prss release #25, JUNe 5th 2009

the independent paper blog aggregator
prss release #25, JUNE 5th 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/05/10/opinion/10dowd_ready.html
1 — Infrastructure: A Hacker’s
Manifesto
Architects should stop worrying about the
Obama administration’s scarce stimulus spending, and start wrapping their minds around new
technologies that reinvent infrastructure, writes
Kazys Varnelis.
2 — The new Architectural Review
On the occasion of the redesign of the Architectural Review, the Sesquipedalist thinks over
how the architectural periodical could perform
the balancing act of propaganda and critisism.
3 — Postcard Architecture Disseminates the Future of U.S. Infrastructure
How to bring architectural ideas to the populace? The format of the postcard offer a way
for architectural discourse to reach beyond the
traditional confines of the museum or studio.
Jimmy Stamp reviews architectural broadcasting in a gas station near you.
4 — BIG
Rusell Davies writes about how he, as an architecture lay-men, experienced a Bjarke Ingels lecture.
8 — Poverty and Partitions
Owen Hatherley shares some thought on what
apartheid, the urban sitcom and architecture
have to do with each other.
5 — Squatter urbanism
comes to America
In the States they use the euphemism ‘Tent
city’, hoping for it to be temporal, for what in
reality is the emergence of a third world conditions in America, writes Mathieu Helie.
9 — Clash of Subways and Car Culture
in Chinese Cities
15 cities in China are building subway systems,
to stimulate the economy and to fight gridlock
on the street. Keith Bradsher reports on if the
car-loving Chinese, will share their love with
another means of transportation.
6 — A Society of Simulations
Media technologies play a fundamental role in
our cycle of meaning construction. This is not
necessarily a bad thing, nor is it entirely new.
Van Mensvoort explains what consequences
this has for our concepts of virtual and real.
7 — This Is Your Brain on Facebook
Rob Mitchum writes about how recent studies
on the effects of the internet and other new media on brain plasticity raises an open research
question: Is Google making us smarter?
10 — Here & There influences
Jack Schulze made an awesome poster revolving around this thought: “Within one field of
view, to be both in the world and to see yourself
in it. The power of looking through, and occupying, your own field of vision.”
illustrations by LeGrandCrew.com
1
Infrastructure: A Hacker’s Manifesto
the Architect’s newspaper
http://archpaper.com/e-board_rev.asp?News_ID=3316
by Kazys Varnelis on March 13, 2009
Farewell to all that: Photographer Michael Light's Interchange of Highways 60 and
202 Looking West, Mesa, AZ (2007), from the series Salt River/Deadman Wash/
Paradise Valley. Michael Light/Courtesy Hosfelt Gallery
In December, when President Elect Barack Obama called his economic
stimulus plan “the single largest new investment in our national
infrastructure since President Eisenhower established the Interstate
Highway System in the 1950s,” the media was abuzz with hopes that
cities strained by decades of underinvestment would become better
places to live. There were even suggestions that building high-design
infrastructure would serve as an inspiration to a gloomy nation.
Calatrava everywhere! OMA-designed windmills! The possibilities
were delirious.
So there has been much hand-wringing that as signed into law, the plan
allocates only $48 billion to highways, rail, and mass transit. That’s a mere
6 percent of the plan’s budget. Sure, architects and the building sector will
stand to benefit from more money allocated for improving public housing,
federal agency buildings, and the like, but the point is clear: Instead of a
vigorously rebuilt future, we are treading water at best.
We should view this not as another professional snub, but as a major
opportunity to get our priorities straight. We all know that infrastructural
investment is necessary. But the way architects were talking about their
hopes for a bailout made them sound as bad as the banks. So let me
make a modest proposal. To paraphrase another president, think not
what infrastructure spending can do for you; think what you can do to
reinvent infrastructure.
Here’s the real problem: Our models for supporting cities have
grown as decrepit as the bridges and highways around us. This I
learned between 2004 and 2008, when I led a team of researchers
investigating the changing conditions of infrastructure in Los Angeles,
and producing the book The Infrastructural City: Networked Ecologies
in Los Angeles. For us, Los Angeles was a case study: A particularly
interesting city, but one that proved the rule regarding infrastructure,
rather than the exception.
Our conclusions were, first and foremost, that a WPA-style
infrastructural push is impossible today. In part, this is because
infrastructure tends to conform to an S-curve during its growth. As
money is invested in infrastructure, its efficiency leaps ahead, but
due to rising complexity, the S-curve eventually flattens and returnsper-dollar invested diminish greatly. Most of our systems are now at
this stage: highly complex and very expensive to invest in. Moreover,
costs for infrastructural improvements are vastly greater today than
in the past. Thus, even if economist Paul Krugman observes that
infrastructure funding generates a greater benefit for the economy than
tax cuts, the improvement to urban life we would see from even $200
billion in infrastructure spending would be minor. As the American
Society of Civil Engineers has suggested in its appraisal of our failing
infrastructure, we don’t need $200 billion—we need $2.2 trillion.
And that’s just to shore up the existing hardware. If we’re talking
about rolling out new rail lines and green power grids, there are still
other problems at hand. The public building boom of the 1960s and
’70s—which was mainly a vast expansion of highways—devastated
many communities and drove down their property values. Since then,
homeowners have defended their back yards like medieval barons
defending their castles, effectively mobilizing to question, forestall,
and generally thwart the construction of new infrastructural systems
that would theoretically benefit everyone. To think that opposition to
vast new projects will evaporate at a time when home values are in free
fall is ludicrous.
As society has become more complex and interconnected, so should
our ideas about how we build and service cities. As a case in point,
new “soft” technologies are already transforming hard infrastructure.
Commuter train ridership, for instance, is more attractive when you can
log onto a laptop and get in two more hours of work while you ride.
Similarly, mobile phones have made hours stuck in traffic more palatable
(even as they’ve made traffic more dangerous by distracting drivers). We
could build on such practices, subsidizing fiber-optic communications
lines to Main Street to encourage the growth of offices in downtowns
that languish half-empty while peripheral suburbs boom. Or we could
add wi-fi to all forms of public transit, encouraging commuters to get
out of their cars and into existing buses and trains. But this is only a
start, and we need to be daring. We need to reinvent infrastructure with
new technologies.
I’d like to suggest that we embrace a cultural practice that is about as
far from Congress and the White House as can be imagined: hacking. In
the post-9/11 culture of government paranoia, hacking is tantamount to
terrorism, but in the best sense of the word, hacking sets out not to harm
other people but to expand our horizons, using systems in ways they
were not intended as a means to free information. This is amply shown
by the internet’s rapid growth, which stems from its status as an ideal
environment for hackers. Anyone with a small investment in access can
build new applications and interfaces. Why not open up infrastructure
in a similar way? Legislating open access to data in new and existing
infrastructure would allow developers to build applications—many
of them as yet unforeseen—that would exploit that data to expand our
infrastructural possibilities.
Take Google Maps on the iPhone. This service delivers up-to-date
information about traffic speeds. Granted, it’s not perfect. Not all routes
are covered, the data is too coarse, and sometimes it is unavailable,
making real-time routing tricky. Still, I have a good sense of whether
I should take the George Washington Bridge or the Holland Tunnel on
the odd occasion when I have to drive into the city. With technology
like this, there’s no reason why New York’s subway riders can’t be
equally enlightened. If the MTA knows where its trains are, we should
know too. It’s preposterous to wait forever to get on a local train only
to find out—once the doors have closed—that the train is inexplicably
going express, right past your stop. Government agencies have such
information at their disposal, yet we, the users, don’t. Incredibly, forms
of data as basic as subway schedules can still be hard to obtain, often
requiring either Google’s muscle or a canny lawyer and a Freedom of
Information Act request.
As last year’s Design and the Elastic Mind show at MoMA
demonstrated, user interface designers and software engineers in urban
informatics are already working on these challenges, but should the
architectural profession cede the city to them? Leaving such work in the
hands of individuals whose primary site of experience is the computer
display shortchanges the city. Architects need to find ways to engage
with such technology, to make it part of the lived experience of the city,
and not just something that happens on a screen.
This may not be what architects who long for construction want to
hear about, but it’s the sort of thinking that led to the transformations in
everyday life that digital technology has enabled over the last generation.
The result was a major economic stimulus from the resulting rise in
productivity. Architects should not feel left out. Their imaginations are
second to none. It’s time to use them again, and to truly rethink what
architecture and infrastructure might be.
2
The New Architectural Review
qualities he looked for and responsibilities he tried to imbue in the
AR during that period. In short, he believed that “helping to sharpen
the perception of architects and their clients is one of the aims of an
architectural magazine.” He also believed, however, that the magazine
should positively criticise bad architecture:
“another essential role of the architectural magazine: criticism – of
architects and all their works, of the opportunities they are given
and of the conditions that allow, or don't allow, them to make their
proper contribution to the world.
