Tuesday, December 16, 2008

pondring, pondering

hmm, just wondering what will happen with this idea, @ this point it has totally lost momentum, guess i will wait till the new year and see what will happen with this magazine idea, lets see where it will go

Friday, December 12, 2008

Thursday, November 27, 2008

reading under the gun

am sitting here in the emily carr library, it is raining outside (vancouver, vancouver), rummaging thru "the end" as fast as i can, have another class and this i took out of the archive in a backroom in the library. so i try to read fast and type fas and i stumble upon so many interesting facts. Vander Lans writes that he styled "emigre" on the example of a magazine called "hard werken", a dutch magazine. and he writes about lots of things that i learned in my "design for humanities class" this very semester, about lipton and abbott, about derrida, about post-structuralism, all kinds of things. but what i like most is his hands-on-description about the process of making this magazine.

emigre and perspecta

it is kind of funny that when i look thru the thank you's of the starting chapter of "the end" of "emigre' i noticed that he thanked michael bierut and "perspecta" is published at yale university ( a magazine about architecture that is published by the graphic design department at yale). michael bierut teaches at yale ( or used to),he is a graphic designer. what interests me here is the connection of writing about visual arts while only using text. both perspecta and emigre do that, their brand is writing about visual stuff while omitting images. and they are pretty successful. so we could do that at ecuad too. - ( one more thing, i think "perspecta" is student published, whereas "emigre" was not.

emigre, emigre

so i am sitting here in the library going thru the last 3 issues of "emigre". emigre is, well, was a graphic design magazine published in berkeley in conjunction with the princeton architectural press, it was published for 21 years until 2005, it used to have very different formats, so the issues were not identically in size. what is interesting for me is that it totally lacks text, at least issue 64, 66 and issue # 69, aptly called "the end". in this last issue the publisher Rudy Vanderlans desribes how he started the magazine, what a learningcurve it was and, basically, how he made it happen. anyways, because i was criticized in my presentation for havng no images in the prototype for : on animation and architecture" i was looking for magazines that totally lack image and are about visual stuff, in this case graphic design. i am trying to get hold of " perspecta" too, i think it lacks images, too. of course, in the case of emigre maybe the lack of pretty pictures was its downfall, and i am not quite sure if it had images in the beginning. i guess it is all about who the targetaudience is.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Monday, November 24, 2008

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU

hope this goes thru

uploading gone wrong

tried to upload this really good 7-minute film, but it did not work, have to do it again, did some research on different sites that are about art and architecture, one is Uk-based and is affiliated with the university of london, the other one is a blog by a denmark-based architect, then there is blu-films-org. which is brazilian, i have to find the URLs and put it in here, i looked into pyramid power which is a magazine here in vancouver, one of the students mentioned it, i actually came uopon it in the animationlab and checked out their website- am debating whether i should make more animations, have to do one for the design class anyways, one named xyz, so all the axes can have buildings coming out of them, morph into buildings, at this time i am not really working on the magazine anymore, am kind of on hiatus, only this blog is slowly snailing on, am not quite sure when the report is due

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Saturday, November 22, 2008

what now?

so the presentation is over, am debating what 2 do next. am not quite sure whether this blog would suffice for the "report part" of the class or if i have to type it up and hand it in, and i am not even quite sure if it is due on december 4th or december 11th, it was kind of in a blur, because i was getting ready to present, have to type up all the comments that were made sfter the presentation, am not quite sure where to go after this, if i want to go through with this and turn this into a viable magazine or whether it should end here, anyways i typed up a table of contents yesterday (actually 2 versions, one with date and volume1- # 1 and date, the other one just plain saying "on animation and architecture 1), i made another two copies with the table of contents, am trying to figure out how to make an online version - am not quite sure whether i want an online version - kind of trying to figure out WHAT NOW????? guess i just keep chiseling away @ this project, though i have to concentrate on my other classes too

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

images, images

just wanted to upload the images of the architecture BC magazinecover and images from the clip/stamp/fold 6 exhibition at the cag



seems the last animation is the best

ditto, have to look thru the blog to compare all the animations, there seem to be four different scenes, and then the final film ( some filme # 2), sans audio and then there is the longer version which has all the pan images that are vancouver specific (what with the woodward sign), and with the shlocky song (downtown) as one of my profs categorized it ( i like it though). it is kind of confusing and so are the different title pages. have to find index cards somewhere lying in a drawer and streamline this. doesn't help to be utterly disorganized, not a good trait for an animator.

