Postcard from Copenhagen

Dear People at South Pole Station.

Its been a long time since I have seen you woolen sweater dressed guys. This night I had a dream similar to the one from Fight Club where a tiny penguin appears with a soft voice and says "slide". In these days I am sliding to much north I believe.
I really miss the feeling of being in an international territory full of undistributed oil fields. I miss the landscape that has so often provided us with a feeling of infinity and love.

I brought my globe to Copenhagen and have decided to turn it up side down so that every time I look at it my dear South Pole looks right back at me and makes me feel as if I was feet up and head down.

Hope to see you soon, over, under and between the ice.


Yours sincerely,
Anders Krogdal

from South Pole Workshop webcam

12KUBE

To whom it may concern,

I am currently involved in the development of a project for an art-festival-rave-exhibition planned for an undisclosed point of time this future. The working title is 12KUBE, and the skinny is basically a setup for 12 separate exhibition spaces for 12 invited artists, all housed in a large venue yet to be defined.

In this process I'm looking into developing a scheme that is universal, site-unspecific, and incorporate ideas from our collective interest in emergent behaviour, game theory and to some extent perhaps situationism applied in architecture. The overall aim is primarily to investigate a spatial organization detached from traditional functionalist paradigms, with aims to establish an architecture that is inhabited or occupied rather than executed as part of program, meaning an effort to fertilize natural bottom-up emergant behavioural patterns.

This is of course a paradox, and this is where any discussion of such ideas begins. How to design a system of non-design? And isn't any large gathering of individuals inherently subject to emergent behaviour?

What follows is a series of initial sketches, outlining the basic premise.

For those not familiar with Conway's Game Of Life, here is some further reading hypertext:

http://www.math.cornell.edu/~lipa/mec/lesson6.html

http://www.leda-tutorial.org/en/official/ch02s02s02.html

and a playable java-version

What I find interesting in this approach is the potential of colliding organizational systems, the overall configuration of the space is generated by a simple set of rules. The collision as such comes into effect when human agents operate in the negative, left-over/in-between-space the first system dictates, and their own operational agendas as participants.

The interior of the cubes themselves will of course also play a large part, and attract or detract attention in relation with their content, and I assume various architectural or other attributes will become relevant, in particular use of light, sound, heat. I would propose to keep the main hall largely darkened, with potential to temporarily illuminate sections of the space to stage ephemeral, pop-up performance/eventspaces that in theory could occur at any place or at any time within the darkened space. These events could be utilized as catalysts to temporarily activate unpopular parts of the playing field effectively "breaking the fourth wall" by making the participants momentarily self-aware. To further underline the potentials of the concept, I would also propose eventual seating arrangements to be mobile, lightweight and singular, this importance made evident in this film (@20:20), which I also highly recommend watching in full.

There are different approaches to the kind of games Conway's "Game of Life" represents, if not only in terms of geometric similarities. A familiar example is the simple game of tic-tac-toe, as mentioned in the leda tutorial. Another example to some extent, the windows classic minesweeper. Another more prolific, the japanese game GO.

Below is a set of investigations I did during todays lecture on modern day virtue-ethics. Incidentally, the flipside provided me with the alternative tic-tac-toe approach, produced some months earlier at a similar event.

The rules I experimented with included the following: Each cube may create clusters, but no larger than three in size. Clusters may join orthogonally or diagonally, with a maximum length of two cubes orthogonally, and three diagonally. Spacing between clusters are related to their size, a cluster of two may not be in closer proximity to another cluster than two cubes, singles may be positioned within a single cube's distance. This complicated exercise in parametric design was performed using a supercomputer.

The alternative tic-tac-toe exercise followed standard championship rules. X vs O, five in a row wins and ends the game.

That is all for now. Any feedback is appreciated. The project is a collaboration with and the brain-child of Michael Hare.

The manifest that was not

Some time ago AK suggested that I should write a Manifest of NO, in order to help me to control my time and energy; simply to learn to say no to things. It was a great idea, and just bringing the idea to the surface of my streams of thoughts has helped me with small and bigger choices.

However, I have decided not to write the manifest.

Mysterious dust miracles

Here he is; Sai Baba curing the illness in life with mysterious dust. You might recognize the sleeve.

sketch.comment on ET (binary flower)

Vedrørende joints.angående rumlig udfordring af konceptet. Bemærk de to små streger på midten af den midterste triangel. Det er vidst nok en teleskopisk approach.

Prototyping 5th of April 2010

At this point, the investigation is about how to get the maximum overall movement of the structure out of the 100 mm movement of each linear actuator.

Update 6th of april:


It's a bit hard to control how the two upper joints are acting (in relation to each other), but this seems to be a way to maximize the movement and beeing in control of the joints.

DUST by Ujin Lee and Tom Edwards

photo snatched from www.ujinlee.com

Ujin Lee and Tom Edwards is currently working on this project called DUST. It says on the web site, that the project is in progress, why there is very little information to find about the thoughts behind the project.

As we are at South Pole Station exploring the 'aesthetics of dust' I find this project interesting as a kind of research. It seems that they are working with dust in a global sense, as it can occur everywhere - indoors awa outdoors.

The dust clouds created by Lee and Edwards contains traces of an explosion (horizontal lines), which leads me to the thought that they are 'created' as artifacts more than 'observed' as unexplainable natural phenomena. The aesthetics of theese explosions is powerful and agressive yet quiet as they lift them selves from the ground.

