petebooth[iaac]

Our sub-group has completed our mapping work for this week.

You can download our PDF file here.
You can download an excerpt from my notebook here.

Minification
The act of making something less or smaller in order to achieve a faster, smaller and more seemingly simpler life.

Widgification
To utilize a small software devices to compact vast amounts of information and into bite sized chunks. Eg; Desktop widgets within an operating system; RSS readers within the internet environment.

Multi.Scalar
Information that is able to automatically reduce itself to suit the medium that it is being transmitted though. For example, web pages that run at full detail on normal computers, but are self scaling for presentation on a television or mobile telephone.

Macropuncture
The art of distilling an entire system by focusing on an specific individual point that is believed to be representative of the complete system.

Consumology
The science of consumerism and how everyday useless items can be made desirable by the average person.

Time Compaction [expansion]
The utilisation of contemporary minification techniques en masse to compress the access and exposure to information and experiences into a smaller time period.
This phenomena has the reverse effect, it expands time. By experiencing more things in a set period of time, an individuals perception of how much can be achieved is extended, in turn giving the impression of extending time.

Now that all of the tubes have been competed, Shane and Thomas spent the better part of 3 hours connection all 27 of them together in the lobby of IaaC.  The images here were taken by IaaC, as they also managed to set up a decent light.  normally the space is a lot darker.
see the IaaC post about the tubes here

Georgina and I have completed the documentation and construction of our tube for Digital Fabrication.
You can download the DWG here.
You can download the PDF manual here.

Group 3 has completed our mapping presentation for week 2. We actually finished it last night, but had issues with uploading and printing, but that is a another issue all together. We looked at a specific area in and around Avinguda del Portal de l’Angel as this offers a wide variety of shopping experiences that will form the basis for the rest of the city to be analysed against.

Click on the images below to be taken to our file server to download the hi-resolution images.
You can download an excerpt from my work book here.

Through the process of group discussion we have identified the term ‘minification’ as our umbrella topic.   The first terms that we have decided to further define are:

widgification
multi-scalar
macropuncture
comsumology
open media
time compaction (or expansion).

For the next class we intend to individually define these terms for group discussion, this will aid in our understanding of the umbrella term.  In addition to this we will [re]invent 2-4 words each that fit within this field of research.

Modern day consumerism and it’s ability do get make things happen faster, smarter, better and smaller has interested me for a while now. In a society where people demand things immediately, has the appreciation for traditional means of purchase, communication, eating and life in general been completely lost?

I come from Tasmania a small island where it is pretty normal to wait up to 15 minutes for public transport and when it finally arrives it is a bus that takes at least another 20 minutes to get you to where you are going. In Barcelona or London, people get annoyed if they have to wait more than 2 minutes for a metro that takes them 2 stops.
My love of music has also been affected by bite-sized culture. In an act of rebellion against it, I refuse to purchase anything from an online music store, believing that the single song purchase that started with the 45 and now is alive in the form of mp3, will die a death one day and life will return to the album. Heck, I buy all of my music on vinyl!
Even websites are subject to becoming too fast, with rss and widgets you don’t even have to visit the site anymore. The information just magically appears in your inbox without even thinking about it.

Is it better to take a moment and slow down your life and experience things a at a pace that doesn’t hit you in the face, even for just 10 minutes? I would like to think so. Maybe I’m just being nostalgic.

Wired: Minifesto for a new age
Slow Living

You can find some of the pages scanned from my mapping diary online now.  More pages will be added as they are developed, probably tomorrow night.

View the pages here. 

Georgia and I have completed the fabrication and construction of our first digital tools and fabrication assignment, we call it ‘the tube’ (pretty unoriginal I know). We worked collaboratively on the design and fabrication of the object, passing many rhino files between us.

There was a bit of a problem with the rhino model though, it wouldn’t cut the intersection tubes away from the component planes. At 2am we rebuilt the rhino model, it still didn’t work. We ended up doing it the long way but creating lines through intersection and manually joining all the lines. Time consuming but the end result was very satisfying.

We had a minor technical hitch in the laser cutting, autocad didn’t like the text format that rhino exported. The machine cut the first sheet, but left off the text. Luckily I realized before we removed any of the pieces [see approx 1:45 into the attached movie]. We were able to convert the text in autocad and re-cut only the text. It all would have been bad if we had realized any later though.

The bottom left sidebar of this blog now features links to a number of my other bits of web based technology: del.icio.us, flickr, youtube and my personal website overland07 (which has nothing to do with architecure, it’s all about adventures).
Hope you get a chance to have a look at them as all of my photos and weblinks will be added through them from now on. It keeps them central and easily accessible for everone, and are also a lot easier to find with google!