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30
July, 1999
I
do not feel obliged to address ideas from exclusively orthogonal
points of view. It's much more interesting to approach an
idea obliquely than to simply argue or agree. I really detest
the established manner of discourse that forces one to take
up a position of opposition... Debate is so-- bounded... This
from someone who has no difficulty making decision or issuing
directives.
La
la la! I'm so unpopular. Here I go again: Extrapolating from
thoughts about femininity and the prescribed (or at least
documented) social constructs of female interaction, to those
interactions within the cultural context of what Baudrillard
calls "masculine
hysteria ..."
It
turns out The Hat was written by Tomi
Ungerer and is now out of print.
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29
July, 1999
We
had a roundtable discussion today led by Brenda
Laurel. It generated lots of good conversation and ideas.
Coupla notes:
In order
to succeed in marketing to Popular Culture (i.e. make money?)
one has to market a variation (or not) of what's already
there... If my goals imply the active manipulation of an
established social construct (as opposed to simply building
upon a construct evidenced by my research data), must I
be prepared for rejection within that market?
I don't
think that the interpretation of market research need be
so literal. It's subjective (and I realize that the world
breaks down into two types of people here), but I don't
agree that the most effective way to address the issues
over which North American preteen girls are obsessed (e.g.
weight, boys, popularity, blah blah blah) is to focus on
those Issues. It legitimizes that kind of genuinely petty,
mundane crap. Obviously, in light of the aforementioned
market research, we need to address these Issues (that word
is making me giggle, ergo the caps.), but we can address
them as absurdities by contextualizing them within that
vital and bewitching flow of information, ideas, and relationships
that we choose to inhabit as adults...
I love
being a grown-up.
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28
July, 1999
I
just played a very nifty game! Pokemon
Snap... I get to do that sort of thing for a living. It's
billed as "game research." It's unusual and delightful
to find games, books
or images that I know I would have loved as a child... It's
equally fascinating to examine the stories and pictures I
treasured as a 5 year old... It's also really, really hard
to find any of them. I think I probably don't know the real
titles of the books... There was one about a magic hat found
by an Italian man named Benito Bedoglio... And another with
all sorts of sinister, fantastical creatures (I vividly remember
the illustrations) which in retrospect, remind me of Hieronymus
Bosch inventions...
Which reminds me of reading that enormous volume, The
History of Medicine (I'm not positive it's the same
book-- the one I read as a child seemed about eleven inches
thick). It contained all sorts of gruesome and mesmerizing
images. I read all about Lister
and Pasteur
and the first
Smallpox vaccine (the story of Edward Jenner, the milkmaid,
and Jenner's little boy-- a story with a kid in it)
and barber
surgeons and blood
letting as a remedy for pretty much anything...
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27
July, 1999
Apropos
of nothing really, I thought of Scarpa's design
work.
I
found all
sorts of information
pertaining to what I wanted to know about constructing a soundscape...
I just wasn't putting it all together... The interesting thing
to me (of course) is the extent of the observable disruption
of the environment upon the introduction of an observer into
the system. How does that disruption become constructive or
controllable?
Yikes!
The Public Property Competition that Steve and Mike and I
worked on in architecture school is online--
along with our entry! Ha! That was the semester I officially
burnt out. The project (as I recall) was a frivolous, post-apocalyptic-style
landscape bristling with lots of the Pointy Things and Media
Stuff deliberately calculated to elicit a flurry of A's in
architecture school (I do not recall if it worked)...
I got to make lots of nifty collages, the best of which depicted
the World Trade Towers are as languid, cross-legged models.
Victor
bought a lovely 1973 Scout. The debate rages as to whether
high octane gasoline really does make a difference.
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26
July, 1999
Yesterday
I read all but the last chapter of The
Diamond Age... I guess Neal Stephenson thought of
everything first... Anyhow I was reminded of this
paper by Peter
Bebergal. He also wrote an interesting Meditation
on Transgression.
In
defense of my erroneous usage of the word wrought,
I am compelled to point out that I was quoting directly from
a particularly flowery hate mail.
I
dreamed about baking and frosting a fluffy white cake. When
it was done, I stuck my fingers in the pristine frosting and
licked them... It was a pleasant and serene dream in which
everything was bathed in a warm yellowy light.
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23
July, 1999
Today
at lunch I was thinking about sound and about my recent epiphany
regarding audio as a medium through which to understand physical
space (I haven't mentioned it as such because it's a bit self-evident
and probably not an epiphany to anyone else)... Is there some
way to focus sound in order to build a complex and detailed
space defined solely by audio? What are the implications of
inhabiting such a space?
In
an effort to become a more effective fake and to wrought (wright
is right? how 'bout wreak?) further widespread deception
about my girlish wonderfulness and to avoid run-on sentences
in which the point gets lost... I'm studying a book Andrea
guilelessly lent me: The
Transitive Vampire subtitled, A Handbook of Grammar
for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed. Here are
some example sentences, unabashedly contextless:
She
gilded the lily and threw in the towel.
