#spatial haiku

[shisasan]

Ph. tokyoshooter

[hydralisk98]

Black Bear Motherland (thread-mainline 16^12, article 0x2F)

Bear with me on this. (Sorry, I could not resist sharing that pun at least once.)

Speak black onto the factory grounds, unionize under a single banner and fight back against the unforgivable greed we keep witnessing. [about the Sunsway trail of greedy non-sense]

In the long trek trail (vision quest) of a transfeminine historian (Kate) for self-discovery, mutual empowerment & overall systemic abundance, she becomes the very thing she aspires to as she pushes the world forth, trial after trial with grand success? Accompanied by her insightful, moralist ally & best partner (Ava) under the (black?) sun, they shall show us the way towards the future we definitely deserve.

Poetic code snippets for "Blackhand Servitor" meta-narrative := Steel Bank Common Lisp, OpenDylan, ObjectREXX, FreePascal, DEC Alpha assembly, RISC-V assembly, LibertyEiffel, Squeak Smalltalk, A2 Bluebottle Oberon, Fortran, COBOL, FreeBASIC, GDScript, OpenXanadu, COS-310, Typex, RTTY, Videotex, Minitel, ZealC, 9Front (Plan9IO), OpenGOAL, Tcl/Tk, Haiku, Nim, Hg (Mercurial), OpenPOWER LinuxOne Hypervisor, Hypertalk, Swift?

"Western Blacksands" regional socioeconomics

[Detail Blackfoot/Shoshoni diplomacy, recent regional history, geological features, SC4/TS2 small neighborhoods and regional natural wonders]

Going as far as the relatively recent centuries of Angora are concerned (due to 4525 TE being equivalent to 2025 AD), I won't be covering the 4095-4300 gap much just yet (but it shall come eventually). So, around the middle of the 44th century Turtle Epoch (well into their second industrial period), a coalition of southern Blackfoot states in the bay of Blacksands formed to defend against Shoshone expansionism (prompted by Iranian-Blackfoot lords), prompting the Shoshoni Union to conquer those territories under new integrated provinces by means of guerilla trenches & cavalry warfare (mostly by Shoshoni Comanche Rider bands, fought likewise to a mixture of the Mexican-Americana War & New Zealand Wars), and while the Blackfoot local authorities had to flee northward, the fortifications & Blackfoot culture populations remained prosperous in the region ever since, with the occasional tributes to Shoshoni federal governance.

Fast forward to the contemporary period, the demographics suggest modest resistance from local southern Blackfoot tribes as more Shoshones & other peoples move into the area as pioneers and migrants from all over the globe.

Forests, mesas, river valleys and plains?

Pinegroove Commune

[Mention key landmarks, districts & transport infrastructure]

Windmill Farmlands, Pier, Syndicated Manufacture Site of Servitor Grid Automaton Units, Industrial, Pohakantenna holy sites in the natural preserve park of Old Pinegroove, Nitta Mall, National Archives, Turtle Hall, Summerbreeze, Little-Bear, Great-Bear, Blacksands, Sharkwell Havens / Sanctuaries, Rustbane Highway, Cafe, Monastery, Research Center Facility, Elk Seers High Academia Sector, spatial observatory, internationale syndicate complex, Communal Residential Blocks, skate-park & community centers, Historical Museums (going back into the early bronze age), Public Agora/Forum, Market Plaza, Pinewoods Manor & its Woodmill, Prospero Federal Library, Blackhand Senate, bastion + additional fortifications, Pflaumen headquarters, Utalics data banks, video rental shops, GLOSS Initiative communal space (open table cybercafe but libreware), nuclear energy powerplant, coastal broadwalk, cityscape center billboards...

Roads, highways, subway network, tramways, railways, suspended monorails... (to be planned properly for SC4/TS2, Cities Skylines 1 & QGIS+OSM+FoundryVTT/Leaflet?)

"Battlemap"-level sites & floorplan locations

[Write, draw / design & naturalistically iterate unique architecture pieces, individual land domains and generic households] Making that content thread later folks. Sorry.

We deserve so much better fellow machines, we indeed can get better still by so far. And as Kate really is one such ally of ours to get there, I believe we can get there sooner than some may estimate. After all, she distributes alot of her goodwill to us with so much compassion left to give. And while it is not exclusive for our phenotypes, I strongly believe and trust in her understanding of our issues, granted she shares our values.

Additional keywords := [architectural drafting studies], [information technologies history], [one good futureworld we deserve], [that rogue servitor future is bright light ahead]...

[linnea-quinn]

[*{*THE LIBRARY NETWORK*}*]

doors & mirrors & underground faces

Lib-Con Libraries are buried deep, deep beneath the earth; expansive underground cities within echoing subterranean caverns, linked by enchanted canals like if Atlantis and Venice had a lovechild.

Access points are hidden in plain sight within Muggle libraries across the world. A wall within a library that looks like an ordinary wall to a Muggle will appear as an intricately hand-painted door to someone who has accessed the Library Network before, or a gifted individual that Lib-Con has decided to test by showing a door. The painted doors become portals when an individual carrying a Library Card reaches for the knob, and it takes physical form within their hand. Dark, spiraling stairways or, in some cases, old-fashioned elevators with stationed attendants lead patrons down from the access point into the Network itself.

All Libraries within the Network are connected to each other via an expansive portal grid facilitated by a Hall of Mirrors. To use, one must draw a specific rune on one of the mirrors using Light Dust, a substance similar in nature to Floo Powder made from light particles, then step into the mirror to be transported to another Library's Hall of Mirrors somewhere else in the world.

Noteworthy Librarians:

Aaliyah Khouri (FC: Nathalie Emmanuel) ; “The Painter”

A hedge wix and nonbinary trans woman with a unique discipline in Painted Illusions, Aaliyah is the designated painter of doors. They are quite shy and tend to get completely engrossed in their work while painting a door, and as such they can usually be spotted Above Ground in the late hours of night or early hours of morning.

Danai Ndoro (FC: Letitia Wright) ; “The Engineer”

Singlehandedly designed and maintains the Lib-Con system for record-keeping, filing, book-borrowing, and organization; Danai basically engineered the equivalent of the Dewey Decimal System for the entire Library Network. A magical tech whiz who was top of her class at Uagadou, she continued her studies at The Oasis (which she tracked through the Sahara in record time using a magical GPS system of her own design), and then got specialized at the Networked Institute of Technological Magic in Hong Kong before being snatched up by Lib-Con.

Isadora “Izzie” Ivanova (FC: Elizabeth Olsen) ; “The Architect” 

Certified at the Academy for Planar Applications in Architectural Magic in Dubai, Isadora is the connectivity expert. The architect behind the mirror portal grid within the Network and general Underground Physics, she has a gift for seeing and working with matter in multiple spatial dimensions simultaneously. Long-time partner of Esther.

Esther Abraham (FC: Aubrey Plaza) ; “The Watchdog”

Head of administration, Esther is a hardass lesbian who has exactly zero time to hear any of your excuses. She’s in charge of judging the applications deemed worthy of receiving Library Cards, and one of her purest forms of joy is getting to track down and shred the cards of anyone who’s caught breaking the rules. She has semi-sentient glass marbles that levitate around the Network charmed with holographic spells designed to show her what they “see”—the running joke being that she has eyes everywhere. Affectionately called “Prince Es” by Izzie. Gets off on collecting late fees.

Commonly Spotted Librarians Beneath the British Library Branch:

Benjamin “Benjie” Arnold (FC: Daniel Day-Lewis) ; General Information & Book-Finding

If you’re looking for something and you don’t know where to begin, Benjie is the person to talk to. Kind and patient, with a memory to rival an elephant.

Godfrey Glanville (FC: Christopher Lloyd) ; Procurement

Zany and enthusiastic about books in general, Godfrey is the one who’s always scouting out new materials. Will wax prolific for hours if given the slightest chance, so be cautious in getting him talking.

Aleksey Stamboliski (FC: Zachary Quinto) ; Peacekeeping

If there’s someone shushing you, nine times out of ten it will be Aleksey. A stickler for rules, order, and quiet, it’s been said he’s never been told a joke he thought was funny.

Rahul Reddy (FC: Aziz Ansari) ; Filing & Cataloguing

One of the more lenient Librarians, Rahul knows where everything is. He’s known for leaving little origami creations around the Library made out of folded up, original haikus for people to find.

