We want to see how an existing network of organization amongst greenmarket distributers and receivers shifts, based on outlets of distribution.  Thus showing the overlaps and fold’s within the network…  and how throughout the week, the network, because of the top-down infrastructure(where market is open, who is able to sell) is able to form in some areas, and break apart in others.

093008_GreenMarkets_BradJoanna

Mumbai: Information/Cognition/Exchange Distributions

Patterns of Goal Oriented Cognition and Distance/Fatigue Conditions:

Updates of previous research work showing two-way flow of currency and water in Mumbai & workings of distributive, pattern oriented cognitive model. Expanded results of cognitive mapping. Indepth research applied to the micro scale of personal aqua-devices & to the multi-scale delivery exchange and information broadcast systems:
week5 research (pdf)

Jakarta

With a semi working script we were able to connect origin and destination points through the shortest distance through an available transit point. With several diagrams that test proximity in unification, seperation, radial concentration, and capacity, we can address the sphere of influence that each origin has to itself and its destination.

We are looking into flexible/rigid logic’s of these spheres/circles of influence. Next we need to go into types of exchange, multiple exchanges in path between different vehicles/people/bicycles. Also scale may be an issue with different forms of exchanges. Also that can potentially determine the qualitative range.

TeamJakarta

A trip through Los Angeles Interchanges

A short video traveling on Los Angeles freeways/Interchanges with really cool music.Interchanges

Bangkok | Water Diversion

Bangkok’s flooding poses a problem in which other cities have encountered and have addressed in distinct manners. Across the world water’s natural flow causes problems for infrastructure. More recently the Katrina catastrophe in New Orleans demonstrated that simply blocking these currents will not protect against them. Because of this a team has questioned the present approach and have proposed an adoption of natures process to alleviate the cities issues with inundation. In history, Aztecs created an agricultural island network, which utilized Mexico City’s flooding as a method maintaining the ecological balance. More closely related to Bangkok, fishing villages in Thailand introduce infrastructure as a way to harness the natural flow and redirect accordingly for programmatic purposes.

The culmination of these probes has supplied data for a system that translates topography and its local/global variables influence on water and what the concepts of placidity, turbulence and directionality have on the fluidity of water upon Bangkok.

Case Study| Bangkok_entries

Week 4_Jakarta

Jakarta’s suburb growth may be a result of 3 systems, the one of transportation infrastructure, existing water distribution, and number of existing suburb clusters. Using transportation as the rate, water distribution as capacity, and neighboring amount of occupants, we can begin to understand the population growth against these three checks. However, its crucial to make time a factor in this system of mapping in order to see the actual pattern change.

Looking into a possible application, jumping a little ahead, of both GPS and transit.

week3_jakartagroup_chad-anna1

LONDON : Surveillance Systems

Intial Research on surveillance systems with a historical example of the Panopticon and a new system of using surveillance to monitor health conditions such as early symptoms of Alzheimers.

entry_1

The second document is the beginning of our script where we started monitoring the surveillance scopes in Trafalgar Square, London. We began to map out two paths that begin to intersect with the surveyed scopes.

london_projectpage_1

Sao Paulo | favela growth_01

Initial investigation into growth systems and favela growth logic. 

080923_seb|heidi_saopaulo

Crisis Fronts discussion forum

We’ve set up a google group and sent invites to everyone. The discussion forum is available here. We’ve placed a link in the navigation area as well. Please post any scripting questions and issues, general questions, research issues, etc there so that other members of the studio can respond. Since so many issues tend to be common to a number of groups it should be a useful place to get troubleshooting and error checking help.

new york city_blackmarkets and greenmarkets

We are comparing the different players in the greenmarket’s and blackmarket’s that exist in new york city.  So far, our research has led to the idea that both systems operate with a set of self-deterministic goals (agents who make the sale’s) within the protocol of a top-down infrastructure set up to allow them to negotiate there way different parts of the city and create informal as well as formal organizations.

