http://www.earthhour.org/sites/default/files/media_to_embed/EarthHour_300x250_2012_0.swf
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Aimless Internet Wanderings…
Lately, I find myself getting lost in aimless wanderings on the internet. A Facebook recommend will lead me to a YouTube search, leading me to an amazing song, which will lead me to an image search, to a flicker account, a blog and back to YouTube. I absolutely am obsessed with the flâneur approach to surfing the web, and my desktop is full of my personal collections, curiosities, inspiring ideas, quotes, images and music. So I thought to myself- “why not share what I found today”.
I absolutely love these black and white washed out portraits from the Library of Congress, which may end up being part of a ink and photo project I would like to do.
Like this:
Open to Public: Community Involvement in Architecture and Design
So these past few months have been packed with exciting projects at work. With the development if the Royal Alberta Museum , and the new Stadium in Fort McMurray, its kept me rather busy. What has surprised(and impressed) me in this time, is the amount of public involvement for these projects.
Each of the respective cities are really are asking for the input of their citizens, through easy to access websites, polls and blogs. Of course, the public sees only select images out of thousands of charts, drawings and data; but even with only seeing parts of the whole story, the comments and discussions have been impressive, enlightening, and of course rather frustrating.
While their are many downfalls to allowing public to see the projects before approval, ( like the outcry against the designs for RAM) I can only hope that as the public becomes aware of the process in architecture, they will also develop a better appreciation for design.
Let me know what you think! Here are some links to the public forums for each of the mentioned projects:
Royal Alberta Museum:
http://www.infrastructure.alberta.ca/3688.htm
MacDonald Island Stadium:
http://stadium.macdonaldisland.ca/
dreaming of new places to travel…
Acadia announces winners of the 2011 Integrative Materialities Competition sponsored by FLATCUT_ | canadianarchitect.com
Three of my colleagues have been chosen as winners of this competition will will be showcased in Calgary, then touring in the US after that. Congrats Bryan, Allison and Rich!
Manifesto for the Unfocused, Untitled Blog
For awhile now, I have been struggling with the idea that a blog needed a focus. I started blogging again, as a way to keep me engaged in what’s going on, to keep me off the couch and into reading/news/magazines/galleries/ideas/concerts/books ect, but none of these things that I am interested follow one definable subject.
I have this one friend who has a blog about ‘gaming’, another a fashion blog, another a sketchblog. All of them are amazing on different levels, and acceptably focused, but I am interested in the uncategorizable, the everything/anything. So how do I title my blog?
Our education system, our culture,everything around us, tells us we need to narrow our focus, decide on a topic, write a thesis, decide on a career, etc. Always specializing, narrowing, organizing, compartmentalizing. As Species, (in the long list of -Kingdom Phylum Family Genus Species), we have created the learned behavior, that in order to understand something fully, it needs to categorized, and filed away under the first letter of its topic. I am questioning this behavior, is it helpful or damaging? Does it work for some and not for others? Do we do it just because that is the way we have always done it? Is it really the right way?
In opposition to the ‘correct’ way to write/learn/study, I want to broaden focus, learn about all sorts of ideas, activities and topics irrelevant of stereotypical subjects or labels that we as humans systematically created in order to understand the world, becuase I think we are limiting ourselves by creating compartments and narrowing our focus so that actually we can’t see anything or hear anyone else. Don’t get me wrong, its great to be passionate about something, but for right now that something is staying unfocused and thoroughly engaged.
That is what my (unfocused) blog is to me. As the french philosopher, Roland Barthes said about his book, [ it is about the musings and mythologies of the modern world]. My blog intends to be this too. It is about everything. As long as it makes us stop, consider, question or do, instead of sitting, absorbing, accepting and assimilating.
This blog is about discovering something, anything really, as long as its not nothing.
Gobble-Gobble
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The most entertaining free concerts I have been too! Gobble-Gobble, a locally started electronic pop band, was the finale performance of this years SOS (Sounds of Old Strathcona) music festival , and had the crowd excited from start to finish with percussion instruments made up of smashing shovels and hockey helmets to its future pop synth and its digital noise. Would definitely see them again!