There is still not enough informed and constructive criticism
of architecture, and it is sometimes asked why architectural
magazines do not pillory the bad buildings, instead – as they mostly
do at present – of criticising them only by implication; by ignoring
them and paying attention instead to the buildings they think worth
serious discussion. Perhaps they should attack the bad more
positively, though this would make it all the more necessary to reach
beyond subjective and appearance criticism; to look critically not
only at the result but at the programme.
Criticism in my experience had not been made easier by the
touchiness of many members of the architectural profession, who
claim to approve of it but resent its being applied to themselves.”
illustration: Annemarie van den Berg (legrandcrew.com)
the Sesquipedalist
http://www.sesquipedalist.com/2009/04/new-architecturalreview.html
by the Sesquipedalist on April 23, 2009
In a piece called “Retrospect” in the Architectural Review of February
1971, the leaving editor of over 30 years, J.M. Richards wrote about the
role of the architectural magazine in architectural production and the
Monica Pidgeon, the nonagenarian editor of Architectural Design
between 1946 and 1975 for example, admitted when I interviewed her
recently that the policy for AD was to do just that – ignore the bad and
promote what they considered the good. Richards goes on to astutely
observe that “the difficulty becomes clear when it is remembered
that the significant dramatic criticism is not written in periodicals
circulating chiefly among actors and stage producers, nor significant
art criticism written in periodicals for practising artists. Architectural
criticism, of which much more is needed, should not be so dependent
on the architectural magazines, it should find a place alongside the
dramatic and art and music and book criticism in the layman's press –
daily, Sunday and weekly.”
It is easily forgotten by architects that the architectural press form
the trade magazines of the architectural profession and the public in
general simply does not concern itself with it. The flavour of architectural
criticism in the national press is quite different. It necessarily needs to
be dumbed down, while maintaining relevance to the philistines that
form society. Richards disapproved of the architectural autonomy that
architects strive for in their work which inevitably becomes reflected in
their magazines:
“Architects' tendency to concern themselves with a limited private
world – to work, in effect, for the approbation of other architects,
or become satisfied by in-language and plug-in gimmicks – is what
makes an editor despair. Such private worlds are really an escape
from the realities that remain architects' only claim to be taken
seriously by society.”
That was 1971. Fast forward 38 years and Kieran Long has been editor of
AR's sister, the Architects' Journal, for about 18 months and has recently
become editor-in-chief of that and the AR, hence this month's redesign. Although almost everybody I ask considers Architecture Today to be the best
UK architectural periodical, the AR is arguably still the most revered.
to say I'm a little disappointed in the design. I think most architecture
part 2 students with InDesign could quite easily match it today. While
I don't expect Archigram, I think it's unambitious and lacks any edge
when compared to other architecture magazines, such as Mark which is
a beautiful piece of design in its own right.
It was established in 1896 and made its name in the 1920s and 1930s
when it was largely responsible for introducing the modern style to these
shores from the continent. Since then it has become the respectable daddy
of architectural monthlies that sets the benchmark for what constitutes
architecture. To be published in the AR still really validates the work as
architecture. But recently it had lost its way and I for one hadn't picked
up a copy for years because it had become so staid and predictable.
Other than tweaks, it hadn't had a redesign in format since January 1985
and so was feeling very weary. Rumours had been abounding that it had
gone the same way as l'architecture d'aujourd'hui. Monica Pidgeon was
saying that she had heard that the AR was no more and I had to reassure
her that although changes were taking place, it was still alive and trying
to kick. So what of the first kick of the new regime?
There is a brief history of its design here at Things to look at and here at
Eye magazine, concentrating more on the typography. The first thing to
notice is the logo, which harks back to the masthead of pre-1985 but with
a 21st century zoom which is strong and nicely retro and works well as
a symbol of both tradition and progress. Inside, the overall design is
clean and won't offend the older AR readers, but is not going to set any
designer's hearts racing. It's clearly from the same stable as the AJ and
looks very much like I remember Icon a couple of years ago, which isn't
surprising seeing as both Kieran and designer Violetta Boxill previously
worked there. One thing that this does bring is the highlighted yellow
marker style words within the pieces, which for me is preferable to
corny summaries at the end of an article in order to get a quick gist.
The layout is based on a flexible grid with some photos framed in white
space and others bleeding right to the edge of the page. The drawings
have that bland quality that all computer drawings have today and it
would have been nice to see the AR set a higher standard for quality of
architectural drawings seeing as drawings are essentially one third of
the content of architectural magazines. There are no line weights for
a start. The long sections on pages 78-79 don't line up for no apparent
reason and the cross section on page 66 has no labelling whatsoever. I
would be disappointed if my students handed in drawings like these.
The logos for the sections "SKILL", "ID" and "MARGINALIA" I think
are a missed opportunity and for me neither echo the past nor beckon
a future and the cyan colour always reminds me of formica for some
reason. Judge for yourself in the "ID" picture (4 below) whether the "ID"
logo works or is lost. And "MARGINALIA" (5 below) requires its own
column rather than being integrated into the rest of the page. So I have
Enough of the design, what of the content? This issue of the new AR is
divided into three sections: "VIEW", "BUILDINGS" and the back pages
of "SKILL", "ID" and "MARGINALIA". All apart from "BUILDINGS",
I believe, are taken from section names in previous generations of ARs.
I understand that themes will be introduced occasionally to issues when
a collection of buildings requires it which is a sensible move. All the
buildings are now numbered and mapped onto the world, which is also
a nice idea. It will be interesting to see how this is collated and used in
the future - whether it'll be searchable online at the much improved AR
web site, for example. The buildings in this issue noticeably come from
the Western world - USA, Europe, Japan. Hopefully there will be more
variety in the future and a greater mix of what constitutes architecture
considered. The critique of the buildings doesn't offer much more than
description, though, and there's never any reference to the drawings or
pictures. This is normal in today's architectural press, and I doubt if the
more critical edge that Kieran brought to the AJ with excellent writers
such as Kester Rattenbury will transfer to the AR. Being published in
the AR validates architecture and that has become its function, rather
than to criticise poor design. The outrage column that Ian Nairn started
with great vitriol in 1955 had become its own self-parody a long time
ago. However, previous ARs had sections called “criticism” and I long
for the return of the campaigns from yesteryear. Whether this can be
expected in a magazine run for profit rather than a hobby (as it practically
was for Hubert de Cronin Hastings) remains to be seen. The AR is
now mainly sold overseas and its "Rule Britannia" days are over so a
campaign such as "Manplan", which makes great reading today but was
suicide for the magazine back in 1970, will be even more impossible.
Yet J.M. Richards' words from 1971 ring in my ears.
The other new-old sections are a welcome step forward. "VIEW"
discusses current affairs that affect architecture in the wider context.
It's readable and informative and hopefully will maintain relevance and
interest. The rear sections of "SKILL", "ID" and "MARGINALIA" are
shorter reviews of the wider context of art and architecture - again more
varied than the previous regime and demonstrating a wider cultural
mix. Hopefully this won't lose the more serious long book review, for
example.
The great period of AR – up to about 1970 under the editorship of J.M.
Richards – saw great articles on the holy trinity of history, theory and
criticism that later became canonised into architectural folklore, such
as Colin Rowe's “The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa” from March
1947's AR. It would be great if the AR could re-invoke more serious
investigation on more imaginative historical and theoretical issues by
the world's best architectural writers and thinkers, as well as maintain
its cultural ambitions. That doesn't mean it should become like today's
AD, which seems to exist in its own bubble and whose relevance to
today's architects is dubitable.
promote high ethical values. It would provoke critical thinking rather
than simply print nice pictures. It would integrate its dead-tree format
with the online world and provide a platform for feedback and real-time
debate. This online world would be a much wider receptacle of more
fluid publication, the best of which could be compiled in with specially
commissioned pieces for the paper magazine, to be published as and
when it was ready. It would, of course, be international, and actively
seek out new talent from the existing Western tradition as well as the
more forgotten places. It would not participate in awards.
With the AJ and now the AR, Kieran seems to be creating a pair of
cultural magazines for architects which add more to the discipline of
architecture and its culture than the profession per se. They are both,
without doubt, better than they were under the previous regimes
and I sincerely hope they continue their improvement and approach
something like my ideal. The architectural press is, after all, where 21st
century architecture occurs.
