On my desk are a number of things:
1 book by the philosopher Lacan which explains where the origins of serial killing behavior lie. This is for a paper on Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate sculpture.

13 kenetic sculptures in lacra which bloom open or closed as passers by pull and push the wires embedded within.

1 Arduino board, 4 working servos, 2 burnt out servos, 1 hacked power supply, 2 flex sensors and a tiny ‘zzzzzzzzzz’ sound as it does its thing. These will eventually be hooked up to the lacra sculptures

Trying to crawl up my desk is 1 light sensing robot that obviously feels my labtop screen is the preverbal light at the end of the tunnel.

It is fairly common to be confronted with such a diversity of objects at the DRL in the morning, all begging for attention and potentially dangerous to touch.

I was trying to explain to an acquaintance one morning over breakfast what it was that I was studying at the DRL. He was erroneously trying to sell it as Architecture and I was arguing that it had nothing to do with buildings and all to do with systems. Generative, networked and manipulatable systems to be exact. “Like a computer network?” he asked. “Sure, if that is where the research leads” I answered. (At this point I do not realize he is an x-computer science professional) “Like a Star System?” he asks. “Sure, if that is what was needed.” “How long would it take you?” “I don’t know, give me a week and I am sure we would have something working.” His reply: “YOU ARE ENCREDIBLY POMPUS!” That is when the fireworks broke out. The next few minuets were full of detailed and emphatic descriptions of why it was ridiculous of me to have the opinion that a DRL team could begin to sort out the complexities of a Star Computer network in a week (whatever a Star Computer Network is). We both left angry but for different reasons.

He was absolutely right to call me pompous. To boast that a week was enough for a few people to understand and build a computer network with no prior experience is naively ridiculous. That being said, he was also completely wrong because pompous is exactly what I have seen the DRL excel at over the last two months. Teams have tackled problems, built machines and written code without any thought to whether or not they were qualified to attempt such a task. Of course, no one is claiming to be a professional in computer science, robotics or any other discipline that they may be tinkering with but the notion of what is outside our capabilities has somehow completely vanished. There seems to be a general assumption that there is someone in the program who knows something about the task at hand and if not, then there is a manual or a hack or an online tutorial or a book out there that can be easily found. This type of attitude might well explain some of the frustration associated with developing projects here but the fact that the attitude exists and is operated on daily by DRL students struck me as amazing. The mental barrier of what one can’t do has largely evaporated and stands in stark contrast to my friend who has been schooled to respect the boundaries of his discipline. I think that without this fearlessly naive attitude and all of its associated problems, the DRL would be a much less interesting place to be in.

‘You have to do the readings. That is where the answers lie.’
(paraphrased wisdom from phase two students)

Every critique, seminar, lecture and project assignment creates a myriad of new questions that seem to push this program farther out into foreign territory. As you have read, it is production time now, which means exploring and understanding the concepts at play well enough to formulate arguments in public and under criticism. This process necessitates a serious survival strategy: READ. Each of our 3 seminar classes eventually handed out at 2’+ thick binder of readings that contain the secrets to success, happiness and riches in the DRL. Never have I been in a situation where reading was more important or productive than designing but this is entirely the case. To do it right means attacking these formidable binders to the lovely round number of 18 hours a week. It is incredibly hard to put down my studio project, neglect my baby, and read but it is essential. How essential you ask? This essential. Before reading hard core I was making catenary models out of chain like a good little literal boy. After reading I am making catenary models out of pasta, boiling them, drying them with a hair dryer at 8 am in front of my incredulous housemates and by 10 am referring to these soggy pieces of pasta as a ‘uniform modular stacking that, through the agents of water and time and gravity, radically deform to become hyper-specific modules adapted to the double curvature of complex geometry.” (Obviously, this soggy pasta has a long way to go on its path to brilliance but lets not critique it too harshly yet)

I give you this example not to show how smart I am trying to be but to tell you exciting it is to begin to see the logic behind the chaos of DRL slowly emerge. The readings are the only tangible resources that articulate the ideas and terminology that are being developed so fervently here. For me they are the ticket that allows me to jump onto the DRL ship and they are fascinating. Primarily, chaos is the content which is why they are so helpful in the beginning. I mean this quite honestly. The first 24 hours of reading are all concerned with different ideas of organization taken from ant colonies to bee hives to virtual reality thought experiments. They study chaos, or what appears to be chaos quite seriously here and this line of research begins to unravel the mystery of why this place operates the way it does. You can imagine my surprise when I realized that the DRL makes much more sense when seen from the perspective of an ant, but hey, an answer is an answer and that is a place to start.


