CONVERGENCE DESIGN | BLOG

hyper-ink: pixels

cnverge — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 18:20:23 +0000

The pixel is a perfect little digi-unit. It is prototypical and scalable, ranging from fragments of an image to large scale three dimensional objects (like monumental Tetris blocks, descending on cities). The whole process of digital organization still relies on two-dimensional boards and chips, but we get to enjoy the illusion of three-dimensional images from increasingly sophisticated processors and graphics programs.

Don Releya’s Systemic Sky uses generative video to process HD footage to deconstruct the frames into vectors. Reyela’s videos explore the relationship between western culture vs. nature, through use of “rigid order” vs. “organic shapes of clouds”. It’s a common theme, but is beautifully done. Releya says:

Systemic Sky is a symbolic representation of the battle between nature and modern western culture. The sky represents nature and the algorithm represents technology driven culture. In Systemic Sky the organic shapes of the clouds are in constant conflict with the systemic algorithm that subdivides the sky and attempts to impose rigid order.

Pixels is a urban narrative of video game characters done by Patrick Jean at One More Productions in Paris. This is a favorite- scaled characters take over and destroy the modern city. It satisfies the desire for apocalyptic imagery, fear of the inevitable takeover of technology, the city as scenery, and the idea of urban games. It’s the upscale of these pixelated characters that both intrigue and horrify- these cute little robots are terrorizing the shit out of NYC…but they’re so cute!

A bit ago, Invader had a show at Jonathan Levine Gallery- his public project posted tiles representing 8-bit characters from Space Invaders throughout cities like LA, Paris, and London. It seems a bit different from tagging, as he was using a more substantial material- he also thought of this as a kind of urban game, creating maps to find them, and giving points for finding each.

I have a feeling the materiality was influenced by Toynbee Tiles- substantial rubber tiles that started appearing in large cities in the 70s. According to the Wiki, the origin of the idea comes from Experiences, a book of Arnold Toynbee’s:

Human nature presents human minds with a puzzle which they have not yet solved and may never succeed in solving, for all that we can tell. The dichotomy of a human being into ‘soul’ and ‘body’ is not a datum of experience. No one has ever been, or ever met, a living human soul without a body… Someone who accepts – as I myself do, taking it on trust – the present-day scientific account of the Universe may find it impossible to believe that a living creature, once dead, can come to life again; but, if he did entertain this belief, he would be thinking more ‘scientifically’ if he thought in the Christian terms of a psychosomatic resurrection than if he thought in the shamanistic terms of a disembodied spirit. (Experiences, p. 139-142)

hyper-ink: adzookie dot com cul de sac

cnverge — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 06:53:58 +0000

if you are an american who uses the internet, then you likely have seen this picture already:

my (sub)urban obsessed-heart exploded with shrapnel of joy and horror when i saw it. i picked three of my initial, kneejerk reactions to point out, though I am certain an entire doorstop of a book could (and should) be written about the Adzookie estate(s).

1. it is a brilliant advertising strategy—sensational within the neighborhood, kitschy and tacky enough to make people smile/become infuriated/whatever, cos either way, they will talk about your company. It’s looping consumerism back onto itself, where we can delightfully imagine it spiralling totally and tragically out of control. ads on mailboxes to subsidize the USPS; genetically modified shrubs that are branded to spell monsanto in topiary form; animated glazing that responds with ads as you walk your dog by a home. your suburban neighborhood would become like an interactive video game, but with lawnmowers and nissans.

2. it’s an integral piece of the facade- a physical and psychological barrier between the realms of private and civic space. in the american landscape, the facade of a structure or the grounds of an estate are the landmark of a democratic society. jefferson had the doric columns of monticello and the open, rolling expanse of lawn—the structure a robust assertion that dominated the sublime landscape. we now have the adzookie dot com in the cul-de-sac, an adoption of consumerism and global linkages that delivers returns, thereby allowing further consumption and networking. the adzookie estate not just a symbol, but a brand of our american democracy.

3. it is an exercise in augmented reality, but also, uh, reality. the graphic/house is just made for google street-view. It actually places the real-life user in a modified, real reality that mimics virtual reality. We’re starting to blur the practice between model-making and implementation, construction and conjecture. the technology is acting upon while simultaneosly is being acted upon. The recriprocal relationship with the built environment is being manipulated in distinct ways to form a singular obscurity of form. This series of strange new spatial relationships is arriving at a singular cloud of multiple realities, virtual physicalities, altered digital constructions that result in physical signs, symbols that form networks of information! kurzweillians rejoice!

hyper-ink: happy birthday, siri…

cnverge — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 19:20:08 +0000

Happy birthday to Siri Husvedt! I think she is a fascinating human, writing about fascinating neurological anomalies. I’m always rather refreshed by her perspective, as she accepts the quirks, jerks and strange surprises that our minds and bodies produce, embracing the unknown with a sense of humor and hope.

Here is an excerpt from NPR’s Writer’s Almanac:

It’s the birthday of novelist Siri Hustvedt, born in Northfield, Minnesota (1955). She is the author of four novels, The Blindfold (1992), The Enchantment of Lily Dahl (1996), What I Loved (2003), and The Sorrows of an American (2008). For years, her talent as a writer was often given less attention than her marriage to the novelist Paul Auster, a darling of the New York literary scene. After she published The Blindfold, one journalist even suggested that her husband had written it for her.