3
Postcard Architecture Disseminates
the Future of U.S. Infrastructure
Life Without Buildings
http://lifewithoutbuildings.net/2009/04/postcard-architecturedisseminates-the-future-of-us-infrastructure.html
by Jimmy Stamp on April 29, 2009
Inevitably I compare any architectural magazine with my fictional
perfect ideal version. This would have a contemporary design that
made the whole look like one, like Arts & Architecture achieved under
Entenza and Travers where even the adverts became part of the whole
design. The typography would be a major part of the design of the page
and merge with drawings and stunning photographs like the original
Plus. The drawings would have character and transmit information
in their style as well as content. This perfect magazine would have a
variety of pieces relevant to architects from the arts and social sciences,
as well as science and technology, much like some of WIRED's best
features over the past decade. The criticism of buildings would include
drawings and diagrams integrated into the text and photographs in order
to tell a unified story and explain, enlighten and educate in the manner
of Edward Tufte. It would include the occasional off-the-wall historical
or theoretical piece by an interesting writer to bring new angles on
current debates, or introduce new thinking. It would have pretentiously
lagubrious reviews of books and exhibitions. It would capture research,
either from the universities or from practice, and even instigate its own
in order to pour cold water on stale thinking and paint a real picture of
what's going on in the architectural world. It would publish this in funky
diagrammatic form as a collectable series. It would take a stand on
important architectural issues such as sustainability and education and
"Bridging Parallel Infrastructures"
One of my greatest frustrations with architecture is how inaccessible it
is to…well, everyone. All too often architecture is something reserved
for the backgrounds of car commercials, the occasional feature of
a weekend paper, and the interiors of glossy magazines relegated to
their own little corner of bookstores. That’s why it’s such a relief to
see an exhibition like Friends of the Future. FoF is a the result of an
advanced studio at the Rhode Island School of Design taught by
Anthony Acciavatti, Infrastructural Reserves: Spreads and Densities
along the Northeast Corridor, that investigated the formal and spatial
potential of rest stops, intermodal stations, and other infrastructural
interventions along I-95. The exhibition will travel to venues located
along the Northeast Corridor and distribute 36,000 postcards promoting
speculative futures of regional transit systems. It’s this populist aspect
of exhibiting that is especially exciting. Starting May 25, the postcards
will be available at rest stops, gas stations, welcome centers, and even
McDonald’s restaurants across Connecticut - bringing design to people
who might just be stopping off to walk the dog, use the bathroom, or
buy a McFlurry.
voters actually support innovative architecture and massive intermodal
transit zones along high-speed rail lines. But that’s not all. We love our
cars in America and we love road trips with mix tapes and crossing
state lines with the sun setting behind us. As rail lines becomes more
prevalent and new stations become necessary, these intermodal zones
could potentially change the nature of the road trip by reconsidering
what it means to travel by car and, as the projects brief states, reorganize
the vast expanse of residual space between our cities. Can we create an
ecologically sound, architecturally innovative infrastructure? As much
I’d like to use the familiar “yes we can” refrain, the best we can hope
for right now is a resounding “maybe.” But at least people are talking.
And the next time you stop to grab a double cheeseburger on your way
to Myrtle Beach, look for the RISD postcards and send a few to your
family.
4
BIG
Russell Davies
http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2009/04/big.html
by Russel Davies on April 28, 2009
Friends of the Future opening exhibition at RISd
From the Friends of the Future Press Release
Throughout the winter term, the students cultivated a series of well
attuned strategies that envision the introduction of rail within the
interstate system. The purpose in doing this is to conceive a diverse
body of proposals, which provide an assortment of alternative
futures for these contrasting sites that are unique for their
exceptional cultural and ecological value.
a portrait of the US via the Interstate Highway System
The exhibition couldn’t have come at a better time, as it coincides with
the recent announcement by the Obama administration of a new high
speed rail plan for America. The Northeast Corridor and a continuing
route that follows almost the entire length of I-95 is a primary focus
of the new plan. After the election, there was a lot of discussion about
the future of architecture and urbansim as the US welcomed its first
urban President. Could we realy be entering a new Golden Age of
infrastructure, creating new infrastructure to physically unite the
nation as we begin what will surely be a slow economic recovery? The
government, President Obama said, “will act—not only to create new
jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.”
Projects like the RISD exhibition can help start the discussion that
precedes this “new foundation.” As the average citizen becomes more
aware of good design, it becomes possible to see a future where educated
illustration: Zsuzsanna Ilijin (legrandcrew.com)
The projects presented serve to foster a discussion about new design
strategies that can start to re-organize the expanse of residual
spaces throughout the interstate, in order to accommodate a wide
variety of programs that can serve a new social and economic future
for the I-95 corridor, and consolidate an array of urban edges into a
new infrastructural network.
Dan very kindly took me to a talk by Bjarke Ingels last night. It was
very good. I liked the architecture, but I'm not really qualified to talk
about it. However, it was really interesting to hear about the interior of
another sort of business - it seemed there were quite a few things that
BIG do, that I've seen in other good creative businesses.(Including,
unfortunately, lots of horrible flash on the website.)
1. They don't seem to be precious about ideas. They don't cherish
them, regard them as valuable or hard to have. They have lots and
lots of them and then prune, recombine and mutate. He talked
about this as 'excess and selection'. You have an excess of ideas
and then pick the ones that seem to fit the problem. (And you keep
them all, because they might come in handy next time.)
2. The work environment is part of the process. Each project is
documented on the walls of the office as it's being done. So anyone
in the office can see what's going on, and contribute. It all seems to
be a very open and collaborative practice.
3. There's a charismatic front-man. Mr Ingels himself is a great
presenter, funny, smart, personable, and above all, convincing.
He's great with powerpoint, managed to talk for more than an
hour about architecture without any baffling jargon and is clearly
someone you'd want to spend time with.
4. They're happy to be opportunistic and pragmatic. Their didn't
seem to be a lot of big theories, just a desire to get good stuff
actually made. They're as adept at engineering the political/client
reality to get something done as they are at making the building. If
you need to put a huge picture of the client in the lobby to get the
building made, then do that, and don't do it grudgingly, do it well,
make it good, make it a postive.
5. They use video really well. They make a lot of films that make
their projects understandable, and feel real. And use music well to
add that convincing emotional depth.
5
Squatter urbanism comes to America
illustration: Bouwe van der Molen (legrandcrew.com)
Emergent Urbanism
http://emergenturbanism.com/2009/04/26/squatter-urbanism-comes-toamerica/
by Matthieu Helie on April 26, 2009
In previous posts I argued that the only way a modern housing subdivision
was possible was by the creation of a permanent, extreme housing crisis
by the authorities attempting to control development. Now this housing
crisis is catching up with American cities and a phenomenon that was
until then limited to dysfunctional third world countries, squatter
camps, is popping up all over the country.
From the well-kept interior of the Caros’ place, one can hardly see
the jagged rows of tents and shanties on the vacant land around
them. About 200 people have built informal habitats along the
railroad tracks, primarily poor whites and migrant workers from
Mexico.
There are many names for this fledgling city, where Old Glory flies
from improvised flagpoles and trash heaps rise and fall with the
wavering population. To some it’s Little Tijuana, but most people
call it Taco Flat.
Just to the south, under a freeway overpass, there’s another camp of
roughly equal size called New Jack City where most of the residents
are black. Even more dwellings are scattered throughout the
neighborhood nearby, appended to the walls of industrial buildings
and rising up the flanks of freeway spurs.
Fresno,whichtheBrookingsInstitutionrankedin2005astheAmerican
city with the greatest concentration of poverty, is far from the only
place where people are resorting to life in makeshift abodes. Similar
encampments are proliferating throughout the West, everywhere
from the industrial hub of Ontario, Calif., to the struggling casino
district of Reno, Nev., and the upscale suburbs of Washington state.
In any other country, these threadbare villages would be called
slums, but in the U.S., the preferred term is tent city, a label
that implies that they are just a temporary phenomenon. Many
journalists, eager to prove that the country is entering the next
Great Depression, blame the emergence of these shantytowns on
the economic downturn, calling them products of foreclosures and
layoffs.
While there’s some truth to this notion, the fact is that these roving,
ramshackle neighborhoods were part of the American cityscape
long before the stock market nosedived, and they are unlikely to
disappear when prosperity returns. The recent decades of real
estate speculation and tough-love social policies have cut thousands
of people out of the mainstream markets for work and housing,
and the existing network of homeless shelters is overburdened and
outdated.
People such as the Caros are part of a vanguard that has been
in crisis for years, building squatter settlements as a do-or-die
alternative to the places that rejected them. This parallel nation,
with a population now numbering in the thousands in Fresno alone,
was born during the boom times, and it is bound to flourish as the
economy falters.
“The chickens are coming home to roost,” said Larry Haynes,
the executive director of Mercy House, a homeless outreach
organization based in Southern California. “What this speaks of is
an absolute crisis of affordability and accessibility.”
…
In Fresno and other struggling cities, which perpetually strive to
boost tax revenues with development, tent cities are often seen
as symbols of criminality and dereliction, glaring setbacks to
neighborhood revitalization efforts. That perception is common
wherever informal urbanism exists, said Mehrotra, and it often
leaves squatter camps on the brink of ruin.
“You are always on the edge of demolition,” Mehrotra said. “There’s
a kind of insecurity in the lack of tenure on the land.”
This hit home in Fresno a few years ago, when workers began raiding
encampments throughout the city, tearing down makeshift homes
and destroying personal property in the process. The city of Fresno
and the California Department of Transportation conducted these
sweeps in the name of public health, citing citizen complaints about
open-air defecation.
