bz @Workshop in the Woods

Invited to be part of the Audiovisual Workshop in the Woods this Fall. Very excited with this intellectual adventure.

About the Workshop

The Digital Musics graduate program of the Dartmouth College Music Department is hosting its third annual Workshop in the Woods on Audio and Visual Synthesis fromOctober 21 to October 23, 2016 at Pierce’s Inn in Etna, New Hampshire.

The workshop is free to admitted attendees and includes meals and group lodging. The workshop is generously supported by Bregman Media Labs, the Graduate Program in Digital Musics, and the Neukom Institute.

This workshop brings together artists, musicians, composers, designers, architects, scientists, and engineers for a collaborative three day workshop on procedural, parametric, algorithmic, and generative means of creating audio, video, and objects.

The workshop will be located in a remote setting where participants will have free reign to roam the grounds, take hikes, and gather by a campfire at night. The evenings include performances and collective audio-visual synthesis improv sessions.

deers at Mt Olympus

snoqualmie hiking

flying kites

One of Clean Monday's rituals: flying kites as captured in schhool's book. Image source: Radar (via gtroza)

the architecture of display, you, and some other aqua-species

Can a prison for exotic animals and rare species, be your getaway spectacle for 25$? There are rules, rituals, and considerations, but at the end of the day, you rule, and they adapt to you.

A human being enters the tank to start feeding the domesticated creatures. The human being touches the fish and rewards it; as if the last can feel? Are there feelings and emotions among these other species? You are not supposed to tap the glass and bother the fish but there is no such a sign when there is a jelly. Other labels imply your superior nature against "the brainless, boneless creatures" or indicate a "fair" exchange between your playing (with the torch light) and their (need for?) training (in the case of penguins). Sometimes they even protect you from animals' (unacceptably?) aggressive swimming, like in the case of the trapped sea lions.

A clear sacrifice of these animals for your knowledge, awareness, and entertainment. Claustrophobia for them, while circling eternally around the same spot, functions greatly for your phantasmagorical display.  Artificial color in the tank creates a new kind of "ecosystem," perfect as background for your photos or to nurture your imagination. You get the greatest performance in front of your eyes and children, the perfect documentation of your weekend activities.

In this spectacle, the director did not follow the latest theories of performance and engagement: there is a clear separation between the actor, and the audience. Or did the operator took engagement further, to convert the spectator as the ruler? And how about the animals rights? The aquarium is not there to remind how small, how insignificant you are in this universe; on the opposite, it highlights man's dominance on earth, it nurtures your ego, the "macho" in you.

Shipwreck @ Amorgos

photo by Dimitris Papanikolaou

parisian airport walls

xarhakos park

limanakia

Few kilometers outside Athens, opposite the lake Vouliagmeni one can find 3 little bays, named "limanakia"/ λιμανάκια (=little bays/ ports). I visited the 2nd one, which also includes a bar. It is one of my favorite beaches in Athens. What is amazing in this beach is first of all the rock formations around the water, making it an excellent place for those who like to jump into the water. The wilderness of the landscape attracts young people or at least people that do not need a lot of luxury and they enjoy the basics. Architecturally, the interventions made in the landscape are remarkable. The "beach" is composed by a series of wooden decks attached to the rocks in various heights looking at the bay. The bar/ cantine is very basic and also has a wooden deck with simple tables/ benches right at the edge of the water. As I was browsing to find images for this post I realized that the waters in limanakia is offered for divers. In the same search I also discovered that Alexandros Papadiamantis has written "Ta limanakia" in 1907. However this seems to be for a different area.

For more info about Athens beaches click here. 

