| Krystian Woznicki on 28 Nov 2000 15:19:40 -0000 |
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| [rohrpost] Berliner Gazette, 29.11.[english version] |
4 1/2 Minutes or: >>The average time it takes a Tokyo resident to reach a convenience store.<< [ ] Protocol: Sean Snyder, artist [1] The one hour and forty minute ride from Narita airport displaces any preconceptions a western visitor may have about Japanese culture. A cognitive placelessness occurs due to overlapping visual references from elsewhere. The basis of my project during a four month residency in Japan is to construct a sampled composite (an impossible task?) of hybrid and non-Japanese aspects of the built environment and cultural landscape of Tokyo and its periphery. Tokyo is constantly transforming and dissolving in photographic, animated, and virtual representations. The most dominant characteristics of the city are not itīs copied landmarks, but interconnected flows of electricity, communication and transportation. Profuse above ground utility lines, elevated subway, urban rail, high-speed train and the Metropolitan Expressway connect Tokyo with the rest of Japan. Auto navigation technology [2] orients the vast expanses around the city through an endless network of transaction points; convenience stores, fast food restaurants, gas stations and shopping centers. Tama New Town, Play Station A5, and the DIY Architecture of Tokyo In 1971 Denise Scott asked the question >>in fact, where did the McDonald's parabola and the split-level ranch come from in the first place? << The same year McDonald's opened their first restaurant in Japan. An examination of the roof angles of traditional Japanese architecture could provide a hypothetical answer. So where did Tokyo come from? Fantastic architecture is everywhere: Pachinko Parlors, Love Hotels, and Theme Parks. But the rooftops of the anonymous expanses of Tokyo's periphery hold the most unusual examples. The depictions of cities around the world with no commentary on late-night Japanese television and free tourist brochures with collaged continents merge with aspects of Tokyo's environment. Tama New Town/ Tama Center in suburban Tokyo combines futuristic urban design and architecture with stylized urban symbols from the great civilizations of the world. The Play Station video game A5 [3], intended for the Japanese market, follows a similar logic as Tama New Town. Using simplified CAD architectural renderings, the game begins with a topographic view of an undeveloped natural landscape with a monument (the Houses of Parliament, the Arc de Triomphe, the Pyramids of Giza, Tokyo Tower, etc.) as the focal point. The goal of the game is to develop a prosperous infrastructure around the monument with the given vocabulary of non-spectacular components of the contemporary city. The elevated transportation network is the one distinctively Japanese aspect of the resulting city. For Japanese architects and individuals there are numerous references for sampling architectural styles available. For practicing architects there are extensive guides to non-Japanese architecture, picture books, exterior details, dictionaries of western architectural terminology, etc. For amateur architects home design software [4] is available. Using a vocabulary prefabricated elements, individuals can create their own 'fantasy' environment [5]. This sort of 'do it yourself' approach [6] can begin to explain the origin of the unusual architectural varieties. Project I have constructed a narrative guide in printed form, creating a composite of the city's surface through an excavation of ephemeral everyday visual data (printed material, television and computer software) juxtaposed against my own digital material. The material has been condensed at low-resolution, re-assembled, categorized, clipped, scanned, ordered and placed into a magnified random grid structure interpreted from Japanese publications and cartoons. One focus of the research, through a process of scanning the city and its surroundings from rail lines with digital media, is to construct a sample archive of typological approximations and pseudo- classifications of the obscure architectural variants found in the region. [7] 1. mailto: seansnyder@altavista.net 2. http://www.zenrin.co.jp 3. http://www.artdink.co.jp/japanese/title/a6/index.html 4. http://www.megasoft.co.jp 5. http://www.pophome.com/index.shtml 6. http://www.doityourself.com/ 7. http://itools.mac.com [open public folder with member name: seansnyder ] And here some Berlin dates for your schedule: Wed 29.11. W o r k s h o p : The workshop on Mobile Multimedia Communications [http://mcp.fantastic.ch] will provide an international forum to discuss innovative techniques to tackle the lack of resources by implementing special optimization and coordination techniques, which support the provisioning of particularly valuable services to users on the move and especially in the vehicular environment [http://www.comnets.rwth-aachen.de/~drive]. The scope includes optimized interworking of mobile telecommunication and radio broadcast networks and the layered interworking of network elements with adaptive applications in order to exploit the scarce radio resources in the most efficient and demand-oriented way. Above all the workshop will provide a road map for the provisioning of the future mobile internet in the car. Place: Heinrich-Hertz-Institut Berlin [http://www.hhi.de], Einsteinufer 37, 9 a.m. - 6 p.m. B o o k r e l e a s e : Friedrich Kittler presents his new book >>Eine Kulturgeschichte der Kulturwissenschaft<< [ISBN: 3-7705-3418-2] which traces the founders of cultural studies from Vico to writers as Flaubert and cultural scientists like Victor Hehn to Nietzsche and his followers. Place: Kiepert, Georgenstrasse 2, Stadtbahnbogen 182, 8 p.m. Thu 30.11. L e c t u r e : Berlin based theoretician Knut Ebeling (born in 1970), who studied under Gilles Deleuze and Friedrich Kittler will approach >>Madame Edwarda<< by Georges Batailles from two different angles: By taking one of the most scandalous and mysterious pieces Batailles ever produced Ebeling sheds light on his way of reading and positions his philosophy between Hegel and Nietzsche. Place: Juliettes Literatursalon, Gormannstrasse 25, 8.30 p.m. Sat 02.12. O p e n i n g : Berlin based artist Hanayo [http://www.hanayo.com] transforms the former Club 69 space at Kunst Werke [http://www.kw-berlin.de] into a winter-style Kindergarten. The playful fantasy area for parents and kids reflects the recent baby boom in Berlin-Mitte and its new, growing social networks: As the artist herself puts it >>Hanachambre is the room where u can feel free: a baby becomes a worm; a man becomes a butterfly; a child becomes an alien<<. The indoor playground by Hanayo opens daily between 10a.m. - 6p.m.; for the opening a special performance has been announced. Place: Kunst Werke, Auguststrasse. 69, 8 p.m. Best wishes, Krystian Woznicki mailto:krystian@snafu.de PS: >>Dreams on the path to reality<< pumps up first when you enter the site of the people's project [http://www.thepeoplesproject.com]. Founded by Axel Lapp, its intention is to stimulate and motivate people to create public space with their own ideas: Public areas like streets, parks or buildings are mostly perceived in their functional idea and less as a creative or democratic space. The people's project wants to open this space for projects that transform places of our everyday life into places of recreation and new ideas. There are several concepts being realized at the moment not only in Berlin. PPS: Im Zeitalter globaler E-Speed-Kommunikation ist vorallem Sprache (Language) ein Medium, das die Globalisierung verlangsamt. Mit dem Internet-Translator Systransoft [http://www.systranet.com] lassen sich Dokumente automatisch uebersetzen, wobei die Moeglichkeit besteht, mit 21 spezialisierten Woerterbuechern zu arbeiten und damit eine hohe Uebersetzungs-Qualitaet zu erreichen. In Wirklichkeit kann die vermeintlich unuebertreffliche Intelligenz der Software Sprache zu neuer Komik und Poesie verhelfen. Um Sean Snyders Werkstattbericht aus Toyko auch fuer deutsch-only LeserInnen verstaendlich zu machen, haben wir ihn mit so einer Uebersetzungskanone beschossen [http://www.kulturserver.de/cgi-bin/view_korrespondent?id=420&layout=], raten allerdings kuerzere Abschnitte in den DIY - Uebersetzungsreisswolf zu werfen. [ ] Berliner Gazette The weekly E-Mailzine is published by http://www.kulturserver.de [ ] Editors Klaas Glenewinkel Ulrike Rogler Anne Schreiber Krystian Woznicki [ ] Subscriptions http://www.kulturserver.de/cgi-bin/newsletter ---------------------------------------------------------- # rohrpost -- deutschsprachige Mailingliste fuer Medien- und Netzkultur # Info: majordomo@mikrolisten.de; msg: info rohrpost # kommerzielle Verwertung nur mit Erlaubnis der AutorInnen # Entsubskribieren: majordomo@mikrolisten.de, msg: unsubscribe rohrpost # Kontakt: owner-rohrpost@mikrolisten.de -- http://www.mikro.org/rohrpost