Discovering Perspective

My current studio project is a Newseum ie a museum of news. Personally, I think this is a bit of a contradiction. News is ephemeral and imperminant. Once you hang it in a museum doesn't news become olds?

There is such a place in existance. Of course it belongs to the Americans and you can guess it is as free, open and unbiased as CNN. Oops, this rant isn't about Americans. The new Washington location isn't due to open until 2006 and in my opinion, doesn't really need to. It's all there on the Newseum webpage which I believe is more successful than the proposed design.

Museums were created to exhibit the world's artifacts to the average person. To liberate information to be accessible to all. This all has to do with the whole revolutionary, guilotine-the-king-and-steal-his-paintings/open-the-Louvre-to-the-
People. It's more complicated than that and I'm not really well-read enough on the subject to spout too many opinions. However, the point is, museums give people access to what they otherwise would not have. And, since the whole point of "news" is that is accessible to everyone. . . In fact, too accessible, sickeningly accessible. Think about it. How many times do you get bombarded by news in an average day.

I wake up in the morning to my alarm radio and listen to the news and find out what the weather is so I know what to wear.
I get in the car to go to school and listen to the CBC because goodness knows you don't want to listen to any other Ottawa radio station.
I get to school and listen to gossip all day.
I walk down the street and pass the newstands and read the headlines.
I go to check my email and get drawn in by stupid MSN headlines.
I go to a restaurant and in the corner the t.v. is showing the news.

Why would anyone go to a museum to get the news?

So I do some research. I actually can't stand the media. It drives me mad and I have many great thinkers backing me on this one. Oscar Wilde for one, but he criticized everything. I believe Soren Kierkegaard said something along the lines of he could forgive his daughter if she were to become a prostitute but were his son to become a journalist he would be disowned on the spot. But my personally feelings aside, there are some interesting possibilities for the news.

I started reading slashdot and the shift. I am fascinated by the idea of the general public becoming the editors and choose the articles of interest and what light to show them in.

I also read a number of articles by Marshall McLuhan. Several things he said have influenced my ideas. . .

"People don't actually read newspapers, they step into them every morning like a bath."

"Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media with which men communicate than by the content of the communication." ie "The medium is the massage." (that's a pun not a typo)

"We can no longer build serially, block-by-block, step-by-step, because instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience co-exist in a state of active interplay."

So, design a newseum already girl. What is taking so long?

more to come

Actually, maybe I will be writing more than I thought. I forgot how often I'm sick and I've learned to be whinny about it. When I was still living at home, my Mom would want to fuss and spoil me when I was sick and I wouldn't let her. I hated being sick. I hated being taken care of. I hated being fussed over. I even refused to react when I got my wisdom teeth removed. I slept off the anesthetic within an hour and then was back to normal. (This is where you get to hate me)

So, whenever I woke up in the morning and couldn't get out of bed, I didn't. I slept for the morning and then spent the afternoon catching up on work. Sick days are generally more productive. You don't have routine and schedules getting in the way. There was no time for anyone to take care of me.

Well, things have changed a bit the last year or so. There are three explanations. One, I have a boyfriend now and being pampered by Mekki is kind of nice and a bit different than Mom. Two, now that I live on my own, I take care of myself every other day and so being sick and having someone take care of making me a warm, comforting bowl of soup and doing the dishes and bringing me hot tea and tucking me into bed is a well deserved change. (Of course I don't have to be sick to get those things, refer to reason one) Three, I almost never got sick until recently and recently, I've been sick a lot. Being sick of being sick is the reason for my increased whining and need for attention. Actually, I still don't like to be fussed over but now I don't like not being fussed over too. So being sick equals being unhappy either way. Now I cough louder than I would if I were alone but also pretend that I'm fine when I feel like I'm about to collapse.

I guess there is a certain amount of acting anytime you are sick. I don't tend to have normal or obvious signs of being sick and often the next day, I'll be perfectly fine. I have to act like I'm sick when I'm sick or I get stupid comments of "suuuuuuuuure you were sick." And when you are younger there is always the challenge of learning which sign will convince your parents that you don't feel well. For me it was the "sick eyes". I have very expressive eyes. I also have the "Irish eyes" and you should take cover when they show up but my temper is better controlled than when I was younger so it doesn't happen too frequently. Nowadays my Irish shows itself mostly in my Guinness drinking abilities. But that isn't why I'm sick. No, really!

Now I'm just babbling, and no that isn't my pretending to be sick so you will believe me. It is a sign that I should just post and go to bed.

I've sat down to write a few times this past week and don't know what to write. I have lots of things to write about but none of them seem appropriate follow-ups to the introduction-type blog.