For more info about diving at limanakia click here.

from the bee-visits series

...or how did i start understanding the landscape. My grandpa, bee-keeper Iordanis Sidiropoulos on the right. Photos from the archive of Kostakis Sidiropoulos.

a cold weekday at the beach

water beads

Photo credits: Kristophe Diaz

Photo credits: Kristophe Diaz

Photo credits: Kristophe Diaz

rain-making machine

[via Modern Mechanix]

light fantastic

A viperfish is ready to attack a deep-sea shrimp. (Edith Widder, ORCA)

The ghostly outline of a Japanese firefly squid. (Michael Ready / Visuals Unlimited / Getty Images)

Atolla vanhoeffeni jellyfish. (Edith Widder, ORCA)

Periphylla jellyfish. (Edith Widder, ORCA)

Jellyfish glow with the flow in the Gulf of Maine and the Weddell Sea. (David Shale / NPL / Minden Pictures / Ingo Arndt / Minden Pictures)

A cockatoo squid from the Sea of Japan. (Dante Fenolio / Photo Researchers / Getty Images)

A deep-sea shrimp spews bioluminescent material to thwart a viperfish. (Edith Widder, ORCA)

Finally, the kraken is captured: Widder worked with scientists last summer to obtain the first video of a giant squid in the wild. (NHK / NEP / Discovery Channel / AP Images)

[via Smithsonian Magazine]

lonely penguin

The artist (or activist) unlike the anthropologist (in this case penguin-logist) would intervene and save it (than simply observe). There is something very brutal during the moment where the narrator takes for granted that the scientists are not allowed or not capable of saving the penguin. #Not like

this May's digital bouquet

Digital bouquet and photo by Maria Toloudi

Blanc-wall show or making the blank walls green

Patrick Blanc, a French botanist who has collaborated with architects like Herzog &deMeuron and Jean Nouvel, recently presented his work at MFA in Boston. His presentation under the title The Vertical Garden: Biological Design and Urban Architecture was very performative. One could easily guess that by the moment he entered the stage on a jungle-patterned shirt and green hair!

Patick Blanc during the show

Patick Blanc during Q&A

Patrick Blanc is known as the vertical garden inventor. In many of his projects, he populates blank walls with plants in wavy patterns. His plant designs include a lot of tropical biodiversity. His inspiration is driven by many plants and habitats, like karst and limestone cliffs, epiphytes, rocks and inselbergs, aquatics and rheophytes, root systems, and what he calls as plant architecture. 

Patick Blanc's office on water [Image source: Patrick Blanc] 

Patrick Blanc's home [Image source: Patrick Blanc] 

Patrick Blanc working at his office [Image source: Patrick Blanc] 

Patrick Blanc has been interested in the plants' architecture since the time he was studying the tropical forest, where plants need to adapt themselves in order to utilize the 1% of natural light. Due to this minimum light resources, the plants develop a sophisticated adaptation by open themselves up to occupy the maximum surface possible (without any overlap at their leaves). Out of the competition among species (fast versus slow plants), some species will survive (distinction and high variation). It seems that Patrick Blanc took this concept of the wide horizontal surface of highly varied plants in the tropical forest and converted to a vertical surface of plants in the urban setting. Many of his projects have more than 250 species. Questions evolve around which species to use, and which plants can go side by side to avoid diseases and parasites. Lately he has been interested to work not only in surfaces but to expand the concept into vertical gardens with trees, or even three dimensional projects. Although in many of his field trips he discovers instances that architecture and plants that co-exist and co-evolute (or perhaps plants taking over architecture), Patrick Blanc totally separates the two in his projects.

Patick Blanc's house and friend [Image source: Patrick Blanc] 

Another very interesting concept he mentioned is that of the "living." Patrick Blanc commented that some things are too old to be considered as "living." For example, it is out of scale to consider petrol as living even if it consists out of dead animals. Some of his projects include edible plants. Other very interesting concepts he briefly mentioned are that of the elongation of plants and the black hole plants created during night (eg. Herzog & deMeuron Caixa).

A typical drawing for his plantings [Image source: Patrick Blanc] 

One of his staircase plantings [Image source: Patrick Blanc] 

During his "show," Patrick Blanc commented indirectly on the role of media and possibly marketing by referring to the different audience reception his projects had between 1986 and 1994. Quoting his words: "1986: Nobody interested, 1994: (same project) big success." To further illustrate the root of his fame, he mentioned that it was first the Art, then the Interior Design and at last Architecture to acknowledge his contribution. This note gives a lot of hope to researchers and designers that are very devoted to their own work, and sometimes work by themselves for many years without anyone being very interested in them. What would I say? Nice days are coming!