed building.  Isn’t it just another form of illustration?  Does this technique finally engage with my ideas or is it just another misguided attempt?

I was reflecting on a semester-long project from last year and the process involved and I was reminded that the entire semester I was very intently involved in making things (collages, models, plans, sections, etc.) and that it was this which allowed me to stay interested and work through the ideas.  Although I am making some things for IP I don’t feel as obsessed as I’d like to be and I’m not sure why.

Time log: 16 hours

Time Log 4

Ok, a few new things started this week but none of the old stuff finished because it is evidently underwhelming.  I’ve started making one of the most basic systems that I can think of which is a 3-dimensional grid structure.  It’s 8×8x8 units and part of it looks like this:

I think it’ll look a little bit like Sol Lewitt’s cube structures but then I’m going to cause it to fail somehow.  Can’t decide if I want to smash it, burn it, or cut chunks out of it.

I think it’s very difficult to show both a system and its failure simultaneously because every idea I seem to come up with is either just an exploration of a system or a depiction of a failure.  The only way I’ve figured how to do both so far is by building a system and then causing its failure.  Or making a system which is destined for failure.

I also went to a vacant factory building this weekend and took somewhere around 100 photos.  The coolest (and coldest) part of it was a decaying building built with the Butler system.  Here’s a couple images from the trip:

I think several of the photos turned out quite good, although they’re not ultimately what I’m looking for with this project.  I think it might be possible for me to get access to the space again…

Time Log: 19 hours

Time Log 3

A screenshot of the drawing currently in progress.  I’m now working on architectural drawings of collapsed buildings.  Each building begins its existence as a set of design and construction drawings created by an architect.  From these drawings, the building is built.  Then the building fails.  The drawings I’m now working on are intended to close that loop by documenting the death of the building in the same manner as its inception.

(via Architectural Record Online)

I suppose there’s a chance the drawings might end up being reminiscent of Constantin Boym’s “Bitter Blueprints” but his drawings chronicle more monumental failures and they’re more directly about the causes of failure than about the buildings themselves.  So they’re not about closing the aforementioned loop.

At the moment I’m drafting the drawings in Illustrator but the tools are proving to be tricky for what I want to accomplish.  The end goal is a polished line drawing on mylar.  This can be done either through plotting or hand-drafting.  As I’m drafting on the computer though I’m thinking that I might need to hand-draft in order to achieve the feeling of collapse that exists in the buildings.  But first I’ll try using Illustrator with AutoCAD.  The problem right now is that the collapsed part looks too stiff.

Time Log: 14 hours

In a State of Disassembly

Luckily no one working on disassembling the building at the end of my street objected to my wandering in and taking some photos.  Unfortunately only a small handful turned out looking good.  The lighting was tricky; very strong outdoor light from one side, but otherwise no light.  Hopefully another opportunity will present itself in a different building… anyone know anywhere?

Time Log 2

This weekend I went home and talked to my grandma about my project.  She had some interesting ideas to try out.  Maybe different size pinholes, maybe a different type of paper, maybe some integrated images.

There’s a building being torn down right at the end of my street.  I’m going to go over there and do some sketches and take some photos early tomorrow morning.

Logged studio hours: 12 hours (+6 hours class time)

An Early Thesis Draft

sys • tem  \’sis-tem\

1. a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole
2. an organized set of doctrines, ideas, or principles usually intended to explain the arrangement or working of a systematic whole
3. a. an organized or established procedure
b. a manner of classifying, symbolizing, or schematizing
4. harmonious arrangement or pattern
5. an organized society or social situation regarded as stultifying

Systems are intimately integrated with our lives.  Our own bodies are infinitely complex systems.  We are washed, clothed, fed, and transported by systems.  We communicate through systems.  We live in building systems that are connected by road systems which extend across the entire continent linking vastly different urban systems.  Everything is part of a system.

Our lives as we know them are dependent upon the systems that we encounter but generally speaking we are unaware of these systems in the way that we are unaware of the air we breathe.  They are unnoticed.

