i entered the blogosphere. blame it on a newfound sense of optimism, hope and creative possibility that's motivating me and everyone i know, ever since nov 4th.

http://unlikelyplace.blogspot.com/

The opening of Liminality at the Exploratorium was on March 8th, and sadly that means my internship is over. I enjoyed every minute of the experience, all the way through the frenetic, hyperstimulating and smashingly successful opening night. I spent most of the opening facilitating the "Building Emotions" arts interpretive workshop and watching the participants create amazing architectural models out of metal, fabric, plastic, paper, cardboard, and other scraps and detritus Julie and I scavenged. It was really charming how engrossed some people got -- a couple people stayed in the workshop room, perfecting their models, for the full 4 hours of the opening night party. And it was really gratifying to hear and see how enthusiastic people were about the workshop -- people were entirely receptive to leaving the main floor festivities and engaging in this work-intensive, pretty challenging hands-on experience for hours. The room was full for the entire duration of the workshop, which we extended an extra hour because people were so committed to finishing their projects! I'm SURE it helped that Archie and I compiled an awesome and inspiring soundtrack -- kraftwerk, stereolab, david bowie, the ohsees, esg, brian eno, etc. -- to play in the background, along with the conceptual art slideshow I screened. See pics of some models below, and more at Liminality photoset on Flickr.






The opening itself was really fun and totally impossible to entirely take in; between SF Parkour running around kicking in the museum walls, Project Bandaloop winding themselves around ascenders high above the ground, multiple opening night-only installations, the debut of the five (semi)permanent art pieces and more attractions I can't fully list--I was lucky to have caught just a fraction of the evening.

Ultimately, I was as inspired by the art that this show generated as I was by the creative work that went into the production of Liminality; the Exploratorium is as intellectually and creatively rigorous as any university, driven by people who bring to their work at the museum all that inspires and motivates them outside of its walls. It's an incredibly enriching place to be, and I hope I haven't seen the end of my time there. For the moment, though: dissertation, midterm grading, and more unpaid interships in the name of exploring the kinds of work that will pay my rent and please my mind and hands.

lead pencil studio finished installing their piece today; it's really enchanting, and i feel lucky to have been able to observe it from start to finish. i'll leave the more descriptive photos for later, so that i'm not preempting its debut on thursday... two close shots:




alex clausen began installing and creating his piece today, which is really dynamic -- bright colors, lots of different materials, and movement in so many directions. all the materials were found around the Exploratorium's workshop, so it's an entirely homegrown piece. all the colors and easy access to the workspace via the mezzanine made for really fun photo-taking:

Liminality opens this week at the Exploratorium, and my role as intern in these last few days continues to entail photo documentation of the art installations, grooming and troubleshooting the hands-on model building workshop that'll be offered the night of the opening, and in general, helping my supervisor, Julie, with the herculean number of tasks (actually, far more than a herculean twelve) that she's overseeing. My unofficial agenda--and probably one of the most personally rewarding aspects of this project--has been to sponge-ishly take in the amazing amounts of creative ideation and art/design/technology boundary-busting that occur on a daily basis at the Explo, but even more so when there are artists like Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo of Lead Pencil Studio in residence.

I hadn't been familiar with Lead Pencil Studio prior to this internship, and am only beginning to become acquainted with their body of work, but I'm already overwhelmed with awe... They're architects who are also artists, and whose collaborative work explores the concept of space, material, process and functionality in visionary ways. The boundary between architecture and site-specific art is fluid in their designs, making their work and vision highly relevant for Liminality. Currently, Annie and Dan are working on their installation at the museum, entitled "In Between," which will explore the liminal state between architectural conception and completion. The work will suggest a building site transitioning between degree zero and constructed space. In just a few days, Anne and Dan transformed the Seeing Gallery floor into a sloping dirt "field," by constructing and mounting a raised, wooden platform and shoveling immense amounts of dirt onto its surface. There is a network of parallel wires stretched across one end of the dirt expanse, which I think will interact in some way with the fluorescent lighting that will be suspended over the space; I'll know more tomorrow when I go in to take more pics... All my images from the first day of construction were lost in a heartbreaking memory card uploading mishap, so there are very few images of the artists at work so far, and only one that I'm fond of:



As I watch Annie and Dan toil away to create earthen terrain on the museum floor, I'm struck by the irony of the process -- the finished work will evoke a space-about-to-be-built-upon, but only via the days and nights of building and construction that Annie and Dan have invested. I guess this is the charm and fascination of built spaces and large- or small-scale dioramas and things of this sort: encountering a recognizable space that evokes nature's design or at least the absence of human intervention, but which continuously forefronts its own artificiality.

In addition to Lead Pencil Studios, my new heroes of visionary art and architecture are Archigram , a British architectural group that formed in London in the sixties with, it seems, the mission to generate an entirely radical approach to urban design and architectural imagining. They are part of the "paper architecture" tradition, a term I just learned from UC Berkeley professor of visionary architecture, Andrew Shanken, and which refers to architecture that exists only on paper or as models, due to a deliberate interest in experimentation without the physical, financial, functional, etc. parameters imposed by commissions. Like Lead Pencil Studio, Archigram transcends artistic boundaries, particularly in regards to style: they're informed by sixties pop and psychedelic sensibilities, which you can see in the illustrations, comics, and designs published in their magazine of the same name. I'm still reading up on their history, influences and impact on current architecture, but I'd never have (or maybe it would have taken me longer to) come across them had I not immersed myself in a short, spotty, but intensive independent study of contemporary conceptual architecture in support of the model building workshop we're designing. It has been one of the best serendipitous finds for me, ever -- totally inspiring and exciting to me.




