<nettime> Berliner Gazette, 29.11.[english version]

[Krystian Woznicki <krystian@snafu.de>]

4 1/2 Minutes
or: >>The average time it takes a Tokyo resident to reach a convenience
store.<<

[ ] Protocol: Sean Snyder, artist [1]

The one hour and forty minute ride from Narita airport displaces any
preconceptions a western visitor may have about Japanese culture. A
cognitive placelessness occurs due to overlapping visual references from
elsewhere. The basis of my project during a four month residency in Japan
is to construct a sampled composite (an impossible task?) of hybrid and
non-Japanese aspects of the built environment and cultural landscape of
Tokyo and its periphery.

Tokyo is constantly transforming and dissolving in photographic, animated,
and virtual representations. The most dominant characteristics of the city
are not itīs copied landmarks, but interconnected flows of electricity,
communication and transportation. Profuse above ground utility lines,
elevated subway, urban rail, high-speed train and the Metropolitan
Expressway connect Tokyo with the rest of Japan. Auto navigation
technology [2] orients the vast expanses around the city through an
endless network of transaction points; convenience stores, fast food
restaurants, gas stations and shopping centers.

Tama New Town, Play Station A5, and the DIY Architecture of Tokyo

In 1971 Denise Scott asked the question >>in fact, where did the
McDonald's parabola and the split-level ranch come from in the first
place? << The same year McDonald's opened their first restaurant in Japan.
An examination of the roof angles of traditional Japanese architecture
could provide a hypothetical answer. So where did Tokyo come from?

Fantastic architecture is everywhere: Pachinko Parlors, Love Hotels, and
Theme Parks. But the rooftops of the anonymous expanses of Tokyo's
periphery hold the most unusual examples. The depictions of cities around
the world with no commentary on late-night Japanese television and free
tourist brochures with collaged continents merge with aspects of Tokyo's
environment. Tama New Town/ Tama Center in suburban Tokyo combines
futuristic urban design and architecture with stylized urban symbols from
the great civilizations of the world.

The Play Station video game A5 [3], intended for the Japanese market,
follows a similar logic as Tama New Town. Using simplified CAD
architectural renderings, the game begins with a topographic view of an
undeveloped natural landscape with a monument (the Houses of Parliament,
the Arc de Triomphe, the Pyramids of Giza, Tokyo Tower, etc.) as the focal
point. The goal of the game is to develop a prosperous infrastructure
around the monument with the given vocabulary of non-spectacular
components of the contemporary city. The elevated transportation network
is the one distinctively Japanese aspect of the resulting city. For
Japanese architects and individuals there are numerous references for
sampling architectural styles available. For practicing architects there
are extensive guides to non-Japanese architecture, picture books, exterior
details, dictionaries of western architectural terminology, etc. For
amateur architects home design software [4] is available. Using a
vocabulary prefabricated elements, individuals can create their own
'fantasy' environment [5]. This sort of 'do it yourself' approach [6] can
begin to explain the origin of the unusual architectural varieties.

Project

I have constructed a narrative guide in printed form, creating a composite
of the city's surface through an excavation of ephemeral everyday visual
data (printed material, television and computer software) juxtaposed
against my own digital material. The material has been condensed at
low-resolution, re-assembled, categorized, clipped, scanned, ordered and
placed into a magnified random grid structure interpreted from Japanese
publications and cartoons. One focus of the research, through a process of
scanning the city and its surroundings from rail lines with digital media,
is to construct a sample archive of typological approximations and pseudo-
classifications of the obscure architectural variants found in the region.
[7]

1. mailto: seansnyder@altavista.net
2. http://www.zenrin.co.jp
3. http://www.artdink.co.jp/japanese/title/a6/index.html
4. http://www.megasoft.co.jp
5. http://www.pophome.com/index.shtml
6. http://www.doityourself.com/
7. http://itools.mac.com [open public folder with member name: seansnyder ]

And here some Berlin dates for your schedule:

Wed 29.11.

