When imagination (intentionally) went dull

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of FLW's Guggenheim NY building, the museum curators invited about 200 artists, architects, and designers to "imagine their dream interventions" in the rotunda," encouraging them to "leave practicality or even reality aside in their proposals." It sounds like an interesting idea - "contemplating the void," a dialogue between late modernism and contemporaneity, between positive and negative forms, between permanence and ephemerality. The list of invitees is quite an amazing group of big names, established big shots and rising stars alike.

And the results? Utterly disappointing... Imagination? Dreams? If all you can come up with is to put a giant sculpture or to plant trees in the middle, or to extend or mirror the original spiral geometry, I would say that's pretty boring.

Upper row from left to right: BIG, Liam Gillick, Gluckman Mayner Architects, Office dA
Lower row left: Bernard Tschumi; Right: Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset

Out of 193 submissions, I only found maybe 5 interesting ones. Mass Studies, JDS, and MVRDV's proposals at least address how people can actually interact with the rotunda space in some creative ways.

Mass Studies, ART/TRAP

JDS, Experiencing the Void

MVRDV, Let's Jump!

What bothers me the most is the sloppiness of the starchitects. Are you kidding me? You call those puny watercolor stains "light"? A colorful beehive represents the 21st century? Ink on Post-it? Photocopy? Some random stuff dated four years ago? I know I know, you like pointed corners, you like wavy forms, and you like blobs. But how are they relevant in this case? Can you at least think and show some care?? I am not even talking about contemplation... I hear some voices yelling in the back: "Give me a break. This is just like a fundraiser thing. I donated my work to Guggenheim, for Chrissake. They just want something for auction." Well... That clearly justifies the carelessness. I forgot architecture is really an all-for-profit business. There's no point spending time on pro bono work, right? The stars may still think no matter what they do, as long as their names are on it, it will be worth something. But to me, names don't mean anything anymore. Hey, we have a crisis! Of creativity or morals, a serious one either way.

Ben van Berkel, Chasing Light, 2009. Watercolor on paper

Toyo Ito, The 21st Century Grid, 2009. Colored pencil and ballpoint pen on photocopy

Michael Maltzan, Contemplating the Void, 2009. Ink on Post-it

Zaha Hadid Architects, Z-Wave, 2006. Digital print mounted on foamboard

Daniel Libeskind, Spiral Inspira....l, 2009. Ink and watercolor on paper

(Re)performing performance

Marina Abramović's retrospective at MoMA shows about 50 works that span the four-decade prolific career of the performance art goddess. The intensity in the galleries is mind-blowing. As you walk through, you see distorted faces, screaming mouths, bones, blood, and (real) flesh. I'm awestruck by the fact that many of these pieces were actually performed originally in the 1970s. Now we are in a new millennium, and they still seem pretty radical to many people, especially in a museum setting.

The major "oddballs" are the live naked people. They are there to reperform Abramović's works as "an endeavor to transmit the presence of the artist and make her historical performances accessible to a larger audience." I see no problem in nudity. The one thing that makes me wonder is whether the idea of "recreating performance art" can really preserve the authenticity of the original work. I think a good way to figure this out is to look back and see what Abramović was trying to say with her original performances.

A prevailing theme of her performances is the body. The vulnerability of it. The best-known example is Rhythm 0 (1971). She stood there passively for six hours, allowing the audience to do whatever they want to do to her body with the 72 objects she selected on the table. They could tear off her clothes, tickle her with the feather, cut her with the knife, and even point a loaded pistol at her head. Admittedly, the presence of the original performer was powerful. But would the performance lose its meanings if it were someone else's body? It was not about her. The horror could have applied to any body, really. At the MoMA show, Luminosity (1997) has been recreated. The young female sitting on the bicycle seat up on the wall is so lonely and exposed. So helplessly vulnerable although there's no immediate threat in sight. What you see here is not Abramović at Sean Kelly Gallery, but you can still feel the strong sensational quality of the work in this reperformance.