Los Angeles and the condition of junction

A series of diagrams that begin to illustrate the relative connection of density and porosity within the infrastructure of major freeway junctions.crisis-fronts-research-entries02

A Primer On Mathematics

Gil and I have uploaded a math primer for you all to reference. The PDF was extracted from a book on MEL scripting; however, it is not syntax specific. We hope this may help further your understanding of basic trigonometry and vectors.

a-primer-on-mathematics

Mumbai: Aqua-Delivery Networks

week4_research

In the pdf:
Diagram of entities, relationships, and conditions of the formal and informal water delivery networks of Mumbai. Water flows down through system while currency, in one for or another, flows upwards.

Initial cognitive map script of the above system in its simplest form then gaining complexity. Question for Gil and Ronnie: we need to know how to have rhinoscript generate new excel columns on the fly since we don’t know beforehand, how many steps the latest script will run since the whole thing operates on a Do_Loop While conditional.

Ok, figures that out. Next question: is it possible to concatonate variables into the string name for each excel file. Something like:
oSheet.Cells(1,intStepCount*3+3).Value = “Step” + intStepCount + ” Z”
which unfortunately doesn’t work.

-

Matters of Sensation

Ruy Klein / David Ruy and Karel Klein, Klex2008,

 

The opening for Matters of Sensation, the current exhibition at Artist Space is Wednesday from 6-10 

 

Exhibiting Architects:  davidclovers with C.E.B. Reas / Emergent, Gage/Clemenceau Architects / Gnuform, Hirsuta / Höweler+Yoon Architecture / IwamotoScott Architecture / mod / MOS / murmur / Ruy Klein / Sotamaa / SU11 / Xefirotarch   Panel Discussion: Monday, September, 22 6:30 pm with Sylvia Lavin, Director of Critical Studies and MA/PhD Programs in Architecture at UCLA / Marcelo Spina, Faculty and Applied Studies Coordinator, SCI-Arc, Co-Principal Patterns / Benjamin Weil, Artists Space / Peter Zellner, Faculty, SCI-Arc, Principal ZellnerPlus Moderated by Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, Architecture and Design, MoMA Organized in collaboration with:  Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University at Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall  1172 Amsterdam Avenue www.columbia.edu/about_columbia/map/avery.html

 

Network and Conspiracy Tracking: Mark Lombardi

 In the context of thinking about networks, protocols, and the construction of durable linkages between capital, cognition, power, and architecture, the work of Mark Lombardi has some resonance. These are simple techniques of diagramming reveal geopolitical networks, associations that are both shadowy and public, and the flow of power and global capital. Images abound on the internet. A few good sources: Pierogi 2000 Gallery, Google Images.  An excellent article on his work that appeared in Art in America is available here.

Extreme Public Transport – Bangkok Water Buses

Here is a clear example of how Bangkok’s maze of canals connected to the river have earned it the name “Venice of the East.”

Redlines: Center for Urban Pedagogy Exhibition

Damon Rich. Preparatory drawing for Flow of funds (spikes and troughs), 2008. 

 

This should interest most of you. MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies has a show up featuring the Center For Urban Pedagogy’s project on Architectures of Finance. CUP produces some intriguing maps and other forms of visual tracking that visualize dynamic information and data and their relationship to architecture and the city. 

“An installation of models, photographs, videos, and drawings, Red Lines, Death Vows, Foreclosures, Risk Structures immerses visitors in a landscape of pulsing capital and liquidated buildings, exploring the relation between finance and architecture. During a year-long residence at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies, designer and CUP founder Damon Rich surveyed the darkening realm of real estate markets and produced an installation to share the findings. As the Subprime Meltdown continues to spread, pushing people out of homes, bankrupting institutions, and threatening global economic crisis, Red Lines aims to broaden and enrich the urgent conversation about how our society finances its living environments.”

“The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) is a New York City-based nonprofit organization that uses art and design to draw the connections between everyday life and the decision-making processes that give it form. CUP produces community and youth education projects, exhibitions, and events that reclaim the possibilities of social architecture. Visit http://www.anothercupdevelopment.org to learn more.”

via e-flux

Case Study: Litina, Italy and urban marsh ecologies

An interesting piece via the Times: Alan Berger from MIT is studying the Fascist era water management system of Litina outside Rome which is built on a system of pumping stations and canals to drain the otherwise swampy and and make it viable for urbanism. The region has had a tremendous economic boom, but is terribly polluted.

