I'd be very interested in knowing who and what. We could all make guesses or spill beans early, but I'll wait for confirmation :) OK, sue me... is Ed Keller or Juan Azulay involved? If not, they should be.

is this rumor as real as SCI-FI almost was? columbia's CLAB got Archis and AMO to collaborate on a magazine designed by irma boom...too bad wiggles can't dean two schools at once (or can he???).

juan azulay is crap...i had him for a class and he refered to the 5 line musical staff as pentagram...wtf?!

i give him credit for sporting leather pants though...

if you don't pay close attention to the words...you will get mesmerized in the impressive use of babble and actually think it's relevant theory...

Dammson

werent you sporting leather pants at the Archinect meetup a few weeks back???

i sport those strictly for meetups...

from SCI-Arc website,

SCI-Arc launches new postgraduate program, MediaSCAPES

Congratulations Ed, Juan and Nick. This is excellent news.

based on the description, one could effectively get a degree by watching a season of "myth busters," "future weapons," or any other prime time series on the discovery channel.

i remember when this type of program would work itself out as a summer intensive or as a 2GAX semester (remember scenario planning? that worked much better as a studio than it did as MR+D).

sounds like yet another post-grad program with no shelf life...

haha. that's funny.

it seems that the intention will be to attempt something not necessarily for architects but for people in the media world (game designers, visual effects people, production designers, media artists, etc.) looking for a bridge to skills related to architecture.

i guess the shelf life depends on the recruiting skills of those who will sell it?

so mediascapes is for dilettantes? awesome...

eric moss is indeed the gary cherone era of van halen.

Ugh. Bring back David Lee Roth. At least Sciarc had chemistry then.

Sci-Arc was definitely at its peak with Fair Warning ... It went downhill with Diver Down.

Ok...so now we have mediascapes? what ever happened to Fresh Urbs? How about Eric and Ming improve the shitty library and other resources for research.

If there are questions [preferably intelligent ones, but I'll try to reply to noise as well] about the program, fire away.

We'll have more material on the SCIArc website in the next weeks
as well as an independent site & BLOG up for it.

Leather pants, by the way, had their peak when Marcello
Mastroianni stole a leather suit and slept on a park bench in 'Pret a Porter', in anticipation of his screen reunion with Sophia Loren.

Cheers!
EK

I have some questions, Ed. Most of them appear above:

1. How does Mediascapes differ from watching a season of "myth busters," "future weapons," or any other prime time series on the discovery channel?

2. how is mediascapes different than a summer intensive or as a 2GAX semester (remember scenario planning? that worked much better as a studio than it did as MR+D)?

3. is this primarily for people in the media world (game designers, visual effects people, production designers, media artists, etc.) looking for a bridge to skills related to architecture, or the other way around?

4. unlike Inaba's film seminars, do you plan to discuss how sound delivers 50% of the effect (affect) of film?

5. DO you plan on offering instruction on competent film editing, or will the end results be a taxing exercise of the toggle switch on a movieola?

6. How will the successes and failures of your "feedback" exhibition inform the syllabus and/or material discussed?

7. Is the Moss era of SCIArc more like the Gary Cherone era of Van Halen, or the Dave Navarro era of the Chili Peppers?

I wholeheartedly admit that i have my doubts about the successes of the program, Ed. Please alleviate them.

Thanks in advance.

According to Jose Castillo of Universidad Iberoamericana, SCI-Arc is the "Helen Hunt" of architecture schools.

Discuss.

if you are interested in evaluating the role that architecture can play given the current state of the world, politics, economics, media and social theory, I would highly recommend taking a class with Ed. If you are interested in curbside appeal, stick with the discovery channel.

I don't think anything had it's peak in Pret a Porter.

Well, those questions lean a *little* too much to the noise category [IHMO] and seem intended to get a rise out of us. However they raise some very useful issues. And I did say I'd do my best to address all questions [insert grin]. Although as the bandwidth changes, I'll probably have to stop that policy. But for now enjoy.

