Friday, 12 October 2012
Coincidence?
Wednesday, 10 October 2012
Tech: 3D printing possibilities
the 'democratization of vice' apparently... print-maggeddon.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenkotler/2012/07/31/the-democratization-of-vice-the-impact-of-exponential-technology-on-illicit-trades-and-organized-crime/
print yourself a handgun
http://haveblue.org/?p=1321
print yourself a new species
http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-chemputer-that-could-print-out-any-drug?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Weekly+Newsletter&utm_campaign=b60382892c-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email
ubiquitous TED talk on it all
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E97Kgi0sR4&feature=player_embedded
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenkotler/2012/07/31/the-democratization-of-vice-the-impact-of-exponential-technology-on-illicit-trades-and-organized-crime/
print yourself a handgun
http://haveblue.org/?p=1321
print yourself a new species
http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-chemputer-that-could-print-out-any-drug?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Weekly+Newsletter&utm_campaign=b60382892c-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email
ubiquitous TED talk on it all
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E97Kgi0sR4&feature=player_embedded
Monday, 8 October 2012
History & Theory #2: Hickey & Davis
Dave Hickey, "At Home in the Neon" from Air Guitar and Mike Davis, "Fear & Money in Dubai" from Evil Paradises.
I don't agree with everything Dave Hickey writes about Vegas, but I'd definitely be willing to kick back on his porch and talk it out over a beer. He writes with such a down to earth friendly affection for the place that it is hard at points to disassociate the childhood memories from the social theory he is gently rolling out. Davis though, I can just see him furiously stalking the airport as he waits for the first plane outta there, glaring angrily at all the happy shoppers lashing out their petro-dollars on Hermes and Mont Blanc. He would find Jebel Ali International hell on earth. I don't think anything he could've found in Dubai would have altered the preconceived notions he already had about the place. I don't really want to have a beer with him.
This isn't going to be a direct comparison about the two chapters, they're too different. They have loose juxtaposing threads of ideas, but the main body of each text too wide to try and pin down too hard.
Vegas can romantically be seen as the epitome of the American dream - you could be a lucky sonuvabitch and hit the jack pot, going from a down and out roady musician to a highroller, a place where anything is possible, somewhere to strike gold. The architecture isn't the only thing that is Disney about the place - its the story after the story, the silhouettes walking into the sunset, happy ever after. Its the potential for the Cindarella ending, the ultimate draw of rags to riches chance. The city is a built on the possibility of a fairytale - that's why people like to see all the crazy buildings. They desperately want it to be real, but its just a pipedream that lasts as long as the weekend.
Unless you live there like Hickey - he's found all this... hope... intoxicating, I think. A bit of rose-tinted spectacles from his childhood maybe, but who can blame him, writing in the bland Clinton mid nineties? Look at the rest of America at that time. Nirvana didn't come out of nowhere, they were just saying how desperately fucking boring everything was. So bored, lets just kill ourselves.
But not in Vegas, baby. In Vegas, there is a chance something might change.
Which is the opposite of Dubai. Dubai isn't about chance, and it isn't about making it big - or losing it all. Dubai is about getting there, and being big already. And then showing everyone that you are the richest guy in the room. The problem with Evil Paradises, is that Davis just can't accept the human element. His righteous anger against the profligate tourists who flock in for this hyper-real superficial world, just makes me think of the mad old man outside the station, foaming at the mouth and screaming, "the end is nigh!" as everyone rushes passed having a good time. He isn't wrong though, its just that he writes like he expects moral indignation and principles to define how people act - he sounds a bit naive. He just can't relate to how these people are so fascinated by shopping and showing off their status. He can't really believe people are ACTUALLY like that. He mentions that soon there will be 15 million people visiting Dubai as tourists per year... with the intention of making you think "Isn't it disgraceful!" but what you actually conclude is, "Well, 15 million people can't be wrong" (although they probably are). I don't agree it's what people should do, but clearly, it is what an awful lot of people WANT to do. There's no accounting for taste. For people's habits, and their motivations, he should stay quiet - the way he writes exposes his own prejudices about consumption in the face of overwhelming counter evidence.
However, where Davis is most compelling is where he describes the segregation between the imported working labour and the locals, or the service industry expat community.
