laniland

1966, Illegal Immigration and Interpretation Today

2011-09-18T20:51:00.000-07:00

"As man developed culture he domesticated himself and in the process created a whole new series of worlds, each different from the other. Each world has its own set of sensory inputs, so that what crowds people of one culture does not necessarily crowd another. Similarly , an act that releases agression and would therefore be stressful to one people may be neutral to the next. Nevertheless, it is fairly obvious that the American Negroes and people of Spanish culture are flocking to our cities are being very seriously stressed. Not only are they in a setting that does not fit them, but they have passed the limits of their own tolerance to stress. The United States is faced with the fact that two of its creative and sensitive peoples are in the process of being destroyed and like Samson could bring down the structure that houses us all. Thus it must be impressed upon architects, city planners. and builders that if this country is to avoid catastrophe, we must begin seeing man as an interlocutor with his environment, an environment which these same planners, architects, and builders are now creating with little reference to MAN'S PROXEMIC NEEDS.

To those of us who produce the income and pay the taxes which support government, I say that whatever the cost of rebuilding our cities, this cost will have to be met if America is to survive. "

– "The Hidden Dimension" by Edward T. Hall, 1966

Regarding cultural tension of illegal immigration within various cities, and most especially America, I would like to pose the question: What is your take on the relevance of this quote?

Architecture has had a long standing relevance to the city, more specifically the city wall and the controlling of a population, trade and movement as to guarantee protection and resources in return for taxes and profit. This is a local administration understanding of the medieval cities penned well by Lucy Marten-Holden, History Today (April 2001) Vol. 51 pages 46-52.

Many arguments about illegal immigration and the efficacy of tax revenues have been presented lately, and as the tension rises and the fairest of solutions sought, I ask, how might a city be remodeled to undertake accountability in the way a medieval city once did? Should such a city exist in today's world, or should everyone that walks the street have an implant that accounts for their birth place and relevant rights? Both are extreme; one is ultimately control-freak, managerial, and the other is cy-future scary and seemingly discriminatory challenging human rights activists and the like while easily creating fear among the population that consistently questions (we should all consistently question) where isn't the government? The government exists in your backyard, on the street, in your home, in the desert, in the middle of the mountains, and in some guises, in the middle of the sea. Accountability is enforced in every niche of the first world country and for the privilege of safety we give our freedom. This is the agreement that we citizens have made, the agreement that develops society, not necessarily culture. These two terms, society and culture, are beautifully different. The first can be described as a deliberate construction of exclusivity and profit, encouraging stratification of a population and its resources. The second, is a vernacular development, based on inclusion and familiarity developed through traditions of all guises. Culture can exist within societies of course, and culture may have within it multiple societies. These terms are beautiful because they are reproductive and with every reproduction produce a new and more incomprehensible level of complexity. When two different cultures, which have developed from two different methods of communication, the most significant source of tension and misunderstanding in a global society according to Hall, live anew within proximity, comfortable or uncomfortable, the spatial miscommunication begins.

Following this train of thought, constructing an environment that begins to trend toward clear, concise, and open communication then appears to be the most apt and applicable solution. Would the world be very different if we had based our society on only four laws, rather than an infinite abyss of legalities? Does population explosion necessitate the multitude of laws, ordinances and readings? Or was that the first assumption made based on pre-existing, territorial legal, moral and value systems? How then do we find the clear and concise world?

Assuming we've accomplished clear communication, it may be further assumed that clear communication involves clear and precise enforcement, that which does not sway based on the histories and claims made by the defendant. A universal gavel that remains enforced. The brevity of four laws means that interpretation still exists, so does one person then accomplish what multiple judges do now?

