Boom

How do you feel about Auckland's population boom? This is the topic of discussion as our city plans for the future. With the amalgamation of 7 different councils and the drafting of the Unitary Plan, there is much food for thought and bureaucratic logistics to be had.

This is what they thought in the 1960s:

A quaint short film on how they saw the city developing jars with many of the ideas we now have around urban planning, design and architecture, particularly around sustainable development. Many are outdated modernist concepts.

A brief summary: cars, cars and more cars; highways and carpark buildings were amazing; unsustainable urban sprawl created the Kiwi dream.

And once I get around to it, I'll have some blog posts about my (very architectural) trip to Melbourne!

Silo

Silo Park by night

I actually can't believe I haven't blogged about this before because I'm a real ranting fanboy of Silo Park and Wynyard Quarter. Right now 'Summer of Sculpture' is on, turning the urban waterfront park into an interesting sculpture walk. In the period before this, Askew One, a renown NZ street artist that I've featured before, did a series of pieces on the decommissioned silo tanks (see above). They act as a backdrop to all of the activity and signals the increasing move towards making Silo Park as a space a creative one. The sculpture in the foreground is one of the many great pieces out there at the moment (the pose kind of reminds me of Assassins Creed).

In fact, the park holds many creative disciplines - music (there's even an old piano sits in one of the silos, for anyone to play on), films with the summer outdoor movie nights, dance, art, fine cuisine in the night market stalls/restaurants architecture and award winning urban design. 

Imagine that just a few years ago, this space was a broken down industrial waterfront. I hope that the spirit in the place is what Auckland as a whole can move toward - an accepting space open to rejuvenation and creativity.

Dream

A short film of Ian Ruhter's photographic process reveals a practice of inspiration. Often a camera is used as a mere tool for capturing images, but Ruhter's 'camera', which is held in a baby blue truck, exposes the lives of others (pun intended), or more accurately, their way of life.

Whether intentionally or otherwise, Ruhter's practice brutally disassembles the 'American dream' - that it is not for everyone, nor is it essential for a happy existence. Finding your own happiness is in your own hands and no one else's. The truck travels around documenting the American existence. Certainly he can't document ALL of it (most of it would be pretty banal anyway) but he sure has a knack of finding the more interesting characters around.

"The LA skyline photo is so important to me. That fence symbolises every fear, every doubt. Once we went over that fence, our trip to America began." 

Using a full plate film technique, crisp details can be blown up. He can inhabit the camera - in the film you can see the world in reverse around him like being in a giant pinhole camera (some spaces are made for this purpose). Doing both portraiture and landscape/cityscape photos, it links the peculiarities of the city with those inhabiting it with their particular stories. The technique reminds me of the chemigram, the imperfections mirror the imperfections of humans.

Blogger's note: I need to stop talking about photography for a while... this blog is becoming a photo blog or something!

Fall

Creative journalism.

All too often we hear about the slow but sure fall of the printed news media in the 21st century. While this is debatable as a phenomenon, digital media is readily growing into 'traditional' media. Traditional media has reinvented itself so much that the two are inseparable and the gnarled boughs of printed media is worked in with the temporality of social media, the internet and multimedia.

Today I saw a superbly made multimedia project by +The New York Times  reporting a story that really went to the heart of the story. Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek by John Branch reads like a novel at times in its composure and thorough research into its subject. Using current web design to integrate the multimedia components really helped with understanding the story which is epic in scale and tragedy. Fly-throughs of the mountain, simulations, videos and an assortment of bite sized supplements to the story really lend support to this feature.

The reporting for this article on the Feb. 19 avalanche at Tunnel Creek was done over six months. It involved interviews with every survivor, the families of the deceased, first responders at Tunnel Creek, officials at Stevens Pass and snow-science experts. It also included the examination of reports by the police, the medical examiner and the Stevens Pass Ski Patrol, as well as 40 calls to 911 made in the aftermath of the avalanche. The Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research provided a computer-generated simulation of the avalanche, based on data accumulated from the Stevens Pass accident report and witness accounts. Additional sources are: LIDAR data from King County GIS Center; Iowa Environmental Mesonet, Iowa State University; Mark Moore, U.S. Forest Service; National Avalanche Center.