Will you ever be able to find a dust cloud like this without seeing to guys with a trigger and a camera?

I think it is important for the next takes on the 'aesthetics of dust' that we explore more closely the ephemeral qualities in the dust, and of cause, treat the dust as clouds instead of explosions.

SPSRG #1

Dear co-workers and readers,

A few days ago i re-read the text "Hamnstadens flöden" by Karl Palmås (swedish only), which once again caught my attention since it seems to combine my approaches to life in general with how I approach architecture and cities. Simply it's about flow and emergence, rather than the creation of static stuctures.

Even though things (buildings for example) seems static, they are always a part of a bigger flux, it's just a question of the (time) frame and focus. In addition to "Hamnstadens flöden", I read a talk, also by Karl Palmås, about an updated perception of Koyaanisqatsi, Godfrey Reggio's masterpiece from 1982. At first seen Palmås writes, Koyaanisqatsi was a critique of our way to civilize mother earth. However, seen today Koyaanisqatsi is much more of an understanding of how our civilization emerges.



After those readings, I decided to look closer on Palmås sources and references, and two names caught my attention: Manuel De Landa and Steven Berlin Johnson.

For those intersted, co-writers or readers, I have compiled a reading list, and you are welcome to join SPSRG #1 (South Pole Station Reading Group #1) by reading one or more of these books within the upcoming 6 months (or so).

Steven Berlin Johnson - Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software (2001)
Steven Berlin Johnson - The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How it Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World (2006)
Manuel De Landa - A New Philosophy of Society (2006)
Manuel De Landa - A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (1997)
Manuel De Landa - Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (2002)
Manuel De Landa - War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (1991)

As we carry on our readings, situations for discussion will surely emerge.

tips and nominations

"Arg Dot Org"

Behind the slightly cryptical adress http://a.aaaarg.org/ [Arg Dot Org] is a really nice theoretical .pdf archive hiding. Many text that I've had a hard time to find in libraries and on other online sources has been available there. One good feature is that you are able to compile an "issue" of different text and share it with other. For example for a workshop or studio. Its really worth checking out! (Nominated by JI)

#

"WFMU"

Liz Berg choosing from the huge WFMU archive
Photo: Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

The New Jewsey freeform radio station WFMU, is nominated for it's 51 years of 'free form' radio activity, giving completely independence to the DJs - which can be extremely dangerous, but in this case turns out as brilliant inspiration. Furthermore we would like to recommend WFMU for it's preciseness and niceness.
...and as they say: ' We'll Never Leave Your Cake Out In The Rain." (nominated by AKN)

www.wfmu.org

Detour dust-Easthetics Exhibition?

'aesthetics of dust'_initial easthetics

'aesthetics of dust'_detour 1_digital grid
'aesthetics of dust'_detour 2_ ASCII

Is it possible somehow to arrange a kind of exhibition in the realm of SPS; considering the'easthetics of dust'as the theme of the exhibition; presented as video.
And then, explore the one million detours possible to communicate the ecxact same 'data' ideas presented in the dust-videos.
In other words; what happens if we see the 'detours' as a kind of encrytion, through which we modify the basic easthetic set of rules.

Here is a piece of paper dotted with various inks, and lead, describing some initial ideas for how this would come to be, photographed.

The Ideas sketched out so far summed up are:

i) alphabet/sign wall/box

ii) ascii relief

a general statement about communication is established, and the various conventions communication is communicated with.

we welcome the next detour

SPS-medarbejdere i medierne #2

A little bit nervous the South Pole Station co-founder Jakob Ingemansson presents the Urban Strategy of "The Fifth Ecology" at Gallery 727 Downtown Los Angeles. More

The aesthetics of dust3.txt.avi

I have the text file saved for further ping-pong.

The aesthetics of dust3.txt

Transition Video - Raw material

During my last travels I've videorecorded the internal airport transit rides. All shots are through the sidewindows of the different shuttles/trains/trams/etc.

I'm interested in this nomansland that is designed with transit as the only purpose. Which views/sceneries are there? How do my senses react to this environment? Are these transits similar all over the world / is the design generic?

I have (as for now) four different shot and I'm a bit unsure of how to go on with the material. I tried to put the different shots after eachother but the clib simply becomes too long / i'm too restless to watch it all.

I've been thinking of putting each one of the movies on one projector, then to be screened from the middle of a room/space so you get one shot in each direction. Then somehow the sound should be edited as well.

Anyway, here comes the raw material and feel free to ping-pong!

Transition - Raw material part 1
Transition - Raw material part 2
Transition - Raw material part 3
Transition - Raw material part 4

Designing/orchestrating disappearence

well, the first intuitive answer must be yes. Could the grid then instead be placed directly on site, and not imposed afterward in illustrator? Painting on the street, on a wall, placing a constructed grid?

Today i went to Fuglsang Museum in the very south of DK to see an exhibition on the theme TREES. This photo is the reason I went there. The way the tree is orchestrated... is stunning and in a sense ephimeral.


Photo: Myoung Ho Lees 'Tree #3'
Text: Anders Krogdal

Representation / tool?

Can "The Easthetics of Dust" be transformed from representation to tool? Can a mapping of the visual and physical densifications/sprawls be used as a tool in a design process? Can these spatial mappings/tools/design processes also involve time?

Photo-edit by Magnus Ohren.
Text by Jakob Ingemansson.