Also, just as a preamble: I am very glad that people are interested in our program, in any manner: challenge, support, questions, provocations, suggestions. The MedisSCAPES program is the outcome of over six years of thinking I've been doing about exactly such academic projects- and it's intended to do the following very very well: create an envelope within which radical thinking happens in CONJUNCTION with wild, fabulous, and SPONSORED content production. I'm incredibly excited to be doing this- really happy that SCIArc is supporting it- and ecstatic with the range of people who have
already committed to teaching/lecturing with our program.


ON TO THE QUESTIONS

"1. How does Mediascapes differ from watching a season of "myth busters," "future weapons," or any other prime time series on the discovery channel?"

MediaSCAPES will be 'two-way' . In other words, instead of being on the receiving end of
an ideology, you'll be critically remaking one. Television is limited in its ability to
destablize itself as a broadcast medium; I enjoy shows like "future weapons" as much as the next
person, but being in a live culture, dialogic situation is different. That's what a good
school is - part of a larger feedback mechanism for culture to know itself. That is the kind of environment
we will have in the program. Dialogic, globally engaged, critical.

_____

"2. how is mediascapes different than a summer intensive or as a 2GAX semester (remember scenario planning? that worked much better as a studio than it did as MR+D)?"

It is a full graduate degree that will have significant research/sponsor components, not a
short summer intensive, or a single semester. You must admit, your question expresses a limited opinion and scope of knowledge about the general project of any academic program- be it MRD, MediaSCAPES or others. Your question could have been framed more seriously. Scenario planning in its popularly recognized form was birthed
by Shell Oil, yielding ultimately some folks who formed the GBN and use scenarios as THINKING TOOLS.
Scenario planning doesn't replace any other form of design, in my opinion: it's another tool in the old kit
bag, not just to solve problems but to reframe them completely. It helps one think outside the box.

_____

"3. is this primarily for people in the media world (game designers, visual effects people, production designers, media artists, etc.) looking for a bridge to skills related to architecture, or the other way around?"

The MediaSCAPES program will rethink a set of interdisciplinary connections between what are often- mistakenly, in my opinion- considered separate disciplines. The entire point of the mediascapes concept as we adapt it, and as Appadurai articulates it in his _Modernity at Large_, is that our world today could be seen to be driven by two main forces- media and migration. The concept of the 'scape' is merely a useful term to provoke more technical subdivisions that ultimately challenge previously respected disciplinary divisions like 'architecture', 'film', etc.
Nonetheless- for example- game designers will be able to benefit from a process which may include them in preproduction design work on a game, that is simultaneously theorized [whilst in production] in accompanying seminars. Without simple distinctions between game designer, architect, film maker. A strong critical agenda will be brought to this. We will merge the MIT Media Lab model of production and sponsorship with a great deal of questioning and investigations which typically have only occurred within hardcore history theory programs or thinktanks.

In short, it is neither of the two options, because the challenge of thinking 'mediascapes' as a field is wider than a binary exchange between any single definition of what a discipline is.


_____

"4. unlike Inaba's film seminars, do you plan to discuss how sound delivers 50% of the effect (affect) of film?"

It seems that some of these questions have an axe to grind. I'm reminded of a great scene in
Antonioni's film 'Passenger', when a man [the subject] turns a documentary camera around back at the interviewer and says: 'Mr Locke, your questions reveal more about yourself than my answers could ever reveal about me.'

With that said: first, I've never been in Jeffrey's seminars, so I can't speak from experience about those, but from conversations, reviews, and participating in symposia together I *can* say that I deeply respect his thinking and what he's done academically and professionally. I reject the implied hostility in your question.

Second, however, to speak to the question's topic- I don't agree that sound is 50% of the affect/effect of film. That's a hasty assumption. Sound and film resonate together and they can be equally intensive, or one can overwhelm the other. I hope that you have seen some films that Walter Murch has either edited and/or done sound on, and read his writing on film and sound. I would school you, and suggest that if you haven't, you start with Coppola/Murch's masterpiece 'Conversation', and then reengage the discussion of sound/image with some specifics in mind.