Accountability is a strange thing, because all these assumptions really do rely on the accountability of a single man and the values he has been taught to hold dearest, protect and pass on. The success of a country begins with the values and morals of a single man, woman, and child, and a collection them all. Thus we turn to the classics - they had it all figured out all along. I wonder what Socrates would say to the illegal immigrants of today, or if he would venture to recommend a path by which society can begin the very long and arduous journey toward righting wrongs that are so deep seeded, it's almost silly that we should address it at all, but continue on until our society collapses as we know it. Illegal immigration is not the culprit, our society and how it functions is - it is bred without accountability to oneself, but accountability to another - which sadly equates to a dog chasing its tail.

thoughts on Julian Assange....questions really...

2011-03-15T19:49:00.000-07:00

I think it is crucial to categorize what has and has not worked for society at this very moment. If we are about to witness and participate in a massive and mind-altering reconstruction of the world economy – practically a pseudonym for global society – we cannot start from scratch: tabula rasa is a naive dream born of fear.

This thought may or may not be a progressive statement or characterized as a "game changer." It is a cautionary feeling of what is to come.

Media has magnified political turmoil beyond the limits of democracy and has pitted humanity against humanity in a cyber boxing ring. Should we regulate it? Should there be an invisible hand? should it belong to a select few? unselected many or majority? an internet with the ability to hold you accountable for your mistakes . . . Orwellian at the very least. But an ignorant society is a sitting duck in the shape of a pawn. Ignorance produces the unaccountable hand, a fear I fear more for every crime revealed, i.e. the extension of greedy hands into public funds, operational hush hush, unabashed racial and sexual slurs, deaths of loved ones, missing information, injustice, etc....And more importantly, evidence of their originating patterns, behaviors, mistakes, blatant mistakes - call it what you will. Julian Assange is a martyr to the digital culture, assaulting political corruption and ignorance with information. The question remains in the air, and for that I am thankful - for I don't know the damage of secrecies revealed, nor would I like to be the judge that decides this - not for infamy's sake, but for the odds at stake.

The question is this:

Where do we, as conscious beings, position ourselves?

Shall we remain in the dark like a sitting duck in the shape of a pawn practically begging to be taken advantage of? Or do we open the information flows wider and more relaxed? Obviously the first is just sad and the second will never happen, period - too taboo - so where does censorship lay on the scale from implausible to implausible? unlikely to 'never gonna happen?' Politicians glib their glib and walk their walk while Accountability takes the longest cigarette break since Louis XIV. I find that the loophole system is childish and fraudulent, creating false sense of security among diverse and/or debt liable populations (don't forget to include Suburbia), I find that the reliance on it is pitiful. Unbalance will always exist, but it takes a wiser population to guide it through rougher storms, a population that learns from what is quickly becoming this young nation's History, to characterize and set precedent for America "to be." That is our many generation's calling - Generation Enlightenment part II.

Girl Contemplates What Love Is

2010-10-08T18:35:00.000-07:00

sketches 08_2010

2010-09-06T15:32:00.001-07:00

just a thought....

Digitizing and Sensualizing the Effects of Modernism

2010-03-28T17:10:00.000-07:00

..."Man’s effort to create something memorable has been modified and thrown askew by the subtle yet dominating yield to vision. It has created a distance from history, where oral histories were once considered valid and believable. This distance is a mode of identity: it is more difficult to identify with histories and traditions further removed than those that are experienced, while it is easier to romanticize histories even further removed, like the Greeks and Romans. Evidenced in modern architecture, the removal of histories and the presentation of the present and only the present have stripped the following generations of the tactile strength of history in architecture, but is it fair to purely vilify modernism? There is still a vision for humanity and the creation of a new history, the creation of a compassionate and free home. Modernism is answering philosophers like Bachelard; it is the beginning of the period we are in.
The significant break in history at the development and fall of modernism was impressive and reality altering. Artists like Man Ray turned mundane objects into representative symbols through juxtaposing utilities to create uselessness which in turn critiqued meaning, creating meaning. Andy Warhol’s Campbell Soups and his representation of the icon through means of mass production stripped the cultural symbol of its meaning (obviously without actually entirely erasing the meaning from memory), reframing the generally accepted definition of an icon. This is a direct interpretation of Martin Heidegger’s example of the repurposing of the Rhine river as a power supplier for a hydroelectric plant in “The Question Concerning Technology:...”

excerpt from Critical Studies for Dora Epstein Jones, 2009

The paper became an installation once bound into a book. Each page formally references the page before and after, transforming the way an overall page looks and functions. Both images and text are red - this is the hardest color for the human eye to see, while at the same time the entire essay is interpreted in braille, and punched through the paper. This not only produces a beautiful lace-like affect, but it also undermines the importance of the written word. This is especially present when the various methods overlap to create a perforated image and text.

