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Transformations

Home » eBooks, Featured, Transformations
Systems/Layers by Nurri Kim & Adam Greenfield
Submitted by on March 21, 2011 – 12:57 pm6 Comments

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About : Around the world, urban form and metropolitan experience are being transformed by the presence of networked computation. The urban fabric and discrete elements in it are newly empowered to capture, process, transmit, display and even act on information. At the same time, our daily tactics of doing and being — practices of citying that have remained invisible throughout recorded history, and have generally been lost to that history — are now being rendered explicit and gathered up by that same network.

Nurri Kim and Adam Greenfield of Do projects have run “walkshops” devoted to exploring these transformation and their consequences in cities worldwide. Through the Transformations series, they offer Systems/Layers, a quick guide to running a walkshop for yourself, covering the particulars of choosing a terrain, knowing what to look for, recruiting participants, and promoting your event.

Published March 2011 in the Diffusion Transformations series

Nurri Kim, co-founder of Do projects and author of Tokyo Blues (2009), is an artist who is interested in exploring the narratives hidden in the ephemeral routines of everyday life. You can see her work at nurri.com.

Adam Greenfield, managing director of New York City-based urban systems design practice Urbanscale, is author of Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing (2006) and the forthcoming The City Is Here For You To Use.

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Towards Psychonutrition by John Hartley
Submitted by on January 25, 2011 – 5:12 pm2 Comments

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AboutTowards Psychonutrition considers the behaviours that feed growth and transformation of identity and aspiration. Departing from the practice and insights of psychogeography, the essay looks at other potential psychodisciplines, including psychonutrition and its major food groups, in a search for new playgrounds in which we might address who we are and who we might become.

Published January 2011 in the Diffusion Transformations series

John Hartley is an artist interested in contemporary myth and creativity. Recent projects include the Poundbury Robot Society; La Orquesta Tonta (the idiots orchestra); and Reading the Waves, a research publication looking at cultural and ecological resilience in Shetland and North Uist. He is co-director of the Difference Exchange, an agency using cultural and disciplinary difference as a driver for innovation and worked for Arts Council England as Arts and Ecology Strategy Officer.

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Home » Featured, StoryCubes, Transformations
A Sort of Autobiography by Warren Craghead
Submitted by on May 17, 2010 – 9:00 am8 Comments

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StoryCube 1 – 1970 A4 only PDF 600Kb
StoryCube 2 – 1980 A4 only PDF 1.5Mb
StoryCube 3 – 1990 A4 only PDF 1.5Mb
StoryCube 4 – 2000 A4 only PDF 1.1Mb
StoryCube 5 – 2010 A4 only PDF 1.8Mb
StoryCube 6 – 2020 A4 only PDF 1.6Mb
StoryCube 7 – 2030 A4 only PDF 2Mb
StoryCube 8 – 2040 A4 only PDF 2.1Mb
StoryCube 9 – 2050 A4 only PDF 1.7Mb
StoryCube 10 – 2060 A4 only PDF 800Kb

About : “I have lived like a fool and wasted my time”, Guillaume Apollinaire
A Sort of Autobiography is a possible story of Waren Craghead’s life projected both back to his birth in 1970 and forward to his death in 2060. Each decade of his life is represented by a storycube as a rough self-portrait. Drawn in various styles and encoded in different ways, the cubes tell a story of transformations – of mark-making, of physical appearance and of a life seen through drawing.

