Gabrielle Hoad:

Artist who represents space and the phenomenon of bird flight paths, they draw/we draw: inside/outside

'What we observe is not nature itself, but nature
exposed to our method of questioning.'
Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy 1963

I address the gap between the world and our representations of it, often making use of methods that promise objectivity but ultimately highlight the human presence.

JR Carpenter: Cityfish [Click here]

Brilliant web space narrative by JR Carpenter, a digital mapping idea that makes an online narrative space come alive:

Paving Slab Animation

A Situationist's Tangram

Tangram sidewalk SMIBE from Nino Heirbaut on Vimeo.

something interesting

something even more interesting here

look this is interesting

site specific architecture

Cathedral Of Nature

Miwok Roundhouse

Finding an example of architecture which was site specific using the natural environment was not that easy , I could of easily shown examples of our ancestors use of the land and the way they designed and built their homes, which was all land inclusive . Such as the Miwok Indians who built their homes from pine and cedar poles which were bound together with grape vine or willow, this was then covered cedar bark taken from dead trees . This way of existence treats nature as it should not taking from it but existing within it . However I wanted to try and find an example of a design from now as I said this was not easy, there were examples of buildings that Incorporated the land such as those with grass roofs or walls but none that used just the natural enforcement . The closest I came was the 'Cathedral of Nature' This was the creation of Guilano Mauri he has designed a living building. The cathedral is the same size as a real cathedral it covers 82 x 15 metres and is 12 metres high. The structures used to shape and support the cathedral will eventually rot away, by which tine the the trees will be able to support themselves. The cathedral can be found situated near Malga Costa in Italy. The design was supported by the group Arte Sella (an organisation that exhibits only natural land art) they believe that "the works come from nature they live in it and then over time return to it "

Mauri 's designs control nature bending them to form his designs however they also work with nature allowing it to continue in its growth and movement.

Science Fiction & Spatial Theory

Another paper worth perusing - but looks at Hong Kong specifically as a model of post-colonial, futurist cityscapes for films such as Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell...

R.E.M. – Stand – Listen free and discover music at Last.fm

Have a listen to this. Was stood in the kitchen doing the dishes when this came on and thought it be cool to have some musical content on the blog. Thinking of space nothing could be more apt. Enjoy...

Place and Space

I'm currently reading a book by Nick Kaye, site-specific art (performance, place and documentation), after last week's session I thought that some of the following quotes might be of interest. Each statement makes me consider place and space in a slightly different way:

The moving about that the city multiples and concentrates makes the city itself an immense social experience of lacking a place [ . . . ] The identity furnished by this place is all the more symbolic (named) because, in spite of the inequality of its citizens’ positions and profits, there is only a population of passers-by, a network of residences temporarily appropriated by pedestrian traffic, a shuffling among pretences of the proper, a universe of rented spaces haunted by a nowhere or by dreamed-of places.  (de Certeau 1984: 103)

Space, as frequentation of places rather than a place stems in effect from a double movement: the traveller’s movement, of course, but also a parallel movement of the landscapes which he catches only in partial glimpses, a series of ‘snapshots’ piled hurriedly into his memory and, literally, recomposed in the account he gives of them [ . . . ] Travel [ . . . ] constructs a fictional relationship between gaze and landscape.  (Auge 1995: 86)

Place and non-place are rather like opposed polarities: the first is never completely erased, the second never totally completed; they are like palimpsests on which the scrambled game of identity and relations is ceaselessly rewritten. But non-places are the real measure of our time.  (Auge 1995: 79)

Our encounter with objects in space forces us to reflect on our selves, which can never become ‘other,’ which can never become objects for our external examination. In the domain of real space the subject-object dilemma can never be resolved.  (Morris 1993c: 165)

Session 1: Week 19, January 5, 2009

Experience of place through: memory, childhood and initial notions of sense of place, early understanding of scale, horizon and ideas of infinity, mapping experience