Reverse Alchemy

Too anglo-saxon?

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 21:49:00 -0400

“Fifty years ago no one would have chosen Darwin and Lincoln as central figures of the modern imagination. Freud and Marx would perhaps have been the minds that we saw as the princes of our disorder. But with the moral (and lesser intellectual) failure of Marxism, and the intellectual (and lesser moral) failure of Freud, Marx and Freud’s ideas have retreated into the history of modernity, among the vast systematic ideas that proposed to explain it all to you.”

Adam Gopnik, Angels and Ages, A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln and Modern Life, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009, 14.

When I took intro architectural theory in my master’s program, the course was in fact based in Marx and Freud. Well, Marx, Freud and Nietzsche and the three lineages that followed. What would it have been like as a course with Darwin and Lincoln? Too anglo? Is it only recently that architectural discourse has shifted to American and English ideas of modernity dealing with humanity and its place in nature, history and republican politics?

Tranquility by injection

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:16:39 -0500

I haven’t seen many advertisements that group these three uses together, psychosis, surgical and obstetrics. I am not even sure I’ve yet seen an advertisement for tranquilizing obstetric patients, maybe those go out of fashion by the 1960s?

the problem of numbers

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 07:15:00 -0500

“I knew that, slowly and steadily, humanity was breeding such situations as a sick body breeds pus. It was as if our race was no longer able to cope with its own numbers and with the problems—greater every day—that resulted from this.”

Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques. Translated by John Russell. New York: Criterion, 1961, 31.

Technology and Society after Sandy

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 07:46:18 -0400

Technology and Society after Sandy:

Lee, of the American Science blog, offers a first hand speculation on technology and society in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy featuring this photo of an ad hoc charging station, neighbors sharing with neighbors.

sciencecenter: Amazing technology would allow for underground...

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 09:26:00 -0400

sciencecenter:

Amazing technology would allow for underground parks in NYC

If you’ve been to Manhattan in the past several years, you may have heard of the Highline in Chelsea. It’s a project that converted an abandoned above-ground railroad track into a park, and it has turned the formerly underdeveloped area around it into one of the trendiest new neighborhoods in the city; if you visit Manhattan, you have to check it out. Anyway, two architects want to build a park that will do for the Lower East Side what the Highline did for Chelsea, but with a twist: they want to build it underground!

If you’ve been to Manhattan ever, you’ll also know that space is at a premium, and there are few open spaces left to grow leafy green things or build a park. Dubbed the LowLine, the project would convert an old underground trolley car station, abandoned in 1948 and untouched since, into a 1.5 acre underground park. But how? This is where the science comes in: they’ve developed the technology to transmit sunlight underground. Using large parabolic mirrors and a fiber optic relay, sunlight from the surface would be shuttled to the park and then redisbursed, allegedly yielding enough light for photosynthesis. As shown in the artist’s renderings above, the park could house trees, grass, farmers markets, or art installations, all year round, rain or shine. The architects raised money on Kickstarter for a proof-of-concept exhibition, happening RIGHT NOW in the Essex Street Market in NYC, and they’re doing battle with the city and the transit authority that owns the underground depot for approval. Here’s to hoping the city bureaucrats see the light! *slaps knee*

Quick Links

TheLowLine.Org

LowLine Kickstarter Project Page

Meet the LowLine - The New Yorker

Science as Experience, John Dewey edition

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 09:21:00 -0400

“In contrast with the person whose purpose is esthetic, the scientific man is interested in problems, in situations wherein tension between the matter of observation and of thought is marked. Of course he cares for their resolution. But he does not rest in it; he passes on to another problem using an attained solution only as a stepping stone from which to set on foot further inquiries.”

Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: Minton, Balch & company, 1934, 15.

To parse: the intellectual or man of science cares for the gaps in observation and thought. Could we extrapolate and say, he or she cares for the mismatch in form and idea? (To be Eisenmanian about it.) Dewey continues to say that both the esthetic and the scientific are merely differences in the “constant rhythm that marks the interaction of the live creature with his surroundings” and that to try to say they are so different is false. Which I love. If there is one thing I am constantly frustrated by, it is the use of the artist by the scientist and the use of the scientist by the artist… science is not some perfect, non-human endeavor. Art is not some un-analyzable beast. But let’s go back and finish the thought with Dewey:

“The thinker has his esthetic moment when his ideas cease to be mere ideas and become the corporate meanings of objects. The artist has his problems and thinks as he works. But his thought is more immediately embodied in the object. Because of the comparative remoteness of his end, the scientific worker operates with symbols, words and mathematical signs. The artist does his thinking in the very qualitative media he works in, and the terms lie so close to the object that he is producing that they merge directly into it.”

