Quizas, Quizas, Quizas

I’ve been meaning to post, but I have been buried under work lately. A bunch of photos from my trip to NYC are up on flickr. I’ll post and explain a few of the key ones soon. For now, apologies.

I’m listening to the soundtrack to this movie. The orchestral parts are ok, but there’s a few songs which really get me. One is the title of the post. The other is a rendition of Moon River. They’re quite touching… so much so that I can’t tell if they’re poignant in the same way or not.

I haven’t seen the movie… Has anyone out there?

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Invivia’s Research Blog

Just launched a new blog for some of the research going on at Invivia. Very informal and very sparse, but come back soon…

Also, I’m going to drop this quote, given to me by my friend K:

“To a rationalized, expansionist and at the same time centralized, clamorous,
and spectacular production corresponds another production, called
‘consumption.’ The latter is devious, it is dispersed, but it insinuates
itself everywhere, silently and almost invisibly, because it does not manifest
itself through products, but rather through its ways of using the products
imposed by dominant economic order” (xiii).

De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life

I guess it’s time to get my read on. This whole thing reminds me of the term “interpassive” (as opposed to interactive) that I heard while in Amsterdam. My shit has been very loose recently… I will try and be more cohesive in the next posts. The “Memento” post will have to wait until I finish the book I’m reading now. In the meantime, T has a record (although a different conclusion) of our conversation.

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A diamond in the mind is worth two in the hand.

I just watched Ratatouille. It was very enjoyable. Shaky at the start but better and better towards the end. Of course, the visuals are just sick. When technology is demonstrated to children, no expense can be spared. They need to know how awesome it’s going to be. We have the technology, we will blow up the moon!

Currently I’m reading The Dispossesed, which is also pretty good, but not as immediately gripping as The Left Hand of Darkness.

So why mention two things that I saw/read recently that weren’t the greatest? Well, perhaps I realize that I’m no longer reading and watching with an open mind, I’m looking for something. I’m not sure what exactly, but I’ve given up the idea that it will be found, whole, somewhere. Instead I’m grabbing pieces of it from whatever is near to what I like already.

My friend T recently posted on his blog about Nabokov’s translation of Eugene Onegin. T talks very carefully about the translators relationship and responsibility towards meaning but also the futility of the gesture itself. Similary, I am reminded of a translation of my favorite play: Cyrano de Bergerac. Sadly, I’ve never read the original in French, since I am retarded when it comes to languages. Originally published in 1897, Edmund Rostand’s play has since been translated (the poet Brian Hooker’s translation was the canonical English version and the first that I read) and adapted (Steve Martin’s Roxanne is a favorite, but I admire The Truth about Cats and Dogs just for the attempt at a gender reversal– also I have a little crush on Jeneane Garofalo) numerous times.

My favorite translation, however, is by Anthony Burgess, the author of Clockwork Orange. His “translation” is both beautiful and drastic. He demolishes the original work. Burgess basically rewrites the entire play, structurally and language-wise: rhyme and meter are used in a completely different way, the original five acts are reduced to three, French idioms have been exchanged for English puns, and some French words, like panache, are left untranslated. The introduction, written by Burgess, is an amazing record of the destruction and reconstruction of Rostand’s play; he describes exactly, scene by scene and sometimes line by line, his criticisms and improvements. A sampling of his thoughts can be found at the bottom of this page, but you should really get a copy of the play just to read the introduction. (It’s not very long and you could read it in the bookstore.)

In end, Burgess describes Cyrano as one of the most compelling and romantic literary characters ever created, but one who needed more than Rostand’s play could offer. His translation is so severe it could almost be seen as a sampling and remixing of the original work, recombined so as to be more faithful to the spirit of the original than the original. I have some thoughts on how this relates to memory and another movie I watched this weekend, Memento, but I’ll save that for another post.

All of this, of course, relates to my thesis and thoughts on pastiche. Which may be more obvious here than when I start talking about memory.

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Diagrams More Completed-er

I’ve been really busy this week so I haven’t posted as much as I should have… I’ve taken the diagrams a little farther. But before those, here’s a site plan which I traced from a screen shot of a website (http://gis.nyc.gov/doitt/cm/CityMap.htm):

Not the greatest resolution, but here’s a traced map with labels to come…and if I can find some building heights, a 3d model.

I hadn’t shown this before but now you can see the slender alley on the eastern side of the building. It just reeks of creative possibilities!

So let’s do this again! Here’s the diagrams you saw in the last post. I added a few more combinations that I’ll talk about after the images. To see higher res pics, go check out my flickr account.

