Monday, December 29, 2008

Above the Streetlights Poem with an ASL Interpreter

Dave Pokorney was also filming my poem at the Vets for Peace Concert. Here's his video, from Vimeo. Diane Delange is the incredible ASL interpreter next to me. Thank you Diane.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Bill Massie's American House 08

Bill Massie, head of Architecture at Cranbrook, has designed and built a beautifully lyrical, modern, pre-fab home called the American House 08.


Above is a photo from the Cranbrook website, of the house during assembly.

In its finished state, walls undulate and light glows from porous segments. Texture, material and form interplay. The roof dips down becoming a seat (the truest extension of A Pattern Language's suggestion that part of a roof be reachable from human height).

The American House 08 was installed on the lawn of the Cranbrook Art Museum, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, this summer during an exhibition at the museum, on Massie's work.

When I was a student at Cranbrook, Bill Massie gave a lecture on his work and discussed the intricacy of the development of his designs. His process is unique in that he owns a warehouse in Pontiac, Michigan (a formerly thriving auto manufacturing town that now has seen better days, like most of Michigan) in which he is able to assemble his designs in pieces and walk through them, spending significant time in them as he goes along. This allows the flexibility of experiencing the space in 1:1 scale, and making changes, as you create it; a smart and necessary idea to me.

An article with great photos of the finished American house 08 is featured in the current issue of Dwell magazine.

The Cranbrook Architecture Department is a fifteen person crew of some great, creative architecture heads; there's a lot of interesting experimentation and materials research going on there. Bill Massie, as the department's Artist-In-Residence (department head), certainly leads this effort well.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Above the Streetlights

My most recent poem, with mention of Austin at the beginning, performed at a Veteran's for Peace benefit concert in Gainesville, Florida.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Joshua Allen Harris Street Art Piece

This street art piece by Joshua Allen Harris makes me nostalgic for New York. I only feel that way because I miss casual encounters with intelligent art. Notice the folks on the street who just happen to be walking by and get to have their day marked by stumbling upon these inflatable pieces on the street.





It would be interesting to create a similar thing in Austin, based on Town Lake/Lady Bird Lake. Perhaps the flow of the water could push kinetic sculptures, or the sun could heat up air inside an inflatable causing it to expand and contract.

The Graffiti Abatement Program here is very quick to paint over all the graf art and street art murals that get painted up around town, but street art pieces that are three -dimensional would perhaps be more enduring.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Thank goodness for the internet and the oddness it cherishes.

image above is from hel-looks.com

On Halloween a girl took a picture of me and said "before you know it, you'll be an internet meme." I'm not one yet but there seem to be a million other internet fashion beings out there rocking memes.

The profusion of internet sites documenting out-there (and yet mainstream) contemporary fashion is real. Lookbook.nu is a compendium of photos of outfits submitted by stylists and clothing nerds from around the world. It's an invite-only site, but one can also apply to be part of the site. The invite/apply part is an interesting creation that I'm sure has generated some cravings amongst folks wanting exclusivity. In general though, there are some amazing and interesting things going on on Lookbook, especially for these amped-experimental-fashion starved Austin eyes.

Connected to LookBook, I found HEL LOOKS, a similar website though all the photos are taken by one person. On HEL LOOKS I found the coolest 11 year old fashionista of the world. Note that she says her hat is from a rock festival in China. She is either a very old soul or has some super cool parents. Perhaps she is the combined mixture of the reincarnated souls of Mama Cass, Janis Joplin and Gianni Versace. With self-awareness around fashion like this, how could she not be?

Tuesday, December 9, 2008