Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Put Something Here - more description of assignment


Please watch the video at this link:  http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/krzysztof-wodiczko
Inspired by the public installations of Krzysztof Wodiczko, the assignment “Put Something Here” asks you to put something into public space that engages the public, asks for their contribution or provokes their participation in “something” - whatever it is that you think of.  The idea is for the assignment to be site-specific in the way that Wodizcko’s work is very site specific.  Meaning that the work has to be designed for the location.  Using mobility systems is also okay with this project, as some projects that have been been done in the past were designed for the back of buses,  designed to be on trains or in train stations, and designed to be put on parked car windows.  
In the spirit of “Creating Democracy” we ask that you try to think of what creates a more democratic public: fair, open and equitable.  And even better, if it is inspired by issues that you have identified in yourself as obstacles or challenges to your own sense of participation whether they may be deeply held concerns or a sense of unjustness that you have experienced or feel.
This is a layered assignment that asks you to put many things to together inside of the project - to synthesize thinking and ideas that have been developed so far in the course.
It is also okay to consider asking questions of the public as a form of participation and a form of “putting something here” as a putting of ideas into the public sphere.  There are many different ways to approach this assignment, the best suggestion is just to think as creatively as you can and ask if your idea covers these areas:
creating a democratic public (however you define that)
Participation/response
site-specific or, alternatively designed specifically to be “everywhere”
connected to yourself in a personal way
Bonus: if you incorporate media in some way, particularly mobile media

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Moblogging or Mobile Blogging


To record an audio moblog, dial: (512) 827-0431 .
When prompted, enter your PIN: 181-197-551 .
Your options will be: Record and Publish, orRecord and Not Publish.

If you select Record and Publish, you will be prompted for your Blog Number or Podcast Number. Your Numbers are listed for you in the table below: 1,134

Put Something Here



Public/Private: Put Something Here

Site-specific art carries the potential to redefine the intention of public place.
Put Something Here, an exercise which is purposely oblique, teases out a variety
of responses, all related to issues brought forward by the insertion of “something,”
or intrusion into public space. Students are asked to “put something here” to
which they usually respond, “What is the something and where do we put it?”
In reply we present Krzysztof Wodizcko’s “Alien Staff,” a pole with a mini
video screen on the top and a loudspeaker in the middle that plays a video
projection of the person carrying the staff. Wodizcko designed the Alien Staff in
response to the dilemma of the outsider, the immigrant who is invisible (and also
silent) as he moves through public territory. The Alien Staff is meant to make the
bearer (the alien) visible by creating a double presence, one in “media” and one in
“life,” inviting a new perception of a stranger as imagined (on screen) or as
experienced (real life) (Wodizcko 1999, p.104). In examining projects of this
nature, we are attempting to bring forward how engaging new media technologies
offer new conceptions of place as a space of resistance, interference, and
enunciation in opposition to those augmentations of surveillance and control they
also enable (Myers, 2006).

One project, titled Palimpsest FM, consisted of a device that houses a
hidden speaker which plays back the sounds of the same spot from an earlier
time, anywhere from thirty seconds to a day before. The replayed recording serves
as an audio version of a palimpsest, a proof of what had been there before. Using
sound as her medium, the student created a nearly seamless overlapping of past
and present where the sounds of today cannot be discerned from the sounds of
the past. Like a palimpsest, it will be unclear where the past ends and the present
begins.

Bachelard speaks of centering oneself in stable surroundings, but if your
surroundings are constantly in flux (and also incidentally not just your
surroundings) like they are in New York, it is no wonder a sense of ontological
anxiety can result. New York City has often been described as a place where the
physical environment changes so quickly that rebuilding without being able to
erase what came before it becomes very obvious to anyone who has lived there
long enough to call New York their home. “You’ve become a New Yorker once
you have the urge to point out a place and say, “that used to be . . .” The “that
used to be . . .” that every New Yorker expresses is part of the inerasable past that
is being built over, it is an expression of memory of a piece of their home and
consequently a piece of their identities that is gone but not forgotten. It is
embodied in the senses. The urge to tell others what used to be is an attempt to
reassert one’s identity and the home they had carved out of the city. This project
serves as another means of describing the “that used to be.” But instead of
subjectively telling the narrative of one person’s New York, it objectively captures
what the place witnessed. The audio palimpsest played back in this project serves
as a kind of memorial of what used to be in the immediate past. It stands to
commemorate the same everyday New York that its citizens quietly mourn when it
is torn down and built over. It memorializes the trivial happenings that many may
overlook, but still plays an important role in a place’s narrative and consequently a
person’s identity. By placing Palimpsest FM in Washington Square Park under the
shadow of the statue of Garibaldi and the Washington Arch, a comparison can be
drawn between the monuments that commemorate the selective history of the
victors to one that records and replays all voices of the city equally. The
neighborhood narrative can then become more complete as it plays back
everything it hears.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Manifestos


Some examples, far out and not:

Joseph Beuys, German conceptual artist: http://www.artnotart.com/fluxus/jbeuys-manifesto.html

Fluxus manifesto: http://www.artnotart.com/fluxus/index.html

White Manifesto by Lucio Fontana, "We are continuing the evolution of art."

The Italian Futurists wrote many manifestos. They wrote manifestos on everything from art to clothing. http://www.italianfuturism.org/manifestos/

The Manifesto Project
http://www.1000manifestos.com/

You'll love this one: The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism, Thomas Marinetti 1905 http://www.unknown.nu/futurism/manifesto.html

The Situationist Manifesto http://www.infopool.org.uk/6003.html

And this is the manifesto that will help you with the entire assignment and final project The Manifesto of Possibilities http://wiki.bbk.ac.uk/Buildingcultures/index.php/Manifesto_of_Possibilities

Thursday, May 10, 2012

The reading for tomorrow

My apologies... somehow the url was not on this syllabus and this is the reading related to the class tomorrow:

Designing for a City of Strangers from the monograph Critical Vehicles by Krysztof Wodizcko

http://hanaiverson.com/pdf/iversonh_07_081_441_01_wodiczko_critical.pdf

More about Kyrzstof Wodizcko at this link.