As well as being a rare effort to report content that the likes of social media couldn't access, this project has an unusually long timeline. Keeping in mind that traditional media hardly ever breaks the news as news any more (that is if you utilise the hyperconnectivity of internet/social media), this is really breaking the box a bit - does traditional media, and its newer form on the digital platforms, allow this slow-cooked information to become a key part of its arsenal in the digital, fast-paced world?

A friend has an interesting observation. After reading the first line he immediately had the impression that it was a piece of fiction writing. Although the drama and writing is captivating, you wonder whether or not it is dramatised beyond belief. If only they put an acknowledgement of the real event and its seriousness before the drama kicked it. As you read on, each of the people's photos show up on the side, a nice touch that links it back to personal reality.

It could be said that only big media reputations could pull such a thing off. The sheer force of the name and the resources in the background offer a unique position to explore issues that deserve more than the double spread feature. And they look like they're milking this experimental format - an e-book is also available for purchase. It seems this media giant is treading a thin line, but which line is it?

Onwards

Just noticed that my blogging count for this year is right on the number of posts last year: 73. So I thought, onwards and upwards, lets keep it up and keep pushing the limits! As you can see with the archive, last year wasn't even as many as 2010, when I had 77 posts. It's that thing which many a creative person gets to - the creative block/writers block etc. When you don't feel like it (and it isn't strictly essential) why do it?

Eventually I end up breaking the blogging drought (like this one at the beginning of this month about the Mentawai people). Today I want to talk about something I watched yesterday: Skyfall. In many ways it is in the same situation as I. At a milestone (50 years) and choosing to continue, onwards and pushing the boundaries that define the franchise.

You either think it's incredibly lame or really cool but I thought Skyfall was a screenwriters' break from the formula. As a person who has watched all the Bond movies (dad is really into the Bond franchise) except Quantum of Solace, there are few that actually go beyond the usual 007 scenario to actually interrogate who Bond actually is.

In one of the films (On Her Majesty's Secret Service) Bond gets married then his wife gets killed almost instantly - one of the few times that actually delved into Bond as a person, not the womaniser, adventure craver that he often is. Brutal and breaking, did it show how little chance that Bond can be a regular person?

Most of Skyfall was a perplexing mixture of a truly psychological villain and a setting all too familiar but at the same time foreign to the Bond franchise - London and the UK. The brief escapades to Turkey and Shanghai alluded to the usual rush but then literally quietened down to the recesses of Scotland. Forging the past of James Bond and whittling out the relationship between M and 007 would have been a real work of creative wit.

Add the tumultuous situation of the political pressure at M's seat of power and then you have the real deal. It had hints of the subtle jiving of JK Rowling's Harry Potter at the British government and, in general, of institution. That is, if you choose to read it that way.

Without spoiling anything, I reckon Skyfall is a game changer for the franchise. This is the 50 year mark and with an extremely different world of criminality as a subtext, Bond will have to reinvent himself to make it work. They ended this chapter of James Bond with great poetic effect and double take moments that made you think over. Goodness, they even broke out a poem right in the midst of crisis.

I thoroughly enjoyed this indescribably different take on 007.
4.5 stars
Feel free to let me know what you thought of it/this rather high rating in the comments.

Mentawai

Time to end this blogging drought! Having been to China, it was a great cultural overload even for me. And without a way to access Blogger, Facebook or Twitter due to the Great Firewall, I've felt pretty oppressed. I am still taking my time processing the many photos I took of my China trip + ancestral village, so those will come in due course.

On a side step, I saw this fascinating video of Joey Lawrence trekking through the Mentawai with waaaay too much equipment to photograph the remnants of this rare and rich way of life (ignore how this is a huge advertisement - I swear I could have done just as well with my cranky old Sony DSLR).

"Hello people from the entire world! Come to the islands of Mentawai quickly. Right now, the Mentawai are still alive. I am still alive. But when I die, you will not see my culture any more."

