DEMILIT

Terra Incognita "Oakland Edition" | The Public School

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 10:58:50 -0700

Terra Incognita "Oakland Edition" | The Public School:

The city is an open ended puzzle. Terra Incognita is a game of urban exploration. With the help of the DEMILIT Collective, we will be discovering the city anew and making the familiar unfamiliar and either way It will be a great way to spend a spring afternoon in Oakland. The Game: Puzzles begin with placing the first piece. Take the plunge. Play a game. Enter Terra Incognita. Start an infinite geographical puzzle. Explore your routine world in a way you wouldn’t even recognize. Study your city to discover something you had never imagined. Every piece of Terra Incognita you create can be the seed for a new puzzle or the newest addition to an expanding one. TERRA INCOGNITA (TI) is played to cipher and decipher a city.

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”...

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 17:36:00 -0700

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-conversation=”none”><p>Thx to @<a href=”https://twitter.com/resonantcity”>resonantcity</a> for helping put this together! <a href=”https://twitter.com/search/%23TerraIncognita”>#TerraIncognita</a> noon, May 4th in Oakland, outside, making urban puzzles. @<a href=”https://twitter.com/newcityreader”>newcityreader</a></p>— DEMILIT₃ (@demilit) <a href=”https://twitter.com/demilit/status/322502719585796096”>April 12, 2013</a></blockquote>

<script async src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8”></script>We’re going to do an impromptu Oakland event! May 4th at high noon, playing #TerraIncognita & starting at the Public School. More info soon!

— DEMILIT₃ (@demilit)

April 12, 2013

Thx to @resonantcity for helping put this together! #TerraIncognita noon, May 4th in Oakland, outside, making urban puzzles. @newcityreader

— DEMILIT₃ (@demilit)

April 12, 2013

To read about #TerraIncognita, start here demilit.tumblr.com/terraincognita | Oakland info coming soon. May 4th Save The Date!
— DEMILIT₃ (@demilit) April 12, 2013

(via Subtopia: Archeology of Espionage)

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 12:38:31 -0700

(via Subtopia: Archeology of Espionage)

The Sorry Jacket (by Palace). Or… The proposal was first...

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 22:33:00 -0700

The Sorry Jacket (by Palace). Or…

The proposal was first mentioned by Clinton in February 2011 following the diplomatic cables leak—Cablegate—that began in February 2010. The request called for an “apology tour jacket” to replace the constant verbal admission for any embarrassment caused following the leaks, and should be worn by all members of the US Foreign Service partaking in the tour of states where diplomatic relations had been tarnished or in some cases severed.

The call for the jacket spells the end of the US as “the reluctant sheriff”, but also its recasting in the role of the overeager participant; and while it might not be the end of a state-centred realism, the leaks have spread a diplomacy where acting upon generalisations and pseudo-psychoanalysis have made way for new forms of protocol and behaviour. This is a result of new paradigms in communication: concerning namely its fragility and pervasiveness.”

This proposal is in Fulcrum 69, and comes along with an article by @AlJavieera (of Demilit) on the biodrone, the detachment of architectural research, and the need for architecture to produce a disconnect from the militarized human terrain environment.

Australian fire forces terrified family to cling dock for hours...

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 23:23:40 -0800

Australian fire forces terrified family to cling dock for hours | World | News | National Post

Guantánamo. Twitter / carolrosenberg: And here’s a...

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 17:54:37 -0800

Guantánamo. Twitter / carolrosenberg: And here’s a military handout …

Made: Technology on Affluent Leisure Time (2012) - Garnet Hertz;...

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 07:59:00 -0800

Made: Technology on Affluent Leisure Time (2012) - Garnet Hertz; via WMMNA

Nick Sowers: Listening Practice

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 08:57:34 -0800

Fes, Morocco, on a scrubby hill overlooking/over-listening the city. Like the view, the image in sound is dense in detail. Tiny spikes of contrast: a distant horn, sparrows flittering in the foreground, the sharper cry of a child nearby. Emerging from a grey droning sea: scooters, voices, air conditioners, idling buses, the overlapping calls to prayer. This sound altogether is the averaged sound of a city.

