FIRST DAY OF CLASSES

So it beggins!!

First day of classes at ITP!! Applications class with Red Burns… What an interesting lady… Founded ITP in 1979 and participated in technologies such as Public Acces, Teletext, and the first emails in the world!

Some of the things she expects us to do:

• Embrace the unexpected
• Value serendipity
• Play
• Create a whole with disparate parts

A quote from one of the founders of Xerox: “If you want to know what the future is – INVENT IT!”

Another interesting topic:

Consumers are becoming content producers – how to sort/distribute/access all of this media/content?

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Our first assignment was handed out:

“Take the M5 bus on a weekend at Houston and La Guardia Place to the last stop – George Washington Bridge – and return.

Make notes of what you find surprising – e.g. Changing neighborhoods, changing people, changing architecture, or none of these – and write your personal experience of the trip – observing, imagining, and reacting to New York, or you can choose to imagine a story about the people you see.”

Some ideas I have:

• Video/picture sequences of the route
• Map pinpointing position
• Retrace route on bike – shooting video and pictures along the way
• Include heart rate monitor data
• Interview people along the way (not so good)

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Second half of the class we had the guest speaker: Acconci

Here are two VERY short exerpt of the lecture – was really just testing the video capabilities of my phone…

(Coming back soon)

Started out as an artists experimenting with the self – showed us some of his pieces:

• Video with him using a candle to burn the hair off his body and trying to become a woman
• Installation in an empty room with a ramp – he was under the ramp talking “dirty” and masturbating – experiment on togetherness and isolation
• Installation with a dining table that stretched out of the window – becoming a trampoline
• Installation of 4 planks on the floor – all with the American colors – and a seat in the middle. The seat is connected to pulleys that tilt the 4 planks up to close up and form a room – the exterior walls having the Soviet colors. The room existed just as long as the person existed sitting there.
• Upside down houses – 3 houses upside down one on top of the other

“Art started to become specific to space and time. If the piece was somewhere else or at a different time it would not make sense or make a different sense.”

Nowadays he is a designer/architect www.acconci.com

Dwells on natural shapes – how architecture should move to adapt to humans – not the opposite. Organic shapes.

In NY:

• Queens College – sphere installation
• Clothes shop in Japan – cloth used to cover the interior to give it a soft feel – in the changing room, if you liked the clothe, press a button and take picture of yourself – picture is projected on store front’s panel
• Staten Island subway station – walls that become the seating

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Can’t wait for more!