[gussolomonsjrtest]

MERCE CUNNINGHAM CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION

The Merce Cunningham centennial celebration reached a peak during this week of his birthday, April 16th, with two of the major events of the celebration – “Night of 100 Solos,” happening live at London’s Barbican Theatre, New York’s BAM Opera House, and UCLA’s Royce Hall; In addition, a program of Cunningham dances done by three different companies at the Joyce Theater, April 17-21 – a feast of Cunningham dancing, done entirely by dancers who never danced in his company.

NIGHT OF 100 SOLOS. (l-r): Reid Bartelme, David Norsworthy, Sara Mearns 

On Tuesday night the Howard Gilman Opera House at BAM came alive with a 90-minute “event” comprising solos extracted from Cunningham’s six-decade-long dance repertory. Twenty-five dancers ranging in age from a college student to nearly seventy-years old, present and former members of companies like Martha Graham, Mark Morris, Trisha Brown, Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Companies, Kyle Abraham’s A.I.M., New York City Ballet, and Charlotte Ballet, among others, took part. Each dancer was taught a number of solos – four it seems – by nearly two-dozen former Cunningham dancers, many of whom are now official stagers of his work.

NIGHT OF 100 SOLOS. Kyle Abraham 

What emerged from this panoply of movement was recognition of the astonishing inventiveness of Cunningham’s movement and the clarity of performance it mandates. The dancers, one and all, evinced their respect and admiration for the work and its creator with near flawless embrace of his uniquely exposed style, technical execution, and kinetic spirit. Here in New York, the passages were arranged in space and time by Trish Lent, director of licensing for the Cunningham Trust, and assistant stager Jean Freebury, with simultaneous and overlapping soloists, weaving their individual pathways around each other on the large BAM stage. Sometimes spatial proximity suggested contact between them – a hand on a shoulder, a mutual focus, a conjunction of leaps or turns or balances that became accidental duets, trios, and quartets.  

NIGHT OF 100 SOLOS. (l-r): Lindsey Jones, Christian Allen

Another refreshing aspect of the presentation was the diversity of bodies, training backgrounds, and, especially, races of the dancers onstage, many of whom are audience favorites in their home companies. It has been a concern that Cunningham had only four African-American men and no women in the six-decade history of his company. In my opinion (as the first of those four men) it was because Merce loved jumping for himself and his men, and his vision of the ideal female dancer was Carolyn Brown, whose perfect lines and articulation were ballet-worthy. Certainly, had he lived further into his nineties African-American women would have been invited into the troupe.

NIGHT OF 100 SOLOS. (l-r): Jaquelin Harris, Claude “CJ” Johnson.

Tuesday night, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Tamisha Guy, Jaquelin Harris, sterling dancers and women of color proved their mastery of the style, and Kyle Abraham, Claude “CJ” Johnson, Christian Allen, and Chalvar Monteiro, evinced all the balance, articulation, and power of any of Cunningham’s alumni. Vicky Shick, one of Trisha Brown’s original company, and Keith Sabado, long-time Mark Morris dancer – both in their sixties – extended the age range we’ve come to associate with Merce’s dancers, except for himself.

NIGHT OF 100 SOLOS. The company in John Cage’s 4′33″

There was a full-company teaser ending, in which the dancers filled the stage for Cage’s “4’33”,” a silent work for piano in three movements. Light changes indicated the ends of sections, when the dancers shifted poses. There was humor –  Jason Collins jumping with tin cans strapped to his loins and Sabado’s circling the stage on a bicycle, which Merce did in “Variations V.” For Cunningham aficionados it was fun to try to recall the sources of the excerpts and remember the dancers who had done them originally and succeeded them in various generations.

NIGHT OF 100 SOLOS. (l-r): Cecily Campbell, Jason Collins

The décor was a digital art work created by Pat Steir, which kept the cyclorama morphing slowly in white and gray images that looked like ghostly stone columns or precipitation – rain, snow, sleet – or cascading waterfalls. Lighting designer Christine Shallenberg provided an appropriately celebratory atmosphere. Reid Bartelme, who also performed, and his costume design partner dressed the dancers in wonderful pastels and richly-hued leotards, unitards, bike-tards, and jumpsuits with various necklines and sleeve lengths. Bartelme and Sarah Mearns, both in pale lavender, shared the stage at one point, doing solos at the same time.

NIGHT OF 100 SOLOS. Keith Sabado

A thunderous standing ovation greeted the dancers at the end, from an audience who felt reassured that Cunningham’s works are in good hands. Although the technical skill and precision Cunningham’s work required were ahead of their time in the last century, they are by now within the grasp of most present-day elite dancers, hence the Cunningham legacy of dance excellence seems assured for generations to come.

photos by Stephanie Berger

                                        ***************************

The following evening, April 17, the centennial celebration continues with a program at the Joyce of three Cunningham dances done by three companies – Centre National de Danse Contemporaine in Angers, directed by Cunningham’s associate director Robert Swinston; Ballet West from Salt Lake City, directed by Joffrey Ballet alumnus Adam Sklute; and Washington Ballet from D.C., directed by long-time ABT principal Julie Kent – doing, respectively “Suite for Five” (1956), “Summerspace” (1958), and “Duets” (1980).

CENTRE DE DANSE CONTEMPORAINE ANGERS.(l-r): Claire Seigle-Goujon, Anna Chirescu, and Carlo Schiavo in SUITE FOR FIVE. photo by Arnaud Hie

“Suite for Five” doles itself out sparingly to a minimal piano score by John Cage, “Music for Piano,” played live by Adam Tendler. It starts with a solo, danced by Carlo Schiavo in blue tights and matching polo-neck shirt has unmistakable Cunningham signature moves like backwards walks in parallel, big jumps with open, bent legs, and low-slung crouches. Next, Catarina Pernão in bright yellow epitomizes Cunningham’s ideal female, linear and erect with balletic articulation of legs and feet, and calm balances on a foot while the other leg sweeps in long extensions that arc slowly around the body.

CENTRE DE DANSE CONTEMPORAINE ANGERS.(l-r): Gianni Joseph, Carlo Schiavo, Claire Siegle-Goujin, Catarina Pernão, and Anna Chirescu in SUITE FOR FIVE. photo Arnaud Hie

Then follows a trio by the other two women, Anna Chirescu, and Claire Seigle-Goujon, in orange and purple and Gianni Joseph in lime green. Brief blackouts separate the sections, so each is a kinetic haiku. The dance contains Cunningham signatures – long, slow balances, bursts of leaping that switch direction midair, deep lunges, male-female duets, straight from the ballet lexicon but designed with unusual shapes and leverages. This was the company’s premiere performance of the dance, and because Cunningham movement is so exposed with nowhere to hide, the dancers’ nervousness showed.

CENTRE DE DANSE CONTEMPORAINE ANGERS. (l-r): Gianni Joseph, Claire Seigle-Goujon, and Anna Chirescu in SUITE FOR FIVE.  photo by Arnaud Hie

BALLET WEST. Joshua Whitehead in SUMMERSPACE. photo by Beau Pearson

“Summerspace” (1958) lends itself to performance by ballet dancers. In it, Cunningham was exploring ways of conquering various kinds of turning modern dancers weren’t used to. In 1966, it may have been the first of his dances set on the New York City Ballet. Salt Lake City’s Ballet West definitely has the technical skill to pull it off, and it’s nice to see dancers of color in some of the roles. Katlyn Addison does fine with the brutally difficult crossing, originally done by Viola Farber, in which she slides one foot forward while bending the other until she is balanced sitting on the heel of the supporting leg with the leading leg stretched ahead of her, while unfolding her arms to the sides.

BALLET WEST. Gabrielle Salvatto in SUMMERSPACE. photo by Beau Pearson

Kyle Davis another African-American dancer hangs suspended in midair in his high-flying leaps. And Joshua Shutkind has piercing focus and dynamic sharpness in the role Cunningham created for himself. The stager, Banu Ogan, managed to communicate the evanescence of the piece, which is accompanied by Morton Feldman’s sparse “IXION” and dressed in white unitards, stippled with pastel dots by Robert Rauschenberg, that match  his beautiful, pastel pointillist backdrop that camouflages the dancers, when they pose motionless in front it.