Her big breakthrough was the novel What I Loved, which got rave reviews. It took her six years to write. She said: “I redrafted it over and over. It just wasn’t good enough; the tone wasn’t right. Finally, in that last draft, I hit it. You feel it. It’s a strange thing about writing fiction; there’s a sense of rightness and wrongness.”

Most recently, she turned away from novel writing and published a memoir, The Shaking Woman; or, A History of My Nerves (2010). A few years ago, she was speaking at a memorial service for her father at St. Olaf College in Northfield, where he had been chairman of the Norwegian department. In the middle of her speech, she suddenly started shaking uncontrollably, her knees knocking and arms flailing. Her skin turned a strange color. But her speech and thoughts remained completely clear. She was disturbed by this episode, and wondered if and how it connected to other dramatic health issues in her past. She said: “As a child I had what I called ‘lifting feelings.’ Every once in a while, I had a powerful internal sensation of being pulled upward, as if my head were rising, even though I knew my feet hadn’t left the ground. This lift was accompanied by what can only be called awe — a feeling of transcendence.” During her honeymoon, in a gallery in Paris, her arm had jerked suddenly and slammed her against a wall, and she spent a year in doctor’s offices and was even hospitalized, taking every combination of drugs they could think to prescribe in an attempt to ward off terrible, constant headaches. There was the time she hallucinated and saw a tiny, pink version of Paul Bunyan and Babe, his blue (now pink) ox, sitting on her bed. In The Shaking Woman, Hustvedt sorted through all the neurological and psychiatric disorders that might be at play in her own condition, and she wrote about the fuzzy lines in a disease that is, finally, impossible to diagnose, and that affects her mental world and her conception of herself as much as just her body.

She wrote:
“Every sickness has an alien quality, a feeling of invasion and loss of control that is evident in the language we use about it. No one says, ‘I am cancer’ or even ‘I am cancerous,’ despite the fact that there is no intruding virus or bacteria; it’s the body’s own cells that have run amok. One has cancer. Neurological and psychiatric illnesses are different, however, because they often attack the very source of what one imagines is one’s self. ‘He’s an epileptic’ doesn’t sound strange to us. In the psychiatric clinic, the patients often say, ‘Well, you see, I’m bipolar’ or ‘I’m schizophrenic.’ The illness and the self are fully identified in these sentences. The shaking woman felt like me and not like me at the same time. From the chin up, I was my familiar self. From the neck down, I was a shuddering stranger. What ever had happened to me, what ever name would be assigned to my affliction, my strange seizure must have had an emotional component that was somehow connected to my father. The problem was that I hadn’t felt emotional. I had felt entirely calm and reasonable. Something seemed to have gone terribly wrong with me, but what exactly? I decided to go in search of the shaking woman.”

I bought her most recent book for myself during the Christmas season (oops) and am looking forward to reading it in the park this spring…

artifact: valentine’s day

cnverge — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 13:00:10 +0000

happy valentine’s day! hate it or love it, today is the day you quantify your relationship:

you have someone you can connect with

you have someone you can hook up with:

you have your fantastic self and some russel stovers:

but really, let’s get some perspective here…it’s february 14th! we are halfway through the worst month of the year!

artifact: i’ve seen flies

cnverge — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 20:04:13 +0000

as my lone flat of wheatgrass has died a slow, dry death due to excessive steam heat and an overworked caretaker…just when february has got me DOWN…my compadres in brooklyn show us how to keep the spring spirit alive and well. erik martig, a landscape architect, bike-builder and mustard-maker (of brothers martig mustard) is showing how to use what ya’ got to make some delicious brew of soil. he’s seeing flies…

[please also notice my dot dot dots in the background amongst the spokes.]

this city is mine is a blog by the multi-talented andrew nicholas.

extraction: philly dot dot dot

cnverge — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 08:44:54 +0000

i’m makin’ dots! i have determined that it takes +/- 6 months to properly settle in to a new geographic location… it’s been awhile, my dear philly, but this is the result. according to my distracted tallies, this represents pop. est. +/- 6862.

hyper-link: so mod

cnverge — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 03:40:28 +0000

internet, you’re so mod. and hilarious.

this post from unhappy hipsters is ripe-

hyper-link: l’oranges

cnverge — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 00:17:11 +0000

this photo from honest fare is a perfectly lovely representation of my day- inside a sunny apartment eating vitamin c, looking out from my foggy head and frost-covered paned windows. 20 degrees with a cold, yet somehow nice and cozy…

artifact: gauss pdf

cnverge — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 04:25:01 +0000

i’m happy to announce the launch of gauss pdf, a publisher of “digitally-based works” and digibrain of j. gordon faylor.

GAUSS (software), a software package
Gauss (crater), a crater on the moon
Gauss (ship), a German research ship
Gauss (unit), a unit of magnetic flux density or magnetic induction

featuring Kieran Daly, Astrid L’Orange & Josef Kaplan/Aaron Araki, Andy Martrich/Tyler Kinney, Lola Galla, Colin Helb, Marc Maffei and… me! It is all available for disemmination/bastardization.

well, its… complex.

cnverge — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 01:42:54 +0000

one of my extractions was featured in faslanyc.