Cultures like the Mentawai are dying out. A series of photographs show the old grandfather (I presume) with their grandchild, the elder in the traditional garb and the younger donning common western clothes. There must be a handful of cultures that still keep so true to how they have existed for centuries. It is this same handful of cultures that slips out of one's grasp like sand from the palm of one's hand.

One can only hope that the hauntingly moving chants and traditions are carried onto those with the Donald Duck T-shirt and muscle tees. Maybe.

Throughout China I've seen an enormous disregard for historic artefacts - there's just so much of it and the pressures of the current age quite easily stamp them out. Often is the sight where an old stone abode crumbles to the weather to be replaced by a really ugly new and much taller building. But that is for another blog.

Score

Deadline looms and projects are firing up (not to mention a backlash from NZFW) so there hasn't been much time to blog lately. Here is a tweet I saw of Imogen Heap, showing the beginnings of a score she is working on for the documentary film The Happiest Place. I love how it is more of a doodle of ideas and impressions rather than formalistic notation at this stage.

@imogenheap: Beginnings of score writing process for @HappiestFilm :) http://instagr.am/p/PweI8VFEL0/ 

Higgs

Many of us who are not involved with the science world probably heard about the ground breaking Higgs Boson 'discovery' but had no idea what it is or the relevance of it. I had the pleasure of having an engineering friend try to explain it to me (with fervour) but it was hopeless - I just didn't really get it.

The artist Josef Kristofoletti was given the task of visualising this phenomenon and I get this one! A mural of the Large Hadron Collider, it's a homage to the discovery but also something pretty for the rest of us. Look at how it transforms those budget tilt slab walls! Remember humans built this enormous piece of equipment, but the sheer scale of it is wondrous.

This guy is a human printer.

Eames

Eames: the Architect and the Painter. Yet another reason why people shouldn't be bound to merely one creative discipline but branch out and generally just relax a little.

I, for one, really want to watch this doco film.

Inception

I know the movie Inception is old news, but it never fails to sneak into conversations in my circles. That might have something to do with one of the supporting roles being an architect and that most of my crowd have something to do with architecture. So what is the fascination with it? The complexity? How the movie screws with your mind? From my point of view, I think any architect/architect-in-training with a drop of imagination revels in the idea that there could be a boundless creative space that one can make sheer creation. Cue the architects' god complex.

The point is, creativity is defined by its bounds. It is also limited by its bounds. For an artist, it might be funding, what space you can get hold of and how to stay alive in your freezing studio, but that is an influence on the work produced. An architect deals with an assortment of complexities that all have to work together: resource consent, building consent, will the thing stand (if it will stand in an earthquake is another matter) and, quite importantly, with all that in mind does the building still work?

The characters in Inception are stuck in a place where the creative bounds are stretched. The architect has full control over the environment. A forgery expert is like an extremist actor turned identity thief that can become the person he is acting. People can battle without gravity. There's even an avant-garde pharmacologist.

Infinite creativity, stretching back to the creative psychological theories of Jung, is both a theme and an ongoing movement. The movie itself has spurred a lot of thought. Graphic designers have made countless infographics to try to untangle the mental knot that is left after watching it (possibly a few times). Memes have sprung up and it seems to have become a common reference for whenever something is within something else or not knowing how you got to certain places.

Whether you like the movie or not, and beside it's action packed drama, clever motifs and award winning everything, Inception carries a lot of themes about creativity that creative people can relate to.

Reflect

Dion Lee's Vein Light Reflective Fringe Dress. Not only do I admire the workmanship and design, but the portrayal of his designs through photos is utterly powerful.

It is when fashion becomes more than that and bleeds into the creative context. Here, architecture and fashion models co-create this striking image.

For more check out Dion Lee's website, which is full of amazing short films of his shows.

Work

Work Hard, Play Hard is a film that documents some of the real struggles with a efficiency society. Our work, environments and the way we do things all play into this current condition. The Screen Daily review:

The film mixes a clinically precise tone with social conscience and some dark satire – excellent and chilling.

That sounds like my sort of film! Mix a bit of architecture, psychology, and humanity (or humanness) and you get an excellent discussion point.

Work Hard, Play Hard is a film by Taskovski Film. It will be showing in Event Cinemas Newmarket tomorrow night 6:30pm and next Wednesday 8:30pm. Also some screenings in Wellington.

