Group Structure

Following on from group discussion of the current structure within the group.
This is very brief explanation of what i understand of your individual projects.


Will - Human to human trace at a cellular level through reactions (derived from memories)

Jason - How these molecules start to form as an object (memories reacting)

Georgina + Annelies - Investigation into the form of the frost flower applied through elements of healing and object transformation.

Lisa - Investigation into the transformation of information through dynamic form.

Henry - Interferences existing within current architecture specifically looking at the elements of death. Contrast between the natural and man-made.

Rich - How current architecture could be dynamic. Utilising the current urban spaces to make the most of natural resources.

I will be out of Wellington until the middle of the second week but will check my email/blog.

Changing architecture as objects

http://blueantstudio.blogspot.com/2010/03/land-peel.html

Really nice illustration of the existing environment changing (folding) to create a desired environment - a similar idea to what I am hoping to show

Older Generation Interview

Hey guys i interviewed my grandparents and found out some really good stuff. The video was about 30min long so i didn't upload it to the blog as it could not fit but i have uploaded it to the xtransfer in the mac lab in the 100billion folder for you guys to look at. So i have written down the main points from the interview here.

These are the beliefs of my grand parents understanding of the future.

- Big social problems in the future
- Science will be aimed at Genetic engineering of food to ensure greater supply
- Food sources depleting and alternates will be needed
- Loosing standards of behaviour
- In future and present people are oriented in thinking about themselves, not others
- Revolution in government
- missing values (human values)
- fundamental religions will takeover
- Global warming not as bad as media says but a possibility
- Cures for diseases/ Medical enhancement
- Alternate products
- Space program is not helping, only rich are benefiting from it
- New generations will save planet, youth idealism and energy
- He believes we cannot rely on old ingrained idealism
- Experience should be learnt from old generation
- Age does not always mean wisdom
- If there was one thing my grandfather could pass down for the next generations to remember it would be LOVE, Care for family, friends and the people around you
- If there is one thing my grandmother could tell me for the future it would be to not live SELFISH lives
- Look out for what you can do for other people
- Things they miss are the social implications from the past such as freedom, having the freedom to leave car unlocked without fear of it being stolen, freedom to swim in the river without harsh laws or worrying of people will hurt them
- They miss face to face social interaction, not leaving a txt message but seeing someone face to face
- People do not think about responsibility
- Innocence of children has been lost, they know too much now
- Human GE too artificial
- If human GE is used it needs to be global
- If they had the choice to go back to youth they would go back with they knowledge they have gained throughout their life now.
- Older people get tired of things easier
- Harder to learn new things when older
- He believes if you never lived through certain experiences then you can never truely understand what it was like
- Society has the thought that somebody else owes them something
- growing up through certain time periods, gives you different values
- He speaks of his father never saying a word about war. This is an interesting point as it brings up the idea that people may choose to leave what information they want to be left behind

The part of this interview i found most interesting was how my grandparents would rather be young with the wisdom and knowledge they have now, then being young and naive like we are now. I really thought that they would want to act young how we do now but it is not the case. The only thing they really miss is the physical properties of being young. Which begs the question, what would we do differently.

I have found a quote which i though complemented this idea perfectly.

"Youth is wasted on the young" George Bernard Shaw

Lead experiments + Rapid Prototyping

I really like how the texture of the lead speaks about its process of
forming - almost like a snapshot in the forms creation.
the 3d print is my part of the group disc experiment - I was looking
at nerve bundles for inspiration.
Rich

Trace of knowledge light and time

Its interesting to think our bodies could be replaced cell by cell using nano technology. The science is advancing rapidly. Our physical bodies could be 'replaced' by nano cells being deployed and individually replicating all our human cells through to our brain. This would create greater resilience across 'humankind.' Disease would be no more and nano cells could operate at new efficiency.

I question the notion of 'humans being' when the biology of these new bodies would retain no trace of their original human state.

I think the notion of a 'trace' becomes blurred when you input the trace into digital form. Therefore trace should react like the physical state and decay 'naturally' through the constant of time.

