I lvoe this conversation and am excited to explore the spatial, material, commercial, political, possibilities that this none stop new world order provides.
But can't help to be anxious about where it will take us.
And Foxnews scares the begeezus out of me. Propaganda at that scale and that successful, should scare anyone. I guess I fit the adverticing into the foxworld....
funny that , mass culture, as culture comes en mass.
mozart's singspiel operas were very mass culture,
now they are the substance of highbrow culture
underground art and music, adverse to the
norm and expected, has a large audience all
wanting to taint themselves with that 'uniqueness'..
the romantic goth culture is an example, a particular
example of marking out specificity, being special and standing
out from the crowd, through cosmetic cloning, becoming very very general. is that not just another mass culture?
subculture, or underground culture, are only relative terms taking
the family-9 to 5 job-middle class culture as the base, but when that subculture becomes the base, when you surround yourself by goths,
or broke artists, or nudist performer artists, scat sculptors, drag transvestites, nail clipping collectors...it becomes the norm...another 'subversion' is possible, and so on and on.
isnt it funny that there should be gay republican clubs? i wonder whther that is a subversion of homosexuality or of republicanism.
Aug 23, 05 5:56 pm ·
·
Gosh cellardoor whore, now you're starting to sound old fashioned too!
melquiades, maybe now's a good time to take a vacation take a vacation.
but rita, there is a side to commercial media that is downright scary for its devotion to manipulation of truth. Being concerned by this isn't olde fashioned, just common sense. Fox is the cartoon boogeyman lately and recent work by said canine to smear Sheehan is a typical example of the method. It wouldn't matter except that it appears to have an effect...
Is OMAAMO hoping to use the BUSH tactic of repition and distraction to create a new world for themselves in the realm of media? and then hope that it will last long enough to take advantage, or maybe even do the pinnocchio thing and turn into a real boy?
I like OMA's buildings. I love the way OMA writes. The content lately is not always so good though. On first glance brilliant, on second sorta talking head-ish. It's like watching Rumsfield speak on the TV. You know he has said something and it appeared that the words were forming some style of content, but then you replay, and go whu? But it's too late, they've gone on to the next question!
ah well. that's my paranoid view anyway. I agree Website like TV would be nice, but what content are you thinking of?
“100 intense year of continuous experiments with and within media� Do you mean media universally or print media? And either has provided innovation and toil for much more than 100 years. So it’s confusing what Raton Perez means by finding an alternative. Are you rejecting print media? Has it really failed us? “Medium†implies the “means†of conveying information; perhaps we should be more attentive to the information, not its medium. Though the internet is obviously a burgeoning means; it is in no regard the only.
But then if you mean media, as in news media, providers of information, it would be strange to pooh-pooh news media entirely. Putting aside theory – critical, post-critical, whatever – anyone trying to grasp a hold our world (where nations sit with one another, where each nation sits with its own citizens, whether a nation is indeed a nation) is at a dear loss; this makes the news media all the more important (and more powerful). The world is information, true.
By no means objective, thorough, or accurate, the news media are a window to our world, especially parts that we can’t explore on our own. No need to make distinctions between magazines, journals and even newspapers (talk about old fashioned, rn!).
The defenselessness of the architect we speak of is his/her inability to stake a claim in these forces; and with that stake to make a difference – or even just to make a project!
Futureboy's comments are helpful. We'll think about a response to what he says...
my comments from the thread "worst paid important jobs", a discussion here last week. sorry to repost, but it seemed to be relevant to this discussion as well:
"i think people do care. but what they care about, similar to ipods and porsches, is what they are fed by the media. we see all the great stuff we can buy in magazines and on tv. seeing these things creates DESIRE. how often is a good built environment the subject of an article in consumer digest, people, oprah, popular mechanics, instyle, or ladies home journal? while you'll see ads for hummers and lexus-es (lexi?), bose and viking, you'll probably also see a lot of frilly curtains, hepplewhite chairs, and color-match condensing units. home environment design, much less public environment design, doesn't enter into the picture at all.
what we need is a media blitz. while i was happy that dwell entered into the design tv fray with their show on fine living, the actual production has been underwhelming. its very subdued and polite - no ty pennington with a bullhorn and no brash 'experts' critiquing residents' tastes in a before/after format."
If the magazine were interesting, more people would be interested in it. Movin' along..
Aug 25, 05 11:41 am ·
·
Please, AMO, you'll have to do a lot better than that. Maybe devote an issue to false facades, or maybe an issue on Castle Howard, you know, made to look big on the outside, but really small inside. If you're interested in the issue of the architect and/as statesman/woman that make a difference, look into the whole career of Thomas Jefferson. Keep in mind he owned lots of slaves too.
it reminds me of the working for FoA and OMA threads, so I guess that architects today also have many slaves... But just like Rem likes them "voluntary" slaves
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re: the media exposure conversation and what el jeffe just posted>
so, what if there were a way to give architectural ideas, advice, even sketches/schematics or whatever FOR FREE, but have sponsorship/advertising for compensation? production, since it's less media friendly, would happen behind the scenes. like a more truly architectural (instead of "sears w/ builders") version of extreme makeover.
the architect(s) would get media attention, the general public would be exposed to design without the cost of the "luxury" they think it is, and the architect might just get more respect - even *gasp* admiration!
coke or hamburger helper or anderson windows would pay your check instead of the client.
what about renting out publicity space in CD's? a company can pay you to put their emblem in the corner of your window schedule. Can you imagine how many poeple see it, how much money one can make?!?
