shadows, 1 Uptown, the weather

blogging mite be sporadic this next month. im currently in nyc, participating in a studio architecture program @ columbia.

update on spahr's chapbook: the folios were boxed. val at one heart will ship in late july, so i'll have time to finish up the folios (hopefully) before orientation (boot camp) back in alabama.

currently reading: sporadically, a book on the objectivists. i need a small break from poetic theory.

michael ondaatje's _running in the family_. his one-worded sentences and sense of timing is impeccable.

peter eisenman (for those of you who don't know, he's an established architect, known more for his conceptual theories than his work) said last week: "all sustainable development architects are bad architects." mark wigley said (another architect taking part in an ongoing discussion series between himself and eisenman): "sustainable development architects are irresponsible, because they're not pushing the boundaries of beauty and structure." what world do these architects live in? do we even have a choice these days in not taking a somewhat sustainable route??? it clearly established that both are working within very specific parameters of "beauty" and "architecture."

we finished posting up broadsides for the RAT project. unfortunately, the NYPD caught on and was on the brink of charging the folks who started the cool project thousands of buckaroos for illegally posting up fliers. the trouble was really posting up the broadsides in certain parts of manhattan ( = $$$$ + prissy).

our first studio project was to construct a 3-dimensional object that expressed the relationships between light, time, and a specific site. part of my studio critic's assignment was for each of us to build a tool to make the 3-dimensional object, and we could only use this tool to construct the object. the 3-dimensional object then also became a drawing tool - the shadow patterns was supposed to reflect our observations.

i realized at the end of the project, my model was really about a dead track on the 1. the center track at 116th isn't in use. yet, it's a track. the only time when one realizes that it's day underneath is seeing the reflection of the light around the pools of water on the dead track.