Published May 2010 in the Diffusion Transformations series

Warren Craghead III is an artist and curator living in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA with his wife and two daughters. He is constantly drawing. His work explores spontaneous narratives that process and encode everyday life and the written word into discrete, pictographic, nonlinear stories that can be encountered everywhere: a sticker on a pole, a booklet in a newspaper, a postcard in the mail, an image on a website, a collage in a gallery. He has exhibited and published his work internationally, including the Xeric Grant winning Speedy, HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE and several collaborations with poets and writers, one of which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2006. He received an MFA in 1996 from the University of Texas at Austin, and a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia in 1993, and attended the Skowhegan School in 1993. More of his work can be seen at www.craghead.com

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Home » eBooks, StoryCubes, Transformations
Welcome to the Imagination Age by Rita J. King
Submitted by on March 1, 2010 – 6:05 pm2 Comments

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AboutThe Imagination Age is a broad approach to rethinking systems through a prism of technology, held up to amplify the bright beam of the imagination. Both the Diffusion eBook and the Story Cubes explore The Imagination Age through the perspective outlined by Giles Lane when he commissioned the project: Transformation: How We Become Who We Are. The Story Cubes take shape across three planes of perceived reality:

Physical Reality: First, the 27 cubes were designed on paper, meant to act as a catalyst in the physical world for people to build stories the way children build castles out of blocks. I thought it would be fabulous if people could make the cubes tremendous or tiny to show the significance of each element in the overall scene of the story created anew each time the cubes are approached. In the physical world, the cubes remain stubbornly one size fits all. You can’t make some of them disappear into the ocean while others float in the sky. That can only be accomplished in the virtual world, so that’s where I went next.

Virtual Reality: For several years I have been working in the field of “virtual reality.” In the virtual world Second Life, participants create avatars for themselves and can design and collaborate on any three-dimensional content they can dream up. Second Life is a creative paradise for those with the vision to give dimension to their own previously intangible imaginations and then allow people from all over the world to enhance their created landscapes. To illustrate the installation in Second Life and segue to the third plane of reality, click the link: www.youtube.com/dancinginktv#p/u/2/Y4KwvsTEHKY

Augmented Reality: Lately, my company, Dancing Ink Productions, has been working in the field of “augmented reality,” which goes a step beyond “virtual reality” by changing the fabric of one’s immediate perceptions in the physical world. Reality is becoming a multilayered collage. 26 of the cubes correspond to letters of the Roman alphabet from which stories are told. The 27th cube has no corresponding letter, so instead, it activates the possibility for a whole new realm of understanding through an Augmented Reality marker printed on it. If you have a webcam, you can print this Augmented Reality marker out and activate the webcam at the following site: www.1000inchesinloveland.com to see the 27th cube create a new reality.

“Welcome to the Imagination Age,” documents some of the main ideas behind a worldwide collaborative movement toward a new global culture and economy in the Imagination Age. If this message of transformation speaks to you, consider it an invitation to join the experiment. Follow @RitaJKing on Twitter and ping me..

Published March 2010 in the Diffusion Transformations series

Rita J. King is CEO and Creative Director of Dancing Ink Productions. Creator of The Imagination Age. Innovator-in-Residence, IBM Analytics Virtual Center. Senior Fellow for Social Networking and Immersive Technologies at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress, and a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, where she collaborated with Joshua S. Fouts on the “Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds” project that spanned four continents as well as the digital culture. Investigative reporter, essayist, artist and adventurer.

*** made with bookleteer.com ***

2 comments - Latest by:
  • tom
    This is all very interesting to me. Curious about the difference between a virtual second life and multiple lives…
    Comment posted on 3-2-2010 at 01:06
  • uberVU - social comments
    Social comments and analytics for this post... This post was mentioned on Twitter by proboscisstudio: new on #diffusion: Welcome…
    Comment posted on 3-1-2010 at 20:00

Home » eBooks, Transformations
Waiting For Crisis by William Davies
Submitted by on December 14, 2009 – 9:00 amNo Comment

Davies_Waiting_for_Crisis_cover

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About : The financial crisis promised a new chapter in political and economic history. But this appears to have been delayed. Modern consciousness is shaped by the notion of crisis, which the idea of ‘post-modernity’ then threw into doubt. But now, as we grow bored of the banality of change and financial uncertainty, and fearful of our inability to respond to disasters, we are waiting for a crisis to finally go critical.

