April 20, 2008
Final Project
Disclaimer: I had quite a bit of difficulty resizing the pictures to make them viewable in my blog, while still maintaining the quality of the pictures. To view the pictures, right click and download them to the desktop so you can then view the pictures in full size.
My idea
My project started around my continued struggle with finding some place to start projects. What I lacked was the correct frame of reference for my project on framing. The idea then came to me, after much deliberation, to adjust the project so that the approach I took was from something I understood. The idea for my project came to me to use a Process Flow Diagram or PFD. These diagrams are ways of expressing the layout of a process in Chemical Engineering. Since over the past semester I've been exposed to these a lot, I thought using a PFD somehow would be a great way of finding a place to start. As I continued to explore this idea, I was able to take it a little further and strip down a PFD, and came up with the idea of using it as a template for writing a poem. Then came the task of figuring out what it was that I wanted to write about. After some thought, it finally came to me, why not write about flow, which really had been the inspiration for the project.
I really felt that flow was one of the best manifestations to explain everything and in writing about it, the poam would become more flexible to describe and define anything. In doing this, I thought it was appropriate that my presentation of the project be two sided, and that the one side include an actual PFD and a description of all the the stages of it, to gain a better understanding of what a PFD was. These are shown in the following pictures.
Then, to compliment this and incorporate the poam into this, the opposite side was of the PFDs built around containing the written words. The words of the poem were written on the lines that indicated flow, serving to both show the flow, and give it some direction. Different lines converge and diverge to show that different beginnings can come together and also one line can split apart.
The words of the poam are shown below.
The aspect of framing that was most amazing to me was how something with one purpose (a PFD) can reassert itself in a totally unexpected way to become something different. The fact that this diagram could on one hand show a complete chemical process; things coming in, coming out, changing form (reacting) and some things staying the same. Or on the other hand, could be a literal representation of FLOW, with the corresponding definition of flow, was amazing to me. The thought of reconfiguration and re-expression was something that I found to be unique to framing. What can't framing explain? What can't it put into context? I learned a lot through this project, but one of the main points I took away was the ability of manifestation in different forms is something that a frame is capable of.
Posted by ndjames at 09:11 PM | Comments (0)
April 01, 2008
Penguin House
The Penguin House is an example of innovation in the greatest sense: making the most out of what you have. So what is the Penguin House? Well watch this video:
To sum up, my favorite quote presented here is that they are “Allowing the structures of the environment to dictate the architectural approach.” Also, I found it was interesting that: "Humans do not perceive a room as small if the ceiling is high." So to use this to they're advantage "The smaller the room, the higher the ceiling." Which in turn was accomplished by "extended site lines."
The best quote of all though was "openness of the space is truly an illusion." But was is an illusion? A trick of the photosynthetic reactions occuring inside our brains that our eyes say is sight.
Interesting thought . . . taking what's around you and adapting to that, instead of adapting your environment to yourself. Basically my thought is: as humans right now, we are still in a stage of conforming the environment around us to suite our needs, instead of establishing a balance and doing a better job of doing what we are give. I feel that Limited Fork, however loosely, supports these ideas and will explain how below.
Background
I know it may be clique to quote a movie such as The Matrix, but I feel that one quote in particular is very true, and applies to society right now:
"It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet."
Agent Smith, a computer program tasked at keeping control of humans in case you haven't seen the movie, lets one of the humans knows that this is how he feels about the human race. In a sense I feel that this is true; not only do we deal with many different economic and social problems on a daily basis, but in our seemingly never ending search for more power, we not only end up destroying acres and acres of land, but have also undoubtedly started and are in the midst of global warming. So what does the Penguin House have to do with any of this?
The Penguin House emphasizes balance and equilibrium with the environment. Instead of altering land to make it suitable for development, the creator took the challenge of adapting the things that we do control, our building materials and techniques, to fit the dilemma of creating a comfortable house in a limited amount of material. When we think back to more primitive human cultures, there are endless examples of humans finding an equilibrium with their environment. The Eskimo's built igloos out of snow because that is what they were surrounded by; Native Americans killed buffalo to get many of the consumables that they need, but didn't kill so many as to the point that herds died out (that didn't happen until European settlers started heading West); even in prehistoric times, when 'cavemen' were around, they lived in 'caves.'