Rhythm 0, 1971

Luminosity, 1997

After Abramović met Ulay in 1976, the couple started to perform together. Relation became an apparent strong subject. Relation in Space (1976), Relation in Time (1977), Relation in Movement (1977)... Relation can be interdependence, like in Balance Proof (1977) where they were holding a double-sided mirror, taller than themselves, between their naked bodies. They couldn't see each other but they were both responsible for keeping the mirror upright. Relation can be combative, like in AAA-AAA (1978), in which the two keep yelling and screaming at each other. Or it may be both - a more thrilling version of complex relation in Rest Energy (1980). This time Abramović and Ulay drew a large bow and arrow, one holding each side. The arrowhead was pointing at Abramović's heart. The slightest imbalance could be fatal. This required the ultimate complete trust.

Relation in Time, 1977

Balance Proof, 1977

AAA-AAA, 1978

Rest Energy, 1980

Abramović and Ulay's interest in relation also included the relation with the audience. In Imponderabilia (1977), Abramović and Ulay stood naked inside the door frame at the entrance of Galleria Communale d'Arte Moderna in Bologna, face to face. The space between them was so narrow that people were forced to squeeze sideways between them, facing either one of them. This piece has also been reenacted at the show. Live nudity certainly intensifies the awkward intimacy. It is interesting to see the reaction in this country where people wear such a big bubble around themselves that they rarely touch each other. After passing through, some people would raise their arms, as if to celebrate surviving the biggest challenge in their lives. To my surprise, among the many shifts, there is a couple of females reperforming the piece. Isn't this supposed to be a male-female duo? On second thought, it becomes clear that the relation Abramović and Ulay tried to address was not necessarily gender-related. In fact, Abramović repeatedly disavowed any interest in the feminist movement. For them, the body is just "a unit of an individual." Although they talked about male energy and female energy, they were more interested in a third existence - something they called "That Self." It carries the combined "Vital Energy" that is caused by but not dependent on the two performers. I can see this third existence being successfully reconjured by the younger performers at MoMA.

Imponderabilia, 1977

Heraclitus said, you could not step twice into the same river, because it would be at a different time and the waters would be at a different place. Theoretically, time and place is crucial to a event. Reoccurrences would never be the same. But for Abramović, the concept of time and space was not really about the particular moment and location. (Maybe the only exception is The Great Wall Walk.) Rather, it's about the abstract notions of passage and orientation. The 17 straight hours of Relation in Time during which Abramović and Ulay sat back to back with their hair tied together (like the Na'vi people) could have been another 17-hour period of any day, including the days of the MoMA reperformaces. The entrance way in Imponderabilia was in Bologna. But it could have been any other door, including the one between the MoMA galleries. The only new work at the show, The Artist Is Present, is also a good example of Abramović's abstraction of time and space. She sits there motionless whenever the museum is open, throughout the entire duration of the exhibition. Visitors take turns to sit across the table and exchange stares with the artist as long as they want. When I was there, the guy was sitting there all day long for 7 straight hours. I saw a new Ulay, together with Abramović, flattening past, present, and future. Time became timeless, form no longer existed, material slipped into immaterial, and the MoMA atrium became a mere void.

The Artist Is Present, 2010

So can performance art be recreated? I don't have a general conclusive answer. But in the case of Marina Abramović, whose messages were mostly abstract and conceptual, it works.

(A NYTimes slide show shows how the reperformances look.)

Instant gratification - Part I

Watching All the President's Men, I was amazed by one scene: when Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) found the name Kenneth H. Dahlberg in the Miami D.A.'s office, Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) started searching for the person in phone books. What is he doing? Oh I forgot, Google didn't exist in 1972, not even the term "internet."