From there, Dewey pursues the idea that animals live directly in their world, without projecting emotions onto nature. But for purposes of a professor, trying to set up a course on science and design, and teaching a group of designers in what has until this week been a _very_ immediate form making exercise… the appeal for me is to consider whether this remoteness applies even in the case of form making at 1:1. We are in pursuit of objects that function in a certain, rarefied esthetic mode as quasi-architecture, as complex spaces, giving hints of occupation but resisting looking like “buildings”.

I guess I will have to leave this track unresolved and turn to less well-formed utterances as part of my new jobby job. I find I’m way busy again, which means that my ability to add urgent items to my to do list exceeds my ability to do them. So I am back to asking myself what is the most important thing and then making sure to do that before my brain is worn out for the day. One key thing for today was to keep my writerly and imaginative side in working order, so a quick Dewey quote was definitely on the list. Resolution of the difference between art and science, well that will have to wait.

a new favorite about an old favorite

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 08:41:00 -0400

I’d really like to warm this old blog back up, after time spent in a kind of mental hibernation and healing to do with the closure of the dissertation and the shift in pretty much everything else in my life. While maybe too ambitious for me to fully unpack, I’ll open with one of my new favorite blogs commenting on one of my old favorite blogs. I’d read through some wonderful posts that led me on to new works on the history of human science in the US, including a review of Joel Isaac’s new book, Working Knowledge: Making the Human Sciences from Parsons to Kuhn, that repositions Kuhn and post-positivism as socially contingent knowledge production… am I the only one to see that as not entirely surprising? Or at least, somehow meta?

Anyway, back to the new favorite blog posting about the long time favorite blog and what it may mean for you, dear reader, or me, as I open a new favorite direction about an old favorite set of ideas. And that is? Quantification, statistics and humans as thinkers and subjects. Lamely, all I really want to call attention to right now (no pun intended) is the block quote here calling for humanists to ply their trade in interpreting data from the past, even the recent past. In my new job, I’m thinking a lot about how quantitative work might mesh with historical work. How can humanities research be transformed into group projects? It seems that humanities research likes to be done in the head of one or two people, so how do you write grants to fund student researchers to help you get more done? Couldn’t they do more than pull articles that you will scratch to find time to read? As I sit in meetings and talks here at Huge U, I keep being drawn to Schmidt’s way of working and reasoning.

Check out the block quote, but also, this great instance of Sapping Attention turned to explicitly spatial analysis.

http://americanscience.blogspot.com/2012/08/mapping-scientific-influence.html#more

“I knew I was at the position on the totem pole that got chipped by the lawn...

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 14:13:00 -0400

“I knew I was at the position on the totem pole that got chipped by the lawn mower…” A nice turn of phrase from Steve Martin’s An Object of Beauty.

focus

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 09:32:10 -0400

Okay, I know I am no Olympian… I’ve seen enough of the national team rowers walk by at the boathouse that it’s pretty clear. Even so Megan Kalmoe’s account of the focusing of the rowers in preparation for the racing reminds me of my own feeling that right now, in advance of final submission of the dissertation, it’s hard to have distractions or really to speak with people about things other than finalizing the document, preparing for defense, and of course, coping with the departure from a much loved grad program. I’ve always had that tendency about racing, to get quiet and to concentrate beforehand, and then relax and open up to the rest of the world after. I guess it’s a good thing.

http://megankalmoe.com/2012/07/26/two-days-to-go-one-big-bad-blog-post/

"It’s hard to find anything to say about life without immersing yourself in the world, but it’s also..."

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 10:44:23 -0400

““It’s hard to find anything to say about life without immersing yourself in the world, but it’s also just about impossible to figure out what it might be, or how best to say it, without getting the hell out of it again.””

- From: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap/?src=me&ref=general

"’ When the missing science, the science of Man, comes into its own, the influence of national..."

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 17:53:28 -0400

“’ When the missing science, the science of Man, comes into its own, the influence of national character on the art and science of a given society may be a matter for specialists to fix rather than for men of letters to speculate about… ‘
But for now…”

- I. De Wolfe, “Townscape: A Plea for English Visual Philosophy” Architectural Review, (December 1949): 360.

second hand

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 09:04:00 -0400

I’m moving. So I am naturally reflecting on consumer culture, and how we manage to accrue so much stuff that we never wear, use, or even look at. All these objects, once shiny and new, now lurk in closets and in other apartment corners. And when we do choose to get rid of something, is there anyone who wants it? Dreams of an exchange system where things I don’t want can find the person about to acquire one of the same item fly straight in the face of the telemedia stimulated consumption economy. In her new book, Overdressed; The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, Elizabeth L. Cline looks at the whole ecology of cheap clothing and gives an insight into where those clothes go once you put them in the donation bin.