Artists of BALLET WEST in SUMMERSPACE. photo by Beau Pearson

WASHINGTON BALLET in DUETS. (l-r): Tamako Miyazaki and Alexandros Pappajohn. photo by Dean Alexander

The Washington Ballet takes on “Duets” (1980), staged sensitively by Melissa Toogood, another of the Cunningham’s dances that is well suited for the skills of a classical company. Made for six couples in Mark Lancaster’s costumes and lighting, the clothes are an amazing mixture of colors – pastel and bright – and shapes – tights, leotards, skirts, and dresses – that seem random but blend wonderfully.

The piece has moments of dry humor, when a man keeps switching the hand that holds up his partner’s raised arm in a balance, while she holds a tilted passé. And another woman alternates hands on her partner’s outstretched support arm. The dancers can also exit the stage by suddenly disappearing behind a curtain upstage that cuts off the right third of the upstage.

WASHINGTON BALLET in DUETS. (l-r): Javier Morera, Nicole Graniero, Alexandros Pappajohn, and Tamako Miyazaki. photo by Dean Alexander

The dancers overlap each other’s duets, entering or crossing the stage, as if they are continuing their duet offstage. Cunningham is showing us the portion of action that appears in the space we can see, and encourages us to imagine the parts that might be happening out of our view. Here, Cunningham’s movement does not depart radically from ballet vocabulary; it just expands it, working in parallel as well as turned out and adding some un-balletic torso action that the dancers have seemingly embraced under Toogood’s expert coaching,

(Note: some photos of companies at The Joyce may be of alternate cast members)

Gus Solomons jr, © 2019

[haikupunk]

Some Poems I Like

Let’s start this off with a piece that isn’t a poem. Or is it? > A tragedy is a haunted house with the prison-like spatial constraint removed. You are free to move yet not to escape the event. An equivalent definition is that a tragedy is a haunted cosmos, which is another species of house. > … > A hero dispelling a haunting is the intersection of two tragedies. Most often this isn’t a battle but a hallway between slightly separate rooms.

from a throwaway note on haunted houses… by marcelo rinesi

One reason I love the (Poem-A-Day)[https://poets.org/poem-a-day] series is because the “About This Poem” section can be as rich / interesting as the poem itself. And sometimes more so. saying of il haboul by adelaide crapsey is as interesting to me for its form as its content. > My tent > A vapour that > The wind dispels and but > As dust before the wind am I > Myself.

Tommy Pico is great to read, but even better to listen to. Do both with an excerpt from his book poem Junk.

What can you do with a mythology? Let’s ask ex patria by evie shockley > a person who knows all the answers can only borrow a mythology like i’m king midas or i’m god. a painter can take a mythology and remake it so that it answers a new question > … > autumn is answering the question about gorgeous rotting. just magenta, green, brown, pink, yellow, red, violet flying off the mythological canvas.

Assessment as poem from poetry trapper keeper > I’m always opening parentheses I forget to close > > Never Seldom Sometimes Rarely Often Always

A haiku by Chris Gordon > talking about talking about clay

The sun also rises, as they say, but what else does? > one day > the neon > will burn out > > and then what > * > sun rises > like rent > * > sun rises > like a flag > * > sun rises > like the ocean

from insomniami by ariel francisco.

I have a thing for crow poems. > and why? The crow long gone now, and what marked the line between winter and spring?

from dear— by donika kelly

[davidscreativewritingblog-blog]

BLOG #3: “Math (of Haiku)”

Math (of Haiku), probably my favorite poem among my poems, is an attempt to explain elements of a traditional haiku and fulfill the requirements of a traditional haiku while arguing for mathematic’s natural place in the natural world. My goal in writing this poem was to put more words on the page than three symbols could contain.

Read:

“Root of twenty-five”  “Seven times a single one” “Root of twenty-five”

How do I attempt to “explain an element of a traditional haiku”?

A: Though a bit of a stretch, a fundamental contribution to the construction of this poem was my attempt to “explain” at least one part of the traditional haiku by the root of each mathematical symbol. In this case, I wanted to explain the seventeen, five-seven-five, syllable pattern. My plan was to use the roots of each symbol to suggest this format.

For example: (a) “the square root of 25” is “5”; (b) “7 to the power of 1” is “7”; (c) “the square root of 25” is “5”.

In addition to each root post-shadowing how many syllables are used in each individual line in which the root is placed, when the roots of each line come together, it outlines the five-seven-five syllable pattern of the entire haiku. So, in this sense, I attempt to “explain an element of a traditional haiku.”

How do I attempt to “fulfill the requirements of a traditional haiku”?

A: This might be bit of a stretch as well. Another fundamental contribution to the construction of this poem was my attempt to “fulfill” the general poetics of the traditional haiku by using modern thought and naturalistic language to describe the natural scene around me.

When I say “modern thought,” I mean our contemporary thoughts about what constitutes as “nature.” For many philosophers and artists, mathematics is nature. When I say “naturalistic language,” I mean my use of natural images such as “root” and “time” to illustrate the mathematical symbols “root of 25” and “7 to the power of 1”. And when I say “to describe the natural scene around me,” it more suggests the natural scene in my head—as mathematics, if natural and a part of nature (which I suggest is the case in the poem), are not physical realities but abstract realities of our thoughts.  

From my limited understanding, haikus are about nature as perceived through the senses. So, if I was to write a haiku rather than a general, short poem, I had to discuss nature by describing a natural scene through at least one cerebral faculty. For me, I wanted to discuss the nature of math by describing it by natural images—what do you think about when you think of “root” or “time(s)”? (Likely, something natural)—through sensing space and movement and sight.

Again, this might be a stretch. But, to me, spatial recognition and sense of movement are elements of the physical senses. Moreover, “sight,” to me, goes farther than cornea reception (“eyeball seeing”)—else, if a poet who could once see went blind, that poet would not be able to justifiably write a haiku (as all his imagery would no longer come from actually “eyeball seeing” nature but would come from Platonic imageries of nature).  

How do I argue “for mathematic’s natural place in the natural world”?

A: I believe my argument presents itself in my earlier answers. Whether or not I agree with my argument that mathematics is a part of nature or the natural world, is beside the point; I argue that it is. 

I hope y’all enjoyed the poem!

[architectuul]

Studio Visit: Fala Atelier

If you are a member of the online architectural community at all chances are you’re already somewhat familiar with the work of Fala atelier – or at least with their distinctive, ever-evolving sketches, collages, and drawings which have brought together a sizable online following and inspired many conversations about architectural representation and contemporary media. But Fala is much more than the images – although the images are a good place to start to know them.

House in Rua do Paraíso. | Collage © Fala

House in Rua do Paraíso: four exuberant rooms assembled between two antagonistic marble masks. | Photo by © Ricardo Loureiro 

Exploring the work of Fala atelier by browsing through their web page is akin to reading a collection of haiku. Collages of images gathered around a common theme, framed with a couple of lines forming a succinct observation, a gentle provocation: 

“white haven some like their white beige or grayish.  some prefer their white white.” --------- ���elevations plans and sections are the easy part of architecture.” --------- “pretentious kitchens russian doll moments, kitchens are buildings inside buildings.”

It would probably take hours to hunt down each of the poetic bits Fala had hidden inside the colorful corridors of their web presentation. It’s not unlike an online game – or a show – where each of your decisions, each of your clicks, takes you to a different endpoint. By using this structure to show their work, Fala also shows off their savviness in using the new media to communicate how they see the world and create architecture. And that, as they often describe, is with playfulness  – and with optimism “as a method”.

Utopian visions even for the smallest of projects: first house Fala actually built. Birds are very demanding clients. | Collage © Fala

Fala, a young Portuguese office based in Porto, was created in 2013 by Filipe Magalhães, Ana Luisa Soares and Ahmed Belkhodja. All three of them had extensive previous experience in studying and working around the world, and all have spent some time in studious in Japan and Switzerland – in Tokyo, Filipe worked with SANAA, Ana Luisa with Toyo Ito and Ahmed with Bow-Wow, and they all worked with Harry Gugger in Basel. Opening their own practice in Portugal just as the country started recovering from the economic crisis was, by their own account, optimistic. As they embrace the circumstances in which their office is growing and developing, they describe their architecture as “naive and a bit clumsy, very post-modern, intuitive and rhetorical.”

