Studio Update: Object+ : 03.14.09

New Tea Bowls

Update: Object+ : 03.03.09

Recent Wood Firing : New Stones Excavated


Upcoming Exhibition:

This is small preview focused on the object portion of this project. The body of work will manifest as an installation. Objects will find their place among an environment that I will leave as undisclosed for the time being. Work will be on exhibit @ J Fergeson Gallery beginning May 1 to May 30, 2009.

Opening reception : Saturday, May 9th from 5pm to 8pm.

Who needs stairs? : Carsten Holler @ Tate

I mean really, what fan of art who loves taking a minute from the hustle of the world would pass this is up? I have written a little on the idea of urban play and this pretty much pegs its union with art. As part of The Unilever Series the Tate exhibited the work of Carsten Holler from October 2006 to April 2007. This work is one that could certainly be appreciated at a distance. I'm sure you get the impression and if you have a great imagination you could probably day dream about sliding down these tubes. But, the best part is that you can. These works are perhaps only fully experienced by actually taking them up on their offer. The aesthetic is in the motion and act of sliding down these spiraling conduits.

Intersections: Grand Concourse Beyond 100

The Bronx Museum has teamed up with Design Trust to host a design competition aimed at gathering ideas for the future of the Grand Concourse. Exemplifying how organizations are taking on the task of improving urban environments. This is an open call to anyone who can come up with a vision of the future for this portion of Bronx's urban fabric.

"This international ideas competition solicits bold visions that describe how the Bronx and the Grand Concourse can evolve in coming decades to cope with pressing needs for housing, green space, and transportation. Winning proposals will be exhibited at The Bronx Museum of the Arts starting in November 2009. Honorable mentions will be on display at the exhibition and on this website." www.grandconcourse100.org

What makes this so interesting?

Partnership between the Bronx Museum and Design Trust:

This project not only bridges public and private practice, engaging local governments and private companies, it expands the role of the museum and the artist. Traditionally, in a very brief and narrow sense, museums exhibit works of art as end products and artists make them. But the exhibition that will be presented in the Bronx Museum is different. Selected proposals will be on show and while these may not be complete plans for urban design they may very well influence the future urban environment of the Grand Concourse. They are images, representations of what could very well become a tangible infrastructure. On that note the exhibition opens an intriguing path for public feedback, putting the big ideas up for all to see means that those who do catch a glimpse can respond. Is the museum going to be recording public response? I doubt it, but it is certainly a interesting shift in the role of the museum and I am sure the images of Grand Concourse's future will prompt an interesting dialogue.


An expanded role for artists interested in the Urban Environment.

Art is often retro fitted onto the existing urban fabric. It takes a side seat, if any, to the design and planning role. This project opens the door for artists. It takes into account the value of art, innovation and creative vision. This competition challenges traditional design and development practices engaging diverse professions, providing a venue for exhibition that places the products of the competition in the domain of art, and opens the door to artists. This elucidates evolving processes in urban design and marks emergent inclusions of art, a valued role for the artist, and the sifting landscape of design professions. Urban design becomes art and the scope of the artist's influence acquires a new lens.

The Jury:

The jury here epitomizes the diversity of this project and its potential. Comprised of architects, planners, artists, a sociologist and an editor this jury covers a great spectrum of professionals.

Some notable Jurors just to get the picture:

Susan Szenasy : Editor-in-Chief of Metropolis
TATS CRU : Bronz based professional muralists
Wilhelm Ronda : Director of Planning and Development for the Office of Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión.
Tim Rollins : Artist, Founder of Art and Knowledge Workshop
Dr. Clara E. Rodríguez : Professor of Sociology at Fordham University’s College at Lincoln Center.
Walter Hood : Professor and former Chair of the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of California, Berkeley.
Stan Allen : Dean of the School of Architecture at Princeton University.


It is great to see the explosion of design competitions in recent years. All are bringing imaginative ideas to the front of urban design and I look forward to charting this evolution of urban environment. I am certainly pleased to see the inclusion of art and the expansion of the artists role from a passive to active one.

To see more visit:

Intersections : Grand Concourse Beyond 100

Impress: possiblities, extentsions and implications

Typically the human-technology relationship carries an air of physical rigidity. Computer displays, digitizers and other devices used by designers and artists are constructed of materials that are all too often cold and stiff. While devices that respond to touch and input through specialized sensors do exist these links between the real and virtual yield little to the tactile presence and provide practically no feedback to users extending beyond the visual domain. This sets up a one way street for input that limits the relationship between the tool and the user.

Artists working with materials like clay, metal, wood and plastics rely on the feedback provided by these materials. Each material, weather worked by hand or tool, responds to the presence of the maker on a physical and sensible level. This responsiveness enriches the human-material relationship. At the level of the designer and artist, creating tools that provide sensory feedback beyond the visual domain enriches the human-technology relationship; making way for a more engaging and inviting experience while affording opportunities for new interactive scenarios related to the design and creation of objects and environments.

