Vernissages NYC | Lower East Side, September 7

"Early Man & Missing Landscapes" @ Charles Bank Gallery

Leah Yerpe "Illumination" @ Dacia Gallery

"Norway Now in NYC" @ .NO

design | Sun Wall at Sun Farm

As home heating oil prices move inexorably upward, the search for clever use of the sun for heat moves to a higher priority. While numerous “out of the box” solutions are to be found (photovoltaic panels, hot water panels, air heating panels), one of the greatest challenges is to integrate the appliance with the architecture. Too often, rectangular aluminum panels are seen perched precariously on their corner, reclined diagonally in an attempt to find the perfect 90 degree relationship to the noon sun.

This house was designed with a large south-facing façade to welcome the sun to two aspects: the long array of windows was placed to allow the sun’s heat to enter and heat the living room as passive heating; in addition, the large timber trellis was envisioned as a mounting system for a photovoltaic array. Unfortunately, the photovoltaics had to be cut due to high cost, leaving the bare open space above the living room windows.

The current project utilizes this perfect setting in the most cost-effective manner by creating an extremely thin “greenhouse” along the southern wall. The outer skin is a transparent fiberglass fastened to a simple wood frame, with cedar trim. The sunlight penetrates the fiberglass, heating the thin air space just as a car is heated by the sun in the parking lot. The heated air, being lighter, moves upward and into the house through a vent. A second vent at the bottom of the wall brings cooler air into the heating chamber from the lower part of the room; in this way, a thermosiphon is created which will perpetually circulate the air, as long as it is heated by the sun.

We are looking forward to the cool days of fall to try it out!

camminando | Sunday Afternoon in Columbia County: "Festival of Books" and Won Dharma Center

Sunday afternoon was quite dense of events in Columbia County. My walkabouts (or to be more honest, "driveabouts") started at the Festival of Books at the Spencertown Academy, the 1847 schoolhouse.
The 2011 Festival of Books is the sixth annual "celebration of books and reading for the whole community"; the program featured a series of events, from best selling author readings to an exhibition of artwork from one a presented books and even sale of vintage books —where I found a 1865 edition of Lord Byron's Poems. It gives me a great pleasure in these years of digital everything to actually touch and read a vintage book, being amazed of how the delicate thin paper with elaborate illustrations and bound in an elegant leather cover, witnessed the passing of centuries and who knows how many stories can narrate...

Artwork from Howard Saunders's “faux graphic memoir ”Axeman Who Will be 70 in the Year 2010"

The afternoon continued at the open house of the Won Dharma Center: a presentation to the Claverack community of the new facilities of the United States headquarters of Won Buddhism Sangha. Won Buddhism is based on the teaching by the Korean born founding Master Sotaesan, who reached enlightnemt in 1916: "After reading the Diamond Sutra, Sotaesan said, "Shakyamuni Buddha is truly the sage of sages."

The Won Dharma Center meditation hall and grounds also featured an art exhibition by Bruno Pasquier-Desvignes, whose work is often based on aesthetically interesting assemblages of found manmade and natural objects :


The facility is set on 465 acres of the rolling hills on the North side of Route 23, near the Claverack Red Mills, offering breathtaking views of the sun setting behind the Catskills Mountains. On the architectural critique note, the series of building —a meditation hall, an administrative building, dining hall and residencies— although inspired by sustainable design and beautifully detailed in cedar and local materials, lack a master plan. Mainly an integration with the land and overall landscape design are missing; the site as well as the Buddhist tradition, relating the human mind and body to nature, would have offer a great opportunity to create an architectural expression / integration with the landscape.



Nevertheless the Won Dharma Sangha presence is a great addition to the energy of the already locally present spiritual communities and practices.

Nature and Spirituality: the Sun Setting behind the Catskill mountains

camminando | SAN FRANCISCO and California Cool

Seaweed soaked shoreline, Golden Gate National Recreation Area

I recently traded in the humidity that blankets Miami (my home town) during these endless months of deep summer, for the cool morning fog of Marin County, CA and surrounds. It was a delightful respite of differing culinary finds, temperature, nature and design. While I bathed safely in the refreshing air of the mountainous region, the Northeast suffered a quake and a hurricane, thoughtlessly named after me. I marveled at my sudden ability to dodge both quakes and hurricanes as I leapt from Miami's stormy season and avoided the watery onslaught of Irene's wrath.