Personally, one of my favorite examples of sound is in the Beat Takeshi film, 'Fireworks', where-
during a pretty savage shootout- he cuts to total silence: zero sound, no room tone, nothing.
My other favorites are the two Leone 'Once Upon a Time....' films. The opening sequences of
both of them- very different situations- are both masterpieces of sound/image editing.
In those cases I certainly would say that the image is invented/merged/born from the sound.
Both of them set up a radical sound/image space, and especially in 'Once Upon a Time in America'
Leone creates one of the most extraordinary flashback / time flux spaces ever shot on film. DeNiro's character
is in a totally indeterminate space of memory and possible future/past world lines, and the viewer is taken
on a kind of dark magic carpet ride driven by the lack of dialog, the labyrinthine admission to the
space of the narrative via the speakeasy, and the telephone which rings, and rings, and rings, and rings...
this ringing is not just a sound device, it poses a terrible moral question which only the rest of the
film can properly explain, thus throwing us as viewers into a kind of spiral of time with 'Noodles',
DeNiro's character, that goes beyond just a narrative question.

As you can probably tell, I absolutely love this film.


"5. DO you plan on offering instruction on competent film editing, or will the end results be a taxing exercise of the toggle switch on a movieola?"

Competent film editing can be done in camera: shoot your edit in the camera. No external editing.

It can also, obviously, be done in MANY other ways. Just like a good designer can design a building
with a pencil and a few sheets of paper. Editing is a kind of meditation on the effects of time and memory.
There are many ways to do that, and the only way to teach it is to discuss the variations,
and then experiment, and then watch/listen.

Walter Murch, again, has written extensively on this as well as schooling us all with his beautiful work. You could start there if you need inspiration. His 'Conversations' book with M. Ondaatdje, prompted by Murch's work on the film adaptation of 'The English Patient', is a terrific read. Also his _In the Blink of an Eye_.

As far as how I personally will instruct people to edit, the most I can do is discuss the values of all opinions- what I know and what other people know. I don't have a single answer to what 'competent film editing' is but I certainly do know what the range of opinions might be. John Woo and J L Godard won't agree on this, most likely- but I really like both of them and the films they make.

Just anecdotally, a friend of mine, a quite experienced documentary film maker- absolutely hates video effects, etc- and I agree with her. I like cuts. Cross fades. And long, long superimpositions. Nothing more. But that's my personal predilection.


"6. How will the successes and failures of your "feedback" exhibition inform the syllabus and/or material discussed?"

Do you mean SUTURE, our SCIArc/TELIC installation? I won't be using that to inform the curriculum, and only tangentially in my own courses. Usually I prefer to discuss other people's work and only occasionally use my own as an example. Incidentally, I will be teaching a select percentage of the courses, since one of the strengths of this program will be the range of excellent faculty we have. I will teach one studio [and occasionally co-teach a second studio] and several seminars and workshops each year. I'll be here teaching each semester, but we will have very strong voices
in studio, seminars and lectures, that go far beyond my own position. This will be crucial to the overall strength and diversity of the program. Any program that will succeed, I absolutely believe- has to have strong
variation and debate- even dissent- in the voices present.


"7. Is the Moss era of SCIArc more like the Gary Cherone era of Van Halen, or the Dave Navarro era of the Chili Peppers?"

Well, I play a fairly decent bluesrock/fusion guitar myself. I haven't performed in some years...

To answer the question: In a light mood ..... I'd say MediaSCAPES will be Ozzy with R. Rhoads: Crazy Train era.

More seriously.. perhaps it's the era of Fred Frith's extraordinary band Massacre circa 'Killing Time'.
Cinematically speaking, it's the heyday era in Leone's 'Once Upon a Time in America'. James Woods & DeNiro.



"I wholeheartedly admit that i have my doubts about the successes of the program, Ed. Please alleviate them.
Thanks in advance."



