so… i know i haven’t been posting a lot here lately, but i have an excuse…. i swear, i have been working on my studio blog… it’s here now… and after all that trouble moving this blog away from blogger and my lofty aspirations of getting the studio onto wordpress and onto the school’s servers… i seem to have deviated slightly.

the new blogs will be on blogger… and i’ve also started using flickr which is super cool [ i don’t want to hear it from those of you who have touted it’s virtues to me for months ] and am trying to teach the rest of the studio about it as well… some of them know… and i’ve put some links to their blogs on my site too so you can check them out there until i get the main studio page up and running…

until then, look at my flickr pictures and learn to love flickr and the way tags work.

if this works [ and it looks like it will ] this is good news!! makes posting way easier for the masses, myself included…

hmmm…. having a little trouble with the image manipulation…

posting from blogger to wp….

it’s difficult to summarize a “body” of work that feels so much like pebbles scattered on the beach… however, in a couple weeks [ and initially tomorrow as a dry run for just our studio ] i will have to do just that for the entire school. the second year students are asked to present work from their first year at cranbrook to the academy over a series of four or five days… we’ve decided as a studio that we’ll each show a maximum of 10 slides and have 3 minutes to do this. it’s not much… i don’t know if that’s good or bad.

ugh…
i am a terrible public speaker.
i don’t really want to do this…
i know i can come up with something to say.
but, i don’t know if i really believe it…
here are some thoughts so far…

last year, the consistent theme of my work was in figuring out different ways that i could make or manipulate what i think are the building blocks of what my work will become; the things that i thought i would or could integrate into a stimulating and sensual experience that can both keep my interest and speak to the larger communities of architecture and society. many of these projects were collaborations with various different people. i began with a group project that simply altered the entry sequence into the forum gallery with a change of elevation; changing the visitor’s perspective. in another project i tried my hand at making a ceramic building unit which would hang in addition to or instead of stacking. these were cast in cardboard molds that were modelled in rhino, laser cut, assembled, and coated with epoxy resin. the tiles were then glazed and hung in a several locations and configurations. at the same time i was looking at video surveillance and thinking about how to use it’s visual language to create a different experience. [more about this here]i am often torn between wanting to know how something works and wanting to just marvel at the thing [more here] this project [assisted speaking devices] was equally about making a low tech device that invited interaction and setting up the conditions for something to happen… [something else here] and finally i began to look at the location based technologies of global positioning devices and motion tracking. while some of these projects reached a specific final moment, i think they are all interconnected parts of larger projects that i hope to complete this year and in the future.

ugh… maybe i should look this over in the morning. i’m getting tired and losing focus… i still have to get my slides in order….

…when they had a secret? They would climb a mountain and find a tree. They would carve a hole in the tree and whisper the secret into the hole, which they would pack with mud so no one would ever hear it.”

i went to see 2046 tonight… i had to drive an hour to ann arbor to see it since that’s the only place in michigan showing the film [ as i missed the grand 3 day run it had in detroit a couple weeks ago, guh ] but i think it was well worth the drive. there are some odd moments in the film [ corny lines and situations ] that took me out of it, but the imagery and music and themes are so beautiful. i won’t review it here, but there are some links to follow below if you want to read some things… not comprehensive or all positive, but they’re fair… and there were people who walked out while i was watching it too… but i couldn’t have been moved from my seat.

Official Site - Sony
http://www.offoffoff.com/film/2005/2046.php
http://www.monkeypeaches.com/2046.html

came across this somewhere… seemed like fun and you can put the results on a blog easily enough [ or so they tell me ]

first, the politics test:

You are a

Social Liberal (78% permissive)

and an…

Economic Moderate (41% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Democrat

 ![image][]

 ![image][]

Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid [][]

next, the commonly misused words test:

English Genius You scored 92% Beginner, 92% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 80% Expert!

You did so extremely well, even I can’t find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don’t. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you’re not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!

Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it!

For the complete Answer Key, visit my blog: http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

---

![free online dating][] ![free online dating][] —————————————– —————————————–

You scored higher than 25% on Beginner —————————————– —————————————– ![free online dating][] ![free online dating][] —————————————– —————————————–

You scored higher than 15% on Intermediate —————————————– —————————————– ![free online dating][] ![free online dating][] —————————————– —————————————–

You scored higher than 38% on Advanced —————————————– —————————————– ![free online dating][] ![free online dating][] —————————————– —————————————–

You scored higher than 51% on Expert

Link: [The Commonly Confused Words Test][] written by [shortredhead78][] on Ok Cupid ——————————————————————————————————

and so… while the first test is no surprise to me and the statement at the top of the second test reassures me that i am in fact an english genius i’m not quite sure what the ‘you scored higher than…’ section of the second test is telling me… seems like i am a genius, but so is most of my demographic… either that or there are quite a few cheaters out there… not sure what to think about it, but i felt obligated to post the results since i took the test with that intention.

