Saturday, February 12, 2005

apocalyptic city and felt cars

jason wrote:

personally i'm happy building a pre, post or post-post apocalyptic city. but a city devoid of people doesn't necessarily mean that it's cold and dead, in fact teeming with the wild growth of nature it could be far more lovable... and maybe some humans have survived whatever-has-happened and remain tenants. but if we are going to show a city after it has begun to renaturalize should we start thinking about crumbling, vine covered structures?

also look at rem koolhas's 'delirious new york', also from the 70's, it investigates the mythos, visions and aspirations of the big apple outside of it's concrete existence ...and as visual inspiration it's pretty good too, there are drawings of many wonderfully sassy architectural ideas, plus a depiction of the chrysler building in bed (represented as manhattan island) with the empire state building, complete with deflated goodyear blimp condom. tee-hee! i'll see if i can get my hands on this book by the 22nd.

on the topic of the autos, little felt cars would be nice, but they're gonna have to be small! about the size of your baby toe, so i guess they'd be pretty simple... we could decorate them with puffy paint bumpers and headlights and such.

Comments:
i don't want to dwell on the car thing too much. others can certainly make cars if they want to. I might abstain because part of what i like about this city thing is that it seems to have something to do with public space, and one of the things that bugs me most about cars is that they're little rolling capsules of private space, and I think a lot of the crappy attitudes that follow from car-driving stem from the sense of entitlement that driving around in a car gives people. I object to the way that buying a hunk of metal makes people think that they own the space it occupies when they're out in public. and i think a lot of the appeal of SUVs is that it makes their drivers feel entitled to an even bigger chunk of public space. but maybe i could just stomp on the cars, and that would make their presence less of an irritant.
 
points taken:
- skyscrapers are also corporate anti-public things that we are making soft (but it's not like making toy cars is a novel creative leap)
- the tension between public and private space is an important part of this whole thing

conclusion:
- stomping on stuffed cars is good

new objection:
- toy soldiers would both make the thing less comfy to nap on and way more creepy. More importantly, we don't need to put mini fake people in the city because real giant flesh people interacting with it will provide the human element. We'll be the people using it, as will the audience at our exhibition's grand opening. so I'm for only making soft replicas of the hard cold aspects of the city, not soft replicas of the already soft inhabitants. unless of course they're apes. (non-human apes)
 
but i'm also embarassingly aware of the fact that i'm the only one being bossy and taking objection to others' ideas. i don't mean to tell anyone what they can or should make. i'm just thinking out loud about what i think this thing means and what i want to make. so please don't feel like i'm stomping on ideas or inspirations. it's only cars i want to stomp on.

the idea i like the best of all is that we all have different ideas about what it all means.
 
i say yes to darren nerding it up.

y: this must be like a dream come true, getting to apply quotes from your nerd school books to cute stuffed felt things.
 
Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?