Tennessee Valley Trailhead,

Golden Gate National Recreation Area/Marin Headlands,

A lovely 3.1 mile hike down to the sea

A patchwork quilt of architectural design in the streets of San Francisco on a shockingly fog-free day

The entrance gate to Chinatown in San Francisco’s Grant Street
was a gift from the Republic of China in 1969. It is on the oldest street in San Francisco.

Columbus Avenue and Grant Street:
This mural commemorates the history of North Beach's Italian settlers,
while the other side features Chinatown and some of San Francisco's early history.

The streetcar system has served San Francisco since the late 19th century. Most streetcar lines in other cities, including San Francisco, were converted to buses after World War II. Five lines survived until the 1970s, when the streetcar lines were converted to light rail during the opening of the Market Syreet Subway in 1980.

Hotel Triton in San Francisco

Outside the Mill Valley Library on a Sunday afternoon….
The Merry Widow performed amongst the Redwoods.

The Redwoods,
A poem by Joseph B. Strauss

Here, sown by the Creator's hand.

In serried ranks, the Redwoods stand:

No other clime is honored so,

No other lands their glory know.

events | Hurricane Irene visits Sun Farm

Irene has finally passed and moved away. As one of the hundreds million people living in the effected areas I experienced anticipation, fear and relief —when the anticipated hurricane then transformed into tropical storm passed my dwelling and finally left.

I recorded the hurricane passage as artist view of how forces of nature transform the landscape, excerpts from video and photographs of a 24-hour period during the passing of the hurricane in Sun Farm, a land art project in the Hudson Valley can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RryhTNOdHd4

Less powerful than expected yet Irene brought high wind and a relentless gush of rain which eventually resulted in flood. The vibrant summer hues turned into unsaturated, almost grey, tones. I was very impressed by how transient weather systems can transform the “permanent” landscape.

Excerpts

Excerpts from the conceptual multimedia project

“Axes Mundi: Perceptions and Understanding of Places as Intersections of Space, Time and Culture"

camminando | Wind Power in Massachusetts

Anticipating the hurricane I am organizing photos, from my summer walkabouts —which did not cover a large geographic area, although quite concentrated from a cultural standpoint.
Approaching the Mohawk trail, a quite interesting view in the Berkshires was a wind farm —seen here from Hancock Road.

And below an aerial view of the wind farm from http://www.bing.com/maps/

Excerpts from the conceptual multimedia project

“Axes Mundi: Perceptions and Understanding of Places as Intersections of Space, Time and Culture"

publications | SPACETECTURE

I am pleased to announce that the first e-book of the SPACETECTURE trilogy is finally out!

The fully illustrated version can be found at Amazon
the abridged, cheaper, version at Smashwords

SPACETECTURE is part of a trilogy of books and interactive content exploring space and its transformation in the information age.

The emphasis is on computing design applications, but the concept of space is also explored from an interdisciplinary approach ranging from geometry to psychology of perception. The content is presented in a rigorous theoretical framework and offers software independent methodologies, with the intent is to build rigorous foundations for design, from the virtual to the physical world. SPACETECTURE is targeted to both an academic and professional audience -in the field of geometry, engineering, architecture and design- and a general reader of popular science, as the series intersects several disciplines from science to art. The ambition behind SPACETECTURE is to bring the "wholistic" approach, which permeates the tradition of the ancient treatises of Palladio or Pacioli, to the digital age, in an organic fusion of theories and methodologies from different fields of knowledge.

fitness | Roya Siroospour: an interview

After dragging, bouncing, hopping, lifting, bending, jumping and bopping my way through several states and three countries worth of gyms and myriad exercise classes, I am pretty clear on what circumstances make me want to work hard, and which conditions catapult me into threatening to bag the whole fitness thing and reconsider purchasing a muumuu and lifetime supply of crunchy cheesy snacks to enjoy on my new sofa. To maintain a certain level of physicality takes ramping up at various intervals in ones progress through time and space.

My "gym du jour" possesses an Instructor who manages to get me cranked up into struggling through routines that leave even the "big boys" with bulging eyeballs. The fact that there are males at all present in a fitness classroom is an anomaly; grunting through a set of rusty metal weight-lifting sets in front of other males and a smattering of nubile females is a more accepted behavior in the masculine tribe ritual. Taking direction "from a girl" is not in the Male Behavior Manual last time I looked.

Over the past several years I have been happily following a certain instructor; Roya is a bundle of kinetic energy and unending good will towards the sloth-like behavior of the average class attendee. Recently I began questioning why Roya, specifically, makes me want to work that hard; which in turn leaves me with a great sense of accomplishment and contentment. I have never been hurt by her class but have often ached with deep and prolonged muscle-usage, which, by the way, I consider a good thing.

