Category: Subnature

WHERE DOES THE DUST ITSELF COLLECT?, Xu Bing, 2011

WHERE DOES THE DUST ITSELF COLLECT?, Xu Bing, 2011

at Museum of Chinese American, NY http://www.mocanyc.org/

and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, NY http://www.lmcc.net/

http://insite.lmcc.net/projects-home/?id=15

The first American installation of a project by renowned Chinese artist Xu Bing, originally created in 2004 in Cardiff, Wales utilizing the dust that the artist collected from the streets of Lower Manhattan in the aftermath of 9/11. Recreating a field of dust across a floor surface, punctuated by the outline of a Zen Buddhist poem, the work explores the relationship between the material and the spiritual world, and the complicated circumstances created by different world perspectives.

Xu Bing (1955- ) was born in Chongqing, China but grew up in Beijing. He was sent to the countryside to perform farm labor as an “educated youth” during the final years of the Cultural Revolution and then entered The Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in 1977, where he studied and taught in the printmaking department, receiving both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees there. In 1990 Xu moved to the United States, eventually relocating to New York in 1992. His work has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions at museums spanning the globe and he has been the recipient of awards and honors including a 1999 MacArthur Fellowship and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Columbia University in 2010. He currently works out of his studios in Beijing and Brooklyn, and since January 2008 has served as vice president of CAFA, his alma mater.

This exhibit is made possible by support from the Ford Foundation.

The exhibition space in The Spinning Wheel Building has been donated by the
Greystone Management Corporation.

Image: Xu Bing, courtesy of the artist.

Urban Open Space: Designing For User Needs, Marc Francis, 2003

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1559631139

Product Description

Research has shown that successful public spaces are ones that are responsive to the needs of their users, are democratic in their accessibility, and are meaningful for the larger community and society. While considerable research has been done on needs and conflicts in open space, no one document integrates all this knowledge and makes it available to professionals, students, and researchers.

  • Foreword
  • Urban open space: Case study in land and community design
  • Introduction: Designing for user needs
    • P4
      • Parks, plazas, streets, community gardens, and greenways (Carr et al. 1992; Lynch 1972)
      • The life between buildings(1987;Gehl and Gemoze 1996)
      • Third places(Ray Oldenburg 1989)
    • P6 A Typology of Urban Open Spaces
  • The LAF case study method
  • Urban open spaces: Why some work and others don’t
      • P14 Why Public Spaces Fail
      • P15 Principles of Creating Great Public Spaces
    • The research on urban parks and open space
      • P19 Case Studies of User Needs in Open Space
        • Issue based case studies
        • Place-based case studies
        • Case studies of types of open space
      • User Needs
      • Comfort
      • Relaxation
      • Passive Engagement
      • Active Engagement
      • Discovery
      • Fun
      • User Conflicts
      • Safety / Security
      • Abuse
      • Conflicts Between User Groups
      • Cultural Differences
      • Gender Conflicts
      • Ability
      • Privatization of Public Space
      • Conflicts Between Use and Ecology
  • Design, development, and decision making.
  • Bryant park: a case study of designing of public spaces
  • Community Participation
    • The landscape architect’s role
    • Approaches to maintenance and management
  • Evaluating the needs and limitations of public spaces
    • The literature on user needs in urban open space
    • Critical reviews
      • ..for example, Project for Public Spaces in New York City (2000) states that places should be created, “not just designed”. Three of their ‘Eleven Steps to Transforming Public Spaces into Great Community Places’ emphasize programming over design and the evolving nature of good open spaces.
    • Why design urban spaces?
    • Limitations and problems
    • Principles of public places
    • Design and Management recommendations for public open space
      • source: Project for Public Spaces, How to Turn a Place Around, 2000, p86-93
    • Issues and Research for the Future

  • Conclusions and recommendations
  • Bibliography
  • Websites and Listservs
  • Photo Credits
  • Sources of Information
  • Index
  • About the author

 

 

 

Product Description

Research has shown that successful public spaces are ones that are responsive to the needs of their users, are democratic in their accessibility, and are meaningful for the larger community and society. While considerable research has been done on needs and conflicts in open space, no one document integrates all this knowledge and makes it available to professionals, students, and researchers.