When you hear an unfamiliar name or a strange term nowadays, the first impulse would be - Google it. So much information is available, and more importantly, searchable on the internet that most likely you will find what you need instantly. As of a few minutes ago, Google spend 0.26 second to find about 28,500 results for "Kenneth H. Dahlberg." No surprise, the first hit was an article on Wikipedia. I remember Rob Matthews once printed only the "featured articles" part of Wikipedia and what he got was a ridiculous-looking 5,000-page book.


The Information Age has turned the world into one big entangled web of digital data that is getting even denser every day. Everybody could be an expert of something with the help of the World Wide Web. The real skill now is to locate valuable information from various sources and piece it together. A new generation of intellectuals emerged. They don't need to know everything. Instead, they just need to know about things. Like ancient cartographers conquering the oceans, these neo-intellectuals surf in the cloud, facing the challenge of the storming explosion of information. Rather than learning the knowledge itself, they mentally build up a map of the largest library in the history of human civilization. When needed, they can locate the core information and have the experience and insight to bring in all the things related to it - images, graphs, events, researches, opinions, etc. I call this new comprehensiveness the art of "sort and connect."

Instant gratification - Part II

We want everything right away. When we have a question, we hope Google gives us the right answer instantly. (Good-bye, libraries!) When we hear a song we like at a bar, we Shazam it and download instantly. (Good-bye, Virgin Megastore!) When we learn about a good book from a friend, we order it through the Amazon smartphone apps instantly and have it shipped on the same day. (Good-bye, Urban Center Books!) If you say you are not that anxious, well... how many times have you complained about how slow your computer is?

One problem of this is that our generation gets more and more impatient, with an attention span that only becomes shorter and shorter every day. In the 1970s, college students could stay focused in a lecture for 15-20 minutes before their minds began to wander. The number in a recent research became 7-8 minutes - an all time low. People just want to get the work done fast, not caring much about the quality of it. "Quick and dirty" becomes the new norm. A five-minute sloppy piece that looks good at a glance can get more appreciation than one full day's careful precise work.

Once upon a time, patience was a virtue, when people still depended on pigeons to bring their mail. But in our society, where instant gratification is expected by default, waiting becomes a waste of time. We want instant communication. We send emails, text messages, online chats as fast as possible - don't even bother to spell or punctuate properly. And we expect instant response, otherwise we get all "textually frustrated." Many times, I found this counter-productive. Rather than saving time, it only creates miscommunication.

Technology is supposed to make our lives better, not worse. While enjoying the convenience technology brings us, we also need to beware of some negative implications that may turn us into those spoiled Axiom people in Wall•E.

Another perspective

When you go past a managed forest, you see a mass of tree trunks. Then at a certain point, you look again, and you realize they are all in perfect rows. Clarity. Clarity of vision. What you've been looking at from the wrong angle and not seeing at all. You labor. You sweat to see what you couldn't have seen from that other perspective.

- The Edge, in It Might Get Loud.

Positive attitudes

Michel Rojkind's Emerging Voices lecture tonight was uplifting. I can't say every single project he showed was fantastic. But it was the passion and the energy at the lecture that were refreshing. I saw again in the young generation of architects a cheerful and positive way of thinking, as I saw before in Bjake Ingels and Minsuk Cho. I started to think, what exactly are those positive attitudes that inspired me? Here, to list a few:

1. Up for the challenge.
One of the many interesting stories Michel told at the lecture was about the Nestlé Chocolate Museum. Nestlé called him one day and said, there was good news and bad news. Good news was they got the project. Bad news was, they had to get it done in two and a half months. Michel was all excited - "Yeah, no problem! We will call up all our friends and deliver the drawings in two and a half months!" Then the client said, no, two and a half months to finish construction. Crap! Better run away... But Michel was up for the challenge. They worked three 8-hour shifts (not two 12-hour ones) and made a lot of decisions on site. The building opened 2.5 months later.