“For most of us, design is invisible.  Until it fails.  In fact, the secret ambition of design is to become invisible, to be taken up into the culture, absorbed into the background.  The highest order of success in design is to achieve ubiquity, to become banal.  The automobile, the freeway, the airplane, the cell phone, the air conditioner, the high-rise – all invented and developed first in the West, but fully adopted and embraced the world over – have achieved design nirvana.  They are no longer considered unnatural.  They are boring, even tedious.  Most of the time we live our lives within these invisible systems, blissfully unaware of the artificial life, the intensely designed infrastructures that support them.  Accidents, disasters, crises.  When systems fail we become temporarily conscious of the extraordinary force and power of design, and the effects that it generates.  Every accident provides a brief moment of awareness of real life, what is actually happening, and our dependence on the underlying systems of design.  Every plane crash is a rupture, a shock to the system precisely because our experience of flight is so carefully designed away from the reality of the event.  As we sip champagne, read the morning paper, and settle in before takeoff, we choose not to experience the torque, the thrust, the speed, the altitude, the temperature, the thousands of pounds of explosive jet fuels cradled beneath us, the infinite complexity of onboard systems, and the very real risks and dangers of takeoff and landing.”
- from Massive Change by Bruce Mau and the Institute without Boundaries

fail • ure  \’fa(e)l-yer\

1. a. omission of occurrence or performance
b. a state of inability to perform a normal function
2. a. lack of success
b. a failing in business
3. a falling short
4. one that has failed

Unnoticed until they fail.  Failure can be an act of revelation.  Bruce Mau mentions the shock of a plane crash when compared to our experience of flying.  Consider the recent economic disaster (dubbed by The Daily Show as “Clusterfuck to the Poor House”, I’m not sure of a name that better communicates “a failing in business”).  The failure of the financial products being sold revealed a greater systemic problem and brought a sense of reality to the forefront.  The same thing was being sold ten and twenty times over, generating fake wealth, but since this was just part of a large and complex system that brokers encountered on a daily basis it wasn’t questioned.  Now that it has failed it is very obviously problematic.

At the same time as failure reveals, it also restructures.  If a bridge collapses it doesn’t just dissolve into a pile of dust.  It collapses into a point of stability.  It is not the intended, designed point of stability but it is the new system that failure and gravity have found for the bridge.

Evidently, one of the most banal systems we encounter is that of the building.  If we look at the definition of the word “building” we can see the extent of its ubiquity.  Why else would the description of the basic unit that constitutes our built environment be so inadequate but that it goes unnoticed?  The definition does nothing to elucidate our experience of the places we inhabit.  What exactly exists between one side of a wall and another?  Why does the building stand?  How does the water reach my shower?  What is the implied relationship between myself and the person living in the apartment adjacent to mine?  These are things which most of us do not consider.  It is only when these systems fail that they are called to our attention.

At the moment I’m drawing buildings in a state of failure.  The obvious failure is structural but there are also geographical and social failures to evidence.  The collapsed building has been abandoned to its fate.  It will either continue to become a ruin or it will be torn down and replaced.

A primary part of the interest for me with collapsed buildings comes from being an architect.  In architecture we are ultimately concerned with making things work.  Effort, discourse, and capital are all oriented towards success.  Which of course means that failure is always present but rarely or never addressed.  It is not really permissible in the field of architecture to explore the topic of failure without a specific attempt to resolve the problems revealed.  Art allows for that freedom.

Getting back to systems briefly, it is worth noting that systems convey to us  a sense of rationality, order, functionality, and efficiency.  However, these connotations are not integral to what a system is.  It is entirely possible to have a system which thwarts itself over and over again.  It is possible to have a system which completes its task in the most round-about manner possible.  This funny disconnect between connotation and possibility is one that I would like to address at some point in my work.

I currently have several drawings in progress at different scales (from 9”x12” to 8’x9’).  I also have plans for several different types of drawings using different graphic conventions.  I want to come at the topic of systems and failure from several different conceptual viewpoints and work with those views in an appropriate medium, so I am also considering objects and installations in addition to drawings.  Ultimately I’d like to have enough work to have a solo show on the topic of systems and failure.

In order to realize this goal I simply plan on continuing to work.  There are other details that will need to be worked out such as venue, publicity, and installation but the bulk of what is needed is more work.  So, I will continue to ask questions and explore the topics I have defined and by the end of the year I will at least have enough to fill a small room, although it would be nice to fill a larger one.