You know that Winnie the Pooh moment of tapping himself on the head and saying "think, think, think" ? Well I find myself doing that all the time when what I really need to do is tap my head saying "do, do, do". Not that I don't find the most enjoyment out of escaping physical and waxing philosophic for hours on end. However, I feel I have to prove that I am in fact doing something when I sit there with a blank look on my face.

For the past two weeks, my prof has been harping on me that I am falling behind on my museum project. I don't feel I am behind but I understand why he thinks so. Everyone else has drawings and mockup models littered all over the place and all I have is a bunch of scribbles in a sketchbook. Those scribbles make little sense to anyone but me, but to me, it is an almost completed design. It's my creative process. There is a lot that comes to light when I make that jump to model making and drawing. A lot of "happy mistakes". However, I find thinking it through first ensures that the project holds together and profs can see that in my final presentations ("crits"), and they are always surprised because they have no idea where the project came from and how I managed to pull it off.

Back in the fall, there was threat of a professor strike. All I could think was "I would learn so much more if I didn't have to deal with professors." I can't speak for most university students. Architecture is a very different program than others. The community created by late nights and early mornings being shared by some rather unusual and eclectic personalities that seem to conglomerate in schools of architecture is what I feel my tuition is giving me (along with being able to work in one of Canada's greatest buildings). For the first two years, profs played a greater part in my education and formed me into the proper little architect who likes to revolt against everything that's already been done. Everyone else is wrong and I am right. It's a nice career/life choice to become an architect. I just need a bit more work on the arrogance and ego. Of course if you teach these things to students. . . you can't expect them not to then apply this philosophy to you. And so now, I always think that my profs are wrong and backwards and can't understand the brilliance of my concept *hint of arrogance*. Shouldn't that mean I deserve an A?

Through a rather memorable and amusing, though short, conversation involving a classic example of Sarah Sarcasm in my first year of architectural studies, I received the honour of adopting the nickname of one of the greatest influencers of modern Western thought and my pet betta (I name all my fish after great architects. Michelangelo regrettably decided he enjoyed the ceiling of his fishbowl and proceeded to float there indefinitely).

Fillipo Brunelleschi, our friends call us Bruno, is credited with the discovery of linear perspective. (The argument of whether this was invention or discovery will be saved for future blogs. I highly recommend reading Erwin Panofsky's Perspective as Symbolic Form) This is often marked as the impetus between Medieval and Renaissance thought; when the perception of the world became rational, abstracted and systematized.

As my professor Tom would say, or rather, would shout at you from the back of room 204 as you attempt to hide the fact that you are taking notes during his lecture: "The grid. Never leave home without it girls and boys. SO! Brunelleschi gave us the window to the world, placing objects in clear relationship to one another. If you don't get that, you shouldn't be an architect. If you don't like it, haha, triple F-minus for you. Haha. Thank you." (As you can tell, I stealthfully managed to transcribe parts of the lecture while he was distracted).

If you are interested in learning what is linear perspective, exactly, I give you the advice of my Profs: "Go find a book." Regrettably, I have not had time to do so, though I am decent at drawing intuitive perspective except for the occasional Van Gogh's bedroom.

And so... It was a late, late/early, early night/morning in studio (as it always was) following the Art History class about Brunelleschi where we learned the legend of the Florence Dome Competition. Renaissance wins 1-0 vs. Medieval thought with Bruno scoring with a self-supporting, double-shell, colossal-rib design with a strong defence against the opponent's fill-it-with-dirt-and-coins-so-the-peasants-will-empty-it-after-the-dome-is-built proposal. (I must read Vasari someday) Sean comes over and asks the bunch of us if anyone had won any design competitions to which the Sarah Sarcasm could not resist the reply "Well there was that dome-thing but the competition didn't stand up."

Finally, a nickname so I could take part in the Engineering Drinking Game.

I've grown into my adopted name. Like Fillipo, I often feel that I live between those two worlds of faith and reason, of art and math. It played a key role in my choice to pursue architecture. What else is someone who won the OAC awards for Art and Drama, but also Calculus and Physics supposed to choose? Reconciling the two worlds is not an easy task. I'm still working at it and expect to be doing so for a long time to come. As a result, I live in a persistent state of confusion as I try to discover my perspective and how that affects my perception of the world. Furthermore, it has led to an interest in discovering perspectives in general, and so, an interest in blog.

Please note: The reason I have finally gotten around to writing this first blog is because I am stuck at home, sick. It is quite likely that similar occassions will be the only opportunity/excuse for me to write in the future. This writing-while-sick may or may not be a good thing. We'll see.