here’s a project that plays with the idea of “space” and “mobility” on a “big moving scale.”
andrew manynard has been designing clever, (some) eco-friendly buildings such as Essex Street House in Melbourne. Corb v2.0 is another example of his creative thinking.
Every wanted to live in the penthouse every now and then? Want to get away from your annoying neighbour with the big stereo and bad music taste? Want to have a party without disturbing others? You want a different view every now and then? Corb V2.0 gives you the opportunity … Corb V2.0 takes well-designed apartments [rather than badly scaled containers] and uses modern infrastructure to deal with the areas where apartment blocks fail, ie social hierarchy and lack of adaptability or responsiveness. Through the mobility afforded by shipping equipment, the utopian ideal is once more subverted back to a houseing solution, which Corbusier dreamt of back in ‘23.
basially, there’s a machine that shifts the location of each apartment (container) either randomly or on programmed path. maynard envisages the destruction and restruction of social heirarchy, culture, and environment - intangible reality - in which we live through physical movement of what’s tangible, or tangible reality. what a brilliant idea. this particular project has been criticised heavily on its originality (or lack of). Yes, it’s true that there has been a very similar project by lot-ekcalled MDU (mobile dwelling unit), but if you look closely enough, you can see that corbv2.0 shows more considerations to the social and aesthetic aspects of living - two particularly emphasised realms of contemporary society.
additional cool pictures here:
it’s interesting to see increasing academic and commercial attention to “space” - definition, construction, manipulation, and shifting of it. it’s not just about “wow, look what we can do with all these technologies to ‘create’ and ‘access’ different spaces through different times!” but rather, it’s more of a mutual interaction and interplay of these two. it appears to follow the history of the big technological and social determinism debate since the beginning of the internet era. the urban tapestries project is a good example, linking what’s spatial - both physical and virtual - with the mobile.
quite possibly the time of static spatiality is over. locomotion is over - sorry, kylie - because everybody’s doin’ a brand new dance now: we’re moving from the “spaces” to the “space” in which every entity shifts around, and in and out of micro “sections” or “modules” fluidly. there’s no stopping to and in this. it’s getting closer to the core concept of buddhism: no attachment … with a but.
“no attachment - including time and space - but your mobile unit (phone for now, perhaps).”
interesting times now and ahead.
yes, camera obscura’s first australian tour started right here in brisbane last night. master carmen was reviewing the show, and kindly offered me her +1 ticket - you’re my hero - so, luckily, getting in to this sold-out show was a breeze. cross-leggedness appeared to be the theme of the night throughout shiver like timber and institut polaire until the break before the band of “the (well, my and many others’) great expectations,” at which point people all stood up and it became quite unwise to walk around through the dense crowd.
even considering my potentially biased feelings - liked them for a while now and had been waiting for this gig for over two months - it was a blissful performance. thoroughly enjoyable. fun all the way. every band member had unique air around them, which was great, and of course, the lead vocal traceyanne campbell was magnificant: absolutly gorgeous, multi-talented, and sings like no one else. gold. who could resist having a bit of crush on someone like her. i have a crush on her, yes. i find the members very charming and talented, but i can’t get over her placidity. and, yes, you saw it coming, her hair! she’s irresistable.
here are two clips from their “let’s get out of this country” album:
“if looks could kill” with bits of their live performance footage
and
well-known “lloyd, i’m ready to be heartbroken”
2007 tour dates - australia
02.22.2007 - Troubadour Brisbane, Northern Territory
02.23.2007 - Laneway Festival Melbourne, Victoria
02.23.2007 - Northcote Social Club Melbourne, Western Australia
02.24.2007 - Laneway Festival Melbourne
03.02.2007 - Perth International Arts Centre Perth, Western Australia
03.03.2007 - Laneway Festival Brisbane
03.04.2007 - Laneway Festival Sydney
03.05.2007 - Annandale Hotel Sydney, New South Wales
When a young man
in Kamchatka
dreams
of a giraffe,
a young girl
in Mexico
waits
for the bus
in the morning haze.
When a little girl
in New York
rolls over
in her bed
with a smile,
a little boy
in Rome
winks
at the morning sun
that colours
the columned capital.
On this earth,
always,
somewhere,
morning is starting.
We are relaying morning,
from longitude
to longitude,
taking turns,
protecting earth,
as it were.
Prick up your ears
a while
before you go to sleep,
and somewhere,
far away,
you will hear
an alarm clock
ringing,
as proof that
someone
has firmly caught
the morning
you’ve
passed on.
i went to a bookshop with a friend of mine in japan recently and bought “naked” by tanikawa shuntaro translated into english. fantastic poetry. impressive.
The Korea Times reports that 1 in 10 minors are addicted to mobile phones in korea.
The state-backed Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity and Promotion found early last year that roughly one third of Korean students send more than 100 phone messages every day.
Up to 35.4 percent of 704 surveyed students aged between 14 and 24 in Seoul and its vicinity said they are members of the 100-messages-per-day club.
i was once slapped (not literally) for sending too many txts. that was shortly after my return from korea and i didn’t even realise that i was sending a few too many. well, i don’t think i was, number-wise. i did send a few a day to that particular person (the slapper) but the problem, i think, was the content of the messages, not the number. i was sending short perhaps “meaningless” messages like “damn, my car battery’s gone flat while i was away” or “it’s so hot. i’m melting” etc, a practice i had got used to during my stay in korea. seemed everyone was doing it, and i was quickly absorbed into the whole practice of sending multimple meaningless messages (MMMs!). ok, 100 messages a day sounds pretty excessive. my fingers and wrist wouldn’t be fit (or young?) enough for that kind of wild exercise.
what i found amusing - but not in such a positive way - in the Korea Times article was this part:
“The number of young mobile addicts would be much greater than merely 10 percent,” said Sung Yun-sook, a researcher at the Korea Institute for Youth Development.