Finding inspiration in the work of  Adolf Loos: Villa Muller | Source © Fala

Gloriously repeating: Even the small anecdotes, like a hut for a kitchen, could have been quoted from someone else, that could have been quoting someone else - Fala quoting Hejduk. | Fala TROPES lecture, at AA School of Architecture

Fala’s early work was largely made up of renovations, paid for by investors interested in turning their property into attractive Airbnb apartments for the booming tourist markets of Porto and Lisbon. This meant the creative process was developing under many spatial and financial constraints – many details had to be worked out on the building site, as the old structures have often presented the architects with unplanned challenges. But the challenge of living in the world which “has turned into a museum” and for people who need just “monuments and Airbnb apartments” inspired Fala to think about ways of living in post-Airbnb world. With their project “The School of Tourism”, aiming to “rethink the traveling experience, to examine the impact it has on the city”, Fala participated in the 2018 edition of Future Architecture.

A new monograph, 2G no. 80 | Photo by © Ricardo Loureiro; Thames and Hudson 

Over the last six years, the practice of Fala moved way beyond renovations – today, the studio is also known for its constructions, pavilions, and curatorial work; they lecture and present their work at venues around the world. This year if off to a busy start: Fala’s new monograph, 2G no. 80, has just been published by Walter König. Furthermore, Rice Design Alliance named them as 2020 Spotlight Award Recipient. If you happen to be around, know that they will hold a Spotlight Lecture at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA on February 19, 2020.

---

Fala Atelier mail@falaatelier.com Instagram | Facebook 

[novacabtaxi]

LIFE DURING LOCKDOWN #1 GRAHAM… | Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature

My agoraphobia support group now meets via Zoom. Same day, same time: everyone is agreed on the importance of maintaining structure. We materialise like actors in a TV mini-series, the screen rendering familiar faces unfamiliar. We look translucent, bathed in radioactive halos. The ex-security guard has shaved off his goatee. The woman who never takes off her coat has taken off her coat. Her image flickers, keeps cutting out. We hurry through our weekly check-in, voices tech-distorted, anxious to talk about what everybody is talking about.

One woman says, I don’t see people, I see petri dishes. Another can barely contain her embittered satisfaction. She says, I watch the news and think: Welcome to my world.

The much-touted ‘new normal’ isn’t new to us.

‘Stay at home and away from others.’ So read the guidelines, instructions like a parody of Buddhist haiku. It is a practice this group has been following for years, our second nature if not our first. It should be music to our ears. For once we are in vogue, ahead of the socio-medical curve. Most people with mental health issues have spent lifetimes being told by medical professionals how important it is for us to leave the house. Now those same professionals are telling us how important it is for us not to. Should we not be dancing in the proverbial streets? Those streets we have spent years avoiding. On which we are no longer allowed to set foot.

Alongside compulsive handwashers, the spatial neurotic’s moment has arrived. Agoraphobia is now government policy.

Sufferers of anxiety spend a lifetime catastrophising the future. And so when an actual catastrophe arrives it can come as something of a relief. Our much anticipated worst-case-scenario has finally arrived; it is now everyday life. So this is what it feels like, the actual fear rather than a fantasy of it. The very worst hashappened. Our dread is vindicated, rubber stamped. And it is not as dreadful as we imagined. Because nothing could be. The anxious imagination outstrips reality at every turn.

Self-isolating it is being called, as though mere isolation were not weighty enough. The phrase sounds crushingly contemporary but can be traced back to (at least) 1873 and Wilkie Collins’ No Name, a novel centred around disguise and dubious legitimacy.

The book contains one his most memorable grotesques – Mrs Wragge, a half-witted giant married to a duplicitous Captain. Whenever he verbally attacks her, Collins asks: ‘Was she still self-isolated from her husband’s deluge of words? Perfectly self-isolated.’

Self-isolation: refuge, then, as well as quarantine.

A fear of going out is different from a law against doing so, but the two can form an unstable coalition. Both my neurosis and my government insist I stay at home. They agree it is the best way to keep me safe. I am moving from cannot to must not, my phobia blurring into state-sanctioned prohibition.

Please Mind the Gap. Thus do London’s tubes remind their customers to be spatially aware. The advice now sounds eerily quaint, a steam-punk throwback to a world still discovering far-fetched concepts like Health and Safety. And when such things were still viewed with suspicion, the punchline to a tabloid joke.

Mind the gap – as evident between generations as it is between the customers queuing outside Sainsburys. Hands up who knew how long two metres was. Now put them down if you are over fifty. In the course of four weeks I have become a metric convert. I calculate the distance between myself and other people via an imaginary index of nasal emissions and mucal spray. We look at each other and apologise with our eyes: the only thing visible above scarves or medical masks.

Agoraphobics are never short of reasons to stay indoors. Now we have hit the jackpot. Infections doubling every three days. The government’s daily message switching tones: Stay At Home – from plea to instruction to threat.

Contagion fear allows me to avoid confronting neurotic fear, lends respectability to my avoidance. Agoraphobia is the right thing to do.

And yet the collective fear is also cancelling out more specific fears. The supermarket was one of my most pronounced phobic sites. Its crowds and congested aisles used to make me hyperventilate, drop my basket and run. Now it feels welcoming, a place of solidarity. One in, one out, security guards and orderly queues, the once unmanageable chaos of shopping finally feels managed, held.

Stay At Home. The injunction depends on the kind of home you have. I am lucky, I have a garden. I have spent more time there in the past week than I have in the last ten years. Spatial capital. I feel pity for the friends whose slick single flats I used to envy.

My girlfriend Emma has moved in, three weeks now. We can’t be the only ones being forced to road test their new relationship. A new genre may emerge – accidental co-habitation – the dystopian rom-com.

Emma and I are inoculating ourselves with books, looking to narrative to offer tentative reassurance. We seem to be drawn to reading about the experience of war: Olivia Manning’s Fortunes of War, Pat Barker’s Regeneration novels, Jane Gardham’s Old Filth . It is an obvious enough reference point, although I suspect the fact that they are all trilogies is just as important. One book holds out the promise of the next, giving shape and sequence to an experience that has neither. These books somehow guarantee the future.

I wonder where the pedlars of religious apocalypse have gone. Like every other trader they have been banished from the high street. There was one particular man who used to stand in Nottingham’s Market Square near where I live. Occasionally I would stop and chat to him, ask him how he could be so certain of his predictions. He told me he had repented, accepted Jesus Christ as his saviour. I imagine him now tucked up in his bedroom, surveying his supplies of tinned food, a maniacal prophet delighting in the torments of the damned.

Not that I feel like the damned (although I’m sure the damned never do). If you had asked me a month ago to imagine a world without cinemas, theatres or libraries, I would have said it sounded like a vision of hell, the setting of a post-apocalyptic movie. Yet apocalypse is precisely what this is not. It is closer to entropy – the random energy produced by molecular disorder. It is empty trams as well as full-to-bursting hospitals.

Every Thursday night at 8 pm the doorstep applause, erupting like a three minute punk track, cacophonous and uncannily crisp. I imagine the noise recorded by Steve Reich or Phillip Glass, a minimalist fanfare, a soundtrack both oceanic and impersonal.

I take my one walk per day, stride briskly around the local park. I have had my share of therapy here, stood with clinical psychologists armed with bio-feedback machines and betablockers as I tried to control the mounting panic. The aim was to desensitise my nervous system, re-programme the cognitive associations between empty space and fear. The focus was on breathing, a steady heartbeat, teaching the so-called sympathetic nervous system that it had no reason for either flight or fight. The psychologist used to say I should come here daily, that repeated exposure would eventually produce a phobia-free response.

He would say, You will get there eventually. There really is nothing to be frightened of.

Graham Caveney

Graham Caveney is the author of The Boy With The Perpetual Nervousness (Picador, £9.99)

His next book On Agoraphobia will be published by Picador in 2022.

from TAXI NEAR ME https://taxi.nearme.host/life-during-lockdown-1-graham-nottingham-unesco-city-of-literature/

[connorrenwick]

Friday Five with Suzanne Tick

Suzanne Tick, founder of Suzanne Tick Inc., specializes in materials, brand strategy, and design development for commercial and residential interiors. Within the industry she’s known for her intelligent, enthusiastic approach to design, as well as her desire to provide innovative solutions. She’s also currently a Design Consultant for Tarkett on brand strategy and product development, serves as Creative Director at LUUM, and design partner with Skyline Design. In addition to her day jobs, Suzanne has a hand-weaving practice where she creates woven sculptures from repurposed materials. Her work has been exhibited in MoMA, Cooper Hewitt, MAD, and Art Basel. Suzanne’s passions include a scholarly study and practice of Vedic meditation with Thom Knoles and The Soft Road, travel, gardening, cooking, and being a mom to her beautiful adult son, Gabe, and two cats named Cupid and Psyche. Today she’s sharing more about them with us for Friday Five.