I appreciate your questions and hope that this will generate both interest in everyone who's reading, and also provoke some important questions about the disciplinary boundaries of architecture and other techno-cultural practices. The whole point of the program is to do that. MediaSCAPES is GROUNDED in architecture as a kind of 'UR-Discipline'- and
that is a classic way to ground it- but then opened up radically through film, gaming, technology, and
contemporary political debates. Again, I must say that I'm as excited as I can be about this new program, so I look forward to some serious
debates, cutting edge projects and giant leaps forward in the next few years-

Best,
Ed Keller

Ed: Perhaps I was "one horse short." Or as the kids say, "I got served."

Albeit 50% of the questions above appeared earlier in the thread and were asked by other voices, i restated them because your first post didn't respond to them. Whether they were noise or otherwise they are reasonably legit concerns: if someone is willing to say in a public forum that potential students of your program would be better served watching the discovery channel, i'm glad you can respond.

I feared that base disciplines like sound and editing would be glossed over in the cirriculum. Arch students sometimes have a predilection towards blaring techno and piecing together their favorite bits of animation. Learning how to overcome this is paramount. I'm glad you plan on discussing the philosophies of editing. Anything so they don't default to referencing the LSD cemetery sequence in Easy Rider.

Coppola discussed how sound was 50% of film in a panel discussion on Apocalypse Now Redux when asked about the editing in the closing sequence of Kurtz's demise. Likely this comment was praise for Walter Murch, and likely is highlighting the notion that the role sound plays can be overlooked by beginning film students. I agree and don't believe it's being too general, but perhaps a generality for the sake of brevity. Like you said, it's one philosophy of many. However, like the battle sequences in Kurosawa's Ran, to not have sound is still sound design, much like the "ringing in the ears" effect / sound design when a greneade goes off nearby in a first-person shooter.

While the program seeks to "bridge" disciplines (deference to your notion that there is nothing to bridge), I'm curious about what types of core design classes would be offered to students with an undergraduate degree from outside the "media disciplines"- arch, film, etc.

Indeed, feedback is feedback, telling more about the sender than the target. Inaba knows -because i've discussed it with him- i ground my axe with his method for teaching his film seminar. It sounds like you're going in a different direction, and it sounds promising. I wish you the best. With such thorough responses at hand, perhaps the text on the SCIArc web page should be revised: Appadurai's notion of "media and migration" is a concise point of departure and i feel like it, or something similar to it, belongs in the program description.

Feedback is feedback. You've made me less of a skeptic, which is telling of the sender.

Hi Marlin, thanks for that nice post. I totally agree about feedback-it regulates the system regardless or content. It's a signal to noise question, but more interesting is that signal is usually present no matter what. Or that our idea of signal gets reconfigured.

I had forgotten that sequence in Ran, which is mindblowing. I admit I have
only viewed Ran once and was so astonished by it that- like Andrei Rublev- I haven't sat down to watch it thru in one sitting, ever again. In
Rublev I've revisited scenes over and over, but never watched it
straight thru a second time.


In terms of the core design, you raise a very important point. Since it is a one year post professional Masters degree, we won't have a 'core design' sequence per se, however your point is on target as RE the interdisicplinary aspect and questions of how to run a 'design studio.'

We're requiring all applicants to have a graduate degree in their field, regardless of whether it is film, architecture, new media, etc. So we expect a very high level of expertise in the student body. We will consider extremely strong undergrad only applicants, but they'll be on a case by case and have to be very talented and mature.

Design studio in our case will run the gamut of definitions of design; everyone who teaches studio will be very strongly interdisciplinary, bringing the ability to evaluate 'design' in a range of practices, from arch to film to game design to graphic design- so that should establish a good base for both production and discussion. Every critic teaching in this program will be able to evaluate many kinds of design.

I agree very much with your point about the Appadurai quote and the 'media migration' theme! In fact we have this fully explained in the longer text materials and mission statement we have written for the program. We'll be posting that material in the next week or so on the SCIArc website, and as well are producing a brochure for the program which unpacks curriculum sequence, reasons for agenda, etc.