I went there a few years ago, for some random business jaunt. I am told it is ridiculously hot - I couldn't tell you though, as I didn't step outside the chilling envelope of the air conditioning the whole time I was there. From airport to limo to hotel to office and back and forth for three days - everything was controlled and monitored so I didn't have a moments discomfort from the pounding heat outside. Yellow air heavy with sand. On the way back to the airport, sitting stationary in 5 lanes of traffic ("you're not stuck in traffic, you ARE traffic"), I watched two Indian guys working on the road, in standard issue heavy boiler suits (stripped to the waist, against the workers regulations which control how they appear when you DO see them), wearing unregulated T-shirts wrapped around their heads to protect them from the sun. Until that moment, EVERY single thing I had seen had been sheet-glass-hi-tech-computer-controlled-luxury. These guys were digging up the road with one pickaxe between them. The readout of the temperature in my limo said 51C. A sense of the strictest hierarchy pervades the whole place, and you are reminded everywhere, even by the air temperature.
Its like my definition of whether you're a northerner or a southerner in England (do you think Bovril is a spread or a drink?)... in Dubai, if you don't have air con you are fucked. If you do, life is pretty great. Air con is the broadest class indicator, and then they continue exponentially on upwards.
Dubai is all about class, exclusivity and money. Vegas is the same, but recognises the ultimate levelling factor of chance. You can be small and make it big or, just as importantly, you can be big and lose it all. Losing it all isn't what Dubai is about - they only know how to deal with the winners, and the winners are guys who have money, already. The feudal societies of the Emirates and Saudi Arabia that have bankrolled the place are more than happy with that status quo - lets not just gamble it all away, eh?
 |
The Burj going up in 2007, from the hotel room.
With the Dubai exchange in the bottom of the picture above
|
This isn't going to be a direct comparison about the two chapters, they're too different. They have loose juxtaposing threads of ideas, but the main body of each text too wide to try and pin down too hard.
Vegas can romantically be seen as the epitome of the American dream - you could be a lucky sonuvabitch and hit the jack pot, going from a down and out roady musician to a highroller, a place where anything is possible, somewhere to strike gold. The architecture isn't the only thing that is Disney about the place - its the story after the story, the silhouettes walking into the sunset, happy ever after. Its the potential for the Cindarella ending, the ultimate draw of rags to riches chance. The city is a built on the possibility of a fairytale - that's why people like to see all the crazy buildings. They desperately want it to be real, but its just a pipedream that lasts as long as the weekend.
Unless you live there like Hickey - he's found all this... hope... intoxicating, I think. A bit of rose-tinted spectacles from his childhood maybe, but who can blame him, writing in the bland Clinton mid nineties? Look at the rest of America at that time. Nirvana didn't come out of nowhere, they were just saying how desperately fucking boring everything was. So bored, lets just kill ourselves.
But not in Vegas, baby. In Vegas, there is a chance something might change.
Which is the opposite of Dubai. Dubai isn't about chance, and it isn't about making it big - or losing it all. Dubai is about getting there, and being big already. And then showing everyone that you are the richest guy in the room. The problem with Evil Paradises, is that Davis just can't accept the human element. His righteous anger against the profligate tourists who flock in for this hyper-real superficial world, just makes me think of the mad old man outside the station, foaming at the mouth and screaming, "the end is nigh!" as everyone rushes passed having a good time. He isn't wrong though, its just that he writes like he expects moral indignation and principles to define how people act - he sounds a bit naive. He just can't relate to how these people are so fascinated by shopping and showing off their status. He can't really believe people are ACTUALLY like that. He mentions that soon there will be 15 million people visiting Dubai as tourists per year... with the intention of making you think "Isn't it disgraceful!" but what you actually conclude is, "Well, 15 million people can't be wrong" (although they probably are). I don't agree it's what people should do, but clearly, it is what an awful lot of people WANT to do. There's no accounting for taste. For people's habits, and their motivations, he should stay quiet - the way he writes exposes his own prejudices about consumption in the face of overwhelming counter evidence.
However, where Davis is most compelling is where he describes the segregation between the imported working labour and the locals, or the service industry expat community.