Not that we need to go too far but as we all know, architecture has historically been always legitimized by different power-centered organizations: the Church, the then newly born public powers, the media, the educational centers, etc. The power held by these organizations (some of them could even be called organisms) has been implemented through different mediums at different moments in time. For instance, Modern architecture was largely legitimized through the media (mainly printed matter but not exclusively, by any means): G, Esprit Nouveau, etc., amongst others, held the power for performing these legitimating processes. This mode of validating discourses has been followed during the last 100 years with different variations, minor conceptual alterations (I would say), and different degrees of success--some of them outrageously huge. Not that we need to despise this. But at this point there are several symptoms that suggest its exhaustion and a bulletin does not seem to have the capacity for assuming such project. For instance, do you watch CNN or do you read openDemocracy? Could the CIAM still be operative today or is it the time for countless NGOs?
Despite all this, AMO's Bulletin seems to still have faith in the same power-centered project: legitimize information (architecture) through a specific publication ("Idiosyncratic and fact-based, the Bulletin is a means of discovering, defining, maybe inventing, nascent trends - a way of generating “insider†information by monitoring external messages… a mechanism for reclaiming power in the form of foresight"). Maybe AMO only watches CNN … ?
the more truly 'architectural' version of Extreme Home Makeover suggested above is the best idea I've heard in a while -- especially an OMAAMO version if it starred Rem, Josh & Ole with Jeff Inaba as the guy who always cries along with the owners of their new home, or rather cries along with the mayors of their new cities...
And Melquiades, (quoted above:"I do have to say that for all their talk, I think that AMOOMA's publications are more political/commerically minded than their buildings. Their buildings are devoid, I cant see how you can cretae a beautiful book like content, and a building like the CCTV that for all the talk is pretty banal.")
-- their "buildings are devoid"?? Don't you mean their buildings are DA VOID! (which is pretty much why most OMA buildings in fact kick ass: da void, man, DA VOID)
raton, that seems exactly the problem. as for why OMA still BELIEVE...
maybe it is because REM (and the others at his office?) came of age in the 60's when media made some kind of difference. When video from vietnam was a galvanising force and lent legitimicy to the youth movement. when he was still young music and art and social experiments were all entwined with the methods of expression and the media was part of it all...
for us kids who grew up with serious focus groups media tends to feel like a tool for thinly disguised, if not blatant, manipulation. The recent textual output from OMAAmo is maybe trying to capture the old vibe again but their counter-culture jabs feel like a commercial. Hence the lack of interest and the cynical response. Guess hteonly way to generate interest is to get past the immune response....
as a child of light and grace i wander the parking lot of the screen actor's guild searching for answers to the inquiry of our tour guide, amo. my visionquest offers no real answers because there are no real questions, only lifestyle positioning.
A revisit to comments by futureboy:
“i wasn't sure at first..much of the language used in the original argument does feel a bit tired, but then when i look through the words i thik i see where this is trying to go. it seems like a willful attempt to create diagrammatic heuristic mechanism for incorporating divergent concepts, news, and research into the actions of the profession. essentially taking over some of the role currently exercised by the "diligent professional", i.e. starchitect. the question is or might be, does architecture need a base medium to develop intelligence from or is it instead the acknowledgement of the divergent intelligences manifest within the multitude of practiced versions of design research that can em-power the profession.
can the multiplicity of consultant research undertaken by small, academic practices be harnessed not as individual entities and "styles" but instead as a academic universe of intelligent schema to be tapped into for the construction of more a elaborate and sophisticated professional process. just some thoughts....â€
to use the media to rule the world or to incorporate the media into our discourse?
I mean, is OMA's practice orientated toward mass communication, or is it influenced by it? or does it use mass communication to its advantage?
Adverts in content make waves in the Architectural world, but who really cares outside? does you uncle john know who rem is? does it make any differece to rem's business?
are we bitches or pimps?
some people seem to be saying: let people know they need us ("creating the need" in a marketing sort of way) so they look for us and we can do them good with our Architecture ("en-power the profession", right?)...but isn't this humanitarian attitude getting in the way of the deadly marketing strategies we could/should be employing?
all the products advertised in content were high end luxury goods. what does this mean? that those were the ones tht would pay for exposure? that those were the ones OMAMO wanted? does rem wear prada? is HE a pimp or...?
