4.24.2008

Choices

1. Monuments

When people go travel, they always look for architectural structres: catherals, temples, palaces, castles, galleries, so on.
Buildings are symbol of the culture and the city and most importantly, people believe what they see physically. If something is not there, people forget and no one believes it. Monumnets are that much important to form the culture and represent the culture.

From that sense, the debate around the Palace of the Republic, which is going resurrection of the Prussian Kings castle in the center of town, is definitely interesting topic to study.
Also other suggestions from Sabine Lang about the Bavarian quarter plaque memorials and the East shopping stores resurrected.


2. Art

Art always ties together with architecture and culture. It directly express power and social condition.

The Flick Collection
Representations of Power: The new Government neighborhood
The Berlin gallery scene
Sasha Waltz radialsystem

I think those are interesting subjects to look at.

3. Migration/ Immigration

Different cultures creats either mixture of two culture or deep conflict.
These can be expressed in community through building styles, boundries/territories, and arts.

Islam and Christian - chuch/ mosque building.
State separation

Rethinking Thinking

I liked the introduction of the article with phrase of "what to think to how to think," but the article becomes boring and boring with repeatitive words and examples. The author should 'rethink' about that part.

Through out the article, the author argues about scientists being artists with instinct and gut feeling, and artists being scentists with logic in their arts. As an architecture major, which classifies as neither art nor science but also at the same time it is a mixture of both science and art, science and art are strongly realted to each other.

Generally, art is defined as expression and science is logic. Ture. Definitely.
However, as the article is arguing, art requries logical thinking to transform internal feeling into an external expression, and science , too. It also requires artistic inspiration or instict to get idea to start.

However, putting this idea into educational system?

Is any preschoolers or elementary students even understand clear meaning of logic, instict, death and alive? Or even how many of highschoolers understand relationship between gut feeling and logic and thinking back and forth? It will be great if school can 'teach' that and students can 'learn' that, but how many people knows explain that process of chaing? Even most of people in article says, it is hard to explain but there is a thing. Education has to be a clearer process. Not just a 'thing' in your mind that you can't explain.

If there is no try and no change, there will be no improvement.
However, as the article says, before you say "Eureka!" you have to find out solution.
Good try and a nice article, but not yet fully agreeable.

4.17.2008

Seattle Monument / Memorial

The dictionary definitions are...

monument: A statue, building, or other structure erected to commemorate a famous or notable person or event
memorial: Preserving the memory of a person or thing; often applied to an object set up, or a festival (or the like) instituted, to commemorate an event or a person.

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I think differences between monument and memorial is, monument focuses on one notable event or person, but memorial is more general.

I will chose Space Needle as a monument of Seattle, since it was built to celebrate the 1962 Seattle's World Fair. Although not many people remembers 1962 World Fair any more, Space Needle became a symbol of Seattle and recognized by visitors.
For the memorial building, I will chose The Broadway Performance Hall in Seattle Central Community College. The Broadway Performance hall was a original building of Broadway High School which was the first high school in Capitol Hill. The high school transformed to technical school after the WW2 and right now it became a part of Seattle Central Community College. The Broadway Performance Hall went through the history of development of Seattle and with unique culture around the broadway, it is definitely a Seattle memorial building.

April 11, 2008 A ballet performance "Midsummer Night Dream"

It already been almost a week already since I went McCaw Hall to watch ballet, called "Midsummer Night Dream". A human's memory is fragmentary images and very selfish filter to think about. Since it does not keep "an image" as a truthful whole image but embellish it with preferences and usually ends up creating a new image.

In one week period, the first image that stuck in my head is buoyant and graceful steps of ballerina. Especially the foot movements of few soloists were so soft and delightful, I couldn't take my eyes away from the tip of toes. Not all ballerina or ballerino could express the feeling through their toes, but some did. By watching their toes and foot movements, I can feel their emotion, too! Heavy, fast, light, and slow. If I have to categorize them it will be those four, but in that four categories, none of the movements were same. It was not just a beautiful scenes, but also intriguing and some what shocking images.
Oh, also that soft but firm hand gestures were unforgettable.

4.10.2008

April 3, 2008 Composition Exercise

April 3rd, 2008 in Hutchinson Hall.
The first thing I have to say is, Hutchinson Hall is so far away from my previous class, which placed in the other end of a diagonal line Gould Hall.

Anyway, after I read The Viewpoints Book, I somewhat expected some kind of stage composing or acting excersie on the first day, since the assigned chapters were all about that.
But still.....it was only the second meeting with the Berlin group when Shanga asked to compose a montage of 5 people in 120 seconds with the theme of the most memorable moment in you life.

Oh, my..... It usually takes me 3 minutes to think about the theme! However, this time, I don't have any choice. I had maximaize the capacity of my brain to memorize names of my group members (which is mostly gone now...sorry), memorize each movements for each story and compose my own montage.

Yep! that 3 minutes were the longest and also the shortest 3minutes that I had never experienced in my life! Nothing to say. It was one of the best icebreaker with strangers and also very interesting and fun exercise! Since each scene was a shot of spontaneous photos that you cannot see the same picture ever again, the montage exercise becomes more special.

It was amazing how people thought different ways to express a moment: a realistic scene, a progressive secene, an abstract scene and so on. These originality and differences make the composition and acting very attractive.

I can't wait to be in Berlin!

This summer I am going study abroad to Berlin, Germany and this blog is for my Berlin Trip!

I can't wait to post new things here from Berlin!! :)

Wait for that!!