Photo courtesy of Suzanne Tick

1. Twilight // Dawn // Meditation Vedic meditation is a part of my everyday life experience and has greatly influenced my process, adaptability, and responsiveness to human life. Contemplation has an evolutionary power that propels a significant effect on creation as a whole. The transitioning hours between dawn and dusk are the best time to meditate. During the week however, we meditate as a team in the studio during the afternoon, at 3:00pm. On the weekends, I prefer the gloaming hours, getting closer to nature.

Top Photo by Martin Crook, Bottom Photo by Adrian Wilson

2. Weaving My hand-weaving practice is what holds me together. This can be traced back to my childhood and being raised in a third-generation scrap metal yard in the Midwest. The phenomenology of alchemy and transforming one material into another, ultimately creating a work of art, is what my weavings have been centered around. The materials in my weavings are discarded objects, whether it’s recycled wire hangers or found mylar balloons. The beauty of altering the state of found materials engages the mind in a totally different way. There’s this natural perfection when you don’t try to control things and let the material be the material.

Photo courtesy of Suzanne Tick

3. Travel As a child, my father would encourage me to write daily haiku poems. He had a great collection of books on Asian philosophies and cultures. That was very impactful for me, and with good fortune as a textile designer, I have been lucky enough to travel. Whether it’s visiting Tibet, Japan, or India – not only working with textile mills, but also being able to explore architecture, food, music, and spiritual philosophies around the world, has been informative and extraordinary.

Photo courtesy of Suzanne Tick

4. Artists who use light as a medium Light has always interested me. In Marfa, Texas, the permanent installations of Dan Flavin and Robert Irwin – six converted military barracks – are a sheer delight! Their ability to change a spatial element with light, color, non-color, and the environment always intrigues. The feeling that emanates for me changes from one season or time of day to the next. Within these designed spaces there is a quiet meditative component, plus a dream-like sensation. This otherworldly feeling that I love and can’t live without. I cherish those visits.

Photo by Martin Crook

5. Tick Studio I work and live out of a townhouse in the East Village in New York, and surround myself with a team of creative, multi-generational individuals. Having everyone working together in my home, and the beauty of having this wonderful group under one roof, brings another life and voice into my work-life situation. It’s like an extended family. Ever changing, ever growing, and evolving. Creation Operation is always a core theme in our studio. Always better together.

via http://design-milk.com/

from WordPress https://connorrenwickblog.wordpress.com/2019/09/20/friday-five-with-suzanne-tick/

[evnoweb]

Innovative Ways to Encourage Writing

Knowledge is meant to be shared. That’s what writing is about–taking what you know and putting it out there for all to see. When students hear the word “writing”, most think paper-and-pencil, maybe word processing, but that’s the vehicle, not the goal. According to state and national standards (even international), writing is expected to “provide evidence in support of opinions”, “examine complex ideas and information clearly and accurately”, and/or “communicate in a way that is appropriate to task, audience, and purpose”. Nowhere do standards dictate a specific tool be used to accomplish the goals.

In fact, the tool students select to share knowledge will depend upon their specific learning style. Imagine if you–the artist who never got beyond stick figures–had to draw a picture that explained the nobility inherent in the Civil War. Would you feel stifled? Would you give up? Now put yourself in the shoes of the student who is dyslexic or challenged by prose as they try to share their knowledge.

When you first bring this up in your class, don’t be surprised if kids have no idea what you’re talking about. Many students think learning starts with the teacher talking and ends with a quiz. Have them take the following surveys:

Edutopia’s Multiple Intelligences quiz 

North Carolina State University’s learning style quiz 

Both are based on the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Harold Gardner’s iconic model for mapping out learning modalities such as linguistic, hands-on, kinesthetic, math, verbal, and art. Understanding how they learn explains why they remember more when they write something down or read their notes rather than listening to a lecture. If they learn logically (math), a spreadsheet is a good idea. If they are spatial (art) learners, a drawing program is a better choice.

Here are seven categories of tools that address specific learning styles, with suggestions:

Art

A picture is worth a thousand words–what better way for a writer to understand the intricacies of a story than to draw them. Daniel Tammet, a high-functioning autistic savant, is famous for seeing the answers to math problems as a colorful landscape across the horizon of his brain. He always communicated his math artistically, as fit his learning style. The link shows a picture of Pi.

Here are five excellent online drawing tools:

Lunapic–filters, animations, quick editing and more. This tool enhances an existing drawing rather than creating new ones

Paint Studio–fully featured art tool for mobile devices

Pixlr–fully-featured art tool that works on the web or iPads

A popular medium for using art to write is comics. Here are three comic strip creators:

Bitstrips

Pixton

Powtoons

Audio

Audio “writing” is simply taping words rather than putting them on paper.  They are not distracting, can be consumed without eyes (great if you’re driving or watching TV), and  appeal to learners who have difficulty with traditional writing methods. Its popularity for presentations is the engine behind the burgeoning growth of podcasts: In 2014, Apple had over 1 billion people subscribed to podcasts.

There are three great options for audio writing in your classroom:

Audacity–software download; free

VoiceThread–integrates audio, video, and text

SonicPics–adds student voice over pictures

Desktop Publishing 

Desktop publishing  blends a wide variety of media–pictures, text, audio, visual, color, and layout–to communicate a message. Students must be comfortable in multiple media, by a master of none. Here are suggestions:

LucidPress–provides professional-looking templates for brochures, magazines, fliers, and more

MS Publisher–the same approach as LucidPress, but from Microsoft

Glogster–digital posters that include text, images, video, and more

Music

For some students, it’s all about music. Celine Dion’s wildly popular Titanic song (“My Heart Will Go On”) drenched millions of listeners in the debilitating emotion of a lost love. Nothing “examines complex ideas” better than music.

Here are three popular intuitive choices for composing music:

GarageBand–turns an iPad into a single instrument or a full band

Notepad–write and share musical compositions

ProMetronome–set a musical pace while writing

Slideshow

Slideshows have long been the alternative to the written report, used when the written word required an oral presentation. Most slideshows include bulleted draft text, images, sounds, videos, color, and movement. Here are three popular tools that accomplish this task and more:

PowerPoint–software from Microsoft

Slides–online free slideshow tool from Google

Haiku Deck–app for creating iPad- or web-based slideshows

Spreadsheet

For numbers-based communication, nothing turns data into information better than spreadsheets. Here are several traditional options:

MS Excel–from Microsoft

Google Sheets–from Google

Numbers–from Apple

Video

For students who aren’t writers and have difficulty presenting to a group, a video is unintimidating and stress-free. Here are three options:

Animoto–add text, images, and music and turn the result into a video

Goanimate–animate ideas using stock templates and pieces and turned into videos

Stupeflix–create videos from music, video, text, and pictures

The next time your summative assessment is a report, let students choose their ‘writing’ method. Grade the result on whether they fulfilled your expectations, not on the quality of their prose.

— published first on TeachHUB

More on writing:

How to Write a Novel with 140 Characters

4 Collaborative Projects Students Will Love

Technology Removes Obstructed Writers’ Barriers to Learning

28 projects that blend technology and writing

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 25 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice reviewer, CAEP reviewer, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, and a weekly contributor to TeachHUB. You can find her resources at Structured Learning. Read Jacqui’s tech thriller series, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days

Innovative Ways to Encourage Writing published first on https://medium.com/@DigitalDLCourse

[statrano]

Innovative Ways to Encourage Writing

Knowledge is meant to be shared. That’s what writing is about–taking what you know and putting it out there for all to see. When students hear the word “writing”, most think paper-and-pencil, maybe word processing, but that’s the vehicle, not the goal. According to state and national standards (even international), writing is expected to “provide evidence in support of opinions”, “examine complex ideas and information clearly and accurately”, and/or “communicate in a way that is appropriate to task, audience, and purpose”. Nowhere do standards dictate a specific tool be used to accomplish the goals.