A “base medium†is in order, futureboy, but it’s one that relies on an intelligent monitoring of currents. And by no means is this a new idea for architecture – sources gathered from outside an autonomous discussion. What we are proposing, however, is another kind of sieve for reading media. Taking political events and developments more seriously, alongside cultural and social concepts. Sometimes a piece of paper can provide a restorative moment for looking at what’s going on.
This process is very much like the successful New York architecture firm that keeps abreast of reports in alma mater magazines to know of future development projects on campus. Or perhaps the news clippings put together for a CEO. For the rest of us, this should be extrapolated toward identifying less obvious trends – maybe trends less directly leading to a project, but to potentially even more lucrative opportunities. We just don’t need to talk about starchitects any longer. Even we see the weakness in the concept (read Mr. Koolhaas’ essay in Volume 1). A new source of power needs to be found for the architect.
By no means does our bulletin project have its own answers. It’s an honest experiment (maybe what futureboy calls a “heuristic mechanismâ€) – and, well, honest in that it is to be taken as what it is. By all means it relies upon some media experience and success, but nevertheless it’s exposed process. Maybe some people can only ingest a seemingly finished project. It seems we don’t have the time for finished projects anymore.
We can’t see why one would call this “lifestyle discussions.†Mainly because we don’t’ know what that means.
Further, the comments about media have been informative. It all gets exciting and then deflated with the ugly homecoming that media’s ability to make a difference is an old-fashioned belief. Focus groups have indeed become the new givers of gospel. Maybe AMO is an old man on antidepressants, or maybe it’s a younger generation searching for an outlet from the depleted and harrowing resources of media. Maybe neither and both.
And in regard to marketing, RC, have you read the papers? The field is in a crisis in every way. All the more opportunitiy abounds to be the pimp of pimps...
i'm stuck in a backward country, no access to volume, and have based my questions on what i have read here and on the net. so, to answer your question, no.
AMO, you are the establishment, stop talking about yourself in such revolutionary terms.
You are starting to scare me I feel as if Phil Knight was asking for advice on how to sell NIKE's on our discussion board. You are nothing but a brandname and Im beginning to feel used, cheap, and weird.
Are you trying to pimp us?
Establishment? Revolutionary? Didn't know these were relevant terms for the discussion. But we've enjoyed some of the comments. Sorry you're beginning to feel used, melq. No one made you type (or is that not true?)
AMOBulletin, i guess i'm talking purely about a conceptual tactic here..since i still haven't checked out the bulletin. i guess what my commentary was attempting to tackle is that (from my own research experience) information is extremely mutable and any filter always has its own agenda or trademarking of the information. i wonder if the reliance upon a singular voice for the translation is a big enough leap or would it instead be an attempt at translating through a multitude of experience and voices that would lend the credibilty you're longing for. i believe this does exist in the discipline, but it is currently an untapped resource. even our magazines focus on particular strains, typologies, concepts of practice...yet right now we exist in a time of exponential expansions of what constitutes the practice of architecture and the creation of design intelligence. how do we manufacture a feasible conduit for this informaiton?
To ask the Q: 'How can architecture revive itself?' assumes that architecture is not even twitching today and that 'architecture' is a single entity that is dead. Infact the opposite is the case.
Everything in architecture today is 'Optional', every theory replaceable and as valid as its extreme counterpart. Everything is optional in a mediated world. We are all 'Method Actors' today, playing our part for the scenes we choose.
I suppose there will be less and less new-content or inventions in th future. Today, reproduction has over taken production.
As for Stars? Their aura will be short-lived as constant media attention rubs away the gloss of myth that coates the Stars. Besides we can all be Stars in our own scenes. We are all Method Actors remember?
when media is noisy the strategy of turning up the volume doesn't work. in advertising the ideal is to make commercials that no one notices, PR so ubiquitous and subtle that escape from the manufactured world is impossible, but more importantly, not desired. Politicians have been doing this since Clinton, if not earlier, and it has reached epic proportions with mr. bush. unfortunately, when the manipu-lees begin to feel the construct they get nervous.
OMAAMO plays with this boundary in some ways, and ocassionally feels fake, like we are being sold aerated content. At the same time, leaving the vision open-ended is a nice idea, but also not exactly satisfying for the every-man. We like to read things with a strong point.
...my point is that if you really want to provoke a paradigm shift then the approach will need to be different. i suppose in the same way that the big companies have used product placement to get around the TIVO death of regualar commercials. How to do this I have no idea, but just another package of text and graphics isn't it.
In SF there are stories about media content being distributed through actual viruses, with the recipient having the option to get antibodies or not. Walk down the street and pick up news viruses from various vendors on the way. Talk about ubiquity. Maybe AMOOMA needs to think a bit more outside the box...
the AMO Bulletin, a paranoid pastiche of events from the recent past. Idiosyncratic and fact-based, the Bulletin is a means of discovering, defining, maybe inventing, nascent trends - a way of generating “insider†information by monitoring external messages… a mechanism for reclaiming power in the form of foresight.Nice idea... But the point is who is reading it? And who contributes to it?