The relationship of all this is that the Penguin House, no matter how loosely or indirectly related, using Limited Fork Theory to tackle one of the biggest problems facing humans today. The dilemma of finding an equilibrium with one's surroundings was conquered by framing the situation in a way in which the human eye and human mind perceived it to be something that it wasn't. In many parts of Japan, and specifically Tokyo there is a huge problem with the limited amount of land in which people have to live. Overpopulation and high costs of living for a very small amount of space are too serious problems that many people deal with. By using the building as a canvas and correctly framing it toward certain tendencies of the human eye's perception, the house is made to look bigger than it is.
And who thought that Limited Fork could have saved the world?
Continue reading "Penguin House"
Posted by ndjames at 06:58 PM | Comments (0)
March 24, 2008
Illusion based on Perception
The Ames Room
This is an awesome example of perception that I just came across. This video is of an Ames Room, a room created an intentional optical illusion. I wonder if the creator, ophthalmologist Adelbert Ames Jr., who first created one such room in 1934 had any idea about the consequences of this and its ties to Limited Fork. PERFECT example of framing, and how framing is influenced by one's perception. Linked here is a better description of the Ames room. When looking at the room from the top, nothing out of the ordinary is detected, other the the fact that you're looking at a room with a trapezoidal shape. The room takes advantage of being able to frame things in such a way that the eye is tricked into seeing something that is not, and thus influencing your perception that something that should not be happening is.
Posted by ndjames at 08:13 PM | Comments (0)
March 20, 2008
Thoughts
I think something important that I may have not touched on was the reason for talking so much about music in the previous few posts. I found it really amazing, and really a great example of Limited Fork in these different works of art. Two different groups did similar things in totally different ways. This is why I felt it so important to express so much about these two things, I found a great deal of relevance in these two albums to our class.
Posted by ndjames at 05:34 PM | Comments (0)
March 18, 2008
The Sun and the Moon Complete
It seems as though more and more examples of artists providing remixes of their music show up everyday. The Bravery, a band I was introduced to when I went to the Incubus concert because The Bravery was one of the bands to open for Incubus, released the complete version of their latest album. They had released what was previously their most recent album, The Sun and the Moon, in the fall. The Sun and the Moon Complete sports two discs (I went and bought it earlier today). The first is the same version from the previously released album, but the second disc is the Moon version of all of their songs. Each song that was on the first release of the album was revisited and reworked by the band to produce an entirely new version of the song, for release in this album.
I wonder what all the people who bought the album in the fall think of the fact that they could have gotten both CDs for the price of one . . .
Posted by ndjames at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)
March 14, 2008
Ghosts
My previous post addressed NIN (Nine Inch Nails) latest CD, Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D, which provided purchasers of the music with an extra CD that gave the instruction to modify the music that was located on the CD, and also gave the tools to do it. If this wasn't enough of a step in the direction of free sharing of material, NIN have one-up-ed themselves this week. They released a new album, Ghosts, and provided a portion of it for free through downloading on their website. They still offer additional tracks for purchase, but some of the music is available, FREE OF CHARGE. Although NIN is the second mainstream band to offer this (Radiohead first offered In Rainbows in the fall of last year), its another huge step for the sharing of information and of artwork. I have read for a while that Trent Reznor, the lead singer of NIN, wanted to split with his record company and start doing work on his own, but didn't imagine it would happen this quickly.
Another interesting plea that NIN has made with the release of this album, is for people to create their own music videos for the album.
I was not only surprised by the fact that they had provided a new album so quickly, and that it was free, but that once again they are stepping beyond the bounds of what is normally expected from a band and doing what they want to do with their material.
Posted by ndjames at 03:41 PM | Comments (0)