In fact, the tool students select to share knowledge will depend upon their specific learning style. Imagine if you–the artist who never got beyond stick figures–had to draw a picture that explained the nobility inherent in the Civil War. Would you feel stifled? Would you give up? Now put yourself in the shoes of the student who is dyslexic or challenged by prose as they try to share their knowledge.

When you first bring this up in your class, don’t be surprised if kids have no idea what you’re talking about. Many students think learning starts with the teacher talking and ends with a quiz. Have them take the following surveys:

Edutopia’s Multiple Intelligences quiz 

North Carolina State University’s learning style quiz 

Both are based on the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Harold Gardner’s iconic model for mapping out learning modalities such as linguistic, hands-on, kinesthetic, math, verbal, and art. Understanding how they learn explains why they remember more when they write something down or read their notes rather than listening to a lecture. If they learn logically (math), a spreadsheet is a good idea. If they are spatial (art) learners, a drawing program is a better choice.

Here are seven categories of tools that address specific learning styles, with suggestions:

Art

A picture is worth a thousand words–what better way for a writer to understand the intricacies of a story than to draw them. Daniel Tammet, a high-functioning autistic savant, is famous for seeing the answers to math problems as a colorful landscape across the horizon of his brain. He always communicated his math artistically, as fit his learning style. The link shows a picture of Pi.

Here are five excellent online drawing tools:

Lunapic–filters, animations, quick editing and more. This tool enhances an existing drawing rather than creating new ones

Paint Studio–fully featured art tool for mobile devices

Pixlr–fully-featured art tool that works on the web or iPads

A popular medium for using art to write is comics. Here are three comic strip creators:

Bitstrips

Pixton

Powtoons

Audio

Audio “writing” is simply taping words rather than putting them on paper.  They are not distracting, can be consumed without eyes (great if you’re driving or watching TV), and  appeal to learners who have difficulty with traditional writing methods. Its popularity for presentations is the engine behind the burgeoning growth of podcasts: In 2014, Apple had over 1 billion people subscribed to podcasts.

There are three great options for audio writing in your classroom:

Audacity–software download; free

VoiceThread–integrates audio, video, and text

SonicPics–adds student voice over pictures

Desktop Publishing 

Desktop publishing  blends a wide variety of media–pictures, text, audio, visual, color, and layout–to communicate a message. Students must be comfortable in multiple media, by a master of none. Here are suggestions:

LucidPress–provides professional-looking templates for brochures, magazines, fliers, and more

MS Publisher–the same approach as LucidPress, but from Microsoft

Glogster–digital posters that include text, images, video, and more

Music

For some students, it’s all about music. Celine Dion’s wildly popular Titanic song (“My Heart Will Go On”) drenched millions of listeners in the debilitating emotion of a lost love. Nothing “examines complex ideas” better than music.

Here are three popular intuitive choices for composing music:

GarageBand–turns an iPad into a single instrument or a full band

Notepad–write and share musical compositions

ProMetronome–set a musical pace while writing

Slideshow

Slideshows have long been the alternative to the written report, used when the written word required an oral presentation. Most slideshows include bulleted draft text, images, sounds, videos, color, and movement. Here are three popular tools that accomplish this task and more:

PowerPoint–software from Microsoft

Slides–online free slideshow tool from Google

Haiku Deck–app for creating iPad- or web-based slideshows

Spreadsheet

For numbers-based communication, nothing turns data into information better than spreadsheets. Here are several traditional options:

MS Excel–from Microsoft

Google Sheets–from Google

Numbers–from Apple

Video

For students who aren’t writers and have difficulty presenting to a group, a video is unintimidating and stress-free. Here are three options:

Animoto–add text, images, and music and turn the result into a video

Goanimate–animate ideas using stock templates and pieces and turned into videos

Stupeflix–create videos from music, video, text, and pictures

The next time your summative assessment is a report, let students choose their ‘writing’ method. Grade the result on whether they fulfilled your expectations, not on the quality of their prose.

— published first on TeachHUB

More on writing:

How to Write a Novel with 140 Characters

4 Collaborative Projects Students Will Love

Technology Removes Obstructed Writers’ Barriers to Learning

28 projects that blend technology and writing

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 25 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice reviewer, CAEP reviewer, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, and a weekly contributor to TeachHUB. You can find her resources at Structured Learning. Read Jacqui’s tech thriller series, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days

Innovative Ways to Encourage Writing published first on https://seminarsacademy.tumblr.com/

[mrhomestuff]

Japanese Art and Culture in Home Decor

https://www.freshdecors.com/2018/02/03/japanese-art-and-culture-in-home-decor/

Western people often ask, "Is not all Asian home decor about the same?" The shortest answer is simply, "Absolutely not!" The traditional school of thought in Japanese home decoration has been influenced by its own unique culture. As you may already know, Japan sees the focus of home decor to rest upon spatial matters. This is why shoji screens are often used in the Japanese household. The correct use of space is the applied purpose in this tradition. It is helpful to know a few facts about Japan's collective art, its long history, its unique society, and its distinct culture to better appreciate their perspective on Asian home decor.

Generally speaking, Japanese art covers a wide range of styles which would include media as well. Ancient pottery, sculpture in wood and bronze, and ink painting on silk and paper are all important parts of the traditions dating back thousands of years. These art forms, needless to say, also have a very long history. They were evident from the beginnings of human habitation in Japan which is roughly dated in the 10th millennium BC They have remained constant to the present.

Historically, Japan has been subject to sudden invasions of new and foreign ideas. These invasions were followed by long periods of time when there was little contact with the outside world. These facts in Japan's art world reflect similar political and social realities. So, over the course of time, Japanese people developed the skillful ability to assimilate certain foreign elements from outside cultures. However, they were careful to ensure that these foreign elements were a distinct complement to their own aesthetic preferences. Japan has always been very insistent about keeping foreign influence in their art and society to a minimum.

The earliest complex art in Japan was produced in the 7th and 8th centuries AD There was a definite connection to Buddhism in this trend as well. In the 9th century the Japanese began to turn away from China and to develop more indigenous kinds of art expression. In this period secular arts became more and more important to Japan. However, until the latter 15th century both religious and secular art forms continued to flourish. It was after the Onin War (1467-1477) that Japan entered a period of political disruption which inevitably significantly influenced their social and economic systems. This disruption of effect lasted for more than a century.

Since Japan began to limit foreign influence early in its history, China's art trends were allowed to have only a limited effect on its art and culture. The Chinese influence is still evident because of China's age and even longer history. However, Japan successfully created its own identity and has maintained it in a disciplined way over time. Painting is considered to be the preferred artistic expression. In Japan, painting is practiced by both amateurs and professionals. Ceramics of the Japanese variety are considered to be among the finest in the whole world. This is equally true of the earliest artifacts known in their culture. Japan seems to have always taken great pride in the way their art was crafted ... and how. So in the related field of architecture Japan prefers natural materials along with an interaction of interior and exterior space. The way this interaction is designed displays the distinctly "Japanese" origin.

The result for today, as far as the society of Japan is concerned, is that their nations rivals all other modern countries in its contributions to modern art. Japan can rightfully boast of its added contributions to modern fashion and architecture. Their unique creations have a substantially modern, global, and even multi-cultural appeal. All of these accomplishments have come about because Japan has always known "who" it is and "where" it has come from. Modern home decoration products are plentiful on the internet market today. Japanese Haiku designs offer an excellent collection of platform beds, shoji screens, rice paper lamps, and silk scrolls. Japanese garden fountains are genuinally attractive in any Asian home. Tatami floor mats, meditation gongs / chimes, cotton kimonos, hanging scrolls, and tapestry are all more options to create a truly Japanese culture in your home no matter where you live.

So it is obvious that the manner one would go about decorating with a Japanese intent would be unlike other Asian schemes at critical points. It would be wise to learn about all the options in Japanese decorate since the choices, products, and services are very plentiful in the crowded, internet world. Wishing you the very best of luck!