Speaking of "a paranoid pastiche of events...idiosyncratic and fact-based" and new ways to access media content, does anybody here read www.digg.com,
or watch diggnation podcasts? Any user can post news links and "digg" other news links, and the higher digged links get moved up the list and users can comment on them... podcasts are also an interesting news medium... Maybe archinect should start a kind of "archi-digg"...
Okay. So if I have understood correctly, AMO's bulletin is not to be seen as a publication but rather as an "Architectural Intelligence Service." Some sort of architectural version of the CIA, MI5, and the sorts. You collect information that you believe is important for a certain position (architect), you format it, and you deliver it. Would that be correct AMO?
But then, who are your special agents? Do you have a team of special agents that use this information for specific operations? Or do you just collect this information, sell it (in the form of a bulletin), and sit down waiting to see what happens? Are we all then meant to be your special agents?
If this information does not have an operative use (if you do not have an operations team that uses it) and you just mean to sell it, it seems to me that futureboy’s point regarding the way this information is collected is essential. At least as a guarantee towards the buyer. If the reasons for collecting this information are not operational, what criteria do you follow for its selection? It has been said, information is always bypassed. So if I buy your product, I want to know who filtered it, how it was filtered, when, etc. etc.
If this information has an operative use, I wonder if in this case critiques regarding its ideological background would vanish since one could argue that AMO’s follows its own path using its own resources.
Getting to the operative is indeed the key to the success of this project. Information being sold in the magazine is in no way the endpoint we’re going for here. We would like to believe the work informs the rest of our work in the office. Whether it can provide a frame for others ... that remains to be seen. Not yet, we know.
Yes, it’s an ongoing project; and an intelligence service is a good analogy, rp. But the secret to this intelligence is that it is no secret. In contrast, it is the overly accessible information, hungry for interpretation and shaping.
AMO relies right now on multiple sources (as many as possible but could always be more) for the stories (sources are always noted in the publication). And our filters are ourselves, a shifting-sized team. So at this moment, the project has true authorship.
We would never deny that, and therefore we could never deny the limitedness that results from authorship.
Authorship is quite present in this project for two reasons mainly:
1. As mentioned earlier, this is an in-house project that, like any “in-process†design book one might buy, we’re putting the work out there to take advantage of imposed deadlines and of other people’s reactions; we also think that some people will get something out of it (true, if only they could find it…); and
2. Authorship is losing weight in the world of rss streams and blogs. It would be foolish to discredit these new sources – they’re wondeful. But there is something to be said, without being retrograde, that the source, the author, can be an orienting force. Is the brand name AMO worth enough for you to spend quality minutes with the work? For some people obviously not. For some, we hope the answer is yes, before you return to your other search hits.
Our main issue is to get this project better distributed. Funny – some here have accused us of being media manipulators, yet we can hardly get a publication to an American bookstore.
Though this thread seemed to fall off after Katrina... I am espescially interested in how it might play out post-catastrophe - If the bulletin is like a set of clippings for a CEO, or somewhat akin to an intelligence report similar to the Economist model of Intelligence focused on forecasting and business prospects around the world yet still retaining the aura, respect and all the benefits of authorship associated with the Economist -Then recent events suggest that something "Idiosyncratic and fact-based, as} a means of discovering, defining, maybe inventing, nascent trends - a way of generating “insider†information by monitoring external messages… a mechanism for reclaiming power in the form of foresight." is clearly needed to filter the over whelming mass of information coming from blogs. 24 hour media outlets etc. I would love to know how in the current milieu, the AMO bulletin positions itself politically, socially and in a way that could become instrumental or useful to architects and designers pondering the future of an erased metropolis.
Slip, great last comment, but I dont AMO self-gratifying ego-centric efforts are the place to discuss such important issues.
Great point though, and I agrre with +q, why o why?
Cellardoor whore, it was meant as an open question to the AMO Bulletin poster, and not as a directive. I am really curious how they may use the current moment to realize their goals of " a parnoid Pastiche" and production of "insider information" to further develop and utilze their ideas of design intelligence (borrowing from Michael SPeaks and AMO lingo)...
i'm really interested in how lingerie design will be affected by the katrina catastrophe and how architecture will respond vis a vis cnc milling and demo-migrational patterns, especially in this world of blogs and expanding waist lines.
blah blah bulemics
Sep 9, 05 11:53 am ·
·
NOLA, the new Low Country, the new Nether Lands?
AMO as Dutch Treat?
SuperNOLA is next?
Yes, but what is the earth's water level will rise due to the greenhouse effect. What is the real future of the low countries?
AMO asks for your response
its already happened in art, jeff koons anyone?
Gosh melquiades, now you're starting to sound old fashioned too!
I lvoe this conversation and am excited to explore the spatial, material, commercial, political, possibilities that this none stop new world order provides.
But can't help to be anxious about where it will take us.