“But instead of simply recommending that polluting farms and factories be shut, Professor Berger specializes in creating new ecosystems in severely damaged environments: redirecting water flow, moving hills, building islands and planting new species to absorb pollution, to create natural, though “artificial,” landscapes that can ultimately sustain themselves.”

“Latina’s prosperity is built on drained swampland, kept habitable by six pumps as huge and noisy as airplanes, put in place in 1934 by Mussolini. Each day they pull millions of gallons of water — up to 9,500 gallons a second — out of the soggy ground, directing it into an elaborate system of cement-lined canals that ultimately dump it into the sea.

The entire province would return to marshland in seven days if the pumps were turned off, Carlo Cervellin of the Pontine Marsh Consortium said. He is in charge of maintaining and regulating the immense machines, which are in a pump house at the lowest point in the province, in Mazzochio.”

Architectural Balkanology **links fixed**

Bruce Sterling, if you don’t happen to know, is the man. Here’s a humorous little interdiction he made on an interesting precis for a show about the urban development and phenomena of the Balkan region. Both Bruce’s comments and the information in the precis are very related to what we’re looking at in terms of the forces, causes, and results of urban crisis.

http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2008/09/architectural-b.html

On a non architecture related note, take a gander at this speech by Bruce that covers all sorts of things from cultural phenomena, psychology, and deep technology:

http://blog.longnow.org/2008/08/03/bruce-sterlings-sharp-warning-8-years-later/

** fixed links..well maybe not. WordPress is being strange about it. Just copy and paste.

World Largest Suburbs

Jarkata has taken the #1, #3, and #4 spot on the worlds largest suburbs and at the same time it’s only the 11th largest city.

Agro-veillance

 

 

Via Pruned:

“If blanketing UK cities with a thick scopic fog of CCTV cameras weren’t enough, the countryside may soon find itself placed under similar heavy surveillance. But this, curiously enough, might be a good thing.

As reported by BBC News last month, researchers from technology firm QinetiQ and from Aberystwyth University flew an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) “over fields in England and Wales to map the nitrogen levels in soil, to determine whether fertiliser applications were needed.”

The data collected was then used to create a Normalised Difference Vegetation Index(NDVI) map, which “tells you the difference between ‘green crops’ that are photosynthesising and bare ground.” Where there is bare ground, more fertilizer may be needed.

Equipped with this NDVI map, some GPS locators and a techno-pimped out John Deere, farmers would thus be able to target areas in need of supplemental nutrients and to better estimate how much to use, potentially releasing less fertilizers that otherwise would leach out and pollute water sources nearby and further down the hydrological line. Making flights and maps at regular intervals would also increase efficiency and thereby decrease energy consumption by letting farmers know precisely when the chemicals are needed. Guessing is pretty much taken out of the equation.

This is precision farming.”

Cognition Research Resources

A few resources for more on cognitive systems:

Sandia National Lab does research on Cognition and Cognitive Systems as they pertain largely to defense systems.

DARPA, the US Defense Department’s Research Arm (Advanced Research Programs Agency) funds a broad range of research on information systems.

Iowa State Computer Science page on AI and AI algorithms

There is quite a lot of research on Urban Cognition available – not exactly the same as our area of inquiry, but related. Even still, research into how the human mind stores and accesses attribute data for the purposes of navigation and mapping is both interesting and relevant. This is one: Cognition and the City

London Night Aerials

Via The Big Picture, the Boston Globe’s website for sharing fantastic photos from current events. A great site for everyone with some truly extraordinary images.

Chicago’s plan to curb greenhouse gases

Via the Times: Chicago unveiled perhaps the most aggressive plan of any major American city to reduce greenhouse gases today: “The blueprint would change the city’s building codes to promote energy efficiency. It also calls for installing huge solar panels at municipal properties and building alternative fueling stations.

Ron Burke, a director with the Union of Concerned Scientists, which helped shape the plan, said it was “more robust and quantitative than those in any other city.””

Mumbai: Distribution Networks

week3_research

Very broad research collecting existing information about water and transporation distribution networks in Mumbai. Next step will move into the unofficial, human powered, water delivery networks between the municipal infrastructure and the populations that demand but have no real or equitable access to it.