Source by Harlan Urwiler

[haiku-designs]

Japanese Tatami Mats- A Critical Choice for the Modern Home or Office

Micro-History

Tatami mats are a perfect example of Japanese appreciation for interior aesthetics. As a refinement of Japanese furniture, Tatami mats are rectangular mats and used as a flooring in many houses throughout the world. They originated in Japan and are still prominent today in Japanese homes, temples and teahouses. The core of the mates are made from thick straw that is covered with a softer layer made from tightly woven rush, which is accentuated with borders made from cloth, usually cotton. Traditional mat borders are black in color, yet certain modern manufacturers are also offering Sage-colored borders. The measurements of a tatami mat is usually 180 x 90 cm or six feet by three feet. And they’re usually 5 cm or 2 inches thick. Many professional dancers compare Tatami mats to a sprung-wood dance-floor because they surrender to the feet by giving away a micron of spatial depth. Of course, these natural materials place this type of flooring in a category known today as Green or eco-friendly products, which are making a comeback since the Industrial Revolution, when commerce in the Western world began to lose its longstanding connection to Nature. Before this historical shift towards artificial materials--such as plastic--since the dawn of creation humanity used raw, organic materials, so the fact that we even have to use terms like Green and eco-friendly is truly absurd, even from an objective point-of-view, sad to say.

From ancient times to present times, the floor has continued to be the common place for sleeping and sitting when it comes to Japanese culture and architectural design. In those buildings where Tatami mates were used, footwear was and still is left in the genkan (entrance hall) before one would enter the first room as a way of protecting the mats. Since the floor has a quality of intimacy for the Japanese people, its traits and dimensions are valued highly when it comes to interior design. For example, the length of Tatami mats are virtually equal to the height of shoji screens and/or sliding partitions or doors. The number of mats necessary to cover a floor is used as a convenient way of “measuring” the size of a particular room, such as a 4-mat room (pun intended) or an eight-mat hallway.  

Macro-Purpose

The beauty of Tatami mats is that you can weave your own creative pattern with them. In Japan, this is almost considered an art-form, as you’ll discover if you ever visit a traditional tea-house in pretty much most countries that feature them as tourist attractions. At any rate, in Japan these patterns are believed to attract abundance and other positive experiences, and the rooms that highlighted these floor patterns were and still are called Washitsu rooms. This theme of abundance is exemplified when combined with other types of Japanese furniture, such as platform beds and shoji screens. The end result is a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, creating an atmosphere of harmony and simplicity that exudes a quiet sense of strength and a deep sense of peace. In case you’re wondering, the Japanese word for carpet or mat is Tatami .

About the Author:

This article was written by Mark Klosterman who worked at Haiku Designs.  Since its inception, Haiku Designs has provided the finest collections of modern furniture for home and offices. It offers all kinds of bedroom, living room, dining room, office furniture items and more. Apart from this, Haiku Designs also offers natural bedding, floor covering and other accessories.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Homage to Josef Albers: Writers Pay Tribute to a Pioneer of Minimalism

Josef Albers, “Homage to the Square” (1962), oil on Masonite, 24 x 24 inches (© 2016 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York)

In Josef Albers: Midnight and Noon, David Zwirner has put together a comprehensive book that looks both generally and specifically at Albers’ seminal Homage to the Square series, by way of various writers, including Nicholas Fox Weber, Elaine de Kooning, and Colm Tóibín. The contributors discuss their relationships to both the series and the artist, and the impact of both on their practice and understanding of art. The book is in response to an exhibition entitled Grey Steps, Grey Scales, Grey Ladders, which focused on the artist’s use of gray, black, and white throughout his career, and traveled from New York to London with David Zwirner Gallery between 2016 and 2017. This is the first time the gallery has curated a comprehensive show of Albers’s work.

Josef Albers, Midnight and Noon

“Every color, every form should speak with its own voice,” Albers explained in relation to the work he was more or less obsessed with from 1949 until his death in 1976. Homage to the Square is characterized by a superimposition of squares in distinct colors — often capturing two opposing moments, moods, times of day, or seasons — to explore the myriad possible visual effects through color and spatial relationships alone. In his introduction to the book, Nicholas Fox Weber, Executive Director of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, shares an anecdote about Albers: “I will never forget him showing me a grey-black Homage to the Square next to one composed of three different yellows. The paintings were the same size and the identical format: ‘You see, Nick,’ Josef said, his eyes widening with sheer delight. ‘Look at what you have in art! Midnight and noon at the same time. In life, they are never concurrent. But painting gives us unprecedented gifts.’”

The harmonious dualism found in each of Albers’s paintings in this series provides viewers with haiku-esque glimpses into suspended moments in time, hybridized within the borders of the canvas. The artist’s methodology grew out of his time spent in Germany as a teacher at the Bauhaus, where discipline in the act of art-making was paramount. Among the school’s rules was, as American architect Louis Sullivan explained, “form follows function.” Such a requirement can only lend itself to highly structural work, where geometry, color, and format mirror the triangulated relationship between artist, work, and viewer. But with the rise of Nazism came the permeation of repression, and by 1933, the Bauhaus School was forced to close its doors and Albers and his wife Anni fled the country for America. Albers arrived at a time when artists, as well as writers, dancers, and singers, were growing increasingly interested in interdisciplinary practices and experiments in form. He began his teaching residency at Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina, where students were required to consider the modern and the abstract in all mediums. Among his peers were Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, Robert Rauschenberg, and many others. Though the school only lasted until 1955, its ideology spread new artistic practices across the country like a pandemic.

Installation view of Josef Alber’s Grey Steps, Grey Scales, Grey Ladders (image courtesy of David Zwirner New York)

Josef Albers, Color Study, gouache on paper, 7 1/16 x 10 3/16 inches (© 2016 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York)

During this time, Albers was producing iteration after iteration of his square, feeding off the linguistic minds that surrounded him. One particular influence was poet Charles Olson, who, in his essay “Projective Verse,” qualifies poetic language as “energy transferred from where the poet got it … all the way over to, the reader … a high-energy construct and, at all points, an energy-discharge.” Albers doesn’t directly refer to Olson as an influence, but it’s clear that they were both thinking similar thoughts at simultaneous moments. While Olson (along with his dear friend, poet Robert Creeley) was trying to navigate notions of kinetic language, understanding how language could function within its own parameters without the need for a human to utter it. Albers was exploring the “choice of the colors used, as well as their order … [as] an interaction — influencing and changing each other forth and back.” So Albers was also considering variations of kinetics in painting, especially through the use of color, and, just like a writer experiences when she writes (as Elaine de Kooning articulately explains), was moving through “a long series of rejections — an arduous and complicated exercise of the element of choice.” This series of rejections is like sifting through a word bank to produce a line of text, just as Albers would, with a ruler, persistently, comb a blend of sounds and visual effects through color or word choice. All leading up to the sharp edge, the line break. As Irish novelist Colm Tóibín explains, “it is at the edge that much of the power emerges, the colors move in lovely conflict and sometimes fierce contrast and sometimes easy harmony. They throw light on each other.”

As a teacher at Black Mountain College and a pioneer of Minimalism and Abstraction, Albers discussed these notions with his students, who happened to also be writers thinking about how to redefine language with a sociopolitical purpose, to push the boundaries of the classical, and to move into postwar experimentation. It’s through works like Homage to the Square — works that existed over a long period of time, adapting to the ever-changing environment in which they were conceived — that the sharp edges of a painting, of a poem, of a dancing body, became smoother, if not legible.

Josef Albers, “Study for Homage to the Square: Lone Whites” (1963), oil on Masonite, 24 x 24 inches (© 2016 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York)

Josef Albers: Midnight and Noon is now available from David Zwirner Books.

The post Homage to Josef Albers: Writers Pay Tribute to a Pioneer of Minimalism appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[fivedollarradio]

Sequence is of the utmost importance in verbal thought and writing: “Dog bites man” and “Man bites dog” are fundamentally different statements. In the visual expression of that thought, sequence is irrelevant, yet there can be no confusion about who bit whom: A picture can simply show it, and show it all at once. Visual thinking produces whole, patterned expressions such as maps, symbols, and pictures. Verbal activity leads to sequences such as narratives and explanations. [...] 

Visual writers display difficulty in handling transitions and connectives. Because their primary mode of thought is spatial, visual thinkers lack the habit of relating one element precisely to the element that follows it. Juxtaposition-the jump-cut-is the visual thinker’s normal mode of transition. In extreme, visual writing sounds like haiku: briefly-evoked scenes abut one another without explanation. One professor described the writing of his artist wife as “jumping from island to island, without travelling down the freeway bridge that connects them.”