This all comes to mind when I encounter technology like the Impress display unit. Combining a force sensitive display with an array of applications, this technology presents a unit that begins to provide a more interactive environment. Though it appears a rough model, having an almost toy-like quality, it does establish in crude form a two way path for feedback between users and technology. The foam bed harboring force sensors responds the touch of a user with about a 4" threshold. This display has a few immediate uses based on sound, topography, and browsing.

What I find most interesting is its potential. Increase the size, perhaps the shape and form, develop a method for changing the threshold, elastic response and sensitivity, connect it to specialized software like GIS or Autocad and there you have it, a modeling tool that works with human touch. Enriched interfaces like this could be used to shape and form surfaces and infrastructure in the virtual domain. Integrate this display with real time software application and the products of this combination may very well be the architectural landscapes of future cities. The possibilities go beyond topographic modeling but I will leave the imagination to do the rest.

Impress:




impress - flexible display from Sillenet on Vimeo.

Images via: Dis.play

Huaxi City Center

Cycles, consistent ebbs and flows in my interests, form the boundaries of my work and research. A pliable delineation of art, design and environment defines the region of my inquiry. Fascinated with the entirety of the inhabited, yet bypassing the broader scope of this interest, I often focus on images of urban infrastructure that invite poetic impressions and engage my imagination through daydreams and an aesthetic sensibility. Emerging from increased ecological pressures combined with broad planning and design efforts of development professionals is a growing trend in competitions and proposals aimed at creating fully articulated urban centers. While many of these proposals remain imaginary they contribute to the mass of renderings and images available to the public, alluding to cities of the future. These plans look to make use of lessons learned over centuries of monumental construction practices; they merge programs for living and working while paying heed to growing demands for urban agriculture and ecological integration. Images of these projects inspire my work and afford countless niches for the role of artists.

Huaxi City Center:

Recent coverage of the Huaxi city center design contest, organized by Mad exposes some great images that bridge the domains of art, design and environment. Architects, engineers and planners are composing this master plan, working to bring this urban environment to life.



images via : design boom


There is a grand dialogue between environment and man, maintained through the imagination, that invests life into the spaces we encounter. With any project like the Huaxi city center there is a exploration of the unknown, imaginary and immaterial. Exploring the chaos of that which is unrecognized, bringing life to the ideas and images of the imagination through material manifestation is art. The dreamer, encountering images that afford raw impetus for creativity, becomes the artist.

Object+ : 1.1

As I move through this life the relationship I have with my environment develops. I have always been captivated by this idea. I am refreshed at times by the relatively simple form of stones and other objects that I encounter on a daily basis. There is something intriguing about the sensibility of objects. Stones that were once part of larger bodies, rigid and rugged, shaped by the elements have a particular presence in my life. Objects can act as vehicles for the poetry of life, channeling ideas and emotions. If I move slowly and shift the way in which I perceive my environment, life opens like the seed watered and nourished by the sun. Ideas of being, the passage of time, movement through space and translation of energy take on new meaning. I am opened to a dialogue with my environment, and the relationship I maintain is enriched.

I am currently using these open forms to communicate ideas and sentiments through the physical act of creating objects as well as through completed forms, compounded works and large compositions. This post is a written sketch. I am exposing some the central tendencies of my relationship to environment, stones and my resulting expression.

- Freedom, becoming, expression and being
- Object image as poetic image.
- Conception; Becoming through action and expression.
- Object as vessel for imagination, both habitat and body of the creative
- Object as landmark
- Object as micro-macro environment
- Object in relation the the physical environment and cognitive landscape

With me these objects have a rich existence, with each viewer they are opened and free to have another.

These objects are direct expression of my own being.
They exist as the body and habitat of my own being; an extension of my self.
They are landmarks used to navigate my own presence.
When opened to the public, into the realm of the viewer, they flux.
They become both empty and full, they retain the resonance of my experience and my being, and yet they are open, vessels to be filled by the experiences of each viewer.
Objects; Infinite degrees of freedom.
They are plastic forms transmuted and informed by the individual viewer.
They are in a constant state of becoming, acts of freedom that embrace the sentiments and evolve with each encounter.
Poetic Object Image.

Studio Update : Object+ : 01.31.09

I have returned to my studio in Cub Creek and after some downtime I am returning to my most recent project work. My work over the summer led to an intensified investigation of the object and I am now exploring several tangents related to my original inquiry. The above image is of a growing collection of sketches, thoughts, and small clay maquettes created since last night. This is part of my studio process that has evolved out of my recent object oriented work.




