Plan drawings

I’ve published the plan drawings on page 4. As you will see they are not to scale anymore but give an idea what information is needed for planning and construction. Captions on the photos will refer to these drawings if needed…

Latest Images…

all images: CAD drawings, ©2009 Walter van Rijn

Construction set to start in September.

It looks like we have managed to get through all the paperwork, red tape and false starts. I’m hopefull we can cut the grass and start digging in the second or third week in September. There are still CBR checks etc. to be done but that is peanuts considered the 2 years of stop-start with many hoops to jump through. I could write a book about it…

Dispite the time-lag the most important point is that the plans are materialising and that we will end up with a sculpture that functions as art and as a platform for art.

Let’s dig….

Budget without credit crunch

How difficult it is to make a plan and stay within budget. Over time so many changes, additions, ideas and possiblities that shape an idea into a form that can be build with the money available.

End November the plans were drawn up and in December a final budget was made, and hey presto: it costs to much. How to adapt the plans, and the building of it and keep focussed on creating something that contains my initial ideas, is the question.

The interesting bit is the notion that an artist is not an isolated, autonomous figure. We are part of ‘the artworld’, a complex social cultural system shaped by many forces (people, institutions, technology, infrastructure, events, capital etc.) and the way they interact. The project is shaped by all the forces that have a baring on it, and I’m trying to find a way to work with it.

Now we have new plans which go back to the original ideas and proposals, creating a platform, open pavilion with only the curved walls. We are almost there!

Audience interaction?

Last week I gave a talk at the University. One of the questions and reoccurring themes is about the way this sculpture will be used.

The site of the sculpture at the left side of the entrance to the Art Dep. building is a place where students hang out it its nice weather. I wanted to keep that open use and extend it to create a place where people can also make something public, present something. A sculpture that can also be seen as a pavilion, but without the roof.

I was influenced by the notion of the Thing,  (Ting or Ding). The Oxford Dictionary gives a range of senses: “Origin: Old English, of Germanic origin (…). Early senses included ‘meeting’ and ‘matter’, ‘concern’, as well as ‘inanimate objects’.” The Thing in the old sense refered to the concerns that would bring people together because it devides them. An archaic meeting to discuss and decide. Today variations of this word are still used for the places where these meetings are or where held. For instance Tynwald Hill in the Isle of Man. There are also examples of places where these meetings where held under significant trees. [See Latour, B., & Weibel, P. (Eds.). (2005). Making Things Public, Atmospheres of Democracy. Karlsruhe: ZKM Centre for Art and Media. Chapter 4.]

My idea was then to use the notion of a special place where people would gather to make things public, as an ‘artwork’. In this case I am not extenting the rol of the artist towards curation but towards architecture.

The question for the owner, the University, is then how is it going to be managed? I hope the use will evolve organically, not only from the visual art, but also from dance, theatre and poetry performance. Meetings of any (unforseen) kind.

The question for the students is then to come up with ideas. While its not build yet this blog could be used to drop in your ideas.

The notion of the ting also relates to the notion of the public sphere:

The public sphere is an area in social life where people can get together and freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action. It is “a discursive space in which individuals and groups congregate to discuss matters of mutual interest and, where possible, to reach a common judgment.”^[1] The public sphere can be seen as “a theater in modern societies in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk”^[2] and “a realm of social life in which public opinion can be formed”.^[3]

The public sphere mediates between the “private sphere” and the “Sphere of Public Authority”,^[4] “The private sphere comprised civil society in the narrower sense, that is to say, the realm of commodity exchange and of social labor.”^[5] Whereas the “Sphere of Public Authority” dealt with the State, or realm of the police, and the ruling class.^[5] The public sphere crossed over both these realms and “Through the vehicle of public opinion it put the state in touch with the needs of society.”^[6] “This area is conceptually distinct from the state: it [is] a site for the production and circulation of discourses that can in principle be critical of the state.”^[7] The public sphere ‘is also distinct from the official economy; it is not an arena of market relations but rather one of discursive relations, a theater for debating and deliberating rather than for buying and selling.”^[7] These distinctions between “state apparatuses, economic markets, and democratic associations…are essential to democratic theory.”^[8] The people themselves came to see the public sphere as a regulatory institution against the authority of the state.^[9] The study of the public sphere centers on the idea of participatory democracy, and how public opinion becomes political action.

The basic belief in public sphere theory is that political action is steered by the public sphere, and that the only legitimate governments are those that listen to the public sphere.^[10] “Democratic governance rests on the capacity of and opportunity for citizens to engage in enlightened debate”.^[11] Much of the debate over the public sphere involves what is the basic theoretical structure of the public sphere, how information is deliberated in the public sphere, and what influence the public sphere has over society.

source: Wikipedia and see also: Habermas, Jürgen (1962, English Translation 1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-58108-6.

Planning permission and more planning…

September has been a busy month. John Summers from UoC Estates has been working on the Planning Permission and that is now approved. The permission has been granted with the clause ‘not to be internally or externally illuminated without prior written permission of the Local Planning Authority’. No doubt we will see later how the illumination will work out. I’ve planned lights in the curved wall that illuminate only the ground. These architectural lights from Concord:Marlin are often used as indirect lighting and should be OK.

By the way the technical drawings are finished and we are now working on our budgeting. Based on the drawings I’ll get now definite quotes for the work and make a time-planning for the actual building work.

Fingers crossed!

Utopian Models ?

At the moment I am redesigning the Sound Unit on a 3D program (‘Sketch-Up’ which has been recently bought up by Google, and there is a free version available). These 3D programs have a strange effect of producing smooth utopian images, which have become the aesthetic of 3D virtual realities. I am playing with these images in the understanding that they are an abstraction, and at odds with real life.

It is the difference between these two worlds, the strangeness created by translation and linking the virtual and real, that the materialising of a digital model of ‘Sound Unit’ makes so exiting. At the same time the 3D model looks odd because it attempts to copy a real life situation.

When it is build we will be able to explore both representations of a conceptual space that lies at the origine of it all. We will be able to move between ‘reality’ (architectural and psychological space), 2D prints, 3D virtual reality and conceptual space. I’ve tried this out in an other work: ‘Inside Out Events’ in a different context but it shows some similar ideas. See www.axisweb.org/graduates/waltervanrijn.