how do you spell geek

i just noticed that i am the only dumbohead who volunteered to do her presentation even though it is so very half baked. how do you spell geek meets keener. anyways, now i have butterflies in my stomach, should go down to the market, have a calming chamomile tea. stage fright, stagefright. adrenaline rush. who made up all these words? in reality i am just talking about what i did for the last month, the problem is really in how to distill it into 15 minutes. the laptop might not work, it might snow, so there might be stuff like that. but basically i just try to document what i did, so i will let go of everything else and highlight my emails to siat, i will show the blog with the 4 animations, and the magazines. that should cover it. one obvious problem is that there are differing lengths in the animations and the sound is so very debatable. could show the brochure of the cag, is somewhere in my locker. was looking at the new yorker title page and what was funny was that they did not indicate the volume and the issue number, just the price ($3.95) and the date. so in this case i could write fall 08, which automatically indicates that the magazine comes out every 3 months. the New Yorker had the table of contents on the back of the title page which is very different from most other magazines, and they have a little blurb on each contributor. anyways, there will be problems with the COW and projecting the blog onto the wall, i am not quite sure if huddling around a laptop will cut it. should try to figure out how to put this online (the magazine that is), how to do it with all the word files, cause i guess pdf is better, kinkos likes them more., i am not quite sure what the digital output center in the south building wants. that is for printing though and @ this point i am churning the copies out one by one and am sewing the middle. old skool meeting new skool.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

some filme # 2

ok, so it is kind of shitty, but i just put scene upon scene - actually same with the magazine - editing can be done later on

volume 1, # 1 or inaugural issue

kind of debating how to call the first issue- should i even number it, should i put the date on it, that kind of stuff, should there be a table of contents, how does that all work with the layout, which is @ this time supersimple and that is how i like it- the presentation is the day after tomorrow which is just fine by me, i could still do much more research but i think that i am pretty ready @ this time, just have to rehearse, but i definitely have enough material to talk about for 15 minutes straight, at least that is how i feel at this time, have to do some more sewing of the magazines (the spine)- maybe still make the animation longer-there is no time for the info interview with jonathan franz - i might do it later, at this time i just want to evaluate what i have so far, to put it all together in a coherent manner- later on i will type up the report and the outline- is only due on decemer 4th.

arkitektur 7777771short, short piece

shortshortshort piece, could be somehow snushed into the other scenes and then, voila, a film

Monday, November 17, 2008

mockup, mockup, mockup

that is what i am doing these days, making all kinds of mock-ups, living @ kinko's, i should learn how 2 use the digital output center in the south building, but @ this time i frequent 2 different kinko's in the lower mainland, and one mailboxes etc. one staples and one library and then i sew those pages together, is not really research, more learning by doing, might as well

Saturday, November 15, 2008

title pages




traditional or nontraditional?

am debating whether the mockup i am making should follow traditional magazine format or not, was looking @ two magazines, one was TIME, the other one was called TRIBUTE, something about movie stars, i just picked them out from the magazine rack @ the fitness center, what was so very weird was how very similarly they were constructed, title page, then filler, then contents, then letters to the editor, then main content, then one more op-ed kind of piece, then the end, one had the exact date (TIME) the other one said september 08, so one can easily understand if it is a weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly magazine), i am not quite sure how to number it, VOLUME 1, no. 1, volume 1, issue 1, should it be rectangle or triangular, but basically i think it should be conforming to pretty conventional forms, then again it could be different each month like emigre used to be, or it could have different forms in the same issue, there sre lots of possibilities but at this time i just go ahead and make another mockup ( i have one already)- by the way both magazines had three staples at the spine