Yet the raids did nothing to stop tent cities from forming, and they
ultimately led to lawsuits. In October 2006, residents who lost
their homes in the raids filed a class-action suit against the city of
Fresno and the state of California. A U.S. district judge ordered the
defendants to pay $2.3 million in damages.
Tarp Nation – High Country News
The same features that define the process of every squatter town are
present. There is the random occupation of land, the lack of any amenities,
and of course the police repression that makes it impossible to create
a viable economy. As the public authorities run out of money they will
have to lighten the repression and the squatter towns will move into the
second class, one with fixed buildings and small outlaw businesses that
will attract even more of the poor looking for subsistence. They will
become America’s Dharavis.
Instead of using repression to enforce a planning system that drives
people into destitution, the authorities should instead act pre-emptively
by extending the towns’ infrastructure ahead of urbanization, not in
collusion with home builders, and tolerating that the settlers build
themselves out of poverty, something that they know quite well how
to do. Over time these neigborhoods would go through an unslumming
process, and their social and economic liveliness would make them
even more attractive than subdivisions, at which point they may become
historic cities the likes of which people always built before the modern
planning process. The people who were once destitute would be smalltime property developers and landlords, and for those who still had
nothing the process could be repeated in a new neighborhood.
Update: Here are some pictures of the “Hoovervilles” that sprung
up in America during the 1930’s.
The beginning of a real place.
6
A Society of Simulations
Next Nature
http://www.nextnature.net/?p=3361
by Koert van Mensvoort on April 13, 2009
Written by KOERT VAN MENSVOORT, published in What you see is
what you feel. PhD Thesis, Eindhoven University of Technology. ISBN:
978-90-386-1672-8 (Download PDF)
An interviewer once asked Pablo Picasso
why he paints such strange pictures
instead of painting things the way they are.
Picasso asks the man what he means.
The man then takes out a photograph
from his wallet and says, “This is my wife!”
Picasso looks at the photo and then says:
“isn’t she rather short and flat?”
INTRODUCTION
This essay aims to increase our understanding of simulations and
their impact on our notion of reality. Following on some observations
regarding the dominant role of visual representations in our culture,
I will argue that we are now living in a society, in which simulations
are often more influential, satisfying and meaningful than the things
they are presumed to represent. Media technologies play a fundamental
role in our cycle of meaning construction. This is not necessarily a bad
thing, nor is it entirely new. Yet, it has consequences for our concepts
of virtual and real, which are less complementary, than they are usually
understood to be.
Before you read on, a personal anecdote from my youth: when I
was a child, I thought the people I saw on TV were really living inside
the television. I wondered where they went when the TV was turned off
and I also remember worrying it would hurt the TV, when I switched
it off. Obviously, I am a grown man now and I’ve long learned that
the television is just a technological device, created to project distant
images into the living room of the viewers and that those flickering
people weren’t actually living inside the cathode ray tube.
Now I return to my argument. Over the last century or so, the
technological reproduction of images has grown explosively. Each of
us is confronted with more images every day than a person living in the
Middle Ages would have seen in their whole lifetime. If you open a 100year-old newspaper you will be amazed by the volume of text and the
absence of pictures. How different things are today: the moment you are
born, covered in womb fluid, not yet dressed or showered, your parents
are already there with the digital camera, ready to take your picture.
And of course the pictures are instantly uploaded to the family website,
where the whole world can watch and compare them with the medical
ultrasound photographs already shared before you were born.
VISUAL POWER
Images occupy an increasingly important place in our communication
and transmission of information. More and more often, it is an image
that is the deciding factor in important questions. Provocative logos,
styles and icons are supposed to make us think we are connected to each
other, or different from each other. Every schoolchild nowadays has
to decide whether he or she is a skater, a jock, a preppie, or whatever.
Going to school naked is not an option. But no matter which T-shirt you
decide to wear, they are inescapably a social communication medium.
Your T-shirt will be read as a statement, which your classmates will use
to stereotype you.
I remember the strange feeling of recognition I had when I was in
Paris for the first time and saw the Eiffel Tower. There it was, for real! I
felt as if I was meeting a long-lost cousin. Of course, you take a snapshot
to show you’ve been there: ‘Me and the Eiffel Tower’. Thousands of
people take this same picture every year. Every architect dreams of
designing such an icon. Today, exceptional architecture often wins
prizes before the building is finished; their iconic quality is already
recognized on the basis of computer models. [1]
PICTURE THIS!
Does anyone still remember the days when a computer was a complex
machine that could only be operated by a highly trained expert using
obscure commands? Only when the graphical user interface (GUI)
was introduced did computers become everyday appliances; suddenly
anyone could use them. Today, all over the world, people from various
cultures use the same icons, folders, buttons and trash cans. The GUI’s
success is owed less to the cute pictures than to the metaphor that makes
the machine so accessible: the computer desktop as a version of the
familiar, old-fashioned kind. This brings us to an important difference
between pictures and pictures – it is indeed awkward that we use the
same word for two different things. On the one hand, there are pictures
we see with our eyes. On the other, there are mental pictures we have in
our heads – pictures as in “I’m trying to picture it.”
Increasingly, we are coming to realize that ‘thinking’ is
fundamentally connected to sensory experience. In Metaphors We Live
By, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) argue that human thought works in a
fundamentally metaphorical way. Metaphors allow us to use physical
and social experiences to understand countless other subjects. The
world we live in has become so complex; we continuously search for
mental imagery to help us help us understand things. Thus politicians
speak in clear sound bites. Athletic shoe companies do not sell shoes,
they sell image. Thoracic surgeons wander around in patients’ lungs
like rangers walking through the forest, courtesy of head-mounted
virtual-reality displays.
You would expect that this surfeit of images would drown us. It
is now difficult to deny that a certain visual inflation is present, and
yet our unslakeable hunger for more persists. We humans, after all, are
extremely visually oriented animals. From cave paintings to computers,
the visual image has helped the human race to describe, classify, order,
analyze and grow our understanding of the world around us (Bright,
2000). Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about our visual culture
(Mirzoeff, 1999) is not the number of pictures being produced but
our deeply rooted need to visualize everything that could possibly
be significant. Modern life amid visual media compels everyone and
everything to strive for visibility (Winkel, 2006). The more visible
something is, the more real it is, the more genuine (Oosterling, 2003).
Without images, there seems to be no reality.
VIRTUAL FOR REAL
When considering simulations, one almost immediately thinks of
videogames. Nowadays, the game industry has grown bigger than
the film industry and its visual language has become so accepted that
it is almost beyond fictional. Virtual computer worlds are becoming
increasingly ‘real’ and blended with our physical world. In some online
roleplaying games, aspiring participants have to write an application
letter in order to be accepted to a certain group or tribe. We still have to
get used to the fact that you can earn an income with gaming nowadays
(Heeks, 2008), but how normal is it anyway, that at the bakery round the
corner, you can trade a piece of paper – called money – for a bread? [2]
Most people would denounce spending too much time in virtual
worlds, but which world should be called virtual then? Simply defining
the virtual as opposite to physical is perhaps too simple. The word
‘virtual’ has different meanings that are often entangled and used
without further consideration. Sometimes we use the word virtual to
mean ‘almost real,’ while at other times we mean ‘imaginary’. This
disparity in meaning is almost never justified: fantasy and second rank
realities are intertwined. It would be naïve to think simulations are
limited to video games, professional industrial or military applications.
In a sense, all reality is virtual; it is constructed through our cognition
and sensory organs. Reality is not so much ‘out there’, rather it is what
we pragmatically consider to be ‘out there’. Our brain is able to subtly
construct ‘reality’ by combining and comparing sensory perceptions
with what we expect and already know (Dennett, 1991; Gregory, 1998;
Hoffman, 1998; IJsselsteijn, 2002).
Even the ancient Greeks talked about the phenomenon of simulation.
In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato describes human beings as being
chained in a cave and watching shadows on the wall, without realizing
that they are ‘only’ representations of what goes on behind them –
outside of the scope of their sensory perception. In Plato’s teaching, an
object such as a chair, is just a shadow of the idea Chair. The physically
experienced chair we sit on is thus always a copy, a simulation, of the
idea Chair and always one step away from reality.
Today, the walls of Plato’s cave are so full of projectors, disco balls,
plasma screens and halogen spotlights that we do not even see the
shadows on the wall anymore. Fakeness has long been associated with
inferiority – fake Rolexes that break in two weeks, plastic Christmas
trees, silicone breast implants, imitation caviar –, but as the presence of
media production evolves, the fake seems to gain a certain authenticity.
Modern thinkers agree that because of the impasto of simulations
in our society, we can no longer recognize reality. In The Society of
the Spectacle, Guy Debord (1967) explains how everything we once
experienced directly has been replaced in our contemporary world by
representations. Another Frenchman, Jean Baudrillard (1981), argues
that we live in a world in which simulations and imitations of reality
have become more real than reality itself. He calls this condition
‘hyperreality’: the authentic fake. In summer we ski indoors; in winter
we spray snow on the slopes. Plastic surgeons sculpt flesh to match
retouched photographs in glossy magazines. People drink sports drinks
with non-existent flavors like “wild ice zest berry”. We wage war on
video screens. Birds mimic mobile–phone ring tones [3]. At times, it
seems the surrealists were telling the truth after all. And though you
certainly cannot believe everything you see, at the same time, images
still count as the ultimate evidence. Did we really land on the moon?
