Assignment: A Map/Model - "Interpretation of a Potentiality"

For Monday (01/25/2010) create a site map/model as follows:

1 scan your vellum map (crop it and post it here).

2 design your itinerary. This is a path through the map. It is not the same as the space you may have named as your promenade. It is a path through that space in which you identify/create opportunity (potentiality) for you to construct conditions (the two interventions from your assignment...not to be confused with the two "sites" that begin and end your promenade) that support/structure your promenade. You will probably have more than two, but you will only develop two. We discussed this is class. In order to make this path you will need to imagine inhabiting and moving through your map (experiencing it). I asked the question, "What does a path do when it takes a 'pause' as Eric described." You each have identifiable moments like this. These moments become jogs, knots, or voids along the path. This path is to become the path of your blade...to split your map in half.

3 once you have made this decision/incision you will plan and construct a shallow (bas) relief model of the city as you mapped it. This model will make use of relief together with collage. The collage material comes from your raw maps (pre-vic, sanborn, GIS), from your vellum map, from your sketches, from you photo-documentation (especially texture). The use of collage will impart tonal-material information of the model and will be a type of "micro relief". In other words, it will probably not be entirely smooth.

4 this model will be cut in half along the line described in 2. You will pull the sides apart to open up a void. This void is necessary for you to think of your grafting/intervening.

5 I gave you a new article, "Anchoring". Read it. In your written assignment, under the "issues" heading, this reading is mentioned as guidance for considering a "critical attitude toward the site as an interpretation of potentiality..." You must develop a way to conceptualize your interventions according to your experience, and the documentation of your experience, of St. Augustine. Remember your descriptive exercises (adjectives, adjectives, adjectives). This time you must "verb" your interventions...make them actions in the city by naming them as such. A verb requires a subject to be an intelligible expression. Name a subject. I demonstrated this with Stefan's project. He named the verb "learn" and I made him point to a spot along his itinerary. This spot I remember to have been a street of Victorian era porches. I said "gravity". So an intervention at this site could be called "learn gravity". Stefan would use the configurations in his map/model to make an intervention. (This may or may not be Stefan's actual project....it is an illustration for all to use). The article will inspire you to get a deep grasp of the opportunities in your project. This is the "program" of your intervention mentioned in the written assignment. Adverbs could help you add detail. Know that all of this description and program is a point of beginning. The models must go beyond the program and words... "Although they fall short of architectural evidence, words present a premise. The work is forced to carry over when words themselves cannot." - from Anchoring.

6 we discussed the surgical repair of bones - pinning. Your interventions will pin the halves of the model back together. They act structurally in the map ACROSS the itinerary. They also act as markers/moments along the promenade. They are "ALONG the way". Consider these two directional actions as you build the interventions. The scale of this model is undetermined. However, since it is not very large the intervention models will be conceptual. They should create, contain, divert, control, etc, space at a conceptual level.

Assignment 01-15-2010

Assignment Part 1 -
POST! Sketches, Photos and descriptive text to the blog.
TITLES of posting should be location based (i.e. "St. George Street at Palm Street looking West")
TEXT of postings should be as we discussed...descriptive words strung together to form a fragment of narrative based in the moment...focus the description using the "Intertwining" heading.
LABEL your posting according to the "Intertwining" heading.
I will be pleased to see these postings start to appear. I can view them on my phone, please surprise and entertain me.

Assignment Part 2 -
MAPS! Obtain:
Pre-Victorian Map (Map Library?)
Sanborn Map circa 1910? or so...
Current Map
OVERLAY these maps on layers in Photoshop (or GIMP) force them to correspond with each other and set them up to fill a 24x36 sheet when printed.
PRINT each of these maps on a 24x36 sheet.
CREATE, in Photoshop (GIMP), a single map which contains all three. This is a collage project. You can dissolve layers together you can cut and paste into new layers so that you get hard edges between maps, etc. You should concentrate these efforts at edges in the city, and spaces in the city.
Finally, DRAW a map on vellum using the analysis techniques you applied to your sketches.

ENJOY the books I left you.

"Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love."
---Martin Luther King Jr., December 11, 1964

Along the River at St. Francis Looking North

Looking north. Not quite straight, hard, thick edge, moves toward the horizon but shifts left and disappears around the edge of palms and homes. Wide metal planes extend over dark horizontal gaps segmented by vertical posts doubled in height by rippled glassy reflection. Beyond, the thin line of bridge is colonized by chunks of construction that block and slash the horizon. It extends across the water with effort.

Over this edge...

The water has receded leaving the hard edge made by the wall with less to do. Rigid skeleton homes of shellfish periodically puncture the surface of shimmering satutated silt, at times in clusters. A pocket of miso water with edge smooth rounded and teeming with flicking and fluttering critters is trapped away from the body of water, amputated.

Divide

At the edge, a heavy cleaved solid surface of light gray segmented slabs of granite receives a soft straggle edged criss-crossed tarsal shape left by sunlight blocked.

Fill

Weather has not yet worked on plasticity poured patch patterned to placate.