Thanks again for the dialog!
Cheers,
EK

MrKELLER: the previous debate doesnt surprise me.
I am an arichitect, living in Athens, Greece.
I have to migrate 11,127km away, if i want to attend the
''MediaScapes'' . Do you plan to direct a unique programme?

give me the main characteristics in contrast to the general framework that rules any other programme like/and yours.

spiliopoulos panos

And by the way, one more comment on an earlier post: I don't need to defend Juan Azulay in any situation- he's perfectly able to do that himself, but nonetheless I'm going say something here: Juan is one of the best professors and critics I've ever worked with- and in the past ten years I have taught every single semester, back to back, dozens of studios, and been on hundreds of reviews. I've co-taught 5 or 6 studios with him, as well as several media theory / practice seminars- both at the GSAPP and here at SCIArc. He's a practicing architect who builds award winning projects here in LA, as well as a screenwriter, architectural theorist, and general ferocious agitator. The MediaSCAPES concept was developed with important input from him over the past few years. He's involved because with his input serious energy will be present. It's too bad that dammson's above post was negative: you simply missed out on what Azulay has to offer.

I do wish that Archinect had a configurable peer review and filter system in place like Slashdot, it would make the threads much more readable.

EK

Ed: elaborate further on what "much more readable" is.

"It's too bad that dammson's above post was negative: you simply missed out on what Azulay has to offer ":Oddly enough, we end up back at the notion of feedback and how it says alot about the sender: Kristin's "I didn't learn a thing", or Damnson's "juan azulay is crap", and i think Archinect readers understand this.

SCIArc hating is a favorite pasttime in this neighborhood.

Good practitioner may not always mean good educator. That's okay: How to educate is a skill set independent of the quality of creative output. In spite of it being a union card in architecture, I tend to think i'll avoid ever being a professor because i don't know how i'd put up with a student like myself.

Jeffry Kipnis -IMHO a great educator / poor practitioner- writes in SCIArc's Sessions_02 publication how SCIArc engenders a "false sense of transgression" in its faculty. couple this with the track record of Postgrad programs in the recent past and you'll recognize that critiques like those above may not necessarily be unwarranted. However, insightful replies like yours tend to quell debased commentary on archinect: Archinect's version of peer review. Again, however, SCIArc hating is a favorite pasttime on Archinect.

Once you don't give a damn what everyone else thinks, the visionary stuff gets a whole lot easier.

"How to educate is a skill set independent of the quality of creative output"
should read:
"Being a capable educator is a skill set independent of the quality of creative output."

Ok. I hear leather pants, I get dragged in.

I'll clarify a thing or two mentioned above, and then on with the MediaSCAPES discussion, which is beginning to appear productive.

1. Pentagram. My partial bad on this one. In Spanish a "pentagrama" is a musical staff indeed. In English (the country that we seem to think we live in) a "pentagram" is a five-point symbol and /or a 'five-point node'.

I hope next time I throw a freestyle spanglish word in there, my confident students correct me, for the benefit of all (including the passive-aggresive ones!). The class is turning out to be fantastic, very much along, and beyond, the lines of the sound design discussion above.

2. My 2002 Maya Class. This class was a fantastic experiment, and an absolute train wreck. I almost thought of shaving my head bald like Britney Spears and swing umbrellas in the darkness at the time.

The class was a direct response to what I believed (naively at the time) was a necessary re-theorization of the use of time-based software in an architecture environment, usually overly-given to formal abuse and total lack of critical underpinning - (how 'cool things look' ruling above everything else).

The whole idea was to develop time-based conceptual models before skill acquisition. Of course, the fact that we had a class of 54 students in a lab with 20 computers did not help, as well as a default-overridden software platform (which I still encounter to this day, even in the case of AutoCAD).

But that is no one's problem other than the instructor's and it was my steep learning curve coming from Columbia and Barcelona - places with different (not necessarily better) constraints.

That said, SCI-Arc is my very favorite place still...

Oh, kristin_kai... I could post some of your work here... you would fool a few people with the comment that you didn't learn much. Some of your work looks like you actually thought about it quite a bit!

My favorite question of that class (And perhaps the best question any student of mine has ever asked me in the last 7 years) was: "Is this the Maya class where we are supposed to learn not to use Maya?".

