NYC Trip - Before

We leave today for what should be an exciting trip. I have never been to New York, and look forward to seeing the city. As of right now though, I am actually more excited to see our site of interest, Williamsburg, and all of its stalled construction sites, than I am about seeing all the skyscrapers. I am eager to start exploring the potential sites for the project, and see what they have to offer, what challenges they bring, where they might take the project, etc.

StudioBlock Final Review

The first phase of the semester is over, and it yielded some interesting projects. The concept of the project was for each student in the studio to build a small "block" to connect to each other, creating a larger "studioblock." Each block was designed to allow marbles to interact inside it. Some chose to transport and move marbles between each other, while others chose to ignore their "neighbors" and focus internally. Although the intention of the project was to create a larger block which could be held, flipped, rotated, shaken, etc., we never achieved physical connections strong enough.

Raising questions about connectivity and continuity, both physically and conceptually, the project was a great warm-up for the rest of the semester. The broader topic amongst all the studios is architecture and infrastructure, and my studio specifically is looking at stalled construction sites. For the studioblock project, everyone had to deal with the tension of meeting their neighbor's requests, while simultaneously keeping their own intentions at the forefront. As the semester progresses, this will become more and more prevalent. How, when, and where to tap into the infrastructure present (both physical connections and conceptual ones, such as program or original architect's intentions) versus ignoring the site and creating a project about itself. No doubt different students will approach the project from opposite ends of this continuum, and in the end, will probably yield the same results as the studioblock project - half the class taking one approach, the other half another.

My block in particular lived on the "non-communicative" side of the studioblock, and focused on misleading the viewer. From the beginning, my intentions were to create numerous paths implying motion, but to secretly block off the path so that marbles could not actually pass. In addition, the eight marbles that were to be originally placed in my block, were designed to never leave as well. Therefore, as the viewer manipulated the studioblock, it would appear visually that the marbles should pass through, and it would sound as if they were moving, however they would be doing nothing of the sort.

After being given the twist of considering how our blocks would interact with ice as opposed to marbles, I decided that the ice could be the indicator of where the secret internal compartments were, based on how the ice melted and soaked into the chipboard.

Although the marbles themselves did not actually interact with my neighbors aside from possibly entering for a moment and then exiting, the physical connections with my neighbors did invoke some communication and compromise. For connecting to CJ, I built a piece to act as a funnel, capturing the marbles exiting his "floodgate." Small basswood sticks projected out of his block, and were inserted into small holes poked into my funnel. On the opposite side, James and I developed a small clip, to be inserted into a slit on my tunnel, as well as the side wall of his project. As it turns out, in the final rendition, the tunnel from my center section fit so well into the appropriate hole in James' block that we did not need the clip to hold us together. In theory, the clip system fit well with the nature of James' project, which involved many moving parts as well as a hinged locking mechanism with another neighbor.

The most conceptually difficult connection was the connection with Chris. His project involved many tubes, and not many rectangular pieces, while mine involved almost solely rectangular pieces. In one rendition prior to the final, we chose to "bridge the gap" via adding a circular tube onto my project and a rectangular loop onto his, allowing us to connect. However, the sharp contrast between this additional part and the vocabulary of the rest of our project proved to be troublesome. The solution to the problem was to introduce a third piece. This third piece contained the logic of Chris' project at one end, and the logic of my project at the opposite end, yet was used to create the physical connection we were looking for. In this way, the piece can be added to connect our two projects, or removed entirely so that each of our projects could be read separately.