NEW LOGO!!!

2010-03-28T13:22:00.000-07:00

I'm getting ready to launch a new website, looking forward to a freelance co-op including myself and my favorite partner phillip cameron; keeping in mind I would love for my other best friend Maria Vera to come and work out here!!!! I love the prep!

Sola Decathlon Midterm: Lani & Cameron

2010-03-11T18:48:00.000-08:00

This project explicitly addresses the idea of modular within the guidelines, rules, and constraints of the Solar Decathlon 2011. We begin by looking for a single module (through iterative exploration) that fits a single or wide-load truck bed for easy transportation. The height of each unit is constrained by the same specific rule.

Rather than producing what our studio deemed the "tootsie roll," a unit that maintains the long rectangle of the bed, we looked for a move that can be done simply to create more variation in configuration possibilities. The ultimate module fit congruently on all six sides, but had no right angle in plan to work with – a significant dilemma for the market viability aspect of the decathlon. ultimately we came up with a unit that was congruent to itself on three sides, including the angled portion.

Each module was designed for a specific environmental purpose (solar, water collection, and living), and each configuration was analyzed based on the particular climate challenges. We developed the most appropriate configuration for California and Washington D.C. , where we are marketing the home as well as where we a competing.

digitizing and sensualizing the affects of modernism: or so they say...

2010-03-09T16:51:00.000-08:00

sketches done for a single paper questioning the ideals of utopian / dystopian aesthetics, fabirication of images and forms in the digital space, and questioning the disillusions of sight versus touch, taste, smell and hearing.

All too relevant dreams

2010-03-04T16:09:00.000-08:00

I figure it’s better to write down my fantasies than to close my eyes at a remedial job and fall asleep.

This morning I dreamt that my school was a city, populated by its students and led by its faculty and administration. It was a lot like Los Angeles with a giant cement river meandering through the middle of it all. A network of extreme overpasses spanned all of it, intersecting and rising in complex layers. The hills fell close to the freeway creating a limiting and comfortable ravine – much like the sciarc and it's narrow halls. The houses were built into the hills with no look I can really recall other than a mountainous aesthetic. It felt familiar like a place I had grown up.

My friends and I were driving across an overpass on our way to some place or another for the night. We noticed the police lights first and a morbid sensation came over me. Looking over the freeways intersecting below, two of the over(under)passes had been shut down. Lights were flashing from everywhere below, and various dark objects, which I assume were cars, dotted the cement lanes. There was no motion as everything below stood still while we passed above. The bodies had been covered by the standard black police tarp and were too many to count. I was curious, but distracted by my date.

He wasn’t so much a date as he was a friend with whom my relationship was evolving. I was in love with him and for the first time, he allowed me to see, feel and understand that he was, too. Arriving at one stationary place, no longer a car, no where discernible, we sat together and alone. He leaned to kiss me and when I hesitated and looked away, he grabbed my chin and pulled it closer to his mouth. His kiss was warm and full of delicate passion. I simply blushed, smiled, and kissed him again and again.

Our group ended up at a theater, where a music show was about to start. The theater was small and intimate with high ceilings and a clear entrance wall. We walked into the glowing theater, white walls, golden wood, golden atmosphere; took the best seats in the house and waited for the show to start. Outside the acrylic-like wall was a packed group of people looking on, excited to experience it from the other side. I wondered where my 'evolutionary' friend had gone, because he didn't sit next to me like I assumed he would. In our group was a friend with whom he had had a “history.” My mind questioned and feared that I had opened my heart to a man who didn’t love me and only wanted me for an instant. I feared without facts to verify my assumptions that he was sitting next to her and was showing her public attention instead of me.