Maya Deren, Maya Angelou, the Mayans and Mayakovsky still have a lot to offer...

3. Mediascapes. I, as Ed, am very excited about SCI-Arc's support for this program. We will bring years of collaborations (in the visual effects world, production design and film industry at large, gaming, engineering and business world and of course, architecture practice and academy) to bear upon a program with many different ends and possibilities.

No better person than Ed Keller to direct this.

As far as shelf life goes, I believe that (given the history of the best academic platforms of the past 60 years) the most one can aspire to get is a good 7-10 years these days... and with that said, the span gets shorter every day, given our current geopolitical drift.

~best,

Juan.

this is too cool. i seem to recall a past experience where a young professional and instructor was called out here, and she never responded to any of the criticism. it's nice to see a critical dialogue, with no animosity emerge. i am for one encouraged that dialogue and not ego is becomming more important in this profession. thanks marlin, ed and juan; i think you may have loosened the noose around a lot of throats here and perhaps a freedom to express an honest critique or discussion can make it to the institutions...??

this is all fine and good, but i dont think we've really addressed the issue of leather pants.

Could Juan Azulay please comment on his entry in Wikipedia? The entry seems to take credit for Osborn Architects work without mentioning the firm. Juan, in the name of intellectual honesty, please correct this, and any other omissions. And perhaps mention leather pants as well.

"Juan Azulay (born February 29, 1972 in Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a Los Angeles based architect.
Trained at SCI-Arc during the Michael Rotondi years and at Columbia University's GSAPP during the Stan Allen and Bernard Tschumi years, his built work, film projects and academic research focuses on the multi-disciplinary aspects of architecture culture and urbanism. Azulay is the co-founder of AiB Matter Management, founded in Barcelona in 1999, and has taught at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles, Columbia University in New York City and ETSAV in Spain.
Juan Azulay's work includes the Aquatic Terrarium for the New Barcelona Zoo at the 2004 Forum of Cultures, MAK t6 VACANT i.e. a winning entry for the MAK Center Vertical Garden competition for the Schindler House in West Hollywood, 3x1, Clifton Middle School (recipient of an AIA/LA Merit Award) and Neighborhood Legal Services (recipient of an AIA/PF Award). His work and writings have been published in Arquitectura Viva, Quaderns, Vanguardia and the Los Angeles Times and exhibited in Europe, the U.S. and Latin America."

Everytime I take a look at this, there's yet another comment. I just want to state my take on the leather pant business and the Van Halen/Gary Cherone Ozzy/Randy Rhoads - but I can't get through...

Spaceman - or whoever you are:

I have nothing to admit and/or clarify

1. I work side by side with 35+ people that constantly change, I have had over 700 students in the past 7 years, I have two brothers (and architect and a professional soccer player - I would have written this in the wiki) and two sisters, an ex-wife and a son, many ex-girlfriends and lovers, a fiancee, two lawyers, an accountant, two parents, two step parents, two dogs (one died last year) and a tarantula. I think I know who wrote the entry but this cannot be independently verified...

2. Despite the above matter - which is for my own amusent - sorry... I have nothing to clarify for the sake of intellectual honesty. My commitment to my work is uncompromised and the intellectual ownership of the work i have done - and will do - is my own and no one will ever take it away, regardless of corporate law, banana republic law or any other kind of law. Your version of capitalism does not apply to me (and should not apply to anyone for that matter). My time is worth $, but its folds belong to me, as my memories do.

3. As an associate and senior lead designer at Osborn (and part of the management team - even though not a principal or shareholder), I have full accountability for the projects listed there. It would have been nice that someone would add this to the wiki (you could) - as I am very proud of the work I've done for the firm - which in lectures, symposia and publications I have always credited. Osborn has full access to my AiB portfolio - as Juan Azulay's not AIB's- for promotional purposes and I believe that the work I have done as senior lead designer would qualify to call it my work - and available to mine.

