Update: Eric Gordon on ROROTOKO >>

The Urban Spectator: American Concept-Cities from Kodak to Google by Eric Gordon:

The Urban Spectator is a lively and utterly fascinating exploration of the ways in which technologies have influenced our collective conception of the American city, as well as our relationship with urban space and architecture. Eric Gordon argues that the city, developing late and in conjunction with a range of modern media, produced a particular way of seeing — what he labels “possessive spectatorship.” Continue reading

Concrete Geometries: Spatial Form in Social and Aesthetic Processes — Exhibition, Symposium and Publication :: Call for Submissions — Deadline: April 12, 2010 :: The Architectural Association School of Architecture, 36 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3ES,UK.

The Concrete Geometeries Research Cluster is seeking submissions of work from the fields of art, architecture, sciences and humanities that explore the intimate relationship between between spatial form and human processes — be they social or aesthetic — and the variety of new material entities this relationship might provoke. Continue reading

Enabling: The Work of Minimaforms :: February 27 - March 19, 2010 :: Machina Speculatrix (A Machine that Watches) performance with Mira Calix, February 26, 7:30 :: Architectural Association, London.

The forthcoming exhibition Enabling: The Work of Minimaforms puts forward a series of questions: Can architecture facilitate new forms of communication? Can design enable? Can we construct models of interaction as forms of conversations? Using design as a mode of enquiry, the projects by experimental architecture and design studio Minimaforms explore these questions with the aim of opening up the discussion. Continue reading

Vague Terrain 16: Architecture/Action :: The latest of edition of Vague Terrain presents a timely and nuanced consideration of ubiquitous computing. Guest curated by the American artist/programmer Joshua Noble, the issue provides a window into the practices of several leading researchers. Given the arrival of gestural interfaces and preliminary deployments of augmented reality technology and “intelligent” architecture, it is an important moment for thinking about the relationship between technology and the body. Noble on this current milieu: “All technologies reshape the body and the space around the body, from the bow and arrow to the steam engine to the telephone. It may be that we are beginning to truly see how computing and ubiquitous devices will once again reshape our bodies and our conceptions of ourselves in space.” Continue reading

Discussions on Networked Publics :: February 9, March 25, April 13, and May 4 beginning at 6:30 pm :: Studio-X, 180 Varick Street, Suite 1610 (1 train to Houston Street), New York City :: Free and open to the public — RSVP: gdb2106 [at] columbia.edu.

The Network Architecture Lab announces a series of evening panels entitled Discussions on Networked Publics at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation’s Studio-X Soho Facility to investigate the changing conditions of the media, architecture, and urbanism today.

The mass audience and mass media analyzed by the Frankfurt School are long gone. As digital media and network technologies are increasingly integral with everyday life, the public is transforming. Continue reading

In order to live at sea, we’re pioneering an entirely new form of marine architecture. Open_Sailing acts like a globally-conscious super-organism, a cluster of intelligent units that can react to their environment, change shape and reconfigure themselves. Open_Sailing is a project that is well underway. We are a constantly growing, international team of around 40 people designing and engineering a prototype under the mentoring of numerous experts. Where is the safest location on earth? How can we live at sea? How can we create a life saving floating self-righting architecture? How can we produce reliable renewable energy? What will we eat? What will the politico social organization be made of? How will we entertain ourselves? Continue reading

I. From the Dematerialized Object to Immaterial Labor

Anglo-American Conceptual art, which emerged in the mid to late 1960s, displayed a new interest in linguistics and information theory that clearly distinguished it from the industrially coded production aesthetics of Pop art and Minimalism. The thesis that went along with this was that replacing author-centered object production with linguistic or information-based propositions represented a challenge not only to any traditional “material-object paradigm” (Art & Language) but also to those aspects of craftsmanship within “production values” that are crucial to any claims to authorship and the “work,” and this perhaps helps to explain how and why the history of Conceptual art has mistakenly been written as a history of “dematerialization of the object.”(1) Continue reading

2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture: City Mobilization :: December 6, 2009 - January 23, 2010 :: Opening: December 6; 6:00 pm :: Conference: December 7-9 :: Marathon Event with Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist: December 22 :: Main Venue: Shenzhen Civic Square; Sub-Venues: Shenzhenwan Avenue, Yitian Holiday Plaza.

Taking the theme of City Mobilization, this year’s Bi-city Biennale proposes an investigation into the organization and balance of social life within contemporary urban China. In today’s globalized world, we have moved from a model of ‘nationhood’ to ‘city-hood’ where cities must consider themselves in relation to a global network of other cities around the world. Continue reading

Turbulence Spotlight: One Text, Many Stories — URBAN MEMORY LOSS: a Nightmare of Change in which Time is Inscribed in Space—or How a Text Became a Story by Annette Weintraub:

One Text, Many Stories is an exploration of reading, and of how the visual context and process of reading influences interpretation. An original text composed of nine short passages describes an urban space reconstituted in memory, and is interspersed with short extracts from Michael de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life and The Production of Space by Henri Lefebre. Taken together, the passages are a construction of ‘the city’ as a fluid mental map of elements that are shuffled and rearranged. Continue reading

Soft City: Azra Aksamija, Pushwagner, Dubravka Sekulić :: September 13 - November 8, 2009 :: Stroom Den Haag, Hogewal 1-9, 2514 HA The Hague, The Netherlands.

How do people organise their space? Or do they allow themselves to be organised? How do unregulated private initiatives contribute to the development of a city? Are there any guidelines, and when do the upholding of public order and legislation start to impact this process? The exhibition Soft City presents existing and new work by the international artists Azra Aksamija, Pushwagner and Dubravka Sekulić. Their work represents the extreme ways in which people create urban (living) space. And how the authorities play a role in this, or, in contrast, are completely sidelined. Continue reading