annexLAB is now bohmLAB

we've decided to name our lab in homage to our dearly missed computer prof, thomas seebohm:

introducing bohmLAB


http://bohmlab.posterous.com/

Moral Judgement v. Social Breach

Thought du jour

I step over to his table and give him a medium hello, and he looks up and gives me a medium hello right back, for, to tell the truth, Maury and I are never bosom friends.

– Damon Runyon

From today's Social Studies (Globe and Mail):

Our inappropriate age

“No words are more typical of our moral culture than ‘inappropriate' and ‘unacceptable,'” Edward Skidelsky writes for Prospect magazine. “They seem bland, gentle even, yet they carry the full force of official power. When you hear them, you feel that you are being tied up with little pieces of soft string. Inappropriate and unacceptable began their modern careers in the 1980s as part of the jargon of political correctness. They have more or less replaced a number of older, more exact terms: coarse, tactless, vulgar, lewd. They encompass most of what would formerly have been called ‘improper' or ‘indecent.' An affair between a teacher and a pupil that was once improper is now inappropriate; a once indecent joke is now unacceptable. This linguistic shift is revealing. Improper and indecent express moral judgments, whereas inappropriate and unacceptable suggest breaches of some purely social or professional convention. … Calling your action indecent appeals to you as a human being; calling it inappropriate asserts official power.”

Nixie Tubes!

More about the "ArduiNIX" here! 

form

onthewaytoschool

is a place
(notthisplace)

form
generated form
i've exasperated don
(which somehow secretly satisfys me)
i know i spelled that wrong
i'm somehow actively resisting form
and desperately trying to figure out how to get it back
it's not that i can't put pen to paper...it's that i wont

to dwell

i'm mystified...i admit...i'm trying to understand achim menges' postagriculture project

(thisisn'tit) this is a dead baby bird everyday i walk to school when it's spring there is a wall just before i get to school it is framed almost an alley (but not quite) and birds nest in the holes in the wall holes from beams (it's an old building) and from the nests fall baby birds who couldn't quite fly or who were blown out by cruel winds truely cruel not metaphorically really cruel

they lie. small. featherless. or featherlittle. on the grey pavingstones that are the necessary and natural ground plane on which sits our red school.

the domain of the school is marked by those pavers. stepping off them is leaving...

form
achim menges is much smarter than me

On Graduation, Procrastination, and Humility

"triumph" seems too meek a word to describe the accomplishments of this woman!

 i wish for the optimism and tenacity of  dr. tererai trent.

From the New York Times

November 15, 2009

Op-Ed Columnist

Triumph of a Dreamer

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Any time anyone tells you that a dream is impossible, any time you’re discouraged by impossible challenges, just mutter this mantra: Tererai Trent.

Of all the people earning university degrees this year, perhaps the most remarkable story belongs to Tererai (pronounced TEH-reh-rye), a middle-aged woman who is one of my heroes. She is celebrating a personal triumph, but she’s also a monument to the aid organizations and individuals who helped her. When you hear that foreign-aid groups just squander money or build dependency, remember that by all odds Tererai should be an illiterate, battered cattle-herd in Zimbabwe and instead — ah, but I’m getting ahead of my story.

Tererai was born in a village in rural Zimbabwe, probably sometime in 1965, and attended elementary school for less than one year. Her father married her off when she was about 11 to a man who beat her regularly. She seemed destined to be one more squandered African asset.

A dozen years passed. Jo Luck, the head of an aid group called Heifer International, passed through the village and told the women there that they should stand up, nurture dreams, change their lives.

Inspired, Tererai scribbled down four absurd goals based on accomplishments she had vaguely heard of among famous Africans. She wrote that she wanted to study abroad, and to earn a B.A., a master’s and a doctorate.

Tererai began to work for Heifer and several Christian organizations as a community organizer. She used the income to take correspondence courses, while saving every penny she could.

In 1998 she was accepted to Oklahoma State University, but she insisted on taking all five of her children with her rather than leave them with her husband. “I couldn’t abandon my kids,” she recalled. “I knew that they might end up getting married off.”

Tererai’s husband eventually agreed that she could take the children to America — as long as he went too. Heifer helped with the plane tickets, Tererai’s mother sold a cow, and neighbors sold goats to help raise money. With $4,000 in cash wrapped in a stocking and tied around her waist, Tererai set off for Oklahoma.

An impossible dream had come true, but it soon looked like a nightmare. Tererai and her family had little money and lived in a ramshackle trailer, shivering and hungry. Her husband refused to do any housework — he was a man! — and coped by beating her.