P.S. After a week to mull it over, I find I rather enjoy thinking like an ant. In the DRL, you have to just give these things a try.

Week number one just wrapped up in a momentously disorienting storm of programming, reading, presenting, cracking, hacking, foreign pronunciations, lectures and chaos. In short, architecturally flavored chaos. No one knows how many classes we have or where we are supposed to be right now but we do know one thing: it is time to produce. This realization set in around Wednesday and studio turn into a mad house. Catenary models began climbing down from the ceilings, maintenance began demanding that we put back the buildings components that we used to make the models… Masses of laser cut puzzle pieces form nebulas clouds that are especially good at blocking doorways and more software is being cracked than you can shake a stick at. Its quite amazing when I stood back and observed the change in attitude from Monday and eon ago. There are beautiful models everywhere and from behind each of them the same explanation is echos “we don’t know what the f*#k we are doing…”

But that sentence contains both a ‘we’ and a ‘doing’ and that is all we know for sure around here.

All of the AA graduate programs had a half hour orientation back-to-back and open to all. It became blatantly obvious that even within the AA the DRL is a unique program. The orientations unfolded as follows:

[TYPICAL] Each set of faculty gave a brief description of the agenda of the course, detailed the course structure and introduced professors. These professors then talked about their courses and teaching methods and showed previous work to illustrate what the students would be creating. They ended by handing out course schedules and syllabi and announcing where and when to show up for the first day of class. Pretty standard and informative.

[DRL] The DRL stands up and presents the history of how the program evolved and where it is directed in the future. The presentation was graphically exciting, verbally intriguing and for the benefit of all the other graduate programs. The DRL sat down.

[TYPICAL] Orientations now finished, all graduate programs file downstairs for drinks.

[DRL] The DRL students are held back for a second orientation while everyone else is drinking. This time there is a thorough explanation of the courses with introductions of each of the faculty members. The teaching methods are described and syllabi are handed out. The presentation finishes and the floor is open for questions. A paraphrased version goes as follows:
Student: So… where and when do we start?
Tutor: Good question.
(discussion)
Tutor: Monday at 10am in studio.
Student: Is there a course schedule?
Tutor: Good question. We expect all of you to be in studio from the time it opens
to the time it closes.
DRL adjourns the orientation and migrates down to begin drinking.


Analysis: We had two orientations and neither answered the most basic questions of what day, what time and where do we begin class.

Conclusion: organization is a very curious element of the DRL. The course director actually spent some time presenting the fact that the program isn't very interested in working in a highly scheduled environment. He explained how the program is team based at all levels and therefore much is open to negotiation and improvisation based upon the circumstances of the moment and the people involved. It’s a messy, spontaneous and frustrating process he admitted but it where the unexpected results come from.

From the outside, before coming here, I could only see the briefs that start the projects and the work that culminated it. Both ends of the process were marvelously articulated and beautifully resolved. In between those two points, however, seems to lay an extremely organic process that thrives in a studio culture that embraces the unresolved experiment. Our brief glimpse into the working process of the studio took myself and many of my classmates by surprise during these orientations. Instead of organizing to maximize efficiency it seemed a little bit like disorganizing consciously to facilitate independence. For me personally, it was disappointingly frustrating to have two orientations and still have to ask the basic questions. Upon reflection though, it was also an incredibly valuable lesson in the degree of independence and flexibility required to operate here. This is not the traditional environment where the teacher disseminates information and the student absorbs and regurgitates. I am beginning to realize now how much unlearning one’s preconceptions will be part of my educational experience here at the DRL. And this I think is the real point of my story.