Published December 2009 in the Diffusion Transformations series

William Davies is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Science Innovation & Society at Oxford University. He is author of Reinventing the Firm (Demos 2009) and Public Innovation: Intellectual Property in a Digital Age (ippr 2006). His writing has appeared in The Guardian,The Financial Times, Prospect and The New Statesman. His weblog is at www.potlatch.org.uk

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Home » eBooks, StoryCubes, Transformations
Trail Song by Julie Myers
Submitted by on December 1, 2009 – 4:00 pmOne Comment

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Trail Song eBook A4 | US Letter PDF 2Mb
Trail Song StoryCube  1 A4 only PDF 1.6Mb
Trail Song StoryCube  2 A4 only PDF 700Kb
Trail Song StoryCube  3 A4 only PDF 700Kb
Trail Song StoryCube  4 A4 only PDF 740Kb

About : “A Trail Song uses a well known song or tune but replaces the lyrics with words of its own. These words reference objects, people and places experienced on the journey” (Trail Songs Magazine (1954) – The Whyte Museum Archive, Banff, CAN).
In the tradition of the Trail Songs of North America, we invent lyrics as we travel from place to place. Like modern day Songlines these songs tell about the geography and the people of the landscape, each song refers to a direction or path taken and is matched to the video footage we shoot en route. The original tune is something we might overhear on a street corner, in a café or on the car radio.
www.juliemyers.org.uk/trailsong

From San Francisco, US to Banff, Canada, March 26 – April 8th 2009 – 1,345 miles by car, coach and ferry
StoryCube 1 – From Golden Gate to Fort Bragg
StoryCube 2 – From Fort Bragg to Cresent City
StoryCube 3 – From Astoria to Vancouver Island
StoryCube 4 – From Vancouver to Banff Avenue

Published December 2009 in the Diffusion Transformations series

Julie Myers is an artist and lecturer and lives in London. Using technology as a way of mediating social interactions, her work is concerned with space and place, collective knowledge and shared experience. Previous work has been commissioned by Arts Council England, NESTA, The British Film Institute, The British Council, AHRC, The Institute of Contemporary Art and The National Portrait Gallery, London. Industrial collaborators include, Adobe Systems, USA, British Telecom, UK and Philips Multi Media, FR.
http://www.juliemyers.org.uk
http://www.axisweb.org/openfrequency/juliemyers

*** made with www.bookleteer.com ***

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  • Baby Product Reviews
    Kudos for giving such a terrific website. this site happens to be not only useful but also bvery imaginative too.…
    Comment posted on 1-5-2010 at 19:30

Home » eBooks, StoryCubes, Transformations
From an outer suburban life by Linda Carroli
Submitted by on November 23, 2009 – 3:49 pm5 Comments

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About : Several years ago, Linda Carroli relocated to the outer northern suburbs of Brisbane, Australia. During this time, as a result of this experience, she was moved to commence postgraduate studies in urban planning and design. Her local area bears all the hallmarks of outer suburban development and in this spatial complex she is considering how this pattern shapes us as individuals and shapes our communities. With reference to notions of ‘dwelling’ (Heidegger), ‘redirective practice’ (Fry) and ‘synoikismos’ (Ingersoll), the eBook considers local encounters, responding in small ways, in thought and act, that disrupt – and ultimately transform – the pattern of suburban life. If we transform the suburbs and our way of thinking about them, can we transform ourselves and bring new futures into the realm of possibility? Can community and gathering displace consumerism and retreat? These works reflect on such transformative potential through experience and through relationships between self, community and place.