Via: OnSite Review

“5,000 Feet is the Best” (by Commonwealth Projects)...

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 08:48:10 -0800

“5,000 Feet is the Best” (by Commonwealth Projects) via @Interdome

ethel-baraona: “Terra Incognita” The New City Reader [Istanbul...

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 21:10:08 -0800

ethel-baraona:

“Terra Incognita” The New City Reader [Istanbul edition] issue #03 on the streets now.

“Terra Incognita” is a game to cipher and decipher the city [edited by demilit]. You can start an infinite geographical puzzle on the new city reader.

Photo

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 21:01:00 -0800

Courtesy of The New City Reader and Joseph Grima.

courtesy of The New City Reader and Joseph Grima.

courtesy of The New City Reader and Joseph Grima.

courtesy of The New City Reader and Joseph Grima.

Photo by @thingsonshelves on Instagram

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 23:19:48 -0800

Photo by @thingsonshelves on Instagram

Guardian UK—Picture of the day: Gaza City

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 20:37:18 -0800

Guardian UK—Picture of the day: Gaza City

This is a collection of speculative audio experimentation that...

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 22:09:05 -0800

This is a collection of speculative audio experimentation that explores the concept of the sonic properties of retail space. The tracks were developed as part of the exhibit As Real As It Gets at apexart in Manhattan, organized by Rob Walker. The exhibit’s run: November 15 - December 22, 2012.

These 23 tracks are part of a larger group created as part of the Disquiet Junto series of communal music projects. These 23, totaling about an hour of audio total, were selected by Walker from 2.7 hours of total sound and music created.

More on the exhibit at

http://disquiet.com/zola
http://apexart.org
http://robwalker.net/

Happy to have a track submitted to the Disquiet Junto selected...

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 22:07:28 -0800

Happy to have a track submitted to the Disquiet Junto selected by Rob Walker. Go to: Disquiet Junto’s exploration of store sounds is changing my ears. : Observatory: Design Observer for more…

The Density Manifest by Buuck.BARGE on Flickr.BARGE: the Bay...

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 23:02:29 -0700

The Density Manifest by Buuck.BARGE on Flickr.

BARGE: the Bay Area Research Group in Enviro-aesthetics Site-specific performance July 2012.

Osama bin Laden Compound Raid Mock-up via @subtopes

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 09:53:00 -0700

Osama bin Laden Compound Raid Mock-up via @subtopes

"When GARPA first issued a call and invited the general public to submit designs for a ‘revolutionary..."

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 13:31:27 -0700

““When GARPA first issued a call and invited the general public to submit designs for a ‘revolutionary zoological terrain,’ the blogs and social media sphere went crazy. Seductive was the prospect of establishing a more scrutinising relationship between the highly privatised sector of defence systems design, and the public, whose opinion of government has grown wearily unfavorable for years. Ever since the phenomenon of anonymous underground hacker networks and whistleblowers cemented themselves as a chronic digital thorn in the sides of corrupt democracies worldwide, there’s been a renewed effort on the part of these institutions to “green politics” again—by weeding out entrenchments of government secrecy. As you might imagine, “transparency” became the measure; it became the new green.””

- “they came to the desert and were consumed by a flickering fortress” by demilit | THE STATE

DARPA hacker Mudge at a recent conference on the fast-track...

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 20:09:59 -0700

DARPA hacker Mudge at a recent conference on the fast-track program.

Architecture's avatars

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 12:13:00 -0700

Some inchoate thoughts in the form of a premature conclusion, drawn from a draft paper (—a paper that might never see the light of day, so therefore, what the heck?)

By overlapping architecture and blockbuster film Avatar, we can draw a dual conclusion. First, Avatar iconically represents for the viewer a very paradoxical American breed of quasi-environmentalism, one in which culture and biological security come about through war and violence while professing to defend life.