Aloud I wondered, “Do you think the sound is better in here? I mean, do they make the experience better for those who pay more, and for those that pay less, must they hear it from speakers on the other side?” I hoped this would disguise the internal anxiety, paranoia and loneliness. It was my fear that someone else could see my private emotions.

Raimund Abraham, a guest professor, died this morning in a car accident on the freeway headed toward LAX. I did not know him well. I hope he finds peace where he is and a bit of the excitement I'm told he lived for.

WTF is MODULARITY?

2010-02-25T13:01:00.000-08:00

The beginning of this spring semester began with a huge boost to my personal pride – I was accepted to the SCI-Arc Solar Decathlon studio led by Wes Jones and Dwayne Oyler. Then it was quickly followed by anxiety and frustration as my partner and I were assigned a cheme derived out of modularity over three weeks ago. We're still struggling.

It's not that we don't understand what modularity literally means; we've done our research. We are now struggling with what modularity means to architecture, to the relationship of buyer and architect, and the relationship of customization and to what degree. To what extent is the consumer allowed to personalize the product/architecture and at what point does the architect give her/his informed architectural opinion and suggestions? How will the tension be resolved if you give too much power to the consumer. At what point will this become similar to photography, where the professionals have become marginalized by digital capabilities of interested amateurs?

More on this later when a viable solution has revealed itself to our eager minds...

TYPOLOGICAL AVULSION (urban farming and community gardens)

2010-02-08T23:43:00.001-08:00

adventures in the future of Reality

2010-01-14T21:28:00.000-08:00

It has only been a few years. I haven’t seen him since the Great Divide, but I think of him often. Years became known much differently by the time he turned into a single memory and emotion. Age is unfamiliar. Hours are pulled much further apart as similarities of discernable things blur into a slow moving constant. We exist in these times differently. My body remembers when he and I spoke. It is like the memory of a spasm. The world was once a pigmy hummingbird, moving at a pace that was considered familiar and unquestionable. Now that space has changed, even the numbers define something entirely the same and wholly different.
Experiencing life was a collection of related memories, like moving from one room to the next to feel the changing temperature, noise penetration and reverberation; to see the galaxy’s infinite colors and creation.
Since then life has become a single awareness. Not at all what any one of us thought it could be, at least not with hope, positivity or negativity; nor with judgment.
The internal progression of understanding through external means began to open of our minds to the possibilities of something much different and representative. Great philosophers in the once written history – now simply absorbed – have hinted at the veil of ‘reality.’ To them, I say, you were right, but with no true understanding of how you could be wrong, no matter how sensitive you thought you may have been. At least, now you know.
Of course, now it makes no difference. Pushing individual minds past the realm of broken divisions was no mistake. But on the ‘other side,’ there simply existed nothing within our common or individual understanding. In that moment, every moment before and every moment after, we understood it all to be as it is. And to understand this was the saddest and happiest emotion experienced for eternity in all ‘directions.’
Minds were once individual. Thoughts were different from one moment to the next. Now there is only the gelatinous reverberation of words said aloud only internally. The words ‘I’ assume ‘you’ read, an action that requires difference in being and interpretation between one perceived object and the next, is simply an entertaining dream of mine or ours. Our mind makes the differences now simply to entertain.

Fairy Tale in Progress.

2009-11-27T18:57:00.000-08:00

The efforts and overall goal are leading to a more emotive approach to architecture. This project questions what it is to live within brocade and ultimately what brocade has meant to culture over the years, especially within in Venice and to provide for the Venice Biennale. More to come on this later.

Obama Support!

2009-11-16T09:52:00.000-08:00

This morning I read "Not An Ordinary ObamaTown Hall," a CNN article by Ed Henry, Senior White House Correspondent, with a growing sense of American pride. The article described our president's visit to Shanghai Science and Technology Museum for a "QnA" with Chinese students, regarding various concerns of the Chinese youth.