I went there a few years ago, for some random business jaunt. I am told it is ridiculously hot - I couldn't tell you though, as I didn't step outside the chilling envelope of the air conditioning the whole time I was there. From airport to limo to hotel to office and back and forth for three days - everything was controlled and monitored so I didn't have a moments discomfort from the pounding heat outside. Yellow air heavy with sand. On the way back to the airport, sitting stationary in 5 lanes of traffic ("you're not stuck in traffic, you ARE traffic"), I watched two Indian guys working on the road, in standard issue heavy boiler suits (stripped to the waist, against the workers regulations which control how they appear when you DO see them), wearing unregulated T-shirts wrapped around their heads to protect them from the sun. Until that moment, EVERY single thing I had seen had been sheet-glass-hi-tech-computer-controlled-luxury. These guys were digging up the road with one pickaxe between them. The readout of the temperature in my limo said 51C. A sense of the strictest hierarchy pervades the whole place, and you are reminded everywhere, even by the air temperature.
 |
| Walk to the office? Fuck that, lets take the limo. |
Its like my definition of whether you're a northerner or a southerner in England (do you think Bovril is a spread or a drink?)... in Dubai, if you don't have air con you are fucked. If you do, life is pretty great. Air con is the broadest class indicator, and then they continue exponentially on upwards.
Dubai is all about class, exclusivity and money. Vegas is the same, but recognises the ultimate levelling factor of chance. You can be small and make it big or, just as importantly, you can be big and lose it all. Losing it all isn't what Dubai is about - they only know how to deal with the winners, and the winners are guys who have money, already. The feudal societies of the Emirates and Saudi Arabia that have bankrolled the place are more than happy with that status quo - lets not just gamble it all away, eh?
Friday, 5 October 2012
History & Theory #1: Zaha & Badiou
This has taken some mulling over. Looking at two articles, one from Badiou's Communist Hypothesis, a chapter entitled 'This Crisis is the Spectacle; Where is the Real?' and an Intelligent Life interview by Jonathan Meades, with Zaha Hadid from 2008 (http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/zaha-hadid)
These two pieces are not directly comparative. The interview with Zaha is loosely about her work, her methods and her position within the architectural community, while Badiou's chapter concerns itself with who is really bearing the brunt of the financial crisis and how politics needs to reset itself to the grass roots level; but they both shine a light on how the two people view the world in broader terms and how it functions. As Badiou says, where is the real?
I'll kick off with Badiou, the old Marxist. Gasp. (Marxism?? Isn't that dead and buried?)
Or is he a Maoist? I don't know enough about the finer points of the doctrine to decipher, but the final paragraph of his chapter essentially refers to grass roots organisation and mobilisation outside the established centres of power... something that Che and Mao would definitely have approved of to win their wars.
Either way, it is impossible for me to read Badiou and not be washed over by a flood of competing sensations. Growing up in the 80's, in commuter-belt Surrey, being a Marxist wasn't something one did, and anyway, we all saw that side lose when the Wall came down didn't we? Marx was like the Emperor, and the Reagan/Thatcher's Luke & Leia Star Wars programme was definitely the side to be on. If I was ever going to be a Marxist, the primary reason would have been to piss of my Dad.
Dissembling all these associations is difficult, but I'll try. Badiou's premise is that the world is essentially fairly simple. There is US, and THEM. This is really going back to the old Marxist definitions of capitalists and the proles, the haves and the have-nots. He basically says that we should disregard all the spectacle, cut through the shit, and get down to the nitty-gritty of what life is like for the mass of disenfranchised poor. "They" have pulled the wool over our eyes for a long time and use various crises to distract us from the fundamental poverty inwhich we find ourselves. (I'm speaking as one of 'us', when to be honest, I'm probably more of one of 'them'.) They need to be 'up against the wall, motherfucker' so that we can get back to the 'real' job of making everyone's life more fair, more just and more on a flat level. Equality, and the communist spirit. Unambiguous, plain, and direct. Cause and effect.
I think this is far to simple as a premise and ignores the very "real" that he is looking to return to. The world is not black and white, there are infinite shades inbetween. The biggest investors in the stock markets, the speculation that Badiou dislikes so much, are the pension funds for ordinary working people. 'Workers' can be 'bosses' at the same time. Maybe there are an increasingly small number of very rich people, but there are also millions and millions of people who have vested interests in those rich people's companies, and WANT to see them make profits. The world is not divided into the actors and audience as Badiou suggests, it is a massive net of complex interests and interractions.
Thats a sentiment that I think Zaha would approve of...