Based on archival research; published case studies; site visits; and interviews with researchers, open space designers, managers, and users, Urban Open Space looks across several seminal studies to glean significant findings and design implications related to user needs and conflicts. It reviews and identifies those critical user needs that must be considered in the planning, design, and management of outdoor spaces, and synthesizes that knowledge into an accessible and useful document.

 

About the Author

Mark Francis, a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, is professor of landscape architecture at the University of California, Davis, and senior design consultant with MIG in Berkeley and Davis. Trained in landscape architecture and urban design at Berkeley and Harvard, he is author of more than sixty articles and book chapters translated into a dozen languages. His books include Community Open Spaces (Island Press, 1984), The Meaning of Gardens (MIT, 1990), Public Space (Cambridge, 1992), and The California Landscape Garden Ecology, Culture and Design (California, 1999). His work has focused on the use and meaning of the built and natural landscape. Much of this research has utilized a case study approach to study parks, gardens, public spaces, streets, nearby nature, and urban public life.

Sentient City, Mark Shepard(ed), 2011

Definition of Sentient City by Mark Shepard

“dataclouds of 21st century urban space” that shape the experience of those in it.

Book

  • Introduction: Mark Shepard
  • Toward the sentient city: Mark Shepard
  • Systems, Objectified: Hadas Steiner
  • Case Studies
    • New Interaction Partners for environmental governance:
      • Amphibious Architecture:
        • David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang (The Living) and Natalie Jaremijenko (xDesign Environmental Health Clinic)
    • Structuring Participation for an Energy Commons
      • Natural Fuse:
        • Usman Haque, Nitipak ‘Dot’ Samsen, Ai Hasegawa (Haque Design+Research)
    • Urban Digestive Systems
      • Trash Track:
        • MIT SENSEable City Lab
    • An International Failure for the Near Future
      • Too Smart City:
        • David Jimison and JooYoun Paek
    • Situating Knowledge Work in Contemporary Public Spaces
      • Breakout!: Escape from the Office:
        • Anthony Townsend, Antonina Simeti, Dana Spiegal, Laura Forlano, and Tony Bacigalupo
  • Essays
    • The Action is the Form: Keller Eastering
    • Interaction Anxieties: Omar Kahn
    • New Spatial Intelligence, or the Tree allowed to grow freely, but to man’s pattern: Dan Hill
    • Boxes Towards Bananas: Dispersal, Intelligence and Animal Structures: Matthew Fuller
    • Unsettling Topographic Representation: Saskia Sassen
    • The Urban Culture of Sentient Cities: From an Internet of Things to a Public Sphere of Things: Martijn de Waal
      • http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/smart-takes/in-a-sentient-city-what-is-public-or-private/16343
    • Space, Finance, and New Technologies: Kazys Varnelis
    • Your Mobility for Sale: Trebor Scholz
    • Comforts, Crisis, and the Rise of DIY Urbanism: Mimi Zeiger
    • Toward the Sentient City: Expecting the Extensible and Transmissible City: Anne Galloway
    • Postscript: Notes on Survival in the Sentient City: Mark Shepard

Exhibition

 

Blog article

http://www.cityofsound.com/blog/2009/10/toward-the-sentient-city.html

Storm Room,Cardiff and Miller, 2009

[Artist’s website]

Have you ever found refuge from a summer shower under the eaves? This piece shows that it is not safe even under a roof. Lightening and shadows of trees surround the windows. It shows you things normally not visible, creating a storm that can really be felt.

A computer controls the flow of water, the lights, the strobes, and the fans, etc. An ambisonic sound track plays through 8 hidden speakers and 2 hidden subwoofers. The piece begins as the storm approaches, with no water hitting the windows, then proceeds to the incredibly loud, floor shaking climax. As the storm dissipates the sound of someone moving and coughing in the next room is heard and then the piece starts again. This work was created in a deserted dentist’s office in a traditional Japanese house near the city of Tokamachi, Japan as part the Echigo Tsumari Art Triennial 2009.

All Photos from: Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial 2009 | Takenori Miyamoto + Hiromi Seno