And Foxnews scares the begeezus out of me. Propaganda at that scale and that successful, should scare anyone. I guess I fit the adverticing into the foxworld....
funny that , mass culture, as culture comes en mass.
mozart's singspiel operas were very mass culture,
now they are the substance of highbrow culture
underground art and music, adverse to the
norm and expected, has a large audience all
wanting to taint themselves with that 'uniqueness'..
the romantic goth culture is an example, a particular
example of marking out specificity, being special and standing
out from the crowd, through cosmetic cloning, becoming very very general. is that not just another mass culture?
subculture, or underground culture, are only relative terms taking
the family-9 to 5 job-middle class culture as the base, but when that subculture becomes the base, when you surround yourself by goths,
or broke artists, or nudist performer artists, scat sculptors, drag transvestites, nail clipping collectors...it becomes the norm...another 'subversion' is possible, and so on and on.
isnt it funny that there should be gay republican clubs? i wonder whther that is a subversion of homosexuality or of republicanism.
Gosh cellardoor whore, now you're starting to sound old fashioned too!
melquiades, maybe now's a good time to take a vacation take a vacation.
but rita, there is a side to commercial media that is downright scary for its devotion to manipulation of truth. Being concerned by this isn't olde fashioned, just common sense. Fox is the cartoon boogeyman lately and recent work by said canine to smear Sheehan is a typical example of the method. It wouldn't matter except that it appears to have an effect...
Is OMAAMO hoping to use the BUSH tactic of repition and distraction to create a new world for themselves in the realm of media? and then hope that it will last long enough to take advantage, or maybe even do the pinnocchio thing and turn into a real boy?
I like OMA's buildings. I love the way OMA writes. The content lately is not always so good though. On first glance brilliant, on second sorta talking head-ish. It's like watching Rumsfield speak on the TV. You know he has said something and it appeared that the words were forming some style of content, but then you replay, and go whu? But it's too late, they've gone on to the next question!
ah well. that's my paranoid view anyway. I agree Website like TV would be nice, but what content are you thinking of?
quite old fashioned, i believe in love, redemption and watch dw griffith inspired formulas over and over and over again
and just 'to rid my dirty mind of all of its preciousness'
did someone say VOLUME?
“100 intense year of continuous experiments with and within media� Do you mean media universally or print media? And either has provided innovation and toil for much more than 100 years. So it’s confusing what Raton Perez means by finding an alternative. Are you rejecting print media? Has it really failed us? “Medium†implies the “means†of conveying information; perhaps we should be more attentive to the information, not its medium. Though the internet is obviously a burgeoning means; it is in no regard the only.
But then if you mean media, as in news media, providers of information, it would be strange to pooh-pooh news media entirely. Putting aside theory – critical, post-critical, whatever – anyone trying to grasp a hold our world (where nations sit with one another, where each nation sits with its own citizens, whether a nation is indeed a nation) is at a dear loss; this makes the news media all the more important (and more powerful). The world is information, true.
By no means objective, thorough, or accurate, the news media are a window to our world, especially parts that we can’t explore on our own. No need to make distinctions between magazines, journals and even newspapers (talk about old fashioned, rn!).
The defenselessness of the architect we speak of is his/her inability to stake a claim in these forces; and with that stake to make a difference – or even just to make a project!
Futureboy's comments are helpful. We'll think about a response to what he says...
Have you seen DwellTV? Its using media forces for good design.
my comments from the thread "worst paid important jobs", a discussion here last week. sorry to repost, but it seemed to be relevant to this discussion as well:
"i think people do care. but what they care about, similar to ipods and porsches, is what they are fed by the media. we see all the great stuff we can buy in magazines and on tv. seeing these things creates DESIRE. how often is a good built environment the subject of an article in consumer digest, people, oprah, popular mechanics, instyle, or ladies home journal? while you'll see ads for hummers and lexus-es (lexi?), bose and viking, you'll probably also see a lot of frilly curtains, hepplewhite chairs, and color-match condensing units. home environment design, much less public environment design, doesn't enter into the picture at all.
what we need is a media blitz. while i was happy that dwell entered into the design tv fray with their show on fine living, the actual production has been underwhelming. its very subdued and polite - no ty pennington with a bullhorn and no brash 'experts' critiquing residents' tastes in a before/after format."
If the magazine were interesting, more people would be interested in it. Movin' along..
Please, AMO, you'll have to do a lot better than that. Maybe devote an issue to false facades, or maybe an issue on Castle Howard, you know, made to look big on the outside, but really small inside. If you're interested in the issue of the architect and/as statesman/woman that make a difference, look into the whole career of Thomas Jefferson. Keep in mind he owned lots of slaves too.
it reminds me of the working for FoA and OMA threads, so I guess that architects today also have many slaves... But just like Rem likes them "voluntary" slaves
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re: the media exposure conversation and what el jeffe just posted>
so, what if there were a way to give architectural ideas, advice, even sketches/schematics or whatever FOR FREE, but have sponsorship/advertising for compensation? production, since it's less media friendly, would happen behind the scenes. like a more truly architectural (instead of "sears w/ builders") version of extreme makeover.
the architect(s) would get media attention, the general public would be exposed to design without the cost of the "luxury" they think it is, and the architect might just get more respect - even *gasp* admiration!
coke or hamburger helper or anderson windows would pay your check instead of the client.
could this model fly?