Are you sure? How did it happen? Or was it perhaps a feat of Hollywood
magic? Are we sure there is no Loch Ness Monster? A city girl regularly
washes her hair with pine–scented shampoo. Walking in the forest with
her father one day, she says, “Daddy, the woods smell of shampoo.” Do
we still have genuine experiences at all, or are we living in a society of
simulations?
MEDIA SCHEMAS
A hundred years ago, when the Lumière brothers showed their film
‘L’arrivée d’un train’ (1895), people ran out of the cinema when they saw
the oncoming train. Well, of course – if you see a train heading towards
you, you get out of the way. Today, we have adapted our media schemas.
We remain seated, because we know that the medium of cinema can
have this effect.
Media schemas [4] are defined as the knowledge we possess about
what media are capable of and what we should expect from them in
terms of their depictions: representations, translations, distortions, etc
(IJsselsteijn, 2002; Mensvoort & Duyvenbode, 2001; Nevejan, 2007).
This knowledge enables us to react to media in a controlled way (“Don’t
be scared, it’s only a movie.”). A superficial observer might think media
schemas are a new thing. This would be incorrect. For centuries, people
have been dealing with developments in media. Think of carrying on
a telephone conversation, painting with perspective, or composing a
letter with the aid of writing technology – yes, even the idea that you can
set down the spoken word in handwriting was new once.
Let’s face it. Our brains actually have only limited capabilities
for understanding media. When our brain reached its current state of
evolutionary development in Africa some 200,000 years ago (Hedges,
2000; Goodman et al., 1990), what looked like a lion, actually was a lion!
And if contemplating the nature of reality at that point would have been
a priority, one would have made for an easy lion’s snack (IJsselsteijn,
2002). Although we do seem to have gained some media awareness
over the years, some part of this original impulse – in spite of all our
knowledge – still reacts automatically and unconsciously to phenomena,
as we perceive them. When we see the image of an oncoming train, we
physically still are inclined to run away, even though cognitively we
know it is not necessary.
Our media schemas are thus not innate but culturally determined.
Every time technology comes out with something new, we are temporarily
flummoxed, but we carry on pretty well. We are used to a world of
family photographs, television and telephone calls. Imagine if we were
to put someone from the Middle Ages into a contemporary shopping
street. He would have a tough job refreshing his media schemas. But to
us it is normal, and a lucky thing, too. It would be inconvenient indeed
if with every phone call you thought, “How strange – I’m talking to
someone who’s actually far away.” We are generally only conscious of
our media schemas at the moment when they prove inadequate and we
must refresh them, as those people in the 19th century had to do when
they saw the Lumière brothers’ filmed train coming at them.
MEDIA SPHERE
I once took part in an experiment in which I was placed in an entirely
green room for one hour. In the beginning everything seemed very
green, but after some time the walls became grey. The green was not
informative any more and I automatically adjusted. Something similar
seems to be going on with our media. Like the fish, who do not know
they are wet; we are living in a technologically mediated space. We have
adjusted ourselves, for the better because we know we will not be leaving
this room any time soon. Today, media production has expanded by such
leaps and bounds that images and simulations are often more influential,
satisfying and meaningful than the things they simulate. We consume
illusions. Images have become part of the cycle in which meanings are
determined. They have bearing on our economy, our judgments and our
identities. In other words: we are living the simulation.
A disturbing thought, or old news? In contrast to Plato, his pupil
Aristotle believed imitation was a natural part of life. Reality reaches
us through imitation (Aristotle calls it mimesis): this is how we come to
know the world. Plants and animals too, use disguises and misleading
appearances to improve their chances of survival (think of the walking
stick, an insect that looks like a twig). Now then, the girl that says that
“the woods smell of shampoo”, should we consider this a shame and
claim that this young child has been spoiled by media? Or is this child
merely fine-tuning herself with the environment she grows up in? In the
past, the woods used to smell of woods. But how interesting was that
anyway?
OUR INTERFACED WORLD-VIEW
Four centuries ago, when Galileo Galilei became the first human being
in history to aim a telescope at the night sky, a world opened up to
him. The moon turned out not to be a smooth, yellowish sphere but
covered with craters and mountains. Nor was the sun perfect: it bore
dark spots. Venus appeared in phases. Jupiter was accompanied by four
moons. Saturn had a ring. And the Milky Way proved to be studded
with hundreds of thousands of stars. When Galileo asserted, after a
series of observations and calculations, that the sun was the center of
our solar system, he had a big problem. No one wanted to look through
his telescope to see the inevitable.
While some dogs have such limited intelligence that they chase
their own tails or shadows, we humans like to think we are smarter;
we are used to living in a world of complex symbolic languages and
abstractions. While a dog remains fooled by his own shadow, a human
being performs a reality check. We weigh up the phenomena in our
environment against our actions to form a picture of what we call
reality. We do this not only individually, but also socially (Searl, 1995).
Admittedly, some realities are still rock solid -– simply try and kick a
stone to feel what I mean. However, this is not in conflict with the point
I am trying to make, which is that the concepts of reality and authority
are much more closely related to one another then most people realize.
Like the physical world, which authority is pretty much absolute, media
technologies are gradually but certainly attaining a level of authority
within in our society that consequently increases their realness.
Today the telescope is a generally accepted means of observing the
universe. The earth is no longer flat. We have long left the dark ages of
religious dogma and have experienced great scientific breakthroughs,
and yet there are still dominant forces shaping our world-view. As we are
descending into the depths of our genes, greet webcam-friends across
the ocean, send probes to the outskirts of the universe, find our way
using car navigation, inspect our house’s roof with Google earth and as
it is not unusual for healthy, right-minded people to inform themselves
about conditions in the world by spending the evening slouched in
front of the television, we come to realize that our world-view is
fundamentally being shaped through interfaces. Surely, the designers
of these interfaces have an important responsibility in this regard. As
media technologies evolve and are incorporated within our culture, our
experience of reality changes along. This process is so profound – and
one could argue, successful – it almost goes without notice, that to a
large extent, we are living in a virtual world already.
NOTES
1 Examples of architectural structures that are already famous and
celebrated before being build are the Freedom Tower by Liebeskind/
Childs in New York and the CCTV building by Rem Koolhaas in
Beijing.
2 We usually do not realize that ‘money’ is in many respects a virtual
phenomenon: a symbolic representation of value constructed to replace
the awkward, imprecise trading of physical goods. Indeed, paying $50
for a pair of sneakers is much easier than trading two chickens or a
basket of apples for them. As long as we all believe in it, the monetary
system works fine.
3 The Superb Lyrebird living in Southern Australia sings and mimics all
the calls of other birds, as well as other sounds he hears in the forest –
even cellphone ring-tones, chainsaws and camera shutters – to attract
females (Attenborough, 1998).
4 The term media schemas stems from the concept of schemas, which in
psychology and cognitive sciences is described as a mental structure
that represents some aspect of the world (Piaget, 1997). According to
schema theory, all human beings possess categorical rules or scripts
that they use to interpret the world. New information is processed
according to how it fits into these rules. These schemas can be used
not only to interpret but also to predict situation occurring in our
environment.
REFERENCES
Attenborough, D. (1998). Life of Birds. DVD from the BBC Series, 2
Entertain Video, ASIN: B00004CXKJ
Aristotle, (350 BC). Poetics, Translated by Stephen Halliwell. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Pres, 987. Pg 34.
Baudrillard, J. (1981). Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by
Sheila Faria Glaser, University of Michigan Press (1995), ISBN:
0472065211
Bright, R. (2000). ‘Uncertain Entanglements’ in Sian Ede (red.), Strange
and Charmed Science and the contemporary Visual Arts, Calouste
Gulbenkian Foundation, London 2000, p.120-143
Debord, Guy (1967). Society of the Spectacle, Zone Books, 1995, ISBN
0942299795
Dennett, D. (1991). Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little, Brown,
and Co.
Goodman M., Tagle D.A., Fitch D.H., Bailey W., Czelusniak J., Koop
B.F., Benson P., Slightom J.L. (1990) Primate evolution at the
DNA level and a classification of hominoids. Journal of molecular
evolution 1990;30(3):260-6.
Gregory, R L. (1998) Eye and brain: The psychology of seeing (5th
Edition). Oxford University Press.
Hedges, S. B. (2000) Human evolution: A start for population genomics,
Nature 408, 652-653 (7 December 2000)
Heeks, R. (2008). Current Analysis and Future Research Agenda on
“Gold Farming”: Real-World Production in Developing Countries
for the Virtual Economies of Online Games. Working Paper Series,
Development Informatics Group, University of Manchester.
