Catching Up!

Been a long time since my last post, so here's what I've been up to since...

• First assignment- carve a book! With the goal of carving to reveal. The book- a history of modern architecture.


• Preliminary concepts- (1) open the book to find a single skyscraper, much like the single gesture example of a dry garden shown in class discussion this one would depict one of the biggest developments in 20th century architecture. (2) again open the book this time see a crowd of people, these people are meant to be the influential men and women who have made architecture modern, the crowd would be made up of layers representing the parts of a whole.

• In-class assignment- thinking about how to interpret the poem "A Throw of the Dice" in an hour's time is easier said than done. A poem that seemed to make less sense after each read, the author deliberately highlights certain words with unconventional word arrangement and font type. The words that read loud and clear: "ABOLISH" and "CHANCE." My idea was to then take the work and leave it to chance what portions could be read by the next reader. I would do this by overlaying a six block grid then rolling a dice (or calculator random number operator) and cutting out the block(s) that corresponded to the first two numbers rolled on each page. What remained of the poem was completely illegible and left the person who received the poem next with even less of a clue as to what the authors original meaning behind the jargon.

• Final product- After presenting the two original concepts I decided to form a combination of the two. Taking the skyscraper as the subject from the first idea and applying the layering concept from the second to create a city made up of skyscrapers. The skyline was framed to keep the integrity of the book and surprise readers when they open. Each chapter in the book adds one building to the horizon. In some cases the images from each chapter were of actual skyscrapers, but in others (mostly the earlier chapters) they were pictures or sketches that resembled the shape of the buildings to come.