Thursday, November 13, 2008

anotha point

i just noticed that i did not really find the film on skateboarding and the making of a skateboard park and architecture, it kind of found me, i posted my "on architecture and animation" video on you tube and you tube just posted that film in related videos, which happened several times, i do not really do research, i post a film on something and you tube shows me related films, which is really good, one skedaddles into the right direction in researching something without even trying

parallels

before i forget i would like to just jot down that we had three very articulate labor union representatives in class today who talked about union relations in the film industry and at one point one of them made a comparision between the labor disputes in the film industry and labor disputes in the construction industry and me trying to link construction/ building and film took of course note, because this is about the real footsoldiers that enable construction, enable film, the workerdrones, their rights, their situation.
another thing worth mentioning is a film i found on you tube which was by this person who said that her or his preoccupation lies in architecture and skateboarding, once more motion and static and she or he ( i think it was a he) made a film about that which was pretty good, was kind of nice to see that i am not the only geek who tries to combine stuff they are interested in

how many more days till the presentation?

in a week i have to have finished my resaerch 4 this, actually this being 2:49, i will have given the presentation, talked for 15 minutes, answered questions for five, stagefright is gripping me by the throat already. wrote one more essay for the prototype, seemed to be kind of on the incoherent, illogical side. am not really very keen about interviewing anyone anymore, i guess i did the fieldwork for this, should now move into making the stuff, because i'd rather have tangible results, tactile stuff like a prototype of a magazine 2 show and tell, a finished blog with more animations on it, as fascinating as research is, it kind of seems to get to the point where it becomes over researched, there is not really time to go through all the books that are suggested reading for the topic, i will kind of distill it to read blurbs, to go thru the notes from my humanities class, my prof is dr. patrick chan, he knows an immense amount about deleuze, about architecture as it relates to film, as it is situated within theoretical discourse and that class definately pushes my research for this class in2 the right direction, anyhow, am couped up way too much in front of my laptop, need fresh air, sun, that kind of vital stuff, wind in my face, sun air and last not least motion, leafy streets of fall, here i come

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

going slightly insane

am cooped up here at home where it is so very quiet, am simultaneously reading this article about "seeing architecture through a filmmaker's eye" which is really good, am reading this article that proposes that architects should use animation during the designprocess, not as a marketing tool, am kind of debating if i should rather do research on "field of vision" issues, about how we perceive reality, how much it is about seeing image 1, then image 2, then image 3 versus being immersed in reality, this line of thought is kind of crreeping me out, i would now rather go for a long walk through the late afternoon vancouverday

other stuff

so i have now 5 two page essays on animation, architecture, that kind of stuff, i am working on the animationfilm for the presentation, i called global mechanic for an interview, they said they will get back 2 me, i emailed the media foundation, but did not get any answer yet, am kind of looking @ different magazines, maybe i should go to a bank and ask about small business loans. at this point, this whole project is getting way too scattered and going into to many directions, i have to streamline it more and declutter it, so that i can give a comprehensive, coherent presentation on november 20th. one idea that really grips my mind is the difference between using different camera angles to simulate reality in film, as an animator i do not really do that, i animate a very flat, frontal view of what ever is going on, for instance a person walking from left to right, my preoccupations as an animator are definately not with perspective which is actually at the complete opposite of what maha does, maybe i will email her questions about that, well, i guess the answer to this dilemma is the classical discourse of comparing 2d and 3d representation and architecture is of course spatial, but then again a blueprint is just basically a 2 dimensional diagram and now i am utterly confused, i'd rather go back to animating because then i know 2 least what i am doing

researching goes somewhere and does not go somewhere

so i sent an email to dr. rob woodbury at SIAT to ask for an info interview ( this was on monday) and I actually got a very prompt reponse from his ph student (her name is maha al saaty). she does research on the correlation of film and architecture and she sent me this pretty dense and difficult article that was written by a student in florida atlantic university and she sent me info about other resources,too. i might still email her my interview questions, but @ this time i think i should somehow work myself through the essay which is just too difficult for me. SIAT ( the School of Interactive Technology), which is part of SFU and is located at SFU's Surrey Campus is much more computeroriented than our school, it used to be Tech One, which did not really work. SIAT seems to be very science oriented, into developing software for different applications, in this case a software for being used by architects to simulate buildings. the intracicies of moving through a projected building and translating that into a software application, that kind of stuff.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

