HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BLOG

Until a Few days ago - I had never used blogs before. The idea didn't start with the blogs. It actually began with a single act. This single act was the burning of a Christmas tree. Yes, you heard correct.

Down the street from where I currently reside, dumpster full of freshly cut christmas trees appeared. You might consider this event out of SCALE from our everyday experience, at least for this time of year. In January, such an event is withing SCALE. It is not unusual. But in late March - that's borderline absurd, is it not. (gain with the SCALE).

At any rate, several of these trees were liberated for fire wood - and one night we burned a few. With one tree in particular an attempt was made to stand it on end - the logic being it will burn faster.

yes this is where it all began - I took a series of pictures from a static viewpoint to document the event. then a video was made - put to music and placed on youtube. The musical choice relates to the event in two ways (at least). First, content - fever/hot/fire. Also event. That very song was sung earlier in the evening.

So yes that is where it all began - the idea of getting the students to construct playlists came out of that - followed closely by flickr, and the use of a system of tags allowing anyone to easily and quickly filter through ideas/images. More importantly, it serves as a content warehouse of the entire class. And with the addition of the BLOGS we have all three, text/image/video.

the power of this comes from the ability to easily and seamlessly stitch these different narrative forms together to create a much more rich understanding of what is being discussed. I have always hated readings that throw out all these references and make no attempt to provide image to these. (I'm not sure if I'm expected to go off and research every little reference, or if I'm expected to know it already).
Of course that's the inherent limitation of the medium (book). But with the blogs is another story, there are no constraints - and the addition of mixing what I call local and foreign content seamlessly together is provocative. Again we are talking about ideas here, not necessarily architecture.

So yes that is where it all began. Additionally this format is meant to challenge the students understanding of SPACE - in all the "INTENT of" Posts, in which I explain the intent of the blog, I refer to these as spaces.

The students at NYIT do not have a proper architectural education, if you ask me - at least not in the first year (or however this problem hangs with them). but they do not have their own personal studio space in which to live/work as a group. Upper classes apparently do, but not the lower.

So These Blogs are meant to provide a SPACE which can at least facility the exchange of ideas - something that occurs when a studio is all together, and does not occur when they are not.

Public/Private - i'm also trying to blur the boundary between these two. Its the desire that outside people (foreigners in terms of the foreign/local) will provide a critique.

the reason for this relates to the completely absurd act that occurs at every FINAL review, we sit around and talk about next steps of a project. This is just absurd. why not get the feedback when it still matters, when it still has time to be incorporated.

And finally there are ideas of a catalyst - it is the hope that enough ideas are generated through this process, that a chain reaction occurs - Another way of looking at it might be to ask the question "how do I put minimum amount of energy into a system with big affect."

Again, we are talking about the generation of ideas, us all methods known to us. If we can generate outside interest, that knowledge base is provided via comments, and all the sudden we have people helping us with our research and idea generation. Its a bit like Tom Sawyer washing the fence - its a bit like Ed wood getting a movie made.

So yes, that is where it all began, with the incineration of a Christmas tree.