Published November 2009 in the Diffusion Transformations series

Linda Carroli is a writer, researcher and consultant based in Brisbane, Australia. With a focus on urban environments, she works and writes at the intersection of planning, design, art and culture. She is currently working on an Australia Council funded cultural writing project titled Placing, an exploration of place writing and writing place. She also writes a regular
column about urban innovation and creativity for Arts Hub. More information at http://harbingerconsultants.wordpress.com and http://placing.wordpress.com

*** made with www.bookleteer.com ***

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  • May Newsletter | Proboscis
    [...] 3 by Tim Wright http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=1639 From an outer suburban life by Linda Carroli http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=1628 Belo Horizonte Anarchaeology by Giles Lane [...]
    Comment posted on 5-20-2010 at 09:10
  • TEMPORARY | Community Building « placeblog
    [...] specific activities and events, resources are available to the community to make the most of it. In From an…
    Comment posted on 1-31-2010 at 05:18
  • Recent eBooks made with bookleteer
    [...] is growing by the week. We’ve recently published new Transformations series commissions by Linda Carroli, Julie Myers and Will Davies…
    Comment posted on 12-14-2009 at 16:59
  • uberVU - social comments
    Social comments and analytics for this post... This post was mentioned on Twitter by proboscisstudio: new on #diffusion: From…
    Comment posted on 11-23-2009 at 22:52
  • Twitted by TommyManuel
    [...] This post was Twitted by TommyManuel [...]
    Comment posted on 11-23-2009 at 16:51

Home » eBooks, StoryCubes, Transformations
The Octuplet: Story of Our Lives by Babette Wagenvoort
Submitted by on July 7, 2009 – 8:50 amOne Comment

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AboutThe Octuplet: Story of Our Lives is the first published story in English by Dutch visual artist and illustrator Babette Wagenvoort. It tells the strange story of eight human-beings living inside their mother, while they prepare for their future. One of the octuplets seems better equipped for life than the others…  Much like Babette’s visual work this story balances between reality and fiction, between poetry and prose.

Published July 2009 in the Diffusion Transformations series

Babette Wagenvoort (MA RCA) is best known for her red drawings from the series ‘Life According To A Rectilinear Personality‘, which she published daily on her website for years.  As an illustrator she has worked for several publications like VPRO Gids, De Volkskrant, Vrij Nederland, Opzij and Hollands Maandblad in The Netherlands and the BBC, Le Gun and Dazed & Confused in the UK. Her drawings can be found as commissioned public art works and animations in schools, as wallpaper designed for Maxalot, but also as wall drawings, animations and installations within more regular exhibition spaces. She teaches drawing at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague and is curator of ‘Volkskrant Oog‘, an online platform for artists of the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant. A new book with Babette’s drawings called ‘Mood Swing – An Alphabet of Moods’ will come out in July/August 2009.

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Home » eBooks, StoryCubes, Transformations
H2O by Alejandra Canales, Anne Ransquin and Juan F. Salazar
Submitted by on March 25, 2009 – 8:50 amOne Comment

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AboutH2O looks at the materiality of water to speculate on its cultural and political significance at the turn of the 21 century. We can begin reflecting on who we are and what we want to become by understanding the place that water holds in social life and cultural change.

Published March 2009 in the Diffusion Transformations series

Alejandra Canales is a Chilean-born performance artist and independent filmmaker, concerned with the social and political dimensions of artistic practice. Based in Sydney since 1998, she has undertaken studies in film and video production and has worked in several roles for independent films. In 2005 she completed a Master Honours at AFTRS where she directed two documentaries A Silence Full of Things and Switch on the Night. Currently she is a recipient of a scholarship to complete a Doctorate of Creative Arts at University of Wester Sydney where she works on the project Rendering Water: a documentary fiction on the cultural future of water. She also received an Ian Potter Cultural Trust grant to progress on her new multi-platform documentary film Solid_Liquid_Gas_H20.

Anne Ransquin is a Belgian photographer and historian working across photography, design, film and community media. She has participated in as well as conducted several photographic workshops such us Suburbancrossings digital photography workshop with young refugees from Sudan and Chad in collaboration with Information and Cultural Exchange and the University of Western Sydney. She has also contributed to several independent film projects in Chile, Australia and Belgium in her capacity as a still photographer as well as an assistant director. Currently she is developing a photodocumentary project in Arles and will assist Spanish artists at the Biennal of Contemporary Arts in La Havana/Cuba (March 2009). She is a member of the Belgian photographers collective, Collectif Caravane.