The
nymphs dished it out.
She
wrapped herself up in an enigma; there was no other way
to keep warm. (This accompanies an engraving of a charming
nude, eyes modestly dropped and fingers pensively entwined
in her hair.)
I once
spied Christophe, the manager at Jean-Luc's, buying a bottle
of rosé; so next time we sat at the bar, I asked him to teach
us about pink wine... A chilly Tavel is a very yummy thing
in the Texas summer... So are grape popsicles.
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22
July, 1999
The
Feed Books
Issue.
I
was shaking and highly distressed... But now I'm back on my
metaphorical horse with my tongue in my actual cheek... Ha!
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21
July, 1999
Jacob
wrestled with an angel.
Hmm...
Consider the implications of nanotechnology
on the materials of the built environment. Suddenly there
are possibilities beyond customization. Imagine a physical
environment that is responsive, adaptive, and self-perpetuating.
Neil Spiller, in one of his meticulously documented tangents
in Digital
Dreams says:
...when
architects talk of 'smart' buildings they are usually referring
to the same old ones with the addition of a selection of
simple prosthetics such as light sensors and small electric
motors. Their smartness is invariably the smartness of the
trickster.
Of course.
The same can be said for most applications of that adjective,
including toys. We
can't yet grasp the possible implications of the medium upon
the built environment. We are still trying to imagine how
to free ourselves from the clumsy morphs and assumptions born
of the physical constraints of the Real world in order to
build environments that exploit the possibilities of the digital
medium... Then to bring those possibilities of a fluid architecture
back to the Real world... It's like trying to understand time
other than linearly... Which makes me think of this article.
I like the quote from John Kubiatowicz, who says, "These
bugs cause time to go backward, which really screws things
up." So maybe we will just give up on leap years and all the
seasons will shift slightly and the definition of a year will
change and then we will all understand time as a series of
concentric circles... or some other nifty metaphor that I
can't predict from here in Flatland.
Yum.
Go Apple!
I've
been eating ice cream sandwiches in the afternoons to soothe
my storm-tossed soul during this time of trial... Real ice
cream sandwiches, not metaphorical, mixed or otherwise...
Because I don't like Neapolitan ice cream.
What's
funny? And why is it particularly funny to me? I never fail
to laugh when I watch the scene in The
Thin Man in which Myrna Loy calls room service and
demands a "whole flock of sandwiches." I giggle
when I see an email from Jane headed, "little excited
snorts."
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20
July, 1999
Oh,
thank you Gavin for the link to this
beautiful toy (it belongs in this context).
It's the most exciting thing I've seen in a long time... Except
maybe for the Office
Sleeping Cushion.
A
very lovely corporate
website. I like the new Herman
Miller site too.
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19
July, 1999
Oscar
Ramirez Durand captured. I've been trying without marked
success to read La
Republica.
I
wonder whether John
Drew believed his own stories... He sounds brilliant and
deranged. What attention to detail!... I have known someone
who left disaster, of a smaller scale but similarly complete,
in her wake. She was very beautiful... Dammit, there is a
time for everything... Even clichés... And that was it.
I'm
not done researching Alan
Turing and morphogenesis
and all
that stuff.
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18
July 1999
Good
Lord, I certainly hope I am not evincing twenty-something
angst... Does anyone in their twenties have angst anymore?
I don't think it's been fashionable for some time... Like
juice fasts and fondue. It's giving me angst just worrying
about it, but not Serious angst-- like Serious music or Serious
literature. That's still the province of everyone fourteen
to seventeen and I would be derisively dismissed if I tried
to horn in on it. I s'pose all I can do is long for the day
when I turn thirty and become sophisticated and blasé... This
whole business of reading other
people's websites is getting a bit too self-referential...
So
Parsifal, why now again the insistent urge to sip from that
hallowed vessel? Have you looked at the possible feminine
in origins of the cult of Baphomet?
The relationships
to those of Isis or Sophia? How about the Cult
of the Severed Head in the Celtic Peredur?
It's all fodder for a nice juicy paranoia...
Is
it the weekend yet? All this staying up all night and keeping
the programmers torqued on a combination of alcohol and caffeine
is all very amusing, but... I so want to sleep and have clean
laundry... Not thinking very interesting thoughts and certainly
not able to invent anything.
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15
July, 1999
Oh
god! This
material gives me that anxious, desperate feeling of needing
to consume. I need to not work or sleep so I can binge on
all
this
information...
Why do I react like that? It's as if I'm afraid that someone
is going to take it all away from me and I'll starve...
Susan
gave me a lovely book the other day. It's called The
Names of Things. It's very slow and serene. The language
is thoughtfully crafted and never frantic. It makes my heart
beat naturally again... But not for long. More brilliant Walt
referrals: The
Library of Congress exhibit, The
Origins of American Animation! I asked to be educated
in comics and animation... It's very nice.
Ellen
and I once spent far too long researching gummi
foods on the Internet. We agree that the referenced page is
very well written.
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more
notes from July
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