As I read Henry's recount of Obama's success, I could not stop my mind from reminiscing about the elections just last year. I remember, as a 21 year old voter, not being confident in who I was voting for and not really knowing anything about why I was voting. Something in my gut - or was it my youth?- told me Obama was the right choice. His voice of hope and clarity rang across all media outlets and I was afraid to admit that I had been romanced! Still, I punched his dot, and walked out of the voting booth with a sense of ownership that I had never felt before.

And now, after the election and a year into his term in office, I can say that I am proud that I voted for him, and find my hesitancy to admit this silly. I was not born during a great presidency and have never been part of a political strife. It took seeing a man work hard against overwhelming adversity and the cry of public favor for me to come to terms with believing that this man could bring us closer to the UNITED States I've always been told I am a part of. As a white, American girl, brought up in a medium place among bland colors, I was taught that to believe in something was to admit to weakness. That scientific evidence is all that can be Truth.

I was taught only a part of the story and now I can see that I belong to a generation of wholeness. A global youth that wants to make peace with the world for no other reason than that we all are human. And if anything, we will always have that in common.

Reading that article today, reading about Obama's reception in China, I can tell that the world will not change simply for a man with a cause. But an entire nation standing behind him - well that's just plain convincing.

Obama is my Martin Luther King.

Unforgiving Sense of Humor

2009-11-02T11:06:00.000-08:00

Maybe my sense of humor is a being and I'm just trying to make her laugh. And when my efforts fail, she leaves me for another, in some different place and time. Damn my sense of humor, for leaving me when I need her most and damn me for driving her away.

I miss her while sadness envelopes me like a gelatin suit with only the tiniest stir straws to breath from. The void she left is filled with this viscous, acidic fluid - mutating the podium my reality is built on. Without my sense of humor, all good things follow a trivial but accumulative amount of negative instances - not enough to remember precisely, therefore not enough to prove inconsequential. These little things are simply vague feelings that amalgamate into an unidentifiable whole, with no tangible past nor relevant future. It all seems hopeless and dismal without her.

Alcohol tends to bring her back around. But the holiday past, full of belligerent celebrations and primal activities, was met by my sober eyes. Evading my lust for liquor instigated a re-imagining of what I once thought a beautiful pastoral painting, becoming a sordid reinterpretation of Dante's 'Inferno.' It is as if everything I thought normal and entertaining about my friends turned into a swim in the blood and carnage of instinctual lust. All sense of normality was jolted for me. I was overcome by a desperate need to leave this social scene, to leave the people that made me fear reality.

This feeling followed me home, like a shadow stalking a vulnerable girl across a dark alley. It followed me into my bedroom, where I examined myself in the mirror. I had dressed in costume that night, wanting to feel proud of how I looked and attract attention from a single man that had captivated my interest for the past few months. But it was in that blurry storm that his face turned to a white mist and blended with the animals I have come to hate. An overwhelming disappointment climbed upon me with every garment I shed.

I looked at my body from a distance. My arms and legs began to turn into the same white mist. I laid down, covering myself with a blanket, realizing that I am a part of this reality and still nothing near what this reality needs me to be. Fear gripped my mind in the dark, my body was disappearing and there was nothing to be done. My mind, having shed its tangible anchor to this world ran wild without bars. Panic tears at the ceilings of my heart, turning that ceiling into a floor, moving those walls I had spent the 'real' years of my life building. There is nothing for me to understand anymore, no relevant up nor down. There is no reason to appear sane.

When I wake in the morning, my mind has had no rest. It ran through dream after dream and tore my reality into infinite shreds, each shred being an eternal deep. I will never recover from this and my fear is that this episode has set into motion a series that will soon rise to a single tone. That will be my new reality and I will have been released from this one.