Harmony

In Bb 2.0 is a music collaboration that was prepared over the interwebs. It takes the form of a bunch of Youtube clips with their creators making a sound. Follow the instructions, turn them on and you get a symphony that somehow works. I'm afraid my musical knowledge only goes that far - perhaps they all use the key B flat? It's a key that I often enjoy when playing music, for its melancholic yet strong qualities.

Make sure you take a look and listen at http://wwww.inbflat.net/

Lifecycles

With the limit release that was the motor car, cities sprawled to epic proportions. Today, suburban sprawl is viewed as the big, bad monster of urban design. Those who study architecture or urban design is bound to hear about this phenomena all the time but what is the current action that is combating this vague, self-induced problem?

A more grassroots approach to all this is the Lifecycles project by Matthew Moore. Having a personal attachment to the farmland which would possibly be consumed by the metropolis, Moore set out to express the issue through a set of neat videos on the growth of produce. 

lifecycles - radish from Matthew Moore on Vimeo.

Will this stop the sprawl? That in itself is a big undertaking, but Moore's project is an effort to change the way we think about sprawling cities and an appreciation of the rural areas that hug expanding cities.

For more about the project, see the GOOD article.

Invisible

Nothing like a bit of great technology interacting with the city and people. And selling a car.

Before

Chairlift's 'choose your own adventure' music video is kind of fun. It also forces you to listen to the same dreaded song over and over in pursuit of less boring experiences. It captures the 'what if' scenarios that go on in real life - what if I did this or that, or went to that event would I have...? 

By clicking the arrows, guide the protagonist through a series of events ranging from yawnable to buzzy as (in a psychedelic sense). Funny to note, the hip fashion of nowadays fits really well in the retro days, even with the hair styles that you see around today. 

Imagine how much filming this would have taken. Have fun!

Move

Having wanted to explore different parts of the world someday, videos such as this intrigue me to no end. What a great concept. I always find people travelling are acting the 'tourist' and end up taking 10 pictures of exactly the same scene - whilst concentrating on that, I don't see how people travelling are actually getting what is important about experiencing new places. A good rule of thumb might actually be one second of documenting per scene and leave the rest to your five senses. 

Limbo

After having not blogged for about a month, it takes something really intriguing to get things going again. I'm always a sucker for shadow puppets, and having done an entire project on that theme before, Limbo really reminded me of what I really love about dark atmospheric sets.

The IGN reviewer writes:

Videogames are an art form made up of visuals, sound, and a mysterious little something we call gameplay. Limbo is the perfect example of these three crafts working together in harmony to create something astounding.

All done in grayscale, Limbo navigates a creepy forest with merely the contrast between light and silhouette, with perceived depth and intricate layering. It is set in the 2D space which further calls to the shadow puppet set in which such effects can all be achieved.

The visuals sit on the fence between bleak and powerfully chiaroscuro - more is hidden than you think in this shadow filled world. Other than adding to the thrill of gameplay, it tugs at our collective fear of darkness and the unknown, becoming nothing more than creatively psychological.

If you are interested in the contemporary use of shadow puppetry, the starting point of my shadow puppet exploration was Little Dragon's Twice MV, and the post Cinema illustrates some of the human scale exploration of shadows.

Kotuku 1

Yesterday I spent the whole day filming and photographing a good friend's beautiful product design project. Created by Kate Ramsay, it is a knitted light fitting and is intriguing at every angle so in a way it was really hard to capture; you were spoiled for choice for shots. 

Once we get past the painful post production process I'll be sure to put up the video but here's a photo of our set up for the shooting. Playing with the light studies I did last year, we painted light with fabric and created a dreamy Rothko/watercolouresque quality as the backdrop and for diffuse lighting. It was great fun! 

This piece is named Kotuku and is the Maori word for White Heron, a famously rare NZ bird that gathers delight whenever people see one. It will be displayed in the Art in the Dark exhibition.

Poses

'Poses' (2011) by Yolunda Dominguez highlights the absurdity and artificiality of posing in the fashion industry. Whilst touching on some serious consideration into modelling, it's also a hilarious video!