I have been working in the darkroom over the weekend and it made me think of the tangibility of a photograph an its natural decay over time. Photography has become digitalized similar to the concept D.L.F has put forward to us. Taking a photo (capturing light), developing the film and then the prints is such a unique interaction with the physical world.

I feel this intimate process would be impossible to synthesize in the digital realm of the 4th world we intend to create.

The trace of a memory of a person should be similar to a photo degrading over time.

As a digital image or representation the trace is secured for indefinite length of time as numbers and binary code.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9391-neurons-selforganise-to-make-brain-chips.html

"The problem comes in thinking that we are somehow sufficiently separate from our brains that those brains can tell us what to do or vice versa. Your brain, for better or for worse, is just the mechanism for being you."

If no longer need our bodies, we just need a protective sheild and an external energy source.

I did this quick image on photoshop to show a snail shell over a brain. Our brain leaves traces of knowledge behind similar to that of a snails slime trail.

Plants owning concrete

When I think about it, having concrete over where we die is a bit weird. I like that this tree is breaking up the massive lid thing. Its like its taking something back. When I die I don't want to leave something behind to block nature. Why try and fight nature, even after we die? I want grass,flowers and trees all over the show.

And heres a brontosaurus by the way: (Now known as a Apatosaurus)

Seedling building.

check this out:

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/shanghai-seedling.html

Quite a beautiful form as well as encompassing seeds as a 'time capsule'

Seedling building.

Architecture experiments

Started experimenting with ways of physically showing healing. We used a plate to represent the past and the knowledge that we will use. The hot glue is a way of healing the architecture, but it changes form as it heals due to influence from certain memories of experiences.

Frost Flowers

So this morning I managed to stumble across these amazing formations called frost flowers. Basically they form by plants pulling water up their stems via a capillary action, then it splitting the outside of the stem and the water seeping out. This repeats itself again and again until they start to form layered 'flowers', much in the same way our fingernails grow.

Me and Gee thought these were really beautiful and tied in well with the different aspects of our project. They form around the existing architecture present and evolve over time, adding to their appeal instead of taking away from it.

Gee is going to try see if she can make a simple model of one of these on solidworks to 3D print and I'm drawing up their growth process so we can start to think about how they could form in and around existing buildings

Healing Experiments

Starting to look at ways of relating physical healing to architecture.

soap

I just did a quick test to see the solubility of the decompressed soap. It has much higher solubility properties than the original soap.

I did a test on a new brand of soap which had much stronger 'growth' properties. Maybe it was the quality of the soap.

I did some further tests with soap to see the reaction (if any) between different varieties of soap. I set three segments out formally in a tri shape. It was interesting to see the physical properties were quite different. I will try different arrangements so they merge into each other better. I wanted to represent the diversity in a community and how architecture will form around other architecture

Ephemeralization

This is not directly related but could be useful to relate to our philosophy.


Buckminster Fuller came up with the term 'ephemeralization'. He uses it to describe our technological advancement as something that helps us do more with less and then more with even less, until finally we can do almost anything with almost nothing

Others have talked about the possibility that emphemeralization can lead to massive complexity in non-physical systems, creating a a difficult and stressful job for anyone involved in creation and maintenance.

An example of emphemeralization could be a digital watch, which does the same job better than a clock of 150 years ago, while using a fraction of the materials and man hours to produce.

I think that maybe biological emphemeralization might work better on face value. Something that we help design that does its own thing afterwards without maintenance. It might even evolve to become more stable in its enviroment, or more useful to us as we use it and it 'remembers' experiences.

Concept of using surrounding matter to create the places we live

Experiment with the re-usage of surrounding material to create a new structure. This was a visualized concept of how a design could use the existing architecture as a basis for the next design. I kind of used the smoke idea of taking in history and feeling as the transformation for the matter used to create the design. Have not yet explored the relationship of the design with existing buildings but more an experiment into the method of transformation and impact on surroundings. I imagined the designs to keep building on from previous forever.