Hoffman, D.D. (1998). Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We
See. New York: W.W. Norton and Co.
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by, The University
of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1980.
Lumière, Auguste & Lumière, Louis. (1895). L’Arrivée d’un train à la
Ciotat
Mensvoort van, K. & Duyvenbode van, M. (2001). Het Bos ruikt naar
Shampoo, Documentary. VPRO Television, April 2001.
Mirzoeff, N., (1999). An introduction to visual culture, Routledge,
London, ISBN: 0415158761.
Nevejan, C. (2007) Presence and the Design of Trust. PhD. Dissertation,
University of Amsterdam, 2007.
Oosterling, H. (2000). Radicale Middelmatigheid (‘Radical Mediacrity’),
uitgeverij Boom, Amsterdam. P23. ISBN:9053526218
Oosterling, H. (2003). Act your actuality, in Gerritzen, M. et al. 2004.
Visual Power: News. Gingko Press, Corte Madera, CA, 2004, ISBN:
9063690568.
Piaget, J. (1997). Jean Piaget: Selected Works. Routledge, 1997, ISBN
9780415168892
Plato (360 B.C.) The Republic, Translated by Robin Waterfield, Oxford
University Press, USA
Searl, John (1995). The Construction of Social Reality, Free Press
(1997), ISBN: 0684831791.
Winkel van, C. (2006) Het primaat van de zichtbaarheid, NAi Uitgevers,
2006, ISBN 90-5662-424-5
Ijsselsteijn, W. A. (2002). Elements of a multi-level theory of presence:
Phenomenology, mental processing and neural correlates. In
Proceedings of PRESENCE 2002 (pp. 245-259). Porto, Portugal.
white
7
This Is Your Brain on Facebook
Seed Magazine
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/
this_is_your_brain_on_facebook/
by Rob Mitchum on April 21, 2009
Recent studies on the effects of the internet and other new media on
brain plasticity raises an open research question: Is Google making us
smarter?
Adapted from the cover of Seduction of the Innocent (1954) by psychiatrist Fredric
Wertham, one of the early figures to warn against the negative effects of popular
media — in this case, comic books — on society at large.
Concerns that the latest fad is rotting the minds of our children have
illustration: Pierre Derks (legrandcrew.com)
never faded. The target of such worries has only drifted from television
to rock music to video games. So when a British neuroscientist warned
the House of Lords earlier this year about the damaging neural effects
of the internet and social networking sites, the only surprise was that it
took so long.
“I suggest that social networking sites might tap into the basic
brain systems for delivering pleasurable experience,” said Baroness
Susan Greenfield in her parliamentary remarks on February 12. “As a
consequence, the mid-21st century mind might almost be infantilized,
characterized by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to
empathize and a shaky sense of identity.”
Greenfield’s comments had little scientific basis, and the British
media reacted to her with their usual brand of sober decorum. (The
Daily Mail chose the headline “Social websites harm children’s brains:
Chilling warning to parents from top neuroscientist.”)
But it’s all been said before. One can simply swap out “social
networking sites” for television, the telephone, or even books and find
similar testimony. However, if one can stomach Greenfield’s alarmism,
an inference is clear: The internet is now so pervasive in our society, it
would be foolish to think it weren’t having some kind of effect on our
brains.
“It is hard to see how living this way on a daily basis will not result in
brains, or rather minds, different from those of previous generations,”
Greenfield said. Though she hedges with the shift to “minds,” other
scientists agree that she is probably correct about the way in which
popular media exerts its influence over our brains’ inherent plasticity.
“Everything you do changes your brain,” says Daphne Bavelier,
associate professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
at the University of Rochester. “When reading was invented, it also
made huge changes to the kind of thinking we do and carried changes
to the visual system.”
But unlike with previous media technology that immersed our
collective attention and spurred the fears of overprotective parents, we
now have the tools to study just how the machines we use shape our
brains. It’s surprising then that so little work has been done. Though
correlations between excessive internet use and ADHD, social anxiety,
and depression have been probed, few laboratories have specifically
looked at effects of such media upon brain activity.
The study of adult brain plasticity, how the brain continues to
dramatically change its wiring and function long after early development,
has picked up speed in recent years as scientists realize that the brain
is not static, but truly never stops reorganizing itself in response to the
world. While in-depth examinations of what changes on a cellular and
molecular scale remain very difficult in humans, indirect measures of
brain changes, such as fMRI images, have strongly suggested that the
adult brain is a highly malleable organ.
In February one lab published what may be the first study to examine
how internet use affects our brains. Gary Small and colleagues at the
University of California Los Angeles used fMRI to study observed
brain activation of subjects interacting with a simulated search engine.
Comparisons between “net savvy” and “net naive” groups of senior
citizens — young internet-ignorant subjects were too hard to find, Small
says — revealed increased brain activity in the experienced Googlers as
they performed the internet task, particularly in the frontal cortex, right
temporal cortex, anterior and posterior cingulate, and hippocampus.
The more active brain, Small says, reflects recruitment of more brain
systems in the active process of browsing the Web. Such processing
involves not just the visual and language regions active during passive
reading, but also frontal regions associated with decision making and
short-term working memory.
More intriguing was the second phase of the study (as yet
unpublished, save for in Small’s book with Gigi Vorgan, iBrain), in
which Small and his colleagues asked the Google rookies to go home
and train by searching the internet for an hour a day for five days. When
the test subjects came back and were rescanned, the researchers found
that the net-naive had already increased activation in the frontal areas
where they had previously lagged behind the net-savvy.
Such rapid changes lead Small to believe that our brains are evolving
rapidly, as computer and internet use comes to dominate our waking
hours. A similar change, he points out, likely occurred early in human
evolution when tools were invented, creating a new environmental
pressure. The choice of a dominant hand for wielding a tool led the
human brain to evolve a neural representation of handedness, with motor
areas for hand movement larger in left hemisphere for right-handers and
vice versa. “Our environment is changing and we’re spending hours and
hours with technology — something’s got to give,” Small says.
The nature of these changes, and whether they are beneficial or
detrimental to humans in the long run, remains to be fully revealed. As
Greenfield’s comments illustrate, much of the discussion can’t help but
rush headlong to the pessimistic conclusion that any changes caused by
technology will be negative. Even Nicholas Carr’s examination of how
human thought might be altered by technology (in the July/August issue
of Atlantic Monthly), was saddled with the diminutive, fretful headline
of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”
The concerns about our internet-addled brains ring familiar to the
neurobiologists working in another field at the intersection of popular
technology and brain plasticity: video games. Imaging studies indicate
that, like in Small’s internet task, playing a video game in an fMRI
machine activates regions across the brain, from frontal lobe gyri to
occipital areas associated with vision. But some studies have gone
beyond the inconclusive, pretty colors of fMRI scans to look at how
playing a video game can actually mold behavior.
Daphne Bavelier’s work at Rochester attracted attention in 2003
when Nature published her paper with C. Shawn Green on visual
attention in video game players. Green, himself an avid video game
player, found that he was too good for the visual attention task (a simple
game in which a subject is asked to identify quickly flashing shapes amid
distracting stimuli) he was trying to design. The experience gave Green
and Bavelier a hunch that regular gamers in general might be better
at navigating such visual tasks due to the hundreds of hours spent on
games that far surpass the study’s point-and-click tasks in complexity,
but which likely train the same attention skills.
The resulting study found that, yes, gamers were better at the task
than nongamers, and that nongamers’ could improve their performance
with training. Since that paper, Bavelier’s group has shown a wide range
of improved visual abilities in avid gamers (including a paper last month
postulating that in some cases, games could be used as a substitute for
corrective lenses), and they expect to demonstrate similar effects on
more complex problem-solving and decision-making processes.
Bavelier says that these games are “extremely powerful” in terms of
brain plasticity. “The real goal for us,” she says, “is to understand why
there is so much transfer of learning. It’s unusual to think just shooting
robots and zombies will actually help you in larger range of tasks — not
just visual tasks but things we consider as being more cognitive, like
improved attention.”
That research pursuit could lead to better-designed educational tools
or rehabilitation options for people with brain disorders, Bavelier says.
As she wrote in a recent review in the journal Psychology and Aging,
the ability of popular games to manipulate the natural reward systems
of the human brain, one of the central tenets of Susan Greenfield’s
doomsaying, may actually be why they are so effective at changing the
brain for both better and worse.
Small and Bavelier’s research suggests that actually researching,
rather than just baselessly speculating about, the effect of popular
media on brain activity and function reveals more benefits than ill
consequences. Although both researchers caution that the brain’s limited
resources mean that strengthening certain regions and processes may
weaken others, that trade-off still remains worlds away from the dire
warnings from Greenfield and others before her.
“We tend to oversimplify when we argue whether technology is
making us smart or making us stupid,” Small says. “The brain is complex
and technology is complex; it’s the content, timing, and balance of what
we’re doing that’s important. We can argue whatever we want with so
little data. It’s not settled; we need to study it. These are the technologies
that are part of our lives, so we need to be scientific about it and not
conclude from the outset whether it’s all good or all bad. We need to
understand it and use it in a way to enhance our lives.”
