Gormley - human sculpture "books" (stories)

Gormley's human sculpted books:

Thus image is from the blog: my modernist.com, where it says: "Crouching at 85 feet tall and weighing about 60 tons, Antony Gormley's Exposure sculpture is rooted to ground in central Netherlands, reacting over time to the changing environment. Riddled with funding problems, It took nearly six years to complete.

"One of the known environmental changes that is happening is the rising of the sea level through global warming," explains Gormley. "It is critical to me that at the time of its making this work reacts with the viewer, the walking viewer, on the top of the polder and that the surface that the viewer stands on is the surface that the work stands on. The work cannot have a plinth. Over time, should the rising of the sea level mean that there has to be a rising of the dike, this means that there should be a progressive burying of the work."

The first step in the making of the sculpture was for Gormley to cast himself in plaster. After an extremely uncomfortable hour and a half locked in a crouching position, he translated the solid form into a geometrical system. Using software developed by Professor Roberto Cipolla of Cambridge University, the form was digitized.

As one approaches the sculpture, Gormley says: "The nature of the object changes. You can see it as a human form in the distance. It becomes more abstract the closer you get to it. And finally it becomes a chaotic frame through which you can look at the sky."

These images are from the blog: my modernist.com, 

This image Hinge, 2011 is from a website of Antony Gormley's Sculpture

This image, Blindlight, 2007 is from a website of Antony Gormley's sculpture

This image "Rhizome", 1999, is from a website of Antony Gormley's sculpture --note branching, "tree" as "book"; "tree" as collection, conglomeration of stories --not juts a source of paper, but as story itself. Please join in and comment on such "stories", and "tell" some stories of "your" "own" 

--part of this telling will be collaborative unless you made all parts of these stories --even  trees! 

"

Environment as a System of Interaction and Simultaneity (intro)

One reason that you should consider your projects as environments involves some of the nature of interactions.

An assumption is that interaction occurs between at least two entities. These entities may be subsystems of the same systems, parts that may function as wholes that then also (likely simultaneously) function together within a larger subsystem that in turn may function as part of an even larger system. Consider parts of the human body and human families and human communities that of course interact with non-human subsystems and systems. Such consideration establishes or helps enable awareness of an environment underway. A dynamic set of behaviors and circumstances in an environment host, shape, and are shaped by interactions of environmental membership, including temporary memberships such as visitors or intruders or those evicted (in various ways on various scales).

Interaction assumes occurrence, event; something happens in an interaction. There is some form of exchange in interaction, any possible form of exchange which can include domination, subjugation, extermination. There have been incredibly brutal exchanges in Japan, Libya, Syria, Egypt; forms of occurrence persist as reconfigurations happen again and again. These interacting systems are also interacting with other systems around the world. There are global ripples of impact that vary in intensity; geological, psychological, meteorological, emotional, political, economic, sociological, motivational, religious, galvanizing, etc. ripples and shock waves. The intensity with which you feel yourself hit with any of these ripples help configure some of the nature of your response, of your participation in the interaction with the shock wave; some of the nature of your role in a transaction with systems and subsystems of ripples, some of which continue from out of Haiti, and some of which mingle to dilution in the recency and comparative (ouch) enormity of current (the breaking) news events.

This is to say that there is still hunger in the world in locations not specifically mentioned in this post. Still people and communities without proper access to proper water and proper toilets (including some First Nation reserves in Canada). (image from CoteGauche)

Constituents of interaction play (configurable and reconfigurable)roles in interaction. There are variables that help determine the nature of these roles from moment to moment. Some of these variables include your own choices. Though there is marking by interaction on participants in interaction, the configuration (including intensity and duration of marking) varies according to determinable (to a certain extent) factors. Prior interactions help to prime responses of participants in a moment of initial participation in emerging interactions that do further shaping, marking, priming for subsequent interactions.

Denial and indifference are possible responses, possible (in)actions within a temporary system of interaction. Intensity of denial, apathy, hostility, indifference, compassion, etc. are variable, fluctuate, according to what is marking, how marking happens, etc. in emerging interactions.

Listen to Exploding Angels (music & lyrics by Ansted Moss, arranged and sung by forkergirl, 2006; also available from the Limited Fork Music podcast):




To participate in interaction is to risk a possibility of being marked in the exchange in a way that can reconfigure perception on some scale for some duration of time.

Context and interpretation are two of many variables that operate as a factor in shaping response. Context is highly variable, in a range from the subtle to the profound. Anything may form a center of context through which an allness or everything may be (temporarily) accessed, the movement outward or inward from that center as ripples and shock waves that eventually, with some form of distance (usually), dissipates to where marking and effects, though still diminishing (perhaps infinitely diminishing) becomes apparently immeasurable, apparently inconsequential.

Please watch again or the first time the ripples of Powers of Ten from the Eames Office:


Involvement in interaction is a form of collaboration. You and the subject(s) of your project system are co-participants in a system of interaction in which the roles vary and are reconfigurable, according to rules that are also variable and temporarily in place from moment to moment, each configured according to interactions with information that arrives and departs with varying intensities. Participants in your project environment may be transient. Status may fluctuate. Alliances may form and disband. Etc.

Please try to determine what the roles are, in moments (at least three) of interaction within your collaboration with your project system, for at least three participants in the collaboration. Do also try to identify as many of the participants as your can. As many as all. This determination of roles in the transaction and identification of participants in the transaction may take on any form, including written list, paper model, map, flow chart, clay, video, sound work, game, etc.