I will continue to post my thoughts related to this work as it develops under the Object+ label until this mass of ideas begin to diverge into individual paths that can be further articulated.

Commission: Windchill Factory: Update 01.24.09

I delivered the glass domes for the Windchill Factory project today. These are a few images of the houses under the domes.

To keep up with the progress stay tuned and check the Windchill Factory label.

Commission: Windchill Factory: Update 01.23.09

The Windchill Factory Commission moves forward after a short break. All is well and after the past two sessions in the hot shop the 20 domes are nearly complete. I will be cold working tomorrow to get them down to size and ready for delivery. The above image shows one of the 10 with one hole for the piping Matt is working on. The remaining domes all have 3 -5 holes and look great.

To see more you can visit Matt Lively and the Windchill Factory on facebook. I will also be updating this blog as I get images from him covering the progress on the work as well as the short film.

Update: 01.15.09

New year, fresh energy. I have put the majority of my work on hold while the push to complete graduate school applications continues. All is well, transcripts and fees add up and my funds dwindle, this will be over soon. I will get back to work and ramp up the energy on a few new projects. I am excited to get back into the studio.

While preparing the portfolio for graduate programs I took a minute to get a new shot of Reverence. Time to get update the website, but this will do for a preview.

More to come...! But I gotta finish these applications.

Event : Urban Play : Droog Design

The IJ-Riverfront in Amsterdam became the creative turf of international artists and designers exploring the intersection of art and the urban landscape. Urban Play is a project by Droog Design and was presented as a component of ExperimentaDesign Amsterdam 2008. The exhibition was created and curated by creative strategist Scott Burnham.

"The Urban Play exhibition provides a global overview of urban design interventions done outside of the formal channels of institutions, commissions and urban planning in cities around the world. Some refer to it as guerrilla design or “3D Graffiti”, but this surge of urban creativity – from billboards that are visually remixed, to streetscapes which are morphed into theatrical areas in the middle of the night – is where creative expression in the city becomes physical, literally transforming cities around the world."
(Scott Burnham, www.scottburnham.com)


Urban Play explores the interactive domain of art, design and environment at the pedestrian level. The exhibition encourages public interaction and marks a notable change in the presence of art and play in urban environment as well as a shift in the perception of public space and infrastructure. Artists and designers working in 3 dimensions are doing here what graffiti artists have been doing for decades; marking territory and injecting their creative will into the channels of the urban infrastructure. "Done without permission or commissions, the vast range of work on display represents the intersection of the latest genre of street art and the beginnings of open source urban design." (Scott Burnham, www.scottburnham.com)

The concept of open source urban design reflects that of contemporary programming and software development. An open source model is a development methodology that allows access to and the manipulation of a system of information and its inherent infrastructure. It is typically applied in the field of computer programming. The implications of applying this concept to urban design remain to be fully expressed through this exhibition. However, it hints at a public reclamation of control in the decision making and development processes for the urban landscape as well as its phenotypic expression.

Allowing open manipulation of interstitial space and the related public infrastructure found among the urban landscape surely opens the door for criticism as well as possibility. But one thing is certain, this concept presents a vast field for practice, research and discussion. I expect the coming generations will see artists, planners, architects, and all around citizens becoming more involved with their environment as the pendulum sways between homogeneity and the draw of diversity within the evolving urban ecology.

Artists as artists, as well as those playing the role of scientist, designer, and architect have explored the regions of commonly unknown patterns and chaotic behavior to share with the masses new and innovative modes of expression. These changes in the commonly applied and accepted motifs of urban design enrich the pedestrian experience. Urban Play is a project intended to explore the next phase of urban art, it exhibits the surge of unofficial 3d work in the infrastructure of our cities. We have the artists of the street to thank for the emergence of such expression as well as creative thinkers like Scott Burnham who see the potential in their application and work to broaden their acceptance.

-DB

Urban Play:

Exhibiting Artists:

• Arno Piroud
• CutUp Collective
• Gilberto Esparza
• Graffiti Research Lab
• Jason Eppink
• Ji Lee
• Joshua Allen Harris
• Leon Reid IV
• Mark Jenkins
• Office for Subversive Architecture
• Posterchild
• Rebar
• Roadsworth
• SpY
• TheGreenEyl
• Till Bay (Windowzoo)
• Truthtag
• You are Beautiful

For more:
Urban Play
Droog Design Amsterdam
ExperimentaDesign Amsterdam 2008
Scott Burnham

Comission : Matt Lively's Wind Chill Factory

I just completed the prototype glass dome for Matt Lively's "Wind Chill Factory" project. I was asked a few weeks ago if I could create glass domes with several holes in them. The holes are orifices for pipes that will maintain the atmosphere of each property. With the prototype completed it is now time to move on to the remaining 20 pieces for the project. I will post more images as the work develops.