W o r k s h o p : The workshop on Mobile Multimedia Communications
[http://mcp.fantastic.ch] will provide an international forum to discuss
innovative techniques to tackle the lack of resources by implementing
special optimization and coordination techniques, which support the
provisioning of particularly valuable services to users on the move and
especially in the vehicular environment
[http://www.comnets.rwth-aachen.de/~drive]. The scope includes optimized
interworking of mobile telecommunication and radio broadcast networks and
the layered interworking of network elements with adaptive applications in
order to exploit the scarce radio resources in the most efficient and
demand-oriented way. Above all the workshop will provide a road map for
the provisioning of the future mobile internet in the car. Place:
Heinrich-Hertz-Institut Berlin [http://www.hhi.de], Einsteinufer 37, 9
a.m. - 6 p.m.

B o o k r e l e a s e : Friedrich Kittler presents his new book >>Eine
Kulturgeschichte der Kulturwissenschaft<< [ISBN: 3-7705-3418-2] which
traces the founders of cultural studies from Vico to writers as Flaubert
and cultural scientists like Victor Hehn to Nietzsche and his followers.
Place: Kiepert, Georgenstrasse 2, Stadtbahnbogen 182, 8 p.m.

Thu 30.11.

L e c t u r e : Berlin based theoretician Knut Ebeling (born in 1970), who
studied under Gilles Deleuze and Friedrich Kittler will approach >>Madame
Edwarda<< by Georges Batailles from two different angles: By taking one of
the most scandalous and mysterious pieces Batailles ever produced Ebeling
sheds light on his way of reading and positions his philosophy between
Hegel and Nietzsche. Place: Juliettes Literatursalon, Gormannstrasse 25,
8.30 p.m.

Sat 02.12.

O p e n i n g : Berlin based artist Hanayo [http://www.hanayo.com]
transforms the former Club 69 space at Kunst Werke
[http://www.kw-berlin.de] into a winter-style Kindergarten. The playful
fantasy area for parents and kids reflects the recent baby boom in
Berlin-Mitte and its new, growing social networks: As the artist herself
puts it >>Hanachambre is the room where u can feel free: a baby becomes a
worm; a man becomes a butterfly; a child becomes an alien<<. The indoor
playground by Hanayo opens daily between 10a.m. - 6p.m.; for the opening a
special performance has been announced. Place: Kunst Werke, Auguststrasse.
69, 7 p.m.

Best wishes,

Krystian Woznicki
mailto:krystian@snafu.de

PS: >>Dreams on the path to reality<< pumps up first when you enter the
site of the people's project [http://www.thepeoplesproject.com]. Founded
by Axel Lapp, its intention is to stimulate and motivate people to create
public space with their own ideas: Public areas like streets, parks or
buildings are mostly perceived in their functional idea and less as a
creative or democratic space. The people's project wants to open this
space for projects that transform places of our everyday life into places
of recreation and new ideas. There are several concepts being realized at
the moment not only in Berlin.

PPS: Im Zeitalter globaler E-Speed-Kommunikation ist vorallem Sprache
(Language) ein Medium, das die Globalisierung verlangsamt. Mit dem
Internet-Translator Systransoft [http://www.systranet.com] lassen sich
Dokumente automatisch uebersetzen, wobei die Moeglichkeit besteht, mit 21
spezialisierten Woerterbuechern zu arbeiten und damit eine hohe
Uebersetzungs-Qualitaet zu erreichen. In Wirklichkeit kann die
vermeintlich unuebertreffliche Intelligenz der Software Sprache zu neuer
Komik und Poesie verhelfen. Um Sean Snyders Werkstattbericht aus Toyko
auch fuer deutsch-only LeserInnen verstaendlich zu machen, haben wir ihn
mit so einer Uebersetzungskanone beschossen
[http://www.kulturserver.de/cgi-bin/view_korrespondent?id=420&layout=],
raten allerdings kuerzere Abschnitte in den DIY - Uebersetzungsreisswolf
zu werfen.

[ ] Berliner Gazette

The weekly E-Mailzine is published by http://www.kulturserver.de

[ ] Editors

Klaas Glenewinkel
Ulrike Rogler
Anne Schreiber
Krystian Woznicki

[ ] Subscriptions

http://www.kulturserver.de/cgi-bin/newsletter





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