circulation and other STUFF

Just read a website about " how 2 start a magazine", was pretty informative, everything in a nutshell. Was actually geared towards Canadian Magazine publishers, very concise and succinct. I just googled "how to start a magazine and, voila: all the info needed. It seems very easy on paper, in the website, but once it gets into doing it in real time, so to speak, everything changes. While working on the prototype I encountered lots of glitches, @ this time there is a far too little amount of pages in the magazine, only ten pages with 20 printed pages, what with doing it doublesided. So I have to find fillers, I think I will use the images of the animation, in black and white. Debating how the binding will be, how the piece will look, what to use for cover, plastic, or thicker paper or cardboard. Actually, if I do it like that it will kind of skedaddle away from the original concept and I don't know if I like that. The website, the one about how to start a magazine, thought that prototypes, mock-ups are a good idea, whereas I thought it is paramount to produce a mock-up. The problem, of course, is that I am doing it all myself, writing all the articles, providing all the images. hurriedly and under the gun. Only 9 days left till presentation day, obviously something has to give. quality will be smushed to the wayside. inadvertedly. Whatver. I'll go to the fitnress center, it is Remembrance day, woke up in the middle of the night to write arkitektur 4 ( the fourth article), producing way too many ideas, am now succumbing to rehaching historical events, mere facts. somehow the discourse suffers, theoretical musings hiccup over the page.

Monday, November 10, 2008

bonnemaison

in the read store i came upon a book about architecture and motion and there was an article about sarah bonnemaison. her work kind of combines architecture and motion. herwebsite is very infrormetive. anyhow, i wrote two essays for the prototype, i emailed ron woodbury @ siat and requested an info-interview, so i am waiting 2 see where that goes. the researchproject is finally on track.

perils of joining a facebook group/ creating a facebook group

so at this point i have created one facebook group that has @ this time one lonely member ( yours truly) and i joined a facebook group that is a group of employees of an animationfirm in hongkong that specializes in 3d rendering for architecture firms and real estate firms, developers, 3d modelling, walk-thru visual models, the like. does not really have much to do with theory, more with the very practical part of providing services for a company, the website is very businessy

validity

so i am sitting here in the ecu library, it is monday before remembrance day, tenish, the woman beside me is eating an apple, pretty loudly, while staring at the monitor in front of her. Airconditioner does its usual thing what with constant not too annoying noise, outside it is sunny, rain has left vancouver, but left an unescapable wetness all over the island. Am sitting here trying to figure out where my research will take me, if this is even research. next to my computer lie three magazines, knowledge, opinions condensed into little bound sheets of paper. One is "Volume", the other ones are DAMn 0 19, and then there is " The Architectural Review". all are glossy papers like Vogue, like Harper's Bazaar. This is not really what i am vying for, I want just texts, just ideas. Just essays. I will show the prototype to the class in the presentation. Somehow I think the "only text format" gives the mag an aura of respectibility that all these photos cannot convey. They area destruction from the text. after all architecture and animation are visual, you experience them by either sitting in front of a monitor, a screen, sometimes lots of screens in a room, and with buildings you either move and motion around or move thru the space, the interior of a built construct. I prefer to translate the effect this has on me into words, into language. someone else will represent the reality of a building with a stunning photograph. For me talking about theory, talking more about the reality of a buiding, a film in abstract terms is just more fascinating. Don't really know why.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

northbuilding # 2

this is getting a tad insane, but it is a movie
worked on this video, did not put sound on it, the beginning is much too fast, might as well. am debating if i should just interview profs in emily carr, about animation, architecture, because there is not really much time left, the presentation is in eleven days, and i am constantly working on preparing this animation, which is kind of annoying and fun @ the same time.
the main prob is how to find really good writers, without paying them, so maybe something like a writers collective, or a blog or something, might go on archinect and canadian animators, basically this should have a bunch of people who like to write and know tons of stuff about the subjects and are just very interested in these kind of matters. it kind of seems very daunting to do. i could ask for submissions or put papers up around vfs, around ubc- soa, but there is really no time for people to submit anything at this time, so 2 this time everything is 2 a nice cul-de-sac, at a road to nowhere. well, might as well. at least the animation 4 the presentation is marching along, so is the blog