Juan Francisco Salazar is a Chilean born, Sydney-based media anthropologist and video maker. He lectures in communication and media studies at the University of Western Sydney where he is also a research member in the Centre for Cultural Research. He has published extensively in areas of indigenous and community media, climate change and social change. He has produced several documentaries and experimental films which have been exhibited internationally.

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  • Lee Johnson
    I wish more artists wuld make the trip to Cuba like Anne Ransquin, the more they see of outside culture…
    Comment posted on 10-17-2009 at 08:55

Home » StoryCubes, Transformations
3 Cubic Conundrums by Raqs Media Collective
Submitted by on January 29, 2009 – 12:19 pmNo Comment

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About : 3 Cubic Conundrums by Raqs Media Collective, 2009
 – The Curse of Invariable Good Fortune
 – Door to Door to Door
 – The Fugitive Never Escapes Himself

Published January 2009  in the Diffusion Transformations Series

The Raqs Media Collective (Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula & Shuddhabrata Sengupta) has been variously described as artists, media practitioners, curators, researchers, editors and catalysts of cultural processes. Their work, which has been exhibited widely in major international spaces and events, locates them squarely along the intersections of contemporary art, historical enquiry, philosophical speculation, research and theory – often taking the form of installations, online and offline media objects, performances and encounters. They live and work in Delhi, based at Sarai, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, an initiative they co-founded in 2000. They are members of the editorial collective of the Sarai Reader series, and have curated “The Rest of Now” and co-curated “Scenarios” for Manifesta 7.

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Home » eBooks, StoryCubes, Transformations
Marseille Mix – along the beach by William Firebrace
Submitted by on December 19, 2008 – 8:45 amNo Comment

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Aboutalong the beach – a disturbing but enlightening encounter. Sixth in a series of 6 eBooks and StoryCubes published weekly, feuilleton style.

Marseille Mix
My first encounters with Marseille were in the cinema, in films such as The French ConnectionLa Ville est Tranquille and Taxi. It seemed a strange place, dangerous, not conventionally beautiful, down at heel, but somehow attractive. I decided on the basis of this cinematic introduction that this was the city I wished to write about – exactly because it did not coincide in any way with what I considered to be a city, because of its defiance.

Marseille is an irreconcilable mix – of different cultures, different societies, different ideas about the planning, different images, different gastronomies. It evokes fantasy as much as objectivity. As a city it inspires dislike and fear but also pride and love.

It is not possible to investigate this city in a linear, coherent fashion, since the city is in no way linear or coherent.

Marseille Mix contains various methods of writing – narrative, essay, recipe, lists, conversations, chance remarks, and others. Sometimes it flows easily enough, sometimes it accepts the need for contradiction, disruption, lack of resolution. Of course the book is not really exactly like the city – it is a personal investigation, with its own points of view.

Published November 2008 in the Diffusion Transformations Series

William Firebrace is an architect, and teaches in various London schools of architecture. He has published one book, Things Worth Seeing (Black Dog 2001), has completed a second, Awake, and is now finishing a third, Marseille Mix, which should appear in 2009.
Unit 2, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

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Home » eBooks, StoryCubes, Transformations
Marseille Mix – turn down the heat by William Firebrace
Submitted by on December 12, 2008 – 8:45 amNo Comment

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About : turn down the heat – a gastronomic investigation. Fifth in a series of 6 eBooks and StoryCubes published weekly, feuilleton style.

Marseille Mix
My first encounters with Marseille were in the cinema, in films such as The French ConnectionLa Ville est Tranquille and Taxi. It seemed a strange place, dangerous, not conventionally beautiful, down at heel, but somehow attractive. I decided on the basis of this cinematic introduction that this was the city I wished to write about – exactly because it did not coincide in any way with what I considered to be a city, because of its defiance.

