Red Line Housing Crisis Center

The CUP project and Damon Rich's (next weeks lecturer) exhibition is discussed via pbs here.

Come enjoy urban interventions! Transmodernfest! 2010

This weekend there will be a fantastic array of performances and shows in the Transmodern festival 2010.

The festival is fantastic in many ways, particularly for me in its ability to transform public space into warm (for me at least) spaces. Actually, last year at the Love Parade in seton hill (by the H&H building/floristree) was where I decided to move back to Baltimore due to the immense love. The parade for me, took a park I never felt comfortable laying or sitting in and created a sense of celebration of the space. The parade began blocks away but I joined in, in a handy costume and it was definitely a little inspired by mob mentality but surely for the purest of motives. The parade was really just a marching band of random costumes and pedestrians handed heart protest-like signs with "Love" written on them. (http://www.fluidmovement.org/)

Here are some images from the event last year:

Its fun to think about how temporary events can alter the way we experience the space.

The city paper has a nice schedule laid out as part of their story on it.

The festival (which I'll be in this Sunday as part of the Pedestrian Service Exquisite (PSE) !)

Buckminster Fuller Map Project

Maps from the great, Buckminister Fuller.

Also, the UN's projects on cartography.

Recent experiences

There are may different stereotypes that come with being a white college student in Baltimore city. It's unfortunate, but true, that race plays a huge role in the fabric of the urban environment. However, depending on the area, a different stereotype occurs. I have been trying to exit the idea of the "mica bubble" at least once a day as a breather for myself; this includes the areas of Bolton Hill, Mt.Vernon, ad the Charles North Arts and Entertainment District. Within the arts district, there is the automatic assumption, for the most part, that almost anyone white is somehow currently or was connected with MICA. However, once you exit SNAED, that stereotype completely dissolves, regardless of the way you dress and what you carry, and a new stereotype blankets you depending on the new neighborhood you've entered. I was recently photographing in east Baltimore in close proximity to Hopkins Medical. I was carrying a camera, and dress like I normally do; this would usually automatically categorize me as a MICA student; however, that was not the numerous encounters that I experienced. One man even pulled his car over to ask me if I was in the market for real estate, ad if I was photographing potential properties. I looked at him puzzled, only to realize that I was too far removed from MICA for the common stereotypes I am so accustomed to. I told him that I won't be ready to buy property for years, and I'm lucky if I can afford rent. He laughed and then asked what I was doing then, since people are always looking to buy property. I told him I was photographing for a project for school, and he said that was cool and keep doing what I'm doing. That interaction would never occur within SNAED. Usually I feel as though I'm being invasive when photographing around SNAED and MICA, and often think many of the long-term residents and homeowners become often annoyed.

I'm glad that the recent visiting speakers have been addressing uses of technology in urban planning.  I usually think of the channels of city bureaucracy that people have to navigate through when they embark on a city planning project or how cold and impersonal using technology can seem, but the recent talks have made me more hopeful that technology can bring more efficiency to urban planning without removing the personal touch.  Sarah Williams, for instance, used cell phone tracking to research traffic in the city, but added a personal, interactive aspect with the text-in for historical information fliers.  I was especially impressed by the projects that James Patten presented.  I appreciated that he kept a running theme of tailoring interfaces to be more organic and interactive so that technology becomes as much about the project and the people using it as it is about the function of the programs.  In the case of the telephone pole mapping project, the technology made the process much more practical and efficient, but still allowed for people working on the project to impose social and cultural restraints on the technology.  Although the DJ application was less related to city planning, I think it was very appropriate to Baltimore because of the electronic music scene.  There are so many shows where the performer is just working with a laptop or synthesizer.  Although adding a more tangible interface may not have that much influence on function, it's good to see people thinking about bringing the performance aspect back to electronic music.  

Creativity and Property

An entirely different issue, one that could be a prequel class for our course (and maybe everything) could be an extended discussion of the commodification not just of the artist for the city, but of art, the selling of work as it reflects on the work and how to be an artist that wants to eat and think of their work as a "gift". Several books of course have been written about this, famously and somewhat recently The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde (which I'm really enjoying reading!) considers these issues outside of the city and the use of the artist and more from the perspective of the artist themselves. He asks larger questions about the true value of art and the moral choices that ultimately reflect more on a large society than the individual.

Just a thought, a blogged thought.

Maps

I came across a website of Neil Freeman's maps I thought they'd be of interest to our class. Here are some images of the maps and it's website.

This one is of all nations capable of nuclear weapons sized down to the same size:

On the site there is also a collection of building typologies:

He took images of the most concentrated metro areas for each state:

The map exercises are simple. Each attempts to use mapping to alter a view point. Here is the site.

An article on one of the maps.