Inspired by the Fantastic Journal's posts on the space of the British
suburban sitcom (and a nod to Sand/orB on comedy and conjuncture),
a post on the space of an urban sitcom, Steptoe and Son. Galton and
Simpson's relentlessly grim show is a practically Pinteresque study of
an Agonistic father and son in inner West London (sometimes it seems
to be Shepherd's Bush, sometimes Earl's Court - but regardless, this is
not suburbia), and the tensions of their relationship and permanently
beleaguered rag&bone business. Left-wing Modern architects were
both despisers of rag&bone clutter, and conversely enormously keen on
moveable partitions as a way of ensuring both changeability and privacy
- some, like Leonid Sabsovich, even believing that 'divorces' between
couples could be achieved through partitioning his communal blocks.
Meanwhile the French Modernist architect and PCF fellow-traveller
Andre Lurçat once designed a house for a mother and daughter, with the
strict instructions that the house had to be divided between them, so that
they would never have to encounter each other unless they absolutely
wanted to. Divided we Stand, an episode from the especially grim 1970s
run of Steptoe and Son is the story of what happens when you try to do
the same thing in a far more impoverished context, and a reminder of the
pitfalls of clean living under difficult circumstances.
8
Poverty and Partitions
illustration: Alice marwick (legrandcrew.com)
Nasty Brutalist and Short
http://nastybrutalistandshort.blogspot.com/2009/04/
poverty-and-partitions.html
by owen hatherley on April 27, 2009
As ever, the episode hinges on disagreements between the Steptoes,
with the younger Harold wanting to improve himself and his father
Albert sneering at his every attempt to rise above his decidedly lowly
station. A lesser sitcom (Citizen Smith for instance) would sneer with
him at any hint of artistic or political pretensions, but while Albert is
often sympathetic in his loneliness and poverty, Harold's constantly
thwarted desires for escape are not patronised. Here, Harold is fed up of
the clutter, chaos, waste and dirt of a house like a permanent junk market.
He tries to convince Albert that the house needs to be redecorated
and some of the crap thrown out, but his books of colours ('Etruscan
red? How about Wedgwood Blue?) and his wallpaper suggestions are
ridiculed. In frustration he goes round the house, throwing around
old newspapers ('Mr Chamberlain meets Mr Hitler in Munich??') and
finding particularly gross examples of squalor to throw at his father
- who, of course, has affection for everything from the half-century
old newspapers to a set of false teeth lost in 1941. Not for the first time,
Harold is driven to desperate measures.
Using some of the clutter left around the flat ready for sale, including
a turnstile taken from a defunct toilet, Harold manages to completely
partition the house, creating what he calls an 'apartheid' between them.
The differences in aspiration between the two are exemplified here
in spatial terms, in that Albert leaves untouched the familiar piles of
god knows what, and a Smoking-Jacketed Harold attempts to create a
minimalist, Georgian influenced half-house for himself, with carefully
selected pictures on the walls, finally using his 'Wedgewood blue'. The
problem of course is that he simply doesn't have the space, the light or
high ceilings that come with real Georgian privilege, and so it seems
poky and ludicrous. In order to get a bit of light from the window, he has
to have the partitions stopping at a point where Albert's hat is constantly
visible. It all comes to a head over the partitioned TV, where Harold
wants to watch Nureyev at the Festival Hall on BBC2, and Albert 'Blood
of the Ripper' on ITV. During the fight over it they ignore a fire which
has broken out in the kitchen, and both end up in hospital - where, finally,
in the uncluttered and sterilised hospital environment Harold gets his
revenge, and is able to close the curtains as a decisive partition.
9
Clash of Subways and Car Culture in Chinese Cities
The New York TImes
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/business/worldbusiness/
27transit.html?_r=1&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/Subjects/I/
Infrastructure%20(Public%20Works)&pagewanted=all
by Timothy O’Rourke on March 26, 2009
Digging for the subway expansion in Guangzhou, China, proceeds around the
clock, every day.
GUANGZHOU, China — Chan Shao Zhang is in the race of his life.
After four decades of false starts, Mr. Chan, a 67-year-old engineer,
is supervising an army of workers operating 60 gargantuan tunneling machines beneath this metropolis in southeastern China. They are
building one of the world’s largest and most advanced subway systems.
The question is whether the burrowing machines can outrace China’s
growing love affair with the automobile — car sales have soared ninefold since 2000. Or are a hundred Los Angeleses destined to bloom?
And even as Mr. Chan labors to bind Guangzhou together with
an underground web of steel, the city is spreading out rapidly above
ground, like a drop of ink on a paper towel.
The Guangzhou Metro is just part of a much broader surge in mass
transit construction across China.
At least 15 cities are building subway lines and a dozen more are
planning them. The pace of construction will only accelerate now that
Beijing is pushing local and provincial governments to step up their
infrastructure spending to offset lost revenue from slumping exports.
“Nobody is building like they are,” said Shomik Mehndiratta, a
World Bank specialist in urban transport. “The center of construction
is really China.”
Western mass transit experts applaud China for investing billions
in systems that will put less stress on the environment and on cities. But
they warn that other Chinese policies, like allowing real estate developers to build sprawling new suburbs, undermine the benefits of the mass
transit boom.
“They wind up better than if they did nothing, but it costs them a
fortune,” said Lee Schipper, a specialist at Stanford in urban transport.
Mr. Chan defended Guangzhou’s combination of cars and subways,
saying that the city built a subway line to a new Toyota assembly plant
to help employees and suppliers reach it.
Subways have been most competitive in cities like New York that
have high prices for parking, and tolls for bridges and tunnels, discouraging car use. Few Chinese cities have been willing to follow suit, other
than Shanghai, which charges a fee of several thousand dollars for each
license plate.
The cost and physical limitations of subways have discouraged most
cities from building new ones. For instance, only Tokyo has a subway
system that carries more people than its buses. The buses are cheaper
and able to serve far more streets but move more slowly, pollute more
and contribute to traffic congestion.
China has reason to worry. It surpassed the United States in total
vehicle sales for the first time in January, although the United States
remained slightly ahead in car sales. But in February, China overtook
the United States in both, in part because the global downturn has hurt
auto sales much more in the United States than in China.
Guangzhou, a city of 12 million people that is also the fastest-growing center of auto manufacturing in China, shows both the promise and
obstacles of China’s subway extravaganza.
Mr. Chan helped set up Guangzhou’s subway planning office in
1965, when he was straight out of college. Digging started the next year.
But the miners gave up after less than 10 feet when they hit granite.
After that, Mao personally sent China’s finest mining and underground construction experts to oversee the digging. But further excavation efforts failed in 1970, 1971, 1974 and 1979. During and immediately after the Cultural Revolution, Communist dogma, poverty and
nationalism forced a reliance on inadequate Chinese equipment.
In 1989, when preparations began for successful excavations, city
leaders thought it would be enough to have two subway lines, totaling
20 miles, in an X shape bisecting a tightly packed downtown.
“At that point, it was still mostly bicycles and people walking,” Mr.
Chan said. Then, “in the 21st century, the Guangzhou economy really
took off.”
Today, Guangzhou has 71 miles of subway lines, most of them
opened in the last three years, and yet large areas of the ever-expanding
city are still distant from the nearest subway stop.
The city plans to open an additional 83 miles by the end of next year
— and an underground tram system and a high-speed commuter rail
system. A long-term plan calls for at least 500 miles of subway and light
rail routes, and there are discussions on expanding beyond that.
China now produces much of the equipment to build modern subways, but the country’s infrastructure stimulus spending is drawing in
imports as well. Most of the tunneling machines here were made by
Herrenknecht of Germany. I.B.M. announced on Wednesday that it had
signed a consulting contract for computer tracking of Guangzhou Metro’s nearly $3 billion in assets, including convenience stores in subway
stations and lighting systems.
The digging in Guangzhou proceeds around the clock, every day.
Men like Wang Jiangka, a profusely perspiring engineer in charge of
one of the steamy tunnels, endure sweltering temperatures at the tunneling site, where workers put in five 12-hour shifts a week.
“If they don’t want to do overtime, we get other workers,” Mr. Wang
said, standing in a red hard hat next to a Herrenknecht tunneling machine that chewed through the rock more than a one-mile walk from the
nearest daylight.
Inexpensive labor — less than $400 a month — and the economies
of scale created by completing 20 miles of subway lines a year have
driven costs down.
Mr. Chan said that it cost about $100 million a mile to build a subway line in Guangzhou, including land acquisition costs for ventilation
shafts and station entrances.
By contrast, New York City officials hope to build 1.7 miles of the
long-delayed Second Avenue line in eight years at a cost of $3.9 billion, or
$2.4 billion a mile. The city expects to use a single tunneling machine.
Owners of land needed for subway construction in Guangzhou have
few rights compared with those in New York.
