GUI formalism
I was editing a Lesson Plan for this upcoming week’s class and accidentally scrolled down to the end of the document. I think I flipped to another desktop before coming back to have this image staring at me. I thought at once, “This looks like architecture.” To a certain degree, I’ll give myself the benefit of the doubt and say that the design of a graphical layout is a kind of architecture, albeit a stretch of its definition.
But what captures my attention wasn’t so much the shape and symmetry of this end of document. It was the gaping blankness; it’s scarcity and pale dull virtual landscape. The buffer at the end of the page, it’s frame. The gray border formed around the edge of the page adds a margin to the margin. It’s formally unnecessary but aesthetically essential. The gray acts as a reminder that you have reached an ultimate end; beyond the page, and the paper, to a a vacuum space that can’t be written on. It’s occupies space as a reminder of the end users’ virtual limits and spatial confinements.
Poems for Scripts
Below a sampling of a reusing old txt scrambling python to create some scripts for video sketches. There are nice elements that happen hear that I could definitely work with. I think in order to break away from past conventions, while maintaining the same style that has resurfaced in the sketches, I could benefit from a good script of nonsense.
Lines,
a gong’s mirror,
plastic doubted piano’s,
backdrops council shelter without snares.
Lines,
Without back fun,
grilling from shadow,
emptied on carbon clips,
giving blankets old polish.
Doors, closed,
new suns,
from melted kisses,
small closed cased melted well,
slide.
Without mirror,
foot-printed sisters,
in a drop of strangers.
I am shelter down,
45s against shadow doors,
I am dusty,
against small happenings,
on shelter back lines,
doubted old suns,
from what happened behind doors.
Avoiding Arrest
This morning, before settling fully into work, I was threatened with arrest by a segway cop.
I got downtown, got my coffee and was about to have a cigarette when a gentleman came up to me and asked if he could have one and some change, I rolled one for him but didn’t have any money on me. We had a brief conversation about the pros/cons of rolling when a CPD office came up behind him on a segway. When the man turned around he nearly crashed right into the segway, and continued on his way. The office came up closer to me (mounted on his segway), and said, “What’s up?” I said, “What?” and he said, “What did he want?” I said almost laughingly, “A cigarette.” He pulled away in his segway and continued to pursue the man whom i was talking to. I started to go inside, after realizing I didn’t have a light, and saw that the police officer was harassing this poor man.
I turned around in the revolving doors, and approached the man and the segway cop. I said “Sorry officer, but this man meant no harm.” He said, “Excuse me son, but this is none of your business,” I said, “It is actually since you are falsely accusing this man of harassing me.” He then started shouting at me to leave him alone to do his work. I was calm and composed, and while I reached out to just touch him on the arm said “There is no reason to yell officer.” He then went wild.
He continued to yell and said that I had assaulted him and that I could be charged with battery, he told me to start walking away if I didn’t want to be arrested. I started to turn around and said that he was doing an injustice. When he came up behind me, grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me around, he said that he was going to call a paddy wagon and have me taken away, I protested, calmly and composed, saying that I had incurred no infraction, while he was yelling directly in my face. I said that I’d like to see his identification number and badge to file a proper complaint against his abuse of power, for which he denied me. I told him it is a citizen’s right to be able to see proper identification of any police officer in the country, particularly one that was threatening arrest. He said that he would only show me this information if I went “downtown” with him. I said, “Sir, that is not right, and this is an abuse of your power.” He started to call a paddy wagon as I was quietly and politely trying to question his abusive behavior. He said, “I will throw cuffs on you and put you in jail if you continue to press this point.” I was close to turning around and asking him to cuff me so that i could see his badge, when the patrol guards from the school came outside and started to direct me away from the yelling cop.
I pulled out my phone to call the “other” police when he approached me again and said that I had assaulted him and that I was going to be in BIG trouble if i didn’t hang up the phone. I said fine, let’s go downtown. He again (I think pretending) started to call for back-up and said that I was going to be put under arrest. I backed down and was lead away by the guards. He said, “Study law if you want to do this properly,” to which i replied that I didn’t need to. I knew my rights; I had a right to see his identification. He refused again, and started to go back to harass the first man.
