robotim.net
project documentation

currently

Fall 2007

• Design Workshop
• MC Magazine Internship
• Redial
• Show/Tell Studio

Cocurricular

• ITP Radio
• Stuff for Kids
• The Half Hour Cozy
• Thesis

archived

Spring 2007

• Designing for Constraints
• GUI in AJAX

Fall 2006

• Physical Computing

Other Projects

• Graphics
• Video
• Web

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Ideas to share in class today

Pre-thesis concept
The Tools Around Us
An examination of popular, available, and accessible technologies that can be used tactically to effect social change.

Related concepts

• psychogeography
• art and public art
• urban space, public space, the difference between the two
• street theater
• parks, statues and monuments
• The 1871 Paris Commune
• The inversion of the public and private in terms of what is valuable to society (Benjamin Barber talk, “Agency and Art in a Hyper-Consumerist Culture”)
• The Chicago School, Free Market economics, and Milton Friedman

Statues in New York

According to the NYC Parks Department, there are an estimated 1,200 monuments, about which 300 are sculptures. The Parks Department has a searchable database of all the permanent art and monuments in the city parks. Searching the keyword “columbus” will return 10 results.

Questions on my mind right now

How public is art? How much do citizens own public art? When does a sculpture or monument cease being art? How much are we responsible for it? Can popular will change public art? Can we change the meaning of it and how?

Terms that are popping into my head, they will need defining if definitions do not already exist:

• Statue modification, statue improvement, statue transfiguration, statue transmogrification
• Monument correction
• Psychogeographic disorder (applies to locations perhaps?)
• Psychogeographic therapy (therapy applied to locations that syffer from psychogeographic disorder)

Does Columbus Circle suffer from psychogeographic disorder? Does it need psychogeographic therapy?