And in re: to the building workshop, we've so far prototyped a few buildings of our own (Julie, fellow Explo Public Programs staffmember Rachel, and I were the initial guinea pigs) and have tested the exercise on a couple high school-age staff members. We've learned that the exercise is entirely engrossing -- we three grownups spent close to three hours designing, fussing with and grooming our little models, and the two high schoolers were given only an hour but wanted way more time. It's tremendous fun, and the diverse and beautiful pile of building materials we've amassed is really enticing -- and takes nearly an hour to set up, there's so much of it. Most of it came from SCRAP, but quite a bit of it came from scavenging from our own houses and other people's trash and recylcing bins.

The workshop's concept was inspired by Dadaist Tristan Tzara's technique of cutting up a finished text into its component parts -- words, phrases, sentence fragments -- and then combining these units at random to form poetry. Picking from two hats, participants create combinations of building types and emotional states of being, and are challenged to translate abstract experience -- happiness, inquisitiveness, randiness, mobility -- into concrete design elements. On my first pick, I ended up with "mosque" and "stubborn," which I promptly put back into the bowl; the second draw yielded "motel" and "lazy," which seemed far more doable. I was definitely shrinking from the more rich and challenging experience of having to concretize the state of being stubborn -- the idea of laziness was more immediately apparent to me via features you might translate into architecture: reclining lines, droopiness, drab colors, etc. There were also some easy-to-suggest signifiers of laziness that came to mind: tv's, beds. I had this moment of self-disovery, realizing how negatively I was construing laziness; someone else who hadn't been raised to fear laziness and the total ruin it brings might have created a really beautiful, lazy environment. I'm also appalled -- but not surprised -- by how literal my interpretation of laziness was; I think a really interesting execution of this exercise would result in a building that manages to convey the essence of the type without relying on real world examples, and which conveys the emotional state without any of the representative symbols, like my televisions and comfy beds. In any case, it's fascinating to watch other people build and interpret and evolve their designs, and I'm looking forward to the workshop's debut.



more pictures here: Liminality Photoset on Flickr

I'm entering the fourth week of my internship at the Exploratorium, helping out the Public Programs office with the very, very swiftly approaching opening night of "Liminality: Art on the Threshold," the new art and architecture exhibit that'll be on display here from 3/8 till 6/3. This internship has been the ideal antidote to the dissertation-isolation-and-stagnation I'd been suffering up till now; I can't imagine a better place to be (well, besides Bali or Panama or Brazil, etc.) -- the Exploratorium feels like a refuge for all the creatively-minded escapees from academia who want a more dynamic place to exercise their minds and hands. It's like an athaneum + nerd playground + mad scientist laboratory + big hammers and tools workshop all in one. plus there's about a billion schoolchildren on field trips here on any given day.

Anyway, I'm involved in multiple projects related to the Liminality opening night, including photo documentation of the installation and art making process, and designing, prototyping and running a hands-on workshop in which opening night participants will get to design and build their own mini architectural models of concept buildings. The workshop is called "Building Emotions" and will entail randomly selecting a combination of building type plus an emotional state of being (skyscraper + bored, tent + inquisitive, bus station + anxious, etc.) and then designing a structure that will convey that abstract state of being. The materials are all low-cost, everyday scraps we've scavenged from Scrap and our own houses, and I think it'll be a really playful and challenging exercise.

I'm also doing a fair amount of online research, looking for images of conceptual architecture to post as prompts and inspiration for our workshop participants. So... I'm getting a hard and fast introduction to contemporary architecture, and if anyone has suggestions re: specific architects I should look at, or buildings that totally blow your mind, I'd love to know more. Send me images and names!!!

I've posted a few images of the work of artists Erica Gangsei, Paul Andrew Hayes and Seyed Alevi, as well as some of the amazing images of conceptual architecture that I've been hunting for on the net. More images of the installations can be found in my Liminality photoset on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/gp/45085321@N00/991GdR

and more info on the Liminality exhibit and the opening night event can be found here: www.exploratorium.edu/liminality/

last week pat and i made marzipan using his great grandmother's recipe from the 1930's. up till now, no one outside of pat's family has had access to the recipe... which i forgot to memorize, but the ingredients list is really simple: almond paste, marshmallow fluff, corn syrup, confectioners sugar, and vanilla. and food dye and little accessories for embellishment.

it took us days. we ate handfuls of marzipan in the process. after we ran out of fruit and vegetable ideas, we moved onto savories; pat made a bagel with tomato-basil spread, and i made a scrambled egg with bacon and a roasted chicken. prize for least appetizing piece goes to pat's very slick looking banana slug...

more pics at Flikr

on saturday, archie and i rode our bikes over the golden gate bridge, which is something i've been meaning to do for a while. while it was way windier and not as leisurely as i had imagined it would be (super speedy bikers in those bizarro aerodynamic biking costumes whizzing by on the bike path, infuriatingly oblivious people walking like five abreast in the pedestrian lane), it was pretty astounding to be on the bridge, which despite all my naysaying, is indeed a beautiful thing.

AND we saw an awesome and HUGE bird on the way there. archie spotted it, hanging out near chrissy field, standing over three feet tall and looking really regal. later, i looked it up in sibley's and saw that it was a great blue heron, which are common to these parts, though i had never seen one. when he flew off, he looked like a humongous bird machine. which i guess he basically is. this is what they look like:

Public Endorsement of the UC Davis Raptor Center!




Come and See:

a barn owl who flies absolutely SILENTLY!!
a surrendered trained hawk, who's still looking for a forearm to hop onto!
a sneezing turkey vulture with glossy black feathers!
an angry, one-eyed bald eagle!
three bored and pissed off-looking great horned owls!

AND MORE!!

Free! Self-guided tour! And adjacent to the UC Davis Collection of Many Kinds of Goats!