“Most Americans are thoroughly convinced there is another person in their direct vicinity who truly needs and wants our unwanted clothes. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Charities long ago passed the point of being able to sell all of our wearable unwanted clothes. They started to look for other solutions. A wiping rag industry sprang up to turn unsellable clothing into rags for industrial purposes. Still, anything left over went into the landfill.”

Much of it is also bailed up and sent overseas, to sub-saharan Africa among other places.

“By one estimate, used clothing is now the United States’ No. 1 export by volume, with the overwhelming majority sent to ports in sub-saharan Africa.”

From:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1Ukhb9/www.ecouterre.com/do-clothing-donations-actually-go-to-people-in-need/

The anatomy of technology. These drawings come at the cyborg...

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 08:20:00 -0400

The anatomy of technology. These drawings come at the cyborg from the other direction, rather than introducing artificial parts to animal bodies, they introduce animal bodies to technology. They’re both horrifying and familiarizing, at least these inscrutable shells conceal ‘guts’ like ours.

martinekenblog:

Illustration by Mads Peitersen

We Work

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 12:48:00 -0400

We Work:

Academia is the research arm of capitalism in yet another way, workplace satisfaction.

“Despite the injustice and impracticality of the arrangement, large numbers of young people continue to present themselves to the meat grinder of doctoral study. Most fall away, but a sufficient number persist, and of the persisting few, only the tiniest fraction take advantage of tenure to refuse steadily mounting demands. These are questions that corporate managers have been examining for decades with a keen sense of envy. How to emulate the academic workplace and get people to work at a high level of intellectual and emotional intensity for fifty or sixty hours a week for bartenders’ wages or less? Is there any way we can get our employees to swoon over their desks, murmuring “I love what I do” in response to greater workloads and smaller paychecks? How can we get our workers to be like faculty and deny that they work at all?”

history as criticism

Wed, 23 May 2012 15:23:00 -0400

So maybe I am not the first person to say this, but I continue to appreciate the use of history to make claims that might otherwise sound a bit too extreme. IE, one can say:

The involvement of the government in the psyches of its citizens has grown far beyond what a naive—or rational—person might think of as the domain of mental health.

Or, an author can say:

The involvement of the government in the mental health of its citizens has grown far beyond the involvement that was common prior to the 20th century.

Less electric, perhaps, but quite true.

Embarrassment of Riches

Sat, 19 May 2012 16:28:05 -0400

I really have more archival gems than I can handle right now, I just churned up a super fun internal report on how a HUD grant for a bunch of “city slicker intellectuals” was fruitful because it allowed “associates and fellows a chance to avoid going out into the world and doing real work. It allows them to do intellectual exercises while they blithely say ‘we’re escaping the from the academic world ivory tower world.’ “

I told ya, gems.

In 1950, Leon Festinger published his study of small group...

Wed, 09 May 2012 15:19:00 -0400

In 1950, Leon Festinger published his study of small group formation and influence using the “ecology” of Westgate Housing, built in 1946 for married veteran students at MIT. The study of small group formation and function was one of the earliest psychological studies of proximity and informal social behavior. Posted in honor of all camp-like student housing built after World War II.

Yes, that is a moving truck.

And yes, those are screened porches. I wish we had those.

Leon Festinger, Social Pressures in Informal Groups: A Study of Human Factors in Housing (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1963, c1950), 2.

Posh, perhaps even ironic, what does it mean to wait for social...

Tue, 01 May 2012 08:19:40 -0400

Posh, perhaps even ironic, what does it mean to wait for social services in a space that could be in 2001 Space Odyssey? Brave New World? It recalls the Apple Store or IRobot?

simplypi:

Social Services Center by dosmasuno arquitectos

ummhello: Anyone else remember these?

Tue, 01 May 2012 08:13:02 -0400

ummhello:

Anyone else remember these?

Of these invisible borders, it’s interesting to see the...

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:59:00 -0400

Of these invisible borders, it’s interesting to see the split between north and south Jersey show up in the later maps of cell phone, texts, and mobility. No wonder it’s so hard to have Jersey pride, when your state is pulled by two major cities outside its borders. PS: A bit spooky to see the data collected, analyzed and visualized.

theatlantic:

The Invisible Borders That Define American Culture

One of the clearest regional differences in the U.S. can found by tracking the words people use to refer to soft drinks, which is in fact the map you saw at the top of this story. Pop or soda, or even Coke, these small linguistic differences are not as small as we might think. While “soda” commands the Northeast and West Coast (green) and “pop” is in between (black), “Coke” reigns in the south (turquoise). These small distinctions can often act as touchstones for larger cultural differences.

Read more. [Image: Samuel Arbesman]