no2self.net

I’ve just submitted my entries to the Ericsson ‘Fourteen Days‘ competition. You can see them by clicking here (mine are the ones that say ‘posted by eversion’ on them).

My opening gambit:

It begins. I catalogued the first 14.

A series of 14 photos, one taken per day during the very first 14 days of my moblogging career. Some you will have seen before on my own page, others will be new; both in image and underlying story. I shall be exposing a little more of my life than I usually do.

All were taken with an Ericsson T610.

Following my previous dalliances with that odd French philosophy, deconstruction; I’ve just added to the list of philosophers break-up lines over at ‘Thoughts, Arguments and Rants’ (found via growabrain).

Deconstructivist: ‘I don’t even know if it’s about me or about you, I can’t tell what’s right or wrong. All I know is that something has come between us and from where I’m standing it looks like we’re in the middle of breaking up.’

(and for extra pathos)

Deconstructivist: ‘Ohh, I don’t know whether I want to live or die!’

• Eyetrack III
  

  ‘…While testing our participants’ eye movements across several news homepage designs, Eyetrack III researchers noticed a common pattern…’ (via boingboing.net)

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New Street, Birmingham City Centre. 1:45pm. Buskers. Looked like this:

Sounded like this (1.2 Mb mp3 link)

• Steve Reich – Clapping Music
  

  click on Multimedia/Video – found via disquiet.com

• Growl Karaoke
  

  Posted for Jono and his band, Seraphidian.

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I was hoping to finish a ‘proper’ blog entry this evening, but once again the hours have slipped through my fingers and I’m left with only minutes. Gone are the days when I would just ignore the natural desire for sleep and work on into the night. Instead I shall quickly hypertextualise my day.

(I must be tired. I just got up to pour some boiling water onto some white tea and reached for the iron instead of the kettle.)

One of the reasons for this evening’s disappearance is that I got a text message from a friend reminding me that Channel 4 were broadcasting the documentary ‘Fight for Ground Zero’. My pizza and I watched it together. It charts the design development of Libeskind‘s masterplan for the WTC site. It also charts the way the project has been completely hijacked by the land owner and his architect David Childs. I’ve had disparaging things to say about Libeskind in the past, but this time it’s pretty clear that he was right and everyone else was wrong. Whilst he was agonising over the grain of the masterplan, Childs was only interested in pumping his erection up to new heights. The old cliche about male architects and towers was writ large throughout the program.

I also got a running commentary throughout from my friend via text message (who was well placed to critique it from a distance, being neither a male or an architect). Highlights included; Bet you like the short fella’s design and Typical architect…wearing all black. She was right on both counts.

Flashback to lunch. A trip to the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery to see ‘Life on the Vale’ – an exhibition that shows work inspired by the the Castle Vale housing estate in Castle Bromwich. We’ve been working on the estate in various roles for about ten years. I’m still very proud of some of the new housing that we designed there. So I was delighted to find that one of our projects featured in the photographic work of Richard Harris. That particular project is quite dear to me, as the CAD model I made in the early stages of the design was used as part of a study on consultation and virtual reality. I’ve had fun touting it at seminars in the past.

And so to the remainder of this evening. Revisiting the link that Matt sent me, I’ve been listening to some radio interviews whilst drawing a cross section. One of the most interesting being David Adjaye, in conversation with Isabel Hilton.

Hilton: What do you like about having artists as clients?

Adjaye: Artist’s vision and artist’s clarity. An artist struggles to resolve something clearly because they have to manifest it very clearly. Architects, generally, have to manifest things but they are embroiled with the business of technique and problem solving and I think it can sometimes be a problem in itself and a resolution in itself; and the art of architecture, I think, sometimes gets lost in this process.

Note to self: That’s me, that is. I lose site of the art in all the process and technique. This is exactly why my love of Anish Kapoor’s work feels so dirty.

In the middle of all that lot, a photo on moblog.co.uk got me thinking about euclidean space. Which, in turn, lead me to axiomatic systems.

In mathematics, an axiomatic system is any set of axioms from which some or all axioms can be used in conjunction to logically derive theorems. A mathematical theory consists of an axiomatic system and all its derived theorems. An axiomatic system that is completely described is a special kind of formal system; usually though the effort towards complete formalisation brings diminishing returns in certainty, and a lack of readability for humans.

Do you see how those two quotes collide with each other? Boom! As my friend Bobby H would say (ask him for the full story when he pops up on the comments later).

Finally, you should all watch for tonights linklog as it has a couple of great discoveries. Two links from entirely different ends of the musical spectrum, sharing a medium as common ground – both are flash movies. With this in mind it’s quite possible that they are so far apart that they meet up, like communism and fascism, somewhere round the back. As I once heard Lars Spuybroek say at an RIBA lecture, A Straight Line Is Just A Badly Informed Curve.

A rather neat axiom to finish this euclidean (data)space with.

Message for Joel: Check out the intersite references on that! Also, here is another leg for you.

• www.trees4tranquillity.co.uk
  

  ‘…these young trees are not Bonsai to start with they only become so, by your training…’

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• Computer Arts Magazine – Daniel Brown wins coveted designer of the year prize
  

  I’ve just realised that I neglected to add the results to my previous entry on the 2004 Designer of the Year

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• Things Magazine: latest entry
  

  ‘…Surely the building can’t embody great beauty and unspeakable ugliness at the same time?..’

• Modernist Dolls House
  

  ‘..comes with plexiglass sliding doors, beech furnishings, a kitchen island and shower…’

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