[]: http://www.okcupid.com/oktest3 [free online dating]: http://is3.okcupid.com/graphics/0.gif [The Commonly Confused Words Test]: http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=14457200288064322170 [shortredhead78]: http://www.okcupid.com/profile?tuid=577245280159428717

today we held a breif meeting to discuss the future of ‘the trailer project’ [ mental note: we need a better name for this thing ] in which i assumed all involved parties would bring a short written statement about what they they thought their involvement would be with this project… i thought this because when we met a couple days ago i am pretty sure we said ‘thursday morning at 9am we will meet and bring a brief written statement about what we think our involvement will be with this project. this will be given to everyone so it can be digested since we won’t have time to really discuss it.’ so you can see my [ petty? ] irritation when only two of us showed up with a statement… [ well, one person showed up with a photocopy of an excerpt from a journal… but only one copy ]

anyway, i am feeling a bit like this is how it’s going to go this year… no one wanting to commit to anything… everyone sort of willing to do some grunt work, but not really so invested in the conceptual… maybe i am the one who is on the outside here. i’ve thought of that possibility. i’ll just have to make an effort to get ‘in’ with the core group… find out who is really committed and doing something that i can build up a dialogue with and at least get a bigger, better picture.

on a brighter note, i came across a blog [ right here on blogger no less ] of one of the first year students in architecture. he’s the other guy who brought in a written statement… i like his blog and we have some similar ideas about the travelling trailer project… i hope we can work together and make some headway soon.

i’m also going to be fooling around with a wiki i set up awhile back, but haven’t touched for a couple weeks… i think it would be a good place to put some thoughts about the cranbrook flying circus on a flatbed project that i may or may not share with the other students… depending on how well it works out. i also have plans to migrate this blog to wordpress [ i know, i know, i’ve been talking about it forever ] as well as the studio blogs [ this is really the motivating factor ]

well, that’s about it for now… enough hurrumphing, not enough working… bye.

looks like something that would be of interest to someone…

http://club.nokia.co.jp/tokyoq/tokyoscape/puri01.html

it’s been super busy here since school started… you, my faithful readers who haven’t abandoned me for lack of material, will probably have figured this out since i have posted nothing for so unforgivably long..

however, i am here now and have some thoughts to share… while i should be researching flight information for several upcoming events, i have just returned from a panel discussion [ actually more of a sales pitch as it turned out ] which included david lynch and john hagelin and a couple other speakers… it was prompted by the david lynch foundation’s desire to set up some kind of permanant education system to teach transcendental meditation across the nation to young people primarily… it was cool to see david lynch [ one of the directors i admire above most ] and there was a nifty live demonstration of brain wave readings showing the more ordered brain waves during meditation and the more chaotic waves of a waking state of a student of fred travis [ the other phd on the panel ]… after that it was not so interesting… not so involved… more of a pitch. but it was in ann arbor and i got to go see that town and a couple of it’s record stores. which was nice. i think i may go back to that place again.

on another note, i’ve been feeling a little disconnected lately… from studio since i have been working outside of the studio most of the beginning of the year and from family and friends as i have neglected to call or write or even post what i am doing here in my blog… i guess i just have to make an effort to sit down and collect my thoughts here more often. it’s been fun working on projects that take me away from the computer, but i realize that i use this device as my main form of communication and because of that i need to make time for it to be part of my daily routine.

i’ve also been thinking about some ideas for the cranbrook film festival… since i was unfortunately forgotten last year, i think i will just submit multiple pieces this time around… just to make sure i get in! or maybe i’ll have an alternative festival at another location, just to spite them! haha! okay… maybe not… i guess it was an honest mistake last year. more later…

so, i can see it… the end of the desk project!! hooray!

it’s 4:30am and we install tomorrow at 9… that means load everything up starting at 8, so get up at 7:30… that’s 3 hours sleep…. :-/

well… it looks fantastic though… i’ll try to post some pictures of the installation [ which should take two days ] and then the final piece… then… well, then i have many more projects waiting in the wings to fill the void.

actually, i am very excited about this year… things may be slow getting set up in studio, but there is definitely no lack of work being done in there… the trailer has been attacked… camera’s have been set up in the rafters to document the deconstruction [ or chopping ] and the reconstruction [ or editing ] … i hope to get my hands dirty on that project and even get a webcam up to broadcast the progress to the world [ hooray ]

sleep calls… goodnight.