Saturday, November 8, 2008

citi # 3

so i am sitting here in the animation lab and am trying 2 patch this together, all these images and the 3 new scenes, i forego putting audio on this for the time being, i think i show this in my final presentation (well, at least the improved version), it is not really research, but it conveyes my process of research, not really research in the conventional form, more research by doing, what with the face becoming the image of a city thus nmimicking a person envisioning an image, a plan of a city, buildings, and thus animation and architecture have something in common, first they are plans in someones mind, then they become the final project, be it fim, be it buidings. am not quite sure if i am being clear here, anyways, this is what i came up with today, it is getting late here in the animationlab on the second floor of the north building, going home now.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

animationshort 4 the presentation

started an animationshort for the presentation, which is on November 20th. first thing in the morning. (report and outline are due december 4th.) i will be presenting for 15 minutes with 5 minutes Q & A thereafter. the animation is a figure walking out of the screen and walking back in, all black and white, kind of unisex. this is followed by a still saying "on animation and architecture", the type is pretty fluid, not linear with sharp edges. might have been better if architecture was in a very hard-edged type, in order to mimick buildings, geometricness, so to speak. anyways, i will have this animation, of which i have two scenes at this time, play on a dvd, because the room i will be presenting in has a dvd-player and i am not quite sure if we will have access to a COW, where i could show this blog.
am kind of debating whom to interview for research or if i should interview any one, for that matter. there is not much time left. i might find someone at ubc, who teaches architectural history/theory, I might interview patrick chan. have to figure out what to ask. at this point i want to concentrate on making the animation for the presentation.

Friday, October 31, 2008

animation meets architecture

http://www.apple.com/pro/profiles/rojkind_rosenthal/

halloween and other storis

yep, october 31st, but still thinking about the professional practice project, ghosts or no ghosts. anyhoo, created a facebookgroup aptly named "on art and architecture", classified it though as student group and then in the subcategory as academic group. invited three people, but did just specify my request for input in one. am kind of learning how to use this group application while i go. the first invitations i sent without request for input and after i sent them i could not really go back, the software did its own thing. read today something in the Georgia Straight about how to start a student news paper. someone at kwantlen is starting one, his budget was 300 000 dollars though. maybe, i am making a mistake here. my budget was 1000 bucks period. i thought of 100 copies of a magazine at a dollar a pop each. ten months and you have 1000 dollars. obviously this is just printing cost, thus writing and typing is pro bono. for the fun of it, for the love of being part of something bigger than yourself. well, good luck. anyways, each volume would have twenty pages, on ten sheets of paper, doublesided. have to learn how to do the doublestitching thingie. vaguely remembered reading the last edition of "emigre", how the founder learned how to stitch the papers together to make a magazine. he did that to get a green card,. something like that. anyways, "emigre" was pretty big.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

first day of research

so i went downtown, it was raining and i headed to vcc and then to the architectural institute of british columbia, i went in and asked if they publish a magazine, turns out they do, it is a quarterly publication, the woman @ thereception gave me a copy and two businesscards of the two main editors, one male, one female. The magazine has about 3700 copies printed (each volume) and it has forty pages, which means there are twenty pieces of paper that are printed, doublesided. It is kind of glossy, full of images and exactly the format i detest for this my project.Anyhow, i walk thru the rain to the next stop: "the contemporary artgallery". chat with the receptionist, who is supernice, and head in to scrutinize the exhibition. I must add that i had listened to the lecture by the curator, whose name is beatriz colombia, she teaches at princeton and started this exhibit at "the storefront of art and architecture" in nyc, the exhibit then travelled to montreal and, i guess berlin and amsterdam, and finally to the cag here in vancitay. The lecture i listened to was in ubc robson street, the name of the exhibit is "clip, stamp, fold", it is mainly about little magazines that are about architecture, most of them were published 1n 1960 to 1980, lots of them very rudimentary, produced at people's kitchentables, and they were dealing with a lot of things, not necessarily architecture. they supposedly mimick a movement in the 1920's and 1930' where little magazines were a precursor for changes in the "making" of buildings. anyways, what was fascinating about the magazinecovers is the stab at taking writing about architecture into a different direction, trying to add to the discourse of architecture, trying to bridge the gap between theory and practice. so, maybe my next research should be into film and animationmagazines. because in the end, i want to do research into stategies for publishing a magazine called "on animation and architecture", so i am kind of baffled @ where 2 start, i put down my experience into the journey towards finishing this researchproject into this blog. It is for my "professional practice" class at the emily carr university in vancouver.