I don't think Zaha fits neatly into the opposite slot... a 'Capitalist' sounds far too archaic a term for her. For Zaha, the world is complex and ambiguous. Her language in the interview is completely obscure, a deliberate vagueness for a variety of reasons. Ambiguity is important in modern art. Without it, you couldn't sell anything. There is a certain sense of the Emperor's new clothes about a lot of modern art and the value that is thereby attached to it - if you don't get it, you must be stupid, or uncultured, or worse, old. If you define it, you diminish its value, because it loses it exclusivity.
So without trying to bring on images of dark Satanic mills and stove pipe hats, Zaha functions as a supreme capitalist entity, gliding around the globe selling designs everywhere. Without principle, capitalism becomes "frictionless", so don't hamper your business by boxing it in, saying what it means. You will only lose clients. And this is another reason for the ambiguity. Where you are dealing with vastly differing ideologies (China/Taiwan economically or the Gulf states/northern Europe in terms of permissive liberality) how do you avoid being put on a 'side'. You obfuscate. You have to be vague. It allows the client to put on whatever meaning they like to the project, and you can move on and sell elsewhere, to the enemy, if you like.
"They still talk about contextual. Ha!" She dismisses consideration of context as 'sops to popularism'. Its easy to simply look at this viewpoint purely architecturally - the image of the powerful all knowing artist/architect is an attractive one to the architectural community. It flatters us, and it allows her to fit a sleek spaceship into a suburban neighbourhood. But it disguises a potential lack of principle. 'Context' doesn't have to just be the local colour of the bricks. It could be the political record of the local government, lack of rights for the inhabitants displaced by the project, or whose money the client is actually spending... (see the now bankrupt Spanish regional governments whose billions have all been wasted on new museums and airports without planes). I'm not saying Zaha does all these things, but the concept that 'context' doesn't matter directly leads to these things.
Zizek (apologies for the missed accents on his name) writes a brilliant chapter in his book Living in the End of Times called 'Architectural Parallax'. The parallax part is relevant to this discussion, as he talks about a triad of the Real, the Symbolic and the Imaginary. One would think that Badiou would favour the Real, while Zaha would leave it up to you to decide on the Symbolic (as long as the invoices get paid.) I won't get into that, but it could be a further thread.
He (Zizek) goes on to talk about a strata of Russian society "the new Russian capitalist elite which sees itself as ideologically indifferent, "apolitical", caring only about money and success, despising all great Causes... all ideologies are equal, equally ridiculous..."
---------
A direct, linear, cause and effect view of the world is seems old fashioned. It makes things black and white, and open to a lack of adaptability. But it allows for principles.
An ambiguous, net-work, flexible system allows for great success, and adaption - equals survival, but where nothing is fixed, you can have no definite principles, and the rights of the individual are lost. This way is evolution, and it is red in tooth and claw.
These two pieces are not directly comparative. The interview with Zaha is loosely about her work, her methods and her position within the architectural community, while Badiou's chapter concerns itself with who is really bearing the brunt of the financial crisis and how politics needs to reset itself to the grass roots level; but they both shine a light on how the two people view the world in broader terms and how it functions. As Badiou says, where is the real?
I'll kick off with Badiou, the old Marxist. Gasp. (Marxism?? Isn't that dead and buried?)
Or is he a Maoist? I don't know enough about the finer points of the doctrine to decipher, but the final paragraph of his chapter essentially refers to grass roots organisation and mobilisation outside the established centres of power... something that Che and Mao would definitely have approved of to win their wars.
Either way, it is impossible for me to read Badiou and not be washed over by a flood of competing sensations. Growing up in the 80's, in commuter-belt Surrey, being a Marxist wasn't something one did, and anyway, we all saw that side lose when the Wall came down didn't we? Marx was like the Emperor, and the Reagan/Thatcher's Luke & Leia Star Wars programme was definitely the side to be on. If I was ever going to be a Marxist, the primary reason would have been to piss of my Dad.
Badiou is the one in the paper
Dissembling all these associations is difficult, but I'll try. Badiou's premise is that the world is essentially fairly simple. There is US, and THEM. This is really going back to the old Marxist definitions of capitalists and the proles, the haves and the have-nots. He basically says that we should disregard all the spectacle, cut through the shit, and get down to the nitty-gritty of what life is like for the mass of disenfranchised poor. "They" have pulled the wool over our eyes for a long time and use various crises to distract us from the fundamental poverty inwhich we find ourselves. (I'm speaking as one of 'us', when to be honest, I'm probably more of one of 'them'.) They need to be 'up against the wall, motherfucker' so that we can get back to the 'real' job of making everyone's life more fair, more just and more on a flat level. Equality, and the communist spirit. Unambiguous, plain, and direct. Cause and effect.