The pain lies in not knowing what to believe. Is it alright to maintain in this one, or is it this reality that I am trying to grow past? And does growing past this reality mean, in the most essential way, that I am to lose my mind? And if that is so, should I care that my body ends up in an insane asylum? Or should I understand that it is okay for my mind to exist separately from my body and what supposedly sane people call 'real?'

I ask my mind to stop searching for these answers, but like I said, it is as if the plan has been set into motion, and I am just a player. I miss my sense of humor, desperately.

2009-10-26T17:50:00.000-07:00

I'm tired of hearing negativity about Obama. Isn't it worth believing in him? How will he succeed if the nation isn't behind him and truly a positive force? It is one thing to offer differing opinions and come to an agreement, but it is another to chip away at the nation's confidence with speculations paralleling him to Carter. It isn't that these parallels do or don't exist, it's that without his people, he has nothing. And right now we have him. I am proud to be under his leadership and I see a man with strong convictions standing up for what's right in the world. I am pro-Obama.

BANURAL (VERTICAL PLATFORMS, SOCIAL GARDENS)

2009-08-28T11:14:00.001-07:00

BANURAL FINAL

SCIarc _ 4A Final

2009-08-28T11:09:00.000-07:00

Monorail Station to Subway
Hotel & Residential
Overall Site
Garden Space

2009-08-21T17:12:00.000-07:00

for IO (idea office)

Thoughts on the "SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS"

2009-06-20T12:50:00.000-07:00

This book is truly one of the hardest things I have ever done. Social comfort zones are being broken every day while we learn the boundaries of professionalism and I hope it will be one of the most fulfilling projects to work on for me and the others involved. Flyers and business cards are two of the billion pieces it will take to get this going. Next will be the interviews; photography by Adrienne will be shot throughout all of it. G.R.O.W.2 will hopefully be a large part of the success of the project as well, but I think the hardest part of collecting the information will be the filtering.

The design of the book will come from the information gathered about the place (sunset, echo park, and silverlake). Colors and type will be truly inherent to the places as well as the body and layout. Much of the layout will come from the diagramming of the relationships between artists and this is the most intimidating part.

How do I get people to open up, even if it is only one very honest sentence, about their relationships and what part of the relationship served to influence their art?

I am struggling with this, no doubt. But as the days go on and I hear more and more stories, I know inspiration will be stacked with motivating passion and drive this book into a place I could never have seen it going!

G.R.O.W (squared) Fake Therapy

2009-06-19T18:32:00.000-07:00

Get Rid Of White Walls Site 02 -Fake Therapy from nina marie barbuto on Vimeo.

Artist Interviews!!!!! I want you, artist, yes you, in UNIQUELY COMMON THREAD

2009-06-19T14:29:00.000-07:00

Flyer for artist calls!!!! Send stuff in!!!! Uniquely Common Thread

1st round of renders

2009-06-19T14:27:00.000-07:00

New to rendering in Maya, so these are the first of many many different studies to come on color and lighting, not to mention formal developement.

2009-06-10T12:32:00.001-07:00

These are a continuation of Object//Landscape exercise 1, and finally the introduction of the object into the landcape. Working with Maya has placed me completely out of my element and forced me to look at shapes in a purely aesthetic fashion. I feel as if I'm starting over with a new set of tools and a more finessed knowledge of rules. The two new pieces of my education seem to be having a dialogue similar to that of my 1st year at Sciarc. It's frustrating and fulfilling _ but it is also promising to know that this project will soon be grounded by "real" life scenarios and premises.

Typological Avulsion

2009-06-07T18:03:00.000-07:00

3B, Erin Lani and Phillip Cameron

The project explores the dichotomy between rural and urban. The site is located directly off of the 110 fwy and is currently occupied by Salono Community Gardens. The 'clients' include the gardens, vitra furniture, and smart car. 15 live work lofts comprise the whole garden community equipped for extensive growth. Much of the program is dedicated to community outreach through education and markets, while maintining an "almost off the grid" mentality.

2009-06-07T17:58:00.000-07:00

Back to the basics of OBJECT versus LANDCAPE!