update on recent research activities:
Dear fellow researchers, makers & thinkers here is an update on some of our recent research activities:
FIVE PROJECTS:
1. Crooked River in First and Third Person:
We just finished participating in the Cleveland Ingenuity Festival with an augmented psycogeographic project: Crooked River in First & Third Person. This project involved developing a series of way-finding systems. The Crooked River project is part of our Deeptime+Rapidtime research with Grand Arts in Kansas City (see below). Information on this project including maps, diagrams, sound compositions, images and press can be found at:
- Project web site: (See: http://www.crookedriversonglines.org/)
- If you would like us to send you a map please email us.
2. Eleven Listening Posts for an Entangled Agent: Denver:
In Denver we developed a map to be broadly distributed as part of Dialog:City a city wide arts event designed to coincide with the 2008 DNC. The project rethinks questions of politics, agency, and develops an idea for a new form of engaged listening. Parallel to this project was a group exhibition at Robischon Gallery. Below are links for each part of the project:
- the web site for this project is: http://www.11lp.org
- the web site for dialog city is: http://www.dialogcity.org
- here is our press release: spursedenver pressrelease.pdf
- a link to Robischon Gallery: robischon gallery
- if you would like us to send you a map please email us.
3. Geophilosophy:
Our mobile research unit developed at the IMA in 2006 to investigate bio-geological questions has been recently reconfigured as: MICROMOBILIA: Machines for the Intensive Research of Interior Bio-geographies. This is a more compact version that fits into three self contained packing units. This will be part of Experimental Geography traveling exhibit (an iCI project curated by Nato Thompson). We collaborated with three very interesting artist: Chris Archer, Cole Caswell and Jeffery Jenkins (see below). This is a very important piece for us in terms of re-thinking the nature of tools and apparatuses in relation to the co-production of the real and moving beyond the limits of both social constructivism and institutional critique. We will be writing more about this but for now please see below:
-
-for overview and schedule see: http://www.ici-exhibitions.org/exhibitions/experimental/experimental.htm)
-
-diagram 1 of Micromobilia: exp geo book 1 copy.pdf
-
-diagram 2 of Micromobilia: exp geo book pg 1 copy.pdf
-
-diagram 3 of Micromobilia: exp geo book pg 2 copy.pdf
-
-chris archer
-
-cole caswell: web
-
-jeffrey jenkins
4. Exaptive Clothing/Architecture Workshop @ KCAI:
We spent the summer working with a remarkable group of students at KCAI developing a modular system of clothing/mobile architecture as part of our Deeptime+Rapidtime project. The goal was to design a system of modular augmented clothing/housing system for migration using exaptive design strategies. This work is continuing through the fall semester and will be exhibited at Grand Arts.
- press: see link
- see our page on teaching: link
5. Bolivia:
This summer we did a workshop in Santa Cruz, Bolivia with students, designers, architects and urbanists on rethinking the idea of comfort.
- see our page on teaching: link
ONGOING:
Affective Time:
Much of our recent research involves experimenting with new modes of temporality. We are provisionally calling this research endeavor “Deeptime + Rapidtime”. We are interested in developing new practices and tools that allow us to be in the world in a manner that affectively senses the qualitative force of both deeptime & rapid time (as in “rapid climate change”). While this sounds quite vague in such a compressed form we are developing a series specific research projects to investigate new forms of temporality and produce concrete systems (e.g. clothing, temporary architecture, augmented sensory systems, mapping and movement strategies). Most of this work is with Grand Arts in Kansas City but includes research being done in Cleveland, Denver, Athens, and elsewhere. At the end of September we will be traveling through Nunavut testing and experimenting with these various systems in dialogue with local groups. In addition, as part of the Deeptime + Rapidtime research, we are collaborating with astronomers, paleontologists, computer scientists, material scientists, and others (for a general overview of this project please see: http://web.mac.com/iain6579/iWeb/iain6579/deep%20time%20intro.html
Conceptualizing Naturecultures:
Over the last couple of years we have been developing ways to rethink practices of nature and culture as naturecultures based in forms of immanence that refuse the problematic metaphysics of an ontological division between nature and culture. An essay that re-writes Marx’s “11 thesis...” & a set of diagrams is being published by the journal WhiteWalls which provide a good introduction to these ideas.
-The book can be purchased from Amazon: link
-This essay, & others can be found on our site as a pdf: http://spurse.org/spurse/texts.html.
-Some of the diagrams can be purchased directly from Lulu: http://stores.lulu.com/spurse).
Holey Space:
As the spaces of contemporary control & order become smooth spaces & the processes of subjectivization become linked to the production of fluid identities -- what are our critical resources and techniques? In 2006 we did a project in Montreal with DareDare to experiment with this question. Some of our tentative conclusions can be found in a set of 2 books and a dvd.
-These can be found at Lulu (note: please do not order the DVD -- there is a format issue. http://www.lulu.com/spurse. Please contact us directly in regards to this DVD).
Excess:
Emergent Cosmologies: As part of our interest in developing new experimental metaphysical systems, last summer we developed a “cosmological proposition generator” as part of “Fat of the Land” at Grand Arts. While the exhibit is over and the generator is disassembled -- this is an ongoing project
-Web link:(See:http://web.mac.com/deeprapidtemporality/iWeb/deep%20rapid%20temporality/Welcome.html). The “outcome” of this project is a series of cosmological origami diagrams. Please email us and we will send you the set.
-For an overview essay on Fat of the Land by Linda Weintraub see: http://www.grandarts.com/exhibits/Fat-of-the-Land1.html.
Entropy is Order:
Despite what Robert Smithson imagined, entropy is a complex form of order -- we are rethinking, & experimenting with some of Smithsons concepts to develop radically distinct ideas of morphogenesis and becoming. Hopefully this will lead to a number of walks and photo-essays this fall.
Greenland:
(more coming soon)
As ever, we are curious what you are up to, what you are thinking about and what you are doing in these similar areas of experimentation. Please be in touch -- we look forwards to new experiments and collaborations towards new modes of becoming. Our email address: spurse01@gmail.com