Quoted from my last post….

First, I’m showing three different types of banding of the program. Horizontal banding respects the floor plates but it means that one of the programs is either going in the basement or the roof. Vertical banding allows the front facade and “rear facade” (the one currently facing a parking lot that opens to a street…. I’ll trace a plan of the site and put it up soon, I swear…) to each operate under the influence of one type of program, being street front seems valuable to both retail and the theater. Diagonal banding might offer a way to incorporated a sloping floor in the cinema.

Finally, I start to use combinations that might have some overlap. Either shared program or architecture (walls, ornament, services). The first twelve combinations preserve the original programming of the building: retail on the first floor; apartments on the second. The second set of six start using the roof and basement in combinations.

Continuing… The next nine concentrate all have the retail in the front along the street and the theater in the back, with the apartments sitting in the middle. The roof is used only by the residents. When there are overlaps and “un-programmed” spaces, I get excited. Overlaps are zones in which both programs exist in the same space. I’m not really sure how they share it. It could be on the level of program still… like sharing bathrooms or something. Or it could be on the level of ornament… they share a column or a screen or a staircase. The blank spaces are intriguing (although pretty unlikely given that space is already at a premium). Maybe I could leave spaces that would be inhabited later by other types of programs– other than the three I’m using.

The next six (the ones that have a diamond in the middle) have shared rather than isolated program in the front and rear facades. I like the possibility of an empty diamond core/void around which the programs cluster. An interior space which all three stop before actually sharing. It makes the inside more important that the singular messages one would find in the facade. But maybe I need to reverse that position…

In the next six, the diamond is shared by two and sometimes three programs.

The last three have central triangle of program which opens to the roof with the other programs fitting around it. I think there’s some possibliities here. The central triangle is seperated from the street and opens to the sky: perfect for the residential block! Or maybe if the cinema was a theater-in-the-round that might work here as well. Kinda like these.

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Incomplete Diagrams

I’ve thrown together a set of diagrams that I’m using to explore program. Right now, as you can see from photos of the facade and the occupancy permit, the building consists of a basement, a first story that’s now occupied by retail stores, and a second story of apartments. I’m trying to figure out a way to wedge the theater back into the building. There isn’t space for it, so the roof and basement (and maybe the parking lot out back) will probably have to be changed.

Here are the unfinished diagrams.
(click for the big picture)

First, I’m showing three different types of banding of the program. Horizontal banding respects the floor plates but it means that one of the programs is either going in the basement or the roof. Vertical banding allows the front facade and “rear facade” (the one currently facing a parking lot that opens to a street…. I’ll trace a plan of the site and put it up soon, I swear…) to each operate under the influence of one type of program, being street front seems valuable to both retail and the theater. Diagonal banding might offer a way to incorporated a sloping floor in the cinema.

Finally, I start to use combinations that might have some overlap. Either shared program or architecture (walls, ornament, services). The first twelve combinations preserve the original programming of the building: retail on the first floor; apartments on the second. The second set of six start using the roof and basement in combinations.

To be continued! Soon!

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Site research/Dump

I’m doing some “site research” right now and I thought I’d post some pictures (and text and links) of what I’m finding. It’s going to be mostly just a big ol’ dump. Apologies.

My site is in Williamsburg right next to the BQE. The address is 279 Broadway, Brooklyn. Here’s a google map for reference.

So here are pictures from people who commented on this site, which is dedicated to cataloging theaters in the New York City area.

This guy (http://www.flickr.com/photos/kencta/) has a number of beautiful photos of theaters. Including:

and

Here’s a blast from the past, taken in what looks like the late 40’s (based on the make of the car). At least, I think this is the same site…:

I’ve linked to a few more reference sites in delicious and posted my rough pre-Thesis work in my flickr account. One of the interesting things about the neighborhood statistics that I found was that the neighborhood hasn’t really changed that much in the past 3 or 4 years, except in one major respect. “City Supported Housing Construction Starts”* have gone up from 60-80 to about 250 in the past five years. I have no idea if that means that the area is being more or less gentrified. My gut reaction is that it is not and my original thoughts on the area are actually incorrect. Anyway, I’m going to make a few diagrams and what not. I’ve got a meeting tomorrow with my thesis adviser (Meejin) which I hope will go well.

* Housing units started in newly constructed buildings through the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) programs, and existing housing units in private ownership that receive loans from HPD to start rehabilitation construction work.

Lastly, here is an image of the first occupancy permit on record for the theater.

There’s a few more on record here and here (when the theater stopped being a theater) and the last one in 1988. Cool, huh?

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