Talking about Mexico, he said, "Some people complain about where they are from, whining about how fancy things can never be realized in their hometowns. But I love working in Mexico." Michel likes to experiment with digital design, but also wants to get things built locally. Construction techniques may be limited, but he went out to find local manufacturers who can do the job. For example, he hired auto repair workers to do the metal work for the PR34 house.

2. Never say "No" right away.
Here is another story about Nestlé. The client called again and said, "Hey, we are going to build another new facility. Are you interested? But you may not like it this time because you have to build arches. It's in a heritage site." "No no no, we love arches!" In fact, he doesn't. But he managed to pick up something undesirable, reinterpret, and perversely turn it into gold. Pseudoclassic arches became a series of intersected spherical excavations we see in Nestlé Application Group Querétaro.

3. Embrace collaboration.
Maybe it's the spirit of the tight-knit Mexican society, Michel believes in collaboration. Architecture is not a one-man show. "Everybody is working with everybody." You need consultants for your own projects since you can't possibly know every advanced aspect of building construction. And you would team up with other architects for design efforts as well, like Michel did in the Museo Tamayo competition with Bjarke Ingels.

4. Learn from mistakes.
Sometimes improper collaboration could be a disaster. Michel was invited by Ma Yansong and participated in the Huaxi project. It was an amazing collection of young architects. "We all wanted to do something together. But I don't know if we did it the right way." He admitted the result was not very appealing. But the good news is, since he realized that, he would learn from it. Constant denial of failures only leads to a blind self-indulgence. Every baby falls when he/she learns how to walk.

5. Think young.
Michel said, "I still feel like a boy and keep asking why about many things." To satisfy the curiosity and the desire to keep thinking, he and three other friends from different disciplines came together and formed AGENT, a "strategic intelligence embassy." To give an example, he showed their first project: CTRUS - the first transparent soccer ball. It has GPS/RFID and mechanical sensors, so it can locate itself and record kick force and travel speed. It changes color at critical situations such as goal, offside and out of bounds. Make sure you watch the video - it's cool!

Everything is envelope

Alejandro Zaera-Polo gave a lecture titled "Cheapness" at the Cooper Union last Friday. The narrative went like this:

Somebody said I didn't have much political sense, so I made the following observation: political movements in the last century were primarily about equality - social, geopolitical, class, race, gender, etc... Then a bunch of businessmen operated within the capitalist system and actually achieved equality through cheapness. Cheap food, cheap clothes, cheap furniture, cheap flights... I think instead of asking for more and more luxury, architects should think about cheapness too... There is a shift from plan and section as organizational devices to the envelope, which is the assemblage of massing and the construction of it... Now I will show you some projects.

Hmm... OK. Let me try to make sense of this. I think the "political statements" are valid and quite interesting. But how do they influence design decisions in projects? If "cheapness" is the conclusion, how does dressing an existing building with shiny wavy stainless steel illustrate the choice of cheapness? If the claims of intelligence are all about "I can make this sophisticated-looking pattern with only three types of tiles," or "the pattern is scaled in relation to the human head," I'll ask, do we need those patterns in the first place?

New Street Station Redevelopment, Birmingham
"The new envelope reflects different fragments of the context."

Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication, London
"The facade pattern consists of only three types of tiles."

John Lewis Department Store, Leicester
"The smallest circle in the pattern is the size of a head."

I saw a problematic theory/practice schism that prevails our profession now. It just sounds silly that everybody is trying to intellectualize things no matter how obvious or superficial they actually are. More disturbingly, these so-called theories are usually so stretched to include the whole world with one simple word or phrase - in AZP's case, "envelope." I couldn't keep from rolling my eyes when I heard "the city is envelope." AZP's logic is, envelope is almost the only thing architects are commissioned to do these days, so you'd better focus on it and try to get some theory out of it. A false premise can only result in unsound strategies. Architects are degraded from spatial creators to facade decorators. "What's your project about?" "Textile patterns from the John Lewis Archive!" "Nice!" "William Morris wallpaper!" "Cool!"