I let him get back on his segway and ride down michigan ave. I called 311 and then went through the process of filing a report to the OPS and the Chicago police oversight committee. They said they’d find the officer and call me back to confirm if I wanted to make any further claims. I haven’t heard from them yet, but I will keep you posted.
Chicago police have a long history of abuse of power, and unsubstantiated arrests and threats. I would’ve like to have gone “downtown” with him, but I knew that once I got there, no one would either listen to me, and that I’d probably be put in jail without any reserve or right to a lawyer or council. I’m glad I made the call to the oversight committee, but i wonder what good it will do. I will honestly say I was worried for my safety,as well as completely shocked that this CPD officer had absolutely no humility to him whatsoever. He knew that strong-arming the situation would force me to back away, and this kind of abuse is – needless to say – completely uncalled for. I’m almost completely positive that the office didn’t give me a citation because he had no jurisdiction to do so, and that i wasn’t cuffed right away due to the same reason.
I hope my complaint reaches the right avenues, and that this injustice will be corrected in someway shape or form. The guards at the Tute were very helpful, and I thank them for intervening. They confirmed that the officer was improperly doing his job, and one of them said it is considered a serious offense to deny a citizen his badge and identification. I hope they are right.
The Virtual Realm v. Public Space
I’m writing this mostly as a rpecursor to a project I’ve been working on for a while that will hopefully be completed in the near term, but also as a response to this post concerning this topic.
The symposium seems very interesting, and initially sparked my interest due to some involvement with public programming, and attempting to make media production somewhat social, if not explicitly collaborativly generated and shared amongst a wide range of people. Alex Inglizian has done this particularly well with his hardware hacking workshops, performances, and on-going collaborative practice (sometimes w/ me). In any event, what struck a major chord with me was that there was a direct assosiation between “public art” and “virtual spaces.”
This association drives me crazy. I talk often with peers about how the rhetorics of contemporary architecture and newMedia often blled over into one another; both perpetrating the same fallacy of “freedom” and “space” that happens in each medium. More and more, especially more frequently since I’ve been teaching at Columbia, have I been in diametric opposition to cyberspace containing some kind of inherent “enabling publicness” about it unlike other mediums. I will give the web the benefit of the doubt and conceede that it has the potential for this possibility, but it is not ingrained in it’s infrastructure, simply due to the question of access. The assumption of the webs ubiquity is part of the problem, but also the commercial infrastructure, and subsequently the dominance of commerce as the backbone to the sustainability of the web’s growth and proliferation is a larger issues that seems rather insurmountable.
This type of “publicness” seems only to come through permissions, access, and authority. Even though the web becomes more accessible as it continues to infiltrate our social lives, it still is brought to us through conduits of exclusion. The pipes and ports that our protocols latch on to are supposed to be designed for unilateral end-to-end relationships. The modes in which the web has been shaped (which again are mostly commercial/proprietary) are not enablers, but instead clandestine prohibitors. The web is private. Virtual spaces are feigned interactivity, due to precocieved, predetermined routes and outcomes. Choice is a fiction in our social interactivity.
The same with space. Space is maintained and administrated. It is only available at a cost; whether physical or psychological. If cannot exhist without guides, scafolding, and structure. Maybe I have breeching a conflict of interest here, in paring “publicness” to “spacialness.” But they involve each other, are mimetic of each other’s habits and implimentation. To have space, is to provide for the public. To engage the public, one must have space to do so. Space gives the public to be public. Without public, space would be empty. We, as a public, occupy space. But this/these spaces are only offered up to us through the specifications of Architects (both virtual and physical)
Space requires specialization to make; the public only sees its effect/affect. I guess one can argue that publicness occurs in these environemtns via play. Radway suggests that mass market media is only as good as its end use. In this way, publicness can occur through intentional hacking/reclamation of the mediums which offer these promises of “freedom” and “space.”
Youtube Blue
Taken from a film still of a blue title slide off of Youtube. Just loved the color.
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