“In particular, young students tend to use handset messages too much. We learned this often prompts them to lose concentration on their studies,” Sung said.
whatever young people do to “play,” the issue of it being a “negative influence on their studies” always becomes one of the main problems and a main part of some political and social propagandas. i do understand that it’s part of the korean culture in general - confucian influences are still widely evident in many corners of korea - and that it’s a small country with not so great social welfare system, so you need to start early to work hard to give yourself greater competitive edge. what i don’t really appreciate is the enormous perceived value of “studying, the korean way” - which is focused exclusively on scoring high in the university entrance exam. this value system really kills people, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
graduating from a good university gives you a golden (and probably empty) promise that you will get a good job, and your spouse would be equally great (if not better) in various ways: attractive, educated, well-off, and from a good family. let’s not forget that the general practice of getting married in korea involves the groom(’s parents) getting a place for the couple to live in and the bride(’s parents) filling up the house with everything from toothbrushes to a tv. so the general belief is - regardless of how realistic it is - that you graduate from a top university, you’re set for life (although this once solid belief is eroding). no wonder education is such a significant part of korean life. its adult literacy rate is around 98% (as of 2004) and that of youth is appx 100%, according to the human development report.
enthusiasm in education is a good thing. but over enthusiam in a rigid learning process for unwise purposes really defies the meaning of education. having a girl/boyfriend is not ok for students and thus prohibited by their parents and greatly discouraged by adults in general, because it’s a major disruption to their studies. students don’t get to acquire pragmatic knowledge about sex and sexuality at school or anywhere, really. Result?
according to the 2001 UNICEF report, korea had the lowest teenage birth-rate at 2.9 percent. So I assume that the number of teenage abortions must be quite high, if counting illegal operations. enjo-kousai is a growing practice amongst young korean girls - although enjo-kousai mainly stems from the material/consumerist culture, another reason why girls get into this is because there is nowhere for them to go apart from suffocating schools (there’s a good book in korean on enjo-kousai amongst korean youth written by yunju kim-go). and this is one of the main reasons why korean youths constantly look for ways to hang out with other youngsters and entertain themselves in the virtual realm, especially the Internet and computer games.
a lot of my friends in korea say that they want to live in another country, expressing concerns for their, and their (some yet-to-be-born) children’s future in this small, complicated country. i’m an australian resident myself, and i understand their desire to leave korea. in fact, korea is losing thier top brainpowers to other countries precisely for the tough lifestyle it offers - i’ve seen stats but i don’t have them here now). what can be done? well, there is no quick fix. the infamous korean PARIPARI (hurry-hurry) mentality is just NEVER going to work in this situation. one most crucial area to look at is definitely education, and providing “space” where young people can feel free to express themselves, and more importantly, encourage them to be there and play. the number of daily text messages may not drop, but at least there’s a hope that their learning will continue and will lead them to make the korean society a better one.
i recently met up with two friends of mine in seoul.
we had drinks - koreans are heavy drinkers; you simply must come and experience it yourself to truly understand what i mean.
An investigation showed on Sept. 13 that South Koreans consumedan average of 4.5 liters of distilled liquor such as whisky and the nation’s most popular alcoholic beverage “Soju” in 2002, ranking fourth after Russia, Latvia and Romania.
– full article from the Seoul Times here
this time, though, my friends and i only moved once, which means we only did “2-cha.” cha is a counting suffix for the number of drinking places (be it a pub or a restaurant where you drink) you go in one night - or day, why not. it’s sort of like “rounds” - e.g. “oori uhje 5-cha gasseo” literally means “we went 5-cha yesterday (last night),” which means “we went to five different places to drink last night.” we koreans drink, drink, and drink… then consider moving to a different place for a change of scenery, and type of edible consumables, i suppose, and continue on. drinking is one of the biggest and most important cultures in korea.
anyway, we only did 2-cha and parted because first, it was getting late, and second, i was still hungover from the night before when i lost track of the number of cha’s, and third, we couldn’t afford to miss the last train. and most naturally i gave each of them a hug at the train station. what i got was, of course, eventually a hug in return, but what i got first was an utterance from my shocked friend k:
“what, you’re a westerner now?”
maybe she was just jealous that she wasn’t the first one to get my hug. haha. no, seriouly… compared to australia, i feel that korean culture involves much closer physical proximities in general. friends walk around holding hands, or arm-in-arm (not so much between men though) etc. such physical intimacy is quite evident in the food culture of korea, where almost all dishes are shared amongst the people on the table. you don’t get your own little portions in your own plates apart from your bowl of rice, and sometimes soup - though stews are shared. so basically, an unvited guest at dinner time is not a problem as all you need to provide them with are:
a spoon
a pair of chopsticks
a bowl of rice
and a bowl of soup, if having a soup, not a stew for that particular meal
yes, you dig in and double-, triple-, and howmanyevertimesyouwant-dip your spoon and chopsticks into various dishes on the table. of course there were gender-based traditions before - for example, women were not allowed to eat with the men in the family - but unless you’re from a really traditional family, you probaby don’t eat separately like that anymore.
now, back to the “hugging” part, i wonder what it is that makes “hugging” a surprisingly foreign practice in korea, especially when physical contacts in other ways and social ties are a lot more intimate and stronger in general. something to think about…