385. Why buy shampoo when real poo is still free?
what about renting out publicity space in CD's? a company can pay you to put their emblem in the corner of your window schedule. Can you imagine how many poeple see it, how much money one can make?!?
+q-
yes. but no one who matters.
When was the last time your plan checker asked to fund your next project?
no, i think the point is that you can rent out space to lets say PEPSI, the put a sign on your CD, and sell cola's!!
Brilliant, I think
Not that we need to go too far but as we all know, architecture has historically been always legitimized by different power-centered organizations: the Church, the then newly born public powers, the media, the educational centers, etc. The power held by these organizations (some of them could even be called organisms) has been implemented through different mediums at different moments in time. For instance, Modern architecture was largely legitimized through the media (mainly printed matter but not exclusively, by any means): G, Esprit Nouveau, etc., amongst others, held the power for performing these legitimating processes. This mode of validating discourses has been followed during the last 100 years with different variations, minor conceptual alterations (I would say), and different degrees of success--some of them outrageously huge. Not that we need to despise this. But at this point there are several symptoms that suggest its exhaustion and a bulletin does not seem to have the capacity for assuming such project. For instance, do you watch CNN or do you read openDemocracy? Could the CIAM still be operative today or is it the time for countless NGOs?
Despite all this, AMO's Bulletin seems to still have faith in the same power-centered project: legitimize information (architecture) through a specific publication ("Idiosyncratic and fact-based, the Bulletin is a means of discovering, defining, maybe inventing, nascent trends - a way of generating “insider†information by monitoring external messages… a mechanism for reclaiming power in the form of foresight"). Maybe AMO only watches CNN … ?
the more truly 'architectural' version of Extreme Home Makeover suggested above is the best idea I've heard in a while -- especially an OMAAMO version if it starred Rem, Josh & Ole with Jeff Inaba as the guy who always cries along with the owners of their new home, or rather cries along with the mayors of their new cities...
And Melquiades, (quoted above:"I do have to say that for all their talk, I think that AMOOMA's publications are more political/commerically minded than their buildings. Their buildings are devoid, I cant see how you can cretae a beautiful book like content, and a building like the CCTV that for all the talk is pretty banal.")
-- their "buildings are devoid"?? Don't you mean their buildings are DA VOID! (which is pretty much why most OMA buildings in fact kick ass: da void, man, DA VOID)
DA VOID. mm. DA VOID.
raton, that seems exactly the problem. as for why OMA still BELIEVE...
maybe it is because REM (and the others at his office?) came of age in the 60's when media made some kind of difference. When video from vietnam was a galvanising force and lent legitimicy to the youth movement. when he was still young music and art and social experiments were all entwined with the methods of expression and the media was part of it all...
for us kids who grew up with serious focus groups media tends to feel like a tool for thinly disguised, if not blatant, manipulation. The recent textual output from OMAAmo is maybe trying to capture the old vibe again but their counter-culture jabs feel like a commercial. Hence the lack of interest and the cynical response. Guess hteonly way to generate interest is to get past the immune response....
it seemed appropriate that 'content' had a vw ad on the back cover instead of a hummer ad, didn't it?
other ads in content: prada, gucci, holland.com, nigeriatourism.net, archis, irma boom office, heumer (appears to be an art gallery?), and boffi.
also lots of product placements, whether intentional/subsidised or not...
as a child of light and grace i wander the parking lot of the screen actor's guild searching for answers to the inquiry of our tour guide, amo. my visionquest offers no real answers because there are no real questions, only lifestyle positioning.
be well.
NANCY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A revisit to comments by futureboy:
“i wasn't sure at first..much of the language used in the original argument does feel a bit tired, but then when i look through the words i thik i see where this is trying to go. it seems like a willful attempt to create diagrammatic heuristic mechanism for incorporating divergent concepts, news, and research into the actions of the profession. essentially taking over some of the role currently exercised by the "diligent professional", i.e. starchitect. the question is or might be, does architecture need a base medium to develop intelligence from or is it instead the acknowledgement of the divergent intelligences manifest within the multitude of practiced versions of design research that can em-power the profession.
can the multiplicity of consultant research undertaken by small, academic practices be harnessed not as individual entities and "styles" but instead as a academic universe of intelligent schema to be tapped into for the construction of more a elaborate and sophisticated professional process. just some thoughts....â€
just questions:
to use the media to rule the world or to incorporate the media into our discourse?
I mean, is OMA's practice orientated toward mass communication, or is it influenced by it? or does it use mass communication to its advantage?
Adverts in content make waves in the Architectural world, but who really cares outside? does you uncle john know who rem is? does it make any differece to rem's business?
are we bitches or pimps?
some people seem to be saying: let people know they need us ("creating the need" in a marketing sort of way) so they look for us and we can do them good with our Architecture ("en-power the profession", right?)...but isn't this humanitarian attitude getting in the way of the deadly marketing strategies we could/should be employing?
all the products advertised in content were high end luxury goods. what does this mean? that those were the ones tht would pay for exposure? that those were the ones OMAMO wanted? does rem wear prada? is HE a pimp or...?