If you configure your project system as an interactive game, for instance, what might be an objective of this game? What would be the role of the project participants/players? What might be the rules of this game? How does one play it? How does one win it —if it may be won at all. How many levels? What happens on each? Perhaps a purpose is not to win, and if not, why play this game? Etc. Maximum number of players? Minimum? Remember that in most video games, the environment is not static. A dynamic environment where anything there is potentially active —Myst anyone? The environment participates in the action, moves the game along, sometimes determines outcomes, presents consequences, alternatives, dead ends, delays, traps, rewards, etc. Anything at all like Jumanji?


Feel Free to make a board game, if you like or set up some kind of (crude approximations are fine) online community experience of (some of) the game elements.

Have you played Darfur is Dying? Play September 12 here & now Then play Madrid. Read about the Global Conflicts computer games —imagine content for history, economics, political science, and other subjects experienced with decision-making and other forms of active participation instead of a textbook. Here are some examples:

USING TECHNOLOGY OR USED BY TECHNOLOGY? (in part a response to the Spalding/Bieber Quesadilla incident)

I hope that you've found your documentation of your relationship with technology insightful. This post is a followup of that investigation, a followup that you can listen to, if you've noticed the two audio blog options now available here: Odiogo (the clearer voice, I think, and the more fluent reader without voice options at sign-up, and iSpeech with a choice of female or male voices and different forms of English: US, Canadian, British, Australian, but without the clarity and fluency of Odiogo. Try both options simultaneously).

How pervasive technology is in our lives —and how fortunate, or this post would not be happening —but should it happen? That is, is it necessarily a good thing that technology is all but completely omitting the lag time between response and delivery of response to an audience. Think of the information delay that accompanies traditional book and magazine publication.

Are we giving enough thought to how we're wielding the power of technology?
This video made it to youtube shortly after the Grammy Award for best new artist went to Esperanza Spalding instead of to Justin Bieber (please forgive the expletives, but they are necessary in this context, just as the profanity is even more necessary in The King's Speech):



Just to provide context for the object of the above video rant,
here's Esperanza Spalding performing Prince's If I Were Your Girlfriend at the BET Music Awards:


and performing on the David Letterman Show:


In addition to enabling the rant video, technology also assisted Bieber's fans in committing some temporary digital vandalism against Spalding's wikipedia entry.

WHAT FOLLOWS IS A QUOTE FROM A FLOP OF THE POPS FORUM, AS QUOTED THERE, SO SAYS THE FORUM CONTRIBUTER, FROM CBS:

NEW YORK (CBS) It seems that fans of Justin Bieber weren't too pleased that he lost the Grammys' best new artist award to jazz singer Esperanza Spalding.

After Spalding was crowned the surprise winner on Sunday, her Wikipedia page was vandalized.

The valdalism since been removed, but Gawker was able to get a screenshot of some of the changes. Among them, Spalding's middle name was changed to "Quesadilla" (and then "Justin") and the page noted that "She now has the 2011 Grammy for being the Best new Artist! Even though no one has ever heard of her! Yay!"

Another fact added to her page was, "JUSTIN BIEBER DESERVED IT GO DIE IN A HOLE. WHO THE HECK ARE YOU ANYWAY?"

"BIBER 4 LYFE !" was also tacked on to the end of her bio.

If you were just Googling "Esperanza Spalding"—tonight's surprise winner of the Grammy for Best New Artist—you may have been surprised to learn from her Wikipedia page that "SHE IS F****** RETARD," or that her middle name is either "Justin" or "Quesadilla," or, for that matter, that she beat out "Nominee and gay favorite Justina Bieber" for the award. Well! Far be it from us to cast aspersion on the accuracy of a user-edited font of knowledge like Wikipedia, but it certainly seems possible that fans of losing nominee Justin Bieber (or, perhaps, people who like to throw poop around the internet) may have been "vandalizing" her Wikipedia page, adding possibly-untrue facts like:

Her middle name is "Quesadilla"

"She now has the 2011 Grammy for being the Best new Artist! Even though no one has ever heard of her! Yay!"

" JUSTIN BIEBER DESERVED IT GO DIE IN A HOLE. WHO THE HECK ARE YOU ANYWAY?" (n.b. this does not really seem to be a "fact" about anyone)

"HaHa Justin Bieber, you're just a little boy with no Grammy for Best New Artist."

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Because of the speed of just-a-click uploading and publishing, technology helps us capture the authenticity of the emotion of the moment, the moment not tempered and filtered by time, helping us avoid some of the regret that can be the aftermath of impulsive actions.

Please give some thought tonight in class, as you continue your exploration of the many applications available in DL1, to think of ways to use this digital technology to communicate better, to enhance and improve the still-prevailing single-mode delivery of most academic papers.

How can you use digital technology to construct an environment in which to experience more of the complexity of an idea system?

Think about what it can mean to produce an idea as an environment instead of as a printed, usually, text piece. What are the differences? How can you use digital technology to accomplish more than what the printed text piece accomplishes, provided that it is: a more that is useful, a more than extends understanding, and inspires further engagement with the idea, further exploration?

—By the way, if anyone is interested in a better quality audio version of Esperanza Spalding's cover of Prince's If I were Your Girlfriend, let me know with a comment to this post.