“There was very little food,” she said. “The kids would come home from school, and they would be hungry.” Tererai found herself eating from trash cans, and she thought about quitting — but felt that doing so would let down other African women.

“I knew that I was getting an opportunity that other women were dying to get,” she recalled. So she struggled on, holding several jobs, taking every class she could, washing and scrubbing, enduring beatings, barely sleeping.

At one point the university tried to expel Tererai for falling behind on tuition payments. A university official, Ron Beer, intervened on her behalf and rallied the faculty and community behind her with donations and support.

“I saw that she had enormous talent,” Dr. Beer said. His church helped with food, Habitat for Humanity provided housing, and a friend at Wal-Mart carefully put expired fruits and vegetables in boxes beside the Dumpster and tipped her off.

Soon afterward, Tererai had her husband deported back to Zimbabwe for beating her, and she earned her B.A. — and started on her M.A. Then her husband returned, now frail and sick with a disease that turned out to be AIDS. Tererai tested negative for H.I.V., and then — feeling sorry for her husband — she took in her former tormentor and nursed him as he grew sicker and eventually died.

Through all this blur of pressures, Tererai excelled at school, pursuing a Ph.D at Western Michigan University and writing a dissertation on AIDS prevention in Africa even as she began working for Heifer as a program evaluator. On top of all that, she was remarried, to Mark Trent, a plant pathologist she had met at Oklahoma State.

Tererai is a reminder of the adage that talent is universal, while opportunity is not. There are still 75 million children who are not attending primary school around the world. We could educate them all for far less than the cost of the proposed military “surge” in Afghanistan.

Each time Tererai accomplished one of those goals that she had written long ago, she checked it off on that old, worn paper. Last month, she ticked off the very last goal, after successfully defending her dissertation. She’ll receive her Ph.D next month, and so a one-time impoverished cattle-herd from Zimbabwe with less than a year of elementary school education will don academic robes and become Dr. Tererai Trent.

Collaborative Art (Feminists)

Judy Chicago

Joyce Wieland

writing

i'm paralyzed...or nearly so...moving slower than a snail, than a sloth...progressing at about the rate of fingernails growing or continents shifting (that's about the same, i hear) i'm writing a paper for contemporary discourses in architecture and every word and sentence seems so important... and i'm paralyzed with self-criticism. i think something or write something and then can't decided if it's right or not so it gets erased...or never even written not written no paper more stress...panic...deadline long past it's only 2000 words!!! the gist is this: an argument for an experiment in material emergence. an experiment which includes as a force the occupation of a space. people moving through, or lingering in, a space is translated through a computer into vibrations which in turn translates into density of material and thus transparency, acoustic absorbency, and insulation value. the gist is easier than the paper.

A Dangerous Thesis - Thesis Group Assignment

Just like the clock maker metaphors of the Enlightenment, or the dialectical logic of the nineteenth century, the emergent worldview belongs to this moment in time, shaping our thought habits and colouring our perception of the world. (Steven Johnson. 2002. Emergence : The connected lives of ants, brains, cities, and software. 1st Touchstone ed. New York. p.66)

Emergence as a theory is philosophically challenging to many people. The shift in thinking from top-down to bottom-up requires new cultural narratives which reimagine human agency and fundamentally challenge existing narratives. A design rooted within an emergent worldview risks knee-jerk dismissal not only because of it's new-ness but because of it's implicit challenge to the reviewer to reimagine their own place in the world as both individual agent and member of the emergent collective both acting-upon and affected-by the group. In mapping public space, hegemony, social interactions, and social/cultural response to interventions in public places and advocating for further interventions which support adaptive emergence in the citizens of the downtown core, I risk initiating a process with a highly uncertain outcome. Not only will Galt naturally resist change, but it may also revolt against its role as the subject of my thesis experiments.

WCC article

here is the article madeline wrote in WCC (see previous post) called:

City Changing: Re-mixing Built Environments

no ideas but in things

"no ideas but in things" -william carlos williams http://www.noideasbutinthings.com/ixd/ http://noideasbutinthings.com/ http://www.purecaffeine.com/2006/10/no-ideas-but-in-things/ http://www.iit.edu/arch/events/2008/no_ideas_but_in_things.shtml http://blog.nerdplusart.com/archives/no-ideas-but-in-things http://www.spinewriters.com/volume-one-issue-three/no-ideas-but-in-things/ http://www.allthingswilliam.com/ideas.html so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens. -w.c. williams

eating the city

two great projects on mapping free edible plants/fruit in urban areas food for free (fantastic!) fallen fruit (slightly annoying)