A “base medium†is in order, futureboy, but it’s one that relies on an intelligent monitoring of currents. And by no means is this a new idea for architecture – sources gathered from outside an autonomous discussion. What we are proposing, however, is another kind of sieve for reading media. Taking political events and developments more seriously, alongside cultural and social concepts. Sometimes a piece of paper can provide a restorative moment for looking at what’s going on.
This process is very much like the successful New York architecture firm that keeps abreast of reports in alma mater magazines to know of future development projects on campus. Or perhaps the news clippings put together for a CEO. For the rest of us, this should be extrapolated toward identifying less obvious trends – maybe trends less directly leading to a project, but to potentially even more lucrative opportunities. We just don’t need to talk about starchitects any longer. Even we see the weakness in the concept (read Mr. Koolhaas’ essay in Volume 1). A new source of power needs to be found for the architect.
By no means does our bulletin project have its own answers. It’s an honest experiment (maybe what futureboy calls a “heuristic mechanismâ€) – and, well, honest in that it is to be taken as what it is. By all means it relies upon some media experience and success, but nevertheless it’s exposed process. Maybe some people can only ingest a seemingly finished project. It seems we don’t have the time for finished projects anymore.
We can’t see why one would call this “lifestyle discussions.†Mainly because we don’t’ know what that means.
Further, the comments about media have been informative. It all gets exciting and then deflated with the ugly homecoming that media’s ability to make a difference is an old-fashioned belief. Focus groups have indeed become the new givers of gospel. Maybe AMO is an old man on antidepressants, or maybe it’s a younger generation searching for an outlet from the depleted and harrowing resources of media. Maybe neither and both.
And in regard to marketing, RC, have you read the papers? The field is in a crisis in every way. All the more opportunitiy abounds to be the pimp of pimps...
i'm stuck in a backward country, no access to volume, and have based my questions on what i have read here and on the net. so, to answer your question, no.
pimpin'.
AMO bulletin = Archinect views? i mean, if we had any (more)
i mean the mechanism's all there it would seem, post some words, post some pictures, but no one wants to share that kind of love for free.
AMO, you are the establishment, stop talking about yourself in such revolutionary terms.
You are starting to scare me I feel as if Phil Knight was asking for advice on how to sell NIKE's on our discussion board. You are nothing but a brandname and Im beginning to feel used, cheap, and weird.
Are you trying to pimp us?
fo' sho!
Establishment? Revolutionary? Didn't know these were relevant terms for the discussion. But we've enjoyed some of the comments. Sorry you're beginning to feel used, melq. No one made you type (or is that not true?)
AMOBulletin, i guess i'm talking purely about a conceptual tactic here..since i still haven't checked out the bulletin. i guess what my commentary was attempting to tackle is that (from my own research experience) information is extremely mutable and any filter always has its own agenda or trademarking of the information. i wonder if the reliance upon a singular voice for the translation is a big enough leap or would it instead be an attempt at translating through a multitude of experience and voices that would lend the credibilty you're longing for. i believe this does exist in the discipline, but it is currently an untapped resource. even our magazines focus on particular strains, typologies, concepts of practice...yet right now we exist in a time of exponential expansions of what constitutes the practice of architecture and the creation of design intelligence. how do we manufacture a feasible conduit for this informaiton?
AMO,
To ask the Q: 'How can architecture revive itself?' assumes that architecture is not even twitching today and that 'architecture' is a single entity that is dead. Infact the opposite is the case.
Everything in architecture today is 'Optional', every theory replaceable and as valid as its extreme counterpart. Everything is optional in a mediated world. We are all 'Method Actors' today, playing our part for the scenes we choose.
I suppose there will be less and less new-content or inventions in th future. Today, reproduction has over taken production.
As for Stars? Their aura will be short-lived as constant media attention rubs away the gloss of myth that coates the Stars. Besides we can all be Stars in our own scenes. We are all Method Actors remember?
the other problem is how to keep it real.
when media is noisy the strategy of turning up the volume doesn't work. in advertising the ideal is to make commercials that no one notices, PR so ubiquitous and subtle that escape from the manufactured world is impossible, but more importantly, not desired. Politicians have been doing this since Clinton, if not earlier, and it has reached epic proportions with mr. bush. unfortunately, when the manipu-lees begin to feel the construct they get nervous.
OMAAMO plays with this boundary in some ways, and ocassionally feels fake, like we are being sold aerated content. At the same time, leaving the vision open-ended is a nice idea, but also not exactly satisfying for the every-man. We like to read things with a strong point.
...my point is that if you really want to provoke a paradigm shift then the approach will need to be different. i suppose in the same way that the big companies have used product placement to get around the TIVO death of regualar commercials. How to do this I have no idea, but just another package of text and graphics isn't it.