Marseille is an irreconcilable mix – of different cultures, different societies, different ideas about the planning, different images, different gastronomies. It evokes fantasy as much as objectivity. As a city it inspires dislike and fear but also pride and love.

It is not possible to investigate this city in a linear, coherent fashion, since the city is in no way linear or coherent.

Marseille Mix contains various methods of writing – narrative, essay, recipe, lists, conversations, chance remarks, and others. Sometimes it flows easily enough, sometimes it accepts the need for contradiction, disruption, lack of resolution. Of course the book is not really exactly like the city – it is a personal investigation, with its own points of view.

Published November 2008 in the Diffusion Transformations Series

William Firebrace is an architect, and teaches in various London schools of architecture. He has published one book, Things Worth Seeing (Black Dog 2001), has completed a second, Awake, and is now finishing a third, Marseille Mix, which should appear in 2009.
Unit 2, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

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Home » eBooks, StoryCubes, Transformations
Marseille Mix – withstanding the gaze by William Firebrace
Submitted by on December 4, 2008 – 2:16 pmNo Comment

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Aboutwithstanding the gaze – a germanic literary diversion.  Fourth in a series of 6 eBooks and StoryCubes published weekly, feuilleton style.

Marseille Mix
My first encounters with Marseille were in the cinema, in films such as The French ConnectionLa Ville est Tranquille and Taxi. It seemed a strange place, dangerous, not conventionally beautiful, down at heel, but somehow attractive. I decided on the basis of this cinematic introduction that this was the city I wished to write about – exactly because it did not coincide in any way with what I considered to be a city, because of its defiance.

Marseille is an irreconcilable mix – of different cultures, different societies, different ideas about the planning, different images, different gastronomies. It evokes fantasy as much as objectivity. As a city it inspires dislike and fear but also pride and love.

It is not possible to investigate this city in a linear, coherent fashion, since the city is in no way linear or coherent.

Marseille Mix contains various methods of writing – narrative, essay, recipe, lists, conversations, chance remarks, and others. Sometimes it flows easily enough, sometimes it accepts the need for contradiction, disruption, lack of resolution. Of course the book is not really exactly like the city – it is a personal investigation, with its own points of view.

Published November 2008 in the Diffusion Transformations Series

William Firebrace is an architect, and teaches in various London schools of architecture. He has published one book, Things Worth Seeing (Black Dog 2001), has completed a second, Awake, and is now finishing a third, Marseille Mix, which should appear in 2009.
Unit 2, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

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Home » eBooks, StoryCubes, Transformations
Marseille Mix – dangerous liaisons by William Firebrace
Submitted by on November 28, 2008 – 2:15 amOne Comment

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About : dangerous liaisons – some short and seedy criminal narratives. Third in a series of 6 eBooks and StoryCubes published weekly, feuilleton style.

Marseille Mix
My first encounters with Marseille were in the cinema, in films such as The French ConnectionLa Ville est Tranquille and Taxi. It seemed a strange place, dangerous, not conventionally beautiful, down at heel, but somehow attractive. I decided on the basis of this cinematic introduction that this was the city I wished to write about – exactly because it did not coincide in any way with what I considered to be a city, because of its defiance.

Marseille is an irreconcilable mix – of different cultures, different societies, different ideas about the planning, different images, different gastronomies. It evokes fantasy as much as objectivity. As a city it inspires dislike and fear but also pride and love.

It is not possible to investigate this city in a linear, coherent fashion, since the city is in no way linear or coherent.

Marseille Mix contains various methods of writing – narrative, essay, recipe, lists, conversations, chance remarks, and others. Sometimes it flows easily enough, sometimes it accepts the need for contradiction, disruption, lack of resolution. Of course the book is not really exactly like the city – it is a personal investigation, with its own points of view.