a working wall

i've spent the day working on a wall of images...sometimes posting what i am working on helps me get out of a funk...the act of placing images on the wall helps me to think and see patterns and gaps in my work. 12x12 is still offline, though some participation is still occurring. i will do some videoing by hand tomorrow and sunday. i don't think my thesis is about emergence...maybe it is about amplification, or tuning a social space. maybe it is about a parking lot/square. maybe it is about gentrification. maybe it is just about seeing...participating... it is about a question of spatial determinism...about the relationship between space and behavior...the affordance of architectural elements... it is about language, signs, meaning it is about the group and the role of space in the formation of the group and in the wisdom of the group

technical difficulties

cranky hard drives have forced me to take a day off-line for hardware rehab...a window of opportunity for madness to erupt while my watchful eye is blind.

fail?

i am at a bit of a loss as to what to do with 12x12... "greening the granite block" isn't what i had hoped for the site...nor has it garnered any participatory support from the community as of yet... what did i want? i was hoping for dances, speeches, crowds of people...unprecedented activity in a previously neglected corner of galt...perhaps a rage mirroring my own at the gall of the city: removing a bench in a public park(ette) because a business owner disapproved of how the bench was being used? ambitious, i know...optimistic, definitely...especially considering the minimal work i have done so far to promote the project... so what now? what next... what thesis?

greening the granite block

having reached the halfway mark of 12x12, i have been considering the effects of the interventions so far. after leaving the site alone for almost a week, the only piece left was the marigold and strawberry plants i planted in the disused drinking fountain way back on may 1. the three watering cans, solar powered lights, chalk, and glowsticks have all been removed while heavy rain has washed away all of the chalk drawings on the site. aside from some sinking after the first heavy rain (due to the spaces between the rubbish in the base of the water fountain) the plants are doing well and have apparently been accepted by the community. so on saturday, may 16, i started "greening the granite block": i made a couple of posters and put up copies at the farmer's market (next to the booths which sell bedding plants), melville cafe and grand cafe, and at baird's supermarket (my source for plants for the site). i also taped a poster to the drinking fountain planter - which is the first time i have advertised directly on the site. i planted again myself: some peppers, cherry tomatoes, and snapdragons...this time in the existing planters with the prickly bushes. total cost was around $20 for the watering can, the soil, the trowels and the plants. (sponsored by mom&dad!) interestingly (as i noted in my "cleaners II" post) this morning for the first time the cleaners have passed through the site and left it largely intact (the only object removed was a broken trowel). i think i am building up to making a bench, notice board, or some other piece of "infrastructure" to add permanently to the site... i have also been toying with the idea of working on the other "parkette" in the "square": an abandoned corner at the south-east of the parking lot, behind the crazy bill's building. then again, i still have a thesis to actually write...

reflections on benchless

i think of benchless as sketches for my thesis...i'm trying to do a few things (badly)... one is to draw a crowd to my site so that i get some more robust data on how people interact with the specific architectural elements of these buildings. i've succeeded in recording hourly since may 1 - i hooked up a laptop and a video camera through evocam, a mac-based video recording software. but, i haven't succeeded in drawing a crowd, yet, so the recordings are of mostly isolated interactions between a few individuals and a limited number of architectural elements. i'm also testing the ownership of this space in a grassroots sense...who participates, what is acceptable on the site, what is removed, by whom and for what purpose. what are the rules governing this space in this community? what does it take to change those rules? i'm intrigued by the responses so far...mostly chalk drawings using chalk i leave on the site. (the chalk is removed daily...i haven't figured out by whom, yet) some of these drawings are doodles...lines, personal marks...and some are messages - "flowers were watered may 3", "your move"...and some are plays on space - like the bird drawn on the shadows of the tree branches. the flowers and strawberries i planted have not been removed or damaged...but the watering can is removed every couple of days, as is the chalk. the red box i rescued from the garbage pile was removed quickest of all, along with the solar powered garden lights i put in last night. the box was in a new garbage pile. the lights were nowhere to be found. does someone have a small stash of chalk, watering cans, and solar powered garden lights? i imagine that they are lined up in someone's back garden...inventoried, watiting for their newly purchased compatriots, which will be left on site tonight at midnight, to be picked up sometime tomorrow morning. part of me wants to carry 30 buckets of water and leave them all on site. fill the garden with dozens of solar powered lights...slowly blinking in disharmony. part of me wants the city to track me down and fine me...for littering? for now i will continue to draw hesitant lines...light lines...layering and layering until the picture emerges

letting go

i once designed a pavilion for the end of the world --one day the pig spit was gone and it was an art gallery

i am leaving behind the plan and finding a thesis... slowly... soo slowly

a bad day

how sad that when the sun is finally shining outside i am here writing to you all. and not writing with sunshine-fueled joy, but rather a heavy heart. i liked my title. i liked it because it pointed me in a direction i was interested in. i don't like the new title at all. it is not my title. it is not my thesis. i don't like the building i am studying, or the city it is in, and really i couldn't care less about the people who use it. so i'm fucked. but also apparently halfway done. great.

a new name

Juliet: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet."

- Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2) In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be. - Hubert H. Humphrey (1911 - 1978)

philip has asked me to consider re-naming my thesis...he's made a compelling argument: that emergence is too imprecise a term with which to define my work and that the imprecision and popularity of the term leads to a lack of engagement on the part of casual critics with my actual interests in favour of their own biases on the topic. not to mention that i need to be much more precise in all the research, writing, and presentation of my thesis. this is a challenging question...

the block the south block of main street between main and ainslie streets, cambridge ontario

this is frustrating...i'm going for a walk. another day has passed and still i am lost...and panicking.  today is mx reviews, and i haven't even got a title.

stoops, people, territory...

right and wrong - how people treat people

the haves and have-nots

the stoop

place, people

purGALTory

finding something to enjoy in this hole

i'd don't love galt, i have no interest in the hollow-core cities of ontario

i do love the bench-less parkette

i can't get a new yorker magazine without an hour or more on the bus

i wish i had a car

watching

participant observer

small steps

battles with my boss over whether the locals have a right to life

a role

"can't we ship 'them' to an industrial park"

the right to community

the role of the other

the role of the other

eccentric - Diversity of opinion

Each person should have private information even if it's just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts.

diversity

true/false

rue ruse

RUE

• sorrow: sadness associated with some wrong done or some disappointment; "he drank to drown his sorrows"; "he wrote a note expressing his regret"; "to his rue, the error cost him the game"
• repent: feel remorse for; feel sorry for; be contrite about
• (French) a street or road in France 

differentiate between the tactic and the problem

rue rue rule

father knows best

"a family comedy of the 1950s, is perhaps more important for what it has come to represent than for what it actually was. In essence, the series was one of a slew of middle-class family sitcoms in which moms were moms, kids were kids, and fathers knew best. Today, many critics view it, at best, as high camp fun, and, at worst, as part of what critic David Marc once labeled the "Aryan melodramas" of the 1950s and 1960s."

rue

hostility, power - remove the bench

prostitution

separate beds - twin beds pushed together

the rule the rule subvert the rule

fuck on the ledge, now that there is no bench

fuck you

what is the difference between stop and yield, between a traffic light and a traffic circle?

distract/divert your puppy to an acceptable chew toy

an acceptable outlet

frustration! bully..."NO!"

time...patience...mortality 

sleep seep seep into sleep

when i cannot sleep i lose my patience.  when time is tight i lose my patience. i ooze my patience.

when and where and when and where...why do i care? 

even if it is just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts...

leave emotion out

do not imitate

leave emotion out? peer pressure, a need to belong...

a need to belong - the traditional goal of community building is to belong/exclude

community and wise crowd are two different things...

could a city work better as a wise crowd than as a community? yikes. 

what do we lose? empathy? forgiveness?

do we work better together than apart? or apart than together?  it depends on why we need to work.

back to belonging...i contradict my own goal when i push for a wise crowd? maybe maybe

agency v belonging

a new name

blank bank cloud fog panic 

an alibi name...a better alibi

i keep changing my alibi...pick a lie and stick with it

ha! ambivalence

so much of non-profit work is about belonging...back to belonging

back to the very beginning...my first lie: non-profit v. for-profit (high density) housing

non-profit design is often focused on building in such a way that social misfits can become socially integrated...so that their neighbours don't lose their patience

and now i look not for social integration but for an acceptance/acknowledgement of the value of the misfit

the outlier

the benefit of not belonging...the value to the collective of the misfit

the misfits

the confrontation 

i seek confrontation. my mom avoids it. poor mom, having me. lucky mom, having me. 

a name!  give me a name!

give me a name i will take a name

i wish for a name

i wish wish wish fish

have you the reader lost all patience yet? with my ramblings my indulgence with me?

community and crowd

commune

come together, right now...

i want to tell you its ok not to belong, to live side by side and not know your neighbour

it is ok

it is good

community and crowd

stoop: community and crowd

stoop community crowd

stoop/community/crowd

!stoop!community!crowd!

sigh.