finding out more

Soo, I'm being lazy and I'm just going to post an email I sent about the fashion project because I don't feel like rewording it.... it seems like every time I write/ think about this project it becomes more clear to me what I'm looking for, but I'm held up trying to find a link between the two subjects.


Hiii,


  Thank you for being patient with me, this week has been kind of hectic. I did a little research last night and found some really interesting fashion designers - "Klavers van Engelen" and "Iris van Herpen" - they are Dutch and look at fashion design and form in unique ways. I think tonight I will research some architecture that is made with attention to surface/ texture details. Also, the one main thing I am missing right now is some one person who is a link between fashion and architecture - I can't find someone who does both. If you find someone who designs clothing and architecture, that would be very helpful! Thank you : )


- c


Oh, also I think these are my main points for the presentation:
- relating fashion and architecture through:  the use of space, form, material, movement, and the body

what is my project about?

What is my Titus project about? I know I have disparate ideas I can link together, but I'm not sure they really "fit" the criteria... it sounded like he wanted the name of a person who acts as a link between some field of art and architecture. I can't find anything like that connecting architecture and fashion designers. The two fields seem to have great deal of respect for one another, but not much understanding or overlap. They are definitely separate spheres of people.

I know what I want to talk about. I'd like to bring up the spatial and texture ideas that are similar and viewed differently for architects and fashion designers. Also, maybe touch on structural ideas and how they relate to form. The body concept will also be weighted heavily in the discussion. The way we use and understand the body are completely different. The architect is designing for space far outside of the body, and yet we are concerned a great deal about what goes on in people's inner dialogues - how do we create safe spaces? welcoming spaces? usable spaces? Whereas the fashion designer is designing close to the body - literally on the surface that links the outer human to the inner dialogues, and yet they are so focused on the movement and volume of each piece... and maybe miss the human as a whole? I'd also like to explore the concept of idea turnover time in architecture and fashion, how in fashion ideas can turnover in a matter of days, whereas architecture ideas progress very slowly. How then, can we look back on the fashions of the time - in both attire and architecture - and be able to pinpoint them to specific time periods? Both fashion and architecture are expressed in similar, overall idea turnovers and yet fashion can run through many more ideas than architecture.

I guess this is a good start to a discussion on these two topics... I just hope it will sound intelligent and interesting to the class/ Titus and not arbitrary and superfluous. Ahh, well I mostly just hope to get through this week...

- c

procrastination nation

I CAN'T GET ANYTHING DONE!


Here's a cool project:

by Boyd Cody Architects - Dublin, Ireland

Some research:

The final two are really dynamic and awesome, but I want my design for the next project to be linked to its site a bit more - even more so than my last project... just not sure how to do this yet.


In other news, still researching fashion, sculpture, and architecture for Titus's class. I think my focii are:
- spatial aspects
- idea turnover [time]
- relation to the form of the body
- relation to life [we live in these things]
- texture, focus on tactile-visual sense
- complexities and use of space [especially with respects to the void, folding, use of space]

Questions still need to answer:
- how does fashion inform itself?
- what are questions fashion can only ask of itself and not with external references?
- what are the main constraints?
[plumage - for how it informs itself - like the feathers and showing-off aspects of birds and animals... also deals with size/scale of what one is wearing... fit... etc]
[also the "putting onto" of fashion, versus the quickly "growing out and away from" of architecture]
- same for sculpture: what are the constraints? how do sculptures inform one another? etc.


Ohhhhkay, better get back to it then. Still have to get everything ready for Grimshaw by Monday, there's two presentations this week, an Ecology exam... ahhh! My vacation is somehow coming to a closee.

- c

fashion research

I like theeese trends!

- c

comment

So, I have a comment about my "Hating RPI" rant... somehow this doesn't include working here, because the summer program I participated in last summer, as well as my incoming time as a freshman [all the first-year stuff]... THAT was all great. It's just surviving as a student here that sucks. Trying to figure out who you are in such a competitive, cold environment... I think it's even worse being a girl [in some respects], and at least in architecture - we have to fight to be taken seriously. Ahh, okay that's all I needed to comment on for now, I couldn't just post about hating RPI without expressing the truth about how it is here during the summer - maybe that's all it is... escaping the typical Troy weather makes everything much, much better.

- c

newest submission for anthropology

Here's the question I thought of for this week, it sort of combines what I'm learning in sensory culture and anthropology all-together... the two classes are beginning to converge very quickly...


Why is it so difficult to describe spatial phenomena? I was recently reading about synesthesia and it was cited that those people experiencing seeing/feeling objects in conjunction with another sense were the most difficult to analyze. The scientists said this was because of the subjective nature of viewing and describing objects.


Also, it seems like languages emphasize time, space [as a dimension outside of the body], and relationships among things [obviously with different ideas about time continuum and what an "object" is comprised of]. But why is it so difficult to understand objects and shapes that do not adhere to pure geometrical form? In addition, it is amazing that we can create things so far beyond our individual mental capacities - we have created the internet, but we don't know or can't point out "where" it exists - and yet we describe it as though it takes up space.


- c

I hate RPI

RPI sucks. I know I'm not the first person to say this, nor will I be the last. This place is like a deep, black pit. They make us work like we are entering the engineering/ architecture military, they aren't understanding, no one really has time to care about anyone else. Time spent not doing work, we all feel guilty that we aren't working our butts off, and the time we devote to work [most of it] is miserable. In this place I've lost more of my dreams than gained any. I've lost a happy part of my personality for a practical one, I feel like a shade of the person I once was. I have never hated myself so much, or thought of myself as so incompetent as I do now, and for some reason I have no confidence whatsoever and suck at talking to people - all of this when I was once the smart, nerdy, helpful Key Club president. I used to help people with Chem homework, and make study guides for all the Latin exams. I was an A student [well except for a couple B's in math.. but really, who's couting?]. And where did it all go wrong? Was it in high school when I decided taking computer programming classes and stocking up on AP's was going to get me somewhere in life... when I did all of this and choose to leave my art classes. Looking back I could have saved myself a lot of stress and time if I had just stayed doing the things I loved in art and just forgot about being a productive scientist. I don't know why I chose to go that way - maybe it was my group of friends... Minority Row... most of them geniuses in their own right. I got caught up in the boys' desires to be the "best" and to excel at all "their" things - math and physics - I guess back then I was sort of competitive - well not competitive, I just wanted to keep pace with everyone around me. And now... I don't care anymore. Architecture is infinitely interesting, it can be exciting to study projects, read into them, decipher them, but is it really fun to sit in front of a computer all day and redo surfaces? redo lines? lineweights? hatches? Ahhh, I wish I knew what to do with my life. I don't know where to go from here... I have no desire to get a job with a firm... the one I'm at makes me want to fall asleep everyday, it makes realllly want to not grow up. But I have no idea what to get a Master's in... this is so depressing. And why does it seem like so many people around me are in this same position? What led us all to be here? Why do we all feel this way? I really wish it would change.

- c