Here, Mr. Chan said, a property surveyor appraises a building and
“whatever he says, that’s it.” But, Mr. Chan added, “because China is
now more democratic, if they don’t want to move, then you have to take
more time.”
And time is of the essence. Guangzhou is growing rapidly outward.
Primly dressed in a white silk shirt and light brown slacks, Kerry Li
stood under the 30-foot-tall crystal chandelier in the clubhouse lobby at
the Hua Nan Country Garden complex and watched as her 10-year-old
son played nearby.
A bus leaves her gated community in the suburbs and heads for the
city, across the broad, muddy waters of the Pearl River, every 15 minutes. But a recently completed subway line under the river goes nowhere
near the compound. Ms. Li’s husband, a businessman, drives his own
car to work every morning, while his wife stays home.
The lure of cars is hard to resist.
Chen Hao Tian, a 43-year-old economic planner for the Guangzhou
municipal government who worries about the need for mass transit,
used to spend a half-hour riding a free bus for government employees
to and from work.
Then he acquired a silver-gray Honda Accord from the local Honda
assembly plant and found he could make the trip in 10 minutes — and
run errands along the way for his wife and 13-year-old daughter, and
listen to his favorite music.
“On my salary, the maintenance costs are a pressure,” he said. “But it
gives me great pleasure and the feeling of a higher standard of living.”
And few subway rides do that, even for those who build them.
Origins and sources
Some of my favourite maps are drawn by a British writer, walker and accountant named Alfred Wainwright. Phil Baines provides background:
“Wainwright was an accountant born in Lancashire who fell in love
with the English Lake District and moved there to live and work. All his
free time was spent walking the fells, and he began his series of seven
‘pictorial guides to the Lakeland Fells’ in 1952 as a way of repaying his
gratitude to them. The work took 13 years.” (Type & Typography)
Wainwright’s walking maps are drawn to suit their context of use,
the books are intended to be used while walking. As the reader begins
their walk, the map represents their location in overview plan. As the
walk extends through the map, the perspective slowly shifts naturally
with the unfolding landscape, until the destination is represented in a
pictorial perspective view, as one would see it from their standpoint.
10
Here & There influences
Pulse Laser
http://schulzeandwebb.com/blog/2009/05/04/here-there-influences/
By Schulze on May 4th, 2009.
I’m going to tell you a little bit about the influences on Here & There,
a project about representation of urban places, from when it began. It
was warmly received when I first presented some corners of it back at
Design Engaged in 2004, before Schulze & Webb existed. Here & There
is a projection drawing from maps, comics, television, and games.
This particular version is a horizonless projection in Manhattan.
The project page is here, where large prints of the uptown and downtown
views can be seen and are available to buy.
I’ve been observing the look and mechanisms in maps since I began
working in graphic design. For individuals, and all kinds of companies,
cities are an increasing pre-occupation. Geography is the new frontier.
Wherever I look in the tech industry I see material from architects and
references and metaphors from the urban realm. Here & There draws
from that, and also exploits and expands upon the higher levels of visual
literacy born of television, games, comics and print.
The satellite is the ultimate symbol of omniscience. It’s how we
wage wars, and why wars are won. That’s why Google Earth is so
compelling. This is what the map taps into.
The projection works by presenting an image of the place in which
the observer is standing. As the city recedes into the (geographic)
distance it shifts from a natural, third person representation of the
viewer’s immediate surroundings into a near plan view. The city appears
folded up, as though a large crease runs through it. But it isn’t a halo or
hoop though, and the city doesn’t loop over one’s head. The distance is
potentially infinite, and it’s more like a giant ripple showing both the
viewers surroundings and also the city in the distance.
This is a reversal of the Here & There projection. In Wainwright’s
projection we stand in plan, and look into perspective. Wainwright’s
view succeeds in open ground where one can see the distance… but in a
city you can only see the surrounding buildings. Wainwright and Here
& There both present what’s around you with the most useful perspective, and lift your gaze above and beyond to see the rest.
David Hockney presents a fantastic dissection of perspective in the
film A Day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China or Surface Is
Illusion But So Is Depth. He describes a very old painting from China
which depicts a journey along the grand canal. I really like how he describes the scene as ‘making sense.’
He justifies a deviation from Western perspective, that to represent
things as they strike your eye is not even functionally as good as some
other interpretative distortions. In this painting in which there’s a grossly distorted perspective, in which there aren’t even any rules, it still
makes sense because it changes how you put yourself in the painting,
and that changes where you put yourself outside it.
Michaels, H. Sargent. Photographic Runs: Series C, Chicago to Lake Geneva
to Delavan, Delavan to Beloit. Chicago: H. Sargent Michaels, 1905. Used with
permission from Prof. Robert French, Osher Map library, University of Southern Maine, Owls Head Transportation Museum.
The book dates from before the national road sign infrastructure was introduced to American highways or inter-city roads. Each page is a photo
of a junction, with every junction between the two cities included, and
an arrow is drawn over the photo to say which direction to take. As the
driver progresses along their route, they turn pages, each junction they
arrive at corresponding to the one in the current photo. (Many thanks to
Steve Krug for the sharing his discovery of these great pieces.)
First person to God games
I don’t like the way maps (in-game maps) work in most video games.
They seem to break my flow of play, and locating one’s actor in the
game isn’t satisfying. I’d love to see a first person or third person shooter
where the landscape bent up to reveal a limited arc of the landscape in
plan over distance. As a video game, the Here & There projection slides
from Halo, through GTA into Syndicate, to end in SimCity.
Augmented reality
There is a element in the map, in the uptown view, of a bus. Its destinations in both directions are shown. (I love NY bus routes, the cross town
super power!) This is to explore how augmenting the map with local
information might work.
One of my intentions with the project is to make an exploration into
way-finding devices. One of my favourite examples of augmented reality is from these American Road maps from 1905. The map is stored in a
book, and good for only one route. In fact, it isn’t a map as we’d typically
understand one.
The final sequence of panels in the penultimate book has Stark wearing
the Iron Man suit, setting off to confront his enemy, his recent transformation has left him with new powers…
Although I never played it, I’ve heard a lot about Luigi’s Mansion for
the Nintendo GameCube. Luigi wonders around a haunted mansion and
hoovers up ghosts with a vacuum cleaner. I heard about a mechanic
in the game which involved a virtual Gameboy Advance in the game.
Luigi could take it out and use it to inspect the world. The game played
out in the third person with a view of Luigi in place, but I think when you
look in the Advance, it gave a first person view from Luigi’s position.
Well, if it didn’t, it should have done.
I know that in some special games the Gameboy Advance could be
plugged into the GameCube, to be used as a special controller. It would
be amazing to use the second screen in a controller for that first person
perspective. Imagine if you could guide your actor around in third person and glance down at the screen in your hands for close inspection or
telescopic sniping.
Powers and cities
Recently Matt Jones and Rod Mclaren discussed Jason Bourne and
James Bond and how they use cities. Jones characterises Bourne in contrast to Bond:
“… in addition, Bourne wraps cities, autobahns, ferries and train
terminuses around him as the ultimate body-armour”
For Bourne, the city is his power, Jones continues:
“A battered watch and an accurate U-Bahn time-table are all he needs
for a perfectly-timed, death-defying evasion of the authorities.”
I like to talk about the projection as a superpower, the power to be
both in the city and above it.
Last year Warren Ellis wrote an Iron Man arc called Extremis. As
ever, fine stuff. And with great pictures from Adi Granov too.
Ellis, unsatisfied with controlling the Iron Man suit by normal means
(sensors, or weeny joysticks in the gloves or something) as an exoskeleton (picture Ripley in the clumsy Powerloader), Stark must ingest the
Extremis serum in order to match his enemy, Mallen, and prevent him
from his destructive path into Washington. The serum welds Stark to
his tech. It leaves him ‘containing’ the membrane-like ‘undersheath’ he
uses to control the Iron Man suit. It is stored inside his bones.
“I can see through satellites now.
What a thought! Within one field of view, to be both in the world and
to see yourself in it. The power of looking through, and occupying, your
own field of vision. Awesome.
What if the projection appeared inside location-aware binoculars?
Hold them up, and live satellite images are superimposed in ‘the bend’
onto the natural view of the city as it lifts up into plan! You’d see the traffic and people that just pulled out of view into a side street from above
mapped onto your natural view.
Timo Arnall posted a video showing a Google Streetview pan controlled with the digital compass inside the device:
It begins to reveal how Here & There might feel if it were moving beneath your feet.
Thanks
I would like to thank both James King (art direction) and Campbell
Orme (technical direction) for their tireless efforts in bringing this work
to life. Email them and make them work on your stuff. They are talented, humane and brilliant designer/thinkers.
Art prints of Here & There have been produced in a limited run and
can be purchased here. Please buy one and stick it on a wall.
Prss founding editors: Marten Dashrst & Edwin Gardner / Editor: Lukas Pauer / Graphic design: Annemarie van den Berg