Published November 2008 in the Diffusion Transformations Series

William Firebrace is an architect, and teaches in various London schools of architecture. He has published one book, Things Worth Seeing (Black Dog 2001), has completed a second, Awake, and is now finishing a third, Marseille Mix, which should appear in 2009.
Unit 2, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

1 comment - Latest by:
  • Jay Fluck
    This has got some great reviews so I will download and check it out thank you. :)
    Comment posted on 11-7-2009 at 17:58

Home » Publishing on Demand, Transformations
Transformations
Submitted by on November 21, 2008 – 4:08 pmNo Comment

why are we who we are?  what do we want to become?

Transformations is the latest series of Diffusion commissions curated by Proboscis. Proboscis is commissioning a diverse range of writers, artists, performers, thinkers and makers to respond to two questions from different perspectives, why are we who we are? and, what do we want to become?

As we get into the swing of the 21st Century our notions of identity, personal and societal, are subject to new arrays of emerging pressures and responsibilities. Our aspirations for change and growth are being re-thought as we grapple with the growing awareness of environmental changes which may already be beyond our control. How have we reached this point? Where do we go from here?

Transformations seeks to address these fluid notions of identity and aspiration by commissioning works that subtly reflect on individual identities, urban identity and pharmaceutical, biological and technological interventions. Over the next few years we will be inviting selected contributors to add their voices into this mix – through essays and artists books (eBooks) as well as in three dimensions (StoryCubes).

Add Your Voice
For the first time we are experimenting with a new approach to selecting works for this series – publishing as a conversation. Readers are invited to submit their own proposals for the series (through the comments section of this site) – we will provide accounts for the Diffusion Generator (soon to be re-launched as Bookleteer) for readers to become authors and create their own eBooks or StoryCubes,  the best of which we will publish as contributions to the series. We are not asking for quick responses, but for measured and considered contributions to the series – putting an eBook or a set of StoryCubes together is significant creative act. Get in touch if you are inspired by the works we have selected and published so far and have a proposal for a work of your own.

The Contributions

Sponsorship Opportunity
We are seeking a sponsor for Transformations who shares our ethos of collaboration, public authoring and creating cultures of listening. Please contact us for more information.

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Home » eBooks, StoryCubes, Transformations
Marseille Mix – ideal city by William Firebrace
Submitted by on November 21, 2008 – 1:41 pmOne Comment

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Aboutideal city – a personal tour of the destruction and reconstruction of the city. Second in a series of 6 eBooks and StoryCubes published weekly, feuilleton style.

Marseille Mix
My first encounters with Marseille were in the cinema, in films such as The French ConnectionLa Ville est Tranquille and Taxi. It seemed a strange place, dangerous, not conventionally beautiful, down at heel, but somehow attractive. I decided on the basis of this cinematic introduction that this was the city I wished to write about – exactly because it did not coincide in any way with what I considered to be a city, because of its defiance.

Marseille is an irreconcilable mix – of different cultures, different societies, different ideas about the planning, different images, different gastronomies. It evokes fantasy as much as objectivity. As a city it inspires dislike and fear but also pride and love.

It is not possible to investigate this city in a linear, coherent fashion, since the city is in no way linear or coherent.

Marseille Mix contains various methods of writing – narrative, essay, recipe, lists, conversations, chance remarks, and others. Sometimes it flows easily enough, sometimes it accepts the need for contradiction, disruption, lack of resolution. Of course the book is not really exactly like the city – it is a personal investigation, with its own points of view.

Published November 2008 in the Diffusion Transformations Series

William Firebrace is an architect, and teaches in various London schools of architecture. He has published one book, Things Worth Seeing (Black Dog 2001), has completed a second, Awake, and is now finishing a third, Marseille Mix, which should appear in 2009.
Unit 2, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

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Marseille Mix – never look at the map by William Firebrace
Submitted by on November 14, 2008 – 10:59 amNo Comment

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About : never look at the map – a confusing entry into the city. First in a series of 6 eBooks and StoryCubes published weekly, feuilleton style.

