i know some of us don’t like Flickr (*cough* Morgan *cough* Stefany) but it’s the best tool around for storage and sharing photos for project development!

The Open Budapest-NYC Picture Department

for those interested, I’ve created a flickr pool where we can all deposit and exchange our Budapest/NYC city shots. i recommend this group not be for sketches or digital renderings but only images taken of these two actual cities. images that we can draw upon for inspiration in sketchbook or sculpture; images we can cut-n-paste for collage; images with texture; etc.

the pool can be found at http://www.flickr.com/groups/395539@N23/pool/

I know some people don’t want to have to remember another password and it’s another online task, but it could really help us all exchange all the images we have in storage with one another for use with this project.

You need a Flickr account to join the Group and upload images. you upload them to your own account; then ’send to group’ the images you want. click the Budapest-NYC Picture Department (which you’ve already joined). it will send those images to the group.

the group is public-accessible but private to join; I will moderate the pool so only our own members can drop images to the group. i hope this all makes sense. did I miss anything? does it work?

we can dissolve the group if it doesn’t work but I definitely am hoping to see hundreds of other images for inspiration and to use in some sculptural-collage works!

will be edited

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If the tent size will remain 10×10 m, i suggest this triangle version. You enter in a real room enteriour with windows to the city, armchairs, bookshelves (guidebooks..), etc. There are two doors, one to enter, one to leave the city. You go through the dark tunnel first, there are windows with views and reach the great boulevard with the gates. At the park, the track needs more (a forest of) loadbearing gates, because of the curve. We can suspend a garden from the beams. Then you enter the museum, which is a closed box, and one wall is made of old, out of order tv boxes, where you can project and put in things. After comes the nightlife box and you return back to the enrance hall.

trackversions

a very simple drawing of the 3 alternatives for our small new tent

4 points for consideration:

1.) The nature of the vehicle (swing, cart, etc) is more skateboard than cart.  The fun in using it will be push-kicking and gliding.  So I can imagine that someone will at first just try to go as fast as s/he can.  Perhaps the 2nd time around s/he will shift the focus from the actual kick and glide motion of the “ride” to the immersive experience of the environment. Its an interesting perceptual process to consider, and I think if we can explore this aspect of time/motion/perception to the installation it will be even more engaging.  You know, they are always talking about (design theory guys) how environments need to be understood not as static objects but as experiences, that is in the context of time.  So a challenge that I would offer is this: can you guys develop stuff that engages the participant in an immersive experience in these two different modes of experience: kick-glide and passive observation?

2.) The new tent only offers us about 35 meters of track. Considering the kick-glide method of riding the ride we will be limited to a maximum of 5 cars on the track at a time.

3.) Last night (here is Budapest at the studio) we explored a pile of different possible configuration for the track in the new tent.  All three configurations play with 3 givens as a means for creating a context for the installation: tent, track, building/structure inside the tent.  As the tent is now significantly smaller (size and volume), and as the tent is already in a park, it seems that a shift is paradigm might generate more creativity.  Let’s try to fit as much density into the tent as possible.  Filling it up to the entire envelope.  Overflowing.  In this way the ride is not so much a path around/through a panorama as it is a means of entering into the heart and soul of a unified installation.  One enters the tent and is confronted not by a space enclosed by canvas, but more like being thrust into a massive object covered by a tent.  SURPRISE!  You are not so much a “participant” as you a part of the art itself.  Upon entering the “tent” one needs to carefully cross over the track, as there may be a “cart” kick-pushing up some momentum.  One enters into a core with glimpses of a cart speeding by, light filtering from above, sound, textures, images, multiple levels; there is no inside or outside in the tent, just an overwhelming immersive experience of urban energy connecting BP and NYC.  There are traffic lights, cars have horns, pedestrians come within inches of their lives crossing at the crosswalk (zebra).  The entire space/volume in an interpretation.  The structure itself provides the context for the making of the art, which IS the experience…  (sorry, I got a little carried away)

4.) Noemi is producing 3 possible track/tent/structure alternatives.  The track can be configured as a circle, a triangle or a square (with rounded corners of course).  Each has it strengths: the circle allows for a smoother, perhaps faster ride, and a continuous and constantly changing means for experiencing the environment.  The triangle allows the track to pass through a large element, and provides at least one long straight run of track (the hypotenuse).  The square maximizes the space in the center and allows for 4 distinct districts/themes.  Any of the 3 could work.  You’ll get a better idea once you see the diagrams.

I hope that this is helpful.

Terrence

Please note that our next meeting in the Studio is going to be on Wednesday at 7.30! (30.05.2007)

 tasks-and-schedules-25_05_2007.xls

Some ideas for uniforms

                          

Somewhat redundant with the below, and now out-of-step with the new tent size, here is description of Tuesday’s gab-fest.

Discussed, and in some cases decided:

We were delighted with the video of the track-prototype, and spent some time discussing Noemi’s beautiful mock-up of the ride design.  We want to bend the current track design so that the largest, widest loop is in the front and center of the ride, forming an area for the corral of waiting riders, and for whatever the gift-shop becomes.  I’ll try to have a sketch up soon.  We also discovered that we went to extend

the Approach section of the ride, which will be a dark tunnel with window-dioramas (most likely three), so that the rider will be in a tunnel around the first loop and into the rear right corner, whereupon it will open abruptly into

the Grand Boulevard, which will run along the entire back wall, and feature the widest panoramic views of the city, as well as a bridge-crossing and such-like fun, and which will appear to continue on indefinitely, while the course curves into an area celebrating

the Integrated Urban Parks of BudaPestNewYork, featuring hanging gardens, real live plants, scenic vistas, cemeteries, fountains, and public baths.  The scale and perspective get wacky there.  The course will guide visitors then through an ivied wall into

the Museum, which is to contain art and artifacts of all the varied fine and applied arts, the histories and the experiments, of the collective creative life of the city.  More strange scale, but the most human-scaled section here. Leaving the museum, the
course opens into the streets for the experience of

BudaPestNewYork Night Life, the final section, which will feature lit windows and festooned towers and faux-neon and the first appearance of the theme of the city with lyrics.

So we have five discreet sections for the ride and for the city guide, and these are they.

What comes next:

We need to discuss what we, as BudaPestNewYorkers present at the exhibitions, are to wear.  Uniforms identical for all?  What themes?  How will we work with the weather?  Et cetera.

We expect to need a staff during open hours of nine or ten people.  Two greeters or barkers or welcomers outside the tent, two to operate the gift shop or its descendant, and five to help people board and disembark and keep things working generally.

Noemi’s set of possible designs for the theme of the carts or baskets were great.  How many are there to be?  Can people ride them together?  Perhaps baskets that could accommodate two people would be ideal.  If we had eight baskets, and they took two parties each and the ride took  twenty minutes to travel through. . .

The gorgeous current design needs some small adjustments, as mentioned earlier, and here were some thoughts.  We need to have storage space/back stage/green room somewhere inside.  The distance between the center of the track and the tent sides must be at least 1.5m in all places, and preferably more.  The waiting area will probably require roughly 4m x 5m of space in the front center, inside the tent.

Is it going to be possible to use ramps and walkways under the track to provide interest, allow us interesting views, permit the illusion of a bridge on the grand boulevard?

What have we missed so far?

Finally, added to the to-do list, we’d like everyone to send a thumbnail photograph and their name so that we can introduce ourselves all one to the other via the website.  Stefany is going to compile the page, so send to stefany@fluxfactory.org please.

And some of us are headed to the Museum of the City of New York to look at some great dioramas.