I think this is far to simple as a premise and ignores the very "real" that he is looking to return to. The world is not black and white, there are infinite shades inbetween. The biggest investors in the stock markets, the speculation that Badiou dislikes so much, are the pension funds for ordinary working people. 'Workers' can be 'bosses' at the same time. Maybe there are an increasingly small number of very rich people, but there are also millions and millions of people who have vested interests in those rich people's companies, and WANT to see them make profits. The world is not divided into the actors and audience as Badiou suggests, it is a massive net of complex interests and interractions.
Thats a sentiment that I think Zaha would approve of...
I don't think Zaha fits neatly into the opposite slot... a 'Capitalist' sounds far too archaic a term for her. For Zaha, the world is complex and ambiguous. Her language in the interview is completely obscure, a deliberate vagueness for a variety of reasons. Ambiguity is important in modern art. Without it, you couldn't sell anything. There is a certain sense of the Emperor's new clothes about a lot of modern art and the value that is thereby attached to it - if you don't get it, you must be stupid, or uncultured, or worse, old. If you define it, you diminish its value, because it loses it exclusivity.
art or brand?
So without trying to bring on images of dark Satanic mills and stove pipe hats, Zaha functions as a supreme capitalist entity, gliding around the globe selling designs everywhere. Without principle, capitalism becomes "frictionless", so don't hamper your business by boxing it in, saying what it means. You will only lose clients. And this is another reason for the ambiguity. Where you are dealing with vastly differing ideologies (China/Taiwan economically or the Gulf states/northern Europe in terms of permissive liberality) how do you avoid being put on a 'side'. You obfuscate. You have to be vague. It allows the client to put on whatever meaning they like to the project, and you can move on and sell elsewhere, to the enemy, if you like.
"They still talk about contextual. Ha!" She dismisses consideration of context as 'sops to popularism'. Its easy to simply look at this viewpoint purely architecturally - the image of the powerful all knowing artist/architect is an attractive one to the architectural community. It flatters us, and it allows her to fit a sleek spaceship into a suburban neighbourhood. But it disguises a potential lack of principle. 'Context' doesn't have to just be the local colour of the bricks. It could be the political record of the local government, lack of rights for the inhabitants displaced by the project, or whose money the client is actually spending... (see the now bankrupt Spanish regional governments whose billions have all been wasted on new museums and airports without planes). I'm not saying Zaha does all these things, but the concept that 'context' doesn't matter directly leads to these things.
Zizek (apologies for the missed accents on his name) writes a brilliant chapter in his book Living in the End of Times called 'Architectural Parallax'. The parallax part is relevant to this discussion, as he talks about a triad of the Real, the Symbolic and the Imaginary. One would think that Badiou would favour the Real, while Zaha would leave it up to you to decide on the Symbolic (as long as the invoices get paid.) I won't get into that, but it could be a further thread.
He (Zizek) goes on to talk about a strata of Russian society "the new Russian capitalist elite which sees itself as ideologically indifferent, "apolitical", caring only about money and success, despising all great Causes... all ideologies are equal, equally ridiculous..."
---------
A direct, linear, cause and effect view of the world is seems old fashioned. It makes things black and white, and open to a lack of adaptability. But it allows for principles.
An ambiguous, net-work, flexible system allows for great success, and adaption - equals survival, but where nothing is fixed, you can have no definite principles, and the rights of the individual are lost. This way is evolution, and it is red in tooth and claw.
Thursday, 4 October 2012
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
BBC's Marxism / relevance to the contemporary world documentary
After yesterday's discussion on Badiou and Zaha, and the ability of TV programmes to maintain a decent level of conversation with its audience, this seemed fairly relevant
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01n6z4s/Masters_of_Money_Marx/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01n6z4s/Masters_of_Money_Marx/
Tuesday, 11 October 2011
Digital Urban: Crowd Sourced 3D Modelling?
Digital Urban: Crowd Sourced 3D Modelling?: At the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Intel CEO Paul Otellini demoed how the company's processors are being used to render a 3D ...
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