HauntedGeographies

85

/ / / / / /Dust
Breeding

After Helvetica the Movie— Dust gets its own documentary.

dust | film | terraforming | narrative

84

/ / / / / /ForThePatriots
OfNonSpace

May 1st:

“We have to construct the figure of a new David, the multitude as champion of asymmetrical combat, immaterial workers who become a new kind of combatants, cosmopolitan bricoleurs of resistance and cooperation.” (Hardt + Negri)

design | nomadic media | geo-justice | bricolage | multitude

83

/ / / / / /Spin
Circa2003

Some cheeky monkey has posted this classic Spin video. It was made for a British Council ‘jolly’ in China…

…yes, we had a chef.

design | spin | missing-in-action

82

/ / / / / /LostInThe
Woods

A quick post about ‘The Rurban’ or ‘Transurbanism’; illustrated via the clash of two fascinating texts.

In ‘Theory of the Dérive’ Guy Debord effectively limits all pychogeographical practice to within the city boundary: ‘Wandering in open country is naturally depressing, and the interventions of chance are poorer there than anywhere else’.

Then comes the past master of centre-periphery politics and otherness, Mr Henri Lefebvre. He manages to loose Debord and Michele Bernstein ramberling— utter genius!

Il y a toujours l’Autre. Lets keep our questions complex please.

design | pychogeography | transurbanism | lefebvre

81

/ / / / / /In
Tradition

Ring any bells! It’s an immersive environment of light and sound. Confirms Vaux’s old position that alt-worship stands as much within an architectural tradition as a theological one.

Soft-build, collision architecture— a production of space delivered via relationship, association and interaction.

design | immersive environment | belief

80

/ / / / / /TheUnbearable
LightnessOfDesign

‘Subtle! Subtle!
To the point of formlessness.
Spiritlike! Spiritlike!’
(The Art of War)

Increasingly I’m drawn to artefacts with low design footprints, adjustments and interventions that tread ever so lightly— twists, swerves and diversions. The tiny alterations that ‘détourné’ environments and systems, make them work in your favour. It becomes really competitive— how paired-down can one get? What is the most elegant intervention, the one that writes the designer virtually out of the equation? It explains my obsession with bricolage (bricoleur, to swerve) and cybernetics (steersperson); two design sensibilities that bizarrely resemble Roland Barthes old clarion call: ‘Death of the Author’.

Check out Joshua Klein’s vending machine for crows— it's brilliant on so many levels. A bio-cultural UI with a low design footprint. Two diverse flows and systems are hooked up and diverted for alternative purposes.

design | hacking | bricolage | interface

79

/ / / / / /Bio
Fiction

Here comes every thing…

Two researchers from ULabs, Cambridge have brought the possibility of desktop bio-engineering a step closer. Dr William von Ka and Dr Michel Mauss are developing DIY kits for bio-engineered networked objects. They hope to have a fully functioning prototype within the next 2 years. Essentially you will be able to ‘terraform’ or farm your own universe, fashion it from a combination of digital avatars, spimes and biological matter.

Writing in The Journal of Genetic Fiction, Ka & Mauss describe their work as: ‘transreality story telling’ or ‘recombinant carnivalism’, a mash-up of three emerging fields: Mixed Reality, AI and Biotech— oh yes, and a heavy dose of ‘ludic’ spin. The gaming angle is vital, for what has tentatively been called ‘Desktop Pet Publishing’ (DTPP), is seen as the logical extension of cosmological programs such as SL and WOW— Think: OncoMouse ® meets Lego meets meets The Sims.

design | biotech | denser now | terraforming | narrative | udp

78

/ / / / / /MonkeyGone
ToHeaven

design | elsewhere | nonspace

77

/ / / / / /Neo
Geography

It’s all about Geography.

Cribbed this off Rhizome and I’d love to see the show. Nato Thompson, one of the editors of ‘The Interventionists’, has just curated Experimental Geography with iCI in New York.

Interestingly, he notes geography’s unique ability to contain and understand hybridity. Many ‘inter-disciplinary practices are still finding their feet’ and burgeoning discourses are temporarily flying geography's flag of convenience.

geography

76

/ / / / / /DesignAs
OpenWork

Whilst conducting some exploratory research I was reminded of the wonderful work of Dré Wapenaar. It confirms that Dunne & Raby’s (oft cited) categories of ‘affirmative’ and ‘critical’ design, still have some currency.

wapenaar | critical design | itinerant | geo-justice | taz