James Cameron himself told The New Yorker: “I suppose you could say I believe in peace through superior firepower.” (Cameron, in fact, is Canadian, not that it makes much of a difference). American militarist culture, which itself has become even more militarized since September 11, gets presented for audiences through what Derek Gregory calls the military-industry-media-entertainment (MIME) complex, which Avatar clearly fits into.

Beyond what Fredric Jameson once said about the underbelly of postmodern culture being “blood, torture, death, and terror,” an updated iteration for today could be “blood, torture, death, terror, and environment.” As opposed to merely isolated culture or architectural objects like the Bonaventure Hotel that Jameson beheld, the environment is an extension of endless war. The contemporary info-entertainment environment, a totalizing tele-connected space, is a violent weapon that complements and completes Cameron’s “superior firepower.”

In Avatar, as one commodity of the MIME complex, the story begins with the grandiose and deceptive promise of direct physical violence being replaced with cultural violence woven into the environment. At least that was the idea of sending the avatars, before it all devolves into another typical American incursion.

The avatars, a perfect neuro-tethered “biodrone” of the sort that DARPA now begins to pioneer, eerily evoke, in fact, the actual American cultural soldiers (anthropologists, psychologist, and other social scientists), these culture warriors the Pentagon has sent to Iraq and Afghanistan to supposedly win the war for hearts and minds.

An idea of the biodrone is meant to indicate that the environment and the biodrone itself, as much as they may seem from two opposing worlds, are ultimately parts of one and the same homespun medium. The American idea, so well crystallized in Avatar, of mastering the invaded environment through intelligence and knowledge, is the biodrone fantasy. The ultimate myth of Avatar is that of socio-environmental penetration; of an interiority replaced by absolute exteriority.

At least that’s the desire from the drone-operator’s control room, a reclusive detachment similar to architecture’s “research studios.” And that’s similarly the view in research architecture today: the fantasy to anxiously replace the represented, crisis-prone environment with controlled design itself thanks to research knowledge.

Architecture has to face what amounts to a combined methodological and political crisis that’s been put off for all too long, but how? The question brings me to the second idea.

The other side of my conclusion revolves around the real architecture of Avatar. In order to produce Avatar, the commodity, it was necessary to first produce the movie’s own unique filming environment, a techno-space that Cameron had to wait twelve years for until animation technology caught up with his plans. The environment we see on film is but one apparition that emerges from a complex and discontiguous material environment of computers, digital models, sets, and costumes, not to mention corporate offices.

At the end of it all, no matter the left-appealing message in the film, Rupert Murdoch’s insidious News Corp (Fox News’s parent) beat Wall Street expectations in the quarter of the film’s release. But much like the biodrones in the movie, architecture in the bland, corporate design research environment can’t see—refuses to see—its own material threads from within.

After all, the gaze of the drones that fly over Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Palestine, Mexico and more countries every day, have a way of visually disassociating people, even while targeting them, from their complex territories and environmental relations in order to bind them to the frame of vision and kill them. Not only that, but this deceitful vision simultaneously opaques the fact that the humans who fly these drones are not merely the pilots.

Behind each drone there are human operators who occupy myriad spaces: spy headquarters in Virginia, lawyers in the White House, the Commander-in-Chief, on-the-ground “intelligence” in conflict zones, and pilot consoles at American military bases. In the end, it is nearly impossible to identify who the killer is and ascribe guilt for murder, aka “collateral damage.” At least, that’s the idea.

This fragmented vision and dispersed spatiality, spinning out into society-at-large through social, affective, and kinship ties begins to incriminate and penetrate us all. The militarized political environment of the everyday is simultaneously the biological one, demolishing any illusion of autonomy or interiority. And the architecture field, if it can get a grip of its own materialist crises, stands uniquely poised to imagine different political environments from the ones we are beleaguered with today.

To the manifesto and adherents of today’s “Yes Is More!” I say “NO Is More!” Let’s get rid of Le Corbusier’s “architecture, or revolution” once and for all, and instead rally around something both radical and uncertain: Homeostasis, or architecture! Of course, homeostasis can be avoided.

- By Javier Arbona

Image via