nothing 8 about october.
I have nothing for you except a room with a fluorescent light bulb and white walls and bad decor. so good bye.
Mastering a Language
The struggle of learning a new language is the same in any discipline. Much of my adult life has revolved around my need, obsession with getting in touch with cultural roots that I have been chasing out of thirst and an unexplainable emptiness. Language is the largest factor disconnecting me from a culture I thought I was apart of, I thought had ownership over me. I have made failed attempts of planning three month trips to Pakistan during which I would ideally submerge myself so deeply into a world I had previously only known from two week –long trips. In these dreams I would become an expert in speaking advanced Urdu and writing novels and letters with words that I had previously only known in English. In these dreams I would have long conversations with the cousins that I stutter with and failingly insert English when I try to speak Urdu today. In that dream, I no longer stand in the in between space. I still chase that dream.
Learning the language of architecture has been similar, but the chase exists in different terms. Like a newborn learning how to swim, the transition between air and water is brief and goes unnoticeable, as the newborn is instinctively forced to learn the ways of the new medium in which it exists. Learning to live and function in the world of academic architecture has been the same. As we were thrown into the water first semester, the challenges that we were faced with allowed me to have the same yearning of finding a fitting culture, experience the same discomforts of feeling in an in between place, and eventually realizing a place of comfort should not exist unless I want to stop learning.
The spatial complexity of ideas, physical and nonphysical spaces that exist in our world, in our cultures, will continue to require redesign in our eyes as long as we want it. Cultures of every medium will continue to cross pollinate ideas as long as we find passion in methods of exploration, betterment, social responsibility. As long as we obsess over learning new languages and are put in the circumstances where we can thrive the most, our words will always be our work.
Jelly Bean Horse
I wish
there was an animal that looked and had the material properties of a jellybean. I wish it could float, but not too high, and if there were too many ants around, they could murder the jellybean horse. Jelly bean horse wouldn’t have a face, just like jellybean, and people could buy domesticated jellybeans horses for labor or play based on their flavors. Harry Potter jellybean horses would be way more expensive since the breed is far beyond the typical jellybean horse flavor. Jellybean horses wouldn’t make animal sounds, but they would, in showing emotion, emit sugar just in the same way sweat emerges from a persons body. However, the sugar would be emitted from all over the jellybean horse, not just where human and animal sweat glands typically lie.
I need to wash my hair.
Make the F***ing I-beam
I really don’t know the jargon of architecture that I wish I knew. Maybe I say that not realizing that I’ve undergone a year of listening to critics talking about ’systemiticity’ (while I’m editing this theres a red underline under that word), spatial violations, transitory experiences and the idea of making an f-ing i-beam. Heather Flood was my instructor last semester and one of the first things she told us as we embarked on building 1/2 scale models of case study houses out of bass wood was “If there’s an ibeam in your building, MAKE the f***ing I-beam”. I’ll tell you the truth. Starting at sciarc, I really had no idea about the conventions of architecture and built environments, and considered a steel beam a steel beam and nothing else. What the heck was an I-beam? It had to be more complicated than just an I-shaped beam right? It had to have some sort of supernatural properties that would allow for it to only be used in case study houses right? I’m an idiot. As I have been on many occasions assuming that something said must mean it comes in the most complicated form. In fact, an I-beam was just an I-beam, as an L-beam is or a C-beam. I youtubed I-beam that night and watched a three minute educational video from the early 90s about why I-beams were super strong because of their shape. These were the booger ridden apprentices of Bill Nye that knew far more than I ever did. Maybe the supernatural thing wasn’t so far off. So that first week of school, the word I-beam was total jargon.
Our group never really got over the over dramatic delivery of such a statement and we often try to relive the moment that sort of started our imprisoned lives at sciarc. So with the obvious (often unintended) humor in what our instructors present us on a daily basis, also comes the ridiculousness of discussing unheard of architects, concepts in seemingly nonexistent places, and basically trying to learn the language of the field.
I was thinking about something else before I started writing. I was thinking about the idea of precision as it relates to caring about what others think, and the dominant group involved. Do dominant groups decide the degree of precision? So far that’s what it seems in school. Or does precision stem from an individuals interests and the context to which they succeed in their lives? If I write a paper, with proper MLA citations, getting my point across to an audience and writing about what I’ve always wanted to write about, is it considered precise and acceptable. I guess I shouldn’t say the two fall under the same category. But I was just thinking that if I write something more raw, totally unedited and getting everything I feel out in the open, is that considered more precise because it’s more truthful? It’s really a simple idea that I haven’t thought too much about and am hoping to address fully in these writings. Anyway, precision at school lies in making the f***ing ibeam and making sure it’s not mistaken for a cue tip. or harpoon. Or other pointy linear elements.
so…I hate precision
So, it starts with me hating precision. I don’t hate things that are precise, but for me, achieving precision in the visual sense has always seemed like the most wrong idea I could come across. Probably wrong in the sense that I was afraid of it. If I ever made a painting, the painting ended in 2 scenarios. The first being, that I was so excited to start the painting, the same excitement would ignite me to finish it, and I would rush through it, with decisions that I wasn’t necessarily aiming for, and it turn into just crazy. I use crazy as a noun. Just plain crazy. The second scenario would be me trying to hard to do this painting according to my original intentions that I would just get so bored of holding on to a patience that wasn’t natural, I just wouldn’t finish the painting. There’s more than enough examples of my work that has gone unfinished out of a boredom or out of thinking that one day I would be inspired as I was that day and I would magically finish the painting. Whatever that means. It hasn’t happened yet. The woman who’s hand was supposed to be painted 2 years ago, still doesn’t have a hand, or the background I intended her to have.
So I was afraid of being precise. Maybe lazy? Maybe I just don’t understand that my work is my work and I can’t convince myself that a painting has to be finished. I don’t know what I’m saying. But anyway, a lot of rash decisions have come from wanting to be finished with something that has always turned into not being precise. Even in junior high when I didn’t want to do a math problem, I genuinely thought I could fool my teacher by giving an answer that looked like different transvestite numbers that where as interchangeable as the giant digital thermometer outside of the bank, even though my numbers were clearly written in purple ink on a stagnant piece of yellowed wide rule paper. But I knew they could see through my charade, but I still did it. I was never good at math until Mrs. August convinced me that numbers can’t change when you write them down on paper, copying them from your math book. Somehow I started actually enjoying calculus in college, so maybe precision was getting on my good side, but probably only with numbers.
If I decide to straighten my hair, the left side of my head totally gets neglected, out of laziness? I’m not sure, but I always hate how much puffier the left side is than the right, and I rarely do anything about it. I hate precision and somehow I’ve come to hate the results of being imprecise. I can’t go into how much this has transformed going from art school to architecture school, but there will be more than enough posts dedicated to it.
On a good side note, that I hope I’m not imprecise with, my friend jo and I are beginning documentation of Greg Lynn’s new exhibit at sciarc. We’re the official bloggers for the entire project, so I’ll be putting up a link for the site soon. It’s pretty exciting actually.
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