In SF there are stories about media content being distributed through actual viruses, with the recipient having the option to get antibodies or not. Walk down the street and pick up news viruses from various vendors on the way. Talk about ubiquity. Maybe AMOOMA needs to think a bit more outside the box...
Speaking of "a paranoid pastiche of events...idiosyncratic and fact-based" and new ways to access media content, does anybody here read www.digg.com, or watch diggnation podcasts? Any user can post news links and "digg" other news links, and the higher digged links get moved up the list and users can comment on them... podcasts are also an interesting news medium... Maybe archinect should start a kind of "archi-digg"...
The bulletin sounds kind of like 'Massive Change' magazine... Could be interesting as an ongoing project, but wouldn't a web medium be more effective?
Okay. So if I have understood correctly, AMO's bulletin is not to be seen as a publication but rather as an "Architectural Intelligence Service." Some sort of architectural version of the CIA, MI5, and the sorts. You collect information that you believe is important for a certain position (architect), you format it, and you deliver it. Would that be correct AMO?
But then, who are your special agents? Do you have a team of special agents that use this information for specific operations? Or do you just collect this information, sell it (in the form of a bulletin), and sit down waiting to see what happens? Are we all then meant to be your special agents?
If this information does not have an operative use (if you do not have an operations team that uses it) and you just mean to sell it, it seems to me that futureboy’s point regarding the way this information is collected is essential. At least as a guarantee towards the buyer. If the reasons for collecting this information are not operational, what criteria do you follow for its selection? It has been said, information is always bypassed. So if I buy your product, I want to know who filtered it, how it was filtered, when, etc. etc.
If this information has an operative use, I wonder if in this case critiques regarding its ideological background would vanish since one could argue that AMO’s follows its own path using its own resources.
Getting to the operative is indeed the key to the success of this project. Information being sold in the magazine is in no way the endpoint we’re going for here. We would like to believe the work informs the rest of our work in the office. Whether it can provide a frame for others ... that remains to be seen. Not yet, we know.
Yes, it’s an ongoing project; and an intelligence service is a good analogy, rp. But the secret to this intelligence is that it is no secret. In contrast, it is the overly accessible information, hungry for interpretation and shaping.
AMO relies right now on multiple sources (as many as possible but could always be more) for the stories (sources are always noted in the publication). And our filters are ourselves, a shifting-sized team. So at this moment, the project has true authorship.
We would never deny that, and therefore we could never deny the limitedness that results from authorship.
Authorship is quite present in this project for two reasons mainly:
1. As mentioned earlier, this is an in-house project that, like any “in-process†design book one might buy, we’re putting the work out there to take advantage of imposed deadlines and of other people’s reactions; we also think that some people will get something out of it (true, if only they could find it…); and
2. Authorship is losing weight in the world of rss streams and blogs. It would be foolish to discredit these new sources – they’re wondeful. But there is something to be said, without being retrograde, that the source, the author, can be an orienting force. Is the brand name AMO worth enough for you to spend quality minutes with the work? For some people obviously not. For some, we hope the answer is yes, before you return to your other search hits.
Our main issue is to get this project better distributed. Funny – some here have accused us of being media manipulators, yet we can hardly get a publication to an American bookstore.
Though this thread seemed to fall off after Katrina... I am espescially interested in how it might play out post-catastrophe - If the bulletin is like a set of clippings for a CEO, or somewhat akin to an intelligence report similar to the Economist model of Intelligence focused on forecasting and business prospects around the world yet still retaining the aura, respect and all the benefits of authorship associated with the Economist -Then recent events suggest that something "Idiosyncratic and fact-based, as} a means of discovering, defining, maybe inventing, nascent trends - a way of generating “insider†information by monitoring external messages… a mechanism for reclaiming power in the form of foresight." is clearly needed to filter the over whelming mass of information coming from blogs. 24 hour media outlets etc. I would love to know how in the current milieu, the AMO bulletin positions itself politically, socially and in a way that could become instrumental or useful to architects and designers pondering the future of an erased metropolis.
what? i'm reading and i'm reading and ... what?
why revive this thread, why???
Slip, great last comment, but I dont AMO self-gratifying ego-centric efforts are the place to discuss such important issues.
Great point though, and I agrre with +q, why o why?
Cellardoor whore, it was meant as an open question to the AMO Bulletin poster, and not as a directive. I am really curious how they may use the current moment to realize their goals of " a parnoid Pastiche" and production of "insider information" to further develop and utilze their ideas of design intelligence (borrowing from Michael SPeaks and AMO lingo)...
i'm really interested in how lingerie design will be affected by the katrina catastrophe and how architecture will respond vis a vis cnc milling and demo-migrational patterns, especially in this world of blogs and expanding waist lines.
blah blah bulemics
NOLA, the new Low Country, the new Nether Lands?
AMO as Dutch Treat?
SuperNOLA is next?
Yes, but what is the earth's water level will rise due to the greenhouse effect. What is the real future of the low countries?
Now you'll have to browse two pages to read this stupd thread, doesnt it suck?
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