Technology Absurdity... Absurdity of Technology

I am tentatively calling my project for this term Technology Absurdity... Absurdity of Technology.

Dwarves that sweat blood. Inflatable devices which utilize the magnetic properties of mysterious alloys to extract loose teeth. 20 seconds of resurrection.

These are the absurdities which Raymond Roussel creates in Locus Solus. But they become believable absurdities. Roussel confronts technology and reality through, seemingly, nonsensical stories. Technology is used to explain or justify his tales - although the technology is just as absurd as the stories. But is it? Every object and consequence depicted throughout the novel is riddled with layers of complex history and Roussel's mythology. But is it? What is real and what is not? What is possible and what is not?

Roussel's construction of language is extremely puzzling at first. It is as if you are reading an extremely bizarre, vivid and rich dream sequence. That is probably the best way I can try to explain it. His method in presenting each story is what I propose to adopt for my method of working for the term. As mentioned, he sets up each story in a manner of which the reader is experiencing it for the first time with no context or history. Roussel then retraces the absurdity and vivisects every layer of history and every consequence within. This makes for a very rich way of construcing a myth.

It would probably help here to have an example of what I am describing. I will scan a few pages and post them up to give you a better idea.

My site for the term will be the Kings Hotel and / or the Fort Douglas building in Point Douglas.





Both sites offer a lot of potential for "myth making". The Kings hotel with its temporary residents and Fort Douglas with its interesting context.

I will post more later to expand on these thoughts.

The Bride Stripped Bare

From Linda Dalryple Henderson's Marcel Duchamp's The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes (1912) and the Invisible World of Electrons. Found here.

In The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, even Duchamp sought to create a humorous "reality which would be possible by slightly distending the laws of physics and chemistry," as he described it in one of his notes (Writings 71). For this elaborate allegory of quest, Duchamp drew on science and technology as well as geometry to create the "collisions" between the incommensurable realms of the three-dimensional, gravity bound Bachelors below and a four-dimensional etherial Bride above. The complex scenario of the Large Glass is filled with ballistic collisions at all scales--from subatomic and molecular to the impact of the Nine Shots aimed at the "target" in the Bride's realm. In contemporary work on the kinetic theory of gases, for example, Duchamp would have found both a scientific analogue for his own growing interest in chance and a model of incessant collision, documented convincingly in this period by the work of Jean Perrin on Brownian motion. Like the molecular drama he enacts in the context of the liquefaction of the Bachelors' semen-like "Illuminating Gas," many of the events of the "Playful Physics" of the Glass are scientific metaphors for the overarching collision between the desire of the Bachelors and the position of the Bride, high above them and forever beyond their reach.

hanabi

Thanks Zach for the link. Really cool piece of design. I wonder, though, how this is able to maintain open? Memory alloy is, typically, only able to be "pulsed" with heat and thus can only really actuate for a second or so. I'd be interested to see this lamp in action.

From the website:
The heat of the bulb makes this shape-memory alloy lamp "bloom" whenever the light is turned on. "hanabi", the Japanese word for “fireworks”, literally means "flower + fire." Both flowers and fire fade away so quickly and easily. Like its namesake, this light flickers between beauty and disappearance.

Some potential sites for the term.

Site #1.



Site #2.

AMANUENSIS -- operation.

Amanuensis: Dictation & Exploitation

It has taken me a while to derive a direction that I am confident in, but I think I have finally arrived at that point. It has come through much frustrations and discussions with numerous people (thanks Patrick, Candace and Gregory). I have been thinking for the past couple of weeks that my Amanuensis device should observe and record something very technical and complex - with the thought that it would somehow make my project more meaningful... I got caught up in the technology. I now realize that that was the main source of my frustration and confusion over the past few weeks. It was a small group discussion with Gregory and Candace where it hit me that I need to focus on a simple, already establish system and pattern within the building.

This is when I began to take a look at some of the work I had done earlier in the term and it all started to come together. The drawings I had started to produce with my typewriter at the beginning of the term really embodied a lot of the ideas and potential that my project has started to take on. The repeating bracket drawing, for instance, was really about the exploitation of the typewriter as a machine capable of reproducing consistent characters over and over... and over again. The typewriter's ability to do so enables simple systems to take on new meaning. A bracket when used in a sentence might just be a bracket, but when repeated, flipped, and layered on top of itself it begins to express a new language. It takes on a new potential in the form of a self-producing pattern. This simple character becomes something more meaningful.

Similarly, if we take an existing system within a building - for example a door - might we be able to find an embodied potential within its established constraints? I remember walking to a used book store in Halifax and talking with Darcy and Candace about the idea of "interactivity" in architecture. I can't recall his name, but an architect we had just finished seeing lecture had so eloquently described his idea of interactivity as a series of LED's within the ceiling of a building which would fade in and out slowly as people entered the space. To me this is no different from a bell on the door of a small corner store. As we were entering the building Darcy said that his idea of interactivity was the opening and closing of the door - to which I agreed. This is part of my reasoning for choosing a door for my system to be observed and to, essentially, become the dictator to my amanuensis. The idea is that the door takes on the role of the bracket from my previous drawing. A system that might be taken for granted but has a potential which resides within it. By monitoring the different components of this system - for example the hinge, the handle, the latch, and the stop - does a pattern begin to reveal itself? I believe that it will. This will be the basis and goal for my experiment over then next 2 weeks.

PIEZO + ARDUINO

This video shows how to connect a piezo strip to an arduino for use in detecting and quantifying vibrations.

Piezo strip and arduino demo