4. I think it would be nice that the wiki clarified this - but nevertheless I insist that the work listed there (and there is a good part of it that is not there) I would not have a problem adding to my own portfolio. I believe that my partners would agree. For reference check the publications where Pelli's work with Gruen, or Lumsden's work for DMJM gets credited and you'll get a picture of what happens. I often get asked for images and bios, and even though I credit them properly, they get miscredited (like in the new sci-arc website).

4. But most importantly 'spaceman', what makes you think you have the right to ask me to make corrections and omissions, when I don't even know who you are?

5. Can I comment on my leather pants now?

Azulay I want to hear about your leather pants.

Dude, I never heard of you so I googled you. Then I thought it would be fun to mess with you because I was high. Maybe your mom wrote the entry.

You were saying something about peer review, Ed? I guess spaceman proved your point.

At the same time, spaceman, Juan is right. If you had issues with the credit citations on Wikipedia, you could have edited them yourself. After all, that's the power -or the plague- of Wikipedia. No need to bring up moms and kind bud.

Juan and Ed signed in with their real names, spaceman: consider doing the same.

Azulay I want to hear about your leathers.

A couple of things:

1. The program seems to be primarily about representation. All the jargon is obfuscating this fact. That's all well and good, and provocative as all hell, but can we consider the program as one that interrogates established ideas about representation? I guess the converse of such a statement would be in the realm of: there's more to the representation than production, right?

2. If the above is right (it may not, after all), then how does your laboratory/scenario planning model really different from past forms of media production? Will it generate something that is truly different? Is the point of the class that in the future, the how and why of media production will have to be retooled?

3. Why is this an architectural issue? Why do this from within the ambit of a architecture school? Does a pre-existing studio culture figure into this? Also, how would the program describe its own level of social engagement? Critical? Projective? How would you differentiate this program from one administered through a media studies, science technology and society, or media ecology program?

4. Does the program have, in any shape or form, a materialist bent? Will you encourage students to study the archaeology of the mediascape?

There is a photograph of Ed Keller and I on the hottest day of 2002 on a dry lake bed around Salt Lake City - during the time we were teaching the Red Line City studio at Columbia... someone must have it.

Those pants were last worn at that symposium last November. They only come out when the tarantula allows it. These days the tarantula has a bald spot on her back - she is living with a failed model of the Schindler House in a terrarium with no earth and many dead crickets.

There's a second pair - seams-inside-out - that is pretty awesome. I wore those out in Hollywood last week.

... and Ed Keller has an outstanding Paul Smith jacket, green as foliage. Talk about biomorphic.

Now - let's briefly deal with the tricky question above:

First, I love Smokety's sarcasm as he indicts the Mediascapes brief of jargon infestation (which we'll admit to, no?) - and then pulls the jargon trigger himself. No harm in mirrors, right?

Starting from the end, I believe the program will clearly have a materialist bend - if not a constantly bending materialism. Ed's choice of people clearly demonstrates that (De Landa, Perry Hall, etc.)

No idea what you mean by "archaeology of the mediascape". Do you mean a Foucault-inspired historiography of media back to Peirce? Or all the way to Plato's cave ("The Republic") - the textbook deployment of the concept of media?

The program will be different in many ways. Again, too complicated to deal with all the references you bring up in the one sentence but by and large, it will be a program obsessively-based on the intensive aspects of the subject matter - rather than the dissective deferral logic that we currently face in education (which has a purpose, no doubt).

Media production is constantly retooling itself with or without our help, no? I believe that the goal is to find more ways to plug oneself to the most radically changing aspects and bends of culture, instead of theorizing them to death. Poor Deleuze, has become the bitch of architecture pseudo-theorists and the crutch of crappy designers. Maybe this means that we retool ourselves more than the things that we set out to transform.

Representation is hard-wired into the question of identity/self. We are not talking about the production of images (moving or not) only. We are talking about practices, ways of working, ways of engaging the world of matter, bending around it... sounds too mystical? If so, I hope it brings an alt brand of alchemy. As such, it should no doubt address questions of representation but inextricably linked to its practice. For every image, there's an intensity, for every representation, another mirror.