Marseille Mix
My first encounters with Marseille were in the cinema, in films such as The French Connection, La Ville est Tranquille and Taxi. It seemed a strange place, dangerous, not conventionally beautiful, down at heel, but somehow attractive. I decided on the basis of this cinematic introduction that this was the city I wished to write about – exactly because it did not coincide in any way with what I considered to be a city, because of its defiance.

Marseille is an irreconcilable mix – of different cultures, different societies, different ideas about the planning, different images, different gastronomies. It evokes fantasy as much as objectivity. As a city it inspires dislike and fear but also pride and love.

It is not possible to investigate this city in a linear, coherent fashion, since the city is in no way linear or coherent.

Marseille Mix contains various methods of writing – narrative, essay, recipe, lists, conversations, chance remarks, and others. Sometimes it flows easily enough, sometimes it accepts the need for contradiction, disruption, lack of resolution. Of course the book is not really exactly like the city – it is a personal investigation, with its own points of view.

Published November 2008 in the Diffusion Transformations Series

William Firebrace is an architect, and teaches in various London schools of architecture. He has published one book, Things Worth Seeing (Black Dog 2001), has completed a second, Awake, and is now finishing a third, Marseille Mix, which should appear in 2009.
Unit 2, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

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Pharmaceutical Cubes by Kenneth Goldsmith
Submitted by on October 3, 2008 – 2:33 pmOne Comment

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About : While watching the 6:00 nightly news on one of the major U.S. television networks recently, I was struck by the amount of ads placed there by the pharmaceutical industry. From bladder control to mood-enhancement, an elderly viewership is clearly receptive to these types of products. But what struck me more than the frequency with which these ads ran was the fact that half of the, say, two-minute ad was given up to a double-speed announcer warning of the drug’s side-effects. For a full minute, what sounded to my ears like a new type of sound poem emerged: a litany of complaints and horrors that arise from steady use of these “wonder” drugs. The text was spoken so fast that I could barely understand what was being uttered.

Curious to know more, I went on the drug’s websites and found more than I ever could imagine. Zoloft, for example, provides a 43-page information PDF beginning with a chilling opening paragraph entitled “Suicidality in Children and Adolescents.” The first sentence reads, “Antidepressants increased the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in short-term studies in children and adolescents with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders.” It’s a numbing document for reasons both having to do with the terrifying content as well as the sheer amount of it: Zoloft is nearly 7,000 words long.

I have often talked about how today in writing, quantity has trumped quality; it is the writer’s job to manage the amount of available language. In sculpting these documents, I found my perfect material. Squeezed into 1-point type, then justified, I created columns of unreadable texts: words as texture. When folded into cubes, these warnings – secretly embedded into the pills we take – are reconstituted into three-dimensional forms, creating a new type of placebo. If language, as William S. Burroughs claims, is a virus from outer space, then this panacea for our psychotropic ills – delivered in linguistic torrents – proves Burroughs right by having opposite effect of virally compounding our diseases rather than curing them.

Published October 2008 in the Diffusion Transformations Series

Kenneth Goldsmith‘s writing has been called “some of the most exhaustive and beautiful collage work yet produced in poetry” by Publishers Weekly. Goldsmith is the author of ten books of poetry, founding editor of the online archive UbuWeb, and the editor of I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews, which was the basis for an opera, “Trans-Warhol,” that premiered in Geneva in March of 2007. An hour-long documentary on his work, “sucking on words: Kenneth Goldsmith” premiered at the British Library in 2007. Kenneth Goldsmith is the host of a weekly radio show on New York City’s WFMU. He teaches writing at The University of Pennsylvania, where he is a senior editor of PennSound, an online poetry archive.
More about Goldsmith can be found at:
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Goldsmith

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