Orientation is officially over for the here at the AA and the beginning of classes looms large as Monday approaches. Through lectures, orientations, speeches, boat tours, office tours, exhibition tours, picnics, gallery shows, symposiums, parties on the terrace and a lot of waiting in line, the AA has done an excellent job of revealing a glimpse of the world we are about to enter. Conclusion: AA-Land is an infinitely foreign place where the best projects from last year could eat you but in all other regards defy explanation. Almost everyone I have met so far who will be studying in the DRL has chosen this program because it represents the antithesis of their experiences so far. They too desire to be exposed to a whole new way of thinking with different values and different goals.

While watching a symposium of AA FAB winners present their research it became clear to me how different that thought process and value system was. Hearing them explain how their process evolved, I couldn’t help but think that they were forecasting the radical conceptual and cognitive adjustments that we would all undergo if we fully surrendered to the program. It’s a little bit like realizing that to succeed you have to allow yourself to be completely brain washed if only for 16 months. To test out this thesis, I questioned a number of current DRL students as they popped on and off the terrace for a quick brake from their work.

They covered the whole spectrum from those who were vital, healthy, impassioned and regretting that their time in the DRL was coming to a close to those who were much nearer to death in appearance and spirit. Over drinks, in the cool night air I learned from them that their previous experiences before the DRL had very little to do with how successful they felt in the program. I had thought that the ones with stararchitect backgrounds would be the happy, healthy stars but what emerged from our conversations was the word “surrender.” It turns out that even stararchitect firms make buildings and so the DRL process was equally foreign to everyone. What separated those on life support from those with a spring in their step was the ability to dive wholly into this new process and suspend all sense of expectation or reality. One vibrant woman told me about how upon returning home on brake her friends and co-workers accused her of being brain washed. She had to admit that it was true and with a smile she said ‘yeah, you just have to try it.’

It’s a funny proposition for someone who is used to making reality they way we want it to be to go the opposite direction and give up all control. Becoming instead the thing that is changed. We pride ourselves on questioning the norms around us so this notion of surrender came as a bit of a shock to me but, it is beginning to make a lot of sense. This is a long way to come and a lot of money to pay just to fight a system. Just to hold onto your perceptions and leave with the same architectural process that you came in with.

Ever think about being sleep deprived while you were working all night in a fairly sleep deprived state? If this is your hobby, or you just want to experience the magic of it, then here is a little podcast sweetness from This American Life to make 2am a little more interesting: 361: Fear of Sleep

Synopysis: "Mike Birbiglia got used to strange things happening to him when he slept—until something happened that almost killed him. Mike's story and other reasons to fear sleep, including roaches, bedbugs, "The Shining," and mild-mannered husbands who turn into maniacs while asleep. "

Dear Readers,

Before I begin trying show you what will happen at the DRL this semester, I want to tell you why I am here. The answer is fear coated in luck.

The fear comes from the fact that this school, and particularly the DRL program represent an experience that is completely foreign to me. It appears to be an extremely informal world that is dedicated to an experimental view of reality. I think Brett Steele put it very aptly in his welcome remarks when he said that the AA is committed to teaching and learning architecture not as it is currently is, but in new ways that that we don’t fully understand yet. There is a very exciting comfort level with the undefined and intriguingly ambiguous here that seems very unique to me. I say it is foreign for me because my background is so practical. I grew up farming in the States, working with very large machines and very dangerous animals to solve very real problems. Professionally, my experience as a designer has been shaped by adapting, transforming and modifying the traditional materials and diagrams of architecture to create built work at the end of the process. Both experiences, as Brette Steele might say, deal primarily with architecture as it is already understood. There has been a real satisfaction for me in this practical world of building and working land that solves immediate needs for people I know. I can’t help but to take a portion of this feeling with me to the DRL in the form of questions about the relevance of these academic experiments and their beautifully exotic forms. It’s a valid question and one I have seen discussed on many blogs involving digitally advanced programs, but it is not one I wish to detail with you here.

What I hope instead, is to focus on the thought process and intentions behind the experiments regardless of what the final results end up being. The interesting thing here I believe is how the DRL teaches one to think; to pursue concepts to incredibly unpredictable conclusions. This process is what the school truly has to offer because the ever changing agendas are simply vehicles for the DRL’s way of thinking to be expressed and evolve.

So now you have it, my perspective and my bloging agenda. In many ways I think I am as curious to explore and understand this program as you are so please post your questions and thoughts and let the discussions envelope what you are interest in knowing.