These are both really cool Gee and Henry, what was that colourful pic in the middle Gee, that is SWEET. Thinking further on our architecture idea and how two or more peoples architecture might interact got me looking into genetics and a friend suggested we look at writing a 'genetic code' for different architecture attributes. We could then use the old fasioned punnet squares (you know, with the dominant and recessive genes from back in high school science?) and use this as a frame work to create various architecture, thoughts? I'm going to get started and just make some models of different forms interacting to get underway but thought this could be a cool way to progress and a nice link to the way humans grow and evolve.

Containing memories

I did some test photos to see if we could get good imagery of smoke being contained, like we are storing nano particles etc. I reckon we could definitely get some good shots in the right environment.

Healing Process

I was talking with Rachel after the last class and she had the idea of looking into the bodies healing process and the way we naturally repair ourselves. We thought this would link quite nicely with the age aspect of our project. Also it ties in with building on architecture that already exists and using history to enhance our future.

I think there could be some really nice models we could do to relate to this. Thoughts??

More Liquid experiments

Interesting aspect that some liquids are affected more than others...

This is a really neat look at using natural algirhthyms to generate information. As the site says, they use the growth pattern of a species of fungi to influence this, maybe we can look at a similar idea for a simulation of how our architecture might grow..

http://onecm.com/projects/mycelium/

Fools Gold

I was recently at the museum of Melbourne and came across a cabinet of mineral crystals.
This is a picture i took of bedrock with cubes of gold coloured pyrite.
The structures intrigued me as it seemed bizarre how a crystal could form such a perfectly shaped structure.
Pyrite is a compound of sulfur and iron, FeS2.

Because we have looked at the degredation of iron to rust (reacting with oxygen to form and iron oxide) its interesting to take that compound and find a potential of supporting life within its degredation. A chemical reaction could be made between rust and sulfur releasing oxygen. We could harness this oxygen and also leave a deposit of the pyrite which would indicate a place to inhabit.
Fe2O3 + S = FeS2 + O2

The industrial revolution has relied on iron for construction so the trace of buildings as they degrade leave potential to be re-used. The hard work of mining has been done through the 20th century. The residue has left potential on the crust of the earth to be recycled and evolved into new form.


-Will

Bust A Change website

May have already been discovered by the team but http://www.bustachange.com/category/art/

has some cool 'eco friendly' stuff. Like this;

I mean they say its eco friendly, but its really just some improvements sitting next to lots of old technology. Its a start though right.

Concrete

Like the idea of this man made material being altered by the natural environment its in.

Rust

Fe2O3·nH2O (FeO(OH), Fe(OH)3

So not totally relevant but maybe a little inspiration to remind to think outside the box, this is a book that talks about having big ideas, its called "An Awesome Book" by Dallas Clayton...

Click here to see a very awesome book...

A bit on Archigram

Words taken from:

http://strawdogs.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/archigram-redux/

The US critic Michael Sorkin defined Archigram’s influences as a combination of Britain’s heroic engineering heritage – Crystal Palace, the Dreadnought, the Spitfire, the Forth Bridge and the work of Isambard Kingdom Brunel – with Buckminster Fuller’s technocractic idealism and vernacular images of Marvel Comics and The Eagle, Meccano, sci-fi films, pop music, funfairs and pop art.

“Bewitched by nomadic fantasies, Archigram argued that an architecture based on mobility and malleability could set people free,” he wrote. “This notion of consumer choice combined optimised technology, a post-Beat hitchhiker’s sense of freedom and the giddy styles of customisation found in Detroit.”

Information intake

This is a conceptual visual example of how someone could intake information, history, emotion and memories of an object or place. The amount of information taken in is judged by who wants it

Combined drawing

This drawing was done by every person in the group. Each drawing was an abstraction of how we felt about the project. When drawn the image was passed on to the next person with only a small amount showing. The next person then built their drawing upon the reminiscence of the previous drawing. This was an idea of the passing of experience, emotion and memory to the next person. When opened out, the drawing showed the evolution of everyone's ideas. A visual example of Chinese whispers.

Water Experiments

Liquid experiments, looking into the movement and communication of objects in certain environments.