To overcome perceived physical short-comings, which all too often are self imposed in origin, is proof that if you can push through the physical barriers, it is a short mental / emotional hop to a realization that one can override other difficulties .

I asked Roya what part of her motivational aspects were unscripted and which were purposefully calculated to control the energy in the room. I wanted her take on how this body-mind thing worked from her front-row seat.

How she gets the energy in the room rolling?

Roya: "When I come into the (exercise) room, I shut down all processes. I grew up a performer, so I know how to turn it on."

No matter what is going on in her life, physically or mentally, she makes it a point to put that aside and re-formulate the mood before entering her classroom.

" It is important to take control of the room. Who is in there also adds to the energy. There is an energy field and it has to be in a certain spot or I have to work harder to bring it up."

Roya needs the front row to be responsive and create the dynamism which will ripple into the receding rows and create a vibrance everyone feeds from and returns back to the group. If the right situation is not in place, Roya will have to work harder to bring it up. Occasionally she will feel logy energy in a class, leaving her drained from working without the aid of reciprocal exuberance. A group can merely take vitality and not give in return, or conversely share their joy and vigor. It becomes a spiraling eddy of "group think", much in the way a car can be sucked up in the "draft" of a large semi truck on the road.

"It's as if we're all rowing and someone's sipping a cocktail. I am consciously cranking up the energy" Roya explains.

In any social group, you can tell who is providing the "juice", the lower energy people plug into the other like an EV battery from a new electric car.

Roya: "I was always super energetic and loved big groups."

When she first moved to a Miami gym from Colorado she was concerned that no one would be interested in what she offered. It did not take long for her classes to fill to capacity. I was there......it happened quickly. The draw is that "super energy" that creates others to want that degree of explosive pizazz. At first I didn't think much about it, but now find myself ruminating as to what, exactly, produces the magnetic force.

Gunning is a relatively new piece of exercise equipment in our gym which resembles a spinning cycle, but using the upper body, your hands on "pedals". Gunning on the KrankCycle was created by the same person who brought us the wildly popular "Spinning", John G. Krank. Adding a personal heart monitor linked to a screen above the class area, allows each participant to track and regulate his own heartbeat. The heart monitor is attached to each class member's torso and flashed onto the screen, allowing the student to note how his body is responding. The student adjusts his energetic output to stay within various zones prescribed by the instructor as the class progresses.

Roya can see how the mind and body are disconnected in some individuals when they first enter the Gunning arena. She notes, " It can be very hard to get people into Gunning because they are so detached; it can be as simple as too much caffeine and too little hydration."

Music is an integral part of the feel good dynamic. Roya's choices? "If it works for me, it works for everyone. I move better when there's music; it makes my body move....it's part of my soul. If you can follow a rhythm, every part of your body will start to move; musical beats are cyclical, like your heartbeat or breathing. With Spinning (a repetitive movement ) you begin to feel trance-like and focus on the beat."

Yoga is about becoming one with your breath. Roya is taking this same yogi thought and bringing music into creating the "one-ness" quotient: music, the heart's rhythm and the breath become an intertwined beat. Fitness movements provide an environment to forego over-think mode allowing mind and body to meld completely into a cohesive whole; the body moving as one unit instead of a series of disparate parts threatening to to fly apart at any given moment.

I asked Roya about her experiences with one-on-one training; "I worked one woman hard for 2 months, but she never lost weight. Her background was fried food and cream, so I had to physically take her to the grocery store, walked her through, reading labels." The woman got it with that last ditch effort to educate, and lost 47 pounds. She began to make her own juices and recipes, excited by the new connection to her own destiny.

Roya has the added support of having a family on the same page with the mind-body connection; her father spent 30 years as a Yale-educated Surgeon, and is now an Holistic healer.

Roya always loved the gym, at 16 years old, the gym felt like home. She competed in gymnastics and rode horses. Today her schedule is exceptionally full of physical exercise. As well as a killer schedule at 3 Miami CRUNCH gyms, Roya manages to have plenty of energy to perform freestyle dancing. A prime example of positive energy breeding positive energy, which, happily she shares with her clients.

Roya Siroospour is Group Fitness Instructor And Personal Trainer

CRUNCH, Miami

An excerpt from the "in-progress" project MOVING MIND

by daniela bertol and irene sperber