Any way, the mere mention of leather brings the alchemist out in me. I am sure this is only Azulay's way of looking at it.

I didn't mean to be sarcastic or indicting ... it's just that I am grappling with the same issues in a class that I am currently taking about representation.

With regards to archaeology, I was specifically referring to Friedrich Kittler, specifically his Foucault-inspired books on media and technology (Aufschreibesysteme 1800/1900([/i]Discourse Networks 1800/1900[/i]) and Grammophon, Film, Typewriter. I'm currently plodding through these rather baffling yet provocative texts.

I did not come here to fight ... I just had questions.

There is now additional information about the program available
at the SCI-Arc website, here:

http://www.sciarc.edu/portal/programs/graduate/mediascapes/index.html

Best, EK

Thanks, Ed.

Last year, SCIArc had the pleasure of a guest seminar hosted by filmmaker/graphic designer/fashion entrepeneur/creative guru Mike Mills. If you don't mind me asking a question whose answer invites opinion, what do you think of his work and does his output support any of the interests being pushed by MediaSCAPES?

Any thoughts on Eduardo's (PhD candidate Smokety's) inquiries?

Smokety: Ed and Juan fight with liquid swords:



well, maybe just Ed.

...and in Ed's case it's more likely a wood bokken.

Eduardo is my brother. My name is actually Enrique :)

(With both your blogs bookmarked, you'd think such a typo wouldn't happen. It's been a long day, Enrique: Change Orders, Wall Street, and "When the Levees Broke on Netflix arrived today. Ugh.)

I think there is intellectual integrity in the absurdity of those leather pants.

is that a shot of extras from "the matrix reloaded" rave scene?

(PG, it's a photo of a few of SCIArc's perks: close proximity to various spectacular climactic regions and professors affable enough to join you on a weekend adventure.)

PG, it's a photo nabbed from a SCI-Arc school blog which was nabbed from a Google image search to symbolize the journey about to take place before thesis--symbolize being the keyword. From left to right: Me (superego), Juan (likeness only), Me (family guy), Ed K (likeness only). Again, s-y-m-b-o-l-i-c representations of three people ONLY... Mr. Magic Marli Mal at it again. Though, going to the desert with Ed was an amazing studio trip, and I regret not going with Juan the next semester. I have some stuff to add to this thread but am organizing my thoughts :)

... or affable professors with a self-esteem low enough to allow their students to use photographs with stand-ins that look that they just landed out of a third rate white man's version of Tupac and Hype Williams' California Love video (which is the better version of Mad Max). If Aldous Huxley was still alive... would he side with Biggie or Tupac?

~J.

And yes, very affable and generally interesting until the barrier between theory and reality gets too stretched--though now, I have a much higher tolerance and consider this dilemma true "architectural peyote". The use of the word "allow" is an interesting one (above).

Reminds me of old school backyard parties...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWOsbGP5Ox4

Huxley (soon to be a game) would side with Tupac, of course (wesside).

I'm interested in knowing what Crowley thinks about Huxley ;)

----------

At the risk of blowing my ear drums out due to the noise level, can we tone down the discussion and recenter on MediaSCAPES? I'm interested in hearing from both Juan and Ed about their vision for paths of production within the studio environment, specifically at SCI-Arc. It would be my hope that a portion of the program be centered on technique and a subsequent dismantling of normative modes of architectural production--of course, backed by the depth of what the assemblage is expected to bring themselves.

To play devil's advocate, technique is like learning how to fuck well... and theory is a bit like knowing how to make a baby. The marriage of the two is a productive way to make fruit. I'd liken the X program to a good fuck and portions of SCI-FI and Fresh Urbs Redux as building contraceptive. I've had the privilege of being intimate with both and fully enjoyed my architectural mistress--SCI-Arc--though, she was very expensive. I don't think the evolution of a student's mind is enough of a product in a post-grad architectural program. Less theory, more product.

2Pac was selling oranges in front of the depot before SCI-Arc arrived.

Thats O.G. (he also cruises down traction in the video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiuioJXKBg8

i'm for stopping the stroking...