I also saw an effort to differentiate "envelope" from "skin," but I was not convinced. AZP kept saying that his concept of "envelope" integrates the pragmatics of construction. But the rhetorical efficiency of the three-tile inventory in Ravensbourne College is not even about the construction of the exterior walls. It could be interesting if the three shapes are building aggregates and they actually form the circular windows. But judging from the construction photos, they just form a thin layer of decorative pattern. How come this applied wallpaper dictates the shape of the windows and doors and therefore the type of wall construction behind? Oh, sorry. I forgot "ornaments have functions."

Ravensbourne College under construction

The sound of forms

The Iannis Xenakis exhibition at the Drawing Center featured over 60 drawings, photos, musical pieces and documents that span the avant-garde composer/architect's career from 1953 to 1984. I didn't know much about musical composition. But through the hand sketches and the almost-architectural diagrams of sound and rhythm, I saw the strong connection between music, mathematics, and architecture that Xenakis had explored throughout his life.

One piece that struck me the most (perhaps it was just the easiest piece for an amateur to understand) was Mycènes Alpha (1978), shown at a listening station with a flat screen TV. As the thin bar swept across the screen on a series of funny shapes and strange lines, I heard fluctuating noises. My first reaction was, "Is this even music?" But after a while, I realized what I heard came from what I saw - the graphics was actually a score. The pitch was represented on the Y- axis in relation to the X- axis on which you read the time from left to right.



This was the first piece of music generated by the UPIC (Unité Polyagogique Informatique du CEMAMu), developed by the Centre d'Etudes de Mathématique et Automatique Musicales (CEMAMu) in Paris. Xenakis used a electrostatic stylus to draw waveforms and volume envelopes on the drawing board, which were then rendered by the computer into sounds. The visual-sonic translation was so literal that it was almost relentless. Did Xenakis know exactly what it would sound like? Probably not. But he was able to let loose the end result and make the act of composition truly experimental. This "arts/sciences alloy" enabled you to hear the "formalized music", the sound of forms - singularity and multiplicity, branching and convergence, chaos and order.

It reminded me of the so-called "parametric design" in architecture now. It's a lie compared to what Xenakis did 30 years ago. It will be convincing only when architects are 1) clear about the relevant principles and rationales (aka parameters); and 2) let go and stop micro-controlling the end object (aka design).

Here comes the Tiger

First day of the Year of the Tiger! Happy Chinese New Year!

(Click to enlarge. Read carefully for the message.)

The (killing) power of boredom

When you say "bored to death," be careful. It may be possible.

Scientists Annie Britton and Martin J. Shipley of University College London analyzed the data collected in a survey between 1985 and 1988, of over 7,500 civil servants who were between the ages of 35 to 55, about their level of boredom. They found that 10% of the respondents reported having been bored within the previous month, with women reporting being bored more than twice as often as men. Younger workers and people with menial jobs were also high in the boredom scales.

Then they tracked down how many respondents were still alive in April 2009. Those who had said they had high levels of boredom were 37% more likely to be dead than those who did not report being bored. The bored ones were two and a half times more likely to die of a heart problem. The researchers said the study was preliminary - boredom itself was probably not that deadly. But people who regularly/chronically feel bored are more prone to being unhappy and feeling unmotivated and unfulfilled, and this could lead to the adoption of unhealthy habits such as smoking, drinking, or drugs.

Christopher Cannon, associate professor of medicine at Harvard and spokesman for the American College of Cardiology, commented that people who were bored would be less likely to have a healthy lifestyle. That made them more vulnerable to a cardiovascular event. If boredom was ultimately linked to depression, heart attacks wouldn't be of much surprise, since depression has long been recognized as a risk factor for heart disease. It's possible that when people were bored, dangerous hormones were released in the body that stressed the heart.

Well... I guess my job is exciting enough!