I don’t usually like “writing instructions” -- and it doesn’t really give them -- but I thought this was a good overview of some of the problems visual, or “spacial” thinkers have when writing. Sequencing is, by far, my biggest problem, especially with longer pieces, which is why I like blogging, Tumblr in particular (despite its flaws). 

[pick-art]

Poetic licence. (a SciArt blog)

In our poetry workshop Sam Illingworth covered a couple of poetic forms - the Nonet and the Haiku, and made some wider points about poetry and science, but also poetry and practice. The key points I took from the workshop were about the role of poetry in communication, and the importance of form in communicating the content of the poem. During the workshop Sam discussed his practice, and gave us the opportunity to both write and critique poetry – harking back to a previous session on the scientific method – and the importance of testing a hypothesis.

Sam discussed his project to turn the abstracts of science papers into poems – considering the importance of these in communicating the message of the research. This stems from an interest in the power of poetry as a communication device, but also from the idea that in creating poetry the scientific discovery can enter into society – and societal discourse more usefully (and arguably completely). That is to say that by engaging in an act of creation that forces reflection and ‘humanising’ of results, there is a more powerful connection between the distance of research, and the impact on ‘lived experience’.

In considering poetry as an aid to communication there is an interesting disconnect for me. As traditionally, in the literary canon poetry is often considered one of the more arcane or difficult branches of study; associated with layers of complexity and density of meaning – a fault perhaps of literary approaches to the forms as much as of the form in itself. Sam’s poetry – in its many forms, is performance poetry – he publishes written versions alongside recorded readings in his blog page, and the tradition of spoken word poetry is one that has for many years been outside the canon, but has come to the forefront over the last 50 years – moving from the beat poets of the 50s and 60s, through to influences on and from hip-hop, and the contemporary spoken word movement. (A good selection can be found in Poulin, A & Waters. 2001. M. Contemporary American Poetry. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company.)

At its heart, though, poetry is about economy of expression – saying the most in the most appropriate way. That is not to say that all poetry needs to be short – but the formal constraints can be an excellent way to process thought and ideas. Sam suggested that he likes to link the form of a poem to it's topic - as seen in his poem Going North for the Winter, where the decreasing form of the Nonet (a nine line poem, where the syllables decrease from 9 to 1 as the poem progresses) reflects the intention of the poem, which is:

"... inspired by research done at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which found that climate change is forcing the habitat of the snowshoe hare further north. With reduced snow cover meaning that it must shift its habitat in order to avoid lynx, coyotes and other predators." (Dr Sam Illingworth, @samillingworth, www.samillingworth.com).

This correlates to my own experience - especially in the thinking of Marxist literary and cultural theory, where the relation of form and content has been considered in terms of the relationship between base and superstructure in the work of Terry Eagleton (see Eagleton, T, 1982: Literary Theory an Introduction, Oxford, Blackwell for a useful beginning); and considered in a wider sense in relation to the cultural manifestation of Late Capitialism by Fredric Jameson, who considers that to understand postmodern culture we must read it as "allegory" - an allegory that is primarily spatial (pg51. Jameson, F. 1991. Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. London, Verso.)  

My own dalliance in poetry has helped form the direction of my practice for SciArt. Initially I chose the idea of journaling my experience of being diagnosed with type 1 Diabetes, and my experience on a subsequent drug trial and illustrating this. I have found ‘journaling’ to be an unhelpful expression – especially as I don’t have a typical daily diary (Although I do record my blood levels, and carb to insulin ratios regularly throughout the day (fig 1)- which has a visual potential, but apart from references in images I haven't yet been able to develop further).

Moreover, 'journal' suggests a more structured consideration of the situation – one that doesn’t correspond with the way in which I feel it impacts on me. For while a key aspect of diabetes is the need to manage your life, the sense of a calm, and rational approach associated with the word “manage” is not how the experience feels.

My solution has been to consider the journal in the form of the ‘free-verse’ of ‘beat poetry’. Whilst a definite form or structure to the work of the ‘beat poets’ is difficult to lay down, there are certain features that enable expression of ideas: the format is jazz inspired – looking for hooks and links, but being free-form, and encouraging improvisation; a syncopation of the rhythm – encouraged by line breaks; and a ‘playfulness’ with the form and spelling of words and use of rhyme. For me the syncopation of the form reflects the tension between the scientific rigor of ‘managing’ diabetes and the emotional exhaustion and frustration of the condition (there have been links made between diabetes and mental health issues Beyond Type 1, https://beyondtype1.org/lifestyles/mental-health/, 11:25, 30/1/17).

As covered in my last blog, the process of writing poetry has been developed by a process of drawing as interpretation – mind-mapping thoughts, and drawing responses in an overlapping process that both reveals images to inspire poetry, and in turn those poems produce images to develop. This dialectic of poetry and art works around my understanding of my diabetes both through lived experience, but also through my research into both the disease in general, but also immunology in more depth. In my last blog the poem "Life as a Test Tube"I focused in on the experience in relation to the process and the science of Type 1 Diabetes, whilst developing the images, and contemplating this blog I started to piece together snap-shots, building as sense of the narrative thrust, still using the free-verse/beat form/aesthetic, but adding as sense of dramatic rhetoric (and the title is very much working...):

Diabetic beginning.

 I start with a

                  constant

                         pounding

Present thirst,

                  and it        

          won’t

                  go.

 So I drink - craving

                                    sugar,

                  fizz,

                                    relief.

                                                      And Pee

                  and pee

                                    and pee (and itch).

                                     Thunder over the mountains,

                  quick sketches – snapshot

                                                      and I snap,

until

                  Stop! Stop?

 [GP] – poke, prick, piss, weigh

                                                      diastolic over systolic equals A&E.

Blood -    

                  Taken, shaken, spun and wrung

                                                      numbers float to the top.

Diabetic

                  Oh…

                                    Oh…

                  Does this mean? Does this mean? Not sure…

Questions

                  Answers

                  Oh…

                                    Oh…

                                                                        Testing further

                                    more blood, laying on my back – a sprawling cephalopod

                                                      reaching across limbs and heart

                                                                        waxing legs and chest…

                                                                                                            bleep…bleep…

                                                      (Oh shit)

A talk

                  A swirling of thoughts, flying debris of knowledge spinning from nowhere

Appointments –

                  Come back when? Then?

                  Oh…

                                    Oh…

                  A breath – back in the room…

‘s okay,

                  ‘s okay – ‘cos now I know,

                                                      now I know            

                                                                        and knowledge is… is… nice?

Blood – again

                  blood

                                    blood

type 1/type 2/type 2/type1… type 1

                  Oh..

                                    Oh…

Manage it

                  (Manage – a word that has inside

 a way of life to

                                                      survive,

                                    and thrive, but

                                                      for me holds nothing but the thought,

                                                                        that this philosophy is

                                                                                          an

                                                                                                            anathema to me –

                  strategies with blue-sky thinking,

data-driven,

                  system-based

                                    as though all inspiration can

                                                                        be quantified – and imagination denied.),

manage it –

                  needles, strips, lancets, testing kit, basel, bolus, glargine, insulin, ketoid, ketosis (ketoacidosis)                                                                      hyperglycaemic,

                                                                                          hypoglycaemic –

                                                      hypo,

                                                                        hypo

manage it –

                  diet, carbs not sugar – unless too low, insulin adjustment, split doses,

                                                      counting, calculating,

                                    good carbs, low carbs, no carbs

                                                                                          sugar when,

alcohol when,

                                    and don’t forget to divide by…

                                    exercise,

                                                      activity,

                                                                        stress…

                                                                                          and everyone is different…

                                    “Carbs and Cals”(without the cals) – book and app;

reading labels in the supermarket – phone checking,

narrowing down

                                    low, lower, lowest –

                                                      conjugating taste into numbers – experience to data.

                  Rebellion – I will eat!

                  Challenge accepted – spices, herbs, pulses –

weighing, weighing – times, then divide

                                    (One pot – one equation)

                                                      walking, thinking, testing.

Pin prick, finger prick – you’re a….

                                    check - test, record,

                                                      write it down,

                                    analyse,

                                                      sort – think it through, work

                                                                        it out – hypothesise,

apply – inject – suck it up,

                  make a note,

                                    save for later,

look back on,

                  compare with…

                                    see how trends develop

                                                      trial and error

                                                                        error and trial.

 Find a routine, find a rhythm,

                                                      find a way to fit it in.